on the 1st steel shipments recently left the port for real stuff on don't. what african nations expressed a wish to buy coal from don't boss. during the recent russia, african summit and green shipments of holes, i left the polt. life is slowly returning to matter. you poll, but just like is post is future is also contested. it is inexplicably linked to the ukraine conflict. i want to false is what it can become. a leading world set into central to russia is developing relations with african nations. and indeed the world along with the economic development of a region rubbish bible. this is steve sweeney and matthew po for all t. so many thanks for your time to be here at all c international web 5 to the top of the i was more of the latest news the

. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy from foundation, let it be an arms race is on all sides. very dramatic. the only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very unclear to get a time time to sit down and talk the primary sanchez, i'm gonna do a news now for 30 years to languages all over the world. here in the united states, interviewed for presidents, worked at the 4 major us television networks. i believe that new should be honest, direct, and impactful. and this is direct impact. the

i want to start with this studies of indicated as by the way we've mentioned on this show in the past. but most of us here in america, in the united states have given a map of the world, could not find most countries including ukraine. in fact is the found but only $11.00. 0 no. out of every 6 americans actually even know where you crane is. the rest placed it as far away with the little pin thing. you know, they placed it as far away as portugal or confused it with even more nearby countries like cars like stop. and then again, the same thing as happened while the u. s. was engaged in other places. like i've got to stand a study which survey $510.00 young americans found that almost 90 percent of them could not find afghanistan on a map of asia. by the way, don't take my word for it. there are countless examples of this type of thing. on the youtube thing or on the google's on social media, and even just even regular,

you know, legacy tv below island right here somewhere here. um exactly. sure. cuz it's like over here somewhere like there's that's what i'm like. okay. you can choose whether it's right here, right here. and that's not all. i got some more stuff for you that's going to entry, get more than 2 thirds of americans say, we really don't mean to know anything about those countries in the news. that's what they said when they were asked. here's another one for you. for 10 percent of americans think that speaking another language besides english not necessary. why?

maybe that's why there's a study as well. that is found that 75 percent of americans, 75 percent of americans, clear majority. right. they believe english is the most widely spoken language in the world. it's not india. 47 percent of the people in this country can't find that. i'm up in the israel, 75 percent. can't find it. it is kind of small, but it also is kind of important bunch of inc, a factor you credit, and the whole ukraine thing. and what we don't know about that. here's perhaps the most interesting stat. when it comes to all of this stuff, remember how i mentioned at the outset. some americans can find ukraine on a map, but most can't get this. those according fine ukraine on a map, were far more likely than those 2 could to be in favor of us

intervention in ukraine. in fact, the farther away from ukraine that each person placed their pin on the map, the more app they were to be in favor of having their money. or maybe even their sons and daughters blood spilled their huh. makes you wonder? now the question that does that make ignorance bliss useful or dangerous? joining us out to talk about this is dan kamala, dan, is a professor labour and human rights lawyer and activists. thanks for joining us, dan. what do you think of that last thing? i that is that i found where the farther away you are and being able to find in this case ukraine, which is the latest, you know, situation where in the more app you are to be ok with whatever the, how your government wants to do there. wow. right now it's, yeah, it's quite,

quite troubling because even within ukraine these, you know, there's not one ukraine in the sense that the people in the west have very different views and the people in the east right back in like 1957 the see i did a report on ukraine and they divided it up into 12 different areas which had very different views on whether they were pro russian or pro european. the point is, you know, these issues take some sophistication and they take a knowledge of history, which again, most americans, i mean, the vast, vast majority do just don't have. so let's go to the question. i asked that the, the, the reason for this is it useful. what by useful here's, here's, here's what i'm postulating here for you there. so maybe that's the way they want us to be. because if, if it's true, what i just said, right? if it's true, what i just said, that the less you know,

the more ap you are to agree with them, then hey, let's get them to not know, right. you get my drift? yes, no, i think we are kept in the door. i, i do think it's not an accident. i think uh, you know, the powers that be, are happy that were completely ignorant about the world, about us history, about world history. because you say, the more you know about history, the more you would be very critical of us for boss. so if you knew about the nature of the wars we've been involved in friday, vietnam in korea, it's, you know, over and over, you would be very skeptical. right? and those of us who do know are very skeptical. so no, they don't, they want you to know things in broad brushes in generalities. and that's how the manufacturer consent. history is context. history is context. wait, if you are worth yourself as an anchor at, which is what i have done for

