Welcome to Caribbean Rhythms episode 158. I hope you enjoyed Erik Prince last week and on this episode also there will be special guest and also next week surprise guest. I hope you enjoy these episodes without my monologues which have to be delayed at least another week or two because I am currently on the move traveling in between countries hiding in the crevices of countries. And they got me, however, they attack my health. You hear how they put congestion into my brain. And so I think I need to have a short period, recover spiritual powers. And so in the meantime, you enjoy these episodes with special or unusual guests. Now I wanted to however add a very quick mini-monologue on this, because there's many things happening in the world.

There is the bridge breaker ship in Baltimore, there is a terror attack in Moscow, very similar to the Bataclan attack in France some years back. I was recently in Paris, Paris is still in a state of siege. If you go to any public concert, let's say the nice old church, they would have classical concert or such. I despised it, by the way. I hate doing that. I love going to these old buildings if I'm alone in them. But when there is a concert and they're playing, you know, Pachelbel Canon or this, always the same music and it's always full of boomers with their families and it gives an air of, oh, it's culture night out for the children. It's not what either this music was meant to be or what the buildings were meant for. I was, for example, at Saint-Chapelle, which

which was the private chapel of one of France's early kings, the beautiful stained glass windows. But I think the atmosphere was completely ruined by this, the glut absolutely packed with time for culture night for little Cindy. I suppose that's nice, you're supposed to applauded as a conservative, but I despised it. And I despised also being treated as if you're going into an airport, but that's what happens now in Paris. Since Bataclan, it is still in an emergency state, and so you are searched as if you were going through airport terminal. They search bags, they put you through x-ray and so forth. Perhaps Russia do this, I don't know. Otherwise, my impressions of Paris were very good. I will talk this on future episode. However, yes, many things going on in the world besides Russia.

There's also Trump doing judo on his enemies. Now he has bounced back. Within a week, it looked like he was bankrupt because of this politically motivated judgment against him. typical something you'd expect happen in Zambia or this but They were going to asset Seize him this week and because of his badly Conceived it seems company or it it appeared so before that nobody was using truth social It wasn't doing well, but because of that and because it went public he's now one of the richest billionaires again in the world and It's become Trump magic a friend said this and I agree. He is a blessed man He met he say whatever you want about him. Yes. He's vain. He's inconsistent, but he is blessed somehow he manages to outwit his opponents every time and

he has now this innovation where there's a meme stock that his supporters are completely legally allowed to buy to support him and and he manages to get out of all his financial troubles and make very well out of it. He has a big war chest for campaign. He's an amazing man. Do you like that? And I remind you, two episodes ago I had a special reminder about what made Trump's campaign so powerful in 2016. the abandonment of GOP orthodoxy, in particular, on migration, where the GOP consultants were supporting, let's say, the naturally conservative immigrant, the naturally conservative Hispanic, and so forth, that mythology. They were supporting so-called free trade, which was not actually free at all, because it's free on only one side. I don't want to restate it.

But he abandoned also GOP orthodoxy on foreign hawkishness intervention, which I think was ruined during Bush years. Perhaps they could have swatted down Saddam as an example. But when they stayed in Iraq, and then after that in Afghanistan, yes, I know Afghanistan proceeded. But the nation building Iraq in, excuse me, the nation building in Afghanistan, that effort was subsequent, I think, to the one in Iraq. They were both huge mistakes. And when the GOP tried to do that, people forget. This is actually specifically the neocon nonsense about spreading democracy, that if you build schools, if you build hospitals, if you introduce parliamentary structures or constitutions in foreign countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, if you spread democracy, in other words, that you will gain allies.

whereas the, let's say, old realist policy would have been to support whatever right-wing dictator could keep communism out, whether that's Pinochet or Mobutu in Zaire. That policy, too, is sometimes falsely called neo-con. There are people who use the word indiscriminately. They don't know what it means. They think it means anything that pursues American national security interests aggressively or by using seemingly retrograde tactics or violence. But a neocon would not like, for example, America's support of Pinochet. In fact, I remember in the past, I defended Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator of Paraguay. And immediately, neocons online jumped on my back. Oh, my family was tortured by Stroessner. Didn't you know? What were they doing in Paraguay that he

decided to torture them. He just did it because he was a big meanie, you know, and I showed them then he met Reagan and the Pope and such. I mean, he was an ally during the Cold War. It becomes absurd when they call these countries that were American allies fascist and they're retconned in this way. Another absurdity, excuse this rather rambling opening segment or closing segment, I haven't decided if I'll put at the beginning or end of this guest show. But yes, they try to take away my spiritual power. That's why my thoughts meander. But another nonsense, let's say libtard slash neocon, because they agree on many things idea, is when they implicitly call Japan a fascist state. Now of course they would never openly say that because Japan is an important American

an ally, many of them traveled to Japan and so on. But Japan's policies, which were, I would argue, part of Trump's policies suggested in 2016 and Peter Navarro's policies, which are some type of trade protectionism to protect local industry, plus immigration restriction, plus, let's say, focus on the health and well-being of your own population. But when you enumerate them, they call these policies separately fascist or nativist or such. It's always very effective, I think, at least in public, and we should always be potentially arguing to the public, not reinforcing each other. But you know, just ask them, is Japan a fascist, nativist, retrograde state? They get very angry when you ask that, because they can't argue that in public, you know.

I think that for an outward-facing rhetorical strategy, I think that's much better than trying to say, well, no, actually fascism is good, and so that line of argument will not work with normal fags, and of course there are normal fags you can turn to your side, but it isn't just the normal fags, right? It is very, let's say, intelligent people who are on the edge, or potentially influential people who are on the edge. I just read article about a mega billionaire who is funding some type of communist projects in Eastern Massachusetts, excuse me, or Western Massachusetts, something like that. I will link it on my account. But that's the kind of man that he seems confused. He doesn't like aspects about the modern world, becomes radicalized out of some kind of dissatisfaction

and maybe if one of us had gotten to him sooner, but you can't get to someone like that with these hoary, let's say, I'm going to revive the image of Francisco Franco even, who I admire by the way. Actually, I prefer Mussolini and I'm not shy about that, but you can't necessarily use that for an outsider except as a shock tactic. Anyway, I'm rambling, But Japan, yes, what I wanted to say to you about Japan on this opening segment, the balance between trade policy and immigration policy, I think it can be struck in something like Japan's favor. But what populists maybe forget, what they don't want to tell you is that there are trade-offs. And Japan has what might be called by, let's say, a dissident rightist or a dissident leftist in the United States.

has something like corporate fascism. I don't think it has that in fact, but let's say I'm using that word as a vibe now. In other words, your work life is very difficult in Japan. The average salary man has a very difficult life, works a lot, does not get almost any days off. In fact, he has a horrible life in the sense of in Tokyo will live in a very small apartment will make very little money. I was talking to a friend, a nurse in Japan makes something on the order of $1600-$2400 a month. That's far less than what nurses for example make in the United States. But it isn't just nurses. That's around $2000 to I think even $3000 a month would be the salary of what a famed Japanese salaryman who lives in a tiny apartment, not in a nice part of Tokyo.

