wait until the elections in 2022 and then the people themselves can and that's a government that will make that decision for them and that is your news wrap for this sad end to get there if you have a chance have a look at our web site plenty of stories that you can find it. was a pandemic no certainly no borders and is applying to nationalities. you . know so much we don't observe you we don't have the facts in the whole world peace to be. judged as coming every crisis with the sentencing law. we can do better we should. everyone is contributing each of our own way but we also know that this crisis will

not go on forever the challenges created the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy thing for him to let it be an arms race off and spearing dramatic to follow the only really i'm going to exist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. you know we look at the solutions we look take a deep dive into the issues we've been chatting about all year now today we're going to be talking with a new a little more also known as an l

w the breakdown god cast and following him on twitter for a long time close into his pocket yes you know the great thing about this whole new universe of media states is that people who might not get on media get on media and then they rise to the top and suddenly they're like wow these people are awesome and i would put and i say neal in that 10. welcome to the alex i mean humor we examine the geopolitical consequences of the coupon thing for most people the spread of crew in

a fight is the motto of avoiding the contagion and keeping your job however i think the public this week devious cause new sensation this month by painting a political article in rolling stone which is going by the forecast that the wife is the author covered 19 could be 2 foreshadowing making moments the end of the make you want when i say that america. is this is it's the end of an american era look i mean i don't wish that will be the styles are because i say to the american century and the best parts of that but remember that all empires are born to die all that's coming up in the program but 1st alex if you take massive. and we're going to spend a bit longer on your messages this week because last week's show featuring professor of human government of the intensive care and dr chris murphy the cambridge but all are just a provoked extraordinary a large the sponsor 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 know there's a lot of sharing of information going on around the world and cecile says definitely one of the best discourses on the corbett 1000 pandemic there are many variables and we will succeed together or fail together we are our brother's keeper roger says very informative the virus attacks everything not only the lungs there's no place for complacency and a hugely interesting tweet from neil campbell having hugged divide the sydney people and still have the lasting effects from it i find information really interesting but also wanting considering they don't 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 i've

had the opportunity to see a doctor regarding the ongoing symptoms and richard and kate see we're 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 past leopard fair to know what we're dealing with under norful said shouldn't of that alexandre show for the 4 star a 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 then. festing to talk yuki express if you missed it 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. money high got to take an opposite point of view to many for

contributors so this fight us kills 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 muddy us or do they not fit this disgraceful and very disturbing knot of and finally maybe on our side but in some ways a hopeful note she says having lost true friends to cool that i don't really want to experience it what will seem to get back on its feet after 3 years of parties flu i'm sure we can overcome this. so back to this marina. last week the 2020 democratic national convention met the walk and virtually across the country among the notable speakers rallying to the cause were former presidents carter 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 star-spangled kos was assembled virtually to claim former vice president joe biden and senator kemal the hottest of california as a party's nominees for president and vice president this week in contrast the republicans have also met but actually but with a difference some convention proceedings just in scale were still held in the original creek venue charlotte north carolina but events and festivities including today's kido speech from the president himself are featured to mostly true cases of the 5 top featured speakers for the surname troubling you. the democrats are to hate but the polls show signs of tightening both sides agree that it's all to play fight in the election but if that isn't an i.q. meant that whether it's a biden 1st time at a time 2nd tad america's days as a dominant well power by killing to a close and today show alex interviews that well leading anthropologist and wade he

believes that the top tested thing and ability to handle covered 1000 odd but symptoms of the fall of the american food. and they're delighted to be joined from his home in vancouver by where davis wade welcome to the alex salmond show thanks alex for having me so professor of anthropology and photography author of many books but few have caused as much start us as remarkable and very political off the pool and the rolling stone getting the end of america plus a pretty dramatic statement with well it's not really i you know i think of it less as 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 and my kids were raised in the states i found my career in the states and their 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 in the question that looms in everybody's mind is why did new zealand do so well why is kind of the done so well and what went wrong so that our border and so it's not really a political story per se but it 'd does suggest that the countries that did well are those that have a strong social contract that a national health care law schools that cater 'd 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 sacked epidemics often become so crimes 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 this. anish 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 100-9001 his way to work and he was dead by the afternoon but they spent his suit didn't shake us in

that way i think because we're used to death yet this cold it is different and it's coming at a point where people are asking what's become of america but few would argue that america president trump to protect us handled the crisis well but other countries have also struggled the impeccable social democratic credentials to sweeten for example of a high of death rate pet 1000000 than america the united kingdom as a high of definite 1000000000 so yes the countries which have done spectacularly better but also social democratic countries which have been washed wells are going to nominees if you think about it i mean the swede made a very specific choice didn't 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 you like america or were led by an individual who was a populist who basically did not for a long and critical period the brilliance of this disease look canada's no perfect

place when rates of death and more did a d. in the states were soaring we in british columbia in all of our hospitals had 5 cases of co there so what was the difference that's part of what this article tries to ask i think the most generous thing you say but the donald is that he is the product of the saved as opposed to the cause effect sort of something about people going on in the miss america presence when i say that america is is is it's the end of an american era look i mean i don't wish that we'll be the styles are because i say to the american century in 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 they've never ever ever felt that the 'd 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 an american official and the a chinese official of the foreign ministry when he had a sub to protestations about the situation in hong kong with wads let me brief in the summer a bit of moral authority a problem that 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 10 part dictator i mean imagine you have the you know this is a country that's you know you know 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 there's an american dine every minute of every day. standing at the podium and recommending the use of household

