Transcript of ‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 10 January

Transcript submitted by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:05
Hi everybody, today is Friday January 10th, and our friend Gilbert Doctorow is back with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Good to be with you.

Alkhorshid:
Let’s get started with the interview Elon Musk had with the AfD and in which he said– he was talking about the situation in Ukraine and he found it as Donald Trump was pointing out various times– he said that it was a stalemate in Ukraine for more than two years. How did you find this interview?

Doctorow: 0:46
The interview was interesting in a number of ways, particularly to judge Elon Musk’s possible contribution to the new incoming administration and what his superior intelligence-– and that is unquestioned, the man is one of the most brilliant men on earth, and he didn’t make us fortune by chance– what one of these most intelligent people on earth says and does when he moves outside his area of competence. And that is exactly what he did. I understand why he’s promoting Weidel, is completely in line with his taking over X, turning it X as a vehicle for promoting free speech. That is laudable and understandable.

However, when you have your free speech, you have to have something to say. And in this interview, it’s clear that he has nothing to say. Very sad because you think with all the time that I imagine he’s a quick reader and I imagine he has a very good memory. But it don’t seem to have been applied to the question that is uppermost in the minds of many people who have watched that. What is the future of Germany in NATO?

What is the view of this opposition, hard right opposition to Russia? Is it, does it hold the promise of a further split in European opinion regarding the current policies towards Russia, the sanctioning of Russia? This is the assistance in arms and money to Ukraine. Is there a change that we can expect, should Weidel and her party, the Alternative for Germany come to power? And listening to this and hearing, as you just said, his punchline, most important remark that Musk made in this whole interview that he sees this as a senseless war, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and produced nothing. And there’s a stalemate.

2:53
This shows that he is either just repeating for the sake of sounding aligned with Trump the empty propagandistic statements about the war that Trump has made following the intelligence briefings that he’s gotten from our deeply faulty American intelligence community in Washington, D.C. Or is this what Elon Musk believes on his own? I don’t dismiss entirely the possibility that he just did not want to contradict Trump. That exists.

3:31
But there’s also, just if you take his words at face value, he would appear to be completely under-informed and uncritical of intelligence that we know is deeply faulty and is basically propagandistic, repeating the empty claims and empty numbers that Kiev has produced over the last two years over the casualty rates and so forth. So this is a very big disappointment. At the same time, it is a refresher course in how everyone, including all the viewers to this program, should approach anything that anybody on this program says just as they approach critically what they hear on mainstream. You cannot expect to find in any of the experts a universal genius. That doesn’t exist in nature.

4:25
People who speak about Renaissance men, which is a word that was evoked yesterday with respect to Jimmy Carter at the, one of the eulogies from the speakers in the cathedral. There are no Renaissance men, or if they were, they were as faulty in their own ways as people who are said to be Renaissance men today are in fact. I hope that we’ll have a couple of minutes to speak about Carter. I understand I cannot violate the rule of not speaking ill of the dead, but nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that we have to be certified fools. And I do not share all of the praise and all of the bouquets put at his casket yesterday.

5:07
But that’s a separate issue, which maybe we have time for, maybe we don’t. And then the main point is that a person of the intelligence, of the wealth, of the success of Elon Musk, has a duty to the public in general to either shut up if he doesn’t know something or to learn something. So he has something genuine to say. That was not the case yesterday.

As regards the interview, it is very clear that Frau Weidel was playing up to him. She was saying anything possible to ingratiate herself with him for the obvious financial incentives that come from having him at her side. But I don’t think that that has so distorted her views that we cannot take and analyze what she said, because of the way it bears on the prospects for a change in NATO or an abolition of NATO that might come about in Europe quite separately from any reduced presence in NATO that Mr. Trump may intend to bring in with his administration.

6:18
So one of my most widely listened to and most authoritative fellow experts who is peers on many programs, including your own, that is Colonel Macgregor, said in the past week that he expects the Alternative for Deutschland to triumph at the polls in Germany on the 23rd of February and to take Germany out of NATO. Well, I ask and invite your audience to listen closely to the statements of Frau Weidel, the head of the Alternative for Deutschland, and see if you can find any reason to believe there would be the slightest change in Germany’s foreign policy if she comes to power, or she will not, when she takes office. Nothing.