Yes, it's not dangerous, but it's bleak. And their wife takes all their money, gives them an allowance. Sometimes they have to beg for allowance for lunch or to have a phone. And then it's very common that their wife divorces them in old age, leaves them alone and broken. It's really a hellish life for many people. Of course, Japan was always like that. It's nothing new in the sense that it was always a highly stratified society, and if you go to a nice restaurant, as many of you may enjoy movie show Tokyo Vice now, you will see, I don't know if they're Yakuza, but they're Yakuza-like men, you know, with a girl with a red dress on the arm, but that's very few Japanese live that way. Most of them lead these lives of despair, and furthermore, I'm just, that's the worst

of it, but up to that, there are many parts of life that an American will find uncongenial. For example, in Europe, everyone gets a huge amount of time off. August entirely closes down in France. Actually, even poor countries like Argentina have this. The equivalent is not August but February. Buenos Aires completely shuts down almost. The streets are empty. goes on vacation. That's just a very... You see why I'm telling you I cannot do monologue? They're absolutely owning my throat. My God, I'm getting throat-fucked by Zog. I cannot record, but I'll continue for you mamzers anyway. Listen, the idea that Tokyo would be shut down during August, which is positively infernal in cities like Tokyo or Kyoto, where

the heat, the humidity is intolerable. But of course, it's inconceivable that the city would be shut down for August. People work very hard. Second of all, you might have heard that the Japanese are thin. Yes, this is true, and I cannot confirm, but I've read that your company or the government will have the right to visit you at work, measure your waste, And maybe you would be shamed if you're slightly fat and given a diet plan or something like that. And I think that's a good thing because the people are a resource of the state that needs to be shepherded in that way, otherwise they turn fat or go to seed in many other ways as the Brazilian people have. That's another topic for a future show, by the way.

My extreme disappointment at how Brazil has had probably some of the best looking people in the world, let's say around the year 2010 and before, both the women and the men, and it's completely almost a complete reversal in 10 years where it's almost like another population now, just gone to seed so fast. And I don't think it's merely that the good people have left or that there's been, let's a racial demographic change. It's also lack of virtue in the population. They've taken one of the great natural advantages and thrown it in the toilet for no good reason. Well, Japan wants to keep its people thin and so forth. But what I'm telling you is that that in the United States would be seen as an outrageous imposition on your freedom and privacy done

through a corporation, you know, through your workplace it's being done, and many other such things where your entire life is your work. And why am I saying this is because there are trade-offs, there are trade-offs. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this, but I suspect that if you have a nationalist trade policy where you have national industry and you don't allow immigration and I agree with both these things but the flip side of it is there needs to be some deregulation on businesses to have let's say greater control over their employees or a lowering of wages for you understand what I'm saying because actually Japan and East Asia which are such models for the dissident right and and to some extent even the dissident left, they actually do have cheap labor with their own

populations, you know, but it's a trade-off. In other words, you give these large corporations or the employers more control or you give the employees less rights and that's what allows this nationalist trade policy. So, does that improve quality of life? I think it does. I I think the Japanese model is still superior to what exists in West Europe at the moment and the United States. But I think it does involve this trade-off where either out of nationalist libertarian impulse or out of nationalist, let's say, state-corporate cooperation such as exists in Japan, people's lives become more like the Asian workers' lives, and you know, I'm sure retards will, if they even listen to what I'm saying so deep on this show, will

say that I'm responsible for the future slavery and the enslavement of the American worker, of the European worker. I'm just noticing this, that it seems to be a trade-off. And I'm not sure, for example, that you can have an economy like France or Spain, where there are many worker protections and freedoms and so forth, and you force somehow corporations to stay national. Why are they outsourcing? Why are they moving to places like Vietnam or Latin America or so on? because they feel they can't make a profit if they stay in a highly regulated environment like that. Then I know you will say Germany, but in my opinion, the life of the German worker is not that different from what I've been describing about Japan. The only places

where it is different would be somewhere like Norway or Iceland, where in the case of Norway they have huge oil deposits, or in the case of Iceland, they actually have a tiny population, about 300,000 people, and they didn't make their money with industry, they made their money by being, you know, people say the Dutch are river Jews and the Swiss are mountain Jews. I think that gives the ashk too much credit. There are various commercial peoples. It turns out that the descendants of the Vikings are unsurprisingly a commercial people themselves. Well, Iceland made a huge amount of money in high finance, but they did not do it by having factories such as you imagine and so on. I think unless you have huge natural wealth like Norway or some other making of money

in finance like Iceland, Dubai would be another example, oil economy, whatever, but unless you have something like that, you end up having to either have somewhat shitty lives for your native workers or the local corporations will end up outsourcing abroad. And I don't know how you stop that. You can force them to stop, but not really. And I am aware of examples given from 1950s to, let's say, 1970s, when there was a national economy in the U.S. and rising living standards and, let's say, economy of leisure. But I hear from people that there was not as much leisure or living space as you've been made to believe during that time. In other words, a family could survive on one's salary, but could even live well on

one's salary and have savings, which Americans today do not, but they lived in much smaller houses, et cetera, and so forth. And something like that may have to return if there is going to be a nationalized industry, is what I'm saying. I'm not the one who makes the decisions, by the way. Don't blame it on me. I just suspect that there would be these kinds of trade-offs. And furthermore, what people forget about the post-World War II scenarios, the United States was ruling the world economy. Europe was destroyed, Japan had been destroyed, Korea was at a level of development after World War II because of the devastation that Africa was at that time, too. They developed in very different directions, I wonder why.

