Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Gates

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Israel Shaken: Fattah Missile Rains Fire on Tel Aviv Once More | Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
by Judge Napolitano
Jul 7, 2025



Transcript

[Judge Napolitano] Professor Sachs, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. I know you're in another part of the world, but it's lunchtime here in the east coast of the United States. And as we speak, the president of the United States is having lunch with a homicidal maniac who also happens to be the prime minister of Israel. What do you expect Prime Minister Netanyahu is asking for now?

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] Well, he's asking for what he's been asking for for the last 30 years, which is a carte blanche to use the United States to make wars across the Middle East, a blank check for the United States to continue its slaughter of Israel, to continue its slaughter with American complicity in Gaza, and probably trying to plot some renewed war against Iran. Netanyahu is a warmonger, and he came to power in 1996 as a warmonger with a theory. The theory was that war would remake the Middle East in Israel's image. He counted on the American people to trust Israel, and to back Israel unconditionally. Essentially, the political system has until today, Trump has shown no capacity to differentiate, unfortunately, American policy from Israel's policy. We'll see if anything changes. I'm not optimistic on that point. But we know what Netanyahu wants, because he always has said the same thing. At least he's consistent. He's consistently murderous, warmongering, and a disaster for the American people, and he will no doubt continue in that tradition today.

[Judge Napolitano] Here is the Israeli foreign minister speaking on channel 7 news in Israel. I'm sorry, not the foreign minister, an Israeli member of parliament talking about the only way to save Israel is to utterly destroy the Palestinian people.

Is this the attitude prevalent in Israel today, or is this just the views of a fanatical member of Netanyahu's coalition in the Knesset?

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] Well, this is a very widespread view. I don't think it's possible to quantify exactly who holds what view, but this is very widespread. And it's the language of the Nazi Holocaust. It is the language of Genocide. It's actually, sad to say, it is the language of the Bible in the book of Joshua, which many Israelis read literally. In that book, it says that God tells Joshua, "Go in and kill every man, woman, and child in the nations that you will confront in the land which I give you." So in the book of Joshua, the Israelites are to commit multiple genocides. And this is taken as a literal command. This vulgarity that you just heard is genocidal language, pure and simple. There are no innocents. There will be no Gazans, no Palestinians left in Gaza. It's horrific. That is representing a policy that the Trump administration, and the Biden administration, and many administrations before that, have supported. It's beyond cruel. It's beyond criminal. It is clearly, explicitly, vulgarly genocidal.

And it's horrible to hear this, but you can hear this from many, many Israeli leaders. This is normal talk among the political class in Israel. This is normal talk among the government ministers. This is normal talk among the generals. This is normal talk among the Israeli defense forces in Gaza. They're killing people in cold blood by the dozens, sometimes the hundreds, every day. They want to kill or expel all the people. And the United States is part of this. Why is it part of this? Well, it's very distressing to contemplate how the United States of America, how people in the United States of America, but especially our governments, uh, hear this, know this, and pay for and supply the weapons to kill all these people.

[Judge Napolitano] There is a regrettably an American version of this as well by a well-known United States senator who believes that the Bible literally commands him as a senator elected by one of the largest states in the union, Texas, to support the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu. You probably have seen this, but it's worth repeating.

Chris, well, that last Q&A is just beyond remarkable. You're talking to a senator, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and he believes the reference in the Old Testament to Israel is a reference to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu today, or somehow carries over to that government. This is what we're dealing with. Professor Sachs, how common is this attitude amongst Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists in America today?

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] No, but Senator Cruz takes millions, or tens of millions of dollars, from Mega-preachers who preach this, and Cruz makes his living on scooping up money from saying these things. That's what this is. The man is completely corrupted by our political system and these campaign contributions. He's a a nasty, ignorant man. We saw, if you watch the whole interview, he knew nothing about Iran, but he knew that he wanted to bomb Iran. He had no idea how many people live in Iran. He knows nothing about anything, but he knows what to say to get millions and millions of dollars from his campaign contributors who include the megachurch Christian evangelical preachers who, by the way, tell their congregations similar things, and get vast money from their congregants. It's all a very sad system of monetary extraction and corruption.

[Judge Napolitano] Do you expect, let's go back to this lunch in the White House, which is still going on. Do you expect that Prime Minister Netanyahu brought MOSSAD with him to school the president on their version of what's going on in Iran, and why he needs to be more militarily aggressive with Iran?

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] Well, we know that Mossad is joined at the hip with the CIA, and has been for many decades in many crimes and murders, coups, assassinations, throughout the world. And we know that Mossad played an important role in convincing Trump personally to bomb Iran in this latest display of our one-person rule. Our President does not have the right to go bomb Iran to make wars, whether it's a 12-day war, or any other kind of war. That prerogative belongs to Congress. But Congress is so corrupt, money-oriented, and dead to the truth, that even when the President launches his wars, Congress doesn't care that it is their function, not the President's function. So is Mossad there? Of course it's there. Mossad and the CIA have run policy for the United States for decades. This is not something new rising. It may be denied, or whatever, but no one would take seriously such a denial. This is the essence of policy, that it is murderous, that it is secretive, that it is against law both international, and domestic, and that impunity is the whole style of government. What did Israel do with Iran in the middle of the negotiations supposedly taking place between the US and Iran? It went in and not just bombed Iran, but murdered dozens of people, and blew up whole buildings for their targeted individuals. This is Mossad operations. It's Murder, Inc., but it is part of the US scene completely.

[Judge Napolitano] Do you think that Donald Trump's bombs hurt Iran or helped Iran, made it weaker or made it stronger?

[Prof Jeffrey Sachs] I think it made the instability in the world much worse. Most likely the Iranians had removed their enriched uranium before the bombing, because they had plenty of notice, and it was reportedly 400 kilos and not hard to move according to the experts that I've seen give very detailed accounts on this. It ruined the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which played the game of Mossad and the CIA, of Israel and the United States. So, it wrecked an international agency. It ended supervision of the Iranian facilities by the IAEA. So there are no winners. Iran was weakened because it was pummeled. But Israel was pummeled as well. And the world became even more unstable. Violence, and war, and illegality, and assassinations, were further normalized. In other words, this is just par for the course. Donald Trump bragged that this was the kind of bombing like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a language by the President of the United States about the two atomic bombings of Japan. We're normalizing the path to nuclear armageddon. This is how we're moving right now. If there were going to be historians after the next war, and there won't be, because there won't be civilization left, but they would look at all these events, and there would be a chapter written about how the situation became completely destabilized in the leadup to the Great Disaster. The next war though isn't going to have historians after it,, because this will be the war that ends everything in the nuclear age. And we just have a normalization of lies, of murder, of instability, of secrecy, of falsehoods, of engaging in negotiations. And you announce the next round is in three days, and then you bomb them the next hour. What is this? Is this a game? Is this a video game? Is this a child's game? Is this our lives at stake?

[Judge Napolitano] So we'll see what the President says about all of this, but we can expect pretty much what is going to happen, because it's been consistent for years and years. Netanyahu, who is an absolute genocidal murderer, and he's sitting in the White House, he'll probably be lavishly praised by the President of the United States in an hour or two. Here's the Iranian foreign minister before the United Nations security council at an emergency session yesterday.

Chris, so I was wrong. It was not the security council, it was a BRICS meeting, but you heard what he said.

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] Yes. And I attended the security council meeting at the United Nations just after the attack by Israel, and the United States and the Western countries threatened Iran rather than criticizing Israel at that UN Security Council meeting. They couldn't utter a word against the brazen, murderous, illegal attack by Israel. All they did was threaten Iran if Iran responds, if Iran retaliates. It was shocking to see the brazenness, the double standards, the hypocrisy, the lawlessness by the United States and its European allies in the UN Security Council. I listened to the ambassador from Denmark, for example. She couldn't even have one sentence about Israel attacking Iran. Her whole speech was an attack on Iran. And judge, I took the chance to look up, because I was pretty sure that Ted Cruz had it wrong about what the Bible says. I wanted to verify it. He was referring to Genesis 123. And as usual with Cruz, he has the quote wrong. He said, "Those who bless Israel are blessed, or those who favor Israel are blessed." I don't know if he ever went to Sunday school, but he never learned anything. What it actually says is, "I will bless those who bless you," referring to Abraham, not to Israel. Israel isn't mentioned there. Israel isn't even yet present as of Genesis 12:3. "I will bless those who bless you, Abraham." Meaning, whoever curses you, meaning Abraham, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

So, Cruz can't even make a quotation, right? He doesn't know the Bible. He doesn't know his Sunday school. He doesn't know how many people are in countries that he wants to bomb. He's an ignoramist, but he makes a lot of money, by the way. He makes money from his preachers who make money from their parishioners. It's all extremely sad.

[Judge Napolitano] He also helps make public policy in the United States, which is disgraceful that a human being would be animated by stereotypical and inaccurate visions of something written 3,500 years ago as compelling him to support a certain foreign policy today.

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] And if you're going to support a genocide like he does, maybe he could even get the quotation right. Maybe he could even take the 10 seconds to open the Bible, as I just did, as you were playing one of the clips, so that I could read Genesis 12:3. No, he doesn't care. They don't care. They're playing games, these people, which would be fine if it were games, but this is the world at stake. And they've got to stop playing games. They've got to start telling the truth. They've got to start having hearings where people actually present evidence again. They have to start abiding by the US Constitution, which puts the responsibility for war and peace in Congress, not in the hands of one person. This is what is at stake in all of this. Playing games with our lives.

[Judge Napolitano] Scott Ritter just told us that he has seen videos of American contractors who to a person, are former military, whom he described as "maniacs" shooting Palestinians as they're lining up to get food in Gaza, and high-fiving each other for doing it. Now, how can Donald Trump permit that to occur? These people should be indicted by the Justice Department and prosecuted for murder.

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] Before our political system fell apart in the last few decades at the hands of corruption, the Israel lobby, big money, so that we don't talk about anything truthful, there used to be a time, several decades ago, when an event like that would have been news. It would be discussed. We have seen the people being massacred as they show up in this US concocted phony relief process. Remember what the US did was kick the UN relief agency out. Then it said we'll put in our relief. And of course, Israel murders the people as they go in for food. It starves them, and then when the people line up, it murders them.

Well, we can recall Nazi atrocities like that. And what we're seeing is atrocities before our eyes. But our political system is so destroyed now that nobody says a word. There's no seriousness. There's no hearings. There's no question of justification. Of course, we also have a Supreme Court that just ruled that Donald Trump can issue decrees as he wants, and the federal courts can't do anything about it, says this Supreme Court of the land. So, what was that revolution about in 1776 when we said we didn't want to have one person rule? What was it about?

Well, it failed. We went from one monarch to another. We are in trouble. And we'll see. You know, look, it may be they walk out of the White House, and Donald Trump announces a ceasefire. Let's hope so. Let's hope so. I don't rule it out completely.

We're talking as they are meeting. But if history is a guide, and the recent history is shocking, the US has been complicit in a genocide. I don't think any American could have contemplated that we would be in this situation, and not even ask questions about it at this stage. That's how broken our political system is.

[Judge Napolitano] Professor Sachs, I know it's practically tomorrow where you are now. Thank you very much for your time. I'm sorry the subjects are so gloomy and aggravating, but your analysis of it is much sought after, and deeply appreciated. Safe travel next week, Jeff.

[Prof. Jeffrey Sachs] Thank you. Thank you.

[Judge Napolitano] Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday at 8:00 in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman, and at 11 in the morning, Aaron Mate. At 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.

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LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : US a Collapsing Empire.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed live on Jul 8, 2025

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski: US is a Collapsing Empire.



Transcript

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napalitano here
for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday,
July 8th, 2025.

[Judge Napolitano] Colonel Kwiatkowski, always a pleasure.
Karen, my dear friend, is the American
Empire collapsing?

[LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski] Yes, it's been in a slow collapse for
some time now. I mean, really, to be
realistic, really since World War II, I
mean, it looked like we were at the top
of the world. And maybe that's the key.
Maybe we were at the top. And at that
point um policies expansionism constant
war uh we are an empire in decline for
70 years now.
What are the signs of an empire
uh in decline? Is it gross overextension
of the military as we have?
Uh is it the reduction in the value of
the dollar as we have? uh is it popular
but utterly incompetent and incapable
leadership as we have and have had.
Yeah, I mean it really is all of those
things. Um and also it's the it's a
shifting in the spirit of the
population. Um it is when people are no
longer proud to be a part of uh this uh
great thing. And I think you know the
whole MAGA message make America great
again is a calling back to some sometime
long before you know many years ago when
you know most Americans were extremely
proud and happy and honored to live in
this country and our culture has shifted
in such a way that um you can't say that
anymore. So, and that's something that
happens to all empires in their decline.
Uh, people no longer really want to be
associated with them.
Do we have competent and capable
leadership today?
No. No, we don't. And, you know, we we
have um, you know, we have this elective
system, right? this republic with
democratic features and we elect leaders
and you know these people are for the
most part pure politicians which means
they're very good at um telling stories
convincing people uh uh fake empathy um
raising funds uh living double lives you
know this is what politicians are good
at doing and so this is what we get uh
it is no wonder that Congress is uh the
way that it is I mean these are the
people we have put there Our system
rewards people like this and and when
you get the rare commodity like a Ron
Paul, Congressman Ron Paul for years and
uh uh Congressman Massie, when you get
this rare individual, the whole system
turns against them.
Right. Right. I mean, have we uh ever
had a state of affairs as we do today
where a small
uh foreign country so totally dominates
our politics that uh we utterly support
everything it does. We gain nothing but
the hatred of the world uh from
supporting it. uh its behavior fails
every moral and legal uh test. And yet
uh the president celebrates the prime
minister of this country, the American
director of central intelligence is
virtually a stenographer for this
country's
um uh intelligence community. I don't
think anything like like this has
existed in history, has it?
Not in American history, I don't think.
Um, you know, as you were describing a
small country that has great influence
on America in our past, you know, you
have to think about Britain, you know,
even after the war of independence and
that took some years to get finished
with and then in 1812 there was another
another battle and there were loyalists
to Britain um throughout that period a
significant percentage of Americans were
were loyal to Britain disagreed with the
idea of independence and those guys were
technically
part of uh a small country that had
undue influence, but that was our that
was the country we were colonized from
and that was a great empire really still
at their peak. Um, of course, losing
losing the American colonies was a a
sign of their decline, but they were
still quite powerful. Um, but that's the
only thing I can think of and uh it was
something we were able to talk about,
you know, are you a loyalist? Are you a
are you loyal to the king? Are you loyal
to the republic? We could talk about
that. And what we have with Israel today
is something that we cannot talk about.
We can't talk about honestly.
How has the American government
succeeded in desensitizing
the American public to its financing of
genocide, slaughter, and war crimes in
Gaza and even to a certain extent now.
This is relatively new, but it's
happening uh in Syria. How did that
desensitization
come about? Why aren't we outraged at
what our dollars are being uh used to
accomplish?
Yeah. Well, part of it is we we give our
dollars to the government without
without without any choice of course,
but but also without our knowledge
because you know we have u every month
or every two weeks whenever you get paid
your taxes are removed from that. It's
not like it used to be uh at the turn of
the century where um you know you pay
the taxes in one lump sum and you would
realize how expensive your government
was even though it was much less
expensive than it is now. So we they
they have a our our tax funding of the
government is basically stolen from us
before we've ever really acknowledged
it. Uh you know we don't occasionally
we'll talk about before tax income but
nobody lives on before tax income. You
live on after tax income. So part of it
is we don't recognize how much our
government costs. And then the other
part is we don't send great armies
abroad and we don't have a draft and we
don't uh you know we're not u sending
the young men and women of this country
to fight actual wars. what we that that
is all hidden from the people and it's
been highly technologically you know
enhanced I guess you say we fight wars
differently um I mean how many guys did
it take Trump to you know pilots what
was it seven pilots that flew to Iraq
and did a great war and ended the 12 you
know all this stuff that he says that's
seven heroes that's not 700,000 American
men dying on some over you know some
battlefield overseas so I think our Our
people have our government has really
protected us as a society from paying
the cost. We don't know how much it
costs in dollars and we rarely visualize
how much it costs in lives because it's
not our kids' life. It's not our cousins
or nephews or uncles that are dying. And
this is by this is the lesson that our
government learned in Vietnam. This is
the lesson they learned.
Isn't the is isn't the Netanyahu regime
I mean let's face it. Israel was born
out of the Nazi Holocaust. But hasn't it
become under Net Netanyahu another Nazi
regime in almost every respect in the
manner in which it deals with the
Palestinians?
Oh, I would say in the manner that it
deals with everyone. Uh it has become
entirely uh a Nazi regime. you know, uh
the idea of uh racism or religious rel
racial purity, you know, as being the
citizen, the true citizen, everybody
else substandard to them. That is
clearly how that government operates and
it's really how the people are taught to
think of themselves. This is part of
Zionist theory. So you have that the way
that they conduct themselves um
domestically uh the the lack of
attention they pay to uh international
norms or standards or morals or rules in
how they treat not just the Palestinians
but um really how they treat their
neighbors. I mean, can you imagine any
other country in the world that was just
would wake up one day and, you know,
bomb their neighbor, just hit them,
smack them down. Uh, you know, it's a
very militarized society. That's
something else that you saw with the
rise of Nazi Germany. You know, the
emphasis on state power, we see this.
So, in every way, they match up with uh
with Nazism. And and again, I don't know
if we can if we're capable in this
country uh of really talking that way.
Can can we really say that? Because um
well, you can't say you can't say it in
a lot of places. We can say it here, but
uh you can't say it on mainstream media
and you can't say it on a lot of uh a
lot of college campuses. Who could take
the Netanyahu
Trump love fest last night at that small
dinner party in the White House? It
wasn't one of those state dinners in the
East Room where it's a cast of hundreds.
was a small dinner party of uh Trump's
uh closest people. Telsea Gabbard not
there.
Uh Mike Huckabe there, Pete Hag, Seth,
Marco Rubio, etc. Couple of the faces on
Netanyahu's side I recognize. We'll play
a clip or two from it in a minute. But
who could take that love fest seriously?
In the middle of it, Netanyahu, as if
this wasn't planned ahead of time, hands
Trump a piece of paper in which he says,
"Here's a copy of a letter I sent to the
Nobel Peace Prize Committee recommending
you." My god, a recommendation for the
Nobel Peace Prize from Benjamin
Netanyahu. You talk about thinking a
nomination.
I know. Well, it it it definitely shows
how a lack of self-awareness, you know,
um that's just uh it's it's almost like
watching uh you know, Gotham City, the
crooks of Gotham City get together and
and talk about things because they're
just not incredible, but they're also
very it's also almost kind of funny to
see um the words that they use. But but
Netanyahu clearly is um playing
psychopant to uh to to Trump to some
extent. Uh, and I think I think it's uh
I think BB was very uh I think he was
surprised at what happened, how hard
that Israel was hit by by Iraq, I'm
sorry, by Iran. Um, you know, a couple
weeks ago that the losses that they
sustained, the damages were were really
um uh faith shaking in terms of Zionist
government there. You know, Israel was
not protected. They told the people they
would be protected, that they were
invincible, but that didn't happen. and
and you know uh I don't know for sure
who called who first but Trump flying in
with his bunker busters and then
immediately pronouncing the end of the
war the ceasefire and peace talks must
start you know this was clearly to save
Netanyahu's butt um his political butt
uh his perhaps his legitimate to you
know his body I mean we don't know how
much danger Netanyahu is in you know if
you are a uh if you are a prime minister
of Israel if you look back at the
history of the prime ministers of
Israel. Um, their ends come often times
in violence. So, um, I don't know how
safe Netanyahu is,
right?
Not that it would make much difference.
The people around him are much the same,
but he needs America now. He needs Trump
to u give him whatever he needs now. And
and so I think you could see that in
that Nobel Peace Prize letter
nomination.
Is is Trump his own man or is he a tool
of the of the Zionist deep state?
You know, I think Trump's
unpredictability
uh is is part of why he was popular
amongst uh many people in the country,
the majority. He's a little
unpredictable. You can't always be sure
what he's going to say, what he's going
to do. He um he talks a big line and
then he'll he'll change his mind. He's
not afraid to change his mind. Takes no
there's no shame in that for him. Uh,
and that's not a bad that's not a bad
thing, but I think he's harder to
manipulate
for the Israelis in particular. I think
he's harder for Netanyahu to manipulate.
Even though so far, you'd have to say BB
has gotten everything that he wants. Um,
on the other hand, if you look at how
hard Israel was hurt by Iran, uh,
physical destruction of, uh, you know,
buildings, a lot of military targets
were hit that they don't talk about. Uh,
that is a serious um Well, that's a
rebuilding. That's a cost. And who's
gonna pay that?
Oh, boy.
You Netanyahu? No. You know how he's
gonna pay for it.
The Congress. I'm sure.
That's right. We know who's going to pay
for it.
The Congress will authorize a hundred
billion dollars to repair Israel. I'm
sure uh there was there was conversation
last night about Ukraine. I'm going to
play a clip which is very interesting.
We're actually going to play it twice.
Once where we watch President Trump
speak and once where we watch uh CIA uh
director uh Ratcliffe react to what
Trump is saying. So uh Chris, he's being
asked about are you planning to send
more weapons to Ukraine? And of course
he says yes. This is obviously his war
now where we're totally in the Biden era
of just send them whatever they want.
Oh, I didn't stop that stuff last week.
Pete stopped it because he thought we
were running low, but we're not as low
as we thought we were. Here he is. Cut
number eight.
Are you planning to send more weapons to
Ukraine?
Uh, we're going to send some more
weapons. We have to. They They have to
be able to defend themselves. They're
getting hit very hard now. They're
getting hit very hard. We're going to
have to send more weapons. Your
defensive weapons primarily. Uh, but
they're getting hit very, very hard.
So many people are dying in that mess.
Now watch another version of it. It's
the same tape, but it focuses on uh John
Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, who
reacts with such relief and joy that we
are going to continue funding the
disastrous war in Ukraine. Ratcliffe,
who Max Blumenthal refers to as talking
about the Israelis, the stenographer for
MSAD. But here he is. Just just watch
his reaction. Same tape, different view.
Are you planning to send more weapons to
Ukraine?
Uh, we're going to send some more
weapons. We have to They have to be able
to defend themselves. They're getting
hit very hard now. They're getting hit
very hard. We're going to have to send
more weapons. Your defensive weapons
primarily. Uh, but they're getting hit
very very hard.
I'm not a fan of Pete Hegath, but I
worked with him for many years. But his
response was a professional and stoic.
Well, look at Ro.
I mean, this is this is making the
rounds on social media today and so we
thought we would uh play it for you. A
lot of our fans and regular viewers were
anxious to uh see us uh comment on it.
Um, it's ridiculous.
that he would react that way knowing
that the television cameras were there.
It's also ridiculous that it react he
would react with glee and surprise if as
if he didn't know what the president was
going to say.
Yeah. It looked like he took a big sigh
of relief, you know, just uh wow, this
is great. Um and you know, it makes me
wonder when I look at Radcliffe. Um, and
of course it's the same with most of
these guys, but you know, you get a
political a former congressman, and
we've had it with Pompeo, and you put
them in uh as the head of the CIA, and
they're not operatives, so they haven't
grown up in the in the CIA, but they
have a, you know, they obviously support
the CIA. They wouldn't be chosen
otherwise. And and I think many of them
have a uh kind of not really a worship
of it, but they are very impressed by
not just the CIA, but they're impressed
that they are in charge of the CIA and
and it's it's almost like, you know,
they've got a hold of the ring and it's
this great power. Um, but you look at
them like Ratcliffe in particular, and
you see a person who doesn't seem very
wellqualified and as you pointed out
with Hedgeith, who we know is not well
qualified, he did a great job. He did
what a staff member should do. uh as the
when the president makes a decision, you
know, you that stoic uh you know,
non-reactive, supportive, quietly
supportive type of thing. But but
Radcliffe didn't even he doesn't even
have the gumption to behave that way.
So, and I think what it speaks to is um
again the the state of our empire.
That's our top intelligence uh uh
operative. He's our top uh you know the
largest part of of the budget a
significant part of the budget goes to
his agency which operates largely in the
dark does all kinds of things around the
world all the time oftentimes in
conflict with different projects and um
and here's the guy in charge of it who
who can't even keep a straight face when
he needs to. One of our uh chatters, one
of our viewers who writes in by the name
of Nicholas said he reacted as if he
were an investor, an investor in the
military industrial complex because his
investment was about to go up. Chelsea
Gabbard uh was not there.
She's uh Radcliffe's boss. She was not
at the dinner, but there was a Gabbard
sighting today at the 2 and 1 half hour
there it is cabinet meeting. She was not
called on. She didn't volunteer. She
didn't utter a word.
Uh but there she put it up again, Chris.
There she is at the very end of the
table as far away from Trump as she
could be seated. Is she on her way out,
Karen?
Well, you know, either that or she's
she's been chasened in some way. Um you
know, I I remember when you know when
she was when the president said she he
didn't care what she said. That is
something that you really should quit
your job over on principle. Um, but
there is a train of thought that many
people in government service have and
that is that they're more effective
inside the system than outside the
system. And this debate goes on in in a
lot of different places. And uh my
opinion is you're not more effective
inside the system. And and this is uh uh
you know whistleblowers, people that
dissent. The system has ways of
silencing people who dissent and they
are and I think that's what we're seeing
with with Tulsi's treatment right now.
She has been silenced. She hasn't quit,
but she's been silenced. Now why she
stays, maybe she feels this is
temporary. She will have an ability to
uh influence uh and and do good work for
the United States. Um hard to say, but
she looks silenced.
Yeah. Here's um uh Trump, you know, he
used the F word the other day. Here he
is using the BS word. I I guess he
thinks this resonates with his base or
it's an honest expression, but he's
angry at Putin. Of course, I don't know
the number of the clip, but you have it.
That was a war that should have never
happened and a lot of people are dying
and it should end. And I don't know, we
get we get we get a lot of
thrown at us by Putin for you want to
know the truth. He's very nice all the
time, but it turns out to be
meaningless.
And then here he is um yesterday at that
meeting with uh uh Netanyahu. I'm I'm
going to play this because
uh you have written and I have written
on this as well that Harry Truman was
argu arguably the greatest mass murderer
in history. if you measure the number of
deaths by second or minute or even hour.
Uh but yet Trump tried to compare
himself favorably to Truman last night.
Uh Chris cut number 10.
They flew for 37 hours with zero problem
mechanically. I mean, when you think and
carrying the biggest bombs ever, the
biggest bombs that we've ever dropped on
anybody, when you think non-nuclear, and
we want to keep it non-nuclear, by the
way, but uh they did a phenomenal job.
It was an amazing job. And I think that
was I was talking to BB about it before.
That was the very beginning of the end.
It ended very quickly after that. I
don't want to say what it reminded me
of, but if you go back a long time ago,
uh it reminded people of a certain other
event and is uh
Harry Truman's picture is now in the
lobby in a nice location on the lobby
where it should have been, but that
stopped uh a lot of fighting and this
stopped a lot of fighting. When that
happened, it was a whole different ball
game.
He must have been taught, you know, he
went to a private school. They must have
been taught the same nonsense that
government schools teach everybody that
the atomic bombs ended World War II.
They just began the atomic era. They
slaughtered tens of thousands of people.
The Japanese army had collapsed and was
within days of surrender. But I'll let
you take it from there. You have some
very interesting observations about it.
And you have the courage to touch this
third rail of American history.
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, I'm no expert on
it, but I remember even as a as a
student in high school, when you know
when you heard the cities of Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, these are not famous. They're
only famous for being bombed. They're
not famous war cities or anything like
that. And then you read, you find out,
well, you know, pretty much a bunch of
wooden shacks and and Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, not too much different. Maybe
a little more technology there, but
these were not military targets. Okay.
And then you find out later, long after
college, that that actually the war was
over. Uh, of course we know VE day had
already occurred months before this and
the Japanese army was uh was done for.
The war was over, so why do this? And
then later, even later, you find out, oh
well, you know, Truman needed to send a
message and the military-industrial
complex needed to test these bombs out
before it was too late. And so, um,
really an example of, uh, uh, the
scientific, uh, military-industrial
complex making policy, the same stuff we
were warned about years later from
Eisenhower. But, um, so it's been going
on for quite a long time. Uh, you know,
I looked for for data and facts from
what I call CIA, Wikipedia. Um, you
know, that's the government story for
the most part. But you can learn more
from Wikipedia than you will be taught
in American public schools and
apparently in American private schools
as well.
the um the first bomb uh you know they
they dropped it by sight not by radar
and the site was a uh Roman Catholic uh
cathedral and of course it hit the
cathedral uh square on and the second
site was chosen because uh somebody
honeymooned in another city the
secretary of defense that they were
going to choose and he had fond memories
of it. He didn't want to ruin that city.
This is insane was kept from the
American public until everybody that was
involved was dead.
Yeah, that's right. Um, uh, the guy who
was the secretary of war, it's in my
article and I can't remember his name
right now, but he had honeymooned in
Kyoto two decades or two and a half year
two and a half decades before, uh, 1945.
He had had a honeymoon. I guess he was
still married to his wife, still loved
her. So that place had special memories
for him and it was one of the five
targets that were presented uh to the
decision makers to Truman and them and
the military decision makers on which
ones are going to bomb. There's five
choices and one of them was Kyoto. They
landed on Hiroshima and Kyoto. Um but
then this guy, the Secretary of War
said, "No, no, no. We can't we can't
destroy Cyoto. It's a commercial, it's a
a important place to me, but it's also a
a cultural and religious center iconic.
We we can't do that. Find another city."
So they went to I guess target number
six which was Nagasaki. And um just when
you when you think about this is how
again you asked about when the empire
started to decline. I would say probably
right about then because this is how
this is not how a great nation makes its
decisions. Um and I remember unrelated
to that but related to the incompetence
with which we are led and how our
decisions are made. You know the the
story have you heard the story about how
the the uh uh what is it the the line
between North and South Korea 49th some
parallel 39th parallel I don't know it's
a line that's where the division was
that's where the the demarcation line is
the the uh uh
you know the demilitarized zone
the mil the demilitarized zone yes and
that was I I have read in a book um and
I I think it's been pretty well
confirmed that that that line was
relatively arbitrary and the pre people
that came up with it were fieldgrade
officers. They weren't even they weren't
generals. They weren't uh topline
politicians advising, you know, on
national security. It was a bunch it was
a couple of lieutenant colonels and they
said, "Well, this looks good. Let's send
it up and see what happens." And they
sent it up and they decided that's where
it would be. So, this is how a failing
and declining empire makes its decisions
arbitrarily based on personal opinion,
randomness. Um
the coyoto uh honeymooner
was Harold Stimson.
Yeah. Very famous.
One of Pete Hegth's uh many uh
predecessors. Karen, a pleasure
discussing these things with you. No
matter how awful they are, they all seem
to involve theft of liberty, theft of
life, theft of property uh by
government. But we have to keep plugging
along. Thank you for your courage and
cheerfulness,
select and the time that you spend with
us. All the best, my dear.
Absolutely. Thank you, judge.
You're welcome.
Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8 in
the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctoro
at 11 in the morning. We'll wake him up.
Max Blumenthal at 2 in the afternoon,
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3 in the
afternoon. And all of this, Phil
Geraldi, judge Npalitano for judging
freedom.
Heat.
[Music]
Heat.
[Music]

[admin]

Trump’s ICE Raid Backfires Spectacularly
by Brian Kabateck
Legal AF
Jul 8, 2025

Attorney Brian Kabateck breaks down how Los Angeles community intelligence networks completely outmaneuvered Trump's massive MacArthur Park raid, emptying the 35-acre park before over 100 ICE agents and National Guard troops arrived to find only 20 kids at summer camp. He reveals how word spread quickly through the predominantly Latino neighborhood, turning Trump's intimidation stunt into a humiliating failure before Mayor Bass arrived to confront agents and demand they leave. Kabateck exposes how this raid violated the Posse Comitatus Act by using military troops for domestic law enforcement, giving California crucial ammunition in ongoing court battles. He explains why "being brown in a Latino neighborhood" isn't reasonable suspicion and constitutes illegal racial profiling. A powerful look at how grassroots organizing and community solidarity can stop federal overreach, while warning that only court intervention can permanently end Trump's war on Los Angeles.



Transcript

My message to Angelenos is, and I'll say
it over and over again, we are a city of
immigrants. And we support Angelenos,
period. Regardless of when they got
here, where they came from, are why
they're here.
Breaking news in Los Angeles. Trump's
efforts with ICE are completely thwarted
at MacArthur Park, the largest park
inside the city of Los Angeles today.
The efforts there have completely
failed. There's a lot to unpack here.
the mayor of Los Angeles drove ICE out
of the park and a lot of information and
a lot of legal issues to share. So,
let's start by explaining exactly what
MacArthur Park is. It is a 35 acre park
inside the city of Los Angeles. It's one
of the oldest parks in Los Angeles. It
is located in a predominantly
uh Latino neighborhood, uh an immigrant
neighborhood, and that park um serves
that community. It's well known that
there are a number of Latinos that live
in and around this area in Los Angeles
called the Westlake area, uh sort of the
Midwilshshire area. And here's what
happened is that around 10:00 this
morning, over 100 ICE personnel uh as
well as National Guard troops showed up
to do a sweep of the park. The problem
was word got out and word got out pretty
quickly and the park was empty except
for about 20 young people, youths in a
summer camp who were playing soccer in
the park. That was about all they found
when they showed up in the park. But it
wasn't long empty because all of a
sudden community activists started to
come out and surround ICE and started
taking videos and pictures of this
invasion in the city of Los Angeles. And
that's what it is. Absolutely. An
invasion inside the city of Los Angeles.
Now, it raises a number of important
legal issues, but before we get to that,
the mayor of the city of Los Angeles
showed up. She called the regional
director. She said, "Get out of our
city. Get out of our park. This is going
to cause more problems. You're going to
cause riots." And they did leave. They
got absolutely no one as of the last
report we got here in Los Angeles. Now,
what are the legal issues here? What are
going on when troops show up inside the
park? Well, this is exactly what the
Ninth Circuit addressed in its opinion
when it validated temporarily allowing
Trump to have National Guards and to
take over the National Guards. It said
protecting federal buildings is
acceptable, but then it left the door
open for injunctions if the troops were
being used to conduct law enforcement
efforts. And as we've talked about
before on this show, the Posi Kamatus
Act from the 1870s prohibits the use of
troops domestically inside the United
States against its own citizens. And of
course, there's no question that these
were against the citizens of the United
States because it was unlikely that they
were going to find any undocumented
people inside the park after the word
got out that ICE was there. So, were
troops being used in violation of the
United States Constitution? It seems
absolutely yes. Was this a stunt?
Absolutely. This was a stunt that was
supposed to round up people. But more
important than rounding up people, it
was to instill fear inside people in the
park in MacArthur Park in the most
heavily immigrant Latino section of Los
Angeles. So the first issue is does it
violate the constitution? Does it
violate the posi commitatus act? And
does it give additional fodder for the
state of California to go after the
Trump administration? The answer to all
of that is yes. And we're going to see
that next in court filings and in uh
motions pending in front of Judge Brier
up in the Northern District of
California where the case is already
pending and discovery is ongoing. The
next issue is can ICE and can the
federal government enter a park that is
owned by the city of Los Angeles? And
the answer there unfortunately is yes.
Under the supremacy clause of the United
States Constitution, the federal
government has the right to go into
public spaces in uh that are owned by a
state or a city. However, that doesn't
mean that they can go into private
places. So if there are private places
inside the park for example, meeting
areas, an area that has been cordoned
off for a private event, uh uh rooms,
offices inside the park, they cannot
enter there without a search warrant
despite being property in of the state
or the city, uh the they would still
need a judicial search warrant. That
means a search warrant signed by a
judge. So while they could enter the
park, we come to the next question and
the question that's come up often is can
ICE can the government ask people for
their identification? And the answer to
that is without either probable cause or
at least articulable suspicion, a
reasonable suspicion. You cannot ask
people for their papers in the United
States. And that's the subject of a
class action lawsuit that was filed just
last week, just before the 4th of July
by a number of groups inside the city of
Los Angeles to stop this immediately.
Was this a reaction to that lawsuit? Was
this the Trump administration trying to
rub the faces of the people of Los
Angeles in the fact that we can do
whatever we want? Probably absolutely it
was. It was an effort to say we're
stronger than you, but this isn't going
to last. The judges are going to
potentially shut this down. Now, the
next important question is what do
people what are people's rights if
they're in a park or in a public place
and they're stopped? Well, first of all,
they do not have the right to cooperate.
They do not have to turn over their
paperwork if there is no probable cause
or reasonable justification for the stop
in the first place. They do not have to
do that. What ICE is doing though is
intimidating people into admitting that
they are non um legal residents or that
they have no documentation. And even if
they don't, we know from past experience
that they're rounding up people. Look,
it's not probable cause. It's not a
reasonable suspicion just because
someone's skin is brown, just because
somebody is in an area where there's a
high immigrant population. That's not
reasonable suspicion. In fact, that's
racial profiling and targeting. So, what
have we seen here in Los Angeles today?
We've seen in Los Angeles is this has
gone down an outrageous act by the
federal government, but by Trump's ICE,
Christy Gnome, recently emboldened by
the billions of dollars that have been
funded to him under the bill that was
signed on July 4th by the president. We
see them coming in on a war on Los
Angeles. And we see Los Angeles coming
out the winner this time because the
people in Los Angeles knew what was
going on. The people were rallying. The
government in Los Angeles was going to
stop it and this came to an end. Is it
going to come to an end in the future?
Maybe not. Not until the courts
interveneed. Not until the courts set
specific guidelines and rules and
restrictions by which ICE and Border
Patrol and the federal government can
stop people. They need to be placed
under a court order. And until that
happens, this is going to continue. So,
you have to stay tuned to find out
exactly what's going to happen next. I'm
Brian Kabetc, one half of the duel of
Shant Carian and Brian Ketch. Kabetch
LLP. We are a civil law firm based in
Los Angeles but practicing throughout
the entire United States practicing in
all areas of civil law. I have over 35
years of experience myself and next time
Shant will be with us but thank you for
tuning in and thank you for watching
Legal AF.

[admin]

David Gibbs: The “Good War” Illusion - A History of Proxy Warfare
Glenn Diesen
Jul 9, 2025

David N. Gibbs is a professor of history at the University of Arizona. Prof. Gibbs outlines how the US fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then the Yugoslav Wars laid the foundation for the illusion of the good war.

