US Globalises Economic War With Iran

Good evening and welcome to Navara Live. Coming up tonight, the Trump administration has threatened widespread sanctions against quote Iran's financial connections around the globe. Analysis finds that two proposed UK data centers could surpass the entirety of Exxon Mobile's UK emissions in carbon and Rert Low is set to earn more from posting on Elon Musk's X than he is from being an MP. My name is Steven Methan and tonight I'm joined by Bansaka KMBI. How's it going? >> Hi, I'm good, thank you. This is our first show together, so I'm very excited. >> I'm very excited, too. Uh been a fan from the other side of the room, and the show has been going on for a long time. Glad to get to to do it with you tonight. >> Um before we begin, tickets for our next Downstream in real life event go on sale today. This time it's at the Duke of York Picture House in Brighton where Ash Sar will be joined by Nom Klein and Astra Taylor to discuss their new book, End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. Essential reading, I imagine. That's on Thursday the 1st of October. Tickets available via the link in the description. Back in February, the US and Israel launched an illegal war against Iran. As everybody knows, in the months that followed, despite claiming to have obliterated the Iranian leadership structure, destroyed the country's military capabilities, and ruined it economically, Washington remained trapped remains trapped rather in a stalemate with Thran. And to achieve this pointless result, the US killed over a 100 school children in a strike on a school amongst thousands more, destabilized the entire Gulf region, and spent anywhere between 50 and hundred billion dollars on the effort. According to the Washington Post, that will come at a cost of at least $1,000 to every American household. And yet, the straight of Hormuz remains effectively blocked with roughly 10 vessels per day passing through the passage from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean in August. Before the war, that figure was around 140 per day. It's a failure that's come at huge humanitarian, geopolitical, and economic cost. And ordinary Americans are beginning to pay the price of their president's foolishness. The Financial Times has reported on how US grain farmers are facing the worst crisis in decades over spiraling costs caused by the Iran war. The FT reports on how fuel and fertilizer costs are hitting farmers hard, reporting this. Inputs are way out of whack, said Matt Bailey, who grows corn and soybeans in eastern Nebraska. He said 11520, a phosphorous rich fertilizer used at planting time that was priced at $470 a ton 10 years ago, now costs more than $900. Where do you start with that? How do you begin to budget for that? The Iran war has made so much uncertainty for us as farmers, said Pam Johnson, who farms in northern Iowa and is a former president of the National Corn Growers Association. It's projected that farmers aren't going to make any money for the next two years. The average cost of diesel, widely used to power agricultural equipment, has shot up to $545 a gallon nationwide, compared with $381 before the war, according to the US Energy Information Administration. And obviously, all those extra costs associated with farming, farming of staples, is going to be passed on to the American consumer. The wider US economy has also experienced some instability, though the Iran war is just one of the contributing factors to it. According to Treasury figures released last week, the US debt has hit over $40 trillion for the first time, doubling in the last decade. Borrowing has also become more expensive for the US as the yields on the Treasury bonds rose in recent weeks, representing investor fears over inflation driven by rising oil prices as well as wider concern over the stability of the US economy. That could of course then mean in turn higher interest rates for American consumers in the medium term. So that's all bad news for the Republicans with midterms just a couple of months away. After all, as always, it's the economy, stupid. And that may all explain a series of announcements made by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant yesterday. >> Today we are launching Operation Economic Outcast to foreclose every other option available to the Iranian regime. Treasury has mapped every node, every facilitator, and every network that Iran has used to smuggle oil and evade sanctions. Beginning today, the actions of Treasury and other agencies will tighten the noose and block every potential source of revenue that funds the IRGC and the evil Iranian regime. It is no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces of this conflict. Countries cannot claim they are blind to enabling this activity. Iran's enablers purchase, transport its petroleum. They facilitate the flow of its finances through exchange houses and free trade zones. They welcome Iran's flights and maintain registries on its behalf. They turn a blind eye to seaborn fuel transfers and overland transits. They condone illicit use of their banks, all the while concealing the extent of their complicity. The president is making phone calls to world leaders with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime. Nations that facilitate any intern inter interactions with the regime should quickly heed our message. Those who stand with the United States will reap the rewards of our partnership. Those who tether themselves to the Iranian regime should expect to share in the isolation of a withering regime. >> Now, of course, there are countries that continue to do business with Iran. It's in the interests of many countries, including Iran's neighbors, to remain on good economic terms with a country that they aren't at war with. And among them are several very big players like China. This graph shows the percentage of Iranian exports by partner with China, Turkey and Pakistan topping the table by some measure and China came up in questions to Bessent. >> Chinese banks uh have often been talk talked about being targeted but we don't see any any of those institutions targeted here. Is that something that is coming in this campaign or is is the uh very delicate trade truce with China something that that could prohibit you from you know going that far and taking that very big step? uh we want to make clear to here today that no one is above the reach of US sanctions that if they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money into repression they will be targeted. We find that the best way to engage with countries is through quiet diplomacy and we are level setting with every country to tell them our expectations. We know who they are. They know who they are. So when the hammer of US Treasury actions falls upon them, they will have no one to blame but themselves. Quiet diplomacy seems actually to be a pretty sharp tack from the US's more recent approach to foreign affairs. In his speech, Bessant called the new threat of secondary sanctions an economic D-Day. D-Day, you'll recall, didn't involve quiet diplomacy. As one reporter brought up, >> was an economic D-Day. But D-Day wasn't a threat of an invasion and the US didn't give a timeline to Germany. So why not impose the sanctions today? Well, we we are giving everyone the opportunity the to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious. >> Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? Sorry, but if you're threatening sanctions, that would blow up the global financial system. And then you say you don't want to blow up the global financial