But the United States had all of the gold in the world, it was the only game in town, and so perhaps for a limited window of time it could have a national economy and the kind of high living standards for everybody that it did. But at the moment I don't know if it can reproduce that, and again I suspect that there would be quite severe trade-offs in lifestyle if there was going to be a Peter Navarro-style economic switch in the United States and West Europe, which I need to explain again, despite everything I'm saying now, that I would like to see that happen, but perhaps people should be ready so that when corporations get more control or more hand in their negotiations with unions or against employees, that they should be given that in exchange for their

loyalty and not outsourcing, not moving abroad and so forth. As for the immigration part, I will maybe have guests in future to discuss that. But I don't believe that's driven primarily by economic concerns for cheap labor. A few industries, and by the way, they're not even necessarily the retarded industries. It is primarily things like the service restaurant industry and the agricultural industry and so on. And they profit from cheap labor brought in by migrants. But overall migrants are an economic drain, and most industries I don't think get any economic benefit from migrants at all. And migrants wouldn't come if it wasn't for the social benefits they enjoy in Western Europe and the United States. If they were coming for economic benefits, it would again look very much like Dubai or

like Iceland, but it does not. They're being brought in, as Elon rightly noted recently, for political benefit. And stupid Republicans are playing along with it because they are afraid to be called racist, first of all. And yes, they are beholden to a few industries which might profit from it, so it's temporarily easy to buy off their consent to this. But ultimately, I think it hurts rich people. It doesn't help, let's say, mega corporations to have mass migration of squatters. I've seen this cycle play out in Latin American countries, where it's been done many times internally. A local, leftist politicians will import from the interior provinces, let's say diversity migrants, and they will do so for social support and political support, and they will give

them in exchange hospitals and other benefits, and temporarily the consent of the mega-rich in that whatever city or region will be bought off, because they will get some cheap labor, some of them at least, and so they will consent to that. But over time, the left gets the upper hand and fucks over the mega-rich. And squatters have long been a problem in Latin America. It'll go the Zimbabwe route much sooner than the United States. And in fact, many old farms and, let's say, old money estates in Brazil and places like that are very easy to take over by squatters, who are supported by leftist politicians. So they attack me. Ultimately, I do not believe that in this line that it's the capital with a capital C or the capitalists or the mega-rich who are bringing in migrants for cheap labor.

I think that actually the old left is trying to throw off their responsibility and blame their usual scapegoat. It is actually the left that profits the most from migration, which would stop without benefits being given out. But of course, it's impossible to destroy, I think, the welfare state the way libertarians are hoping. And so only a front-facing migration restriction is doable. I think something like what Trump, Peter Navarro and people like that are suggesting. I say this only because there are people who believe that by bringing in migrants, you can crash the welfare state. I think that's a huge mistake. Anyway, look, I hope you do not mind this rambling introduction. I wanted to just talk briefly about what I see as trade-offs between if you adopt

a Japanese or Asian model, there are things about it that you might not enjoy. And of course, this has nothing to do with personal advice. I would advise all friends listening to this show to form something like a cosanostra, something like that, and to avoid conservative so-called virtue. But again, these are big talks for another time. I hope you enjoy guest on this show. And next week, also a very special guest. Look forward to it. and I will return with power show and real monologues either the week after next or if there's still another special guest in one to two weeks, I should be back to regular scheduling of monologue power voice. Very good, I send power, we talk soon. We are back to Caribbean rhythms with old friend, Edward Lutvak, needs no introduction,

most important geopolitical strategist in world right now. How do you, Edward, welcome back to Caribbean rhythms. I'm happy to speak to you. I'm happy to have you back. I wanted to talk to you. I am currently in hidden location. It is dawn, my time, I cannot say, but I am in part of, hidden part of East Asia. I know you travel a lot, you know Central Asia and you've traveled extensively there, I'm told. Do you have anything to say about Kazakhstan, your time there, the things you know about? Well, you know, Kazakhstan was the lucky one of these so-called Central Asian republics, although Kazakhstan is mostly Siberian rather than Central Asian. And it was the luckiest one because the Soviet geographers who designed its borders, which are very large,

And the Kazakhs border with the Russian Federation is the single longest border in the world. Apart from giving them a lot of space, we also gave them a lot of resources. You know, every known mineral. And in Soviet days, it was known as the periodic table of the chemical, because they were the people. Even luckier is their transition from communism was carried out under a single dictator, Nazarbayev, who remained in firm control. He started, he was the senior communist official. He was, he was not the revolutionary at all. He was the secretary general of the Kazakh party in charge of the Kazakh party. He is the one who brought it to independence. There was no transition. And he had a couple of interesting characteristics. Because the population of Kazakhstan

was highly multiethnic and independence. There were many Germans there, many Poles. There were some Jews, not too many. And there were every other known nationality because in Soviet days, they would deport entire populations to Kazakhstan and throw them there to live or die, including the Germans of the famous Volga Republic on the Volga River, where there was a big Soviet republic. Soviet, Volga, German, Republican, some. And he had all these different population, and given that he became the Kazakh leader of an independent Kazakhstan, it's extremely fortunate for all concerned that he is a very unusual character who was devoid of any kind of ethnic prejudice. He was not anti-Polish, he wasn't anti-Russian, he wasn't anti-Jewish, he wasn't anti-anybody.

Genuinely, so he himself is a pure Kazakh, but he was brought up in the high school in Karaganda, which was the Gulag Headquarters City where there were all kinds of nationalities there in his high school And I actually have met people who were in high school with the old guys in Israel I run into And he became the leader of the class before becoming the leader of the Kazakh Communist Party He was the leader of the class. And the way he was the leader is that he was the one without prejudices. So he could keep the Germans and the Jews and the Poles and the Kazakhs and the more Muslim types, the less Muslim types, everybody happy. So this was very lucky break. Not at all a Democrat, but somebody who understand that you had to regularize government. That said, he had no intellectual concept

of the rule of law, but he realized that Kazakhstan has to be run in a stable, organized, legal way. And so you didn't have the upheavals and the adventures of the other Central Asian countries. And so that was, he's still alive, Roosevelt. He was not lacking in modesty. I mean, he was not lacking, did not suffer from an excessive modesty, and eventually allowed the capital city to be named after him. His first name, Nur-Sultan, Nur-Sultan. Nur-Sultan, the Sultan of Lightest. But anyway, he was a genuinely, as I say, in a multiethnic country, as Kazakhstan was, extremely multiethnic. You had Chechens, all kinds of nationalities, and Koreans, you know, originally from North Korea, deported to Siberia and something. It's very lucky that the guy genuinely had no presence.

