Welcome to the alex aventura we examine the geopolitical consequences of the global planting for most people the spread of corn a virus has been a matter of avoiding the contagion and keeping your job however anthropologists we davis cause new sensation this month by painting a political article in Rolling Stone which has gone viral he forecast that there was also a covert 1000. 00 could be to foreshadow and he poked making moments the end of the make a new one when i say that america is is is its the end of an american era look i mean i dont wish that will be the styles are because i say this to the American Century and the best parts of that but remember that all employers or board. All thats coming up in the program but 1st alex if you take messes. And were going to spend a bit longer on your messages this week because last weeks show featuring professor of human government of the intensive care and dr chris murphy the cambridge but all are just a provoked extraordinary large the spawns and the quality of the contributions was excellent many if you phoned the show both the star being very very informative janet for example says the 2 experts are like interviewed frontline scientists working with the virus at the moment good to door theres a lot of sharing of information going on around the world and cecile says definitely one of the best discourses on the call but 1000 pandemic there are many variables and we will succeed together or fail together we are our brothers keeper roger says very informative the virus attacks everything not only the lungs theres no place for complacency and a hugely interesting tweet from neil cam im having hud divide the samee people and still have the lasting effects from it i find information really interesting but also wanting considering they dont know what the long term holds for those who have had the disease especially when it was said that the body is attacking its own healthy cells the big problem is very few have had called it ive had the opportunity to see a doctor regarding the ongoing symptoms and richard and kate see we are writing see how much we enjoyed and appreciated your item and called it you let them speak and did not interrupt them looks right to score political points and sky eckel says little bit scary that pass left affair to know what were dealing with under norful said shouldve that alexai show for the 1st time more welcome aboard incredibly informative and helpful as mina a superb and glamorous horse missing from the house of commons a good one says one of the best most informative discussions of colbert i have seen huge lead. To top. If you must for the read on highly recommended margaret says a must watch thanks for this hope it deals with some of the complacency that seems to be spreading. An opposite point of view to many of for contributors so thats why the skills the vast majority of people i thought the vast majority survive it very well and the kilo which will pale covert 19 into the ranks of generally non fatal diseases will be world wide unemployment and destitution killing millions upon millions and millions more than 1000. 00 ever will we have on the voices of sanity money yes or do they not this disgraceful and very disturbing. And finally merely on the subway and subway is a hopeful note she says having lost true friends to cool that i dont really want to experience what will seem to get back on its feet after 3 years. Im sure we can overcome this. So back to. Last week the 2020 Democratic National convention. And virtually. Among the notable speakers rallying to the cause were former president s clinton and obama and former 1st Lady Michelle obama the democrats were also able to field george w. Bush to secretary of state colin powell the starspangled cast as a sample virtually to claim former Vice President joe biden and finished. California as the partys nominee for president and Vice President. This week in contrast republicans have also met but actually but with a difference some Convention Proceedings albeit be just in scale were still held in the original creek bed Charlotte North Carolina but events and festivities including todays keynote speech from the president himself i featured 2 monthly from biggest cases of the 5 top featured speakers for the surname. The democrats had ahead but the poll shows signs of tightening both sides agree that its all to play for in the election but if there is that and i commend that whether its a biden 1st order to 2nd tab and medical status is a dominant while power are drawing to a close and today show alex interviews the world leading anthropologist. He believes that the top presidency and inability to handle covert 19 up at symptoms of the fall of the american face. And theyre delighted to be joined from his home in vancouver by Wade Davis Wade welcome to the alex. Thanks alex for having me so professor of anthropology in British Columbia they went off multi awards for a exploration for photography author of many books but few have caused as much star as remarkable and very political off to kl and the Rolling Stone getting the end of america plus a pretty dramatic statement with well its not really unless you get that list is political than a love letter to a country that i really adore i was born a canadian but i married an american i became an american my kids were raised in the states i found my career in the states and the same thing is this this article was really just trying to look at code through the cultural lens really a cultural story not a medical story the question that looms and theres at least mine is why did new zealand do so well why is kind of that done so well and what went wrong so that our border and so its not really a political story per se but it does. Suggests that the countries that did well are those that have a Strong Social contract that have National Health Care Hospitals that cater to the collective not the individual and certainly not the private investor who gives every hospital bed as a rental property and it kind of reflected on the fact that epidemics often become fulcrums of history you know the black death that transformed a Medieval Europe and