cleansing distance acted as a treatment of a disease that he didn't 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 obrecht but also its crushing of democracy in hong kong when we the american foreign secretary secure state was front trying to sort of make a comment about that the chinese ministry simply had to take a breath and say you know i can't breathe invoking the. pavement of the unfortunate but slowly he died and now to this you know so i think i think there's 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 don't think

there's anyone clever enough in that white as 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 would be 'd to the extent we're literally. his core followers will deny reality that serves his interest and that's a kind of stunning inversion if you really want to know one sure sign of what i would to sign as a terminal decadents the united states it's that moment when a nation doesn't 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 it's you know it's socialism or communism lite well you know social democracy may never work in america but it's

true it's a stunning indictment and it's a perfect indication of what oscar wilde have in mind when he said the united states was the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilization i finally on this section. hopeful some audio been caught in the metaphor be led by to the shining city on the hill of his joe biden the passion to lead them there you know i'm the 1st to say my life was made in the united states a kind of a collective aunt canary 'd 0 risk taking creer that i soloed 'd to become an independent scholar could never have happened in my home country in canada in a 1000 years so you know i revere that wildness the madness the united. it's and so with any kind of hope you know it will steer its way back because we need that this isn't of what the america that we all love represents but as long as a country has been torn asunder by those 'd 'd who are deliberately doing that for their own personal needs you know in my time 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 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 i'm 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 he's not the figure of history he's he's 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 i'm 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 play when i'll be talking with wade davis about the range of his work and in particular his love affair with the south american country of colombia. if you go to the symphony orchestras warming up and each musician is his tuning his or her instrument so you hear this year all these sounds of noise about it but it's it's a constant a it's disorganized and then the band the orchestra plays and you get music so what the brain does and what the maker tubules you is organized orchestrated one collapses. welcome back

alex is in conversation of the canadian anthropologist we do things they going to discuss his latest book magdalena the great river all this favorite country colombia. michael in us a remarkable new book i mean i can't imagine those any columbia this isn't the best pleased to you for your for contribute to smush the piece that bad 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 length 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 grown bia and at a 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 it's just homesickness and i like contrast sound that i felt like i'd finally found a home that was just something about the energy of the people the the warmth the the understanding of the thrill of human spirit and then i just was in chance 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 and answer poetess living amongst indigenous people and studying the floor of the new york for a police force and magazine is you know way ector about it and there's 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 an actor as thing asli bitter about that and it's 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 it's of the country and just before you know we. we met today 2 days ago i got a call from one man u.s. santoshi ex-president a nobel laureate for peace and he had read the book i sent it to him and he's 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 we're speaking about at that rolling 'd stone piece my attempt was to really hold a mirror to the americans to sort of show what the become of them in the case of mack the lead on trying to show hold a mirror to the communists to show all that's 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 it's the mississippi of of corona it is both the quarter of commerce and the sounds in the culture the it is the source of ploy a tree in literature music and and prayer and a big point of the book is to point out to you 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 'd their country was 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 something to colombia. president santos of course made you a colombian citizen do you think that the piece that stablished for which he won the nobel award the kind that peace hold on is that the very shaky and difficult times no will the peace endure come he will never go back to the chaos of previous years it's a little bit like ireland why did peace come to ireland the people just said and nothing and generally these wars of civil strife. come to an end when the whole also it's a kind of collectively exhausted so in that sense peaceful and you're colombia is safe to travel and it's it's extraordinary it's become kind of the it is tourist destination in the world right now. and yet and yet peace is used for terri is in part because in the wake of the peace agreement. those opposed to it

elected a president do k. who despite the fact that homicide rates in the 1st year of peace after the agreement in havana and carter hinna in $26.00 team homicide rates dropped to levels not seen since 1975 and yet still there was attempt to resort of the the agreement that led to disappointment on the part of those who had signed the agreement so all of this is in balance but and of course it really is just been put under house arrest so there's some instability but i have great confidence as the book makes clear that fundamentally is a world seems to be full and part clumsy is falling together i'm devoting a great fuss like in the book prophet i was potentially in plaster of the the most of the like the lana as the color of the f. give us just a sign of what makes you 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 botanically 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 now when i was

a young man coming of age and clumpy in the early 'd seventy's 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 you'd 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 it's paved the way for an economic response as thousands of kids forced to flee the conflict or 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 who's up who's known who's round 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 now been question. well i tend to remain completely optimistic a because i'm a father and people because i also believe that pessimism is an indulgence i think

despair is an insult to the imagination i think orthodoxies in a good intention i think you know what i learned from my father was she learned from his father is that there's good and evil in the world and my dad used to say to me don't 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 isn't to win the goal is a state of mind in the path you know you need be one of the reasons i think people burn out in old age or becoming bitter it's that they always expect to win something and then they lose and they get in bitter and veyron mental battle or or literal battle and if you realise that it's all a process of lies. it allows 'd you to win some and lose some but keep pushing the wheel of of when my father would say justice and righteousness for and it's if you do that you can go to your death knowing that at least you were the architect of the license and your you did your bit for all that is good in the spirit of

humanity we had davis on for apologists right there from mockable books and offical so thank you so much for joining me i'm alex on the show thanks so much for having me douglas. the gaze of wit davy jones far and wide from the revis of columbia to the minds of nicole however few works in his quitting career have had more impact than his recent rolling stone 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 america's 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 has 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 and technology in commercial power and medical may no longer be totally dominicans however neither is she thing just and so from alex myself and all that issue is goodbye for life stacy and we hope to see you all again.

president putin says he's put what he called a lower. to be sent into better if the security situation there breaks down. that things would be settled peacefully. the russian prosecutor general's office says it has found no evidence of an intentional criminal act against alexina valmy the prominent opposition figure remains in a coma in a german hospital and make claims that he was poisoned. and she was seeing protests in the u.s. .