and is shown by the fact that he had, among his particular favorites, he had the one nationality that the Kazakhs disliked intensely, which was Uyghur. The Uyghurs, who are, of course, Turkic people from China, and whose traditional relationship to the Kazakhs was one of superiority and inferiority, because the Uyghur are urban, urban. Their country was called Five Cities. That was the urban Turks. There are Turks and urban, and Uyghurs are hated. Nevertheless, he found a particular talent, an extraordinary talented Uyghur called Karim Massimo. And he took this Karim Massimo, made him a minister, then made him prime minister, then made him head again prime minister. and he was national security, chief of national security. As I said, that's the one that's,

but when he basically lost power, very recently, long after he served as president and son, there was a sort of uprising in Almaty just three years ago. The people who came to the top, who were former ministers of his, They arrested Karim Masimov, slammed him in jail because they need the popularity, and that's, as I say, the one prejudice of the Kazakhs, who are not extremely tolerant people, extremely tolerant and friendly and so on, was against Uyghurs, so it became popular by arresting him. So the former favorite, Nazarbayev is still there, although he has no power but still lives in his palace and everything, And his favorite, Karim Massimov, is in prison. And that's a bad term of what had been a very good story. And again, Karim Massimov is studying mathematics,

but can read them right Chinese, read them right Russian, read them right English, and read them right Arabic. And with me, this non-linguist, as I say, this non-linguist with me insisted on speaking French because he was learning French. Kazakhstan, therefore, was blessed by good borders. They got much better than the borders of some other Central Asian countries with good resources and some, but also this extremely talented national leader who started in high school. Well, talented. Not much money was stolen from the oil and mineral money. lot of it was to build up cities you know because there was very little there including the capital Astana which is full of spectacular monuments. Every famous architect was allowed to build this building there and some of them are

even quite good. Yes, they're trying to interrupt us here. You say that Nazarbayev was not lacking in arrogance or was not a modest man. The The leader of Turkmenistan is famous for being a megalomaniac who built gigantic statues of himself revolving. Did Nazarbayev do things like that? Right. So Turkmenistan is a case where the natural resources, natural gas, and most of the money was spent to satisfy the whims of the dictator, who then left, died, and left it to his son, who is very similar to him. Nazarbayev was not lacking in he was he had not the modest person at all but he was not megalomaniac either. He allowed this capital city Astana. Astana is the it's a place where so originally it was known as Ekmola which means the white

mullah that is the white burial there was a burial of some wandering mullah Which was white because that you know painted in chalk. That was Akmala. The Russians called it Akmala Then they called it Akmolinsk. Then they decided it's the best place for them to grow a lot of grain Because it is just warm enough so you can actually grow grain And so they call it Selinograd. The new heart Selino is you know, the the new harvest essentially so the city of the new harvest and so on and And then upon independence, they called it, it was called Ahmola, then they switched it to Astana. Astana is a word derived from the Persian term for a city, big city or state, stad, you know, stad. So Astana, and finally, Astana became, was named after Nazarbayev, and it was called Nur Sultan.

Nur Sultan was his first name. Sultan of Light, so the Light Sultan. It was called Nur Sultan for a while, and then when he lost power, he went back to being called Astana. So now the city has changed seven times its name. So the whole place is an interesting place and has, in some ways, has managed to leap forward in advancement because of the fact that Nazarbayev had a very strong commitment to education. So they spent a lot on education, a lot of universities and so on. At the same time, the basic national character of the Kazakh, he's a step rider, a rider of the steps. He's a big, strong, big-boned man who mostly eat meat. When I was in restaurants in Astana, and I would order a meal, you know, with beef,

There was beef, there was lamb, and they would serve three small potatoes next to it, three small potatoes. And all the old-timers would say, too many vegetables. This is good. I've heard of the North Asian peoples, steppe peoples, they can't eat vegetables, they say it tastes like wood. They only eat meat. But you mentioned the name of the capital was Astana, was Persian, and this Uyghur, I guess, prime minister equivalent spoke Arabic. Was the Middle Eastern or Islamic influence in Central Asia was traditionally, I think, mediated through Persia. Is Persian influence still a thing there? I know after the Cold War, people were worried Iran would spread through Central Asia, but it hasn't really happened, or I'm not sure. First of all

The most of the geography of Kazakhstan is Siberian geography It's at the bottom that it is Central Asian geography and it is there that you have More Muslim culture in the actual life of the people even people all over the place might be nominal Muslims They're extremely nominal Muslims. They're vodka drinkers or something now in regard to Persian influence Persian influence is very strong where you have Shia but there are no Shia in Kazakhstan or at least a handful of them, very very few of them. So the Shia channel of influence wasn't there. The Arab influence was there but dates back more than a thousand years at the time when the wandering preachers would go around a thousand years ago and you don't really have any Arab influence now. The Emiratis or the Qataris

or something they built some giant mosques and so on but they're not very important. The Kazakhs are not very religious at all. They're not religious. The percentage of the religious is extremely low and so you don't have an Arab influence you don't have this. Now there was a period when you had Turkish influence but paradoxically that influence was not Erdogan Turkey influence it was the influence of his enemy Fethullah Gulen. Fethullah Gulen who was very incorrectly described as an Islamist and so on he was definitely a religious person who wanted to push Islam but Fethullah Gulenzi Islam is a very specific one and it is one that derives from the 1920s struggle against Ataturk and it's an Islam that says that the enemy is secularism, secularism is the enemy

because you know in reality Kemal Ataturk would have abolished Islam, extinguished it from Turkey if he could have done so he would have left no trace of it at all because he was truthfully he was vehemently opposed to the suppression of women that was a big thing he respected his mother he respected his wife he respected his daughter he actually adopted a girl and persuaded to be a pilot she was an air force pilot so the the Turkish secularism extreme secularism provoked a religious reaction by the religious reaction of Fatima Gülen who started the whole movement in Turkey and developed all kinds of universities and things like that. His Islam was a very particular Islam that was very much anti-Christian and anti-Jewish that is it was very strongly opposed

to Muslims being anti-Christian or Muslims being anti-Jewish because he thought the enemy was secularism after all he had to deal with Kemal Ataturk and beyond that there was the Soviet Union which was aggressively anti anti-religious and suppressed religion across the Soviet Union so Fethullah Gulen who rose together with Erdogan and provided Erdogan with the intelligent people of his party the AKP was a competent political party AKP of Erdogan was a party that could manage the economy competently, which had, you know, former World Bank people, Fethullah Gulen followers. He had a lot of intellectual followers. When Fethullah Gulen and Erdogan had their deadly quarrel, and Erdogan said that Fethullah Gulen tried to overthrow him and described him as a

criminal, and he went around shutting down all the Gulenist institutions and all that stuff, that's the moment when the management of the Turkish economy goes to pieces. That's when hyperinflation starts, corruption spreads and other things. So, Fethullah Gulen was the only Turk who had influence in Kazakhstan. Once they destroyed Fethullah Gulen, there's no Turkish influence. There's no Iranian influence because the Iranian way of government doesn't impress them. Kazakhs has always had good relations with Israel. Nazarbayev personally had very good relations with Israel and his current successor with people also. so there's no muslim influence there there's not what there is on the ground even in

there is definitely in uzbekistan in the fragana valley there is all kinds of people including the people who just attacked the crocus city hall in moscow they were they were coming through uzbekistan from tajikistan or something they were tajics they were tajics and it but you see the The Tajiks are the most numerous people of Central Asia. You won't know that by looking up Tajikistan on Wikipedia because Tajikistan is rather small and there aren't many people there. Most Tajiks actually live in Uzbekistan, but there are Tajiks everywhere. They are the big population. And the people who perpetrated this attack in Moscow, they were Tajiks. And Moscow is full of Central Asians, most of whom are Tajiks. So all the speculation about this event is completely inappropriate

because those few minutes of interview that the Russians interviewed one of the people they captured and he blurted out some things. He was in extreme pain. He'd obviously been beaten up. The few things he said are exactly accurate and correspond exactly to the modus operandi of the ISIS today, which is that he followed the preacher on telegram that the preacher, at some point, the preacher's assistant contacts him and says, you and some other people I'm talking to, we need you to do something in Russia. So then, you know, they start moving on that direction. Then another follower of them, another Tajiks, no doubt, pops up who brings them the weapons. Yet another one pops up who delivered them to the hall and tell them what to do, more or less.