US Provoked the 1979 Russian Invasion of Afghanistan: Parallel to the Ukraine War?:



Transcript

Hi everyone. Today we are joined by Professor David Gibbs, a professor at of
history at Arizona University. So uh yeah, welcome back to the program. Uh
thank you for having me back, Glenn. Um yeah, I wanted to discuss with you
today some of this uh yeah evolution of proxy wars and also how uh yeah the we
can say the evolution of a proess of a pro war on the political left uh as
interesting developments but um yeah I've seen articles that you have written
in the past about this and uh both in terms of the war in Afghanistan in the 80s but also
of course the Yugoslav wars. I I thought perhaps you could start with this the
the US provocation of the USSR in Afghanistan because it after the
Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, you had
the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she said that uh many people were now looking towards uh the
Afghanistan model. she said um on NSNBC or anyways uh and uh of course she was
hinting towards the idea that you know we we can use Ukraine to drain or bleed the Russians right um and and of course
the lesson from Afghanistan well the lesson they're telling now was that they could bleed the Soviets and this would
lead to destruction and uh yeah so a lot of people have looked towards Ukraine in the same way as a way of bleeding out to
the Russians however you also look towards other historical similarities
that is effectively also provoking the war as an opportunity. I was wondering
if you can yeah elaborate. Well, a couple of things just context here is the context was the American
defeat in Vietnam and that the United States had lost a war in Vietnam in 1975
a tremendous damage to American credibility and also not only internationally but domestically as
well. the public was simply not willing to accept the idea of further overseas adventures. And I think that uh the
other eyes simultaneously of among elites of neoconservatism, the idea of
the need to uh make up for the failures in Vietnam and reaffirm American power
um and high military spending and the like. And it was felt that what was needed was to shock the American public
with what one neoconservative called a Pearl Harbor-like event. Uh something so
shocking uh that the public would would would come around to the idea of a of a
new phase of the cold war. And that Pearl Harbor event was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
uh which was occurred in December 1979 after about a there's a takeover a coup
by the local Afghan communist party the called the PDPA
in uh 1978 a complex civil war within Afghanistan followed by a Soviet
invasion at the end of 1979 and the beauty of Afghanistan is nobody
knew anything about Afghanistan uh the public information base was virtually zero
And so you could tell the public anything you wanted. And the party line that the public was given, I remember
this very well. I'm old enough to remember it was that Afghanistan is one of the most strategically vital places on the planet. And that's why the
Soviets had invaded it. That it was completely unprovoked unprovoked. We kept hearing that very much like uh
Ukraine in that respect. Unprovoked and strategically vital and anticipated worldwide Soviet expansion. Um, now we
hear about Russian expansion, not worldwide, but you know, we're going to take over Europe. They're going to occupy southern Sweden. They're going to
maybe march to the Atlantic. Who knows? A very similar, even more extravagant rhetoric accompanied the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan. And this was seen as uh again it was strategically vital. And uh
you know so I spent many decades going through the archives on this. The archives of both the United States and
the Soviet Union I should add um going back to the 1940s. Um the Soviet
archives by the way have become available um in English through the Woodra Wilson Center. And so there's a
very large information base and what that shows is that Afghanistan was of absolutely no strategic importance to
the United States whatsoever for decades. US officials kept hammering away at this that Afghanistan is of no
strategic importance. It's um it's underdeveloped. It's very far from the sea. It's um uh at one point in 1956
there was a CI document that asked the hypothetical what if the Soviets were to invade Afghanistan and they acknowledged
this was very unlikely but let's say hypothetically they did. And the answer was the US basically would do nothing
because Afghanistan is strategically worthless. Um, in 1973 there was a Wall
Street Journal article on the front page, the only front page article I believe at any major newspaper up to
this point in time and it was entitled, "Do the Soviets coveret Afghanistan? If so, it's hard to know why." All right.
And the article referred to Afghanistan as a vast expanse of desert waste of no value to anybody. Um, but American
officials acknowledged it was important to the Soviets because it was on their borders. All right, on their borders.
And because of that uh they they established a large aid campaign to give economic aid. And the Americans said
that this was not a very threatening campaign. Afghanistan was neutral. They compared it to Finland. Finland the old
days, the neutral Finland, a third world Finland it was called. And the Soviets had no interest in a communist
Afghanistan. They wanted a neutral Afghanistan. Um then it was I won't go
into the destabilization of Afghanistan. That's a very long story. Uh it was largely provoked by the United States. I
should add Henry Kissinger decided in 1973 uh to um launch an uprising in
Afghanistan to threaten the government um to show American power despite our
fact we were losing the war in Vietnam. The US had to intervene somewhere. Afghanistan was available. It destabilized the country leading to a
coup in 78 um and a civil war between 78 and 79 and
ultimately the Soviet invasion. Um and the bottom line is that um the the um
Soviets we now know did not want to invade. Well, the bottom the American position was that the Soviets were eager
to invade because they wanted to expand globally and this would be a stepping stone the Persian Gulf. They would first
take over Afghanistan, then the Persian Gulf and then the world was the official position. And nobody contested this
because there was no real information in Afghanistan. Um and so um it's interesting by the way
a key player here in in in in escalating the war in Afghanistan was the national
security adviser to President Carter's big Bjinski who for 25 years had been a
political science professor at Columbia University published extensively on international relations and later on as
national security adviser he insisted Afghanistan was strategically vital. What's interesting is over 25 years
there was virtually no mention of Afghanistan in any of Bjinsk's works underscoring the fact that he was didn't
see that as a very important country and um in any case so you have this
propaganda invention that Afghanistan was strategically important because people had to be shocked into increasing
the military budget. Um and in any case what happened well let me stop for a
moment and see if you want to ask a question or interject something. Well, uh, I was wondering if you can
bring in, uh, Brzinski's interview because I, you know, Brzinski, again, if
you want to pull it into the present time. It's worth noting that Brzinski wrote, you know, the the sequel to
Mackinder's Heartland Theory in the I think it was 97 when he wrote the book
on the grand chessboard. And uh this was effectively a recipe for the uh for yeah
advancing and also cementing the unipolar moment. So uh was a key player
over decades and was born in Poland. I think he was instinctively anti-communist. He developed very close
ties to extreme militarist circles from the 70s onward. But he also saw sorry
yeah he also saw therefore in this unipolar moment to to maintain it it was important to again weaken rivals and
Russia being the main one. So of course in his work he put Ukraine severing Ukraine from Russia as being the main
objective. Uh but uh yeah but besides you know if you go back to the 70s and '
80s you know he was there to you know arm the you know he was arming the majin
bin Laden but uh but he gave an interview once because the whole idea was that the Russians as you said
invaded this unprovoked but he gave an interview as the main player there which
contradicted this entire narrative which they built up. Let me let me uh give a little bit more background here. So in
1978 you had a communist coup that resulted from extended destabilization
that began earlier and you had a communist takeover of Afghanistan. The PDPA was in power but they're very
illprepared for power and they're very factionalized and they instituted a series of reforms the country wasn't
ready for and was offensive to the very very conservative Islamic character of
the rural population. This resulted in a largecale civil war. Afghanistan um does
have a tradition of uh sort of the rural areas resisting the central government
and the they're the very proud of their independence despite their poverty. And
many people in Afghanistan um you know they didn't have heavy weapons but uh gunsmiths in Pakistan produced copies of
the World War I era British Lee Enfield rifle and many Afghan males had Lee
Enfields stored away. And so they would take out their Lee Enfields and start shooting Afghan communists when they
appeared in the village. And this led to a civil war in the country. Um a very
unfocused uh disorganized civil war. The people who opposed the government were called loosely the mujahedin but that
wasn't a single group. It was many groups and uh but nevertheless uh it had popular support. The communists were not
popular. They were very illprepared for power. And um and so you had 18 months
basically in which uh the Soviets were again we now know based on the documents
both Soviet and American documents was that the Soviets were very lacking in
control of the Afghan communist party and they did not encourage it's not even clear they wanted the communist party to
to take over that's not clear at all and when they took over uh they were very egased at the reforms that were being
undertaken which seemed destabiliz izing the Soviet position is we don't want a socialist Afghanistan. It's not ready
for socialism. That was their view. In other words, the image when had um that
Bjinsky presented was the Soviets were eager to make Afghanistan communist. They were eager to make it like Mongolia. The the documents don't show
that at all. Don't show that at all. The Soviets are very restrained. And the Soviets were trying to remove the sort
of more hardline factions of the communist party from power led by the foreign minister named Hafi Amin. He was
kind of seen as a radical hotad and the Soviets wanted to reduce his influence. They wanted to uh bring non-communist
elements into the government and basically they wanted simply to stabilize Afghanistan. What's very striking about this whole
period is that the Afghan communists uh were getting um aid from the Soviets
in terms of military aid and training. But the Soviets refused to send troops repeatedly again and again. The Afghan
communists kept on begging the Soviets to send regular Afghan soldiers. Oh, excuse me, regular Soviet soldiers into
Afghanistan. They said, "Our soldiers are unreliable. Uh you know, please send Soviet soldiers." and the Soviets
repeatedly refused. Um there's a very interesting event that took place. I'm
discussing this at some length because the whole idea is that this was unprovoked. The Soviets wanted to take
over Afghanistan. The documents show completely the opposite. Completely the opposite. Um in March 1979
there was a major uh breakdown of order in Hat which is the third I think the third largest city in Afghanistan in
which a whole division of the Afghan army defected to the Mujahedin with their equipment and it looked like uh
you might have a generalized breakdown of the whole military situation and the Soviet uh central committee uh met in
emergency session. BR BRV was not there. He was too ill. But all the other top figures uh the KGB chief um Andraov uh
the foreign minister GMOV the defense minister all met we have the minutes of that meeting and the
conclusion of the meeting they all agreed was that they could not send Soviet forces into Afghanistan
uh because uh it would mean that the Soviet soldiers would have to shoot Afghan civilians and that would be a
terrible look would mean the end to day tant with the Americans which the Soviets wanted to preserve
and um So they refused and so they were firm. They did not want to invade Afghanistan. Contrary to what was later
said they weren't eager at all to invade Afghanistan. Um what changed their mind? What changed
their mind in the end uh were two things. Uh first of all um
the Soviet the the Soviets wanted to remove Hafi Amin from power and they planned a coup against Amin and they
wanted to give full power to the very weak president named Muhammad Nur Taraki.
Uh Amin got wind of this coup and so he undertook a preemptive coup and he
seized full power. He killed um Taraki, President Tari and seized full power.
The Soviets were ghass at this because they didn't never trusted Amin. uh Amin had studied in the United States and
there by some reports he had some contacts with the CI front group and while he's in the United States and that
made the Soviets very suspicious he was not work there's no evidence he was actually working for the CIA by the way but the Soviets didn't know that and um
also Amin then began meeting behind the backs of the Soviets with the American diplomats suggesting some kind of an
alliance with the United States and he had a public interview with the Los Angeles Times in which he said Afghanistan would try and broaden its
base of support not just to include one country but many countries and everyone the Soviets knew what that meant of
course and so I'm sure that was a very big factor in their invasion but there was another factor which you just mentioned which is the US deliberately
provoked the invasion uh and the way they did that is that on July 3rd 1979
President Carter what is called signed what is called a CIA finding a secret
authorization to the CIA to give support military support non-lethal military
support which I think means everybody but everything but guns and bullets to the mushi for the first time in secret
while officially the US wasn't doing this and was denying that the US denied that they were giving this kind of support and private they were giving it
it was not secret from the Soviets however covered operations are rarely secret from the target country and the
Soviets of course found out about it which was intend I assume intended and I'm sure the combination of those two
variables the consolidation of power by amin combined with the American decision to back the mujahedin made the Soviets
very paranoid the Americans were thinking of establishing bases in Afghanistan or something like that on
their borders and that's when they decide to invade I think um a bit I'll
give you a bit more detail on the um American provocation here before I do so just some chronology the invasion
occurred on Christmas Eve 1979 when Soviets uh commando forces spetnav
were helicoptered into cobble They killed Amin. That was one of the first things they did was to kill the
head of the communist party, underscoring the fact the Soviets were not in control of the situation in Kabell. That's one of the reasons they
invaded. Um, and then they put in power an Afghan who was much more friendly to
the named Babra Carmal. And Carmal signed an authorization for a full-scale Soviet occupation of the country which
lasted 9 years. All right. Now, a bit more detail on the American provocation.
As you noted, Bjinski in 1998 gave an interview with the French magazine, The
Nobat. It was published in French. Um, it was later translated. I published a
translation in 2000 in an academic journal and it got some attention. Um,
and what this shows is Bjinski more or less boasted, not once, but repeatedly that he deliberately provoked the
invasion. All right? He did it intentionally because he wanted to get the Soviets involved in an Afghan what he called the
Afghan trap. Um he also said as motive that he wanted to get revenge for Vietnam. The
Americans were still very angry about losing a war in Vietnam and he blamed it on the Soviets who were backing of course the Vietnamese communists. I
think another motive which Brinsky doesn't mention is he wanted a Pearl Harbor moment to scare the public and
supporting a generalized shift in foreign policy toward a new phase of the cold war.
um which was achieved. Military spending increased. It's a myth, by the way, that the shift towards a new cold war
occurred under Reagan. It did not occur under Reagan. It occurred under Carter and it was Afghanistan that gave the
justification for it. And Bjinski is boasting that he helped orchestrate all of this and admits more or less that he
lied to the public. I remember at the time the Soviets said that they were invading. They didn't say it was they
said we sent forces into Afghanistan to oppose US and Western intervention in the country. and nobody believed them. I
didn't believe them at the time, but it was true. Uh, the US was intervening and
lying about it, the public. Um, this has been confirmed, the Bjinski
interview has been confirmed in a number of other places. Uh, later on, uh, a British historian named Jonathan Hustla
McCambridge University reported in a book that he had had dinner with a Lieutenant General William
Odam who was the chief military aid to Bjinsky at the time. And what Odam told him and he quoted in
his book was that uh Odam was the first one to brief Bjinski on the invasion.
And when he briefed Brjinski on the invasion, the first thing Brjinsky did is he pumped his fist in the air like
this in triumph and said, "They've taken our bait. They've taken our bait." Now, that's very clear what that means. So,
you have two different sources pointing in exactly the same direction. The new Observator interview uh and these
statements by Lieutenant General Odam. I might have finally brinsky in his memoirs and I published in 1983 talks
about the invasion of Afghanistan with some degree of satisfaction that enabled a shift in policy in a hardline
direction that he favored. Um and so all of these things basically um we have
multiple sources of information pointing all of them towards provocation with provocation. Um
before you interject let me um just add one more point. There's an Irish historian named Connor Tobin who
published in diplomatic history tried to discredit the Newvel Observator interview but the effort at discrediting
was very feeble. He noted there was an error in the title of the new observator
article. Uh and there was an error in the title but the problem is anybody who knows anything about journalism knows
the title isn't is selected by the editor at the last moment and is always considered the least reliable part of
any news story. and new observer by the way for those in know of the French intellectual scene is one of the most
prestigious publications in France. Um and um another thing uh that professor
Tobin mentioned was that Bjinsky later disowned this interview and claimed that
he'd been mis or implied that he'd been misqued. The problem was the disowning of the interview occurred 14 years after
the interview and uh it occurred after he'd been he sustained considerable
criticism for the interview. Um which which leaves doubt as to whether or not
this was a truthful disowning. Furthermore, and the critical point is the interview was largely corroborated
by General Odom. So all of the indications are that uh this interview
was quite authentic and accurate. Um and that we have solid evidence of provocation here. And again the analogy
to Ukraine is clear. Uh you know Ukraine uh the Ukraine invasion by the Russians was unprovoked. We saw this again and
again. Uh we heard this hundreds of times literally hundreds of times if you looked at the internet actually more
than hundreds of times thousands or tens of thousands of times on the internet. And um it was the same thing in
Afghanistan. It was unprovoked. But now we know the Afghan invasion was provoked and as was of course the invasion of
Ukraine. But let me stop and uh see if you want to um add anything.
Well, no. I was I remember reading that interview and uh Bizinski, he had Yes.
said something along the lines, now we could give the Soviets their Vietnam. And this was kind of the the idea that
we bring them in. Uh yeah, they they can't go and we have this opportunity to
gradually bleed them and uh bleed them. Yes. But uh but for me I this um the
idea that the that the Russians well then that time the Soviets wanted it uh
was also again very false and and there's even more evidence in that direction that the Soviets never wanted
to invade uh Afghanistan. And this is also the same with uh with uh Ukraine because
we're also being told that you know this is you know it's a dream to conquer Ukraine and once they're done they'll
move on. But uh as um in this uh memo by William Burns in 2008, he you know
writes very explicitly this uh if if they would see a civil war breaking out
as a result of trying to expand NATO uh the the Russians would then likely use
military force. But then he adds something that yeah which is something that Moscow doesn't want to do. So even
making the point that this will be reluctant. This is because they will see the status quo as being lost and they
can't afford the the new realities being imposed on them. But the idea that they wanted this that this is a you know that
the the this is a war they wanted. It's it's is very much proven it's not the
case. So but it's um it very much becomes a case study of political propaganda. I think that's right. it. Um
I mean several things here. The parallels are very striking. I mean one of them is the idea that uh the the
Soviets were eager to um to to occupy Afghanistan. They've been playing this
for decades. Some said very similar to how uh you know the Russians were eager to occupy Ukraine and in both cases it
was a stepping stone to further aggression. Um there's no doubt all the evidence we have all of it on Ukraine is
that this was undertaken with the most reluctance. Uh the Russians put off this decision for years. Um and uh again my
own view is they should not have invaded. They should have accepted the fact the United States was determined to humiliate them and accepted the
humiliation as better than invading. But there's no doubt also the US would have done the same thing under similar
circumstances if let us say Russia or China were establishing bases in Mexico. That's very clear. And in Afghanistan
there was extreme reluctance to invade this. The documents are absolutely clear on that. both the American documents and
the Soviet documents. Uh there was extensive propaganda. Um it was the opposite of what was claimed. Um in both
cases and um furthermore, I might add that there's no evidence in any of the Soviet documents that they had any
intention of going any further than Afghanistan. They wanted to occupy Afghanistan to make sure it wasn't a threat on their borders. There was
nothing about going to the Persian Gulf or anything like that. That was a propaganda invention
uh to justify it. One more point is that the Americans viewed publicly the invasion of Afghanistan as enormous
setback strategically to the west justifying a major military buildup. In private, they viewed it as an asset. It
was a good thing. Brinski said this in the interview. It got them in it invited
the Soviets into the Afghan trap. It was a trap for them. Um and uh for nine
years, by the way, the Americans did everything they could to lengthen the war in Afghanistan and to block negotiated settlements, which is another
similarity uh to Ukraine or the United States again and again block negotiated settlements that might have prevented or
stopped the war early on. Um and so the one more parallel that I have to
emphasize is the issue of proxy war. Um, up until Afghanistan, the United States
was much more willing to use regular US ground forces. Of course, in Vietnam, they sent in half a million regular
soldiers into out of Vietnam. Now, Vietnam discredited the idea of regular ground war. The public would not stand
for it. 58,000 Americans were killed. A lot more Vietnamese were killed, obviously, but in the United States,
58,000 Americans were killed. And that discredited the whole idea of future
adventurers based on regular American foot soldiers in combat zones. So
instead you had the doctrine of proxy war. Others do the fighting for us. Afghanistan was the first really
largecale use of this technique. And of course we're seeing this play out as well in in Ukraine. It's a proxy war.
Americans aren't being killed. It's it's Ukrainians who are being killed. Uh very similar to um what happened in
Afghanistan. There's no doubt Afghanistan um is very much a model for what the US would like to have achieved
in Ukraine, even if it didn't really work out so well for the Americans in this in the latter case.
It's uh it's interesting the not history repeating itself but how this became um
yeah formula because you also had uh Neil Ferguson he you know interviewed
all these American and uh British military and political leaders uh after
the Russians invaded and he published this piece in Bloomberg in was yeah March of 2022 where he said you know
effectively all the British and American leaders were all telling him the same thing that now that the Russians had
been brought into Ukraine the the only acceptable outcome was regime change in
Moscow. So he you know this was an opportunity and even wrote to bleed the Russians. So it was yeah very much the
