 Salam, this is People's Dispatch and you're watching The Daily Debrief coming to you from our studios here in New Delhi with me Siddhantaani. On the show today we have Praveen Prakash talking about submarines, nuclear submarines that is for Australia and much ado about Gary Linnaker and the BBC. First up submarines and the self-proclaimed leaders of the free world have announced from a US naval base in the sunshine state of California how Australia will acquire nuclear submarines under the umbrella of the military alliance known as the AUK US. Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Anthony Albaness all addressed the press from the Point Loma base in San Diego where they claim the military alliance is aimed at preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific. The plans for the new submarines go well into the 2030s and beyond leading several commentators to wonder what exactly the thought process is given growing global multi polarity and the ever real impacts of human induced climate change. But of course before the Indo-Pacific is free and open Australia will have to spend some cash and they'll do so by buying three nuclear powered submarines from the United States. First revealed 18 months ago the alliance was formed after the US agreed to supply these nuclear subs to Australia superseding an existing deal between France and Australia. The submarines have of course now been left out of a part of the world they consider very much a part or sort of within the sphere of their colonial influence. The AUK US alliance is clearly positioned against China in a region that may well be the next major global flash point if it isn't already. To talk about all this and a little bit of football afterwards we have with us news clicks editor-in-chief Praveer Bukhaysar. Praveer good to have you in our studios today we have you for the entire episode we're talking about things as seemingly diverse as nuclear submarines and football but somehow I'm sure we'll manage to find how the dots are connected. First up are you at all surprised by the announcement made in sunny California by the three some of our favorite three white men well I don't know if Rishi Sunak counts or where he is. Honorary white. Honorary white. Talking about this quite actually future-looking nuclear deal to arm essentially Australia with nuclear powered submarines what what do you make of the announcement and and the plans that Australia the United Kingdom and the United States are hatching for the Indo-Pacific. Well the Indo-Pacific part is relatively more clear because if we take Australia it's regarded in Southeast Asia as an ex-colonial power and even now its policies towards Southeast Asia in terms of immigration as you know extremely racist and in that sense Australia's immigration policies have always been racist towards Asia so that's therefore not surprising the Southeast Asia doesn't warm up to Australia as Australia might think they do the same illusion that ex-colonial powers have with respect to colonies that the colonies must be really in love with them because that's what their textbooks say what was a civilizing mission in all this part of the world. The interesting part is they replaced in this case the UK replaced what would have been the French who already had a submarine deal and they were supposed to give diesel powered submarines if you remember to Australia and they would have given it a shorter time span then what this AUK-US deal is about which are going to give nuclear submarines but starting with three of them by I think the US wants to supply a little earlier later on the the latest ones which will be manufactured which looks like the reactor will be manufactured in Britain and it will be fitted into the nuclear submarine. This is going to be which is going to come from United Kingdom and the Rolls-Royce pressurized water reactors are going to be used now if you take that that time frame earliest is 39 it probably goes to 40 years various people have said and so its significance in say another 20 years down the line who knows what is the picture of the world at that time so if you look at that picture it seems to be centered around essentially Southeast Asia and East Asia including Japan which is the quad part minus India which is the military alignment that the US wants and it seems this AUK-US is freely for Southeast Asia while the East Asia is Japan is the fulcrum of that along along with the United States Taiwan being the Ukraine of the East so to say that a war may be fought between US and China in Taiwan so giving that Australia's therefore really coming into this agreement throwing out the French and bringing the United Kingdom in has always been a big question mark what does it give the Australians apart from losing France's support and French were actually telling the United States hey in Oceania in the Pacific I'm a much bigger player because I've got this ex-colonial islands which are officially French overseas territories but really colonial possessions of the French and therefore they have the largest actually what would be called the zone which they can control both in terms of what their littoral coastline would say 12 miles and so on nautical miles but also the economics economics zone those so that that given France would have been a much better bigger player they already had a submarine agreement so we haven't understood the what is the meaning of this except this is the five eyes core of the United States NATO alliance if you if you will the Australia's formally not a part of NATO so this is the core of the five eyes countries coming together that's the only other way we can see what this means but the ambit of this is really Southeast Asia of course people have laughed already about that Australia says this is to protect their trade with the rest of the world well the major part of the trade in that part of the world is in China and their main enemy in that is China so as a very famous video which he goes all has gone all over the place that it's this discussion is that you are protecting the this navy you're using all of this your navy your main enemy is China and with the protect your trade who's your trade with China so this this conundrum as it was still stays but looking these things out the idea of transfer of technology to Australia the 2040s this submarines entering Australian naval force this seems a very far cry from today and the fact therefore they gave up the French technology and French collaboration is something the Australian XPMs have