7:17
They spoke about many things and many of the causes that she has espoused– and that Musk wanted the worldwide audience to see and hear about to give her respectability and her party respectability– these are many of our worldly causes, halt on illegal immigration, a reduction in taxes on the general German population, I assume on business as well, or business stripping away over-regulation that makes it very difficult to have initiative and to have innovative manufacturing in Germany. These are– free speech to ensure that there is no state censorship as now exists in Germany– these are all very worthwhile things and will improve the social climate in Germany if she and others were to bring that into play. Of course also to address what she denounces as the green policies that Chancellor Merkel introduced abolishing the nuclear power plants and so forth that have made German industry in such a disadvantaged position.

8:34
These are nice changes, but the things that interest your audience, the things that interest me, are changes in foreign policy. There was nothing in her statements to indicate a change of policy. In fact, she doubled down on Germany’s wrongheaded and unforgivable, unqualified backing for the state of Israel. She insisted that her party, the conservatives, are more solicitous, more promoting security for Jews in Germany than the other parties who are tinged with a leftist sympathy for Palestinians.

9:20
None of this is going to reflect well on a change in Germany’s policies to address the genocide in Palestine, in Gaza, and the rest of the atrocities that Israel is now perpetrating. There was, as I said, she agreed very calmly to Musk’s comments on the senselessness of the war, and she subscribed to his notion that Donald Trump can fix it quickly, can find a resolution to the war quickly. She asked him for details, and he very wisely said no, that’s not his role to play, that this is the prerogative of the incoming commander-in-chief, and he will not set out what specific measures Trump could or should take with respect to the war. But the idea, the basic idea, this basic fallacy in European policy is there, right in the middle of what she is saying, that the United States can end the war.

10:29
I’m sorry, officially the United States is not an uninterested, fair broker in this. It is effectively a co-belligerent. And it’s a co-belligerent on the losing side. How the losing side is going to settle a war, short of capitulation, is unfathomable. It may be that Mr. Musk has in mind capitulation as the outcome of this war, but he didn’t dare say it. And so we’re left to see that the Alternative for Dutchland is just going to follow in the wake of whatever America does. That is not very promising for our future.

Alkhorshid: 11:13
Do you understand the role of Elon Musk and how influential he is on Donald Trump in the coming administration. Can we get it, in your opinion?

Doctorow:
No, I don’t think we can. It is being intentionally left very vague. We know that he has moved into Mar-a-Lago, that he has a villa on the estate, on the Trump estate there, which he’s renting for $2,000 a night, which is of course small change for him. That gives him instant access to any important meetings that Trump may have with American politicos who come to visit him and bend the knee. But what exactly he’s contributing to this is not the least bit clear. I don’t know which way the information flow is going: from Trump and Trump’s advisors to Musk on how to characterize the present state of the war, or from Musk to Trump. It isn’t obvious. And it’s intentionally left unclear.

Alkhorshid: 12:23
You mentioned AfD and their policy. As I understand it and you’ve mentioned it, there is no drastic change in their foreign policy. It’s all about the domestic policy and how capable are they in implementing those domestic policies that they’re talking about?

Doctorow:
When you’re listening closely to her remarks, to her talking about how it was so essential to her since she doesn’t know all that much about everything, that she has competent aides, assistants, whom she allows to criticize herself daily and tell her what’s wrong. I’m sorry, that’s a very peculiar method of management. Musk didn’t come back to her on that. And he’s, “Oh, yes, we also, in our companies, we have feedback.” But generally speaking, in corporations, feedback means this 360-degree review, in which all people at various levels can tell the chief executive what they think about this or that.

13:27
You don’t do that every day. You cannot undermine the authority or suggest that the leader is rudderless on a daily basis. That’s not the way to manage anything. So that was not too good. She was kind of folksy. They were sharing laughs and jokes. It was all very conversational. The whole point was to put a human face on what otherwise looks like the Hitlerjugend, it looks like it’s a continuation of fascist Germany.

Instead, Musk wanted to show that these are just folks like we are, and they are interested in the same greater liberty, freedom of expression, chance to get rich by pulling back the very high German personal income taxes. That these were the causes that the American conservatives respect highly, are the basic agenda of the Alternative for Deutschland, as compared to what she’s calling the Uniparty, which means everybody else who are, if you listen to her, all a pack of socialists.