And one of the things they said in the interview is that they were promised money. And the interrogator says, from whom? And he says, I don't know, but somebody was supposed to pass. That is how they work. On telegram, the preacher's assistant, that's what he called him, the helper of the preacher, he would have connected the merchant, the local merchant who has a little money to give them some million or two million rubles something you know a few thousand dollars and so that's how they operate and that's how they were intercepted by the US because the US monitors telegram since telegram promises to be highly secure naturally it's monitored because it's used by people who don't want to be monitored and that's how the Americans

monitored them but all they ever got from that information was that some brothers are going to attempt to do something in Russia that's what they picked up. They – of course, they didn't know the date, the hour, or the location, but they did pass it on to the FSB, the Russian Security Service, and it's nice that the FSB acknowledged that they were warm by the now. But of course, as I say, these mornings are of very limited value – no place, no time. You don't actually – you can't act on them. But they could over here that they were planning something. And the modus operandi, if you see that interrogation video that was shown and a few words he said are exactly corresponding to the actual modus operandi of ISIS today because you know ISIS ideology is

identical to Hamas they are both followers of the same school of Islam even Tamir which even though the Iranians helped Hamas big time in fact they view Shia as heretics deserving of death the Ibn Tamir crowd and of course they do not accept the people of the book have any exemption Ibn Tamir rejected the exemption back in the 14th century the exemption of the people of the book Christians and and so on and but the one that particularly concerned him was the extended exemption which is to the Zoroastrians you see the Zoroastrians would put into the picture I heard that in the 17th century still half of Iran was still Zoroastrian, I don't know if that's true. Well, I can tell you that the Safavids, who were the Shia, the Shia who conquered Iran

did so very recently in some, you know, 16th, late 16th century. They are not all established and before the Shia conquest, which started from eastern, what is today eastern Anatolia in Turkey, and this is by the way an extraordinary story of ideological inversion because the original movement that was in eastern part of the Anatolia were the Kizilbash, Kizilbash, red, Kizil, red, red heads, red turbans and the red turbans were very nominally Shia, very nominally Shia. Why would the Shia? Just to be able to oppose the Sultan who was not only Sunni but the head of the global Sunnis. The Sultan was at the same time the college of Ozemel and he was the Sunni college so his opponents called themselves Shia, vaguely. But these people who remained in Turkey to this day,

now they are rebranded as Alavi and they are the most liberal Muslims in the world, that is the most liberal. The state of Turkey evolved into the most liberal because they don't pray in mosques, because they pray with their wives, they don't fast on Ramadan, they don't go on a pilgrimage, so they're not contaminated by Arabian Islam and so. So then, and the ones who went to Iran became more and more clerical and more and more restrictive. So the same Khizr Abbas movement evolves into the most liberal Muslims there are, very valuable people there too, these alibi, who followed this doctrine of tolerance and so. And the ones who went to Iran evolved because they developed priests, you see, they developed these sorts of Talas, Ayatollahs,

so they developed a hierarchy of ecclesiastics who naturally drove the religion in a more and more and more extreme direction, of course, so it's a it's the same movement, Kizilbas, Red Hat, and they invaded Iran quite, you know, quite recently, just 300 years ago, and the institutions of Shia Islam evolved very slowly, so that the title of Ayatollah is actually younger than the Exxon Corporation of the United States, which was the standard oil company of New Jersey, was founded before there was the first Ayatollah in Iraq. So this Ayatollah stuff is all newly manufactured, a hierarchical thing, an authority thing, and allied themselves, you know, with gunmen. Now it's the revolutionary guards. And none of it is antiquity. All of it is really, really recent.

I mean, literally the Exxon oil company is older than the first Ayatollah in Iranian history. No, this very interesting, this kind of ideological inversion reminds me of how the assassins of Lord Hassan turned into, you know, the people of Alamut, I guess the Ismailis of today, the Aga Khan, is one of the most liberal branches of Islam. Yeah, well, the Ismailis, the followers, these are the Shia 7ers, you know, not 12ers like in Iran who followed the 12th Imam, who as you know is alive and well but hiding somewhere waiting to come out. They had the 7th Imam in the chain. They defected at the 7th, the Ismailis. And as you correctly point out, the other ones who were established in what is today Syria in the mountains of Alamut and so on, or actually Eastern Syria could be Iran, it

could be... Alamut was itself in Iran, but Iran fought all over the Middle East. Iran, yeah. But anyway, the point is that these Ismailis, they were the assassins because his power, he used terror as his power. would send these killers to attack rulers that disagree with him and you know there were trained killers and so on who would infiltrate situations as civilians and pull out the knife and stuff but they've evolved as you correctly point out into today's Israelis they were they're they're definitely the followers of the Aga Khan most definitely a very urbane and urban and you know Rita Hayworth's son, I mean after all, and they, by the way the Aga Khan Foundation is a very active foundation which helps Ismailis in difficult places like Tajikistan, Ismailism,

where they revolt actually, the Ismailis, Badakhshan, eastern Kazakhstan, this extreme altitude, these shepherds, the Ismailis, and the government is after them. and of course they were in Iraq in Afghanistan but in Afghanistan interestingly enough the Taliban were inclined to kill Shia on sight so the Azara population as you know was very brutally persecuted and so on then they formed the northern alliance against them etc etc but the Ismailis were even more heretical from the Taliban point of view than the the Azara, because the Azara are 12-word Shia, whereas the Ismailis are 7-ers. And interestingly enough, the Taliban never touched them, and nothing touched them. They live in a series of villages after the Salaam Tunnel.

