Post-election 2024 breakdown w/ Matthew Hoh - Ep 164

[00:00:05] This is Fortress On A Hill with Henry, Danny, Kagan, Giovanni, Shiloh, Anisha, and Mike.

[00:00:11] Welcome everyone to Fortress On A Hill, a podcast about U.S. foreign policy, anti-imperialism, skepticism, and the American way of war. I'm Giovanni, your host. Thank you for being with us today.

[00:00:22] As November 2024 unfolds, the world stands at a crossroads. The recent U.S. elections have deepened divisions at home while conflicts intensify abroad.

[00:00:32] In Gaza, violence spreads across West Asia with the ongoing genocide drying international condemnation.

[00:00:38] As Israeli military operations expand beyond Gaza into the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and potentially Iran, the risk of a wider regional configuration grows.

[00:00:55] The situation is becoming increasingly volatile with each new front opened by Israel raising the stakes for all parties involved.

[00:01:04] Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Russian forces continue to make significant advances across multiple fronts.

[00:01:10] The Ukrainian military facing severe shortages of ammunition and personnel is struggling to hold its defensive line and maintaining cohesion.

[00:01:19] In these troubling times, we're witnessing the erosion of international institutions and norms.

[00:01:24] The United Nations, long criticized for its ineffectiveness, now appears more impotent than ever as it fails to fault the violence in Gaza.

[00:01:33] International law, a beacon of hope for global cooperation, is become formed to shred before our eyes as Israel operates with impunity, fed fully by Western powers.

[00:01:44] This shifting geopolitical landscape reveals the waning influence of traditional Western powers and the emergence of new global dynamics.

[00:01:52] As we gather in our virtual fortress to examine these pressing issues critically, we are reminded that the choices made now will shape the future for generations to come.

[00:02:03] Now let's welcome our returning guests to delve deeper into these complex and urgent matters.

[00:02:09] Matthew Holt is an associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network and a former U.S. Marine Corps officer with nearly 12 years of military experience.

[00:02:19] He resigned from his State Department position in Afghanistan in 2009 in protests against the war's escalation.

[00:02:25] Matthew Holt served in Iraq as part of a State Department reconstruction team and a Marine Corps company commander.

[00:02:33] Matthew Holt worked on war policy at the Pentagon and State Department from 2002 to 2008.

[00:02:41] His writing can be found in various publications, including The Guardian and USA Today.

[00:02:47] He received several awards from his advocacy, including the Writing Hour Prize for Truth Telling in 2010.

[00:02:54] He is also involved with multiple organizations advocating peace and ventures issues.

[00:02:59] Welcome back to the show, Matt. How are you doing?

[00:03:02] Thanks, Giovanni. I appreciate you having me back on.

[00:03:05] So let's delve right into all the topics I just mentioned that I was to talk about.

[00:03:09] Let's start with the elections. What happened in November 5?

[00:03:11] Why did Harris lose? Why did Trump win?

[00:03:14] And do you think Gaza have anything to do with her losing?

[00:03:18] Yeah, I think so. We were just talking about how we saw each other back in D.C. a year ago at some of the protests up there.

[00:03:23] You mentioned I've written in The Guardian.

[00:03:26] Actually, I was quoted by The Guardian about a year ago saying this is going to have consequences for the elections.

[00:03:30] If the Biden campaign chooses to not listen to progressive voters, chooses to ignore Arab and Muslim voters,

[00:03:39] and chooses to go all in on Israel with what was looking like a genocide beginning to occur,

[00:03:45] there were going to be consequences for it.

[00:03:47] And sure enough, the Harris campaign had polling, because we've all seen this polling,

[00:03:52] that says that if she had taken a stronger stance against Israel,

[00:03:57] she had said, I am going to condition military aid to Israel on a ceasefire,

[00:04:03] or I'm not going to say, I'm going to put an arms embargo even better on Israel,

[00:04:07] that she would have gained many more votes than she would have lost.

[00:04:12] And that would have been the difference in several key states, most especially in Michigan.

[00:04:17] They chose not to do that.

[00:04:18] So they chose to give up Arab American, Muslim American, progressive American votes

[00:04:24] in order to stay in the good graces of the Israel lobby.

[00:04:27] Now, the two other big things that stand out for me about the election is that

[00:04:30] Harris is a terrible candidate. She was a terrible candidate in 2020,

[00:04:33] she's a terrible candidate now. She did well in that debate against Trump,

[00:04:36] and that's about it. If you watched her in almost any other forum,

[00:04:40] most especially that town hall she had with Anderson Cooper in the last weeks of the election,

[00:04:45] she was just not a good candidate. There's no other way to say it than that.

[00:04:48] The other aspect is the economics. And I know this is a focal point of what you all talk about on Fort Sonny Hill,

[00:04:56] how these wars have affected working class and middle class families in the United States,

[00:05:02] how our militarism affects our society, how we lose out as a people because we're buying weapons

[00:05:08] rather than building schools and hospitals. The idea that the Democrats,

[00:05:14] and this was enforced by Harris's poorness as a candidate, were just so smug and so arrogant.

[00:05:21] And when people came forward and said, we're really hurting, the economy is really bad for us,

[00:05:26] 60% of us are living paycheck to paycheck, more than 60% are living paycheck to paycheck.

[00:05:30] The response from the Democrats was, you just don't understand how the economy works.

[00:05:36] You open up the newspaper, you turn on MSNBC or CNN, and one Democratic Party expert after another

[00:05:43] saying, no, you just don't really understand. The financial and economic hardships you're having

[00:05:49] aren't that bad because the economy actually is doing really well. You just don't understand how

[00:05:53] the economy works. It was supporting a genocide. It was having a terrible candidate and telling people,

[00:05:59] no, the economy is fine. You're just not smart enough to understand how economics works.

[00:06:03] Yeah. And it seemed like this was how Mark's frame is lying is the first time as a tragedy,

[00:06:09] second time as a farce. And it seemed like they ran the same campaign that Hillary Clinton ran,

[00:06:13] which is like photocopy of it. They have the same blueprint.

[00:06:16] And the results were the same, right? One of the things I would always talk about in the 2016

[00:06:20] campaign was the fact that various studies showed seven to 10 million 2012 Obama voters either voted

[00:06:28] for Trump or didn't vote at all in 2016. Where did those people go? It's even more stark following

[00:06:33] this election where Harris is off by about 12 million votes from what Biden got four years ago.

