Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: Robert I.
Speaker 2: She had mentioned I have a friend in Ukraine named
Speaker 2: Nadya Vesina. She has popped on a couple of times.
Speaker 2: And she was, you know, kind of a mid level
Speaker 2: maybe a higher media star in Ukraine, but gotten kind
Speaker 2: of like MTV, you know. She was kind of a
Speaker 2: fun person who she'd won beauty pageants, and she was
Speaker 2: a gymnast and spent a lot of time in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Her English was pretty good, and so she would send
Speaker 2: me these photos and she was doing what you were
Speaker 2: doing about following up and going to the front lines
Speaker 2: and bringing supplies. And at one point I was given
Speaker 2: I was speaking on a board or something like that,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to give me five hundred dollars. I said,
Speaker 2: I don't need it, so give it to her, and
Speaker 2: I'd signed it over to her, and and that little
Speaker 2: bit went a long way to buy bandages and other stuff.
Speaker 2: But I remember the I was trying to see the
Speaker 2: last photo she sent me, which was I mean, she
Speaker 2: looked like Rick moranis and spaceballs with this helmet, just
Speaker 2: the helmet on her. But that was my impression was
Speaker 2: like everybody was pitching in and people that had no
Speaker 2: business doing that, you know. And as soon as the
Speaker 2: bombs dropped in Kiev and part of the building next
Speaker 2: to her got hit, she was out there taking video
Speaker 2: and sending it to me the next day. And it's
Speaker 2: very interesting. So, I what's that like is there? Is
Speaker 2: it the same thing that in your experience for the
Speaker 2: countries you've been in in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: No, Well, first of all, Ukraine is a massively huge place,
Speaker 3: right right when you see the bombs exploding in the artillery. Yes,
Speaker 3: they happened in certain places, but it's a very very
Speaker 3: large country and life goes on. You know, if you
Speaker 3: go to the main cities, the restaurants are open, you
Speaker 3: can have a coffee, hotels are open. So Ukrainians don't
Speaker 3: pretend like it's the end of the world. They're getting
Speaker 3: on with their lives. In Middle East is a different story.
Speaker 3: And you know, when we say Middle East, we have
Speaker 3: a it's been twenty years doing history stories about why
Speaker 3: this guy doesn't like that guy who took over this
Speaker 3: place and etc. Etc. But what's critical about the Middle
Speaker 3: East is the connection to the US. We have two
Speaker 3: things about the current conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is
Speaker 3: that it affects the global market. You know, you have
Speaker 3: the Arab nations, which many of them are petro dictatorships,
Speaker 3: pushing back and they're going to jack up fuel prices,
Speaker 3: you know, if they don't see things happening their way.
Speaker 3: We have a huge group of people in the States
Speaker 3: that are split. You know, typically older Republicans support Israel
Speaker 3: and younger so the left wing Democrats support Gaza. And
Speaker 3: you have this dynamics that's got nothing to do with
Speaker 3: what's happening in the States. It's happening, you know, thousands
Speaker 3: of miles away. So that's what makes the Middle East
Speaker 3: of interesting, is that it echoes around the world.
Speaker 2: But tell me, like then, to your point about the
Speaker 2: land mass, these are fairly compacted countries. They're not. I mean,
Speaker 2: Ukraine is mostly like right, wheat fields and farms and whatever.
Speaker 2: But this is this is different and so everybody's kind
Speaker 2: of on top of each other and that that rarely
Speaker 2: works out.
Speaker 3: Well well, okay, so so Ukraine doesn't do a lot
Speaker 3: of lobbying, you know, when something happens. Israel has a
Speaker 3: very sophisticated pr arm that immediately launches things into social
Speaker 3: media and then gods that will launch thousands of pictures
Speaker 3: of dead children and explosions and screaming people. So we
Speaker 3: see it in our living rooms, we see it on
Speaker 3: our phones. It's when you look at Ukraine looks a
Speaker 3: little bit more professionally. You see people, and you know,
Speaker 3: tanks and plans and helicopters or whatever. Doesn't have the
Speaker 3: same sense of whole that the war in the Middle
Speaker 3: East does. So it's a lot more impactful emotionally, and
Speaker 3: also because it's cyclicult, it's also very depressing, you know,
Speaker 3: because we kind of know that it will calm down
Speaker 3: and happen again, calm down, happen again, as it has
Speaker 3: for many years. So it traumatic traumatized.