basically broke the back in the medieval age some epidemics have less impact the spanish flu killed millions of people but in a world that was so used to death because of the great war that almost went on past my own grandfather alex walked out in calgary one morning in 1900 on his way to work and he was dead by the afternoon but they spent his suit didnt shake us in that way i think because were used to death yet this cold it is different and its coming at a point where people are asking whats become of america of the few would argue that America President trump and protect us handled the crisis well but i mean other countries have also struggled the impeccable social democratic credentials a sweden for example of a high of death rate have 1000000 than america the United Kingdom has a high of deferent 1000000000 so yes of a countries which have done spectacularly better but also social democratic countries which have been washed wells are going to normally d if you think about it i mean the swede made a very specific choice didnt it to basically ignore the virus and hope that it would basically be absorbed by the populace and turned out to be the 9 that turned out not be the case and the case of britain youd like america or were led by an individual who was a populist who basically did not for alarm and critical period the brilliance of this disease look canadas no Perfect Place when rates of death and morbidity in the states were soaring we in British Columbia in all of our hospitals had 5 cases of code. So what was the difference thats part of what this article tries to ask i think the most generous thing you say about the donald is that he is the product off the saved as opposed to the cause effect sort of something about people going on in the listen american president s when i say that america is is is its the end of an american era look i mean i dont wish that well be in a stylistic as i say for the American Century and the best parts of that but remember that all empires are born to die as a journalist at the irish times said so putting it lightly you know people have had many feelings about america over the years but theyve never ever ever felt that the United States and as Health Workers desperately awaited relief flights of basic supplies from china i argue that the hinge of history moved to the asian century and you cite an exchange between the and the medical official in the a chinese official of the Foreign Ministry when he had a sub to protest stations about the situation in hong kong with wads let me brief isness of a bit of moral authority a problem yours is so clever you mention that alex because i mean i mean that the tragedy of that of course is that as america suddenly started to act like a template dictator i mean imagine you have the you know this is a country thats you know you know it was a pioneer in all great medical breakthroughs defeating polio defeating smallpox leading the world in middle medical technology certainly in the 20th century and suddenly you have a bill soon of the president at a point of incredibly desperate. National need where theres an american die and every minute of every day. Standing at the podium and recommending the use of household cleansing distance ect and as a treatment of a disease that he didnt have the intellectual capacity even to understand and so the real tinpot dictators. The world suddenly had a chance to take the high road and that the culmination of that is when when america tried to make comments about both the mishandling of the epidemic in china at the initial break but also its crushing of democracy in hong kong when we the American Foreign secretary secular state was trying to sort d of make a comment about that the Chinese Ministry simply had to take a breath and say you know i cant breathe invoking the treatment of the unfortunate and slowly he died and now to see you know so i think i think theres these signs of an america that is so deeply polarized and and one of the one of the extraordinary consequences of the trump air and weather with it i dont think theres anyone clever enough in that white has to have actually done this deliberately but the way that truth has become malleable the way that truth has become relativistic the way that truth is what you say it to be to the extent were literally. His core followers will deny reality that serves his interest and thats a kind of stunning inversion if you really want to know one sure side of what i would to sign as a terminal decadence the United States its that moment when a nation doesnt recognize the truth it means it has no collective sense of itself no benign sense of its own internal wellbeing and when i speak of the countries that got on top of this they are the social democracies and has always said you know social democracy will never work d in america its you know its socialism or communism lite well you know social democracy may never work in america but its true its a stunning indictment and its a perfect in the case of what oscar wilde have in mind when he said the United States was the only time tree to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilize. Patient i finally on this section. Hopeful said not all been caught in the medical be led by to the shining city on the hill of his joe biden the passion to lead them that you know im the 1st to say my life was made in the United States a kind of a collective entrepreneurial d risk taking creer that i slowed to become an independent scholar could never have happened my home country and kind of than a 1000 years so you know i revere that wildness the madness the United States and so with any kind of hope you know it will steer its way back because we need that this isnt what the america that we all love represents but as long as a country has been torn asunder by those d who are deliberately doing that for their own personal needs you know not and i saw them in law was on was present United States he turned down the vice presidency when nixon offered it to him because he and he later served on the committee that brought nixon down my brother in law was a democratic senator for 18 years i mean i i i i love