[00:06:39] Where did those voters go? And you see how poorly she performed in all demographics. I don't think

[00:06:45] there's one demographic where she did better than Biden did in 2020. She lost across the board,

[00:06:50] everybody. And you can, we can certainly talk about the inherent white nationalism, right? That

[00:06:57] populates a good deal of Trump, MAGA, the Republican party. There's no arguing against that, but that is

[00:07:06] an excuse not to look at the realities for the American people, the economic realities of American

[00:07:12] people. The choices made by the democratic party, the decisions made by this current white house.

[00:07:19] Case in point, 25 million people have lost their Medicaid coverage under Joe Biden. So when COVID

[00:07:25] happens and under the Trump administration, that was the cares act, if I'm remembering correctly,

[00:07:31] it essentially opens up or expands Medicaid and tens of millions of people are able to get on

[00:07:37] Medicaid. And then in December of 2022, the Biden white house and the democratic congressional

[00:07:43] leadership decide to no longer continue that Medicaid expansion and to begin to let the states

[00:07:49] get people off of their Medicaid rolls. So regardless of what you want to say, now it's the Republican

[00:07:54] governors that actually made the decision or Biden had no choice or it's had to do with this, that,

[00:08:00] the other thing, or it's Joe Manchin's fault or whatever excuse you want to use.

[00:08:03] It doesn't even matter. The reality, tens of millions of people got healthcare coverage under

[00:08:09] Donald Trump and 25 million of those people lost it under Joe Biden. We could talk about all kinds

[00:08:15] of things, the child tax care credit. The Democrats went up and down about that. That's a great thing.

[00:08:20] They should have done that and they should have kept it. But in 2022, the Democrats decided not to do

[00:08:24] the child tax care credit. I was astounded this past year listening to buy the Biden campaign,

[00:08:29] the Harris campaign, talk about the child tax care credit, because I had to imagine all these

[00:08:33] families around the U S saying, yeah, that was great. And then you took it away from me.

[00:08:38] The arrogance and the entitlement of not even understanding what they had taken from people,

[00:08:44] just those two, two, two examples. We can go into others. I think was a clear demonstration of the

[00:08:51] smugness and the contempt and the coldness that Americans felt for this administration, whether it

[00:08:59] was Joe Biden or Kamala Harris being out of touch essentially, which was exactly what the autopsy of

[00:09:06] 2016 found over and over again, that people didn't like Hillary Clinton. They didn't trust her.

[00:09:12] They felt she was a warmonger. They felt that she was an elitist. They felt that she didn't have any

[00:09:17] concern for who they were as a people. And so essentially that's what the Democrats ran again in 2024.

[00:09:23] So what do you think Donald Trump brings to the table? Do you think the fears of the American

[00:09:28] left is the liberal, American liberal left is hyperbolic and can he deliver to a consistence

[00:09:34] in your opinion?

[00:09:35] I don't think it's overblown. Certainly there's just on the right, the way that if Kamala Harris had won

[00:09:41] to listen to conservative commentators, like every family would have to like transition one of their

[00:09:47] children to a non-binary status or something like that. Both sides are guilty of being dramatic,

[00:09:52] exaggerating. But we certainly know what a Trump administration has looked like before. We know

[00:09:56] its assault on civil liberties will be like. We certainly know that the most vulnerable people

[00:10:02] in our population will have those vulnerabilities very much exposed. People in the LGBTQ community,

[00:10:09] people in the migrant community, the poorest, the lowest income among us are going to have

[00:10:14] trouble worse than they're experiencing now. I do think that the concerns about this next Trump,

[00:10:21] this incoming Trump administration are very accurate. But I also know this, that it'll be the

[00:10:29] same as what you and I went through from 2017 to 2021. All our colleagues, all our comrades,

[00:10:36] all our friends who are out in the streets in 2017 to 2021 will be there again. If I have anything this

[00:10:42] past week that I feel it's a bit of a gratitude for knowing what we're up against now for the next

[00:10:49] four years. Okay. I understand who's going to be in the White House. I understand who's going to

[00:10:53] populate the agencies and who's going to be in the cabinet. We have an idea then of what we are up

[00:10:58] against. I'm a bit grateful for that clarity because at least we're no longer wondering if

[00:11:03] our strategies are going to have to go up against the Democrats or up against the Republicans,

[00:11:07] especially who will be on our side going forward.

[00:11:10] Yeah. It's interesting you said about civil liberties because that's one of the talking

[00:11:14] points that's going around this Harris campaign of people advocating to get out of the vote.

[00:11:18] They were pushing for people to vote to Harris and that's one of the things that brought up

[00:11:20] civil liberties, but that came in the backdrop of students getting beat down by police when they

[00:11:25] were protesting over the genocide in Palestine. So it was just mind blowing.

[00:11:31] Every time I heard that, and that was a more recent talking point in the last month or so,

[00:11:37] I feel like that was a talking point later in the campaign about you won't be able to organize

[00:11:40] against Trump like he could organize against Biden or Harris. And that was my thoughts exactly,

[00:11:46] where have people not been paying attention this past year, let alone the censorship that has come

[00:11:51] down across the board on everyone who has spoken out on behalf of Palestine, whether you're in the

[00:11:58] web people in the media, people in entertainment, people in politics. Look how members of the

[00:12:04] Democratic Party were treated over this past year for their defense of the Palestinian people.

[00:12:10] And that somehow we're going to be better able to organize than to try. Now, both are bad.

[00:12:15] And depending upon where you're coming in, depending upon where you're meeting this,

[00:12:20] just who you are and what your resources are, what your identity is, all those types of things.

[00:12:25] Yes, it might be worse under Trump than under Harris. But by and by, you're just dealing with

[00:12:31] differences in degrees. This is not apples and oranges. This is censorship. This is oppression

[00:12:37] of speech. This is degradation of civil liberties. And of course, we have to remember both parties

[00:12:42] are very much in favor of the surveillance state. This idea that one of the parties were going to be

[00:12:49] better for our first and fourth amendments is just ludicrous because they've both been

[00:12:53] equally complicit in the robbery, the vandalizing of our first and fourth amendments over the last

[00:13:00] couple decades. Yeah, absolutely. So you were a former Green Party candidate, critic of the new,

[00:13:08] of the two party systems. So what's your analysis after this election? Do you see a shift in voter

[00:13:14] sentiment compared to various elections? And do you see an opening window for third-party

[00:13:20] candidanship in the future? There should be, Devon, there should be. And I think this week is very

[00:13:26] disappointing for those of us who are involved with or interested in independent politics.