14:35
They’re socialists with the same agenda that the most progressive and I should say perverted forces in American political life are expressing, whether it’s the emphasis on gender issues or a leftist educational program, which is destroying the quality of German education in her view. These are the issues that Mr. Musk wanted the world to hear. And they did have a pushback to the criticism of this interview that Germany’s two main party leaders, that is the CDU and Merz and the socialists with Scholz, they were complaining loudly about Musk’s foreign interference in the election.

15:37
And she pushed back by saying, “Oh, okay, what about Mr. Merz’s disparaging remarks about Trump before the American elections? That wasn’t interference?” For that part, the Russians have also commented, what about Mr. Soros’ constant intervention in all European politics? It’s never denounced for what it is. It’s also foreign intervention. But that is celebrated by the EU institutions because it’s on the side of values driven policies. So these are the basic features of that discussion, on-air discussion, which I think really merits close examination.

Alkhorshid: 16:23
It’s so amazing to see that Elon Musk, who is so, he’s criticizing Soros and his attitude, but at the same time you see the same sort of behavior when you look at Venezuela right now in Europe. He tries to interfere in the domestic policies of these countries. Don’t you think that would be a game of two, like these two parties in the United States fighting each other, but at the end, we’re going to get the same result?

Doctorow:
Well, I think so. I was very positively oriented towards Musk, thinking that, all right, where is the adult in the room, which is what the kind of expression that was used about Trump in his first administration. I don’t think that Musk is the adult in the room. He’s a technical genius, but all of us have had plenty of experience with techies who try to set domestic and foreign policy, and usually those people are disasters. I’m afraid that Musk falls into that same category. I had hoped that he would help pull Trump out of extreme positions, but I think that was a false hope.

Alkhorshid: 17:44
Donald Trump was talking about Greenland and how important Greenland is for the security of the United States. Here is what he said. Let me play it.

Trump:
Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I’ve been told that for a long time, long before I even ran. I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time. You have approximately 45,000 people there. People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world. You look at you don’t even need binoculars. You look outside, you have China ships all over the place.

You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen. We’re not letting it happen. And if Denmark wants to get to a conclusion, but nobody knows if they even have any right title or interest. The people are going to probably vote for independence or to come into the United States. But if they did do that, then I would tariff Denmark at a very high level.

Reporter:
The US just have to draw a plan.

Alkhorshid: 18:54
Yeah. Because he says that, “I’ve been told that Greenland is so important for our security.” Who are these people, and what is happening in their mind?

Doctorow:
Well, this whole Greenland story has been handled extensively by mainstream media, and to a certain extent, in alternative media. But I think that most everyone I’ve read or heard has taken the wrong end of it. They’re all looking at the question, well, when the ice cap melts in 30 years time or whatever, these sea lanes will be very important. The control over the Arctic will be important. And so far it is really Russia because Russia’s geography is there and China in cooperation with Russia is trying to lay claims to Arctic wealth.

19:46
And so this is a bit of prudence. Other people are saying, “Ah, you can put missiles there in Greenland. That’ll be that much closer to Russia for deterrence purposes.” There are many of these arguments, many of them absolutely meretricious, which are dealing with the Greenland issue as an abstraction. I say it’s anything but an abstraction.

A man like Trump does not give a damn of what’s going to happen 30 years from now. This is part of his indifference to global warming. He won’t be around 30 years from now and he just doesn’t give a damn. The issue, I mean, there’s just no need to say that I support all the green measures, nothing of this. That’s not at all true.

20:33
But the arguments that Trump would care about Greenland because of what comes, is totally false. It is, I don’t know that’s intentionally misleading, it probably is, but it is taking us away from what’s really happening. What’s really happening is that Trump is considering throwing Ukraine under the bus. He can do it very simply. He doesn’t provide any further aid.

The Ukraine army, armed forces, will not survive more than a few weeks without American assistance. Europe cannot fill the gap. Therefore, if Trump does nothing to assist Ukraine, there’ll be a capitulation. The problem is the Ukraine regime will take the first plane out if they’re lucky, or they’ll be lined up and shot if they’re unlucky. And everyone will speak about who lost Ukraine.