Speaker 2: This one seemed spontaneous, or I mean, it wasn't. There
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be a cause that I can find
Speaker 2: a trigger for why Hamash did that, when they did it,
Speaker 2: where they did it, and to the degree that they
Speaker 2: did it. You know, I think we're used to them
Speaker 2: throwing missiles at each other or whatever, but this wasn't that.
Speaker 3: Well let me let me tell you them. First of all,
Speaker 3: you got to go to gods and understand, this is
Speaker 3: a terrible place to live in. I mean it's not
Speaker 3: someplace you would choose to be in. Everything's compress, everything
Speaker 3: is you can't get out. I mean, it's a terrible
Speaker 3: place to live. Secondly, I told you about the cyclical
Speaker 3: nature of this. When they had the Abraham Accords, they
Speaker 3: literally ignored the Palestinians. You know, that was supposed to
Speaker 3: be a peace deal. It didn't shape Palestine or New
Speaker 3: Country or anything. Nothing happened. And you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter who you blame. But the point is that we've
Speaker 3: had a series of peace deals and then failures and
Speaker 3: then flareups. So it's expected. I mean, if you put
Speaker 3: people under pressure for that long and you have that
Speaker 3: many young people that are unemployed, and you have people
Speaker 3: stirring them up with rhetoric, they're going to do something.
Speaker 3: The thing that was shocking was the intelligence failure and
Speaker 3: the number of casualties caused by Hamas, who then broke
Speaker 3: out into the southern part of Israel. And I think
Speaker 3: Israel so traumatized by that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I keep coming back to that rock concert,
Speaker 2: that peace concert, sort of a little many Woodstockers on
Speaker 2: or a burning man who ray. Yeah, but that raid
Speaker 2: on that group, that there was a brutality to that.
Speaker 2: That yeah, but that that seemed pretty and then all
Speaker 2: of the people and the families, and I know that
Speaker 2: that goes both ways, but there was something about it
Speaker 2: was very personal. It seemed like on the let's.
Speaker 3: Zoom back, because nine to eleven was about as brutal
Speaker 3: as you can get. You know, the water of three
Speaker 3: thousand people, right, and to be very cold and clinical.
Speaker 3: If someone is killed by having their head cut off,
Speaker 3: or shrapnel cuts their head off when the bomb is
Speaker 3: dropped on them, you know, is that the same? In
Speaker 3: other words, this terrorism created at different levels. And all
Speaker 3: I can see is that we get dragged into these
Speaker 3: things as having to choose a side or to And
Speaker 3: I can say, you can condemn both sides, you can
Speaker 3: support both sides, you can agore both sides, because what
Speaker 3: Hamas did was a deliberate terrorist attack to get attention
Speaker 3: and to create that same cycle of violence and then
Speaker 3: peace talks and then money flows and they steal the
Speaker 3: money and then they settle down, and then they stir
Speaker 3: it up again. And if you look at your history,
Speaker 3: it's just like this constant cycle of violence and negotiation
Speaker 3: and violence, et cetera, et cetera. It's a terrible situation.
Speaker 3: It's not going to end anytime.
Speaker 2: So as you look at the map, as you know,
Speaker 2: going back to dangerous places, what's the next big place
Speaker 2: that you're worried about having traveled.
Speaker 3: I'm worried about the UAE, which is Abu Dhabi, a
Speaker 3: very small, little oil rich country, has a very methodical
Speaker 3: plan of slicing up African countries. And you know, they
Speaker 3: they started with Yema and they went on to Libya.
