← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
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- [00:03]
A
This is a global player original podcast.
- [00:10]
B
The Trumpies seem to be going full ball, all guns blazing, blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela and essentially getting ready for regime change.
- [00:19]
A
10,000 soldiers with aircraft and ships doesn't make a Maduro, a locked in military dictatorship, fall. It just doesn't happen that way.
- [00:29]
B
There was nothing warm and cuddly about Maduro when I met him. I mean, the guy just cannot grasp what a legitimate election is. King Charles, his brother, wants to have a clean slate. And as you mentioned, Prince William, his.
- [00:42]
C
Heir, the king and his eldest son probably want to try and clear the slate of, let's call it euphemistically, the dodgy uncle problem.
- [00:56]
B
Hello and welcome. It is me, Christiane Amanpour with the X Files.
- [01:00]
A
And I'm Jamie Rubin, former official in the State Department twice.
- [01:04]
C
Yeah.
- [01:04]
B
And I a.m. a former CNN. Well, I am a CNN global correspondent and also anchor my own show where I try to hold world leaders accountable. And why do we call it the X Files? Because we were married for 20 years and we've been divorced for about seven or whatever it is now, but hence the X Files. So, Jamie, let's get started. Today, Jamie and I are going to be talking about Venezuela. With a crumbling ceasefire, Trump is hastily trying to shore up back in the Middle East. There's a real war brewing in his own backyard, Venezuela. And we're going to ask, is regime change their mandate? And is it ever a good thing? We're going to do something slightly different this week as well. I'm going to be talking to my global colleague, Emily Maitlis from the newsagents about the Prince Andrew international story. She's the one who, who with her famous Newsnight interview, hastened his demise over the Epstein affair. And finally, Jamie and I will be back with our recommendations to wrap up today's episode. Let's talk about Venezuela. It's happening in your hemisphere. Who knew that that would be where the next war potentially started? But it's something the Trumpies seem to be going, you know, full ball, all guns blazing, blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela and elsewhere and essentially getting ready for regime change.
- [02:30]
A
Well, you're right. There's three things about this that I think are interesting above all. Number one, we've talked before about how Trump sort of sees the world, like the Western Hemisphere with Colombia and Venezuela and Canada and Mexico. That's his part of the world. Putin has his part of the world, including Ukraine and China has its part of the world, including Taiwan. And so this policy of Essentially, gunboat diplomacy going back to the 19th century of trying to dictate the regime in Venezuela and using military power is something that I think is a case where Marco Rubio, his aide de camp as national security advisor and Secretary of State, etcetera, has always cared a lot about Latin America, has always seen the Venezuelan regime, first under Chavez and now under Maduro, as kind of part of the communist bloc that he's been fighting his whole life. And thirdly, they have essentially put forward a policy that is extremely difficult to implement, namely regime change. Now, sometimes it works as they did with Panama, with Noriega, the George Bush, the first George Bush overthrew Noriega, successfully put him in prison. But it's very, very difficult to do. And we've seen regime change fail over and over again in Afghanistan and Iraq. One good case is Kosovo. As you know, we've talked about that. But the lessons of regime change in the Middle east don't seem to be learned. And I don't see how even 10,000 troops and all these boats and these aircraft will force Maduro to leave office. I just don't see it.
- [04:09]
B
So let's just talk about Kosovo. That was a humanitarian intervention because the then leader of Serbia, Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, was about to inflict essentially the same kind of genocide and ethnic cleansing on Kosovo that he had done in bosnia during the 90s. So the Clinton administration and others intervened. So that was a whole different thing. So leads me to the question, is Venezuela a real threat to the United States? They tried to make out that Iraq was because of weapons of mass destruction. They didn't exist. What about Venezuela?
- [04:40]
A
I think this is another case of hyping the threat. So the United States clearly has what is the threat? They claim it's drugs. They claim that Venezuela is connected to a drug gang which imports or exports fentanyl and cocaine and heroin into the United States. But this is exaggerated, wildly hysterical evidence. Evidence we do have a problem with drugs coming into the United States, but they come from everywhere. And Venezuela, according to the administration's own intelligence services, the Maduro government doesn't control this gang that Trump always uses as an example of who he's attacking. So they're conflating a whole bunch of stuff. Maduro as a dictator who lost an election but refused to give up power. Maduro as connected to drugs, and drugs being a threat to the United States, and Maduro as part of a, quote, you know, strongman communist bloc like Cuba and, and Nicaragua. But none of them add up. To a real threat to the United States. And I think, I never thought the Bush administration lied about wmd. I thought they were wrong, but they didn't intentionally lie. I think we have clear evidence this time that the intelligence community does not believe that the Venezuelan government is controlling the drug trade that is causing so much damage to the United States. With the intelligence community over and over again says, sorry, I can't say that. And Trump fires people who don't say what he wants them to say.