21:25
First of all, Democrats preparing their argument for the next congressional elections. And there will be a very sore point for Mr. Trump. Well, how do you distract attention from that? Not only distract attention, how do you demonstrate that you really are macho and much tougher? And if you’re letting Ukraine go, it’s because you have much bigger fish to fry, much more important things on your agenda that are of higher value to American prosperity and security, and which frankly speaking cost the United States nothing.

It’s all low-hanging fruit. The Greenland issue is low-hanging fruit. Mr. Trump showed his teeth. He said he’s ready to use military force or economic pressure to get the agreement of Denmark to ceding ownership, possession of Greenland to the United States.

22:25
That was the first step. Second step, almost followed immediately, is a statement by the Prime Minister of Denmark that there’s no reason for us to have a conflict over this. There’s no reason for us to create a scandal within NATO by the United States itself, breeching all, she didn’t say this, but the essence is the United States breeching international law on sanctity of boundaries, borders by forcing the takeover of Greenland. No, none of it. She said the Greenlanders should decide themselves.

Well, that sounds in abstract political terms, it’s all very politically correct. She’s emphasizing that it’s a free world and these are free people. However, in reality, what she’s saying is, Mr. Trump, go ahead and take it. Because there are only 56, 57,000 Greenlanders on the world’s biggest non-continental Island, which is Greenland.

23:34
And you can imagine how little it would take in millions to each of those 57,000 inhabitants to buy them up. America’s expansion in the 19th century was very largely, or in many cases, where there wasn’t a war as such, in many cases, it was done without military force by buying up the given property. Well, you go back to Manhattan and the first Indian settlements and trading trinkets for land. That policy, in much bigger money terms, was used elsewhere, whether Hawaii or elsewhere, to take possession of islands or territories that became quote independent and then voted independently to join the United States. That’s what he has in mind.

24:26
It’s entirely feasible. I think he’ll get away with it. What this changes, as many people have written and commenting in my writings on this, is almost nothing, because the United States is virtually the only country that has serious military outposts in Greenland today. The advantages, supposed security advantages relative to Russia are nil. The Alaska is much closer to Russia. It’s, I don’t know, 50, 100 miles away, I forget, on the Pacific, than Greenland is, to anything Russian, going over the pole. So that is an absolutely empty argument.

25:07
Therefore, I say it comes down to Trump’s taking a page out of the playbook of Ronald Reagan, who I’m sure his assistants, some of them, have pointed out what Reagan did in a situation of embarrassment when in October 23rd of 1983, the American marines, more than 140 of them, were in barracks together with French soldiers in a peacekeeping mission so-called in Lebanon, and they were attacked by a bomb attack from Hezbollah, which killed them all. This was a terrible embarrassment. The United States, after that, pulled out of Lebanon completely. And how do you cover that up? Well, Reagan did it very effectively.

25:57
Two days later, on 25th October, 1933, he invaded Granada, and that took over all the front pages of all the newspapers, in which he looked macho, he was saving some American students, I forget what the pretext was for the invasion, but it was completely trumped up, phony, and and it served the purpose. Everyone quickly forgot about the disaster in Lebanon, and they moved on to our brilliant leader. The “Financial Times”, by the way, in its first coverage of these remarks by Trump, said, “My goodness, and we all thought that he was an isolationist. It looks like he’s an expansionist.” Hint, hint, bravo, bravo.

26:32
So they were very happy with that. And they were uncomfortable with what he said later in the same press conference that he quote, “understands” Putin relative to the expansion of NATO into Ukraine. Of course, our newspapers changed the word “understand” to “sympathize with, which is not the same thing as “understand”, except if you’re in Germany where the Putin stooges are all Putin versteher. They’re people who understand. But aside from that linguistic quirk of the Germans, an English “understand” does not mean “sympathize”.

Alkhorshid: 27:15
How about the funeral of Jimmy Carter? It was so amazing to see Donald Trump talking to Obama and while Kamala Harris was just not comfortable with the situation.

Doctorow:
I think we all enjoyed that. That wonderful coverage which was on many different news channels. Surprisingly, the biggest number on YouTube are Indian outlets that are rebroadcasted.