questioned but it still isn't cost very clearly and the United States also very clear that its capacity to build submarines is such that they will reserve it for themselves they're giving three made the US made submarines to Australia but bulk of it really is going to come from UK that is not clear so yes interesting but where it gives Australia in terms of the navy who that navy is going to be against will they have the manufacturing capabilities ever to nuclear submarines over there and of course the big question mark that if you allow nuclear reactors to be maintained or to be owned by Australia does it also mean they will also have the nuclear fuel capabilities transferred to them and if that is so is it a violation of the NPT so those questions the question marks still remain so but as you know those questions as far as US is concerned it doesn't really bother them because they says all these rules and treaties are for others not for us and that is still the picture they carry with them but increasing the world is actually starting to disagree with that picture and we have seen that China Russia India Brazil Mexico was joined bricks of all are now emerging as centres of power in their own right so where does it leave old colonial past the settler colonial past like the United States and Australia is a big question fair enough we leave this story here for today but we'll ask you to hang around because we're talking about Gary Linnaker next and and he's someone who back in 1986 you've watched play the world cup we'll talk a little bit about what's happening with the BBC and Gary Linnaker in fact we can get straight into it he's been reinstated now sort of ending this two three day row that has dominated headlines even on the BBC itself it was quite funny to see the BBC doing a live blog covering what's happening within the BBC but that's how important they consider themselves to be and and and this is a program actually the day that's been on since the early 60s or the mid 60s and Gary Linnaker himself has spent over 20 years on the program how do you view this series of events that led to him being asked to step back and now being brought back in well the crucial issue with the tweet that he did which he compared the immigration policies of the Tory government particularly of the Home Secretary Swela Breverman who has roots in the South Asia that they're stopped the ship stopped the boats stopped the boats stopped the boats targeting the boats which were coming with immigrant population from let's face it West Asia Africa North Africa through Europe into the United Kingdom two things which Dai Linnaker also has pointed out is that the number of refugees that the European countries have taken is much larger than what UK has taken and UK's target is to keep the Asian and African refugees out of the United Kingdom they have nothing else to offer on this issue except of course offering the immigrants to be disposed of in Dhawan which is one of their policies that they have of course the question they don't raise is why are there so many refugees coming from a few countries and if you look at those few countries you'll see Afghanistan well UK had the troops there it's Iraq UK had the troops there Libya UK had its troops there and of course Syria and Iraq now all of these are places where the UK has intervened mostly without any United Nations sanction in fact the only place they had some some quasi-legality but not to the extent of putting the boots on the ground over there is a no-fly zone over Libya where they could claim there's a United Nations Security Council resolution all the rest of it are illegal no questions on that no questions why are there refugees no question how many have you taken compared to say the Ukraine refugees who have come so all of this was basically a clear racist issue that we don't want brown and black people to come into the United Kingdom that's the sum and substance of it this has been an old Tory party bugbear as well as the further white racist ideologies of other parties Ian Paisley and so on so this is an older thing so I think we can understand where the Tory party is coming from Lillekar's quote was that he compared then this language to the language of the Nazi Germany and therefore the issue was of course the whole attack on him was that he's comparing this to Nazi Germany and therefore belittling the Jewish Holocaust and somehow eroding the BBC's rules on impartiality no that is an even more tricky part absolutely the political argument was that he's comparing the British party Tory party to the Nazi Germany therefore whitewashing Nazi Germany and be and therefore reducing what happened to the Jews therefore this is anti-Jewish statement that he's doing this is anti-Semitism you know their understanding of semit that only Jews are semitic and Arab population is not semitic which is of course nonsense but leaving that out the second part of it is the BBC impartiality till now people who do specific shows in BBC express their political opinions as other people have pointed out for say somebody does a cooking show and supported Brexit there's a whole number of other people who have done that that time the impartiality of a BBC commentator never came into controversy so this was because he really criticised the home secretary and it's not because of politics but the Tory party leadership was being criticised specifically that this reaction took place and of course it also raised the issue that the BBC chairman owes its position to essentially Boris Johnson to whom he had arranged an 800,000 pound loan and then he got his BBC chairmanship so this has drawn all attention and all these issues but the key issue really is that this question of impartiality by a commentator who's not in that sense an employee of BBC but essentially would be considered as an independent contractor that it only seems to apply on Linneker but not in others as you said Linneker of course is an icon in the United Kingdom particularly the English football because A he was a very important player he holds the largest number of goals except I think Bobby Charlton well now it's of course Harry Kane has yeah and his time he was just one goal behind Bobby Charlton so therefore people know him as a footballer and after that he's been a very able commentator in BBC with a large following there's a huge following and of course Bobby Charlton is also one of the figures in that famous goals that we talked about but he scored the first goal and then the two famous goals Maradona's one is the