system, you're not really threatening sanctions at all, are you? I mean, haven't you just totally rumbled yourself exposing that what you're calling quiet diplomacy are in fact just empty threats. Now, now those threats were briefed by the White House for days before that announcement. So, Iranian leaders have had some time to prepare. The country's economic minister, Sed Ali Madin Nazad, appeared on Iran state TV on Monday night where he said this. They want to launch an economic terrorist attack against us. We also have our own tools and we know the rules of this game. This time they shouldn't think that our approach is purely defensive. They should also expect an attack from us. He continued, "Plans have been developed for various scenarios, including what actions should be taken if they attempt to cause damage in the financial sector or in the country's financial relations." and he added that the global financial system is not structured in a way that allows anyone to claim that they can cut off Iran economically. China has also responded to what they they've seen as a coercive threat from the US with its foreign ministry spokesperson Lyn Jian saying this today. China has made clear on many occasions its firm opposition to illicit unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or the authorization of the UN Security Council. Economic warfare and maximum pressure provide no solution. On the contrary, they only serve to fuel tensions and lead to risk spillover which will disrupt the global economic and financial order and harm the legitimate rights and interests of other countries. China's cooperation with Iran is conducted within the framework of international law that should not be disrupted. China is closely following the development and will do everything necessary to firmly safeguard its rights and its interests. Earlier today, I was joined by Tita Parci, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. And I began by asking him whether the US can really take on China and would the sanctions be effective if they can't. >> So I find it extremely unlikely that the Chinese would go along with this. But I also find it unlikely that the US will really press the Chinese. It is actually thanks to China that oil prices never went above $200. They could have. In many ways they should have. But because the Chinese dramatically reduced their demand, they shifted to other sources of energy. They killed the demand for oil and as a result prices were kept much more stable. They didn't do this to support the US or to undermine Iran. They did it because it was in their own interest. They wanted to prevent a global recession which would have been devastating for everyone including them. If the United States now given this what the facto support from the Chinese goes after the Chinese I think the Chinese have tremendous amount of leverage to truly hurt the United States. So I doubt that the US actually will go hard after the Chinese on this issue and without China's buying onto these sanctions these sanctions or this implementation of the sanctions will prove to be very similar to what we've seen in the past. It will inflict the cost on the Iranians. It will not likely be unbearable and as a result it will not change the picture. If it ends up being very painful to the Iranians, then they're far more likely to escalate than to surrender and mindful of the fact that Besson has not presented any demands to the Iranians. It leaves the Iranians with the impression that the objective is regime change and state collapse and they will never accept that. And as a result, they're more likely to escalate if these sanctions end up becoming painful. But it's very difficult to see that right now given the fact that it's going to be extremely difficult, if possible at all, to get the Chinese on board. >> Just sticking with that idea of retaliation from Iran if these sanctions go through. Um I mean I guess that's part of the strategy that we've seen from Iran in responding to US aggression over uh the past six months which is that uh they often retaliate in a way which is intended um to put off support for the US. So if you look at like Gulf states for example the idea there is that the retaliation against the US aggression is also such that uh it warns off anybody from supporting them too much at risk of even greater retaliation. Do you think that's the kind of um strategy we'd see at play in in the case of sanctions? >> Yes. Depending on how painful these measures end up being, if they end up becoming very problematic for the Iranians, combined with the blockade and other measures, then I can see a full-scale counter escalation by the Iranians in which they would strike at economic interests in the GCC countries, uh further attacks in the straight of Hormuz in order to uh push up oil prices. If they become less painful but nevertheless problematic then you can see other measures that they might take. One um example from recent history that I think is instructive here is that back in 2018 2019 the US imposed maximum pressure sanctions and once they started to become problematic for Iran that's when the Iranians started back then strike at oil tankers in the region and eventually also strike at the Saudi oil fields uh with drone attacks and they did so in order to make it as costly as possible for the United States to pursue that policy and make it costly for these countries if they collaborated with that policy. But that was a much more restrained leadership in Iran that did that back in 2019 compared to the new leadership that you have in Iran that is far more riskwing. So I think that example tells you how the Iranians are likely going to act in this scenario if these sanctions end up becoming biting. But without the type of plausible deniability that they sought back in 2019 because they still deny that they had anything to do with those attacks. I think this will be very open. It will be far larger scale, far more aggressive uh than it was in 2019. But again only if they feel that these sanctions actually are painful to them. So yeah, I wanted to ask you about this idea that the sanctions may not be painful for the Iranians because from our understanding that the Iranian economy has been badly affected. Uh inflation I think is in the high 80s percentage wise. The currency has collapsed roughly 20% I think against the dollar. You know whatever that means. Um surely if these were effective it would in fact intensify that pain. Or is it the is your is your thought just that they they can't really possibly be effective even if they're applied? >> No. Um, I'm glad that you asked for that clarification. I want to make sure that I'm very precise. These sanctions often times do inflict the pain on the Iranians. The question is how painful are they? Is it something that the Iranians can tolerate? Is it something that they can offset? Uh, many of these other sanctions do inflict an initial pain and then the Iranians find workarounds and as long as that is the case, it's not worth it for the Iranians to counter escalate. But once the pain becomes too problematic, that's when we have seen them um uh respond in kind. In this specific case, mindful of the fact that the country is already under a tremendous amount of pressure. Uh but we have not seen that that pressure has led to the Iranians uh collapsing or surrendering. I find it unlikely that these additional measures will be able to bring uh the situation to that point for the very simple reason that much of this is about pressuring other states. These are secondary sanctions as you correctly pointed