- [06:08]
B
He did fire the staffer who wrote the report that he didn't like on Maduro's links. Let's just get it clear. Fentanyl is a Mexico thing coming from China via Mexico. It is cocaine, mostly, that they're talking about in Venezuela. But even that doesn't mostly go up from Venezuela to the United States. There are many other ingress points, as they like to say formally, for cocaine into the US including from the Pacific. But yes, he fired the staffer who wrote that memo about all of this. And then, Jamie, the, I think it's the head of Southern Command, the admiral who resigned. He didn't say exactly why he resigned, but he's the one in charge of the American forces that are being deployed around Venezuela and would be deployed if Trump actually did do some kind of land striking, targeting, invasion. And certainly since he's an admiral, he knows what's going on on the high seas right now. So he's resigned. That's pretty dramatic, I think.
- [07:10]
A
I do think so as well. And so here's where we get to the really subtle, interesting, hard legal questions as to whether what the administration is doing in the Caribbean and against Venezuela is legal at all. Under what basis it's being done. Congress has the power to declare war. The president's power is big, but it's really designed only for emergencies when Congress can't get and make a collective decision. It's not designed to be able to act without Congress to initiate a war. And finally, and what, most interestingly, I don't know if you saw over the weekend that they rescued two individuals out of the sea and they didn't know what to do with them because they have no legal basis to hold them. And so instead of trying to send them to Guantanamo, where they might have faced a legal question as to on what basis are they being held or civilian law enforcement, what basis are they being held? They did. They showed the bankruptcy of their policy by deciding to repatriate them. Yeah, these are people they said they need to kill. So they're so dangerous you have to just murder them. And instead they're sending them back to Ecuador and Colombia. And now Trump is threatening the president of Colombia because he's speaking the truth. Trump wants to muzzle the people of Colombia's president.
- [08:31]
B
Yeah. And these people were in the sea because their boat had been, you know, targeted by, by us. So here's the other thing. Maduro, we know, is a dictator, a far left dictator. His mentor was Hugo Chavez. You mentioned that there had been an attempt to dislodge Hugo Chavez that was under the George W. Bush presidency. That didn't work. There has been a lot of actually successful, but very long term failed American interventions in Latin America over the decades and decades. And, you know, it's become democratic by and large, or absolutely for the last decade or more. The thing is, though, the reason I raise that is because the person who is, you know, Venezuela's democratic icon is Maria Corinna Machado. She is the opposition leader who won the Nobel Prize last week and who, along with her party, won the last presidential elections in Venezuela. But the election board did not allow her to take that win and gave it to Maduro for obvious reasons. But the US and the rest of the world believes that the opposition won. I interviewed her a couple of days ago, and she is on board with this American intervention. And I think it's a really risky, risky prospect because by and large, Venezuelans aren't on board with violent American military intervention. They want to get rid of Maduro and his dictatorship, but not in that way. She is the most popular leader in Venezuela right now. And she says, when I asked her about regime change, she said to me, listen, Cristian, it would have been regime change if they had allowed the election result to stand. But they didn't. They stole it from us. So it's her way of saying, and she also says, like Trump, that Maduro is at the head of a narco terrorist state, that this is all above board and hunky dory with her is causing a lot of ructions now within the opposition community. I mean, I don't know, where does one go with that?
- [10:41]
A
Well, that's a classic case of people looking at a problem from their own lens. And from her standpoint, anything that the outside world can do to undercut and damage the Maduro regime so that it can fall, so that the legitimately elected government can take its place is fine from her standpoint, but that's not the issue for the United States. Whether she likes it or not, that makes it more palatable. To me, the fact that she supports it, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether it's legal. The issue is whether it's needed, whether we are going to humiliate ourselves. I actually believe the problem here is you can't do it. 10,000 soldiers with aircraft and ships doesn't make a Maduro locked in military dictatorship fall. It just doesn't happen that way. When dictatorships locked in brutal dictatorships fall, it usually requires a ground invasion like Saddam Hussein, like it did with Manuel Noriega in Panama. You have to go in there and physically remove them. And then as the Colin Powell phrase goes, if you break it, you own it.