the United States. I love what it can represent you know. But right now im not sure that the the depths of polarization will ever pull it back together and unless someone can come along and i much as i think biden is a nice man hes not the figure of history hes hes going to be at best a caretaker and the reason to vote democrat in november is not because of the values of the Democratic Party im a complete independent the absolute crisis of american democracy is not simply defeating trump but the cd resoundingly what he represents and if the election is close or heaven forbid he is reelected then i think the road into the future looks very grim indeed so the United States. Join me after the break when ill be talking with wade davis about the range of his work and in particular his love affair with the south American Country of colombia. Little. Welcome back alex is in conversation of the canadian anthropologist we do based baby boy to discuss his latest book magdalena the great river all this favorite country colombia. Michael in us a remarkable new book i mean i cant imagine those any columbia this isnt the best pleased to you for your for control of this must the piece that why did you fall in love of this country you know when i was a little boy my mother who was a very. Humble but determined canadian woman told me in 1968. That spanish was the langs of the future and she worked all year in as a secretary in a local Public School earn enough money to allow me to join a group of schoolboys at a british professor was going to take to ground bia and at the time when most canadians had never been in a commercial airplane the south american destination was terribly exotic and i was the youngest of the group of 14 and many of the older lads at 16 suffered from what the colombians call money which is homesickness and i by contrast sound that i felt like id finally found a home that was just something about the energy of the people the the warmth the understanding of its realities human spirit and then i just was incensed at the entire time and then i went back with a one way ticket when i was 20 years old and became an acolyte of the great the technical explorer Richard Soltys and and spent 2 years in colombia as a book as a botanist an answer poetess living amongst Indigenous People and studying the floor of the new york for a police force and magdalena is in a way ector about whos a great colombian writer who wrote a book called oblivion and his father was one of the one of the deaths that he colombia during these horrible years that really shook the nation was the death of tech his father and hector is thingness lee bitter about that and its well known and so he writes in the back cover of magdalena you know only weight could make me love my country again he describes it because of love that its of the country and just before you know we. We met today d 2 days ago i got a call from one man u. S. Santoshi expresident a Nobel Laureate for peace and he had read the book i sent it to him and hes a friend of mine and he said every colombian must read this book and in a way the book holds a mirror in a certain same way the previous segment were speaking about at that rolling d stone piece my attempt was to really hold a mirror to the American Society of show what to become of them in the case of madeleine im trying to show old amir the communists to show all thats good about their their nation you know and one of the reasons the Peace Process drug moves is because of a kind of a laten leader ng testin ism the negativity that is inevitable in a people who d have suffered through d 50 years of war and the reason i picked the river back then is its the mississippi of of corona it is both a quarter of commerce and the sounds in the culture the it is the source of poetry in literature music and and prayer and a big point of the book is to point out to 2 particularly north american audiences that you know yes colombia has suffered from 50 years of war d but that war would not have lasted a day if it was not for the profits of the drug trade i mean the for the fuel of the fire of violence and war that has killed 220000 colombians and left 7000000 homeless and forced 5000000 to flee their country was d always cocaine and so all of us who live in societies who have both the sewage say the black market by making the drug illegal and yet doing nothing to really limit the trade even as we consume the drug in boardrooms and bars across europe and north america all of us owes something to colombia president santos of course majora a colombian citizen do you think. That piece that stablished for which he won the nobel award can not peace hold this as it is at the very shaky and difficult times no will the peace endure come he will never go back to the chaos of previous years its a little bit like ireland why did peace come to ireland the people just said and nuts and generally these wars of civil strife its come to an end when the whole also its a kind of collectively exhausted so in that sense peaceful and your columbia is safe to travel and its extraordinary its become kind of the it is Tourist Destination in the world right now. And yet and yet peace is is per terry is in part because in the wake of the peace agreement. Those opposed to it elected a president do k. Who this by the fact that homicide rates in the 1st year of peace after the agreement in havana and carter hinna in 2016 homicide rates dropped to levels not seen since 1975 and yet still there was attempt to resort to the the agreement that led to disappointment on the part of those who had signed the agreement so all of this is in the balance but and of course it really is just been put under house arrest so theres some instability but i have great confidence as the book makes clear that fundamentally is the world seems to be falling apart clumsy is falling together now im going to vote if a great fuss like in the book prophet i was potentially in plaster of the most of the like the lana as the color of the f. Give us just a sign of what make she love this the public faith in this people so much. Well 1st of all no columbia cumbia is with the most diverse