Speaker 3: They're operational in Sudan by supporting the you used to
Speaker 3: call them the janjued in the south, splitting that kind
Speaker 3: and have They're active in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and essentially they're
Speaker 3: trying to create chaotic situations that favor their sort of
Speaker 3: peace and stability. And it even reaches out to this country.
Speaker 3: You know, we are a very divided nation and we
Speaker 3: must ask ourselves why are we so eager to argue
Speaker 3: with somebody who doesn't believe in what we believe in?
Speaker 3: And this is the trend we have to watch out for,
Speaker 3: is the deliberate manipulation of ideas, opinions, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of into right or wrong, left or right, and this
Speaker 3: is something that is fairly new, you know, what happened
Speaker 3: in the last fifteen twenty years, and also social media
Speaker 3: has exacerbated it. We are being manipulated to be weaker,
Speaker 3: to be divisive, as opposed to being unified. And this
Speaker 3: is the danger that I see, and this is you know,
Speaker 3: I'm working on a new edition of Dangerous Places. And
Speaker 3: I don't think people realize how often during the day
Speaker 3: they're assaulted by ideas, images, things designed specifically to manipulate them.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting because I don't I wouldn't have I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have thought of the UAE of all the places
Speaker 2: you would have mentioned, because they've got it, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty good. I mean, the people that live in the
Speaker 2: UAE live very well.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: There's a citizenship thing where you have to have a
Speaker 2: job in the Emirates in order to be able to
Speaker 2: to stay and as soon as you don't, you got
Speaker 2: to go and all that. You know, there's there's citizenship
Speaker 2: has obviously is done in tears and all of that.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, why why are they rocking
Speaker 2: the boat? What's in it for them?
Speaker 3: Let's be fair, everybody does this you know, we do it,
Speaker 3: Russia does it, China does it. Everybody jumps in there
Speaker 3: and tries to manipulate people. But this particular organization, which
Speaker 3: you know, it's a family, the bunny Fatima and six
Speaker 3: brothers one die, is terrified. Remember Air of Spring, that
Speaker 3: these were one demonstration away from being kicked out of
Speaker 3: their own country. So a lot of these including out Arabia,
Speaker 3: has sort of said, okay, we have to be proactive.
Speaker 3: We have to go get people that don't like dictatorships.
Speaker 3: And they call it the Muslim Brotherhood, which is essentially
Speaker 3: politicized Islam. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't believe
Speaker 3: that one family should woo a nation, just like we
Speaker 3: didn't think that city station royalty should run countries. And
Speaker 3: vari Spring scared the hell out of these people, so
Speaker 3: they came up with this, you know, a plan to
Speaker 3: basically destabilize and control potential threats.
Speaker 2: But so this is all about then going on offense
Speaker 2: is a good defense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, here's something for you. Putin spends almost five
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars a day to prosecute the war against Ukraine.
Speaker 3: If you could elect someone that would simply stop funding Ukraine,
Speaker 3: work to you, right exactly, And it's on the dollar.
Speaker 3: Right if if someone is angry at Saudi Arabia because
Speaker 3: of their human rights violations and their sort of archaic
Speaker 3: view of things, what is the cost to change the
Speaker 3: government in this country? Or you're to find someone who said, oh,
Speaker 3: that's okay with me. You know, we're friends now. So
Speaker 3: there's a huge danger in this soft corrosive invasion into
Speaker 3: countries that are sort of you know, moralistic and high
Speaker 3: and mighty by groups that have a lot more money
Speaker 3: and a lot more time on their hands to degrade
Speaker 3: what we call the you know, the the liberal democracy
Speaker 3: theory that we created after World.
Speaker 2: War Two, right, you know, uh, when you're traveling in
Speaker 2: these countries. And by the way, I really like your
Speaker 2: website photo. A lot of people they make they make
Speaker 2: their own website and they picked the weirdest photos of themselves,
Speaker 2: like but you like you like you look like the
Speaker 2: guy who we'd be making a film. Who are the
Speaker 2: soldiers who were behind you on the boat?