- [11:52]
B
But Jamie, listen to your point. Perhaps there's a ground invasion or some kind of ground action in vision because as you know, the, the, I think it was the New York Times, whoever scooped the fact that Trump has authorized covert CIA action in, in Venezuela and then he came out and confirmed it. So it's no longer covert. It's like overt. But we don't know exactly what they're doing. What do you think they're doing? Is that preparing for a land invasion or some kind of ground operation?
- [12:23]
A
My guess is the CIA will be looking for ways to undercut the Maduro regime from inside, will be to lay the groundwork for a pot military action. But, you know, these things are extraordinarily difficult. We've discovered that with Saddam Hussein, the CIA had finding after finding after finding to overthrow Saddam and it took a ground invasion. The CIA tried to kill Castro with a cigar. The CIA has been involved in many covert operations around the world that have failed and some that have succeeded. The point here is that over the years, the idea that the, the President of the United States can dictate who the government of a large country like Venezuela is in our part of the world is no longer plausible. Back in the era of Teddy Roosevelt, you know, talk softly, carry a big stick, he could threaten a country and those dictators back then would be afraid and they might leave office for fear of running into trouble with their fellow colleagues. Maduro's been through all of that. He stayed through decades of, of oppression from the United States where we're trying to undercut him through sanctions and legal action. And so I don't know what the CIA can do unless they have a spy inside his group. And remember, we've been talking to this guy. Trump has a mixed view of this. He had one part of his team, what's his name, the former US Ambassador, Germany, talking to Maduro Making deals with Maduro over and over again, offering him all sorts of things. And then Maduro was offering the United States first cut at all the oil, the resources. And then finally one day, Rubio takes charge of the policy because he didn't like that. And he says, no, no, no, we're not going to do any of the things we talked about. Goodbye, Grinnell, hello overthrow. And so I think this is a case of Trump's mixed messages, mixed views and incoherent policy. And frankly, now behaving like a king. And over the weekend, Americans were protested in the millions under the banner of no kings. And I think this behavior of acting like a king, like he decides everything all by himself. No Congress, no Venezuelan government, no United nations, no nobody. Just Donald Trump's view that morning is something that is going to increasingly become unacceptable to our people, to the courts, and hopefully to the Congress with a new Congress. So that's what this is all about.
- [14:55]
B
Right? But also, as you pointed out, really believing there's this hemispheric sort of moment to try to, as you said, China has that side, Russia has this side, and Trump has your side. Talking of kings, I mean, the first CIA coup of the modern era was in my country, which wanted to bring the king back. They overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mosaddegh, and over oil and Cold war imperatives and this and that, they, you know, they, they organized a coup and brought the Shah back.
- [15:31]
A
1953.
- [15:33]
B
Right, 53. That didn't end great because 20 plus years later, the Ayatollahs decided that that was one of their reasons for overthrowing the Shah. About Iraq also, I remember because I covered it. I mean, the overthrow of Saddam was quick, but and fairly bloodless on both sides because the US had convinced the Iraqi military not to oppose them and promise them a role in the future governance of a Saddam free Iraq. Then it reneged on its promise. And I remember there had been a fairly fulsome and fairly coherent State Department plan for running or reconstructing Iraq after the fall of Saddam. But the State Department plan was thrown out by the Bushis and instead the Pentagon plan came in. And that is really what brought us to the chaos and the, you know, then the ISIS and Aqim and all the rest of it, the insurgency in Iraq, it was totally total chaos.
- [16:36]
A
Someday some president is probably going to have to express regret for what Donald Trump is doing in Venezuela right now, because we have no business using this dictatorship, which we hate, and we're right to Hate. And we support the opposition, but that doesn't mean we get to decide through gunboat diplomacy and illegal actions and questionable military activities who's the leader of Venezuela. We have to do this the right way, and they are not doing it the right way.
- [17:04]
B
I interviewed Nicolas Maduro a few years ago. He called Corinna Machado, the opposition leader, a demonic witch. And she is actually in. She's quite brave woman. She's in Venezuela, hiding. We interviewed her. We obviously did not reveal her location, but she. You know, I just have this feeling in my heart that it could end up badly, not just for regime change, but for the opposition as well. Because, you know, even the latest US Israeli intervention and military action in Iran was subliminally, if not subliminally designed to overthrow the ayatollahs and certain exiles who consider themselves the rightful heirs. Like the current monarchists and the others. They were all in. They thought this was the way to get rid of the ayatollahs, and it wasn't. But not only that, it really enforced a certain, at least temporary spirit of nationalism and unity.