out which means that the targets are actually the other states that are trading with Iran. There is nothing left in Iran that the US itself could sanction. It sanctioned everything. So now it's sanctioning others that are trading with Iran. And there the big items are countries such as India and China and Russia where the US has limited leverage of being able to force them to go in that direction. And then the smaller items are countries in the region. Uh some of them are bordering Iran such as Iraq or Pakistan. A lot of that trade is not being done in the dollar and as a result the US has very little limited impact or even insight to that trade. So its capacity of doing much there is more limited. Um and as a result the overall picture ends up being one in which it seems unlikely that these sanctions will dramatically increase the pressure on Iran in such a manner that it will compel the Iranians to respond or or counter escalate. It could happen. But I think the key problem is if they're not particularly effective, nothing happens. If they are very effective, then you have a counter escalation by the Iranians and then instead of seeing this being an end to the conflict, it just ends up becoming another round in this escalatory cycle. >> I see. Okay. So, so in terms of from the Iranian perspective, it's a combination of the potential effectiveness of these sanctions applied to states where the US actually doesn't have that much leverage perhaps combined with what we've already seen, which is quite a high pain threshold from Iranian society itself and and the Iranian government itself. Um >> and combine of course with the fact that um street protests right now under these circumstances and particularly mindful of what happened in January are they can still happen um but they're the bar is going to be much higher before people are willing to take those risks. And here I think there's another thing that the US is doing that frankly is playing into the hands of the Iranian government. When Trump says he's not interested in diplomacy, then you create a scenario in which diplation have a harder time blaming the Iranian government for the collapse of the negotiations because Trump is essentially saying he's not actually interested in a compromise. He just wants the capital. Now, if Trump had played this and messaged this somewhat differently, he could have potentially um won some propaganda points amongst the Iranian public in which they would have started to view the Iranian side as being the intrigent side, the one that is responsible for the continuation of the conflict. I don't think that is the perception right now and given what Trump himself is saying about these things, it's very difficult for that perception to be any different at this point. So you've set out quite nicely why in a way how how in a way the Americans might have backed themselves into some kind of corner with this threat and you brought up the idea of there Trump saying he doesn't do diplomacy or doesn't want to do diplomacy. In his announcement uh Scott Bessant uh said he did want to do soft diplomacy and in fact he said he wanted to do it because he didn't want to impose the sanctions because that would collapse the global financial system. Um what is the wider implications if they were to impose these sanctions? I mean it sounds like maybe well I don't know perhaps you don't want to predict what this US government would do but do you think it's likely that they will >> let me first say one thing when Bessent there is talking about diplomacy he is not talking about diplomacy with Iran he's talking about diplomacy with other countries that he's trying to convince should cut all their trade ties with Iran frankly that has been mostly what the US has meant when it has said uh that it's engaged in diplomacy certainly that was the during uh the early stages of the Obama administration as well as much of the uh Biden administration as well. It is somewhat interesting that no country has been no administration has been more willing to go all out in terms of direct diplomacy with the Iranians than the Trump administration has. Uh it's under the Trump administration that the vice president of the United States has sat down for hours with the other side. This is the higher highest level contacts between the two governments uh including during the period of the JCPOA. Uh but at the same time, no other administration has been willing to go as far as the Trump administration in terms of military action either. But it's important to understand that when he's talking about diplomacy right now, it's not diplomacy with Iran. It's diplomacy in terms of convincing other countries to do these things. Again, I find it unlikely because in order to do this, you have to convince the big countries to go along with it. And that means that you have to prioritize your Iran file and your objectives with Iran above all of your other objectives. So in terms of the USChina relationship, Trump is then elevating collaboration on Iran more than all of the other items that constitute the agenda between the US and China. And I find that unlikely to happen, mindful of the fact that the US has at the end of the day in its own view uh a tacit or perhaps an explicit great power competition with the Chinese. And and this is again part of the challenge with the way that this administration has conducted things. It doesn't seem to be capable of managing a large set of priorities on a global scale and being able to effectively and precisely say well this specific issue should have this level of priority but it should not interfere with these uh higher points above. The mere fact that we're going in this direction right now, in my view, is a sign of a failure of the US's policy because it's it's willing to take increasingly large risks with its Iran policy at the expense of its priorities with other countries that according to their own NSS, National Security Strategy Document from December 2025 are far more important than the Middle East and Iran is. >> So, I was going to ask you in that case, what was the point of all of this? But I think you've just sort of answered it. There is no point. >> Yeah, exactly. Well, then I'm going to ask you, how do you think this is going to play out? >> So, I see a couple of scenarios. I can see a situation in which this adds a bit of more pressure on the Iranians, but not enough for them to retaliate. It freezes the situation. There's going to be some mediation in the meantime, but nothing really happens. There's a relatively stable status quo that I think the administration would be very happy to have up until the midterm elections. And then after the elections things may change and they would want this to be painful to the Iranians. So it's more painful to the Iranians than it is to the US but probably not so painful that it actually causes the Iranians to counter escalate. That would create a relatively stable situation up until the midterm elections and then after the midterms the US may actually go back to kinetic actions and other things. So, I'm not seeing much of a development towards really resolving this issue. And the Trump administration by now is well known for using all kinds of um uh bombastic language about what this measure is going to do and two months later is going to move in a completely different direction because it was an utter failure. Uh but uh the media cycle tends to forget that. Remember, we were told uh four months ago, five months ago that the blockade of the blockade was going to collapse the Iranians within 13 days. And here we are five months