a large part of my life as a journalist, right? we're in graduated university, minnesota school journalism because i, i know context is important and history is context. how can you do any story about any us and gauge meant today without talking about the one that came last year or the year before that? how can we talk about ukraine without reminding people from time to time that we lied to get into a war and iraq is relevant? you can't believe it out, but i never hear the people on the television networks or for that matter of the big newspapers to add that into the story to give that context. you know, i said, you know, it's right. in fact, uh after the uh, you know, russian intervention in february, the media went silent on a few things that they had at least covered a little, not a lot, but they covered a little. the fact that there had been a war going on. and ukraine since 2014 right between the government and their own

people in the dawn bass and it, which is in the eastern part of view quite, that'd been covered. then they pretended that never happened. right. because it's set up for a vote or so we're going to talk about that. and then when russia was saying, hey, we're fighting neo nazis a new credit, all of a sudden the price was, oh, there's no not sees there. of course you can find older, main street cross stories, not tons, but saw at least that work that i had been saying, yeah, there are knobs easier, right? so they don't want you to know these things as you say, because that context, customs, to things i've mentioned, would certainly give you pause as to how you feel about this for a new grant. who is the day? is it the politicians? is it the media is it is, so let's you, cnn, or fox, you know, pick your flavor, pick your poison, i don't care who isn't there. how does it get to the mouth of the anchor? any one of those networks to keep you dumb, where does it come from? how does it manipulate down? do you think, dan?

yeah, well, there's a few ways. any one you do have a major corporate donors to keep those networks. going to tend to be obviously in support of u. s. foreign policy, because in many ways they may be even helping direct for us foreign policy because our government, i'm sorry, is governed by money and covered by the corporation. so you have that because you have that wedding, that marriage of corporations in the government. and because corporations dominate the median, in fact, you only have a few conglomerates that run all the media. they dominate the narrative, right? so you have that. and then some of it too, so some of it is money driven. some of it also, frankly, is laziness. you know, it's the fact that it's easier to just get the state department. yeah. those line off the fax machine and read it. then it is to send reporters to a place like the dog bass and ukraine to actually see what's happening and to get

the other side of the story. so there's a, you know, those events conspire to manufacturer a certain narrative, you know, is chomsky and edward hiring pointed out in the book manufacturing and said, what people need to understand is the news is not the product to being sold. what's being sold is the pop public, the public are being sold to the advertisers, right? that. and so the result therefore is the news that is very much, you know, in line with what the corporations want. and i guess i have to find the right people. i'll tell you the story i want to share with you right now. back when i worked at cnn. i was once and working on a story, and i want to do including the story context of the history of what, you know, i love the united states. i love my country, i want it to be better, but i think to love it properly. you have to point out it's false. and i wanted to

point out in the story, maybe because i'm a hispanic and i know these stories. what the united states had done historically the c, i a, in the dullest brothers in places like guatemala and columbia and some federal mingo, cuz it's a fact it happened. and i wanted to talk about those things to learn about how we can be better with our foreign policy. man, you would have thought that i had warns coming out of my head, i had these ombudsman and cnn, like this dude named rick davis. come after me, i mean with guns blazing. what the hell do you think you're doing? we don't do that here. we don't talk about that kind of stuff. and i remember always asking myself why not? it's true, right? it's history, but you never get that. and of course they fired me, but the guys they have now they'll, i don't think they'd ever do that. maybe because they don't know. maybe they're not hispanic, they don't know a little about bought them all. but how i do them and yeah, well,

and of course it's important to know these things because how do you know anything about us foreign relations and how do you assess that all at all? if you don't understand what the us is done to these countries, and therefore you're able to see it from their perspective. i mean that's the base is not going to have any sort in bed. the iron stand. oh yeah. yeah. and also when we talk about why do we have all these people coming into the border? well, we should talk about what is the us going to undermine these countries. economies of political situations, you know, that's irrelevant. it's, it's, you know, again, like people just don't show up for no reason. yeah. and, and when you look at the reasons then you think, oh, well, maybe the us, the changes. 7 see towards these countries in the maybe they'd be happy to be in their own good. you know, do you find like i do? boy, i'll tell you. i've been gob smacked by this whenever i've traveled. and as

a reporter i've traveled a lot. uh you told me you just came back from crimea, right. so i find when i travel, i am impressed most of the time by cab drivers by people, and not just average people and what they know not only about their country and their history, which they probably will tell you about. but then they'll start asking you about your country and your president them and everything else about they know more many times about what is going on in our country, or as much as they do about their own country. and i think to myself, i hardly know any common people in my country who are as impressive as that. we just don't like others do that is true. and that's been to my experience everywhere around the world. that's true, the, that, that, that your average person in other countries is just better and for more aware what's happening in the world. and certainly in europe,