Before the Salaam Tunnel, when you drive from Kabul to Salaam Tunnel to this day, there are all the burnt out vehicles of the Soviet army and everything on either side of the road. It was a savage land of war. The moment you go through the tunnel, you come out, there are these perfectly tranquil villages, quite prosperous. And these are the Ismailis of Afghanistan, who, as we stand in the fact they were Shia, were not hunted and killed like the other Shia, like the 12 Azaras who were hunted and killed by the Taliban. Because the Taliban viewed them as a heretics, the same as Hamas. They're identical to Hamas in Gaza, by the way, which is a big joke, because they're supported by all these, you know, leftist queers, leftist queers for,

they don't realize that they are exactly the same ideology as the Taliban and Islamic State, which is the absolutist Ibn Tamir ideology. It's such a joke that I watch these college students who somehow visualize Hamas as liberal, okay? Whereas in reality, they believe that Shias should be killed on sight, and you know, that kind of stuff. And also they don't accept the doctrine of tolerance, the fact they believe that Islam cannot triumph until the last Jew is killed. And they mean not the Jews in Israel, they mean the last Jew in Alaska. If they find out there's a congregation in Fairbanks, Alaska, they will feel Islam cannot win until they're killed as well. So that's their doctrine. And here's this group of extreme fanaticals, extreme fanaticals, and they're supported

by all these liberal people. It tells you the moral worthlessness of that whole stance in life. They're complete idiots. I mean, to have anybody who doesn't think of himself as an extreme reactionary, any such person to support Hamas, they have to be complete idiots because they don't actually, you know, Hamas publishes. opposed to the Palestinian state, totally opposed, because the Palestinian state divides Islam. Islam should be only one. And of course the PLO was very culpable, first because you talk about Palestine, and Palestine doesn't exist in Islam, there's only one land, right? The other is that it included Christians. The PLO included Christians in order to appeal more to, you know, Western support. And to them, there was an atrocity to actually have a Muslim group that

has Christians in it, intolerable. So nevertheless, at Harvard, they all applaud like crazy, hammers, great hammers, wonderful hammers. It's not a surprise. You know, Mark Stein used to say that after the fall of communism, global Islam ended up just taking the default anti-Western attitudes, and they just, they Even Tamia was in the 14th century. There's always been different currents in Islam and there have been lots of Islamic governments and rulers who had to make pragmatic adjustments. No, of course, but the only liberals are the Qizilbash, the redheads, the ones who stay They are truly, truly liberal. The Alavi, Bakhtashi Alavi believe in the tolerance of other religions as a matter of their religion that is authentic the Alabi and it's you

know very lucky for the Germans for example that many of the so-called Turks in Germany are actually out of it that's why there's so little terrorism compared to France I was not trying to attack Islam I was just saying that first Mark Stein was saying that the global left after the fall of communism started sort of Oh yeah, naturally. Global Wahhabi Islam, just as an umbrella for anti-western sentiment. They're all angry, you know, they're all angry at the rich uncle or whatever, and, you know, angry against the parents, and we know this mechanism some, but I must say, for having queers for Hamas, which is not as if they didn't realize that when Hamas took over from the tolerant PLO in Gaza they did throw homosexuals from the available four-story

building but since then in their great poverty they've built high-rises so if the queers for Gaza were to visit them they'll throw them from high-rises not just from these you know modest Yes. Edward, do you… you know I like to take breaks on this show. I wanted to ask you some more about the Uyghurs and Afghanistan, which you mentioned. Yes. Do you mind if we take a very quick break and come back to talk about that? Yeah, sure. Okay. Very good. We will be right back. It's supposed to go somewhere. Okay. Well, it's recording now, but I'll edit this out. We are back to show… Edward, welcome back. We were talking about Central Asia a lot, Kazakhstan, the Uyghurs. You said there was some kind of rivalry, disdain, common disdain between the Kazakhs and the Uyghurs.

I know the Kazakhs are supposed to be descended from the Kipchaks, the Cumans, at least linguistically. The Uyghurs have, of course, their own ancient- Not the Cuman, but they are, the Kazakhs are the East Asian Turkic population, which has a lot of mongol in it the Kazakhs have different tribes you know different tribes and some tribes are really very mongol when you see them they are look like mongols okay there's nothing turkic nothing turkish in them others have some turkish and a little bit of Persian a little bit arab but the Kazakhs are East Turks, East Asian Turks, so they, I mean, generally speaking, they don't have grand eyes, they have slanted eyes, but they formed themselves as a khanat quite late in the 17th century, and they survived the last outburst of Mongol power,

Mongol, which was the rise of a very powerful Mongol, which occurred in the 17th century. In the 17th century, a new Mongol power arose, centuries after the 17th century, and these were the Mongols that dominated what is today Chinese Xinjiang, and from there they spread out. and their name was Oirat. Oirat is the Mongol word for left hand. They were originally the left hand of Genghis Khan's army. It was the right hand, the left hand. Oirats, these Oirats spread all the way across, and they are the only Mongols who live in Europe, because the westernmost Oirats crossed the Volga River and set up a Mongol republic there, which is there to this day. They're not called Mongols, they're famous for chess. Calmykia. Chess. Calmykia, yeah. They are the Kalmyk.

Kalmyk was originally an Arab insult word aimed at Mongols. They assumed it as their national identity. And the Kalmyks lived west of the Volga. If you drive down the Volga from Stalingrad as it was to going to Astrakhan on the Taschen Sea, you pass this republic. So these oil rats in the, their power, they emerged from nothing and exploded to be a huge power in the 17th, 18th century. And they were, in that time, they were known as Jungarians, Jungaria, because Jungaria is this part of today Northwest Xinjiang. The Jungarian Hanate, which had, was blessed with technology because they had wonderful rifles on account of Swedish, the Swedish army that was surrounded and captured in Poltava in the time of Peter the Great, some of them escaped and they went all the way east to Jumdariya,

today it's Xinjiang, China. And they taught the Jumdars how to manufacture excellent rifles, excellent rifles. They were good Swedish order. They found iron, they made iron. Suddenly, mambles with rifles burst out. And they went all the way down to Lhasa in Tibet and building a connection that lasts to this day because the Tibetans are important in Mongolia. And they went all the way west across the Volga and where they still remain, these oil acts in the common republic. So in this explosion, the Kazakhs were the Turks who were caught in the middle, they're almost wiped out, almost destroyed, almost destroyed as a nation, as an identity and to be assimilated in this great Jungarian Hanat, you know, but then there was a kind of revolt, the rebellion, there was a successful uprising

and the whole Kazakh national identity comes from this uprising. And, but the one thing they still had all along were these tribes, some of which are decidedly Mongol tribes and they look like Mongols. They don't look like anywhere, Turkic or Persian or something like that. And do they dislike the Uyghurs? This is part of the Kazakh story. They dislike the Uyghurs then for historical reasons, or is it because of the usual pastoral versus urban? I have no hard information. I have no documents, nothing of the sort. I have only got a cheap gas. The Uyghur are the only urban Turks, the only Turkic, not Turks, Turkic people who are urban, and their country, as I say, was called five cities in the world. And I think that the Kazakh attitude

that is a reflection of the ancient hatred of the nomad to the townie, because the nomad goes through, when the nomad appears around where the city dweller lives, the town dweller lives, the town dweller sees him as a vagabond, you know, Somebody who's dirty, doesn't wash, primitive, sleeps on the ground in his tent or your whatever, and he's a family. You know, he has some sort of house and stuff. And also the Uyghur were literate. The Uyghur were literate centuries before the Kazakhs and before all the other Central Ages, because the prejudice is not just the Kazakhs. It's also the Kyrgyz, the Kyrgyz, and Uzbek. All of them, all of them tend to be rather tolerant, but they're not tolerant of the Uyghur and the Dungan. Dungan is the term for a Chinese sort of person who is...