later now he's talking about D-Day sanctions. >> That was treaty from the Quincy Institute speaking to me earlier today. And like now if you like me are a great admirer of Twitter's eloquence, his intelligence and like pure gravitas, uh he does have a Substack, you can follow him there and get some more of that at treaty.substack.com. But having said all those nice things, I will also say I think his crisp white shirt was working far too hard subtweeting my slightly disheveled orange one during that interview. We've been focusing a lot on data centers on the show recently and for very good reason. People really don't seem to want them. They're bad for the environment and yet they keep getting foisted upon us. Well, reporting from the Guardian today has made clear exactly how toxic some of them could end up being. The paper reports that two planned data centers, one in Buckinghamshire and another in Bedfordshire, will have higher UK carbon emissions than Exxon Mobile, amounting to 4.5 million tons of carbon a year when they're fully running. Exon Mobile emitted 3.9 tons of carbon in 2023. This is from the Guardian's article. AI data centers use a massive amount of electricity to power servers and cooling equipment and to run facility systems. There are currently 300 there are currently 315 data centers in the queue to connect to the UK's electricity grid. representing 73 gawatts of demand. This is almost double the peak winter energy demand for the entire UK. Because of the long wait to connect to the grid, the Wapsies Wood and Quest Park data centers, those are the ones that we're talking about, are seeking to build their own on-site gasfired power stations. Based on government figures on the carbon intensity of electricity generation, Fox Glove has calculated these projects will produce 4.577 million tons of carbon emissions per year. Fox Glove is a nonprofit that carried out the research. Now, the government said that their figures are misleading, arguing that it isn't accurate to assume the data centers will be running 100% utilization from day one. Well, okay, fine. Let's say they emit 50% or 70% or even 30% of Exon Mobile's annual UK emission. It hardly sounds much better. Is the idea that there's like some magic amount of additional emissions that will somehow not make it harder to meet our legally binding carbon targets. No, it's the the argument is, I suppose, that there is some amount of additional emissions that we should accept as a trade-off for the economic benefits that a set populated by bureaucratic billionaires intent on exerting unwarranted political influence and eliminating our jobs will bring. Wonderful. Approval for the two sites was also fasttracked as part of the government's nationally significant infrastructure project or the NSIP regime. Projects that the government decides fall under that scheme bypass local planning applications with the decision to go ahead being made by, you guessed it, the same government that fasttrack the project in the first place. Former Greens leader Caroline Lucas had this to say about the scheme. In order to be able to make sensible decisions on which projects should go ahead and where they should be, we need to have more information in the public domain. We need to have more scrutiny, not less. And yet things like the NSIP regime are moving things in the opposite direction. Now, there is obviously very good reason to avoid local planning processes in the case of data centers, and it's because people hate them. Polling by Politico conducted in July shows just how quickly opinion has swung against data centers amongst US voters. In January, over a third of those pled supported building data centers 3 miles from where they lived, with just over a quarter opposed. By July, those who supported the idea dropped below a quarter with this oppo with those opposed rising to over 40%. That is an incredible swing in just 6 months. And the attack in opinion has shifted how politicians are operating ahead of the November primary elections in the states. This map of the US shows the 250 legislative moratoriums on data centers that have been proposed or enacted across 43 states with just 18 having been rejected so far. And the latest politician to move against him is Republican Mike Rogers who's running a tight race in Michigan for the Senate against Abdal say, the DSA member who won the Democrat ticket earlier this month. And we're seeing a bit of a similar turn in Scotland. Scottish MSP David Torrance, who represents the village of Octatul in F, where a mammoth data center has been proposed, has told the Guardian he's never seen such a high level of local objection to a project before. The data center proposed there is in fact bigger than the village itself with an area larger than 100 football pitches. Protests are also growing in other towns and villages across the country which have been inundated with data center proposals partly because of Scotland's abundant supply of water. Banska people really don't seem to like data centers. They don't seem to want them nearby if at all. Is this though just nimism? you know, even a couple of years ago, how many people had the term data center like rolling off their tongue? Like that wasn't something I think we were really talking about. So there is something really interesting here about how a consensus has kind of come together really really quickly. Um I don't think it is just nimism to be honest. I I I get from the data obviously there is this reflection of we don't want it here specifically in our local area. Um but I also think that there's something empowering about people kind of having some kind of desiring some kind of autonomy about what happens in their local area. This is something that Andy Bernham was meant to be very much in favor of. Uh, of course, so there might be a bit of a bit of a kind of conflict there. Um, I mean, some of the justifications that have been made for why we must we simply must have these data centers and they must be in your area. Um, it just feels really shortsighted, which is the idea that all growth is good growth and that if this is creating growth, economic growth, then that's actually really good. And I think there's something severely limiting about that argument. um you know not all growth is good um the we should be distinguishing between you know a certain amount of energy for example being used to do something like you know create life-saving technology that's a good I can see how that's a net societal benefit for example but that's being collapsed into technology which might be being used to create sort of AI slop images and so I I'm struggling to see you know the distinction between those things with the with these data centers you know how how much of that of this growth is is kind of so-called good growth asosed opposed to growth which might end up being a kind of societal negative as well. But it's a reflection, I think, of the the limitations of the way in which we are measuring what is good in the economy and what is desirable or not. And and you made a really interesting point when we were talking about it earlier in thinking a little bit about the speed at which people have kind of mobilized against these data centers. Um, which is that often, you know, these technological harms that we are facing, they're quite intangible a lot of the time. It's very difficult to kind of put a kind of physical description on the intangible harm of let's say social media apps for example or X. It's not always very easy to do that. And you made a really good point which was that these data centers are of