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tv   The Bottom Line  Al Jazeera  July 28, 2024 11:30am-12:01pm AST

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we could see some blood bass leaving venezuelans at home and abroad an age allison to be at the address. either. thousands of people have taken to the streets and propose capital for testing against president dana boulevard fit and to administer ration the demonstrations that taking place in june. for those $200.00 and 3rd independence out of us, we blew out this government is dealing with a weak economy, rise in poverty and accusations of corruption money on a sanchez reports from lima in the capital, demanding the resignation of precedents. the one thing and the thing was they are fed up with this many have come from places like i'm the why not, you know, on the occlusal where most of the 49 people that were killed during the protest between 20222023 they have come all the way from the highlands to demand justice
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for the families of those who are gone down. i'm here to demand justice and to month a dana palo alto, he resigns. my father was killed. they took away my rights. i have a parent. i am sad, protest to say they want to go with a national strike. it's rare to see so many people demonstrating because the sweets have been quiet for many months. people say they're afraid of police repression. was that you said to announce a serious of projects where millions of dollars will be spent in infrastructure not the 6 of these people. one of them now and they want to know authorities in the philippines and waiting for the weather to improve before
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attempting to drain one and a half 1000000 leases of fuel oil from the ship. sunk by type boon gave me chemicals and booms of being used to clean up all of that's leaking into manila bay to and finally, this bullets in the united states, japan themselves, korea have signed 8 fine natural agreement and homeland security ties between the countries. the agreement as a head start 1st, it comes submitted escalation tension in the south china sea. japan is said to be scaling back on his policy of pacifists, as in the face of china, roland military mines in the region that sits in the elizabeth put on him for this half hour of news. but stay with us on al, just near the bottom line. is coming up next a meeting of mine's discussing the defining issues of our time in one year we
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source that change. it became clear at that point, but we really were in that kind of a new era of nobel peace. slower. if maria rest uh and professor michael wooldridge and explore the pedals and possibilities of artificial intelligence, it changes the way we think. and then the way we all can protect ourselves. studio b, b, a. i series on a jersey the house coverage of africa is what i'm most proud of. every time i travel, whether it's east or west africa, people stop me and tell me how much they appreciate coverage. and our focus is not just on their suffering, but also on a more realistic and inspiring story. people trust to tell them what's happening in their communities in a t a and i'm biased and as an applicant, i couldn't be more proud to be part of the a hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question with americans more divided than ever and facing an election where they
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choose between the least bad option. are we watching the end of the american era? let's get to the bottom line. the after he was elected 4 years ago, us president joe biden flew around the world, declaring america is back. but is it in this election year? americans are debating the gap between the haves and have nots. they're debating, immigration book, benz guns, abortion freedom of speech, gaza ukraine. you name it, and it's becoming less of an open minded debate and more of a u. f. c. cage fight where each side considers the other side. the enemy couple all that with the far right populism that's on the march on both sides of the atlantic ocean and it makes the world wonder where america is going. today we're taking a deeper look at america with one of the continents leading thinkers. we davis professor of anthropology at the university of british columbia and canada,
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an author of dozens of books, most recently beneath the surface of things, weight. thank you so much for joining us. um, i would say i, i really enjoyed um are very, very depressing. discussion years ago. it was during the error of cobit and you wrote a powerful rolling stone article called the unraveling of america. i love to kind of take quick stock with you on whether you think america is still unraveling or whether we put an equilibrium or what you think the big equities of this moment are . you know, i hear it's a really excellent question, steve, you know, that essay that i wrote, as you said, the very low point of the lock down. i was about an indictment of america. if anything was an intervention, you know, when people that you love the need to be encouraged to see themselves in the mirror to see how far they fall. and if you will, that to the active love, you know, mean corey booker themes and said, you know, as if america hasn't broken your heart,
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you don't love her enough. and i think that i say, got some things right. and some things wrong written in the heat. of the moment, i mean, for example, who could have guessed that science would come up with a new class of vaccines in a matter of months when previously the fastest vaccine in 4 years as if almost to a firm. they kind of those a spirit of american exceptionalism, that the se, fundamentally calls into question. but, but that is a really trying to do is just remind americans of, in a sense what it become, of their country, you know, from the, the nation that literally let our way back to civilization from the dark as possible. era of world war 2 with amazing, extraordinary, almost unbelievable industrial might, and diversity to a country that, you know, suddenly, headphones to the point where, where, you know, it is caught it rank low in terms of press freedom. it had