[00:13:30] As bad as things were for the Democratic Party this week, even worse for independent politics.

[00:13:36] The way you have this circumstance where you have two of the most improper President Kidd

[00:13:40] Kidd's full time, representing parties that have just continued to demonstrate their inability to do

[00:13:46] things for the people, as well as both parties favoring this ongoing genocide. We can go down

[00:13:52] the list of all these things. And the fact that independent parties, particularly independent

[00:13:58] parties that were running as anti-war parties, that couldn't muster more than a half of a percentage

[00:14:04] point each is really alarming. Jill Stein got about 650,000 votes this cycle. In 2016, she got a million

[00:14:12] and a half. Chase Oliver got 550,000 votes this cycle. In 2016, Gary Johnson for the Libertarians

[00:14:18] got four and a half million. So we just look at the decrease in support for these third parties,

[00:14:25] particularly juxtaposed against the circumstances. There's no reason why these parties shouldn't have

[00:14:31] had their best years ever running against Trump and Harris, running as anti-war, running in a failing

[00:14:36] economy, running with climate change, exploding on our doorsteps, wiping out entire communities.

[00:14:42] And we go up, 50,000 Americans dying every year from lack of healthcare, all these things.

[00:14:47] This is what happened. They got less than half a percent each. So I think the third party movement,

[00:14:53] the independent politics movement really has to take a step back and say, what the heck is going on?

[00:14:58] What are we doing? What are we trying to accomplish? How are we going to accomplish it? It has to be a

[00:15:03] complete reset. I agree with what Chris Hedges says that essentially it needs to be decapitated

[00:15:08] and resurrected. The idea that the performance was this bad. There are a number of things you can

[00:15:14] look at. You can look at the amount of money raised. Jill, I think Jill is probably, her number's going

[00:15:18] to come up about $3 million. That's simply, it's, it's, you're up against billion dollar campaigns.

[00:15:24] The fact that you got 0.4% of the vote only raising $3 million might not be that bad. Chase

[00:15:30] Oliver didn't even raise, I think he was around a half million dollars. I don't think he, or maybe,

[00:15:35] but I don't think he broke a million dollars. I mean, for those folks out there who are saying money

[00:15:39] doesn't matter, we're organized on the streets and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that doesn't work.

[00:15:43] It just doesn't work because if you don't have that political arm, look, my view on this is in

[00:15:48] the 60s and 70s, which is where everyone wants to look back to and say, hey, it was done then. And it

[00:15:53] was done then. And you had tremendous success from the anti-war movement, the environmental

[00:15:57] movement, the civil rights movement. And then going into the 80s, you had a transnuclear movement

[00:16:01] that had incredible success because that's what gave Ronald Reagan the political capital

[00:16:05] to negotiate with Gorbachev. He had all these great examples and successes of popular movements,

[00:16:12] of mass mobilizations. The establishment, the elites, the empire recognized it. So they evolved,

[00:16:17] they changed things. And so in the 80s, you start seeing this change in how campaigns are allowed

[00:16:22] to be financed. And of course, that gets capped off by Citizens United about 15 years or so ago.

[00:16:27] So you have the establishment saying, we're going to insulate our politicians with money

[00:16:32] so that no matter how good the mobilization effort, no matter how great the organization is,

[00:16:37] it's not going to have an effect.

[00:16:38] You saw that, right? You saw that with the anti-war, Iraq anti-war protest for 03,

[00:16:42] which are the biggest protests in the history of the world. We saw that with Occupy, where you had

[00:16:47] people all around the country just behind Occupy and they had that tremendous slogan for the 99%

[00:16:53] people were behind it. And then of course, most recently where you had the post after George

[00:16:59] Floyd's murder and the protests, the rallies, the marches, the vigils, 20 to 25 million people out

[00:17:06] on the streets and what became of it? What political, right? Independent politics, if the purpose is going

[00:17:12] to be the arm, that all those folks out there are killing themselves in terms of organizing and doing

[00:17:18] an incredible job organizing, right? You look at that from four years ago, how successful that

[00:17:24] organization was, that mobilization was. Look at this past year, how successful the rallies, the

[00:17:29] marches, the vigils in support of Palestine have been, largest anti-war march, you know, 2003.

[00:17:34] And then what was the result? What was able to be accomplished politically because of it?

[00:17:39] And so I think it's really, this has to be a very important moment for those in independent politics

[00:17:46] to, because the other thing too, is that these movements can't rely upon the democratic party.

[00:17:51] We've seen over and over again, there has to be something for them. How do we create a political

[00:17:55] movement that can actually do for these movements, what they're doing? If you look at how successful

[00:18:01] these movements are and then look at the independent politics, it's embarrassing. These folks kill

[00:18:05] themselves and they get all these people out there. And then what happens? What does that turn into?

[00:18:09] And so after this performance by the third parties, there has to be some real tough conversations.

[00:18:16] There has to be some, a lot of new people coming in, a lot of realistic perspective. I've talked about

[00:18:21] the money briefly. You'll hear so often about how the money doesn't matter. Guess what? The money

[00:18:26] matters when it matters. So those are the types of things where these mantras about grassroots,

[00:18:31] we don't take money. Terrific. I talked to independent candidates about it all this time

[00:18:35] and they're going to do this, they're going to do that. And it's okay, great. How many people do

[00:18:38] you have in your district? How many voters in your district? 550, 600,000 if you're running for

[00:18:43] Congress. How are you going to get out to them? How are you going to get in front of them? That's the

[00:18:48] whole thing. We know this because the advertisers and the marketers have done all this research for us.

[00:18:52] We've all seen those charts where this is the number of times you have to have your name mentioned

[00:18:56] or your brand mentioned in order for people to not only recognize you, but remember you.

[00:19:01] Okay. You've got 600,000 people that you've got to get Matt Ho to remember his name, let alone

[00:19:07] identify with what he's talking about. So if you don't have the money to do that, how are you going

[00:19:11] to do that? I ran two years ago and I learned this firsthand. Certainly you can go out to all the

[00:19:16] festivals and state fairs and everything else. You can shake hands with a couple hundred people

[00:19:21] every Saturday. It's not going to get you anywhere, particularly if you're running in a state like I was,

[00:19:26] it had to get across the seven and a half million people. That's why I didn't, I didn't break 1%.