course a very prominent impossible not to look at probably if it if it is built in your area physical manifestation of um something which is coming very quickly down the line. Something which is going to be impacting people in quite a material way very rapidly very quickly. This week there was news that you know about 50% of graduate jobs are expected to be scrapped um because of AI. AI is a kind of contributing factor to that. And so I think it's interesting that the mobilization against these data centers how quickly it's happening precisely because there is a kind of physical thing there for people to look at as this kind of spectre of of horror this spectre of dystopia. >> Yeah. Yeah, I think I I think there's I mean yes, we were talking about that earlier and I think that there is really something in that that you know you you know AI and what it represents um is not something that you can object to because it's sort of intangible. out there whereas these these these data centers are and I think that you know Michael will often make the point about you know whether or not something which is being developed piece of infrastructure whatever has social value or not makes a real difference and I think that >> the social value of AI and people definitely associate data centers with AI. I know they do other things like speed up the speed up transactions in the city if they're nearby. Uh also very limited social value. Um but people have not been convinced of the social value of AI. Um because they would really try to make any arguments yet about its social value. All people see when they think about it is job losses coming down the road. Indeed some job losses happening already as you said about graduate jobs. Um various kinds of administrative jobs also going but you know massive massive job losses potentially in the future. uh and don't understand why on earth they should be supporting that on their doorsteps or anywhere in in the the country. I mean I think the other argument against this being nimism is I think a lot of people are actually moved by the waste that these centers entail in terms of resources in terms of water and electricity um in terms of carbon output. I think there is, you know, part that's encapsulated into it the sort of objection to AI and the data centers that are required to support it. Um, alongside the actual the thought that like these technocrats, the not technocrats, sorry, these bureaucrats, these billionaires who stand to be enriched from causing massive harm to us and to our environment are all represented in these things being built on people's doorsteps with no social value for them. And actually they're unconvinced by the economic value as well to be honest because everybody knows that data centers are not really going to employ a lot of people once they've been set up. They have they require like some minimal maintenance and security and that's about it. >> Yeah. Very minimal sort of benefits. Um and I kind of worry about Andy Bham and his government's potential uh sort of positioning on this to be honest. I know he's got this focus of cost of living which I I think is good certainly better than where we were at before. there's already been some indications that he's weaker around environmental concerns. You know, I think for example, the government procuring rules change so that you don't need to um if you're trying to procure someone for a government contract, they don't need to show any commitments to net zero, for example, which I think is, you know, is bad. Um but but I think his economic outlook is is very much like growth probably simulated by the state, which I agree with. Okay. Um but no real assessment, as I said, of of of whether that growth is of societal benefit or not. if it creates some jobs then that's just a net benefit fine and and there's no real more perhaps more detailed analysis that than than that. I mean I hope I'm wrong obviously because I want him to be better on this. Um but his positioning seems to be well we should just try and see all growth is good and if it can be redistributed a tiny little bit that's that's fine. Um and I'm not sure that's good enough for this kind of technological uh sort of whiplash now that's that's coming down the line with with this. I think I mean in a way nobody should be surprised by that approach from Andy Bernham though because that's a criticism that's been leveled at him around Manchester right that there's been uh growth in Manchester there's been the growth of a whole skyline in in in Manchester but that it kind of floats above the people who live there and it's a sort of shiny um empty in many cases uh development of homes which aren't really for you know ordinary people in Manchester but rather for like you international wealth and things like that which have been drawn to it. Um that you know looks looks like something is happening but it's not really happening in the in in any way or in the right way for the people on the ground. >> I mean it's like a perfect metaphor for our economy right >> it's giving bladeunner um yeah I think I think I do think though in this energy around data centers there is already um the capacity for something more organized about AI coming down the road. I mean on the show yesterday, Michael was talking about how like Open AI hasn't seen the adoption that it expected to have seen by now. >> Um, and I think it was put down to like the recalcitrance of employers to to to to to to use it more. Um, I actually think it's probably because employers are having to like negotiate very hard with their workers to introduce these things into the into the supply stream of whatever it is that they're they're doing. Um, I think there's a natural antipathy towards this technology from workers that we're seeing exhibited here and it and and that we're seeing it exhibited in this kind of public anger around data centers means that there is something to be harnessed against this this technology you know not I mean you know maybe there are good uses for it to put be put to maybe there aren't that's a public debate that actually has to happen that has not happened and if it doesn't happen there is this energy there which I think probably will be harnessed um to bring people together against something that they really don't trust. >> They say you can't buy love, but what I personally would call hate, on the other hand, can apparently make you a ton of money. The Guardian has reported that Restore UK leader and actual MP Rert Low has been paid almost £1,500 an hour for some of his tweets on Elon Musk owned platform X with a total sum paid out this year set to match his parliamentary salary. Now, I found this pretty hard to believe myself. I don't know why because Bana Seca told me earlier that she's been talking about this a lot um on another podcast. So I went and checked the register of interest myself and yes, it's right there in black and white. In 2026 so far, Lo appears to have received almost £56,000 across 12 payments for a total of 60 hours work. That's £932 an hour. Nice work. And I'm going to do a very heavy inverted commas on the work there if you can get it. Except of course in Lo's case, it isn't nice. Amongst Low's high engagement recent posts was this one from last week calling on Britain to enact a burka banan. This was another low banger from the weekend getting in a in a strop over the BBC reporting the success of a Sudanese child refugee getting their GCSEs. Now it goes without saying that everyone has the right to express their opinion even if you fundamentally disagree with it. Maybe the kind of engagement