same approach you bring them in and then yeah you can just bleed them until you
topple the government in Moscow. And what is so it's it's all the lying of
not just the governments but the media as well cuz a lot of all of this is available information but but yet
everyone has to kind of repeat the same mantra that uh no no it was unprovoked
and uh you know we we we just want Russia to leave Ukraine because we this is the only thing we're just motivated
solely by altruistic goals. We just want to help Ukrainians. Uh but of course I
think a lot of this is falling apart when you don't uh when you see majority of Ukrainians for example wanting an end
and the Europeans do not. Um I I want to ask about uh yeah another war as well
unless you had something to add on Yugoslavia. Now on well I I there is something I do want to add. I'll be real
this quickly. You want to you do want to pivot to Yugoslavia. I understand that it's um during the 1980s uh there was
there efforts to bring about a negotiated settlement of the war. The United Nations appointed Diggo Cordovz,
an Ecuadorian diplomat as the special UN representative to see if they could find
a negotiated settlement. And Cortez published his memoirs and what he said is that fairly early on I think by 83
before Gorbachov uh the Soviet Union tire got tired of the war and they realized this was a quagmire and they
wanted some face- saving means of pulling out that didn't look like a defeat and Cortez felt that his
obligation was to end the war as fast as possible and see if he could find his face- saving means because that would
facilitate a Soviet exit and he said the main impediment to this was the United states and that um publicly the American
position was to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan and arming the Mujiadine as with the objective of getting them out.
Privately what American officials were saying was they wanted to keep the war going as long as possible to bleed the
Soviets. That was the word they used to bleed the Soviets and damage the regime. And uh you know
if hundreds of thousands of Afghans die for the cause that's not a problem because it was not Americans dying. And
so um the Americans just kept on torpedoing uh efforts at negotiations and uh again publicly endorsing the
negotiations privately undermining them. And he said one of the reasons the war lasted so long was because of the
American non-ooperation with the negotiations. And only by the late 80s when there was
a shakeup in the Reagan administration and some of the hardline figures were removed partly William Casey who died of
a brain tumor. He was the CI director died of a brain tumor and some of the others had his edge scandals and were
moved during a scandal. Uh only then was a negotiated settlement achieved and um
you know the war went on for almost a decade. It permanently destabilized Afghanistan. The country has never
recovered from it. Uh so Afghanistan paid a high price you might say but from Rajinsk's standpoint the Americans won
except for one thing. Uh it destabilized Afghanistan so badly this was the incubation point for al Qaeda leading to
further destabilization led to another occupation by the Americans of almost 20
years of Afghanistan the longest war in American history by some accounts. Uh it helped bring about the war in Iraq. It
helped destabilize Syria indirectly because of the war on terror. Um actually the war on Syria helped
basically destabilize Europe by bringing waves of immigrants leading to Brexit. Uh and so you had all these decade after
decade of blowback from the initial decision to destabilize Afghanistan in 1979. So you could say the Americans
lost significantly by this. They Rinski might have fantasized that the US won the war but in the long term the US did
not win the war. the US lost. Well, to to pivot to Yugoslavia, I
thought um it it also had a lot of the similarities to the present. And uh of
course, one can begin with um with the maybe the sabotage of u of
peace. Now, of course, the Yugoslav war had you know, we mainly focus on Bosnia and um Kosovo. We can uh we can stick to
the 99 uh yeah Kosovo era. But uh but a key
event was at the ramblled the the peace agreement which was made because well
which was not made uh because even I remember even there Kissinger he had a comment something along the lines that
uh we were looking for an excuse to bomb. So setting the conditions
um at a level which they knew the Serbs would not be able to um to to accept.
But do do you see any other like similarities with between the Yugoslav wars and um
and yeah the present war in Ukraine? Uh there are a lot of similarities
clearly. Um the important one here is along with Afghanistan it helped
legitimate the idea that US intervention and war in general is a good thing. It
serves humanitarian purposes in in Afghanistan it helped the brave mujahedin freedom fighters expel the
Soviet invaders which was a good thing or into the narrative. uh in Yugoslavia,
first in uh Bosneravina and then in Kosovo. US intervention uh protected
ethnic minorities from persecution. Uh it protected women from uh rape and
sexual abuse. It uh helped over later on overthrow the dictator Saddan Malloich.
That was achieved in 2000. So had all these positive effects. Um and that uh
war was really the only way. One more thing that's very important here again is the disparaging of negotiations
publicly in Afghanistan. This is done privately and Yugoslavia was public but a narrative and the narrative was
Melvich was so evil there there men out there who are so evil like with names like Mallosvich Gaddafi later on Putin
that you can't negotiate with them. Negotiating with them first of all is impossible because they're like Hitler. You couldn't negotiate with Hitler and
these people are the same as Hitler. But more importantly, negotiating with them is immoral because that's compromising
with evil. And compromising with evil is what you defeat evil militarily is what
you do. Compromising with evil shows is itself a form of immorality. That's how
it was presented. And uh many I think well-meaning people bought into this narrative. Uh it was very popular on the
political left. Uh I was very struck by how first in Afghanistan and even more
dramatically in Yugoslavia, the left moved from anti-war and anti-intervention to pro-war and pro- intervention. Uh very much as the left
now is very much mostly pro-war with regard to Ukraine with a few exceptions. There are a few exceptions here, but
most of the opposition to the war in Ukraine comes from the right. Um and that was increasingly it was Yugoslavia
that helped mold the narrative. The narrative became very important here and sticking to the narrative became very
important and uh the narrative was a pro-interventionist one. I've written my second book was on Yugoslavia. I might
add that we did not have declassified documents as in Afghanistan. They weren't available yet. They used the um
international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has a vast number of testimonies taken under oath of all the
major figures both US and Yugoslav uh giving their recounting of the war and they give a very complete picture or
reasonably completely picture of what the US was doing there and a number of things come through which is again
sabotaging of negotiations. Uh the Bosnia war could have been prevented by negotiations being undertaken in Lisbon.
In this case, it was being done initially by the European community and the United States sabotaged the negotiations
um and provoked the war and um you know we had a three and a
half year war with 100,000 deaths that probably wasn't necessary because the war could have been prevented and the
claim was that it uh um it makes concessions to the Serbs and the Serbs are evil and you can't make concessions
to the Serbs um in the and uh so so you had a three and a half year war because of that there were repeated efforts by
the European Union then called the European Community to end the war early.
It was being brokered by David Owen, former foreign minister of Britain. And
in his memoirs again he lays out that one of the principal impediments to any negotiated end of the war was the United
States which kept blocking his efforts because it insisted that United States position was that only military victory
will do. And so in 1995, NATO began a large air campaign directed by the
United States. It uh you know defeated the Serbs militarily along with ground forces
provided by Croatia. Uh and only then and only then was the United States willing to uh allow for
negotiated settlement on American terms. The negotiated settlement was remarkably similar to what the Europeans have been proposing for years
um and could have been settled earlier. But I think what the Americans wanted was something to justify NATO and give a
new lease on life for NATO. NATO didn't seem to have any purpose after the Cold War and now it had a new purpose. It had
a military victory. No one was talking anymore about NATO's irrelevance. The Europeans
during the 90s, people forget this, there was a remarkable degree of independence by the Europeans and there was a significant initiative led by
France and Germany to make the European Union an independent player in
international relations independent of the United States uh as a check at American unilateralism and US made every
effort to block this and it was in Yugoslavia that they achieved this objective. Um, and Kosovo was a second
iteration of this. Again, there were negotiations led by Britain and France that aimed at
a peaceful resolution of the Kosovo War. And the United States torpedoed those
efforts. Um, and led to a 78-day air war, more intense than the one in
Bosnia, led by NATO, defeating the Serbs. And the peace agreement was remarkably
similar to what France and Britain almost achieved in their peace negotiations. But what the United States wanted was a military victory.
Uh and again it undermined European efforts at independence and demonstrated that NATO
is the only game in town. I think it was after the Kosovo war that Europe gave up completely on independence and decided
if you can't beat them, join them. And uh you know France resolved that it would have to rejoin fully the NATO
integrated military command that had left in 1966 which it did. I think
Sweden and Finland began gravitating towards ending their neutralism completely
and um you know so it set I think Europe on uh you know on the road to becoming a
full vassel of the United States which is what it is today and it was Yugoslavia that achieved that and Yugoslavia also just gave a very good
name to war. The political left after this mostly loved war uh and um gave up
its anti-interventionism. Um let me see if you want to um interject
any comment there Glenn. Well just that it was a nice introduction the Yugosa
wars to the era of liberal hedgeimonyy as you said when the political right
seeking hedgemony with neocons at least seeking hedgemony with the political
left seeking to defend liberalism and human humanitarianism.
And so you saw in these wars they yeah they came together hand in hand and uh
you know in support of the of the good wars. Uh and uh yeah this is for me this
is it's not one of the reasons for the good wars was
al also the assumption that there would be support that we were actually standing on the side of the people. And I thought this was fascinating because
no longer are we at war with countries we're at war with bad leaders. And that's right. You saw this with
Milosovich. We're just fighting Milosovich and then we're just fighting Saddam Hussein, just Gaddafi. Now, you
know, we're talking about fighting Putin. I mean, it it's very it's uh I
I'm thinking if you would this whole explanation of wars, this is
how you would explain a conflict to a small child would be well, you know,
over here the reason why we have conflict is because there's a bad man over there. If we remove the bad man
then there will be peace and uh you know also everyone will thank us because even the people were fighting and uh this
kind of yeah radicalism has is now become just
accepted by by by yeah by by everyone. And uh it's kind of strange cuz you take
away all you strip every conflict of uh competing national interests. You
compete strip them of all complexity and you end up with this uh you know good
guys versus bad guys. You know we're just here to fight for freedom and rights and over there is just this
really really bad man. And uh it's well again pull drawing connecting it to the
current war in Ukraine is is uh is the same thing. We we keep talking about Putin. Uh but you know
there's a country Russia. Uh we don't have a Putin problem. Uh we have a problem with Russia. Russia you know
there's no other leader I think that could would act in any different ways than Putin is now. But uh we're kind of
compelled to refer only to one individual very demonized Putin. And when one you once
you do this there's no reference to national interest. is not uh representing his country. It's, you
know, he's a KGB thug and you go into his personality and and and this is the
extent of analysis. It's very uh yeah, this it dumbs down to a
incredible level. I I think that you hit on something very important, which is the personalization of conflict uh and
the attributing of all problems to specific evil men. again in the manner
as you said of what you'd say to a small child. I think of a comic book. Maybe comic books I read maybe when I was
eight years old, that kind of thing. Um and it uh is amazing that educated
people would fall for this kind of narrative, but evidently they do. And um
and this is I something I do want to note in contrast is how this is far less
sophisticated than what we had during the cold war. the Cold War, you had all sorts of absurd propaganda, of course,
against communism, the Soviet Union. You had Joseph McCarthy or Jay Garoover making all sorts of ridiculous claims.
Um, nevertheless, you never really had anybody saying that we're at war with Joseph Stalin. All right, it wasn't
Stalin, it was communism. The level of analysis was far more sophisticated during the Cold War than what we're
seeing now. And it's remarkable how at the end of the Cold War, what you did have is this idea of again evil men. the
great man theory of history coming back. Some of these men really are bad. Mallowich was certainly a very bad
actor. Gaddafi was bad. I I don't particularly like Putin honestly. He's an authoritarian figure. I don't much
like authoritarianism. But the idea basically that um all problems result
from evil men is is um a simplification of analysis that's that's embarrassing
to hear. uh but nevertheless you had that and and it's very popular and remarkably difficult to push back
against. Another feature you had I think is the evolution of a neoonservative ideology
uh which really was a very clear ideology developed during the 1970s by
um fairly sophisticated intellectuals uh you know people with academic backgrounds a lot of them who were
reacting against the uh what they saw as weakness after Vietnam and wanted to
establish the United States on a um position of unrestrained militarism. I
think the model they had was Israel. Uh Israel basically uses um unapologetically uses force. It attacks,
it doesn't defend. And I think the neoconservatives really like the idea of offensive warfare, not defensive
warfare. Um and Israel not completely but mostly disparages negotiations.
Israel relies on force and the United States too should rely on force. Um making Israel a model for what the US
should be. I think that was a neoconservative idea all along. Um, you know, John Mirshimer um, uh, takes the
view that the Israel lobby is responsible for this and there's no doubt he's written an excellent book, co-authored an excellent book on the
Israel lobby. That's part of the picture, but I think another part of the picture is the Israel lobby essentially
is the US has become the US government. The neoconservatives became increasingly influential in the
US government and that's the Israeli idea in the US government, you might say. And um that was their model. And
this this was gradually Afghanistan was the first test case for neoconservatism.
Uh using total victory basically as an objective, disparaging negotiations,
provoking war, lying to the public about it. All of these things were done very consciously and cynically. Bjinski was very much the neoconservative camp. Uh
and now we're seeing it again. It's played out again and again. The war on terror, we saw this. We saw this in the overthrow of Gaddafi. It's very
influential in both parties. So I'm seeing here, we're seeing here I think is uh an ideology that is intrinsically
hostile to the whole idea of negotiations and relies on total victory through military force. And that of
course is what they wanted to achieve in Ukraine. The only problem for them is that achieving it Ukraine is impossible.
Yeah. So well again I think political propaganda is the key word because in propaganda the key objective is yeah to
sell in war propaganda to sell wars as uh virtuous and um yeah this is
definitely the case with with uh Ukraine as well. But um I thought what was
interesting for me with the 99 war uh against Yugoslavia was that at least
from my perspective this is also what began to break international law by uh
establishing an alternative because it was in this war when it was argued that
yeah the war was not legal because it didn't have a UN mandate but it was legitimate and for me this is uh was
very dangerous because you decouple legit legitimacy from legality. And one
can always ask, well, what made it legitimate? If it's not legal, what is the other source of legitimacy? Well, it
was in support of liberal democratic values. And then, uh, you know, so this
became a clause of exemption when you're allowed to push international law aside.
Well, are are the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, are they allowed to do this? No. No, because they don't have the
liberal democratic credentials. So it created a system a dual system where the
west kind of had a prerogative to break international law because we can say well it's uh we have a we have an
alternative justification one which is only reserved for us. So now after this
you you end up in situations such as with Kosovo in 2008 where we recognize
its independence and we can say ah you know it's a unique case it's you know we
we have the right to push international law aside and when the same excuses used by the Russians then in 2014 it's it's
rejected you know the same you know the Russians also couldn't claim humanitarianism as a as a excuse for
intervening in Donbas for example. So it's it's a very yeah I think for for me
this in 1999 this became a key moment uh which began to I guess unravel the whole
concept of having common rules. You know the British historian eh Carr said back in the 1930s that uh he wrote how you
know great powers always feel it's their entitlement to define morality uh and they always see a moral purpose to their
assertion of power. That's just a normal thing. thing. You know, Britain had the white man's burden. They didn't conquer
after the world out of self-interest. They did it out of altruism. You know, France had the civilizing mission. Same
thing. Uh this is a very common rationalization for great power exertion
of uh force. Uh what is very interesting though is how in private there was a
more or less open cynicism about this. Um, one illustration of this is in 1999
as the US was preparing for war in Kosovo, they wanted to get the British on board. And again, even Britain was
much more independent in those days than it is today. And the British foreign minister Cook told Maline Albbright, the
secretary of state, that uh the British were quite wary about this idea since it
would not get UN Security Council approval. And he said, "Our lawyers think that would be illegal." And
Albbright responded, "Well, then why don't you get new lawyers, right? Uh, you know, um, that's what we would do."
Um, you know, indicating the United States has no respect for international law. It's just a mere nuisance. It's a
triviality to be disregarded. And, uh, you know, when questioning about the moral basis of this, there was a lot of
self-righteous language. But was it really moral to torpedo negotiations and
to start a war that was unnecessary and to get people killed? thousands in co in Kosovo and tens of thousands in Bosnia
um when negotiations would have likely solved the problem without war. Is that really a moral basis? It it would seem
very unlikely. Uh but nevertheless, again, there's what's what's very striking here is the US doesn't like
accountability. You see, if you have to go through the United Nations, there's accountability there. If you have to respect international law, there's
accountability. But the US doesn't like accountability, which is only natural after all. If you have power, you you
have every reason to want to dispense with accountability. Nobody likes accountability after all. Um and that gives you the ability if you have power
to simply do whatever you want. And that's the US position that we should be able to do whatever we want. And we get to define it as moral because we have
power. In effect, that's certainly what the US did in Yugoslavia. And that's what the US is doing now in Ukraine.
Well, this is the problem with international law. The whole principle at least according to UN charter is uh
well from a more political realist perspective is uh there has to be mutual constraint for international law to work
because international law entails giving up some of your own um foreign policy
uh options uh in return for yeah reciprocity thus predictability.
But if no one can constrain you but you can constrain others then why would you accept the international law based on
the principle of mutual constraint. This is why it was common to expect under
hegemonic orders for uh international law and rules to be changed to a system
where um again constraints remains on others but it's reduced for yourself and
I think this is what you see with the well the so-called liberal international order which is or the liberal
international well the rules based international order in which uh um yeah
you can pick and choose between uh yeah which principles you you follow and uh I
yeah so that's why I also think in the '9s we began to introduce all this new concept oh democracy promotion
humanitarian interventionism global war on terror all of these things they have the same commonality which is
we sovereignty is uh reduced for others but not for us and uh it's um yeah I
think this is going to be one of the hardest adjustments in the multipolar order to go back and recognize that uh
well the constraint on others have to be also imposed on us and uh it's um it's
not going to be an easy few years. Uh and before we wrap it up, do you have
any other thoughts about how either Afghanistan or Yugoslavia can link up to
the current one? Uh something that I my whole career I've been fascinated by is
the rise of a pro-war left. Yeah. um which is where I come from and uh in the
1970s uh during the Vietnam War after the Vietnam War for an extended period the left was very anti-interventionist.
You had a very neat split between left and right on foreign policy. The right was interventionist and militarist. The
left was anti-interventionist and anti-militarist for the most part. And it was this was a clear-cut difference.
Um this began to break down in Afghanistan and it really broke down in the 90s uh during uh Yugoslavia and he
began getting uh um what they were called liberal um interventionists which
are essentially the same as neoonservatives but on the political left and by the left I mean the mainstream left, the democratic party,
socialist party in France, social democrats in Germany but also the activist left, people further left uh
began to talk in positive terms about interventionism as a good um as many of them do now in Ukraine. Um
and so you really had a transformation. The really the left had been somewhat of a check at least publicly in terms of
public discussion on the um on the on the idea of basically
unrestrained militarism at least in terms of public discussion. And that restraint was gone because the left
became a cheering squad for intervention. We don't intervene enough. We should intervene more. Many of them said uh many on the left said we should
have intervened in Darur, we should have intervened in Rwanda. Uh we should have done more intervention. Uh so I think
that this is something basically the narrative structure of how these wars were sold to the public um transformed
political discussion in a way there was no going back and it's still very much with us today.
Yeah. No, this is uh in again in the past you had political left often
arguing for Yeah. peace being um yeah the absence of
war. So pursuing nonviolent solutions to conflicts or diplomacy all of this uh
these days it looks as if they still consider themselves to be part of a peace movement but instead not to
oversimplify but uh that peace now depends on essentially bombing bad guys
and well that they taking them out. again uh it be so they kind of been drawn into this uh good war uh story as
well and uh yeah I see this with the Ukraine war as well they see it as a
deeply immoral not to send weapons into a conflict zone it becomes deeply immoral to legitimize the opponent by
you know talking to them and uh and yeah so it's I I think it's interesting how
the peace movement in general has been captured to the extent that people now believe the peace is just to send more
weapons and uh defeat evil. It's uh it's a morally self-righteous language
has come to define the left view on foreign policy that um moral self-righteousness seems like a
justification in and of itself. So yeah, Professor Gibbs, thank you so
much for your time. I uh yeah, hope you can come back again. Yes, I'd like to. Thank you.