[00:19:30] And in my race, I was running as an independent candidate, a Green Party candidate in the statewide

[00:19:34] race. Of course I wasn't going to break 1%. No one knew who the hell it was. The first time they saw

[00:19:38] my name was when they saw the ballot. No one's voting for you then.

[00:19:42] In the same token, the people who are giving the money, they're giving the money to safeguard their

[00:19:47] interests. Usually the interest is countered to the interest.

[00:19:50] That's exactly right. And so because money has been so hard and people don't like talking about money

[00:19:55] and money is our big juxtaposition on our side, particularly on the left. We're not about money.

[00:20:00] It's almost like a taboo subject, right? It's something that people don't want to get around

[00:20:03] and talk around, but you have to. I have people who have maxed out their donations. I see people

[00:20:08] max out donations to independent third-party candidates all the time. Give $6,600 or whatever

[00:20:13] the max is now, $3,300 for the primary cycle, $3,300 for the general election. No problem because

[00:20:18] they've got it and they want to support somebody who is advancing these types of interests,

[00:20:22] who have these policies of minds, who are saying these kinds of things. You have just a reluctance

[00:20:27] from the parties to be too involved with money. It's unseemly, it's dirty, it's not who we are.

[00:20:33] It's also hard. It's a hard thing to do to raise money and you have to be dedicated and you need

[00:20:37] professionals to do it. And that's not what the third-party movement has been about.

[00:20:41] And this is how we can have these results where Americans are, when you look at the numbers,

[00:20:46] the polls, 60, 65% of Americans want a third-party option. And you look at how well a year ago RFK

[00:20:53] Jr. was doing as an independent candidate, how well he did for a while. He was getting close to 20%.

[00:21:00] And then I think he had his own issues and some other things that brought that down. But certainly

[00:21:06] the desire is there, the need is there, the want is there. It's just a question of whether or not we

[00:21:10] can deliver it in a manner that actually is going to make a difference electorally and politically.

[00:21:16] Absolutely. Let's shift gears. We're coming up on time shortly. Let's talk about Israel,

[00:21:21] Gaza and Benjamin Netanyahu. As a former State Department official and military veteran,

[00:21:26] how do you assess the Biden administration handling of the Israeli-Palestine war so far?

[00:21:31] I'm not going to assess it the way that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. I would encourage people

[00:21:36] to look at Spencer Ackerman's column on this. If you don't read Spencer Ackerman, I can't recommend

[00:21:42] anyone better to read. He's terrific. Spencer reported from a transcript of a press briefing that

[00:21:47] Lloyd Austin gave when asked to comment on how he thought the last year had gone. He thought that

[00:21:53] Secretary of Defense Austin thought that the Biden administration had handled the situation in the

[00:21:59] Middle East. It's just right. Just it's so far gone. It's so beyond just the is he intentionally trying to mock us.

[00:22:07] Do these people actually believe this? It's been disastrous. It's been absolute disastrous. It's been we've armed and we've

[00:22:12] funded a genocide. We have destroyed millions of lives. Every life in the Gaza Strip has been ruined. The death toll,

[00:22:20] we don't even know. We may never know. It's going to be years from now, you're going to look up the look this up on the

[00:22:25] Wikipedia page and it's going to give you one of those range estimates. We'll never know. But it'll be in the

[00:22:30] hundreds of thousands of dead. We still don't know what's going to be the outcome of Israel's genocide.

[00:22:37] I think there are two poles here. One is either military occupation of Gaza or the outright ethnic

[00:22:43] cleansing and settlement. And somewhere in between those poles are what's going to happen. I think that's

[00:22:48] what we're seeing. As they're ethnically cleansing the north, you'll probably see sections of the Gaza Strip

[00:22:53] ethnically cleansed. The Palestinians pushed into essentially concentration camps and that's the

[00:22:59] way it's going to go forward. And it's just going to, the Palestinians are just going to suffer.

[00:23:03] And that's just one example of this disaster. Certainly the region is close to all out war,

[00:23:09] which doesn't take too much imagination to understand where that can lead to. You know how

[00:23:14] that could become a world war. The idea too is that the United States is isolating itself.

[00:23:20] This idea of the American empire in decline, I don't think anyone's arguing with that.

[00:23:25] And I don't think anyone's really arguing or should be arguing that the decisions made by the

[00:23:29] United States, particularly in the last 20 years, have hastened that decline. And these decisions

[00:23:35] this past year have just accelerated that decline because we are isolated, we the United States,

[00:23:41] are isolated in a manner that I've never seen in my life before.

[00:23:46] The only thing that we can hold onto as an example, our prowess, our imperial presence,

[00:23:51] is the fact that we have these vassal states that are increasingly tied to us just out of

[00:23:56] transactional matters. These governments themselves are neo-colonial, neo-imperiists.

[00:24:02] Look at the Dutch, you look at the Danes, you look at whoever, they want to just matter. They want

[00:24:07] to be a part of the imperial club. And that's how a lot of their politicians are. Meanwhile,

[00:24:11] all their people are about, we look at some of these European countries, what doesn't matter,

[00:24:15] it's Western, Central, Eastern. Folks are getting the torches and the pitchforks ready

[00:24:19] because they're so unhappy with their governments. I think that it's been incredible

[00:24:22] how disastrous this policy has been.

[00:24:26] And the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military attempted to use a COIN strategy,

[00:24:32] the counterinsurgency operation strategy, right? And the focus of COIN is primarily to protecting

[00:24:37] and gaining support from local population, setting up a government, supporting government,

[00:24:42] that particular government that has been set up. And instead of just targeting solely the insurgents,

[00:24:47] right? This is for recognizing when you have an insurgency, right? Insurgency getting strength

[00:24:52] from the population. By isolating the insurgents from the population, the theory of COIN is that you'll

[00:24:57] defeat the insurgents. But Israel doesn't seem to care about this. Not at all. They control the

[00:25:01] Palestinian population for the last 70 years and they don't care. Their approach is just collective

[00:25:08] punishment, scorch earth to establish their so-called deterrence. They just don't care.