Speaker 3: Top of the fold on your webs you get up
Speaker 3: to We were tipped off that there's going to be
Speaker 3: an attack by reak Mshar who was the vice president
Speaker 3: hiding in the bush and we had to get up
Speaker 3: the river to get to this battle. And they you know,
Speaker 3: they hand soldiers with you because people will rob you
Speaker 3: or whatever. But it's really just an employment scheme, right,
Speaker 3: So I say, yeah, come on, let's all get some
Speaker 3: if you watch savingselves to them, you know, the whole
Speaker 3: I could explain the whole story there. But the funny
Speaker 3: thing is is that I rarely take pictures of myself,
Speaker 3: you know, so that that was taken by Tim Preshett,
Speaker 3: who was the photographer had with me. But some of
Speaker 3: them are rather incongruous because why is this guy in
Speaker 3: the boat and you know, who are these people, and
Speaker 3: you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I have a
Speaker 3: collection of a few crazy photos.
Speaker 2: But that's not crazy that semiotically as we would say,
Speaker 2: that's a great photo. It tells a story. I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know what the story is about. What's going
Speaker 2: on behind you?
Speaker 3: What's that that somebody's going to get into trouble?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what it looks like. But the funny thing,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's perfect. You know, you've got your your
Speaker 2: eye line as a tron to the center, which actually
Speaker 2: draws you right to your mustache. And then you go,
Speaker 2: you go, and you look at the faces of the
Speaker 2: guys behind you, and they're perfect, like they were posing
Speaker 2: for this, and you look pensive and you look like
Speaker 2: a guy who's who's on a mission. And that's kind
Speaker 2: of the whole story. Then I think of your of
Speaker 2: your website.
Speaker 3: Well, that that's the cruel at fiction of resting bitch face.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You know that the premise was I was bringing back
Speaker 3: a child's soldier to fix South Sudan. And what he
Speaker 3: didn't tell me is that reactor sure of the warlord
Speaker 3: that we were hunting down to the bush and actually
Speaker 3: killed his father. Oh no, And it was a very
Speaker 3: for him. It was a very traumatic experience to see
Speaker 3: all these people chopped up and burned and raped with spears.
Speaker 3: And I was just but he he was just happy
Speaker 3: to get back to managing a costco.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Robert, how how have you survived? Why are you
Speaker 2: still here?
Speaker 3: So I'm either like mister magoo you know you ever
Speaker 3: watched the old mister McGoo, right, or people in my
Speaker 3: theory is that people want to get me to where
Speaker 3: I'm going, and they want to get me back alive
Speaker 3: so I can tell the story. And I have been
Speaker 3: in some horrendous situations, you know. I've been kidnapped and
Speaker 3: marched at gunpoint to the Jungles of Columbia. I've been
Speaker 3: you know, shape Michelle's and whatever plane crashes. I truly
Speaker 3: believe that if you develop a relationship with people, they'll
Speaker 3: do their best to get you somewhere. They'll say don't
Speaker 3: go there, or go there. You know. For example, I
Speaker 3: was hounding a mola who's a friend of Molla Omar's
Speaker 3: and a friend of and we're in the coast the
Speaker 3: border area of Afghanistan, and I kept bugging him that
Speaker 3: I wanted to interview this guy who had shelled his
Speaker 3: convoy and tried to kill him. And he said, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll set it up. So he set it up, and
Speaker 3: then at the last minute he calls me, I can't
Speaker 3: do it. I can't do it. So he paid me
Speaker 3: money so we can kidnap you because his son was
Speaker 3: arrested the day before and he wants to trade yous.
Speaker 3: I can't do it. So just stuff like that, you know. Yeah, again,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know why I'm alive, but I
Speaker 3: never imagined I would live past, you know, thirty five
Speaker 3: or forty. But here right am.
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