including russia. most people speak at least 2 or 3 languages. yeah. and many, well, even met low have some facility in english. right. and so, you know, they're just more uh, you know, connected to the world than we are. and they, we, we really think the world begins and ends, you know, at the atlantic coast, in the pacific coast of continental united states, you know, in the rest of the world doesn't see the world that way they understand they're part of the bigger organic whole, you know, and that's just, that's the difference is just huge. well, that's what gets to the question of democracy, right? because we're always saying how much and we all appreciate a democracy, which means we all should have a say in what's going on. the question is, given the way things are set up right now and given what you're talking about right now, that the government is making decisions because they make those decisions for monetary reasons or for whatever other interests are out there. having very little to do

with what the people want and it's because the people don't know, then, do we really have a flourishing democracy in this country? is it really working the way our forefathers maybe set that up to be? and that's what i want to take up with you in just a bit. stay right there. we're going to come back with them. come all like ok to talk more about this as we ask ourselves, why is it that we don't know what we talk? no, by the way i have a broadcast where i as a journalist, as a latino, as an entrepreneur, tell my story, share my story with you about what i've learned and talk about some of the things right here. it's called the rick sanchez podcast. i invite you to check it out when we come back. so how do you fix stupid? can we ever leave is level of ignorance or are we just found to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again that allow money to interest? as dan pointed out, to dictate things like our foreign policy. don't go away, gonna be right back

the, [000:00:00;00] the european nations ultimately experienced that transformation with the exception that is, was kind of defeated by the hard realities, right?

or at least confronted with them in a, in a very significant way. and you know, the space up more or less a more or less the only exception to the general tendency. that, of course, has to deal with the fact that the jet radical situation of the united states is funding it. is that of an island that is the size of the continents the are started reading about this last night before this conversation. i'm having now with the, with dan, welcome back everybody. i'm rick sanchez and i found a couple of things i like this. so there's a dude named stephen ledler. he is a pulitzer prize winning final list who, who writes for time magazine. and he recently wrote something about our own, well our stupidity for lack of a better term. and here's a,

here's how he describes that. he says that the stupidity is a kind of intellectual stubbornness. a stupid person has access to all the information that is necessary. he writes to make an appropriate judgment to come up with a set of reasonable and justified beliefs. and yet it fails to do so. he goes on to say the evidence is staring them right in the face, but it makes no difference whatsoever. they believe what they want to believe because they are not acting in a rational manner. easy right? now that's interesting then because i think to a certain extent and one of the things that you and i have not spoken about that i think has some causality here. is the fact that. busy we. busy are living in bubbles today more than we ever have been. and once we find that little level, that little box is i like to call it. we won't leave anything that doesn't fit,

we throw it out and anything that we think fits, we exaggerate it. that's a problem. yeah, in fact we know to the social, the social media companies there algorithms work in a way that continues to feed you essentially the narrative that you seem interested in, right, by your claim. so if, if you are, you know, again, oppose the worn ukraine, you're gonna tend to and you click on stories like that, they're going to keep beating you that you support the war and would you crate. they're going to keep the new that. and so you say people just end up in their own bubbles because they're just going to see that one narrative. yeah. and that's the definition of dumb, because that means, yeah that, that, that not only means i don't know, it means i don't want to know. right in right, yeah, you're not encouraged to know. right. and so, and i think that's how you'd be, for example, as a book on this out. again,

the social media and the news to they really encourage this incredible polarization and us politics where the population, you know, they're in these different camps and again, they, they don't even get uh, uh, any information or a news from the other camp. and so we just continue down these parallel pads. and how does that allow for any sort of political discussion or debate? it does. it's impossible to have debate in that's in that atmosphere. so, and once again we go back to the question as to whether or not we live in a world where that's another thing that maybe they want us to be. and maybe they want us to be at each other's throats, you know, divide and conquer, right? maybe that neutrality of, of, of, of, of ideologies, you know, fox crowd, the cnn crowd, whatever crowd this crowd, it keeps everybody in this country. so separate that then they can do all kinds of stuff to us. because that in and of itself, that, that,

that separation makes us stupid. yeah. cuz were separated from people that should be our allies inviting for issues of common concert. i mean, it is not in the interest of any of us regular people to spend a trillion dollars a year on these military adventures that don't secures that don't help us. and then meanwhile, moneys are going to education health care towards infrastructure, etc. right. i mean, it doesn't benefit any of us, but we don't unite around those issues because we're always fighting. and we're usually biding over social issues, which are important. but we're like to believe they're the only things. right. and so uh yeah, i do think that type of division works to the benefit of the ruling class. they continue to be able to do what they want and the rest of us again or fighting over