Lo gets and the kind of money he makes though shows that lots of people just do agree with him. Maybe that's all it shows. But that kind of massive engagement raises more than a few questions for an elected parliamentarian parliamentarian. For one thing, Lo is supported by Elon Musk, the owner of X. He's like politically supported by Elon Musk, who has repeatedly amplified the MP on the platform and so grown his earnings. Earnings which are in turn paid by Musk, who likes Lo's political views. That's clearly a case of possible incentivization if not financial interference in our politics. And while there's no suggestion of wrongdoing, do we want our MPs being paid by tech oligarchs who write things they like uh that they can then amplify all with the sheen of the officialness that comes with the author being an MP? In other words, potentially reducing our parliamentarians to handy puppets whose income is derived from credentializing the views of someone whose vast power is not democratic but merely economic. And of course those payments couldn't they also incentivize a person and I'm not specifically speaking about low here to double down on their rhetoric even intensifying it rather than engaging with a politics that's more in the interests of the nations of the nation rather than their bank balance. In response to the Guardian article Lo has said this if I wanted to make money I would not be in politics. I donate my entire net MP salary to local charities in my constituency. Being a politician is the most expensive job I've ever had. Maybe don't give your money away and then it wouldn't be expensive. In a later post on X, Lo listed all the charities in Great Yarmouth that he says he gives his entire monthly MP salary to each month. I think that's great. Fine, but it doesn't answer any of the questions or concerns that I raised above. Ben, what do you make of the story? As you as I said, you you've been talking about this for a while. >> An evergreen story is becoming for me, I think. Um, yeah, it's really grim, isn't it? Cuz I think for me, either way, it's bad, right? if he collects his his whole salary and on top of that he's still being paid by X, you know, I think that's bad. Increasingly, it looks like he's on a trajectory at the moment where that um amount that he's getting from X will like start to dwarf his MP salary if he was taking it. So, his incentives are still warped because your main uh pay is is actually coming from somewhere else potentially. But then the other side of it is also bad, which is what he claims, which is he has said that he donates his salary to charity. I would argue that's maybe even worse actually because then it means that you are almost entirely bought potentially by private interests and not the taxpayer at all. You actually have no financial incentive to be doing things um in in in with the taxpayers and your constituents in mind. So, I think that's really really awful and the charitable angle really it's a bit of a deflection. You know, would his constituents not really feel like they might be better off with an MP who, you know, isn't bought by private interest, right? Someone who doesn't have this incentive to potentially be engaging in increasingly divisive rhetoric, you know, and and I think as you've shown like the more his posts are seen and engaged with, the more money he gets. So, there's a direct link, right, between engagement um and how much he receives financially. And so there is a big incentive in built into there as we know in these very penicious platforms particularly X to use more divisive rhetoric divisive ideas to further your reach and then if there's a financial incentive linked to that you know that I think that's quite a corrosive situation. We were talking earlier and and Rert Low is he's not just a backbench MP really he's also actually someone who on the political scene increasingly at a kind of more national electoral level is having an impact. he may well have an impact as restore party in a number of seats across this country come the next general election. So that's quite a worrying set of ideas, a worrying um a load of sort of things coming together. And in contrast, Nadia Witt um when she became an MP, I think it was in 2019 and I believe she's still assigned to this commitment which is that she would give away half her salary and she gives away half her salary to various different charities I think or union movements and and things like that. I checked her register of interest today. She has no registered interest. It was just a blank page. And so if MPs want to do that, you know, that's fair enough. You know, she takes half her salary, which she feels like she can live on and she donates the rest elsewhere. I think that's completely fine. But to try and make up that vacuum with private vested interests to me, you are bought. You are not working for the taxpayer. You are working for other shady interests. But I think each of the um payments registered from eggs was for 5 hours work. And I think they start off at the you know beginning of um this year or something at you know sort of 2,000 or £3,000 for 5 hours work and by the end it's like £12,000 for 5 hours work. So you can see how you know the the amount of of how the engagement has increased and the value of of the tweets assuming that that that hourly amount that he's put in is accurate that you know he's can only produce so many tweets in 5 hours or whatever that the the money that they bring in uh is in a kind of feedback loop with the kind of engagement extra engagement he gets um points at which I suppose Musk has you know tweeted him himself or commented on a on a tweet to to to increase the the engagement Um there is a kind of mechanism that seems to be at work here, a really lucrative mechanism if you're saying the kinds of things that a particular billionaire with very strong political views um very strong and I would say detrimental political views wants wants you to say. Someone who is not even in the UK, someone who's not that I think billionaires in the UK should have extra rights, but you know they're in they're an American. They're not they're not here. >> And I it sort of made me laugh a little bit because in one of the quotes that you showed, he said, you know, I I have to work really hard to make my money. I I would not be in politics if I, you know, if I just wanted to make easy money. And, you know, not being funny or anything, I think if he worked in a hedge fund, I think he genuinely would have to work harder for that money. Like, and I'm not sitting here defending, you know, hedge fund managers or saying that they, you know, are kind of hugely of a societal good, but I genuinely think if you went to the city, you would probably have to do more than a few tweets to earn that kind of money. >> Yeah. And you know what's interesting as well is I was thinking I was thinking when I about about, you know, what you know what what should we do, what can be done, that kind of thought. uh like you know should there be you know parliamentary rules that say that you know if an MP just can't take money for media appearances for example for work in the media I mean I actually wouldn't be particularly opposed to that I think MPs they are paid by the taxpayer they should go out and put themselves in front of um the country for free to say what they think so that people can decide in their constituency whether they want to vote for them and indeed whether they want to vote for a party that they belong to. Uh I think you know it's ridiculous that MPs get paid to make media appearances or get paid