- [18:02]
A
It's a classic problem. The exiles from a country or the refugees from a country or the people who are living outside of that country always want to snap their fingers and get their problem solved instantly and are willing to do almost anything. Remember all the time we spent with the various Iranian community around the world, the diaspora, and every one of them had their own great genius plan to get rid of the ayatollahs. The problem we've talked about, Iran, is the same problem in Venezuela. The government, the dictatorship, is entrenched with deep, deep, deep power structures inside the military intelligence services. And to extricate those people from their positions when they fear going to jail or being murdered is extremely difficult. And I just don't see that they have a rational plan. This is a nice example of Secretary of State Marco Rubio flexing his bureaucratic muscles over Grinnell and getting Trump to do the things that he wanted. But he may not be leading the Trump administration into a place it can succeed from. Maybe one day Maduro will die of a heart attack and it'll all be solvable, but in the meantime, he and his people are entrenched, and gundo boat diplomacy is not going to get them out.
- [19:15]
B
So just a question, really, because when I read the details about the negotiations, that Grinnell, who has not one good thing to say about me anyway, but he was tasked with this diplomacy, and to me it seemed like, wow, it's everything the US wants, you know, you stop the drugs, you. Not only that, get rid of Chinese, Cuban, Iranian influence, which is strong in Venezuela right now because Maduro said that he would chuck them all out. You get Trump doing what he loves and that's getting a bit of the action and a lot of action. Preferential access to, you know, everything from oil to gold and all their minerals. What's wrong with that picture? Why? I, I know it's not human rights and I know it's not necessarily democracy, but doing that, you could influence a trend towards democracy.
- [20:03]
A
That's why I think this is a case of Rubio's ideology. In other words, all of the things you said fit with the classic Trump policies of, you know, transactionalism. Working on projects, gold, oil, making a deal to get rid of the Chinese. All of that is in America's interest and it may even arguably have been the right thing to do. But Rubio has an ideology in Latin America. He's grown up as a grandson, I guess, of Cuban refugees who are anti communist, anti Castro, anti Maduro, because Maduro and Chavez were elected on a socialist platform. So that's why Rubio and the anti Castro Cuban Cubans hate them because they saw socialism. Win an election in Venezuela a couple of times, if I'm not mistaken. Chavez won legitimate, fair elections because he was seen as a socialist who the people of Venezuela wanted because they were a very, very divided country, extremely wealthy, extremely poor. So this is ideology and Rubio flexing his muscles because you're absolutely right, on the surface, that deal seemed like a good deal for the United States.
- [21:11]
B
Just closing. I'll just say there was nothing warm and cuddly about Maduro when I met him. I mean, the guy just cannot grasp what a legitimate election is or what democracy is or what opposition is or anything. Anyway, Jamie, we're going to take a break and I'm going to do something a little bit different in the next, in the next segment because I'm going to be talking to our colleague at Global, Emily Maitlis. She is one of the hosts of the News Agents and she is the one who interviewed Prince Andrew and he is literally on the brink of total implosion if not already happened because of these continued relationship with Epstein that keeps being revealed. So we'll come back and talk about that. I will with Emily and then Jamie and I will be back towards the end of the episode with our recommendations. So Jamie, stand by.
- [22:01]
A
Will do.
- [22:05]
D
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- [22:40]
B
All right, so we're back with the second part of our conversation, as I said, with my colleague from Global podcast, Emily Maitlis of the News Agents. And why? Because she, in my opinion, is instrumental in getting the truth out of the whole Prince Andrew Epstein scandal. And now it's a huge major story again. Emily, are you surprised that there was even more to come out? And now he's had to renounce all sorts of things. The king has got involved and just basically banished him.
- [23:10]
C
It's taken a long time. Christiane Honestly, just after I did that interview in November of 2019, which was, what, nearly six years ago, he was basically asked to step back from public life. We know that he relinquished a lot of his patronages then, military and charity. We know he relinquished some of the titles then. But I think there has been this kind of drip, drip effect in the intervening years where each time a story has broken, it has become slightly more complicated, slightly more difficult for the palace, and they've sort of wanted it to all go away. And the timing of this is not coincidental. Virginia Giuffre's memoir, his accuser's memoir is out tomorrow. And my sense is that the king and his eldest son, his heir, Prince William, probably want to try and clear the slate of, let's call it euphemistically, the dodgy uncle problem, and allow for a smoother transition wherever whenever that may be. So in a way, I'm surprised that it took this long.