[00:25:13] What was your opinion of that? Yeah, exactly. We don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves

[00:25:17] or overcomplicate it, right? Their goals really are subjugation. Subjugation, again, between those

[00:25:23] two pillars of either military occupation and controlling the population or completely eliminating

[00:25:29] them. Those are the goals that they have. I feel like I haven't seen too much reference to

[00:25:34] counterinsurgency. God help me. And I don't want to ruin your afternoon either. But I saw a thing with

[00:25:40] David Petraeus the other day where he was criticizing the Israelis for not doing the counterinsurgency

[00:25:45] fundamentals that he had put into place in Iraq, all that garbage he was spewing.

[00:25:50] You haven't seen too much mention of that because they are interested in the Palestinian people.

[00:25:54] They're interested in continuing the colonization of the land that began more than 100 years ago.

[00:26:00] And it became the goal of the Israeli state following the 1940s. They say it out loud,

[00:26:06] the Israelis. Naftali Bennett has said it the best, the former prime minister,

[00:26:09] that this is the best opportunity we've had in 50 years. This idea that here's our chance to

[00:26:15] accomplish what we've been trying to accomplish in terms of the greater Israel project, in terms of

[00:26:21] the Zionist program, taking the land that belongs to us, depending upon the Israeli or the Zionists

[00:26:28] you talk to. Some relate it back to 3,000 years ago. Others relate it back to the United Nations in 1947

[00:26:35] or 1948. But this idea that the land belongs to them and they need to remove these people is the

[00:26:41] prevailing view of the Israeli government, of Israeli society. And so the idea of practicing

[00:26:48] counterinsurgency because you want the Palestinians to accept your authority, to accept a government

[00:26:56] beholden to you, the Israelis, is not anything they even care about because that's not what they're

[00:27:00] trying to do. That's not what they're trying to accomplish. You can see it if you go to the West

[00:27:04] Bank, there's not the counterinsurgency type work being done, right? Counterinsurgency is supposed

[00:27:12] to win the hearts and minds of the people and you're supposed to provide the people with a reason

[00:27:16] to choose your government over the insurgency, which is just laughable, right? The idea that people are

[00:27:22] going to accept occupation because you built on roads and bridges and the well or whatever. It's

[00:27:26] just, it's really stupid. There's not a better way to describe it than that. It's ahistorical. It goes

[00:27:31] against who we are as humans. When you're in the West Bank, you don't see counterinsurgency programs

[00:27:36] like winning the hearts and minds. Israelis are systematically and deliberately debasing

[00:27:42] the Palestinians every way they can, whether it's the infrastructure, whether it's their culture,

[00:27:47] whether it's whatever they can do to try and force the Palestinians to leave, try and make

[00:27:52] everything unhabitable. So yeah, the Israelis have never had that approach. If they do say anything

[00:27:57] about it, I'm sure it's just because they're being annoyed by someone like General Petraeus and

[00:28:01] they just want to humor him and get him to leave.

[00:28:03] So Matt, many call this a live stream genocide, right? Happening right in front of our eyes. Like I

[00:28:08] mentioned earlier, the UN is made a mockery. It's showing it's impotent. They can't do anything

[00:28:12] about it. International law is just being shred in front of everybody's eyes because the West is so

[00:28:17] bent on supporting Israel. Do you foresee Israel in the near future or in Israel gold the way that

[00:28:27] French Algeria went or Rhodesia went or apartheid or South Africa? Do you foresee that in this Israeli

[00:28:34] apartheid state?

[00:28:36] I don't think, I think say French, there's no place for the Israelis to evacuate to,

[00:28:41] right? There's no place for them to leave and go to. With the South African model, I think the

[00:28:45] Israelis learned a lot from the South African experience. I certainly see, I think two things

[00:28:50] occur in the 80s that really shape what we've seen in the last decades with Israel and its

[00:28:54] relationship to the U.S. One is the American response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon,

[00:28:59] where President Reagan is upset. Everyone has seen on Twitter and social media, various types of

[00:29:05] history lessons being presented about how Reagan handled the prime minister of Israel at the time

[00:29:10] and how he troubled him to shut it down. And the Israelis did. The way the American media handled

[00:29:16] that invasion and the way the American media talked about it very frankly and candidly and

[00:29:21] honestly, and were very critical of the Israelis. And the Israelis understood that at the same time,

[00:29:26] the South Africans were at that point lost potentially the whole world with the exception

[00:29:31] of Israel and the United States. The, what turns it is that political support in the United States,

[00:29:38] it's so against South Africa and in the U.S. support for South Africa that the Reagan administration

[00:29:44] has to buckle, right? So the Israelis look at these two things and they come up with their modern

[00:29:50] political and media operations, whether it's the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, or what's known as

[00:29:57] Hezbollah, the information operations, where they're going to do everything they can to control American

[00:30:01] politics and to control American media. The media is being undone, of course, by the technology we have,

[00:30:07] by the rise of independent media, by the fact that genocide is being live streamed. If this genocide was

[00:30:12] happening 10 years ago, we would not be able to see it the way we can. It's only because everyone has

[00:30:18] these phones that we're able to see it, right? So Israel would have gotten away with it in a way

[00:30:22] that they, 10 years ago, would have gotten away with this in a better way for them, so to speak,

[00:30:29] than they can now because everyone can see what's happening. But politically, they still have that

[00:30:34] strength. And AIPAC, of course, is crowing about how well they did in this election, how much money

[00:30:39] they spent, how the people they made examples of. This idea with Israel is that Israel becomes so

[00:30:45] isolated along that model of South Africa, where the entire world is against them, they're being

[00:30:49] sanctioned. I don't think even that's going to happen because a lot of these nations are

[00:30:53] hypocritical. Like South Africa, which leads the genocide case against Israel and the international

[00:30:59] court of justice. South Africans are the biggest suppliers of coal to Israel. So there's still that

[00:31:04] hypocrisy, and that's got a long way to go if sanctions or anything like that were to occur.

[00:31:08] But say it does. I think the Israeli belief is that they won't lose the United States. They learned

[00:31:15] from the South Africans in the 80s, and they won't lose the United States the way the South Africans did

[00:31:20] because they've done everything they need, particularly politically, to insulate their

[00:31:24] politicians so that you could have, like we just saw, where for the Harris campaign, the data was all

[00:31:30] there, the polling was there, the polling numbers were there, in a sense that 90% of Democrats favored a

[00:31:36] ceasefire. 39%, if Harris had imposed an arms embargo on Israel, 39% of respondents said that

[00:31:45] they would be more likely to vote for her, as opposed to 7% that said they'd be less likely.