famous hand of Diego hand of God's goal which probably was a handball and the second goal was the brilliant run from the half line that Maradona made cutting right through the British defence straight through the penalty boxes scoring a goal of course Britain has made much of the hand of goal but the hand of God goal and how they lost because of that they don't talk about the 1966 World Cup which was also probably a even more controversial goal which is the goal that I think Joe first scored and that was probably not a goal probably if we had the goal line technology we have today it would have been considered not a goal Germany has protested from bitterly about that goal which gave Britain, England the World Cup for the only time for the men at least to me you know this kind of as as politics marches quite steadily to the right this kind of silencing of any voice outside of that sphere seems to be becoming a thing I mean and you're someone who watches not participates in but also watches the media in other countries in India particularly what do you make of that aspect of this entire debate where you know the more right wing sort of tabloids or outlets jumped on to the bandwagon to kind of talk about their own agendas it's important that they failed because Gary Linnaker had the white support of the footballers who refused to participate in any BBC program as long as Linnaker was under this quote unquote suspension and so on and it raised all kinds of issues that housing that you're doing it for him but not for others so the complete partiality if you will of this step it's power of footballers because England football is the iconic sport not cricket as Indians might believe it's really football and British football is working class roots so therefore it's also closer to the people in that sense including of course also right wing hooligans who infested the sport in 60s 70s and 80s but living all that out the power of sports has always been there in fact a lot apart from film stars the sports people have the maximum of social power if you will in any country and the British footballers have spoken out in this instance it has also black footballers who are also iconic today in UK so I think all of this is to the good that yes sports is not free of politics this whole bogus argument that sports is free of politics that has really been taught apart and you know in India our cricket has the same iconic status as football does but it's also interesting that Indian cricketers and it's a money issue as well because they don't want to lose the huge money both from television as well as IPL and so on and therefore they're unwilling to speak out Indian cricketers have never really spoken out much on any of these issues and less so today except when fellow cricketers are abused shashyam shami for example even recently so but on other issues they have been silent in fact it was bollywood was willing to speak up earlier but as you know the kind of attacks on Shah Rukh Khan on Deepika Padukone and others there is that silencing slow silencing there also the question is how much they will succeed or not succeed depends on what is the general temper of the people how they're willing to accept it in UK clearly the sportsmen revolt had a huge impact will similar effect take place here question mark it also I think depends on what is the social mood of the people Tony party in the United United Kingdom is a little bit of the ropes put it mildly and therefore you know any stick is good enough to beat them with so a lot depends on the larger political climate of that specific country whether people will speak out or not and I think that is a country by country issue it's not really that you can generalize yes in our country at the moment I think people are not willing to speak out so openly because the climate has become much more difficult for them and let's face it the pick the warnings are there both on social media as well as what actions are taken FIRs are filing various other steps are taken so given that I think the climate has to also change it's an interactive thing whether the climate will change because of people's actions or the people's the climate changes then the people's actions start I think it's basically symbiotic because both have to take place together but yes I think the UK sportsmen have played a role in the United States we saw on taking the knee and this kind of issues racism slavery head whatever the remnants are there on this sportsmen coming out India question mark other countries question mark Brazil the other place where there used to be sports activism question mark I think these are impacting some with Brazil we saw during the recent election how you know in a way that gold and green iconic shirt of the Brazilian football team has also as a symbol been appropriated by the political right so so like you're rightly pointing out these these kind of interactions can go in both I think that's rather difficult to appropriate because a set of footballers have also been on the left very much so even now you have those footballers which are listen for example so these these figures are there and yes Pelle was very apolitical he kept quiet almost on all these issues but it's not for everybody and of course if you take Neymar he has been on the other side so I think the Brazilian football we have to watch it has always been partly political the clubs are also politically divided and this is something across countries you'll see Egypt in Arab world all of this football is also very closely associated with politics and lot of his working class politics and therefore these issues do percolate into the sport itself but once big money is there then of course people are then much more scared to open out it was good for a change at least to see on a talent sticking up for each other because it is otherwise you know even in this industry because there are there is big money involved here as well it is otherwise quite a doggy dog kind of scenario where you're just waiting for one of these incidents to happen and somebody to get cancelled so that it opens up a spot for someone else to take but thanks very much for for all of that and your time today Praveer and with that also we'll bring to wrap this episode of the daily debrief as always we invite you to head to our website peoplesdispatch.org for details on these stories and all of the other work we do don't also forget to follow us on the social media platform of your choice we'll be back same time same place tomorrow until then goodbye