- [24:22]
B
Emily Part of the you know what's causing him, in the words of the New York Times, to be a pariah prince and constantly falling to ever lower depths from grace is that he insisted that he had stopped having any kind of communication with Jeffrey Epstein somewhere around 2010, and these ensuing emails proved that that wasn't the case. We were together. I watched it go out with you. We're neighbors, we're friends. I was just gobsmacked by your sang froid and your ability to to conduct such a forensic interview in such high stakes. Did you know that he was basically lying.
- [25:01]
C
It's so funny. We sat on the sofa in my house and watched that interview go out. And I remember feeling terrified at the time. Cause I just didn't know. I didn't know how it would land. I didn't know what the ramifications would be. I didn't know whether it would end up sort of boomeranging, backfiring on me at that point. Christiane, you're absolutely right. But I went back and I rewatched it this weekend because I just thought in the cool light of day, I need to just remind myself what he actually said. And there is a whole section where he is categoric about the time that he broke off his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. And he dates it to December of 2010, when he went to stay in the pedophile's house, that Manhattan townhouse in New York. And. And I asked him why he felt it was necessary to go and stay with the man who was already then a convicted paedophile. He used this very odd phrase to me. He said he didn't want to take the chicken's way out. It would have been the chicken's way of doing things, to call up and make a phone call. In other words, he thought the honorable thing was to go and stay with Jeffrey Epstein. And when I pointed out that he hadn't just gone to stay with him to break off the friendship, he'd gone to a house party there. He had spent four or five nights there. Like, who goes to somebody's house to make a solemn, you know, explanation that their friendship has ended and finds themselves staying for four or five days? And he used again this really weird phrase to me, which was, I have a tendency to be too honorable. He says, I realized that I made a mistake. I had a tendency to be too honorable. So make of that what you will. He described the two of them going for a walk in Central Park, Public park, obviously, in New York. And during that time, he says he had the conversation with Epstein and broke off the friendship. We now know less than two months later, an email was written by Prince Andrew to Jeffrey Epstein with that really vomit inducing sign off, let's play again soon. That does not sound like a man who has gone back to check one more thing or, you know, maybe had to return something he borrowed. It sounds like a man who never broke off the friendship in the way that he described to me. It sounds like a man who was always considering carrying on the friendship because in his own words, it meant a lot to him. He enjoyed his company, he met interesting people. He got a lot from it. So it's made me revisit it so much of what he told me in that interview, because, frankly, that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And much else of what he says doesn't really either have to say this.
- [27:57]
B
Because we have to. On Friday, when he, you know, relinquished his remaining titles, he basically said, I vigorously deny the accusations against me. I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to family and country first. But we mustn't also forget about Virginia Giuffre and the victims. We have to have to believe the victims. And as you say, this memoir posthumous, because she took her own life in Australia a few months ago in April, and her siblings and her family have been really beating the drums to get justice and vindication for her. She describes some really terrible things.
- [28:35]
C
Really terrible things. I mean, it's harrowing. It is devastating. And I feel like putting an audio trigger warning on at this point, because she describes a life that has been broken by abuse, first at the hands of her own father when she was under 10 years old, then at her father's friends. These are claims that her father denies. And then she describes running away from home, being picked up by another predator, another pedophile, who then essentially kept her for six months as his own sex slave. And by the time she meets Jeffrey Epstein, I mean, this is almost, I guess, inconceivable for people who've had a sort of, you know, balanced, happy childhood. But by the time she meets Epstein, when she is 17 years old, she has already been raped multiple times by people that she would have considered to be close to her, by people that she would have trusted. And there is a sense from her memoirs that Jeffrey Epstein saw all this, knew all this, understood her vulnerability, understood that she had nowhere else to go. And the thing that she describes simultaneously is just how key a role Ghislaine Maxwell played in that as well. She describes her as the apex predator. In other words, having a woman there with a sort of posh English voice and beautiful clothes and manicured nails normalized what was going on, not just for her, but for many of the other girls. I'm not even gonna call them women because they were young girls, they were underage girls. And this idea, Virginia describes of every time she thought she should be checking herself or stopping herself, she looked over at Ghilaire Maxwell and thought, oh, it's fine, there's a woman here. This must be normal. And the power that had really that. That Maxwell and Epstein were working together, she says, not as girlfriend and boyfriend, but as two halves of one wicked whole. In other words, they knew the power that they held over these young girls together because they smoothed out anything that might seem predatory to the outside world, that might seem dysfunctional. Oh, there's a woman there. It'll all be fine.