[00:31:49] She was going to get many more votes by going against the Israel lobby, potentially win this

[00:31:54] election, but she chose not to because the Israel lobby, Israel, is so strong because they've done what

[00:32:00] they did, what they had to do, learning from South Africa to protect themselves. So you get to this

[00:32:05] point where essentially you could have a fortress Israel. And I think that's what the Israelis are

[00:32:09] okay with. This idea, as long as we have the United States, we can be fortress Israel. And for many of

[00:32:14] them, that lines up with their understanding of the world. That lines up with their mesophysics.

[00:32:18] That lines up with their cosmic and religious history. This is the way it's supposed to be,

[00:32:23] Israel versus everybody. And for the Americans, it makes sense too, because more than half, I don't know

[00:32:28] how many members of Congress would say things like, the two nations that the good Lord have blessed

[00:32:34] is Israel, the United States. So that you got this, right? You've got this relationship that the

[00:32:39] Israelis are baking on. And so I imagine, Ivani, you can get to a point where Israel resembles

[00:32:44] Afghanistan. You have this political leadership in Afghanistan that doesn't care about the rest of

[00:32:50] the world. They're going to do what they want to do. And in the case of different is that the

[00:32:55] Israelis, of course, are baking on having the support of the Americans.

[00:32:58] Let's move on to Eastern Europe. So you mentioned that Ukraine is inexorable, moving towards a

[00:33:07] military defeat. What specific indicators lead you to that conclusion?

[00:33:11] Oh, I think now, particularly the Donald Trump. That's the big one. And if people saw

[00:33:18] Volodymyr Zelensky's congratulation message to Donald Trump, which is on Twitter, if people haven't seen it,

[00:33:24] I'd urge you to go read it. Nowhere in that message does Volodymyr Zelensky talk about victory over Russia.

[00:33:29] Nowhere in that message is Volodymyr Zelensky defiant. Nowhere in that message is Volodymyr Zelensky

[00:33:33] talking about the loftier goals of democracy, freedom, liberty, or protecting the West from Russia.

[00:33:40] It's all about how I see us as having a great partnership going forward. Ukraine can be an

[00:33:46] integral part of the European community. We can help the United States anchor American security

[00:33:52] by being president in Europe that the U.S. once was. This was first proposed by Boris Johnson

[00:33:57] several months ago, the former British prime minister. I thought this was absolutely

[00:34:01] nutso because usually anything that Boris Johnson says is nuts. But he said something along the lines

[00:34:07] in this panel discussion about how the Ukrainians can replace the Americans in Europe. At the time,

[00:34:15] I just thought this is nonsense. And then Zelensky repeated it a couple of times that I thought

[00:34:19] it was nonsense. And he said it again the other day. And my thoughts were, this ties entirely into

[00:34:24] Trump's line of thinking that the United States needs to renegotiate NATO and have the Europeans

[00:34:29] pay for their own security. And here's Zelensky saying, I will do that. Mr. Trump, I will do that.

[00:34:36] I will backfill the Americans in Europe. And essentially through his words, through the absence of what

[00:34:41] he's saying, I'm open for a peace deal. I'm open for an agreement. And this is what we just saw as

[00:34:45] reported in the Wall Street Journal coming out of Trump's team. And you got to caveat that with

[00:34:50] this is Trump. So who knows what's going to happen? But the Trump team is saying that Trump's proposal

[00:34:55] for Ukraine is going to be an immediate ceasefire, freezing the conflict along the lines that they

[00:35:00] are now. Russia keeps the land it's occupying and the front line is demilitarized, so on and so forth.

[00:35:06] That Ukraine pledges not to try and join NATO for 20 years and that the Americans continue to sell

[00:35:12] Ukraine all the weapons that they want. And that's the Trump-Ukraine peace strategy, as far as we can

[00:35:18] tell via Wall Street Journal. So what Zelensky says the other day fits with that because he's not going

[00:35:24] on about victory. The writings on the wall for the Zelensky government, certainly you look at all the

[00:35:29] indicators, say if Harrison won. The reality is that the Russian army is moving forward a couple

[00:35:35] kilometers, maybe more every day, that the momentum is fully behind them. The Ukrainian army is

[00:35:41] certainly on their back feet. The Ukrainian army has been led by incredibly, we could talk about the

[00:35:47] Ukrainian army and its bravery and its will to fight and its performance, which I think most people would

[00:35:53] say is pretty laudatory. But you look at Ukrainian leadership and certainly the Ukrainian leadership

[00:35:59] has been catastrophic. The fact now that you have had a Ukrainian army that's been on its back foot

[00:36:05] for more than a year, essentially, since that disastrous offensive they launched in the summer of 2023,

[00:36:11] for 16 months now, the Ukrainian army has been falling backwards. And the Ukrainians have not

[00:36:18] prepared any defenses in depth for which the Ukrainian army can fall back into, right? I think

[00:36:24] anyone who's got the basics of military tactics and operations would understand that in this

[00:36:29] circumstance, prepare some very serious defensive lines in the geography and the topography that works

[00:36:37] well for that and have your forces fall back to that. The dangers too is that the Ukrainian government

[00:36:43] is a patronage network, similar to what we saw in Afghanistan. It's incredibly corrupt. The entire

[00:36:50] Ukrainian economy is sustained by foreign assistance. If that money ever dries up or even the threat of it

[00:36:57] dries up, there's going to be a panic, just like we saw in Afghanistan, and that will bring about collapse.

[00:37:02] It's not even the case that the Russians need to defeat the Ukrainian army on the field. It's the

[00:37:09] fact that just have to get to the point where the Ukrainians feel like it's over for them, a panic sets

[00:37:14] in, and then collapse comes. And that can come especially from, say, a Trump administration that says,

[00:37:19] we're not giving you any more money. Once that panic happens, like a bank run, the consequences

[00:37:24] would be catastrophic. And the Russians realize this. The Russians understand that a collapsed Ukrainian

[00:37:30] government means what? Essentially warlords take over in central and western Ukraine. You have a

[00:37:37] Syria, you have an Afghanistan, like a failed state that's in the midst of all types of warlords.