[admin]

Evarist Bartolo: 50 Years of Deceiving Russia & the Collapse of Pan-European Security
by Prof. Glenn Diesen
Jul 8, 2025

Evarist Bartolo is Malta's former Minister for European & Foreign Affairs. Bartolo discusses how the Helsinki Accords have represented five decades of deception that ultimately led to the collapse of the pan-European security architecture. However, as a multipolar world emerges, there is an opportunity to revive an authentic Helsinki process for an inclusive European security system.



Transcript

[Prof. Glenn Diesen] Hi everyone and welcome. We are joined today by Evarist Bartolo, the former
foreign minister of Malta. So yeah, welcome back to the program. It's great to see you again. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Glenn. So uh yeah, we were going to discuss
today what should be in my opinion uh the main discussion in Europe but a
discussion no one seems to be having which is uh the failure to establish an
inclusive and functional uh panuropean security architecture and um I guess as
a quick introduction to our listeners to this topic is that at the end of the cold war we signed agreements for an
inclusive European security architecture based on the so-called Helsinki process
uh security architecture would which included Russia and um we then uh
changed our minds and we more or less began to walk away from the principles of the charter of Paris for a new Europe
and uh some of the reasoning was that the Russians were weak and instead of having this inclusive security
architecture we look towards the promise of a hegeimon ic peace or liberal
hedgeimonyy as we now refer to it. Uh and this of course was facilitated
through NATO expansion. So um essentially making eventually including
all European countries except for the largest country in terms of now yeah
population territory economy and military. So um and this meant that we
cancelled to a large extent agreements for this postcold war uh panuropean
security architecture. Now the hegemonic peace we can see now has failed and well
burned. uh there's no longer a hedgeimon and there's no longer peace and uh I
think Ukraine has become both the cemetery for the uniolar world order but and it could also become the cemetery of
NATO um under its current objective. So again uh what what Europe is discussing
now is what comes next. In my opinion, it's quite unfortunate that if you look towards Germany, they're saying, "Well,
I guess the solution is to spend hundreds of billions on weapons and take a leading role in confronting Russia."
You know, we've done this before. Well, the Germans have done this before in their history. And I don't think this is a the recipe for peace in Europe, for
simply to all arm ourselves to the teeth. uh instead I in my opinion we
should revisit this pan European option which we abandoned in the 90s and
predictably brought us to this horrible place we're now. So I'm very glad yeah
to have you here uh everice to yeah discuss this uh things and um I I
thought a good place to start could be the Helsinki Accords because this is really where we laid the foundation
wasn't it between you know how could the communist block of the east versus the capitalist block on the west find some
common agreements how to essentially share a continent. Uh so
yeah this came in 1975. So I was wondering if you can flesh out a bit about the ideas behind this and why this
was I guess the founding pillar. Well, uh, Glenn, I think till a few
weeks ago, I would have shared your optimistic interpretation of this
process, but I've spent quite a bit of time now going through 50 years of
national security archives of the United States, which are available online,
which give a lot of what was happening behind the scenes when it comes to
American and European diplomacy. I would say at best at best the United
States and I think the centerright European leaders saw Helsinki and the
CSC process as politics of gesture at best
much more symbolic than meaningful.
At worst, this kind of diplomacy can be classified
as peridious diplomacy, which the United Kingdom used to be accused of for many
centuries, especially by the French that they carried out a diplomacy which was
full of treachery and betrayed promises. Why am I saying this? Because even if we
go first of all I would say even during the second world war
Churchill had already drawn up plans to attack Russia you know the project
unthinkable which was declassified in 1998. I mean, you you're just working with
your ally to defeat Hitler and already you're thinking of turning on your ally
to defeat him. My impression is that historically, even if we take the 19th and the 20th
century, the only Russia that the United States and Western Europe can live with
is not as an equal partner. It has to be either a weak Russia or a defeated
Russia. And even if we go even if we just take
the final Hinki Accord of 1975,
when you see the evaluation that Henry Kissinger makes of it because President
Ford is worried that the Baltics have already started protesting that with the
Helsinki Accord, their boundaries will not change, which means that they will always remain within the Soviet block
Kissinger tells him, "Don't worry. Helsinki accord is meaningless. It's not
a treaty and it's a paper worth
nothing." And I think that that already shows a
lot even in 1975. So we're not talking about, you know, the last 30 years, 20
years, but even in in 1975, it was very obvious that for the United
States, what was important was NATO. And in
fact, in these uh confidential documents that we see online in the National
Security Archive, the United States says our our approach towards Europe is based
on three pillars. Number one, NATO. Number two, the European Union. Number
three, CSC. And I repeat, and I quote Kissinger again, saying, well, you know, this is
grand standing of the left sort of let's tolerate them a bit to to play around
with with with this concept, you know, of the talent and building a kind of uh
European security architecture. But really what we want to work at is to
strengthen NATO. And more than that actually says that the CSCE is a good
Trojan horse because through the basket of human rights and political democracy,
we can actually help those groups in Eastern Europe and in the Baltics uh to
weaken to weaken uh the Soviet the Soviet Union. Whereas the Soviet Union
was seeing CSC as a security arrangement,
I think the United States and Western Europe were seeing it as a good Trojan horse into the Soviet block through the
weaponization of human rights and political democracy. This might sound very pessimistic and might sound very
reductionist, but I repeat, a close scrutiny of these documents and then
especially of what happens after 1990, I think would bear out what I'm saying.
Yeah, there's a very interesting Russian uh scholar Fod Lukiano who I I think or
remember once wrote something similar. He pointed out that the Helsinki Accords it placed a yeah time bomb within the
Soviet Union. Meanwhile, uh the Western countries never I guess lived up to to
their side of the the yeah the the deal which was that ambition should be to
overcome some of this sum block politics and uh there's also a lot of literature
who supports what you're saying. Uh I forgot her first name uh Sut. She's a
scholar I think French or American. She she had written extensively on on uh
yeah on the failure of this uh inclusive security architecture. And she
also writes that the Americans were never really serious about the Helsinki Accords that this was seen as something
that would undermine an international system and dominated by the US and again dominated by NATO. So
and um but uh yeah there's also been other arguments
u so when they decided to expand NATO for example the Americans then proposed this NATO Russia final act of 1997 which
was most bring them together but really it was just so the Russians wouldn't complain too much about NATO
expansionism indeed in the book of Serotes he quotes Bill Clinton who when he was introduced to this deal he said
wait a So this means we have to sign this and uh we we promise not to put our
military forces in Eastern Europe. However, we can uh just withdraw from it
whenever we don't want to abide by it and it's like yeah okay we'll sign it.
So again it's a way of uh overcoming opposition while we still
plow ahead and I think this is the main problem. Um but taking us to the present
time we let's but let's but Glenn let's even let's go a bit a bit back to 1990.
So we're talking about Helmouth Cole and George Bush. George Bush asks Helmut
Cole to come to Camp David. This is 1990. He tells him don't bring Gsher with you
because Gsher is not doing what we would like him to do. Genshir was a voice in
the desert saying why do we need NATO with the Warso treat
the organization gone? Why shouldn't NATO
morph into the CSSE and have one security architecture which would
include everybody and not against the Soviet Union and Bush tells him we must
not let Ger you know get away with this in terms of seeing that we agree with
him. We do not agree with him and in fact call Tesbush no I will not bring Gshe this was just two years before Gher
uh did was not a foreign minister anymore so even in 1990 with Gsher
saying let's have a common European security architecture which is cooperative rather than confrontation
Bush tells him no we don't want that and we must not let and I'm quoting verbatim
now we must not let the Soviet Union snatch victory out of the jaws of
defeat. Let's not talk about equal partners. Come on. We want we are the
winners. They are the losers. They have to abide by what we tell them. This is
obviously never said publicly. But in these documents of the National Security Archive, both at the time of Bush and
then much more at the time of Clinton, you're going to find this over and over
again with what it was called that two track approach. Tell something to the
Russians. But then when you're talking to Germany and when you're talking to the Baltics
and when you're talking to the Eastern Europeans, especially the Poles, tell them something else.
In the meantime, the State Department is working on a plan to enlarge NATO.
Obviously, the Soviet Union and eventually Russia through their intelligence network used to know that
there were really practical programs on when the enlargement was to take place.
But they would never tell this to the Russians. They would tell them, "No, no, no, no, don't worry. We will enlargement
will take place only gradually and we will consult you at every at every stage. But but then you see that uh this
is uh this is not the case and throughout something that really strikes
me the there is a a meeting between the Manfred Verer who was the general
secretary of NATO at the time that we're talking now in the '9s. He talk he's
talking to the speaker of the duma. By the end the speaker of the duma had to
tell him I thought you came here for us to discuss not to give me a lecture
and and this is and this is consistently and then you see the weakness even of
Gorbachov and and the Gorbachov like like Premierov and the others are are
sort of advising him and warning him. you are, you know, you are giving in to
everything and the they do not they do not respect us. They, you know, we we
are not we are not considered equal and this is going to humiliate and to hurt
uh Russia and to hurt Europe a lot because a new dividing line is is
coming. Yeah, this uh
this is the very treacherous history of it because I la last month I was in um
in Georgia with uh you know the former American ambassador Jack Matlock who who
was there who negotiated an end to the cold war with the Russians. Um yeah as
ambassador to the Soviet Union. But he uh yeah he also made the same point which you make now. He argued that, you
know, under Clinton, he was telling the Russians, listen, we uh we will find,
you know, some inclusive Europe, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, he was going to the other Eastern European
countries and saying, "Oh, don't worry. NATO's coming. We're going to expand." And uh and it was it was all yeah, as he
said, it was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Uh eventually deceiving the Russians all along. in other
agreements we had as well because we had the Russian partnership um for peace and
they sold this to the Russians as look this is an alternative to NATO expansion we just but instead it was a way to get
all the Eastern European countries uh the militaries aligned with NATO standards and instead of being an
alternative it was a stepping stone towards NATO expansion and also yes ambassador Matllock points out this is
this was not a change in strategy or something it It's just deception. Just
keep the Russians calm and not too much opposition while we plow ahead with our
goal for hegemonic peace. But it was always intended uh to stab them in the
back effectively. Yes, I I agree. And and you can see this even for example in
1954 so we're talking now a good a good practically 20 years before the Helsinki
Accord Soviet Union already suggested that there should be a security conference
you know to discuss common sort of to build confidence between the two sides and United States
says no we do not feel any need for that in the meantime time and this is
frightening. In the meantime, the Pentagon was drawing up plans to invade
Russia on the 1st of January 1957. This is the dropshot operation where they
actually planned to drop 300 nuclear bombs on Russia, 20,000 tons of
conventional weapons to weaken Russia and to I mean they they would uh
obliterate I think 75% of the industrial the potential kill over nearly 300 3
million actually 3 million people and nearly 7 million casualties ulties and
this is so not even two tracks but even triple tracks saying something doing
something else and in the meantime all the time preparing for for war and this
is this is uh really really worrying and I I would like to also to point out to a
particular episode at the beginning of 1990 in January a meeting between Leva
and Bill Clinton Levawensa tells Bill Clinton don't trust the Russians
Because in one hand they hold a pen, in the other hand they have a hand grenade.
And remember the visorat countries are part of the west. Russia is not part of
the west. So it's even civilizational. It's it's not only you know we want a
weak Russia either because we don't like its political and economic system or
because we want its resources. Russia has to behave. If it doesn't do
what we like, we will invade Russia. We might be Napoleon. We might be Hitler.
We might be others. But the only I repeat, it's it seems as if the only
Russia that the United States and Western Europe is ready to live with is a weak and defeated Russia. And so when
you have the I mean the charter of Helsinki and then you have Paris and
then you have the stumble declaration the the the language there is so is so
good in terms of mutual security how how to have dialogue how to have mediation
how to how to work together so that not not one country feels threatened by the
others. It's interesting that when the Russians saw that the United States was
going to keep on pushing for enlargement, at one point
it makes a suggestion that let's have a a security conference so that we address
the security concerns of the Baltic countries and the Eastern European countries. There is an acknowledgment
even by the Russians that they understand the anxieties of Eastern Europe and the Baltics who had just come
out of their Soviet experience. They understand that anxiety but is the way
to address it to enlarge NATO or we can have a kind of
security arrangement. and both Bush and Clinton dismiss this as saying listen uh
it's nice the Helsinki uh is is you know is is a nice dream but
what we have is you know reality is NATO and what is also interesting is both the
Baltics and the Eastern European countries say we want to be in NATO not because we see a threat from Russia but
so that we control any authoritarian initiatives. and surges within our countries. So, so
they do not see it. So, it's a it's a domestic it's a domestic concern more than that they are worried that the
Soviet that Russia then is going is going to attack them. But what is very
very clear is that the United States wants to dominate wants to dominate
Western Europe and wants to dominate uh Russia. So no equal partnership. And
what is also very very clear is do not let Germany and Russia get close
together. We must always do whatever we can to keep them separate from each
other. At one point there is a discussion for the unification to take place
Germany must remain out of NATO. Again two track approach.
They give the Russians the you know the illusion that yes that might be
considered that might be discussed but then when talking face to face with call
it's very clear we want you in NATO because if you are not in NATO and we
have to withdraw the nuclear weapons that we have based in NATO which other European countries going to accept our
our nuclear weapons? See this is the kind of logic that we see happening over
and over again. Genshir believed that that was possible to keep not only
Germany out of NATO but actually to disband NATO to have a common security
architecture. But obviously the United States would not hear of anything like that. Whether it was Bush, Clinton,
eventually Obama, Biden, all all of them. It has been consistent. The
Helsinki spirit I think has been killed before it was even it was even born
because it was not believed in by the United States. The Eastern Europeans did
not believe in it. um and and the I would say the centerright politicians Europe did also
not believe in it especially when we're talking of the northern countries because I think countries like Spain uh
and Italy and possibly France I would say would would have believed in in Helsinki
to to bring it to bring it about but but otherwise uh in hindsight now I would say that it
had never a chance of of succeeding also because the energy and the push was for
the enlargement of NATO to enlarge first the European Union and then at a
second stage enlarge NATO. I remember when I met Minister Lavough in Soi for
four years ago and he was telling me the discussion that he had with President
Romano Prodi at the time. Pro had told him, you know, this is going to work to
your advantage. The fact that we are going to include the Baltic countries and the Eastern European countries in
the European Union because now as they become part of our club, we will calm
them. They will be they will feel secure and safe and they will be less anti-Russian.
Lavroof told him, "Mark my words, in a few years we'll see that the European
Union has become more antiRussian rather than that you have conned the the Baltic
states and the Eastern European states." And unfortunately
it has happened. It has happened and and one thing I would like to say about this and this is from my personal experience.
I I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. So when when uh in 2021
and also in 2022, Minister Lavrov was writing to all of us as foreign affairs
ministers of the European Union and he was obviously quoting the Helsinki
accorder of of Paris and the Istanul declaration
to talk about indivisible security and that my security does not threaten your
security and that we must work together to build this uh European home that had died obviously
with with Gorbachov. Uh he he wrote to each and every one of
us as as a at least as a matter of courtesy. I sat down to answer him and
sent a reply uh straight away, you know, saying that I believe in cooperative
security, that we should work together, we should negotiate. All hell broke loose. They said, "Who
authorized you to write to him? We do not write to to to Minister Lavro.
We do not want to talk to Minister Lavro. If something is going to happen, things have to be settled on the
battlefield. I mean, can you imagine? Not even having the courtesy to answer.
They didn't even go into the merits of whether what I said was idiotic or whether it was treacherous or whether it
it put the security of the European Union at risk. Simply the gesture,
simply the the the the step to answer. I mean, this is this is this is this is
terrible. I I I couldn't believe it. I and and I I at that point with some
people I said, "But even Bismar teaches us that when we declare war, we have to be elegant and write a nice letter, let
alone when we're trying to seek to peace." you well I talked to many diplomats European
diplomats and they often they they confirm what you say that when whenever they want to have uh well courteous or
good relations with the Russians they often countered not by no no we are anti-Russian but they're saying we need
solidarity we have to speak with one voice and the problem is that one voice is always one of ignoring uh yeah
disrespectful and confrontational So whenever they talk about solidarity one voice which sounds wonderful but
that one voice is always
not not not optimal that this is always the common denominator to take this hostile view and Glenn actually it's the
one voice is no voice and why should I say it's no voice because it's the ventriloquist voice the voice is coming
out of Washington and and what happens here is like a puppet you you repeat
what the voice told you told you in Washington and and from my experience
again the only relationship that the United States tolerates with Western Europe and and it did this over the
years. that did it even with the Marshall Plan. Um how how it engaged the
European Union in a net in a network of dependency