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enormous economic in equity that there was a kind of a fundamental challenge to the very idea of american it. and at the time of the pen demik it was, it was um, it was performing very, very badly and with the prospect of a trump presidency on the horizon. things did not look very good now. in an incredible way. we stumbled forward, but we find ourselves nevertheless, on the edge of yet another kind of of this, if you will, i don't mean to be pessimistic, but, you know, it's interesting. think back, steve bianco, to the 1990 is when, you know, the berlin wall fell in the soviet block, finally shattered. and we seemed to be on the, the edge of a new kind of a era of, of peace and tranquility and stability. and it's hard to imagine how the events in
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the week of 911 and stumbled one upon the other to find us where we are today with, you know, a talk or see on the rise. and i kind of unholy alliance of, of, uh, uh, to, to north korea. and she really threatening the very idea of, of democracy and the same time within the united states. this is kind of crazy election between 2 men who really auto of stepped off the stage a long time ago and it, it doesn't really bode well. and one of the pieces that i, one of the comments i made in this site was that, you know, empires are born to fall and they never anticipate their own demise. uh, you know, the 15th century belonging to the portuguese, the 16th, the spanish, the 17th, to the dash, the 18th to the french to 19th to the british and the british empire reached its greatest extent, geographically. as late as 1935. yet, of course,
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we know that was even before the great war, but certainly in the wake of world war one was bled white and bankrupt. so clearly the 20th century belonged to america. and the question is, whose gonna rule in the next, who's going to rank, we're in the next century and, and the signs of decay or decadence, can be found all over the of american social and political landscape. and this, this is the discouraging thing. when you talk about these 2 older guys, donald trump, and joseph biden, you know, when, when most of the united states has to be clear, did not want the race of either of these 2 people again. but you've none, the less have them have. we become a kind of a we become soviet task in this moment. well, certainly in terms of the geometry jerry, patrick, nature of our leaders. i mean, um, uh, you know, what is life but
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a story we lose the power of comprehending is we get old and one of the acts of grace in getting old. and i hate to say, but i guess i am speaking from experience at this point. just turn 70 know is a get off the stage, right. you know, and let the new generation of work things out. you know, i, i, i find that really unfortunate that in the great country like the united states, it says something i think about the calcified nature of the, of both political parties and the illogical extreme is that both parties embrace, you know, we, we talk often about the uh, originally the ology of the american right. but of course, the american left is, is equally adherent to extreme views that i don't think most americans hold. and so, you know,
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there is no place in the middle. is there something paper that needs to happen to basically get americans to trust this system? right now? it's a 0 sum game and they talk about each other in the most awful terms. this is not a side where one will respect the rights of the other. if the other wins in, in my sense, no, i, i think you're absolutely right. and i think this is what is ultimately most corrosive the but the moment that we're in the, you know, my, my father in law was a homeless us presidency. was a senator from illinois for many, many years, a highly respected uh republican who worked across the iowa all the time. senator charles percy and if he was able to be alive today and see the state of the us congress, i just don't think you'd be able to believe his, his eyes. and it certainly would break his heart. and, you know, city ology is a very dangerous thing. what it is always you be it from the right,
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the last through the religious extremes. after all, what is 80 ology? idiology is words it gets bantered around a bunch, but it basically means that you buy into a set of ideas. you know, you, you, you become almost religiously, politically attached to a body of thinking and, and that body of thinking becomes kind of calcified in your head. and, and anyone who does not agree with you, not only becomes your antagonists, but they also by their very existence, written your identity because they challenge the fundamental set of ideas. be those political or religious by which you find comfort or you find a consistency you find solidity in your life. and once you identify those who are in opposition to your set of ideas, you're going to do something about them. and so 1st of all,
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you demonize and then 1st that and secondly, you go after the sources of their ideas, it may be different from yours. and if they're found in books, you burn the books as we discover to the 19th thirties. once you begin to burn books, it's a short step to burn in people. and so what we're really seen in the united states is a clash of violent, extreme etiologies that are, are kind of being masked as if they're not as extreme as. and they, in fact are and, and it's because of that, that the polarization runs so deep in defiance of all that is in the american spirit and tradition. i mean, i remember steve as a young lad going to united states for uh, for college, you know, and our family was so simple. my parents couldn't fly down to boston with me. and so i flew down and i got to in logan airport. and i didn't even know where a harvard was and i asked around and no one seemed to know either. and i finally
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dragged my trunk through the subway system. got up in harvard square and realized my money made a mistake and shipped me down to the states $10.00 days early. the dorms were in open. i had to drag my truck the age of 16 to the streets of cambridge until i found a church. i knocked in door, an american pastor took me in and put me up for 10 days. i mean, that's america, that's the america. i know, you know. and um, i think it's then america's been betrayed by the vitriol and the hatred of india. logs of both left and right. i just mean interested in whether we have a fundamental problem where democracy's failure to deliver for a substantial portion of a public's is now the rock that is part of this political economy globally that we have to deal with. well, it certainly in, in terms of the united states, you know, the generation of my, my father in law, you know, they had the common experience of, of fighting