to say things on the internet. I don't think that should should should happen. But the trouble is you sort of immediately know what the reaction from Rupert Low would be if there would be any attempt to like institute on the basis of the the kinds of earnings that he's making from a foreign billionaire. Um which is that it would be a free speech issue and it would be a way of trying to silence a voice of you know much needed dissent in the country a truth speaker who you know the establishment can't bear to hear. Uh, I mean obviously and some people would buy that. I mean, no one's stopping him from tweeting, right? They're just saying you can't get paid for it. >> Yeah. And you can say all that stuff for free. >> You know, I say stuff for free. >> Yeah. So, you know, to me that kind of sullies the the idea of of of freedom of speech, right? To say, well, you know, I have to be paid to say this. No, you should have your freedom to be able to to to to say what you believe within some limitations. I'm not a free speech absolutist, but you know, to me, it really sullies that very important value to say, "Well, I simply must be paid." I mean, it's just completely perverse. Just say it for free. If you really mean it, and it really is just about your values and nothing else. It's not about the paycheck. You will get up and say it for free and you can take your MP salary. You know, I'm quite happy for them to say their salary. I would even justify if we just kind of abolished um you know, secondary incomes, which I personally would support by the way um for MPs. I don't think they should get, you know, a dime doing anything else, you know, and if you don't if you don't want to just be an MP, then don't be an MP. I would support them having a slightly higher salary to do that. I I genuinely would because I think that the impact of that would be to remove a lot of kind of corrosive activity and in in our politics. But yeah, if if it means that much to you and you really want to say it, you can say it with your MP salary. >> I never understand the argument against raising MP salaries. I mean, you know, saying like raise them to the, you know, to the to the level of, you know, hedge fund managers or whatever, but, you know, like, yeah, put the put them up a bit. It's a serious job. Pay it pay it seriously. Um, but come with a come bring bring the caveat that that's that is like actually your full-time job, your really truly full-time job, and you can't have other sources of of of of paid income. I mean, I, you know, I guess you can't stop people being landlords and whatever, unfortunately. >> Yeah. And like I say this all the time. I think that register interesting is a joke because it's just one long list of like here's all the ways I've been paid and here's all the ways I'm complicit but it's all written down so it's fine. >> Yeah. The one that always makes me laugh is like the assets but they never have to say what they're doing with them. They just have to say they've got them. >> Medie Hassan is not the kind of debater you challenge without being very wellprepared. But Times journalist Hugo Riiffken decided to have a go on the topic of whether the Democratic Socialists of America should be opposed to Israel's policies in Palestine and its role in American domestic politics. Let's just say it didn't go well. >> Is it a fundamental part of the DSA to be anti-Israel? >> I don't know. You'd have to ask the DSA. >> But what do you think? >> I think that has become a litmus test for people on the left and center left and in the Democratic party more broadly in recent years. Having watched a genocide be live streamed to their phones. I think people are finally fed up. And by the way, this isn't just a left issue. As you know, Hugo, there are parts of the right. There are young Republican voters who are now saying we should not be supporting Israel. There are prominent Republican podcasters saying that as well. People are quite fed up of American blind support for Israel, which not only helped do a genocide in Gaza, but also played a role in provoking an unnecessary war in Iran, which continues which drives up gas prices. Uh, and they're seeing APAC, a lobby which like any other lobby, by the way, I always make this clear, just as the NRA or, uh, crypto or AI or big farmer uh, use Dart money to influence elections and help the 0.1%, Apac is doing the same in Democratic primaries. People are fed up of it. And I think, yeah, that will be an issue. I don't think the next Democratic presidential candidate will be a rah rah rah, we must support Israel Canada. They won't win the nomination if that's how they run. And I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that the American public has now finally woken up on this issue. And you now have polls showing more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians under occupation than sympathize with Israel the occupied. I never thought I'd see polls like that in my lifetime. But to come back to your point, that's Americans just showing agency and being smart. >> So you had there a very eloquent, precise, comprehensive, causal explanation for why the left as well as others are standing against Israel in the USA and also in other places like here. But Rifken had another question, a kind of different one. >> Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, why is it so why is it so important? Why is it so important for this whole political movement that you'd think was going to be largely about about about domestic policy about about capitalism, about social policy, about rent controls to have something from the other side of the world thrown into the mix? >> That's always been the case on the left though. In the 1980s, could you be on the left and be proarite South Africa? >> Could you It's a serious question. Could you Did you know any one prominent leftist in the 80s who wasn't ardently, loudly opposed to apartheite South Africa? Namely, >> no. But I mean but that but you can see I mean even on the face of it how those situations are different because you didn't have a you didn't have an apartite South South African leftist movement for example you didn't have South Africans who were proapartite who consider themselves to be on the left you know this I mean I don't the parallel is a bit weird >> I think the parallel is actually much worse we were much less responsible for apartheite in South Africa than we are for genocide in Gaza Americans are fed up of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money going to an Israeli government that uses it to bomb schools and kill kids and I think that's a fundamental now you got the war in Iran Which by the way, the US government is saying we fought the war in Iran because Israel was going to do it. So the problem you have is you have these people saying it out loud that we are fighting wars. Donald Trump said the other day, Hugo, that Marco Rubio is going after the International Criminal Court to protect Israel. Those are Trump's words, not my words. So when you have American politics making very clear that they are prioritizing Israel's interest over Americ's interest, for example, right now, um that is a problem. I >> I really didn't understand Riiffken's point about about apartate South Africa at all. So, so no, there were no leftists who were pro-appartate because you didn't have leftists in South Africa who were pro- apartate. Was that the >> It was just bizarre. >> I couldn't make it. I mean, you obviously had leftists in South Africa who were against a partate on very good socialist communist grounds. You had the whole