operations for paris 2024 has been one of the largest ever for hill and big games. after the assassination of a mass leader is male, how many of the challenge of securing the events may increase even further? natasha butler reports from paris olympics organized as hope that escalating tensions in the middle east of to have masters political leader is male and year was killed in iran, wants impact the games in paris. where athletes from the regional competing. what are you going to be doing in terms of the security? can we expect you to be stuffing it up a tool and rest assured that there's very good security, very strong security there in touch with this all the time, assuring this all the time. but i can't actually go into the details of, of what that is. so do you this week? french police open to the investigation into death threats, received online by somebody's radio fleets. from system terry administer says the team has been going to data round the clock. i decided that fund ruble, delegations, in particular, these really delegation would be protected 24 hours

a day by the french police, as well as by specialized agents, a pulse dissipation of israeli athletes. and the game has and good some the age of the palestinian and then pick committee jeep real. where tube is calling for the team to be burned. i think it's like this should not be in fads 85 percent of the lower than for the 5000 people care of kids, women and innocent people. what's more to convince 0 today is that it today slain is age palestinian athlete. so in the competition among the book, so what's the map of solve for sure, depicting children being born and creating ceremony. the r o c has strict rules on political statements, but the anti bully message was allowed. how the, the t should represented the image that exists in palestine. today,

children killed and dying under rubble. children whose families of moss and left alone without food or water. the i o. c rule, the russian instead of russian athletes should compete under a neutral flag because must go took ukrainian athletes when it's onyx to create new territory breaking olympic rules. the palestinian olympic committee wants to know why disabled dung to point to israel when it says at least 400 pounds, assuming athletes have been killed in the gaza, with the situation in the middle east ever move forward a tall, it will be increasingly difficult for and then picks organizes to keep politics out of the games. natasha butler. i'll just sarah power and it does it from a little rock. the news continues here on al jazeera after the bottom line, and i'll see you at the top of the hour. the as china ramps up to full patients of north korean, defective human rights group,

say they faced imprisonment, torture, and even death in the home country. in desperation, some involve dangerous journey. 101 east reveals and north korea's claim to factors on al jazeera, a. hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question with americans more divided than ever and facing an election where they 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, wayne davis, professor of anthropology at the university of british columbia, and canada, 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 in an equilibrium or what you think the big equities of this moment are. you know, i, 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 was about an indictment of america. if anything

was an intervention, you know, when people that you love, you need to be encouraged to see themselves in the mirror to see how far they fall and if you will, and to the active love, you know, mean corey booker themes and said, you know, if america hasn't broken your heart, you don't love her enough. and i think that i say, god, something's right, and something's 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 say, 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 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 pandemic, 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 never less 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, 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 and the week of 911, i 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 ought to of stepped off the stage a long time ago and it, it, it doesn't really bode well. and one of the pieces that i have one of the comments

i made and that i say it was that you know, and tires are born to fall and they never anticipate their own demise. 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, we know that was even before the great war, but certainly in the wake of world war one, it was blood white and bankrupt. so clearly the 20th century belonged to america. and the question is, whose gonna rule in the next, who's gonna rank? we're in the next century and, and the signs of decay or decadence, can be found all over the, under the 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 sylvia 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 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, um 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 city of logical extreme. the said 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 the extremes. use it. i don't think most americans hold and so, you know, there is no place in the middle. is there something paper that needs to happen to basically get americans to trust the 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 aisle 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 always you bid from the right the last through the religious extremes. after all, what is it? the ology idiology, it's 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 a 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 and tagging is, 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, you find 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, you demonize and then 1st that and secondly, you go after the sources of their ideas that 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 idiology is that are, are kind of being masked as if they're not as extreme as they in fact are. and, and it's because of 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 dragged my trunk through the subway system, got up in harvard square and realized my money had made a mistake and shoot me down to the states 10 days early. the dorms were in open. i had to drag my trunk 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, uh i, i think it's that america's being 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 democracies failure to deliver for

a substantial portion of, of a public's is now the rock that is part of this political economy globally that we have to deal with. well, it is certainly in, in terms of the united states, you know, that the generation of my, my father in law, you know, they have the common experience of, of fighting a global war together. and they came out, is that a kind of a united force almost not just politically and economically, but even almost spiritually. and in the wake of that war, of course, was much the world in ashes of the american economy was virtually dominated the entire globe. i mean, half the world 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 a contract between labor and capital. they gave us the middle class who gave us the

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, there's nothing like it is today. i mean, the, the, the, when my father in law, for example, was a ceo, 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 and howell 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 wealth 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 conflicts been broken. and at the same time, we've had generations of politicians,

particularly in 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 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. no 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 as america was mine, dream is america. so i could never get how these politicians could get away with demonizing washington and incense,

but for their own political gain. it seemed to me almost kind of like an act of treason if you will. and yeah, 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 in the, the ability of government to, to improve our lives. remember ronald reagan's famous crypt, you know, the most dangerous worlds words and the 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 us congress at this point. a laughing stock. i mean, you can go up and down the republican leadership and the higher 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 continued to support in america to engage in that? well, i mean, it doesn't that sort of basic things you spell out there, 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 murderous and bloody for the people who suffered. but also incredibly the 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 lot and must have

calculated or at least participated in america. but do just what it did, and in doing so it, it, it, it betrayed so much the lies about is iraq, the invasion of afghanistan, against all the evidence of history that it would be 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,

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 and who's come back to the consequences of that and gauge meant for working people all over america. so you 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 if the economic union, as cuz as a financial force, a trade force had moved east into the baltic states and the carcasses and so on. but nato was a military organization, you know, 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, 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, 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 has been laid waste by negligence, by the, you know, previous inhabitants simply not the case of course. um, but again, you know, it anticipated the, the, the fact that this conflict disc 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 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 you, steve. thanks. 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, receiving china sort of rising 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 we are a few kilometers from the border with as well. and one of the latest markets in the middle east. this corner in southern lebanon hasn't been directly targeted, but the sound of is really war planes as well as rocket launches by hezbollah, has become part of the, the nice, the instability is affecting livelihoods. my home has been destroyed, i live to my village, we lost every 2 weeks ago we, we have shopping and the exchange of bias started. people ran away. there's little

optimism in a conflict that's linked to an end to as well as more on cost or possibly not even that. and this is the 1st one they saw that we see the real time. it's the victims themselves long before there's a disconnect between what we are witnessing on social media versus what we're seeing on mainstream media. it is always an attempt to frame a to side of them, but there is no 2 sides to this. the western media does have a western bias who understand what they are looking to see out and raise. the listening post covers how the news is covered. this business uptake this voltage by the city bank growth partner of on the dash before he is the

this business uptake. this makes it by the citrus bank rose partner of bundle dash football. he is, maybe his son goes head to head with his roommate, historians, that he morris. the jews were on the 5th of annihilation by the arabs. and that's my view legitimize justified cleansing arabs from palestine. the who to said exactly the same thing about maybe for the 1990 israel is committed. numerous will crimes. since that i'm also friends on the type of stuff. i'm fairly sure that'd be

fine. the toward itself is not a well fine head to head on tuesday around of the the you're watching that is our life from headquarters in delphi and teddy. you navigate, here's what's coming up in the next 60 minutes. be is really army says have killed another him. us leader, but the group has yet to confirm the death of its military wing commander or on a supreme leader holds funeral affairs for her masters political chief who was assassinated in.