which started exactly after after the war to make sure that the Europeans do
not do not rise again and and challenge
in some way or other the power that comes out of out of Washington. So, so
and and it is so sad to see your your colleagues and and I say this honestly
with sadness at the foreign affairs council not even having a serious
discussion perhaps. Is there another way of looking at this? No. wait for what Biden is
going to say, especially through blinking because he used to attend regularly and I can tell you in 2022 it
became very difficult to see any difference between the foreign affairs council and the ministerial council of
NATO. You know, it became very very difficult to distinguish which is which
because obviously um the neutral countries including Malta our presence
was being weakened more and more and they wanted to draw us in and and it's
it becomes it became one block in fact we should rename the the
you know EU it should be NATO EU it cannot be just EU h if NATO is going to
survive in any form in the in the coming years but uh it's like that and the
European Union has lost all sense of leadership and I remember Junker making a very important point when we were
going to discuss the document on strategic autonomy that the European Union should have strategic autonomy. He
said although he used to be dismissed as you know as not serious as drinking too
much as but at least they had some strategic foresight and he used to say
you know if we are going to have strategic autonomy first we should have an autonomous voice. First we should
have a voice where we speak with our voice not simply repeat what others what
others have said. And that is why unfortunately I see that all the process
that started with Helsinki led nowhere and even the notes of the
state department when these uh documents were made available in 19 87 sorry in 20
in 2018. They actually say, you know, when we look back at Helsinki, we see
the tragedy of roads not taken and promises betrayed.
It's it's so sad. We should have been celebrating, you know, 50 years of peace
and and working together when we have so many problems that can
only be solved if we work together. I mean we're going through another heat wave you know climate change if there is
an area where we should be discussing and working together but obviously with all the tension and with all the money
now being devoted to militarism uh global warming where the European
Union used to be a champion. I I remember the European Union. We were told to be very very proud of our
European social model that ours was not like the neoliberal American model where
everything is money, militarism, you know, we we should exercise our soft power, we should lead by example. Where
where has all this gone? Because with with 5% now devoted to to the military,
Europe is going to lose its its model of of social welfare and we're being told
let's move from a welfare state to a warfare state because that's what we
need to do. You mean well it's on the topic of the lack of strategic autonomy
of the Europeans. I had an interesting interview with uh Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who was the chief of staff for
uh Powell um under the Bush administration and he he was he he told me how again it's on one of yeah I can
put a link to it in the description for anyone who's interested but he was explaining how in the White House they put up a whiteboard of the different
European leaders in the different countries and they effectively said you know which one do we lift up and who do
we break like push down and they look for you know based on the extent to which they're willing to serve American
interest and he made the example that from Norway they had the Yen Stolenberg and they said oh he will do anything
America wants him to do so he we have to bring up and then you know so so they were kind of explaining which how how to
control the Europeans how to make the Europeans sufficiently obedient and I
think this is uh so again it's not a conspiracy it's just you organize your
and I can tell you from my personal experience how how they intimidate you very politely. Yeah. And and perhaps
sometimes not so politely. Like for example, they didn't want me to meet
Lavro. And I said, you know, we're a sovereign country. I'm not going to meet
Minister Lavrov, you know, to discuss how we're going to undermine the United States and how we're going to use Malta,
you know, to launch nuclear missiles from Malta. and attack, you know, Europe
and we're going to discuss tourism. We're going to discuss bilateral relations, culture, education. No, no,
you should why why should you go? And then as punishment, they never got me to
meet Anthony Blinkin at the State Department. I I must say I as I have no respect for
for Anthony Blinkin, I I didn't feel I was being punished. In fact, I think I
met I met some of hisander secretaries who are who were clever and who I could
have frank discussions with and I can tell you that they were not liking how things were going on. Like for example,
the policy of organizing a summit for democracy and dividing the world into
the democratic angels and the authoritarian devils, you know, and uh
it's it's uh and this is so this is so sad and recently I don't know Glenn
whether you are aware of of a I think it's a brilliant book of James Fulbright
about the arrogance of power. It's a it's a really a good book where he tries
to understand where does this arrogance of power where is it coming from and tries to
understand it even c culturally not just economic power or military power and he
says that probably it's the kind of puritanical ethic where we tell the
whole world how to behave and he says there are two faces of he was writing
this in ' 66. He said there are two faces in European for in American
foreign for foreign policy. One is built on the humanism uh of Lincoln and the
other one is built on on dominance. You know, you do what I what I tell you and
they behave like that not just with the not just with Russia and with the Soviet Union but even with with Europe, you
know, it's it's the that trend in in in American politics. wants to dominate
everyone not not just the Soviet Union or or Russia. So, so
having an egalitarian structure of security as proposed in
Helsinki as embodied in the spirit of the charter of Paris and then the
Trumple declaration that doesn't go. It's NATO because NATO is what where we
dominate and where we tell everyone what to do to the point now that we've be
that we've come to the pathetic point of the general secretary calling Trump daddy. I mean
it's it's incredible. It's incredible. Well, I
think it's worth putting what NATO expansion meant in in a context in terms of uh undermining
uh all the agreements which have been reached since the Helsinki final act in 1975 because the the Helsinki Accords
they uh they well they they set in place this uh yeah the conference on security
and cooperation in Europe, the C CSC and
uh in in 1990 this laid the foundation for a treaty for a new Europe. Indeed, this is a charter of Paris for a new
Europe uh in I think it was November of 1990. I know he's saying 1990 and then
yes and he had key components. He spoke of indivisible security which means one
side should not enhance its security at the expense of others. So you have to which goes against the concept of block
politics and indeed there was supposed to be Europe without dividing lines and it should be based on sovereign equality. They call it the sovereignty
that one side enjoys should also be enjoyed by the other. And uh and these same principles of the Helsinki Accords
were used to then convert the CSE into an actual organization in 1994
which was the organization for security and cooperation in Europe. The OCE this was intended to be actually an inclusive
security architecture for Europe. one which Russia also belonged to and again it was also based on the Helsinki
Accords and it introduced the same ideas indivisible security. He said we should
also have no more yeah the dividing lines in Europe is over and we should have sovereign equality. But what does
NATO expansion represent? Well then you have one side expanding its block towards Russian borders. Now one side is
enhancing it security at the expense of the other. the dividing lines instead of removing them we're just moving the
dividing lines closer to the Russian borders and also NATO introduced the concept of sovereign inequality instead
of sovereign equality because what we say is well we are liberal democracies you are not so we can interfere in your
domestic affairs because it's democracy promotion you know you can't do that to us we can do humanitarian interventions
because you know we are the champion of human rights you can't do that so we can do it in Kosovo you can't do it in let's
say Donbas or Crimea And so you create one set of rules for us and one for them. So all of the key
principles of the Elsynia course thrown out the window and instead we built a
hegemonic Europe and uh and you know you can explain to a child why this would
create problems how you avert to the block politics and yet when we confront
the when we tell this to the Russians suddenly now we say no no it doesn't conflict at all. It's just you know our
hedgeimony is benign. It's a liberal hedgeimon. You know, when we dominate,
everyone will benefit like the philosopher king because we're gonna help everyone develop their democracy,
good governance, and you know, all the block politics is just, you know, shoved under the rug. And we present the
Russians as somehow being, you know, um pursuing conspiracy theories that oh well, you
know, we we betrayed them. Well, of course, we we stabbed them in the back multiple times over and over again. And
then this is why I think it's interesting if you bring it to the present time cuz when now the we're saying, well, we weren't really going to
expand the NATO to Ukraine. We were just saying that. And also, you know, now
that the Americans are trying to suggest a ceasefire, yeah, we do a ceasefire. Trust us. We're just going to, you know,
then we'll have a political discussion about a settlement. I mean, can you
blame the Russians for not trusting us? I, if I was advising them, I would tell them, you cannot trust. This is, you
know, how many times can you possibly be be deceived? And let's be honest, the
the deception is already in the game. They're not going to deliver on anything they're saying. So, the the trust is
gone for very good reason. But I see this consistently. uh one one phrase
that I that I learned I I hadn't thought of it before was that we should only
have meetings with likeminded countries. So even when it came way back to the
United Nations, if you see how the United States treats the United Nations
again there it's a multilateral organization there you have to treat everyone as equal even though you have
obviously the the veto of power and you do whatever you like but don't use the United Nations again when you come to
CSC and OCE no show your preference to NATO because
NATO that is where you have the your people together and you do you know what
what you decide to do and we are taking this now to ridiculous extents and I I
was quite shocked recently I read a speech given by Christine Lagard and
Janet Yellen who had spent years decades talking about open borders
globalization how we need open trade, how we need to work with each other. And they were actually telling the CEO of
companies from now on trade is going to happen more and more within a narrow basket of
friends who share our values. Now this is before Trump, you know, this is four
years ago. I mean to to to take this idea of that there is a narrow basket of
friends and we only live here. I think it it shows the the deep crisis and the
decline of of a uniolar world where the European Union is part of it only
because it wants to grab the tales of the jacket of the United States instead
of building a new relationship with the rest of the world because there are
people within the European Union and within European politics who were ready over the years to have an equal relation
relationship with the rest of the world which is not built on 500 years of colonialism where you do what I tell
you. There were those who are still believing that this that colonialism is still there but there have been others
who during the years wanted to work with building you know an equal relationship
with Africa with Asia with with Latin America. Those unfortunately have been
weakened and the European Union now is in a situation where it cannot accept
the reality of what is happening. You know that power is shifting, technology is shifting, the economy is shifting and
what are we to do militarize as a shortcut which is also
uh very very shortsighted. Well, what I also think is happening now because of this is that they are turning against
their own people. So the high moral ground of before of human rights, democracy, liberty, it's become very
difficult to to talk openly. Uh if you're not going to be accused of being
a traitor, um if the people if the majority of people say we don't want war
and we are not going to be recruited in armies, then you know uh still do what
you can to go against them. And I think as a result the European Union is has already lost I
think its credentials to be a democratic leader also especially because of its complicity with the genocide in Gaza and
and having double standards and two weights and two measures. In some areas
you see uh repression and and you know lack of liberty but in other areas where
it's geopolitically convenient uh you don't. So even even that has been lost
now the the credibility of having the soft power of leading by example and
having the politics of values and of soft power rather than you know hard power.
you said something yeah interesting about undermining yeah the United Nations because this has been a
historical thing if whenever you want to try to in establish a an international
institution that um represents international law you know be it the the
concert of Europe or now the present United Nations whatever you want it to be one of the things that historically
undermines it is that states will then have more loyalties to exclusive
alliances rather than this uh framework for an international for international law. And this was part of the problem
also of NATO. One can say because when NATO expanded for the first time then after the cold war in March of 1999
less than two weeks later it attacked Yugoslavia. Now this is important
because this attack on Yugoslavia it did not have a mandate from the United Nations. It was an illegal attack and a
war of aggression against Yugoslavia by NATO. But the the rhetoric then was
interesting because I was actually in the army then and then I remember very well how they spoke. They said well yes
it's not illegal but we faced with a threat of a veto from Russia and China
and they don't believe they don't have the same uh liberal democratic and humanitarian values as us. So NATO then
has to be able to uh push it aside and act in the spirit of the UN and this was
starting. So in other words, you create a dominant NATO in Europe and then it
has the essentially the authority to push the UN aside and then act on its own mandate and this is what what and
this is often what we refer to as the rules based international orders. Yes, we have the we have different an
alternative set of rules. So it's very we write the rules and you obey them, you know, and
And the problem is the problem is that they feel they own the United Nations.
They were the only country that after the second world war could house as an
institution like that. You using their budget also to control the United
Nations and no respect for it. I'll just tell you an episode recently without giving a lot of details but I know that
recently the secretary general Antonio Gutes would have liked to meet Marco
Rubio. He he refused to see it and told him talk to our ambassador. I mean it's
it's this kind of this kind of arrogance shows that it's not true that you
believed in common rules for everyone that you are bound by the same you know
by the same reality and within the same common framework. I only accept the
framework where I dominate and where others do what I tell them. And and this
is this is terrible. This is terrible. And again recently I I was referring to
the book of James Fulbright who who says that you know we used to attack the
Vietnamese of of fighting for their country because they were simply obeying
orders from Moscow or from Beijing. And uh he said it shows that you have never
read a book of history about Vietnam and the the geography of Vietnam and you
would understand that we've been fighting the Chinese for a thousand years and we're not now going to simply
obey what they tell us. And Hoshim when he when he announced the declaration of
independence he was actually quoting the constit the American constitution.
So simply so simply saying you know Hoshim is a is a communist puppet and
things like that it's it's terrible and we see this happening over and over
again. um it's it's it doesn't leave you much hope and optimism but but at the same
time I think the only hope is that the rest of the world at least the 86% which
is not controlled completely by by Washington
can stand up can stand up and push back this kind of dominance. It seems that
it's the only way that you can keep domination away. I only hope that we can
find an arrangement without going to war because unfortunately in these kind of periods where you have a declining power
and other powers emerging usually it results in war and it is
something but which in an atomic age we cannot afford to have.
No, I agree. And uh I guess that's my last question in terms of if there's any reason to be more optimistic now because
uh well again in the bipolar world during the cold war or the uniolar world
there was always very serum game with the Russians. I mean if they're weak then good for us but these days if we
don't accommodate them and just always go for the deception and trying to weaken them more. what we see now is uh
uh we're pushing them uh further towards uh other centers of power. So again in
the 19th century when we try to push Russia back into Asia the idea was you know you push it into an insignificant
region but now we're pushing it in the arms of China, India, Iran like all
these Eurasian giants. Uh so it it kind of from my perspective taken very
political realist would be that the incentives have changed a little bit that uh you know if if you try to weaken
or Russia now you you end up with uh yeah empowering your opponents instead
of marginalizing it in Europe. In other words, would you like a powerful manage,
you know, have common security with a with a Russia in Europe or do you want to face a very powerful Eurasian block
instead? So, it's it seems as if in a multipolar system that there could
be some hope for reviving some of the Helsinki act or processes. Do you do you see it
in the same way or as you began this talk you not don't share my optimism always? Only only only Glenn if it's
taken as a reality check. Yeah, I I remember the superficial discussion we
had when the war broke out in in Ukraine just even just a bit before. I remember
having a discussion with Jose Boret uh about this and I told him, "Are you sure
you're not pushing Russia into China's embrace?" No, no, no, no, no, no. It's
not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Uh you know, Russia Russia doesn't trust China. Also because the
Chinese are invading Siberia, they're going to take over. So the Chinese So
the Chinese are considered to dominate by the by the Russians. I mean, and and
it was built on this premise like like on the premise that if we sanction Russia heavily, we're going to defeat it
economically if not militarily, you know. And it's as if you don't remember
that the world is not made up only of the G7 and the EU. That there are 86%
living in the rest of the world. So this this kind of historical shortsightedness
that comes out of historical arrogance. Um, I still believe um I consider it an
advantage that we're one of the few countries in the European Union where we've been colonized, not colonizers. So
our perspective is different from those who had empires. So we can see the
European Union from below, not from on top, from inside, but also from below.
And I I see that mindset still there. I only hope that there will be a reality
check when in the years to come even what is being proposed in terms of militarization
and of going for hard power fails. At least there will be a return. A return
to sobriety, a return to rationality, a return to sitting together and see what
we can do together to negotiate. Uh I only hope we can do this. I I hope that
it can be done with the United States. I hope it can be done with the European Union, with the rest of the world, you
know, with bricks, with with with Latin America, with Asia, with Africa. Um
because because otherwise the the situation will simply will
simply get worse. Well, on that uh semi-optimistic note,
uh I think we can leave it. So, uh thank you so much. I I appreciate your insights on this because I I do think
that the discussion on panuropean security architecture is is really one we should be having. Our politicians
should be having but instead we should learn from history. Exactly. But we must
always remember that history is a good teacher but we need to be good students.
We cannot be we cannot depend only on the teacher. Thank you. Thank you very
much.