The Dungan is a term basically for a Chinese Muslim, but only, sorry, a Muslim within the historical area of China, Dungan and Uyghur. And if you go on around and ask people like in Kyrgyz Republic, who do you hate? It's only dungans. And when Chinese merchants penetrated in the last 30 years, so 20 years, to set up shopping center in the capital of Bishbach in Kyrgyz and other theater, periodically they get burned down because they're associated with dungans. Typically the people who come are these Chinese people, and they call different names. And I think it is the ancient hostility of the town dwellers versus the nomads. No, this makes sense. The Mongols have similar attitudes toward town dwellers. You, I assume, have been to Mongolia.

Also, you keep talking about the food of these regions. I'm very interested in that. You ate unusual things like eye and the organs of the sheeps and so forth. No, no. When I went to the, Ulaanbaatar is not Paris. It's not Paris, it's not Rome. Lambethal doesn't have many good restaurants at all. But they did have a kind of elegant representation in the restaurant. I looked down the menu in despair because they offered all these very conventional Western things, rib eye steak and things like that. Because they do have a lot of meat. And then, to my great delight, I came across sheep head, sheep head. So naturally, I ordered the sheep head. My companions were horrified at the idea because it's a complete sheep head. It has the face, the lips, the eyes, the cheeks,

and it has a little hair left here and there, and you tear at it. And to people who know sheep head, they laugh at everybody that lives without it because there are seven kinds of meat on a sheep head. You have the tongue, you have the cheeks, you have the brain, which is very nice and squishy, and you have the eyes. And the best part is behind the eyes, there's this cartilage and stuff. And it's a wonderful thing eating sheep egg, surrounded by diplomats who are about to throw up. They were all sitting all around me. They couldn't believe it. They thought it was a joke when the sheep had arrived, because it's still, as I say, got all his skin, his hair, the eyes, everything, very intact. And at the end of the day, I actually eat it. And then they became seriously disturbed

when I saw that I wasn't doing so as a display, as a sport, but I'm really enjoying it, which I am. No, she- I used to get sheep head in Bethesda, Maryland. But briefly, there was a Greek restaurant, a real Greek restaurant, authentic Greek restaurant. So they went to great lengths to have sheep head. Kefalaki in Greek, Kefalos, the word for that, Kefalaki. I met once a Mongolian exchange student at West Point. at West Point he had been sent from one of the elite families of Mongolia to train in the United States he was complaining a lot about he's saying oh you have many vegetables in America I'm still getting used to that yeah there's a novelty for him today's Mongolia you know today's Mongolia is afflicted by very serious Chinese political penetration yeah which is done not

through some agency or other but through that there are these Sino-Mongolian families which are associated with the coal trade. They actually smuggle coal and they are very politically influential. The other thing is that it's a small population, you know, three million people or less. Everybody including elite people are drunk by 2 p.m. Ulaanbaatar is the coldest capital in the world, there are heavy drinkers, there are all kinds of problems with that. He mentioned... Now, from a strategic point of view, on the other hand, their independence came into existence only because of the power of the Russians, the Bolsheviks originally. It was the Bolshevik power that kept the Chinese out from there, and ever since then, and in fact the weakening of Russia imperils the existence of Mongolia.

He mentioned that the Chinese claimed Mongolia. Yes, he mentioned this is Mongolianism. They were ruled by the Mongols and the Manchus and now they claim all of these as if they were there. Like Sri Lanka claiming Scotland because both were ruled by Queen Victoria. No, yes, it's absurd. That's the Chinese procedure. He mentioned the only possible future Mongolia has is playing Russia and China versus each other. Sorry? I'm sorry, there was a disturbance. Yes, they're trying to cut our signal. He mentioned the only possible future Mongolia has is trying to play Russia and China versus each other, you know. Their existence depends on an equipoise between Russia and China. If Russia goes down the drain, Mongolia becomes a Chinese province the next day. Yes. You need there.

And by the way, it's the only place in the world where the Russian ambassador and the American ambassador, who are both ambassadors in this very small place, Ulaanbaatar is not a big city. There may be a lot of people camping around it but it's a small town and the Russian ambassador, the American ambassador, they're exactly on the same side. They're both struggling to help Mongolia retain its independence from the overwhelming Chinese presence. Yes, it's absurd the things China claims that Genghis Khan was a Chinese general and what you just said about the borders of current China are not historically a Han. They're the borders of the Manchu empire which was not a Han thing. It was not Chinese. It's Manchu. Manchu. I mean the Manchu are,

they are Yurchen. The population is called Yurchen and they conquered China various times and in one of those times, the last one where they ruled for 200 plus years, there was a movement among the Yurchen who are East Asian Manchurian Asiatic people. There was a movement among them which is a bit of a cultural movement called Manchu, Yes. Enlightenment. It's a Jurchen word, Manju. I think it's... So they invaded and ruled China, and they were not Chinese, Han Chinese, they were Jurchen. And the Chinese were subjects, in fact they had to wear the little hair, you know, that string of hair behind their heads to show they were subjects, so they could be pulled by that, you know, you could be pulled, and the Mongols were partners.

The Mongols were partners of the Manju, whereas the Tibetans were greatly respected by Manju because the Tibetan, the only religion that had any currency was Buddhism. The Manju were not particularly Buddhist, but insofar as they were religious at all, and their Buddhism was Tibetan Buddhism. So in the actual existing China, until communism was hot, what you had was Manju, elite of Yorkshire, Mongols who were their partners in ruling the Han subjects, and the Tibetans who were the religion of prestige of the rulers. And the Han were the subordinate class. They were like the Indians under British rule. They were Serbs. The Chinese. They were humble and so and so forth. For now, these servants have

gone around striding and pretending that they were the Mansu. They pretend that they conquered Xinjiang and they conquered They were kings. Yes, they were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. They were kings. Afghanistan and you mentioned that the folly of the American national security establishment which is trying to turn Afghanistan into a kind of Switzerland by building schools or

these delusions and building schools yes and I was just wondering if you have more to say about that but in particular I'm more interested in your time in Afghanistan which parts did you visit what tribes did you see my I first of all my trip to Afghanistan was not a serious strip. I wasn't a researcher, I was not an investigator, I was just an idle traveler. Or actually it all started because there was a bus that left Victoria Station and went to Bombay, and this red bus, which is a two-floor British bus, and you slept upstairs, would drive from from London Victoria Station across France and go through Turkey, and then go through Iran, and then we'll go through Afghanistan. And I went on this ride, and I got interested because as soon as I crossed the border into