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a global war together. and they came out, is that a kind of a united force? i'm was not just politically and economically, but even almost spiritually. and in the wake of that war, of course, was much the world in the ashes of the american economy was virtually dominated the entire globe. i mean, half the world's economy was based united states, even though the states have had less than 5 percent of the global population. and that wealth within the united states allowed for a kind of um, a contract between labor and capital. they gave us the middle class, it gave us a weekend and gave us a, a society where a working man could support a family by a car, by a house and his kids to good public schools. and, and, and, and the gap between those who have, and those who have not was nothing like it is today. i mean the, the, the,
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when my father in law for example, was a seat your dell and how his salary would have been perhaps 20 times. that of one of one of his subordinates in white color, the offices of bell on our lot today. the gap between a ceo and such an individual would be more like $400.00 times. you know, the 3 rich just americans control more well in the 160000000 forest americans. and so what you've seen is that social contract that came out of the era and there that gave us confidence in our institutions and the contracts been broken. and at the same time, we've had generations of politicians, particularly the republican party united states and running against washington. i mean, i always found it serious at 1st nixon and then basically ronald reagan chose to kind of demonize washington because i lived in washington for 20 years. and i
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would walk through those memorial gardens and those great monuments with the words of lincoln and jefferson inscribed in limestone. and i would feel a chill at the promise of the american dream. you know, a dream of democracy that was invented made up by individuals. you know, the famous words of, of jefferson. i swear upon the altar of all mighty god decided against all forms of tyranny over the minds of man. and that kind of dream is america was my mind. dream is america. so i could never get how these politicians could get away with demonizing washington and incense for their own political gain. it seemed to me almost kind of like an act of treason if you will. and you know, we've been doing that for year, year in year out. and so, so the government in general has its reputation and, and our faith and the, the ability of government to, to improve our lives. remember ronald reagan's famous crypt you know,
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the most dangerous worlds words in english language. are the government's coming to help you? well that's not really. that's not really true. i mean, the governments have done a lot good. um, so what's going on, at least in the states, it seems that the fundamental institutions are being called into question minutes, that you can only call the u. s. congress at this point a laughingstock. i mean, you can go up and down the republican leadership and the fire people are in the leadership. and the less legislation they've ever proposed or managed to get past. i mean it's, it's become a soapbox for, for, for, for personal aggrandizement as opposed to a place where you went to do the hard work of government in and get laws passed to help the american people. how can a divided deeply toxic american political system continue to support and
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america to engage in that? well, i mean, it doesn't that sort of basic things you spell out there is no matter who wins america is going to receive. well i, i think you're right and, and i think what's really going on here, let's, let's remember on the eve of world war 2, america was a demilitarized society of bulgaria. and portugal had bigger armies in the united states and 1940 in the wake of the war. we never stood down. and to this day we have troops in a 150 countries. um and, and we, we've, we've, we've become the policeman of the world. you know, in the since 1975 america has never been at piece, china has never been a war every year. china was pouring more. smith and america didn't the 20th century as they built their infrastructure well, whereas we squandered resources on wars that not only proved to be enormously
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murderous and bloody for the people who suffered but also incredibly de debilitating. for the, the american people, the american government. and we had had a president in the wake of 911 who had stood on those ruins and said, look, we're going to find these people. we're going to avenge the losses. we're going to come for our dead. but we're not gonna let these people pro solve our game. then history would have been very, very different. but the, the, the, in the same way that the israelis in a sense had no choice but to take a mouse as bait in the terrible tragedy in garza, similar to the latin must have calculated or at least anticipated that america would do just what it did. and in doing so, it, it, it, it betrayed so much the lies about iraq, the invasion of afghanistan against all the evidence of history that it would be
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a debacle. and as a result of those who were asked to bear the brunt of those pointless wars, wars which were revealed to be pointless even faster than vietnam was revealed in a sense to be pointless in, in comparison, i mean, vietnam at least we can look back and understand that within the context of the cold war, where there really was a, a global, a conflict that could have exploded into a nuclear war, but iraq and afghanistan. and um, i think i can imagined as anyone who would agree with the possible exception of dick cheney or something like that. these were useful and helpful either to united states of america, its allies or to the poor victims of the conflict in iraq and afghanistan. so, so, you know, you can see how those who are sent to fight those wars who's come back to the consequences of that and gauge meant for working people all over america. so you
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can see why they've turned their back both on washington, but also on a new adventure such as ukraine, right? you know, what, i'm, what are the things we do forget about ukraine and this is not true in any way. i'm a condone. what put is done, but remember that the, the deal that was struck with the garbage of, um, uh, by the, by bush was that nature would not expand east in exchange for the, the, essentially the, this, the surrender if you will, of the soviet block in the way in the, in the cold work and, you know, it would have been one thing of the economic union as because as a financial force of trade force, had moved east into the baltic states and, and the carcasses and so on. but nato was a military organization, you know,