I followed that also. I enjoyed seeing, it’s peculiar in this funeral service to see Obama sitting next to Trump and sharing a joke. The two of them are on camera laughing at something. Next to them, completely rigid, looking only at the ceiling, was George W. Bush.

In front of them was Harris, who was so happy to have her husband there, so she didn’t have to look at anybody else. But aside from this body language, the thing that interested me, and there was a wonderful eulogy, the best eulogy was the first one, I think. This was by Gerald Ford’s son. It was the eulogy that Ford had promised to deliver when the two, when he and Carter, who had become fast friends, had made a vow that they would each read an eulogy at the other’s funeral so that the eulogy then written by Ford was read by his son. That was very good, very effective, very human.

28:53
The least human was of course the last one by Joe Biden, which was a very stilted and empty politics. But in between there were, everyone had bouquets to lay at the beer of Carter. And I understand that the man was revered by many people and had, particularly in his post-presidential years, of which there were many, had done a great many humanitarian things through his foundation that are well worth the praise.

However, looking at Carter and without being, violating too severely the old recommendation that you say nothing ill about the dead, departed, I have no particular affection for Mr. Carter. He ruined my business. It was the, I had a consulting business for American corporations that were doing, that were setting up large activities in Russia, particularly food processing from 1975 on. And after the Russians, the Soviets moved into Afghanistan, thanks to Mr. Brzezinski, Carter imposed very deep sanctions and my business activities suffered. I had to close down my company as a result.

So I have a personal, to be totally transparent about this, I have a personal axe to grind against Mr. Carter. But more importantly, having Brzezinski as his security advisor was disastrous. It came from the wrong sources. Carter took the wrong advice in appointing him. People who have some brain said, “Why would you ever appoint a Pole to direct policies which are mostly dealing with Russia?” So the United States got what it deserved, unfortunately. And the world got what it deserved very unfortunately, the promotion of the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to attack Russians, which lived on after the Russian evacuation of Afghanistan and gave us 9-11. All of these things are interlinked and they come back to one man and his personal decisions.

31:10
And that one man is Jimmy Carter. I have the highest respect, there’s something still bigger, which I want to mention. And of course, nobody in mainstream would ever touch this issue. They touch it, when they touch it, they touch it in a most flattering way. But he put, this came out in some eulogies, that he made human rights the most important aspect of his activity.

Yes, he did. And I do not praise the man for that. A lot of the problems that we’ve had ever since come out of that very emphasis on a values-driven foreign policy. It’s disastrous. And the opposite of values-driven foreign policy is an interest-based national policy, which isn’t cuddly. The general public doesn’t like the idea, but it avoids wars.

32:03
And the interventionism, all of the right to, or the obligation to save vulnerable people in various countries, which was the gateway to American military intervention and to disastrous loss of life and creation of failed states that go on for decades — all that goes back to Mr. Carter’s policies. So no, I do not revere the man. I respect him for his good intentions. But as we all know, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Alkhorshid: 32:40
As Joe Biden is on his way to leave Washington, we know that the last aid from the United States goes to Ukraine. It’s $500 million. And on the other hand, we have Fico and Orban talking about the way that Ukraine is behaving and their not letting the Russian gas going to these countries. They’re not happy with the situation. They’re going to be tough with Zelensky in Ukraine. How do you see these European countries, the response coming from these European countries to Ukraine, as we know Washington is supporting Ukraine as we talk right now?

Doctorow: 33:29
There are two factors going forward. Neither of them is in Europe. There is the Washington factor and the Moscow factor. And everything else will follow in the wake, depending on which of these two factors are decisive in the weeks and months ahead.

I would put my money on the Russian factor. I think that Mr. Trump is not looking to enter a new war, is certainly not looking to escalate to a nuclear war. And therefore, when he sees the Russian advance to the Dnieper– which is going to come in the next weeks, certainly no more than several months from now, when he sees the game is up– then he will meet with Putin yet again. I assume they’ll have a meeting before then, to put an end to this and possibly to talk about the security architecture in Europe, which is where the war started.