both geographically ecologically britannic living biologically diverse country in the world there is no place in colombia more than a day removed from every known ecosystem on the planet there are more bird species and clumpy than any other nation it is it is a stunningly beautiful landscape and what really drives the wonder of climate is that it is a spirit of people themselves which is something hard to explain you know people talk about a modicum governor Garcia Marquez as the creator of what is often called magical realism in the literature of latin america but people forget that as a journalist he was an observer all his life he just happened to live in a land where heaven and earth converge on a regular basis to reveal glimpses of the divine you know when i was a young man coming of a cyclone in the early seventys living where my hats on the open road i never once was afraid i was in my entire journey was and developed with. A kind of cloak of wonder in the kindness of people i mean another way of thinking about it and you as a Government Official of one point in your career youd understand this i mean think of this you know all of that 3 way civil war there were never more than 200000 troops in a country of 52000000 people the vast majority of clintons were innocent victims of a 3 way war fueled exclusively by cocaine think of it at the height of the 1000000 cartel the amount of money coming in to climb the it was such that the cartel budgeted a 1000. 00 u. S. A week just to buy elastic bands to wrap the money think about that and yet for all the challenges to all those years clumsy and maintain Civil Society and democracy green that cities created. Millions of acres of National Parks so restitution with Indigenous People and critically d has paved the way for an economic response as thousands of kids forced to flee the conflict are returning home from every capital of europe every major city in north america with skill sets in every conceivable endeavor and so if i were to bet economically on the future of a nation in the americas i would put my wagers on colombia. And my final question to you in davis is as the big one and forget for a 2nd if they met a consensus giving way to the chinese century whos up whos known whos right about his humankind as a whole still making progress on his essential aspect of progress which we have grown up with as an assumption is that no and question why i tend to remain completely optimistic a because im a father and b. Because i also believe that pessimism is an indulgence and despair is an insult to the imagination i think orthodoxy is in and invention i think you know what i learned from i saw other outlets which she learned from his father is that theres good and evil in the world and my dad used to say to me dont expect to win but pick your side and get on with it and i like that in a sort of buddhist sense you know that the goal is not a destination the goal isnt to win the goal is the state of mind in the path you know you need one of the reasons i think people burn out in old age or becoming bitter its that they always expect to win something and then they lose and they get in bitter and vajra mental battle or or literal battle and if you realise that its all a purse of lies. It allows you to win some and lose some but keep pushing the wheel of of when my father would say justice and righteousness for and its if you do that you can go to your death knowing that at least you were the architect of your own lives and your you did your bit for all that is good in the spirit of humanity we have davis on for apologists right there from mockable books and off tickles thank you so much for joining me im alex on the show thanks so much for having me douglas. The gaze of wit davy jones far and wide from the rivers of columbia to the minds of new pope however few works in his quitting career have had more impact than his recent polling still an article on the decline and fall of america perhaps both the democrat and Republican Conventions should have started with a 3 minute silence to mourn the passing of dominance of their nation of course the american empire will inevitably fall just as so many others have before and it is to the covered 1000. 00 has demonstrated one of americas key weaknesses the total inability to subordinate individual freedoms for the collective good even when the case for doing so is overwhelming but all is not yet lost for america one of its characteristics over the last 246 years or so was feed resilience it was after all as a davis puts it American Industrial might and russian blood would save the world from darkness in world war 2 although still supreme in technology in commercial power a medical may no longer be totally dominicans however neither is she just and so from alex myself and all that issue is goodbye for life stacy and we hope to see you all again next. Throughout its history with the selfproclaimed Islamic State terrorist group have recruited up to 30000 foreigners from all over the world to fight for the. Sounds of russian citizens left their country to join the terrorists often bringing wives and children with them. And you have no. More new to the. Hundreds of children and widows were held captive all disappeared. Russia those children families wait for search for them. So what weve got to do is identify the threats that we have its crazy confrontation let it be an arms race. Period Dramatic Development that only. Exists i dont see it. Will be successful very. Time to sit down and talk. President putin says hes put a special force on standby to be sent to but if the security situation there breaks down expressed hope that things we settled peacefully. The russian Prosecutor Generals Office says its found no evidence so far of an intentional criminal act against. A prominent opposition figure remains in a coma in a german hospital amid claims he was poisoned. The 1st time of the death of teenager harry u. K. Officials say theyre considering a virtual trial for the wife of a u. S. Diplomatic use the voting him down he spoke to his grieving parents. Are true to me
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