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assembled specifically to combat the soviet union, which effectively meant batting, where it is now russia. and so the prospect of the, the ukraine, which was already a sore point for the russians because in their own kind of imperial visions that continue, well through the soviet era, the ukraine was always seemed to be a part of russia. right? whether should have been or not. and so we can forget that the, the, the movement of nato east was in violation of that agreement and, and clearly a finger in the eye of the, of the kremlin. it's been your new book weighed beneath the surface of things you spend time in jerusalem and you dedicate a chapter to talking about jerusalem and palestine and, and the situation. but as you think about, you know, beneath the surface of things and, and the equities that you saw it play in jerusalem and, and,
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and with palestine in that very complicated part of the world. i'd love to love to hear your thoughts. well that is a which i, i called the promise land and that was written well before october 7th and, you know, i was going to jerusalem for the, with a group of, of, of, of americans. and i, i knew that the whole topic of obviously the, the conflict would be on everybody's mind all the time. so i wrote that really as a kind of way to try to make sense of it myself. that as a just simply attempts to, to tell what we know is a historic proof, which is that the, the, the diaspora, these rarely of, of the jewish people into is real, you know, beginning before the great war, but certainly reaching a peak in the 19 thirty's and of 19 forties absolutely displaced the power steering people to, to the point where in, in this kind of cruel irony of history,
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the palestinians have become what design is once we're a broken people, a without a homeland. um, you know, with deep memories and recent memories of the displacement and perfectly willing to wait as the jewish people did 1900 years for justice to be done. and so in a way what the say tries to do is just expose some of the, the miss that be as absorbed in, in, um, american particular the kind of the, the, you know, the, the kind of the exit exit is infused idea that the, the people who settled the jewish people settled, did so in a sort of an empty homeland or homeland had been laid waste by negligence by the, you know, previous inhabitants simply not the case of course. um, but again,
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you know, it anticipated the, the, the fact that this conflict, this is, is not going to end on. and there's a lovely quote or moving quote from an airbus a scholar who says that, you know, we're always as to why we continue to be so belligerent and is real exist and, and these early people have nowhere else to go. and he said that may be true, but to just roll over is to say that it was ok for people to come in and, and displace our parents from our land and the, to raise any issues or even to point out that that is the historic fact that nobody can deny is somehow to be labeled either belligerent for even as a terrorist you know. and so the, the, the, the say late in a way, late the basis for what we see is going on in the terrible situation and gaza
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will have to leave it there. i really appreciate your time, social anthropologist, wade davis. thank you so much for being with us today. it's always pleasure to be be with the state banks. so what's the bottom line? during the cold war, the intense competition between the soviet block and the american block kind of ironically, kept the u. s. on it shows sure it came out on top. but today, just 30 years later, america is struggling to stay there. the post cold war era is definitely over. if we were to name the error that we're entering now, i'd call it the great mess america receding. china, sort of raising lots of power voids lots of conflicts between nations and within nations. my guest is right, the world is rearranging itself as we speak. that's how to look at america as it braces for the people's decision here in november. and that's the bottom line, the
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a noel for us, for palestinians in garza. busy it is say, the polio virus has been detected and stores and contaminated water is really a talk of caused extensive damage to ga, the source systems, definitely nation appliance and water supply networks. even before october, the 7th palestinian did not have enough to clean water line grenade agencies and the you and for daily deliveries. we are begging for help. we have begging to be saved from the suicide. people are locked in, their homes can't go out. as well, has as part of vaccinating exposure as in dog to protect them against the virus which can cause deformities and paralysis. many palestinians here say they are exhausted, tired of moving from one temporary shoulder to another, being hungry and waiting in fear for the next attack. and now they also worried
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about the threat of disease in a $150.00 is a chip sion history seen through an extraordinary photographic archive, stepped into the opulent 12 of egypt through a family with photographs, recruit every moment as king photo slavish quenching in 1938, but behind the eclipse, perhaps he also tested moments, the trip egypt scroll poets, egypt through the lens, all marriages on $20.00 once the capital of the combat empire, the serene, ancient city of encore and present they cambodia, is it protected your next school world heritage sites, but as its temples, the lakes and irrigation canals are being preserved, many of its inhabitants are being relocated. people in power investigates the alleged forest evictions of thousands of families,
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the bottom for the soul of anchored box pots and one on the jersey. the the, the us strengthens ministry coordination with japan as to, to condemn russian military cooperation with china. the federal on elizabeth put on them and this is ellen to 0, life from dog hawkins. so coming off is around strikes hezbollah targets, and 11 on august, a rocket attack on the occupied golden heights kills at least 12 people. the.

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