secondary and tertiary issues. and they keep us divided because there are 2 general guiding ideologies in this country, which seems nonsensical to me. i don't want to be either a republican or a democrat. i think the idea that you have to choose one or the other to be an american. again, to use an over used word is stupid. we should have lots of ideas, lots of ideologies and find the best among them. but that's not what we do. now what do you get in the system? the system is reg, so that you only have those 2 parties. 3rd parties really have no chance of gaining any traction the way the system works most or for, for filter sex or some of the river by the bad or not. and i mean, you know, right, it's exactly like in power mattresses. it's much easier in a place like italy you have like 20 parties or something like that. here you can't, you don't even have alternative voices within part is the name of her example right now. i saw

a pole that robert f kennedy is like one percentage point behind bite. and in the democratic polls, which is, it is amazing because people being completely ignored by the mainstream press, right. they completely ignore and block out alternative voices. and so in the end, the choice you have is so limited and it ends up being the choice between 2 people . but yeah, disagree on some things, but again, really don't disagree on this, the essential issue. so what is you say, what kind of democracy of that it is that it's not much of a democracy at all. you mentioned a while ago that one of the biggest problems we have is that there is this technology that keeps sending us through algorithms. the same things we believe and over and over again. and just that, which means that's a product, a big pack right now with the advances that we're seeing on a i, and some of the stories that we've all been doing on track g, p, p, etc. one can't help but wonder whether there will be even more tools in their

arsenal for them to do this and that, that, that combination here. here's, here's what my, here's what i'm going to, here's my question. when government and big tech come together and use these tools, ma'am it's, it's hard not to think that we're kind of screwed. well, yeah, and we know we know that facebook and twitter and other social media outlets have a overtly sense or particular points of use. and continue to do that, continue to throw people off their platforms because they take a different line because people take a different lot on cobra or a new train or other issues. so now we've, we've been in this toby a bit, the science fiction writers predicted, you know, we are living in, you know, a brave new world like al just huxley wrote about or to some extent, 1984, like george orwell wrote about where, you know,

we're convinced it think to believe that 2 plus 2 equals 5 and we accept that. and where language doesn't mean anything, you know what wars piece and piece is war. and yeah, i think that what you're describing is that the scope of reality that we're facing right now, and i do think, or it's likely to get worse. yes. is there anything we can do or is there anything you see on the horizon where we can guys like you and me? i think by the way of thinking of guys like you and me, i bet the average person out there be american or anywhere else thinks more like you and me than they do any of those extreme bubbles that we were just describing. i think and you were to bring most americans together. they would agree, hey, that sounds crazy. why would we be in a war for 20 years and spend a trillion dollars or whatever the heck it was an easy billions of dollars us. why

would we go and spend $75000000000.00 in our country? the none of us could even find on a map. what are we doing? why are we doing this? and so i think a lot of this stuff is just common sense to us. but we can't come together. why can't we come together? is, is, is it good? do you see a way we can? well, yes, of course we can. and again i, i see, you know, when you look at it again, just as an example, i'm not pushing his fantasy. but if you look at what robert cavities saying, he's saying some of those things that you just said, right? and people seem to be responding. the point is, as you say, i do think mirror americans are hungry for another narrative. and actually the poles of american show that they do tend to agree with people like you and be on these issues. you know, they, they are interested in the other ideas and i guess it's up to people like you would need to keep promoting them and be willing to speak to people who don't agree with us to speak to people in the other parties. and then we're members of not to see

people is the portables because they disagree with us. yeah. and we need to, you know, encourage education. i think the biggest thing is so much that, i mean it's one thing bad. yeah. that people aren't educated, but also the not even encourage to value knowledge. then you're your delight to talk to thanks for taking thanks. taking the time to take us through this. okay. my pleasure. rick. thank you. bank of all like thank so much. well, thank you for joining us today. and before we go, i want to remind you of our mission here. it's simple, really kind of one of the silo the world. that's what dan and i were talking about, right? stop living, a little box has truce. don't live in boxes too, so everywhere i'm actually interest. i'll be looking for you again right here, where i'll provide you with a direct impact by golly, the

the known in vietnam american war, the vietnam war lost it for almost 2 decades and dragged in numerous countries. nor does he have written down that you don't see it now. why it's all on the empty hundreds of thousands of american troops who was sent to the country to back the south vietnamese on me. and the american soldiers murdered resistors. most of the slaves burned down entire villages and spread dangerous chemicals and lee by all right, did the americans ever fully acknowledge what they did on the vietnamese veterans ready to forgive? yes,

yes. that's the way to the point, only appealed to you is that you should not say the whole is. i'm not doing the struggle for myself opinions. i'm doing this for my nation for you, for the future of your children. if you don't write up for you, right, you will leave the lives of slaves and run con, appeals to his support is on for a pakistani 12 whole sentences. the countries form a prime minister to 3 years in prison on charges of corruption. add on certainty in these the active wants defense to agree on military action without repeating that invasion times. toughest people in the west african country protest against the regional block sanctions. i'm going to venture a lot of the media and the people of