34:29
The Europeans have sacrificed any say in the way this goes. So frankly, I don’t care whether AFD gets 34% of the electorate or gets 51%, it’s not going to change anything. Europe is, as Madam Weidel says, in the center, they have lost their way. And all the elites that have managed to run the European institutions here in Brussels are disposable. They cannot carry forward and do the changes needed. So where do you look? You look at those two capitals, Moscow and Washington, to see how this war ends and how peace may or may not come to Europe.

Alkhorshid: 35:20
Yeah. Here is Donald Trump talking about Putin wants to meet with him. Here is what they said about them.
—————-

Questioner:
Putin — is that a day-one or week-one–

Trump:
He wants to he wants to meet, and we’re setting it up. President Xi, we’ve had a lot of communication and we have a lot of meetings set up with a lot of people. Some have come, but I’d rather wait till after the 20th.

Questioner:
And when you say meet with Putin or meet with Xi, do you guys want to have some kind of a summit, or are they going to come here?

Trump:
To be determined. But President Putin wants to meet. He’s said that even publicly. And we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess.
—————-

Alkhorshid: 36:04
The positive point in this talk in this response is he’s talking about we have to put an end to the conflict. I think this is very positive. At the same time, he’s talking about Putin wants to meet him. Your take, Gilbert.

Doctorow;
Well, I believe that Putin does want to meet him, but he hasn’t said it. Certainly hasn’t said it publicly. And the reason why he wants to meet him is because of several things, specific things that Trump said, which resonated in Moscow.

Going back, it’s almost two weeks, when Trump first said that he thinks that the decision by Biden to allow, just allow the use of American, high-precision, long-distance missiles to attack Russian Federation territory, that this was foolish and highly dangerous. That caught the Russians’ attention. And of course, in the last couple of days, Mr. Trump has come and said specifically that he does not see Ukraine ever joining NATO. That, of course, is music to Russian ears.

37:17
And so that sets the stage for serious talks between Moscow and Washington. And in that sense, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say there probably are feelers at a lower level going on between Washington and Moscow as to how to arrange, where to arrange, who the parties will be in the first meetings. I don’t believe that they’re going to take–

The Russians would not want to meet at the summit without the assistants doing all of the legwork, doing all of the Sherpa work, as they call it, preparing the way to climb the mount. So I don’t expect a meeting to take place anytime soon at the highest level, but would Kellogg and somebody else tagging along for a little delegation go to Moscow and be received? Well, of course they will be.

38:12
And will they be talking about possibilities for meeting at the top? Of course they will be. So … look, I don’t want to join, used to be in the first term of Trump, these Pinocchio counters, how many lies he’s told today. But of course this is a lie, what he was saying.

Alkhorshid: 38:33
Just the wrap of this session, on January 1st, Indonesia was one of those countries that Russia announced they’re going to be BRICS partners. And on January 8th, we’ve learned that Indonesia is full member of BRICS. And BRICS is just expanding and getting growing stronger.

On the other hand, Donald Trump is coming to power. Do you see the United States under Donald Trump would make this world, this type of conflicts that we are witnessing right now in the Middle East, in Far East, in Ukraine, are we going to be more divided under Donald Trump or Donald Trump is going to manage as he talks in his response to this reporter, he wants to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine, that could bring some sort of changes, I would say some sort of drastic changes in terms of Europe, the United States and Russia.

Doctorow: 39:48
If there’s a drastic change in Europe, it will not be from this alone. It will be by Trump’s also cutting back on American financing and equipping NATO forces. I think this will force a lot of rethinking. But the only rethinking that will count is for the European leaderships to come to the recognition that they live on the same continent as Russia. And they have to have some kind of a modus vivendi with their Eastern neighbor, and not only look at the transatlantic connection as their salvation.

So I’m hoping that the brutality that Trump and his assistants, including Elon Musk, may show with reference to the leading authorities in Europe, will parallel the brutality that he has shown to Justin Trudeau in Canada, with similar results. That is, I hope it will not be an empty hope, but I think it has some justification. And that is one of the points that I rely on for a change in Europe, brutality coming from Washington.

Alkhorshid: 41:10
Yeah. Thank you so much, Gilbert, for being with us today. Great pleasure as always.

Doctorow:
Well thanks for having me.

Alkhorshid:
Goodbye.