communist party which was um uh you know at one point largely white South Africans or and and then you know merged in various ways with the ANC and then split from it. Um but you also had plenty of people who were leftists who were in the ANC who were who were um you know exiled. Um and you also have plenty of Israelis who are leftists who live in exile as well who don't want to bring up their kids in Israel. you know well maybe I don't know plenty I don't know the figures but you know you have some anyway but I don't understand what the relevance of that was to this point about it being kind of definitional of the left that even if you are engaged in domestic policies around rent controls and whatever other examples he he gave public services welfare you are also it's always definitional of what you're doing that you care about humanity wherever it is and you're going to be opposed to genocide and oppression and apartate where wherever occurs, right? >> Yeah. And I don't know if that shows a a certain limitation in his thinking that he thinks in political silos >> in that sense. You know, he doesn't see things as kind of being interconnected. Um I went to South Africa, as I've mentioned quite a few times on the show already, I went to Johannesburg um several weeks ago and I spent quite a long period of time in the apartheid um museum, which is this wonderful uh resource of of information about what went on in apartheid. And of course like leftists are are opposed to apartheid on principle which is that you know it's wrong. Um but also that the basis of apartheid like so much of it was economic and so much of the subjugation of black South Africans was about economics and about having a economic system that would benefit a very small kind of white minority rule at the top to the detriment of um of black South Africans in in particular. And so of course leftwing people would would make that link. And again, that's not to say that there has to be that um explicit capitalist underscoring in order for leftwing people to care because we should be against, you know, genocides or or mistreatment of anybody anywhere, of course. But the idea that leftwing people throughout history have not been making those links, you know, workers of the world unite, you know, kind of and understanding what happens in the colonies may have an impact on what happens here and that our liberation might be tied together. You know, that's just a to me that's a very basic idea underpinning leftist politics. I accept not everybody leftwing thinks that way. Like there are some people on the left who who do wish to operate in silos and talk about you know class in a very kind of narrow way which is just about domestically what's going on here. But I would argue those people by and large were in the minority. I don't think those people are in the majority on the left and and so to to to talk about this as though somehow it was it was a kind of an oddity that uh leftwing politicians in the US are taking these positions where they are being explicitly against what's going on in Gaza and that being some kind of a historical aberration is ahistorical to me. >> Yeah. I think also what's interesting as well is that you know what's what's not said there is that leftwing politicians and indeed like you know increasingly like online right media commentators are also taking issue with Israel over its what they see as it its interference through hugely wealthy bodies of money include like Apac but also you know a couple of billionaires um it's influence on domestic politics it's influence on who gets to run on on what ticket, who gets the funding based on the views that they that they've had around Israel, who who whose competitor gets funded if they've been critical of Israel. You know, this is this is not just um you know, this argument about the domestic political structures in the US is not merely a foreign policy argument or an argument about funding Israel. It's also an argument about the insidious creep of another state's influence into US domestic politics which means that things like rent controls um welfare spending um you know debates around universal basic incomes about you know universal health these all don't make it up to the you know the highest you know parts of like establishment power because those candidates who have those views also have anti-Israel views and therefore get like suppressed early on down the kind of electoral system and that's only just really starting to change now where uh people because I guess there's all this attention on on Apac and the and the lobby uh people are actually breaking through on anti-APAC tickets which I don't think is something that we've seen frequently in the US before and that is a domestic issue that's not a an international issue. >> Absolutely. They're very intertwined and you know money and politics in the US has been a big issue for a really long time. I think it's something that's becoming more prominent here, but it's still somewhat new. I think that discussion about money in politics, but in the US, we were talking about when the Supreme Court made its decision, was it in 2010, we said >> systemsite um >> for uh unlimited amounts of money to be given to political um parties or political individuals under the banner of free speech. Again, another perversion of of of free speech, right? And that's something which like across both Republicans and Democrats like they've they've actually been against in lots of ways for for quite a long period of time. You know, polling consistently has shown that that actually it's a kind of cross party issue of money and politics and and you're right like this issue around um Gaza and this issue around Israel like it gets to the heart of the way in which American democracy is operating and the way in which it's actually it's failing people. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Just I just wanted to make one last point about that debate and and and apartate. Um and I think this is something maybe Medi wasn't quite right about because he said uh you know the the the US is much more responsible for Israel than it was for a partate South Africa. Um and you know there is there is a lot of truth to that. You know the US sends more aid to Israel than it does to anywhere else and it has done consistently for a really long time. But I don't want but but there's also a way in which the US and the west in general you know a partate didn't just happen in South Africa as a kind of isolated thing which sustained itself on its own sort of internally merely on its own internal mechanisms. It was very much boyed up by the west as a kind of outpost for antis-siet um sympathy and as a way of activating the military in South Africa against communists in other parts of Africa like in Angola for example. Um, and you you know how you can tell that? You can tell that because apartate collapsed as soon as the Soviet Union did and there was no further interest in the West sustaining it. It became intolerable at that point. >> No, that's a really really interesting point and I mean, yeah, like the US's hands are kind of all over the African continent in that respect and the way that they, you know, were incredibly instrumental in removing uh any kind of so-called threat of communist or or socialist leaders. >> Banana, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. >> Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great. Yeah, it was great for me as well. And uh thank you everyone for tuning in tonight. Come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Navara Media. Good night.