[admin]

Einar Tangen: Asia Responds to an Unpredictable America
by Prof. Glenn Diesen
Jul 7, 2025

Einar Tangen is a Senior Fellow at Teihe Institute & Chairman of Asia Narratives. How is Asia adapting to America's strategic unpredictability? While China seeks to lock America into reliable trade agreements and diversify its trade partnerships, other states in East Asia are seeking more predictable alternatives.



Transcript

[Prof. Glenn Diesen] Hi everyone and welcome. Today we are joined again by Einar Tangen a senior
fellow at the Thai Institute and also here the chairman of Asia narratives. So
um welcome back to the program. Thank you Glenn. So uh I uh wanted to discuss
with you today this um uh Trump's big beautiful bill uh but also the future
direction of the trade war with China. Um however yeah let's start with the big
beautiful bill because there is so much uh built into this and uh well first of
all of it will increase the debt some estimate uh over 3 trillion 3.3 trillion
and um yeah I was wondering if you can map out what this actually means because
this appears to have a lot of consequences and it wasn't easy to push through either.
Yeah, I I call it the massive miscalculated mandate. Um, you know, the
big beautiful bill, you know, people should pay attention to this. It backloads most of the pain on the
American public until after the midterms. But the pain is coming. And while it offers a sweetener in terms of
tax breaks, uh it's not clear that that is going to be very popular because it
disproportionately helps the wealthy while uh punishing uh the everyone else uh especially the
very poor. So what did Trump get out of this? uh 5 trillion uh in borrowing
authority so he doesn't have to go back to Congress and you know play this game of you know I need more money uh at
least until he runs out of 5 trillion and he's also counting on his tariff
slush fund uh this could add another a declining amount but uh it could add
substantial amounts to it somewhere in the three to400 billion dollar and you
know in essence politically he plans to by the midterms, delay any pain, give
some sweeteners, and then use uh money to, you know, kind of pay off his base
uh and keep everyone sweet. The problem here is he hasn't calculated the
economic and political damage he's creating, especially, you know, the erosion of trust and reliability.
So many issues, uh, you know, let's start with economic ones. Inflation from
tariffs. I mean they just concluded this u agreement with
Vietnam and he says oh 20% across the board and then 40% on anything that's
trans shipped. Well uh if you do a careful study of Vietnam uh a good
percentage I would say uh 70 80% of the things that they uh create there are in
essence either have inputs from China or are trans shipping. Now, they're obviously very smart about this. They
try to wash it to hide it and things like that. And companies will have that incentive. Uh national debt and interest
rates hikes. This is a big one. And you mentioned it uh right off the bat. What
happens to the national debt when you add $5 trillion uh in in new borrowing?
And that's apart from the fact that every year uh last year um there's a
little under $6 trillion federal budget of which two trillion was borrowed. Now
that isn't going to change. So over the next three and a half years you're going to see another 8 trillion borrowed in
addition to the 5 trillion. Then you add in interest rates, right? And what I
talk about interest rates is already central banks across the world
are at the lowest point in terms of holding US treasuries that they have been since 2011.
That means that you're really relying on the private markets. Private markets
will certainly invest if they have confidence, right? And the rate is high
enough because there's risk already. the US dollar has gone down by 10%. So if
you're a foreign buyer of treasuries and you bought before Donald Trump uh was
sworn in, you had $100 in treasuries. Today you have less than 90. So, anybody
who's investing in treasuries, especially since Trump says he wants to further devalue the dollar, they're
going to say, "Okay, well, if you're going to devalue the dollar, I have to have a interest rate that's high enough
to make up for that devaluation plus pay me um some sort of interest rate." And
that becomes very ticulish and can lead to this kind of downward spiral or
upward spiral in terms of rates. you know, the economic impact of migrant
worker deportations. Um, it might find a sound fine to his
base to say migrants are evil. The fact is they do a lot of the jobs in the
United States that Americans won't do. They clean the toilets. They're in um
picking fruit. Uh they're working in restaurants. Uh there's a tremendous number of them. And as they go away,
those jobs either go undone or they become more expensive, adding to
inflation. The global slowdown is going to affect US exports in with Vietnam. Uh
the US can export tariff-free. I mean, you know, no tariffs to Vietnam. Well,
Vietnam only bought 13 billion dollar worth of American products last year.
It's not like they're going to start buying more. Now, that's out of a total trade of a over uh almost $150
billion. So, it's a drop in the bucket. It's not going to help the United States. And as prices are are higher, um
it's just not something that people are going to do. I mean, you buy an American car in Vietnam, well, dwiz, it's still
twice to three times more expensive than a Chinese car. domestic push back over prices and
foreign policy. This is kind of in the political reign, but you know, American
people thought that Donald Trump was going to control prices and that he wasn't going to get involved in these
kind of forever wars that are sapping uh you know, the American uh in their
opinion, the American focus on domestic issues. Remember, it's
make America great again, not get involved in foreign policy issues. So, there's there's a lot of things there,
but there's the new political party, America Party, run by Elon Musk. Now,
that has exploded into a real issue. Elon Musk has a huge voice with X. He
has um you know, the this the largest satellite system in the world. He has a
Space X. He has a Tesla. We're talking about billions of of dollars, tens of
billions of dollars and lots of employment. They go to war. Um it's not
certain that Donald Trump even with the US government can take on uh one individual who uh is always flirting
with that richest man in the world uh issue. Then there's the conflicts with the Federal Reserve. This is undermining
uh international feeling about the US. They don't trust Donald Trump. They
don't understand if he has an endgame or if the endgame is just simply uh they
become client states of the United States. They trust the Fed more than
they trust the government. This is having a real
effect on the markets. Then there's the limits of quote flood the zone and crazy
man tactics that Donald Trump has embraced. This idea of every day coming
out with new uh pronouncements and creating crisis. Uh it does well in
television media but it is not the way that you run a country. The crazy man
tactics that he's using overseas is getting push back. international criticisms. It's the bricks are meeting
in Brazil that they've all come together on one issue and one issue alone really
and that is US is acting arbitrarily. This is important. This is half the
world's population, 40% of the world's GDP and a massive amount of the
resources and manufacturing of the world. So this global on top of this you
have the global unrest and foreign policy incoherence. No one really knows what's happening uh in terms of the US
or Gaza or Ukraine seems to flip-flop on a daily basis on whether or not he's
talking to Zalinski Putin uh or as he
will be talking tomorrow with Netanyahu. Uh what have all of these conversations
yielded? Nothing. We're still in the same uh boat that we were before.
There's also push back on US support of Israel. I mean, they can arrest all
these people, but they can't arrest uh they can arrest many people who are uh
demonstrating against what they see as a genocide. You cannot arrest everybody.
other issues, you know, there's going to be in place legal and regulatory challenges which are going to slow
things down. There's the bureaucratic inertia. I mean, you know, implementing
uh something this vast and complex when you've just cut all the budgets of these
entities is going to be very very difficult. Then we get to revenues.
The IRS cuts uh they cut it by half. that is not going to increase collections that the big beautiful tax
cuts are even going to make that less. Now Congressional Budget Office can make
assumptions. The fact is US is in dire straits. Talk to uh private equity uh
analysts. They say that it could be as high as 24 trillion dollar when you
start adding up additional debt uh that is going to be borrowed. the regular
borrowing to make the budget work and the lost tax revenues and then you have
the bill for uh the interest on all these uh T bills that you're issuing. So
many many many issues and it's just not clear that he has any answers to all any
of them. Yeah, this I was going to say the what
was strange with the yeah platform of Trump now is he he he was arguing very
much for making America more sustainable and uh but the I think this is obviously
where he broke as you said with Musk as well the the reluctance to to cut debts.
I mean all all of this focus on cutting the budget and now suddenly this bill it
seems to be a lack of consistency and I think that's what many people miss
because uh or would like to see that there's some kind of a strategy grand strategy if you will as well just some
end goal and of course different policies some may work some may not but at least some
context where people can position and understand what is trying to do. But there's a lot which appears to be
uh well unexplained and it's very difficult to understand what what the
what the common thread is. And uh yeah, we we we always see this that uh instead
of uh clearing it up and uh finding, you know, putting some context in uh we just
move on to the next big thing which sucks all the oxygen out of room which takes all the headlines. And um yeah, my
concern is that this ballooning now of US debt will obviously put immense
pressure on both yeah, US Treasury but also the US dollar. It's just very hard
to see what toolbox what tools are in the toolbox when the next crisis will
hit because uh surely this this can't go on for much longer before there's
something in the economy that begins to crack. But uh but with this pressure on Treasury and the dollar, what is the
what's the US going to do when banks begin to fail and you usually the you
tinkering with the interest rates is the main solution. Um otherwise it's also as
you mentioned the the crazy man or the madman theory of Nixon which he appears
to embrace to the fullest. Uh this idea that the world has to be kept on its toes. I think they referred to it in his
administration as strategic unpredictability. If no one knows what the US will do
next, everyone will be a bit more cautious and you know not push any of its buttons. But uh how is this playing
out in uh East Asia? Because well I guess this geographical focus makes
sense given that uh China is really seen now as the main adversary in you know
being in the crosshairs of uh Washington. How how is how's East Asia
reacting to this? not just China but uh its neighbors as well which uh the US
appears to be trying to let's say create some quarrel among them
and uh some more dividing lines. So how how is this whole thing in impacting East Asia? Because on one hand they do
have to be a bit careful about what the US is doing next uh and uh not alienate
the Americans. But on the other hand this um strategic unpredictability is
just the worst in economics. In economics more or less the first rule is you want predictability. You want to
know what's happening tomorrow if you're going to have safe investments and uh yeah predictable growth.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, u we can go back. I often refer to this is that
Donald Trump is not somebody who plans into the future. Uh you hit the nail on the head. It's just every day is a new
day and you figure out how you can maximize that day. And if something bad happened yesterday, like you got into a
fight with your main benefactor, Elon Musk, you just uh announce some new trade bill or that you know you're going
to go to war with Iran and all this kind of stuff. So there there's almost unlimited uh white rabbits that he can
release where the press will follow them around uh trying to figure out what they mean. Um which means that they're not
really paying attention to the big picture. And this is this is deliberate on his part. Um it's not all he he has a
theory, right? His theory is that he wants the Fed to cut rates and what that
will do is devalue the US dollar. But you can either have a devalued US dollar
or you can have a trade dollar, but you can't have both. It's like a birthday cake. Can't eat it and have it. And and
this is something that Donald Trump doesn't seem to either understand or
care about. Uh he thinks that he can razledazzle everybody and that he will,
you know, the dollar will slip down by 20, 30, 40%. uh but he can still bully uh countries
into using the US dollar but that happens people are not going to be happy about losing half their equity uh and if
the rates would skyrocket and it just work so it doesn't make any sense that's
where you you know you pointed out that where's the thread I always tell people don't look for one just look on a
day-by-day basis he's going to react to whatever is happening uh he pays a lot of attention to the markets he pays a
lot attention to his base uh in terms of polling and uh he pays a lot of
attention to the to the news other than that not much else. um th those are just
you know three parts of his daily bible and uh he thinks that he's playing
24dimensional chess and a lot of his supporters have given him the benefit of
the doubt even even through this you know big beautiful bill they say well you know may maybe it'll all turn out I
don't understand it but you know maybe he's a smart rich guy and he he understands this stuff and maybe this is
going to help me But over the next few months, especially, well, I should say the next
year, you're going to see a tremendous amount of pain by the people who voted for him, who trusted him, and that some
of them will, you know, say, "Oh, he's a vessel of God, and you know, we should just follow him without thinking he's
he's our cult leader." Others will say, "He's betrayed us." And that's the
danger is the these are the people that could be easily turned not to the Democrats necessarily but to a new party
that says, you know, like Elon Musk America party, uh, which could erode it.
Now, remember, everything in Congress is razor thin in terms of control of the
House and the Senate. Elon Musk only needs to win two or three
Senate seats and maybe 10 um House of Representative seats. And guess what?
He'll control who is in charge of Congress. He can decide to work with
Republicans or he can decide to work with Democrats or he can just say no and then nothing happens. So he has the
money uh he has the you know the people who understand how to start a party which is
is painful uh but he can do it. He has the time and he certainly has the funds
and it's a statebystate battle. Go in and you have to fill out the papers. You have to get signatures. Um, but if you
have a lot of money and you're organized and you have a lot of information,
right, then this becomes a lot easier. Third party challenges in the past
weren't really very well funded. Uh, this one is going to be self-funded by
Elon Musk and see if others are attracted to him. Uh in terms of of
China, China looks at this and they're just scratching their head because Donald Trump is doing more uh to
alienate the United States uh than China would even wish, right? I mean that's
may sound strange because you know the US is targeting China. China is the adult in the room. They understand that
US demand is important for China and it's important for the entire world. And
without that uh there would be a global recession, perhaps even a depression. So
they're not anxious for the US to to fail. No one is. Then the question is
what do you do with a guy who doesn't seem to have an endgame and China is obviously slow playing
Washington. I Trump keeps announcing that somebody's going to call him or
that, you know, we have a deal. Well, they don't they they have little points
that they're doing. China says, "Okay, we'll release, you know, rare earths for
civilian purposes, cars, you know, automobiles and other things, but not
for weapons." US is offering say, "Okay, we'll let you
have chips, but we're not going to let you have the most advanced chips." So, these are very, very small moves. Um the
Chinese government came out and said, "Well, uh we expect a deal uh to be
ready in September." That's a long ways off. And there a lot
of daylight in between uh them. And then meanwhile, the rest of the world is
watching this. Now, let's go back to Vietnam. They agreed on a 2040
situation, but they're going to be facing some pressure from China who's
made it known that any country that decides that it wants to uh in essence
sacrifice its relationship with China, sign on to the US pressure things uh
will in fact be subject to uh some sort of action from China. Why? because they
don't want Trump going around the world doing the same thing. Oh, you can have 20% tariffs and 40% anything that has to
do with China. This obviously is is targeting them and they've made it very clear this is not going to work for
them. Remember, as much as Vietnam exports to the United States, if you
start taking a look at the breakdown of the increase in imports from China, I
think it'll give you a very very clear idea, most of the Vietnamese products that
being shipped to the United States are either passroughs or they comp contain
components that are made in China. So, you know, we we have a situation where
China is just scratching their head and it's going to slow play it enough to deal with him for three and a half years. No one is absolutely clear what
happens in midterms. It appears that he will lose uh for all the reasons that I
went into. But you don't know. So, the best thing is just to play it cool. And
you see a lot of countries doing that. Japan, you know, America's closest ally
in in the East has signaled that they're not going to call uncle. They're not
just going to turn over their economy again as they did with the um Plaza
Accords to the United States. They they've been once bitten and they're
twice shy. So at this point with Japan uh and so many other countries, EU
fighting back uh and you know the bricks coming out unilaterally saying you know
you're unfair and you know we're against that and we're sending you a clear signal. Donald Trump is risking
alienating the world at some point. You know when you're the big guy in the playground uh if you can bully little
people that's fine. Now, maybe you can get your way, but you can't bully
everybody. And if the crowd comes together, it will be the United States that loses, that is isolated.
Uh this, you know, this this kind of behavior, bully behavior is unappreciated and will be remembered.
I think uh the reason some people are giving him the benefit of the doubt is
because the the grand objective of reorganizing the global economy in a way
which is more favorable to the United States after the model over the past decade seems to have come to an end. Uh
I guess people are waiting for some you know some clarity to emerge and uh to
make some sense of all the chaos. I see it also with the wars that he can still
you know end the Ukraine war that we we still haven't seen the last chapter of the Middle East you know. So there is uh
but of course a lot of this comes down to the domestic politics as well that is uh a lot of people were very
disillusioned by the Biden administration and then uh kind of Trump
came against you know all expectations and uh yeah took back the presidency. So
the you know in the story line here you would like to see it actually result in
something but uh but if there is one clear policy in terms of its foreign policy though it's really and as well as
domestic to reassert America's uh dominant position it's uh the main theme
appears to be or consistent is to roll back the rise of China and um well
that's why Of course, one can be optimistic about the rare earth deals uh
if there's able to reach some agreements on tech. But for the Chinese to be able to lock in the United States into some
trade agreements, uh which the US won't tear up with, you know, within a few
months. How how can this be done? And uh I'm assuming I might be wrong but uh
that the main strategy for China now is to insert some predictability
in this partnership with the US government which appears to thrive itself or to thrive on the notion that
it's unpredictable. So how do you how do you if if again Trump's main goal is to
be unpredictable to shake things up in order to give himself more room for maneuver. How do you insert
predictability into this strategy which is deliberate unpredictable?
Well, there a number of ways. First off, uh you lead by example. And what China
has done is they've uh you know they've done away with visa requirements for many many uh countries. They reduced to
zero tariffs to African countries. They're trying to build a larger trade network outside the United States in
addition to trying to push more consumption within. So in essence, they
and Russia have said, "Look, this isn't going to work long time long term. I
mean, this is a country that doesn't like us and is going to continue to target us. Uh, we need to rip the
band-aid off. We need to face the pain and just deal with it." Now in ch Russia
is a little bit more aggressive. China is a little bit more strategic, right?
They're they look at this and they say, "Okay, we have to deal with him three and a half years. We will continue to
build our trade network terms of dealing with the US and Donald Trump. There's only one way. We slow play him. All
right. Keep him, you know, at the table talking about all sorts of issues. And
then finally, there'll be what I I I predict will be a phase two. Phase two
would be an agreement that China would be buying a lot of energy and agricultural products and whatever else
uh Donald Trump is, you know, wants to sell, but at market prices, right? And assuming that that goes
through, that does create some predictability because Donald Trump having agreed to that,
uh, if he walks away from the terms, it stops. And this would have a more
disruptive effect on all these farmers who are sitting there wondering what they're going to do with their uh their
crops, especially soybeans. So, it's very difficult. But, you know,
something you said uh sparked something uh I want to I want to point out. You
know, you talked about Biden and Trump and the kind of crisis and leadership.
And this is not just particular to the United States. You you have this in
Great Britain and and uh throughout South America, especially
Argentina. uh but in Germany uh you seem to have a a set of leaders who are
almost interchangeable. I mean think about it um they kind of go
wherever the wind is and the question is how how did it come to this? And I I'll
suggest something to people then think about when you have systems where in
order to be, you know, in the party to to work your way up, you have to agree
whatever is being said at the time. You're not going to get independent leaders. You're going to have people who
are going along to to to get along. uh it's it's about their desire for
power not necessarily their ability to create change. So in the US you have the
Democratic party who says you know you you have to be uh you know here are litmus tests you're not don't fit in
that you can't be part of this party and you we've seen you know breaks between
the middle and the left the same thing has happened the Republican party it
used to be conservatives versus middle of the road Republicans and then Donald Trump comes along and he redefineses a
party moving at 180 degrees in certain areas in terms of going after uh you
know working man lower um class uh voters with you know very little uh less
education um and now he is setting the test you're either with MAGA or you're against it
and you're going to get primar and we saw this quite clearly as he was passing the big uh beautiful bill he was uh
telling people if you don't agree to I'm coming after you. No, playground bully stuff. But does that produce leaders? I
don't think so. It produces followers. Look at his cabinet. They may look good
in terms of being on TV. Pam Bondi is, you know, she she looks like, you know,
a newscaster. Um, you know, you have a headset. I mean, certainly is has a lot
of swagger. But do they have the experience of judgment independent to
advise uh the president and help him craft policies that affect an entire
nation and the world? So this is uh one of the conundrums that uh you know
democracies are facing is that this desire to have parties and control is
stifling the ability of people with vision to emerge.
No, I I speak a lot to different well both former and current uh diplomats and
politicians in Europe and uh I I this is a common theme I always yeah get get
away from the conversation as well which is um that uh you always get this
comment well yes it's it's uh like this unfortunately but uh you know on on any
given issue but it's you can't really say that in public or this is not what
you know we we have agreed on. So uh and it's this common theme that you know what you can say and what you can't say
and it's very concerning because even on yeah very important issues security
economy you yeah I I come across politicians who do tell me that yeah
we'll this is not necessarily what one believes but this is uh again where the consensus is this is where we all have
our common talking point so it's you end up having all this entire political us
having to follow the group and people saying what they don't actually you know genuinely believe and uh it's not only
in political parties you see it also in in larger institutions for example you you see in NATO this you know Yen
Stolenberg who for all these years you know said oh no no this is you know
everything is black and white Ukraine has to get everything and then as soon as he was finished he get he
gives in position as NATO secret secretary general. He gives interviews saying well probably Ukraine has to give
something back. I mean make some compromises. It's it's you know you could never say these things when you're
holding a key position and but but again this is uh but I see this among yeah as
said diplomats and politicians as speakers as well. No one can actually say what they mean and what they see
reality as. It's uh it's the group loyalties which comes first. Again, if
you want to play ball, you do have to sign up to not just the rules, but also the script of uh and and the narratives
because if there's anything that define politics of our days, in my opinion, is is so narrative driven. We have a story
line. Everyone have to join in on this and that narrows very much the space for
what you're allowed to say. Um I I want to yeah pivot a little bit into the how
China organizes things with its neighbors though because if the US objective is to create you know
divisions between China and its neighboring states uh something you
would do if you want to contain uh I mean I think this ideal position the
East Asian states all quarrel among each other and the US steps in almost as the mediator obviously taking the side
against China and everything while remaining officially this neutral
mediator. I mean this is a role it's also playing you know other parts of the world but how is uh how will China play
this because you mentioned well if we go through some of the countries Japan um
this is not this was supposed to be the most loyal anti-Chinese force uh is
China taking advantage of this somehow to reorganize its relationship with Japan
because um if I there's a lot of bad history there and
uh Yeah, poor relations. But if this relation, you know, geography doesn't change, they're going to have to live
next to each other. If they can start to change this uh relationship, that would uh yeah, for the positive, that would be
transform the region. Do you do you see any movements in this area? Well, yes. I mean, people like to think
of it in in terms of the old ways and that is, you know, US takes advantage.
they interfere things like that. I mean the playbook in Asia is no different
than the playbook uh that was in the Middle East, Africa, South America,
Southeast Asia many years ago. Um it is always divide and conquer. It's um you
know America is an empire. We solve our problems by taking things from others.
You know you mentioned earlier about you know re reu uh rechanging the world order. Well, you know, there's so many
countries around the world who are kind of wondering why the richest, most
powerful country in the world with the strongest military has to be supported when they
can't feed themselves. Why why are they being beaten on? Why are they being
ignored? This is especially true in South America and Africa. Middle East,
it's at worst because they see, you know, active US troublemaking.
You know, what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, you know, Lebanon,
the list goes on and on and you know, so ASEAN is aware of this. Um but I I you
know I I I I I must say that I I think China has a golden opportunity
um you know with countries like Japan. Japan is the one who's initiating uh a
lot of the uh newer communications. Uh they were adamantly opposed remember
to China uh coming into the CPTP which was the former trans-Pacific
partnership. the US walked away from. But if that changed, that would be huge.
It that if China comes into that, it helps the TPP. It also is a very strong signal that the
you know the large that regional groupings will continue and they will
continue without the US. So well, but that that's an area we'll
we'll have to see. Coming up to the the this is the 80th year of the Japanese
invasion. Uh there's a lot of feeling within China about what happened during the Japanese war trial, criminal war
trials. They tried uh 45 class A criminals and then the day after a
verdict was given uh the rest of them over uh almost a hundred were just
summarily they said no no we won't have any more trials. These criminals are free to go
about their business. And in fact many of the people who were class A war criminals including uh the father of the
previous ambassador I mean prime minister um ended up working in the government uh
holding positions of power and this is something that is very hard for the Chinese to understand right and it's
still bad blood and you still have similar things with of Korea the question is can they be practical and
say Look, the US is not reliable as an economic partner. We still may want to rely on for military. Um, but we need to
have markets and we need, you know, have to have a a growth trajectory and we have need to
have better stable relations with with our neighbors in China.
Now one of the big issues that China has is the South China Seas
have you know said you know if they were able to solve that they sat down with ASEAN and went beyond a code of conduct
for example let's say they said okay any disputed area and there are multiple
they always talk about the Spratley Islands and you know all these things but the fact is it's
not just China and u the Philippines that are odds here.
There are two other countries in at odds including Taiwan. So there are multiple
claims and these claims were created by who? The United States. Its desire to
have a larger territorial ocean territory created problems for the rest
of the world. And they knew that when they passed it, people didn't understand it. Uh the US was very much more
powerful back then and they basically pushed it through. You either agree or you're out or bully tactics. But if
China were to sit down with these uh countries and say, "Listen, let's just
put any disputed area into um some sort of trust that's mutually um
governed by us and that we agree to develop whatever there because the
reason they're talking about this is develop. These little islands are are, you know, they're not really habitable or anything like that. It's about the
resources that people think are in the sea. China has the machinery and the
capital to develop them. Uh that would be very useful to these countries. So if they were to agree on a you know shared
prosperity and a common future at least regionally, it would completely change
things. So I do think that China has to pay attention to not only what the US is
doing to weaken itself, but what it can do to make regional partnerships
stronger, increase the trade, right? Because if they're thinking of a future
that does not include the US in the prominent role it was before, they have
to come up with a new one. So if they're able to solve that, what happens all of
a sudden? ASEAN in China. Um, everybody says, "Well, there freedom of navigation
patrols for what? We don't want you here, right? We don't want uh
Canabara sending uh uh ships up here or the Brits or Americans or even the
Indians. You have you have no ro there's no problem here. Why are you sending ships through?" So it it severely
affects um the perception of uh people about Taiwan. Everybody
says well China seems to be getting along with people. We seem to be the ones who are trying to create a problem.
Uh we have no business doing this stuff.
So I I do think that yes, you can wait around and you can slow uh the United
States and watch it disintegrate its um soft power and credibility and
predictability. But on top of that, I think it's important to start building a new structure. You know, bricks, bricks
bank and bricks fund, these are all, you know, projects. I mean, uh I think first
time 60% of the world trade wasn't done in dollars.
And that that is something and it's something that people aren't talking about but is something they should be
considering very very carefully. If China has over 140 primary trade relations, why would you use a dollar
that's depreciating that's u just not reliable to do trade between countries?
There are other alternatives. And it's not that the dollar will disappear. It'll still be used to a certain extent.
But the US is killing itself. China doesn't have to help, but it does have to present an alternative. And that's
really where I think they they need to get their ducks in a row and start talking about it. It's not about taking
advantage of the United States. It's simply responding to um you know, the
United States uh inability to articulate plans to bring peace.
that that I think is probably the most important thing that China could do.
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's what I was centing towards because uh in in this alliance systems the US set up to
contain China once not Yeah. now that these systems are no longer benefiting
its um well call them partners or proxies or vassels or whatever you will
is junior partners. um there's an opportunity but of course there has to be replaced with something and um not
just one side pressuring them versus uh yeah China pressuring them but rather uh
be able to present some yes some different format some uh yes
you said alternative a mutual prosperity. Uh just my my last question though was in in well again one can look
at many countries in the region Philippines as well but but the two country which seems to stand out in
terms of the changing relationships with India or challenge is uh India and
Vietnam. Do you see do you see more antagonism or do you see possibilities
for improving for China improving ties with these countries?
Well, you know, I I I hope that they will. As I said with Vietnam, uh China is going to take a dim view of them
agreeing to in essence uh treat Chinese goods as part of the US agenda.
That that will not mass easily and there there will be some sort of reaction to
that. In terms of India, India is interesting and I I want you to think about something. During this last um war
with Pakistan, what did you have? You had Pakistan was being uh supplied by China um and by
Turkey. Um but if you look at everybody who's supplying them, they're all in the
global south. Then you look at India. India is being
supplied by Israel, France, United States. Uh Russia used to be 72%. Now
they're literally half that amount and continuing to be pushed out of the equation.
So you have India which is a a situation that it suffered greatly under
colonialism. Uh they started at 24% before the world's GDP before the British arrived
after the British left they were at 4%. I think that's pretty clear that they
were raped and pillaged. Yet today they rely on the same colonial powers
but that basically you know ripped them off and is that going to continue even
at bricks right India has a different approach they don't want
to talk about mutual things so much they want to trade say well you support me
against uh Pakistan and I will support
you on some sort of trade thing. And and this doesn't really play well because
that's not the kind of organization it is. That happens in in of course in the
United Nations. But in this things, it's purely about trade and India continues
to try to bring in political issues and they see it as smart. They see it as,
you know, pushing forward their their national interests. Now will that change? I don't I mean at
some point uh I've seen um personally I was on a show with the leading um
say host uh for India. It's kind of a
more of a tabloid type of thing. Lots of shouting and screaming and things like that. Um, but the two shows were
basically devoted to criticizing the United States
for its regime change efforts in Iran.
And it's not that Iran, I mean, India used to support Iran, right? Then they
had an abrupt shift. So it's not that they're friends with Iran, but there was
this real very stride in tone that the US is not entitled to do this. And I
think part of it is because what happened in Bangladesh believe the US fingerprints were all
over that and that this is a message uh to India that don't be an uppy minority.
white men are here and we're in charge and you just you know you you take what
we give you don't get any ideas about yeah you're doing that that and there's
also this feeling by the Modi government that the US allowed interference
in his general election which he believes cost him uh the majority and
the mandate that he wanted to in essence um unify India more like China a strong
central government with uh not as strong provincial governments which he thinks
is necessary to change India and he's probably right. So there are many
currents that are running back and forth. Uh it can seem like the river is going in one direction but we all know
beneath the surface there are many currents going in different directions backwards sideways etc. So this this is
the reality that is here today. The question is how does India see itself.
If it continues to be pushed by the US, it will turn more towards China, but it
will never abandon the US completely and they'll never completely abandon China.
they want in their in their opinion the smart thing is to do is have a foot in each camp and take whatever you can get
and you can see this uh you know one of the reasons I believe that Xi Jinping
wasn't that enamored of going to the bricks was
because there's you know five country tour by Modi and then with a state dinner in
Brazil hosted by Lula uh Lula thought he would could charm everybody into taking
perhaps a less a more pragmatic in his opinion view towards the United States.
Brazil has a lot of connection in investment things like this it cannot
walk away from the US uh even though you know is not particularly enamored with
US policy. So it becomes very very complex. So you have Russia and China on one side uh saying look you know we we
have to do what is necessary to protect ourselves and build world order not to
suppress the United States but because the US is not reliable. Then you have India and Brazil to a certain extent
more saying look you know forget that don't take any positions let's just figure out what we can get out of this
individually as nations which course means that you really don't want to be
in the group you just want to use the group for your purposes so until attitudes change until the US realizes
that it is part of the world not the ruler of the world until it reflects on
its actions and say here's things that didn't work. Going into countries thinking we're going to create regime
change didn't work. It didn't work in Afghanistan and so many other places. Um we need to think of new strategies
perhaps engaging with that's one component. Second part is
other nations like India deciding that their best interests are actually in
cooperating with groups as opposed to using them political and economic
purposes. I hope that answered the question. No, it does. And uh well, I
think um uh they say that a curse of uh of hedgeimon of a hedgeimon is not just
the failure to prioritize and have have strategic focus given that you try to do
everything. But curse of hedgeimony is also the ability to absorb a lot of cost. So you
can do a lot of uh stupid things without uh necessarily suffering the consequences and uh well from my
perspective this perfectly summarizes the past 30 years a lot of failure to
have proper strategic thinking where where to do what and but also yeah this
acrewing all this cost is willingness to do really stupid things and I I think
it's coming to an end Now that hedgeimon is over, you do see all of this cost
will the consequences are building up and uh uh yeah I don't think it's been a
proper adjustments and uh that's not just on the Americans. I see this in Europe as well. the willingness to just
double down on every failed policy hoping that well it it will get better
whether it's a war issue or security issue then but um yeah I think reality
will catch up with us very soon but always does
interesting to look at East Asia because I do think this region is going to yeah
go through some big big changes in terms of uh the yeah the US alliance structure
not necessarily yeah being be able to be kept in place and the irony is of course while the
Americans want to want to leave Europe it's not that big of a problem if uh
they yeah you throw their weight around and have some consequences but given that Asia is its main strategic focus
it's very difficult to yeah see see the strategy or order behind
some of these things which are being done it's A lot of it appears to be self harm, but um yeah, here we are. Um
anyways, thanks again for your time and uh yeah, look forward to speaking again.