- [31:01]
B
It wasn't classic grooming, isn't it?
- [31:02]
C
Yeah.
- [31:03]
B
Obviously, across the pond in the United States, Epstein is still a big issue for the MAGA group. And here in the United Kingdom, it's a situation about the royal family. It's said that when the Queen was alive, you know, Andrew felt some protection. But now the King Charles, his brother, wants to have a clean slate. And as you mentioned, Prince William, his heir. What does this say about the state of the current monarch and royal family now?
- [31:32]
C
Well, my sense is that King Charles probably thinks it is his duty to, you know, get rid of this problem before his son has to take over. Now, obviously, you know, there is a royal succession. We don't know when that will be. We know that the King has been ill. It may be playing on his mind that this is something that he will to sort out for his son and it may be that he feels he has a much freer reign, I mean literally, than when his mother was in charge. It is much more difficult, clearly, for a mother, even a queen, to sanction her own beloved son. And I don't think that there is much love lost between those two older brothers. And I think there's even less respect granted Andrew by his nephew, Prince William. And we know already that Prince William's talking about banning him from the coronation. I think they'd really like the Prince to disappear, do what we'd call a profumo refers to the conservative politician who, after a scandal broke about him, he just, he took himself out of public life. You know, he went off and he did good deeds and he worked in a civic way and he wasn't really seen of again for, for many years. And I think there's a sense that the royal family would quite like him to do that. But, you know, his titles have disappeared except for the one bestowed on him by his birthright. He is a prince, he is still Prince Andrew. He still lives on the royal estate, he still has a 30 bedroom house. And I guess on one level there is a duty of care to somebody who is still your blood relative. I mean, you know, I can't put myself in the position of being King Charles. But on one level, I'm sure that also plays with whatever he chooses and feels he can do.
- [33:31]
B
Now, Emily, you really did the interview of our age and congratulations and thanks for telling us about this latest episode. It's huge story on both sides of the Atlantic, obviously.
- [33:41]
C
Christiane, thanks so much for having me.
- [33:46]
D
When you bundle renters and auto with progressive, you can save while protecting your most valuable possessions, like your priceless vinyl collection. Sure, you sleep on a futon because the money most people would have spent on a bed you spent on more records, but forget the fact that you can stream just about any song ever created for a few dollars a month. No, no, you need to listen to music in the most difficult way possible. So go ahead and get progressive so you can save while protecting the things that matter to you. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates and other insurers not available in all states or situation equations.
- [34:21]
B
All right, just had my conversation with Emily Maitlis now back with Jamie and the X Files to talk about our recommendations this week.
- [34:30]
A
There's another issue that's similar to what we talked about, Venezuela. We were talking about regime change. We, as you know, the United States overthrew the regime in Afghanistan and then tried to put in place a good, sensible alternative. And the people that killed that idea were the government of Pakistan working with the Taliban. And that caused untold damage for 20 years. And the Indian subcontinent is filled with, you know, hundreds of millions of people. And the Afghans and the Indians and the Pakistanis are all having their own leaders use strategic arguments that have caused untold damage to the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan and India. And my recommendation this week is because I think we forget that India is the biggest country in the world. I think population wise, they, many of them do speak English and many of them are all over the west, many of particularly the elite Indians. And this book, the Loneliness of Sunny, oh yes, Sonia, is about two Indians, a young woman and a young man. And it brings to bear something that, that really, really I thought you'd get a kick out of because remember, we went to India to see the Tigers together. After our divorce, you, me, and Darius, we spent, I don't know, eight, ten days in a car together.
- [35:48]
B
It was the precursor to the X Files.
- [35:50]
A
Exactly. And we really saw Indian culture and it's complicated. Something is beautiful and wonderful and glorious and sometimes it can be infuriating. And what's so great about this book is the cultural truths that are told by the characters and the author about how Indians talk to each other, how Indians think about America, how Americans think about Indians and all the ethnic issues that come out in our daily life, come out in this book in a glorious.