[00:37:42] Plus you have so-called allies like Poland, also eyeing a piece of Ukraine for themselves as well.

[00:37:49] Exactly. Or the Romanians. You don't need to be a big history buff to know this stuff. This is on the

[00:37:53] first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry. And so what happens there? It collapsed, right? Giovanni.

[00:37:58] Say the Russians are moving westward, which I don't think they will. I don't think they really want

[00:38:01] to go much farther west than they are now because they didn't want to have an insurgency, like all

[00:38:06] that type of stuff. And that was never their goals. But say they do start moving west. What do the

[00:38:10] Poles and the Romanians do? Right? Now you've got two NATO armies trying to take territory in Ukraine,

[00:38:18] potentially coming into conflict with the Russian army, plus Ukrainian elements that are

[00:38:23] wandering around and it's like a warlord dystopia type of thing going on. Yeah, the Russians recognize

[00:38:29] this and who would want that on their front yard or side yard or backyard? So I think the reception

[00:38:37] from the Russians to Trump's proposal, if it is as it is, will be agreeable. Results may not look the

[00:38:47] same as what Trump people expect. It's definitely going to go in Russia's favor, but I think the

[00:38:52] Russians want to end this sooner than later. And all the talk about how Russia is witting and they're

[00:38:58] going to et cetera, et cetera. And it's true, but they're also wise and mature in a manner that

[00:39:05] people like you and I, after experiencing our leadership over the last 20 years, have a hard time

[00:39:11] recognizing. Matt, our 45 minutes are up. Do you have an extra 10 minutes? Yeah, we can go 10 minutes.

[00:39:18] All right. So in your opinion, with just summarize now about the Ukraine, if a defeat of Ukraine,

[00:39:26] would that be a defeat of NATO in your opinion? No, actually I think the opposite, Giovanni. I think

[00:39:31] it will be the storyline, the narrative, the reason for NATO. You go back several years ago and there

[00:39:38] were honest and sincere conversations about what's NATO's purpose. The conversations should have been

[00:39:44] had in 1991, should have happened in December of 91. As soon as the Soviet flag came down over the

[00:39:48] Kremlin, that conversation should have been had rather than quickly became about expanding NATO.

[00:39:53] Now we're in this situation we're in. I think what happens is that an occupied Eastern Europe,

[00:40:00] an occupied Eastern Ukraine gives NATO its Jerusalem, right? Our purpose is to retake the Donbass.

[00:40:07] It becomes a driving narrative. We have to stay strong, buy more F-35s because look, what do you

[00:40:14] forget? The Russians are occupying Ukraine. The Russians launched this war a few years ago and

[00:40:19] then they occupy on and on. And there is all kinds of other narratives about Ukraine could have won if

[00:40:24] they were just given the equipment they needed. If we had gotten the Ukrainians, the F-16s sooner,

[00:40:29] essentially we stabbed the Ukrainians in the back. We betrayed them. All those storylines are already

[00:40:34] being circulated. So I think what it does is it provides the reason for being for NATO going

[00:40:41] forward. And it's interesting too, because you see other elements of this as well. The new head of NATO,

[00:40:45] Mark Ruda, who was taken over from Jen Stoltenberg, who was Stoltenberg, incredibly hawkish.

[00:40:50] And so the new guy has to be better than the old guy. So how do you be a bigger hawk than the old guy?

[00:40:55] You expand the presence of your hawkishness. Where Stoltenberg and NATO had begun in the last

[00:41:00] of the years really talk about expanding NATO into Asia. I think that's where NATO is also going to

[00:41:05] look towards. And you saw with these reports of North Korean troops being with the Russians,

[00:41:10] the South Koreans are really upset about this. And there's stories about the South Koreans now maybe

[00:41:14] get involved or whatever. But the big thing is that this is a type of storyline that you need

[00:41:20] to get NATO into Asia. The fact that the North Koreans went to fight in Ukraine,

[00:41:25] we see that this is just not a European war. That we can't be so foolish or naive to believe that

[00:41:32] all these things, it's not global, it's not interconnected. So if the North Koreans are

[00:41:38] going to have a presence in Europe, we have to have a presence in Asia. You're seeing through this

[00:41:42] is not just the reason for NATO's being, but a reason for it expanding into Asia.

[00:41:48] How have we already been seeing that with favorable nations in South America,

[00:41:51] with Colombia entering a special NATO partner and all that? How have we been seeing this expansion

[00:41:55] already? Yeah, we have the idea of formalizing it, which I think is really possible. So I think

[00:42:01] it takes years time seeing Japan or South Korea as a NATO member or Australia as a NATO member.

[00:42:07] And people go along with it. Just in our college football, right? None of the teams in the SEC or

[00:42:13] the, or the, or no one is anywhere geographically located anywhere near they should be for the

[00:42:17] conference they're in. So people go along with them. As preposterous as they'll be, that's a

[00:42:22] possibility is you'll see that expansion of NATO into Asia. Cause you're exactly right, Giovanni. It's

[00:42:28] already there. This relationship with AUKUS, the fact that you have the German and French warships going

[00:42:34] through the Taiwanese Strait, things like that have already been occurring. So that's, it seems to me,

[00:42:39] the logical progression of this. Moving gears before we get out of here, let's talk about BRICS.

[00:42:44] BRICS. Do you feel this initiative of BRICS and BRICS and BRICS and the other one, the Central

[00:42:49] Europe Cooperation? Yeah. So do you see these, because we're witnessing a shift in the goal

[00:42:56] balance of power, right? For the last three or 400 years, the balance of power has been

[00:43:01] centered in the West, but now we're seeing a shift. Do you see these organizations that are

[00:43:05] forming, these blocks that are forming, the likelihood of reducing military conflicts with

[00:43:10] the fostering of South to South economic interdependence? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like

[00:43:16] when streaming services became available for people in their home and they were able to get

[00:43:20] rid of cable, people had this relationship with the cable company, entirely extractive,

[00:43:25] gouging and everything else. Now, now I'm being glib here, but I think that's what we've seen,

[00:43:30] particularly with BRICS, this alternative that's available. For the last few decades, since the

[00:43:35] end of the Cold War, there's been no alternative, but the Americans, right? There's been no alternative,

[00:43:40] but the U S empire and its hegemony. And now there are alternatives, the behavior of the United States,

[00:43:46] the decisions made, the policies carry out, the wars conducted, the coups, just all the more reason

[00:43:52] for people to say, I've got to link up with somebody else. I got to protect myself and my country

[00:43:57] from the American empire, as well as the transactional nature of it. Everyone knows you're on a losing

[00:44:02] end of the current world, monetary, financial, and economic order. The international legal order

[00:44:08] is completely doesn't exist because of the United States. And the only reason that's a world economic

[00:44:13] order is because the United States benefits from it because the United States wrote it during World

[00:44:17] War II and put it into action. So the fact that people are on a losing end, particularly nations

[00:44:22] in the global South that every year for decades, see trillions of dollars be extracted from their

[00:44:30] economies to the Western economies for no other reason. That's the way it's been for centuries.