– very soon after crossing the border into Iran, I arrived in Herat, and in Herat I arrived on the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday of Passover, and I found some Jews who were traders in spices, and they doubted I was Jewish because I didn't have a horse. All of them had horses, and the horses had leather pouches in them, and they carried their spices in them, and they traded spices and jewelry, and they lived in Herat. They lived quite very nicely and unmolested in any way, and they had very nice, very primitive housing, but nice, you know, with four yards, gardens and so on. And I went there for a passover, even though they suspected I was non-Jewish because I didn't have a horse. And you know, who's ever heard of a Jew without a horse? I couldn't trade spices all across Afghanistan

and Central Asia, you know, never, never. But they were tolerant, and I got interested. So then I made an excursion from I was supposed to go from Herat. I was supposed to wait for the next bus They would arrive in about 10 days two weeks and continue on to Bombay my destination But I decided to make an excursion and go up to Kabul where there was also Jews who I went to But who were coming from Bukhara? They came these Jews came from Bukhara the ones I met in Herat were refugees from the Iranian city of Masha which was the subject at the locale of a catastrophe when a group of super fanatics took power and they killed all the Jews who didn't escape and forced others to convert at a short point and they didn't go back to Judaism

until the Shah arrived. When the Shah arrived they threw it all off and became Jews again. But these guys were, you know, the first lot I met were refugees from Iran, from Russia. But then when I went to Kabul there were the Jews from from Bukhara in Central Asia. They were a very interesting bunch. They already had a colony in the New York of Bukhara Jews and in Jerusalem. And there was the ones in Kabul were a very small outlier of this Bukhara empire. And to this day in New York, the Bukharan Jews have houses which have, you know, like nine bedrooms. They have multiple, you know, children and they all trade in things like colored stones. Yes, yeah, well, they're not really mafia. They were not part of the New

York Jewish mafia. They were all Odessa people. It's wonderful to me. It's perfectly wonderful to me that people who happen to be born in Odessa become gangsters and they adhere to the culture, they respect the culture of Odessa, they become Odessan gangsters in that particular style. Whereas these people who were in Kabul a long way from Bukhara adhered to the Bukhara model, they traded in jewels and so on and so forth, and their cousins in New York did the same thing. If you want diamonds you can get them from all these companies, if you want college stones you have to go to the Bukharas, and that's the same too in Milan or Italy. You know, these Italian jewelry people, who have these Byzantine names, you know, the ones who sell the colored stones, they buy all their stones.

They don't bring them from far away, they go across town in Milano, to this day, colored stones. So I ran into this group in Kabul, it was interesting, I decided to hang, I was a casual tourist, I was not a researcher. What hero is this? Sorry? What hero is this? Well, actually, I'm recounting my first trip, which was in the 1960s, which is 60 years ago. But then I went back a few times and so on. But the only thing was when the Americans thought that the way you fight the Taliban is by building schools for girls, then I realized that insanity of it is the most complete insanity because and then of course they wrote the constitution which required that women should there should be a higher percentage of women in the afghan parliament than ever was in the house

of commons in england or the u.s congress much higher the afghans were called upon to have a quota i don't i forget what the number was like 25 25 whatever it was it was way higher than and U.S. Congress and the House. And of course, the Afghan views women as domestic animals. You know, so you are now invading the country, and let's say foreigners invade the United States, and they demand that dogs should be given, you know, seats in Congress, from their point of view. Not dogs, certainly cows. You demand that cows should be there. And so the only Afghan attitude to the Americans is that they're insane. They have a lot of money, so let's take the money. and they were very easy to take the money. And so many Afghans became millionaires and billionaires

to this day from the American money thrown around, you know, my taxpayer's money. And some of it was to do things like build schools for girls. As soon as the school was built, the builder was usually a Turkish contractor paying bribes to make sure that the church, the school, wouldn't be destroyed until he was paid in full. The moment he was paid in full, he said, Okay, I'm paying Taliban would come and demolish the school which was built by the Turkish contractor who got the contract from the American AID contractor who got it from the AID office via a retired AID Consultant so my taxpayers money was first slimmed down by this successive draft Which everybody knew about and then was used to build a school which the Taliban would come to destroy

Put the applause of the local population, you know The one thing that the people really appreciate about the Taliban was that they kept women in their place where these Americans I mean they put them in Parliament. Can you imagine you enter the Parliament and see women there? It's like some American enters Congress and he sees a group of dogs sitting there barking To them is the same thing And you were called when you pointed out to the I guess occupying authorities in the 2000s about these realities, they called you a racist for denying that Afghanistan... No, no, it wasn't, they were completely beyond any, any, it was not possible to argue with them. They, you see, let's say you persuaded the top guy and then he would have to unpresuade himself when he came back to Washington

because you couldn't educate the whole of the American political community into the basics of life. You just can't do that. Because they were not trading in actual realities of their own. They were already trading in these categories like LGBTQI and this equality, that equality, fortunately it was before climate, otherwise they would have to do all kinds of climate things in Afghanistan. So you're not dealing with reality, you're dealing with ideological obsessions. and it happens very rarely that the ideological obsessions coincide with reality. Yes. Anyway, can we continue some other time? Yes, let's continue some other time. Just very quickly before we go, did you happen to visit any of the very exotic parts of Afghanistan like Nuristan or meet Nuristani?

Oh yes, I did, I did, and I did, but only once in my first trip all those years ago. And Nuristan, of course, had been very newly subjected to Islam, very newly. When I visited Nuristan, which is in the 1960s, Islam was a very new religion and had not penetrated into, let's call it the hills and so on. It was a very new thing, Nuristan. And Nuristan is of course mountainous, of course beautiful, and of course had a lot of Buddhism there. It had so much Buddhism that it had the two famous statues that the Taliban felt duty-bound to destroy, and which the local people were extremely, extremely, extremely attached to. I cannot tell at all whether they were religiously attached to them or not, but they viewed these colossal statues as their protectors.

I don't know if the interpretation of them was Buddhist or pagan or whatever, but I saw the statues before they were blown up and so on and so forth. They were blown up, by the way, at the direction of the Taliban originating center, which happens to be in India, in Uttar Pradesh, where you have this gigantic Muslim madrasa, sandhu emanated the fat one to destroy the statues that's disgusting yes i hope that the buddhists want they they return to that area and take their revenge and do it thank you so much for coming i don't mean to kill you you are running your you're running your mercenary manner bond i don't mean to keep you but um very good please come back thank you bye