- [36:20]
B
Is Kiran Desai?
- [36:21]
A
Yes, it's Kieran Desai. Exactly. It's a brilliant book.
- [36:24]
B
I want to read it.
- [36:25]
A
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny. And it's a classic idea of a woman in college and a living in New York City and then all the connections back to the country of India and all over the world. And the Indian factor is played up in this book in a way that I think is really our world needs to understand better as the world's largest democracy.
- [36:50]
B
Yeah. Which remember, Trump has hit the Indian government with a 50% tariff or whatever. But listen, I'm gonna do mine in a moment. Just having said that, I love Indian novels. I mean, my favorite of all time was A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. And I was waiting for him to do a follow up up a sequel and he never did, but I loved it so much. But here is my recommendation. Back to our persistent wars. I don't know whether you can see this, but it's the flyer for a new film, a feature film called Palestine 36 just premiered here in London. I went to see it as part of the British Film Institute BFI. And it is amazing because it is from 36 and 37. The Arab revolt, it was before World War II, you know, was fully exploded. It was before the Holocaust. It was before, before all of this. And yet the British were there and the French were in Lebanon and just, I mean, treating the Arabs, the Palestinians, as it was called Palestine, and the Lebanese as if they were vassals and all the stuff that's going on right now, they must have learned it from the British, the settlers and the IDF and all the rest of it. And what they're doing, you know, attacking a lot of Palestinian land and villages and farmland. And you just see, oh my gosh, if we don't learn from history and we don't put a sustainable piece in there, it's just really tragic. But it's a great film. And as a Brit, I feel horrible. I didn't know the details of this. Vaguely I knew it, but I didn't know the details. And it's just horrible. It just is. The inhumanity of people to each other is terrible.
- [38:23]
A
It's interesting that you mention that because there is a connection between that and the book I recommend. And that is how much of our world was created by the British Empire and the behavior of those leaders back then, particularly Churchill, but others, Mountbatten in India and Pakistan. The terrible, terrible tragedies created by People drawing the wrong lines on the wrong maps in between India and Pakistan and causing untold tens of millions of deaths because of ethnicity and Hindus versus Muslims and all of that issue same in the Arab world. I can't tell you how many times in my professional life as a diplomat you talk about something and then it always comes back to some Sykes Pico agreement that was signed by the British and the French back during World War I period. Or the behavior of the British imperialist empire in India, which did obviously some good but was now doing so much damage. And the complexities of our world very often come back to the behavior of an imperial country. The uk America may be a large country and it may occasionally behave in ways people want, but our relationships are not. Not imperialism.
- [39:37]
B
Until now you just said it's Trump wants to be kid.
- [39:40]
A
Well, Trump is trying to do that and hopefully we'll prevent him because all our military relationships are alliances. They're voluntary. They're not the way the British were where you send soldiers in. But you're right. He's behaving the way the British did back in the day. You're absolutely right.
- [39:53]
B
Highly Recommend the film Palestine 36 and that book, I think it said the Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kieran Desai. Righty ho, everybody. Thank you for listening. Make sure you follow our feed so that you never miss an episode. And remember, you can always watch our episodes on our YouTube channel as well. Just search for Christiana Monpour presents the X Files with Jamie Rubin and do subscribe to our channel. You can listen for free on Global Player. You can download that from the App Store or go to globalplayer.com and we'll see you again on Thursday for our Q A episode where we'll be answering your questions. So keep them coming. We love hearing from you. Email us@amanpour pod.com or find us on social media. Our handle is Amanpur Pod. Over and out. Bye, Jamie.
- [40:41]
A
Goodbye from New York.
- [40:43]
B
Bye from the Empire.
- [40:49]
A
This has been a global Player original production.
- [40:54]
E
Progressive knows we all crave validation.
- [40:55]
B
Girl, you are not 37. I would have guessed 27.
- [40:58]
C
You guys are too sweet.
- [41:00]
A
Sure. Dewy skin.
- [41:01]
B
Terrific.
- [41:02]
D
Um, is something wrong, Ned?
- [41:03]
C
Why would you ask?
- [41:04]
A
Just because Today marks my 10th anniversary without a car accident or even a speeding ticket, but somehow tonight's all about your skin care. Wow.
- [41:13]
E
With Snapshot from Progressive, you can get a personalized rate based on how you drive. And that's all the validation you need. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliate snapshot not available in California from all agents. Search possible for unsafe driving.