[00:44:36] Now there's an alternative. Now there's something where the playing field may be more level where at

[00:44:42] least it's not going to be this, I've got a gun to my head. And if I don't do what the Americans say,

[00:44:47] they're either going to sanction me or they're going to coup me or they're going to invade me and

[00:44:52] occupy me. Just those, that very in your face base kind of explanation of why this is occurring.

[00:44:59] It doesn't have to be any harder than that to understand it, right? Of course, there's an

[00:45:03] alternative. Why wouldn't there be an alternative? And the success of it, yeah, it continues to grow.

[00:45:07] And we're seeing the diplomacy as well. For example, how South America and the leadership of Chavez

[00:45:12] started the diplomatic de-escalation of the conflict in Colombia between the FARC and the

[00:45:18] Colombian government. We're seeing how the Havana, for example, in Cuba, they're participating in the

[00:45:23] de-escalation of the conflict in Colombia. We've seen the ELN and the Colombian government.

[00:45:27] Recently, we saw the diplomacy brokered by China between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I just saw today

[00:45:35] also that Russia is taking part in diplomacy to bring together China and India. All this is being

[00:45:41] done without the involvement of the West. And we saw how recently in the Sahel, in the Sahel in Africa,

[00:45:46] the countries that pretty much broke off from France and they're coming together, building their own

[00:45:51] block in the Sahel as well. So we're seeing that.

[00:45:54] That was the big storyline coming out of the BRICS conference last month. India and China had

[00:46:00] brokered an agreement and told their troops back from the border. That's something that people

[00:46:03] of the United States, that's impossible, won't happen. The same Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia

[00:46:08] and Iran just last week or two weeks ago held joint naval exercises together. I thought that was

[00:46:13] impossible. I thought that was like you had the same degree of that happening as walking through a

[00:46:17] brick wall. I remember looking a number of years ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago, at the list,

[00:46:22] the roster of all the different special representatives that the U.S. State Department

[00:46:27] had. A special representative for all kinds of things. Terrorism for whatever, all kinds of stuff.

[00:46:33] 50 of them about. And there was no special representative for Kashmir.

[00:46:37] The one of the most, potentially, particularly when I was looking at this list 10, 15 years ago,

[00:46:42] the flashpoint, the tension, the fact that these are countries that have already gone to war four

[00:46:47] times in the last 70 years or whatever the number is, and Kashmir being such the importance of it.

[00:46:55] And the United States doesn't have a diplomat dedicated to Kashmir. You still have Pakistan

[00:47:01] and India, but in separate military, the whole thing was crazy. You see the unseriousness

[00:47:06] of American diplomacy. And in this last year, with the complete destruction of international law by

[00:47:12] the United States, led by Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the U.N., but also Tony Blinken and others,

[00:47:18] whereas international law dying and bleeding out, the United States really has killed it.

[00:47:22] When you look at places around the world like Singapore, and how come Singapore is so successful

[00:47:27] and you talk to people who do business there, is they said because there's a rule of law,

[00:47:30] because they have a law that's followed. They have courts that we can depend upon.

[00:47:35] We can headquarter our businesses here and have a predictable outcome. That's the nature of people

[00:47:41] also moving towards these organizations like BRICS. There is a belief that these organizations,

[00:47:48] while they won't be perfect, will be fair, that they will follow law and rules and treaties and other

[00:47:54] things that bind everyone together. Another reason why people feel the need to get away from the

[00:48:00] American empire.

[00:48:00] Have we seen the fall of the U.S.-led Western Empire established in 1945?

[00:48:07] Have we seen the fall? No, it's still around.

[00:48:09] We're witnessing the fall.

[00:48:10] Oh, we're witnessing. I would say to people, be careful. It's certain that's what we want,

[00:48:15] but we want this thing to come to a soft landing, so to speak. The consequences of it breaking apart

[00:48:21] dramatically would be catastrophic for the entire world. Certainly things like climate change,

[00:48:27] de-dollarization, even just watching Trump talk about the tariffs. We're a country that is dependent

[00:48:33] upon imports. And so when all of a sudden inflation is back up again because we've got a 60% tariff on

[00:48:39] things from China, the consequences here are going to be felt overseas by the disruption and societal

[00:48:47] unease of the American people. The other thing I'll say about the empire is that there's that saying,

[00:48:53] the dying mule kicks hardest. The American empire is not going out without a lot of death and

[00:48:59] destruction and violence around it. It's not going to go quietly. It's going to go very violently and

[00:49:04] very aggressively.

[00:49:06] Lots to think about. Thank you. This is a good place to wrap it up for the day. Thank you, Matt.

[00:49:11] Thank you for coming and talking to us, sharing your experience, your insights. Before we go,

[00:49:15] what are you working on and where can people plug into your work?

[00:49:18] Yeah. So I'm the associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network. You can just Google

[00:49:22] Eisenhower Media Network. I think the easiest way to follow me in my work is to follow me on Twitter,

[00:49:27] Matthew P. Ho, P as in Patrick, last name is spelled H-O-H. And then I'm on Substack as well,

[00:49:32] though I'm not nearly as good about posting on Substack as I should be. If people want to follow

[00:49:36] me on Substack, it's Matthew Ho at Substack or Matthew.Ho at Substack or something like that. I'm

[00:49:42] pretty sure I'm the only Matthew Ho on Substack, so you can find me that way.

[00:49:45] What's that name from, by the way?

[00:49:46] It's German. I used to be a whole in German.

[00:49:48] Got it. Yeah.

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[00:51:17] Skepticism is one's best armor. Never forget it. We'll see you next time.

[00:51:22] Bye.