[admin]

With Trump's Inability To Answer Reporters' Simple Questions, THE Question Now Is "Who's In Charge?"
by Glenn Kirschner
Jul 9, 2025

Trump's cognitive decline was on full display when a reporter asked him a simple question about how long detainees would have to stay at the so-called Alligator Alcatraz facility in the Florida Everglades. Trump asked the reporter to repeat the question and she did.

Trump then launched into a nonsensical rant that had noting to do with the question that was twice asked. Watching this change makes clear that Trump wasn't unwilling to answer the simple, twice-repeated question, but rather was unable to understand and answer the question.

As historian Heather Cox Richardson asked in her daily column, "Letters From An American", who's in charge?



Transcript

So friends, in her daily column, Letters
from an American, historian Heather Cox
Richardson poses the following question.
Who is in charge? Because watching
Donald Trump's inability, not
unwillingness, but inability to answer a
simple, straightforward question. A
question that a person repeats twice for
him. makes it pretty clear he's not in
charge. Hell, he's not even in charge of
his own faculties.
Let's talk about that because justice
matters.
[Music]
Hey all, Glen Kirschner here. So friends,
did you see recently how Donald Trump
was unable to answer a simple question?
A question that was posed to him twice
because he asked that it be repeated.
It was a question about the so-called
alligator Alcatraz.
uh facility that's been erected in the
Florida Everglades to hold human beings
who happen to be in the US without
documentation.
Now, I am not going to inflict Trump's
voice on you, but let me read for you
that exchange between a reporter and
Donald Trump as it was printed by the
New Republic.
Headline: Trump bizarrely rambles about
Florida instead of answering question.
Donald Trump took off on a winding rant
about his summer vacation plans Tuesday
when asked a crucial question about
alligator Alcatra.
During a press conference at the ICE
facility in the middle of the Florida
Everglades, the president was asked
whether there was an expected time frame
that detainees would be kept at the
hastily constructed immigrant detention
center and whether it would depend on
the immigration judges staffed there.
this quote from Trump. Uh, quote, "When
you say, uh, what was the first part of
your question?" Trump asked, clearly
confused.
Quote, "Is there a specific time frame
you expect the detainees to spend here?
Days, weeks, months," the reporter
repeated.
"In Florida?" Trump asked. answer. Yes,
here at Alligator Alcatraz, the reporter
responded. But the president had already
jumped into a response about how much he
loves the Sunshine State. Quote, I'm
going to spend a lot of this is my home
state. I love it. I love your
government. I love all the people
around. These are all friends of mine.
They know me very well. I mean, I'm not
surprised that they do so well. They're
great people, Trump said, singling out
Governor Ron Dantis, who previously
campaigned against Trump, but now acts
as a cheerleader for his new wetland
themed concentration camp.
From Trump, quote, I feel very
comfortable in this state. I'll spend a
lot of time here, Trump continued. He
said that he would continue to visit
despite his current digs at the White
House, which had allowed him to fix up
the little Oval Office.
Quote, "But I'll spend as much time as I
can here. You know, my vacation is
generally here because it's convenient.
I live in Palm Beach. That's my home.
And I have a very nice little place,
nice little cottage to stay at, right?
But we have a lot of fun," Trump
continued, joking about his massive
estate at the Mara Lago resort. Friends,
does that sound like a man who's in
charge of his faculties?
Does it sound like a man who should be
in charge of a nation?
The question posed by historian Heather
Cox Richardson is
who is in charge.
Here's what she writes.
Just who is in charge of the
administration remains unclear. In the
New York Times yesterday, Jason Zangerly
pointed to White House Deputy Chief of
Staff Steven Miller as the final word on
White House policy. Homeland Security
Secretary Christy Gnome defers to him.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is so focused
on preparing for and appearing on Fox
News that she has essentially seated
control of the Department of Justice to
him. White House Chief of Staff Susie
Wilds is concentrating on producing a
reality TV show every day. A Trump
advisor told Zangerly.
So Miller, with his knack for flattering
his boss, wields power.
Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Secretary of
Defense Pete Hegsth did not inform the
White House before he stopped the
shipment of weapons to Ukraine last
week. Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen
of CNN reported today that Hegsath's
lack of a chief of staff or trusted
advisors means he has no one to urge him
to coordinate with other government
partners. Trump has ordered Hegsth to
restart some of the shipments.
When a reporter asked the president
today who had authorized the pause, the
pause of shipments of weapons to
Ukraine, Trump answered, "I don't know.
Why don't you tell me?"
At today's press opportunity, Trump was
erratic at one point, veering off into a
discussion of whether he should put gold
leaf on the moldings in the room's
corners.
So, friends, I have a question.
Where are all those people who were so
concerned about Joe Biden's cognitive
decline?
Who's in charge?
Who's in charge? When a president of the
United States can't answer a simple
question, a question that's repeated for
him twice,
who's in charge?
Who's ordering all these lawless
policies? Who's drafting all of these
unconstitutional
executive orders? Who's in charge?
Because friends, the way I see it,
what's going on in the executive branch
of the United States government
can't hold together forever.
It may not even hold together for that
much longer. So friends, let me say
this. With every lie that Donald Trump
and his flunkies tell, with every
violation of the rule of law, with every
abuse of the due process rights of our
fellow human beings, with every soldier
illegally deployed to our streets, with
every hospital closure, with every
Medicaid cut,
Donald Trump will get weaker.
And we the people will get stronger
because to us, to the American people,
justice will always
matter.
Friends, as always, please stay safe.
Please stay tuned. And I look forward to
talking with you all again tomorrow.
[Music]

******************************

Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American
Jul 09, 2025
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

One hundred and eleven people are dead and more than 160 are still missing in Texas after Friday’s tragic flood.

​​“‘[W]ho’s to blame?’” Texas governor Greg Abbott repeated back to a reporter. “That’s the word choice of losers.” “Every football team makes mistakes,” he continued, referring to Texas’s popular sport. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, ma’am, we’ve got this.’”

Abbott’s defensive answer reveals the dilemma MAGA Republicans find themselves in after the cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service that came before the Texas disaster. Scott Calvert, John West, Jim Carlton, and Joe Barrett of the Wall Street Journal reported that after a deadly flood in 1987, officials in Kerr County applied for a grant to install a flood warning system, but their application was denied. They considered installing one paid for by the county but decided against it. Then county commissioner Tom Moser told the reporters: “It was probably just, I hate to say the word, priorities. Trying not to raise taxes.”

Since 1980, Republican politicians have won voters by promising to cut taxes they claimed funded wasteful programs for women and racial and ethnic minorities. Cutting government programs would save money, they said, enabling hardworking Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money. But leaders recognized that Republican voters actually depended on government programs, so they continued to fund them even as they passed tax cuts that moved more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Now, in Trump’s second term, MAGA Republicans are turning Republican rhetoric into reality, forcing Americans to grapple with what those cuts really mean for their lives.

Today the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to fire large numbers of employees at 19 different federal agencies and to reorganize them while litigation against those firings moves forward, although it required the administration to act in ways “consistent with applicable law.” A lower court had blocked the firings during litigation. Ann E. Marimow of the Washington Post notes that this court has repeatedly sided with President Donald Trump as he slashes the federal government. The court said it is not expressing a view on the legality of the cuts at this time.

The administration's cuts were in the news today as Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has just 86 people deployed in Texas today although Trump declared a disaster on Sunday. At a press opportunity at a cabinet meeting today, Trump said it wasn’t the right time to talk about his plans to phase out FEMA.

The administration is getting pushback in a number of other places as well, including from medical organizations. Yesterday the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American College of Physicians, and four other groups sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the changes Kennedy has made to the vaccine advisory panel, to the availability of covid vaccines, and to vaccine recommendations. The lawsuit calls those changes "unlawful” and “unilateral” and says they violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

Just who is in charge of the administration remains unclear. In the New York Times yesterday, Jason Zengerle pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the “final word” on White House policy. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem defers to him. Attorney General Pam Bondi “is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice” to him. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is concentrating on “producing a reality TV show every day,” a Trump advisor told Zengerle.

So Miller, with his knack for flattering his boss, wields power.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he stopped the shipment of weapons to Ukraine last week. Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported today that Hegseth’s lack of a chief of staff or trusted advisors means he has no one to urge him to coordinate with other government partners. Trump has ordered Hegseth to restart some of the shipments. When a reporter asked the president today who had authorized the pause, Trump answered: “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

At today’s press opportunity, Trump was erratic, at one point veering off into a discussion of whether he should put gold leaf on the moldings in the room’s corners.

The administration has so few successes to celebrate that, as Jarrett Renshaw of Reuters reported today, it is claiming credit for investments that were actually made under former president Joe Biden. A government website touting the “Trump effect” claims more than $2.6 trillion in U.S. investments, but Renshaw found that more than $1.3 trillion of those investments originated under Biden or were routine spending. One company has warned that its pledge of investments worth $50 billion is threatened by Trump’s policies.

When asked why the administration had taken credit for projects that happened under Biden, White House officials said “the final investment decisions were announced under [Trump’s] watch and prove his economic policies are triggering U.S. investment.” Renshaw noted that “[i]t was not clear in many cases what role, if any, Trump or his policies played in getting the deals across the line.”

Instead of embracing proven economic policies, the administration appears to be turning to ideologically based ideas that seem far fetched. Today, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins rejected the idea that the government would find a way to protect undocumented agricultural workers. “There will be no amnesty,” she said. “The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way. And we move the workforce towards automation and 100% American participation, which again with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”

The administration is now facing a rebellion from MAGA supporters who expected that, once in power, a Trump administration would release information about those men implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal as people for whom Epstein provided underage girls. MAGA loyalists maintained the “deep state” was hiding the list to protect unnamed Democratic politicians, and MAGA leaders fed the conspiracy theory to stoke anger at the Democrats.

Once in power, though, Trump officials have failed to produce a list of Epstein’s clients. MAGA loyalists have now turned their anger on those officials, especially Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said in February that the Epstein list “is sitting on my desk right now” and who now maintains that no such list exists.

Perhaps to distract their supporters from the issue, the Fox News Channel today announced that the FBI is launching criminal investigations of former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey over their investigation of ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

The Fox News Channel also announced that the White House has waived executive privilege for former president Biden’s White House physician Kevin O’Connor, who had asked to postpone his testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee about former president Biden’s mental acuity and use of an autopen. On Saturday, O’Connor’s lawyer wrote to committee chair James Comer (R-KY) asking for the postponement, noting: “We are unaware of any prior occasion on which a Congressional Committee has subpoenaed a physician to testify about the treatment of an individual patient. And the notion that a Congressional Committee would do so without any regard whatsoever for the confidentiality of the physician-patient relationship is alarming.”

As its popularity sinks, the administration appears to be turning to extraordinary measures to enforce its will. Ellen Nakashima, Warren P. Strobel, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post reported today that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has tried to get access to emails and chats of people working in the Intelligence Community in order to root out those perceived as insufficiently loyal to Trump.

Gabbard’s press secretary claimed the effort was designed to “end the politicization and weaponization of intelligence against Americans,” but Representative Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the reporters that Trump’s loyalists “zeal to root out ‘politicization” “often seems to be shorthand for anything less than unconditional support for the president.” He noted their effort risks “creating an echo chamber within the intelligence community or creating counterintelligence risks.”

The Internal Revenue Service today changed longstanding policy to say that churches can now endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. According to Gary Grumbach and Dareh Gregorian of NBC News, the rule prohibiting churches from endorsing candidates is rarely enforced, and Trump, whose strongest supporters are white evangelical Protestants, has called for an end to it.

A judge will have to agree to the change.

The administration’s show of force in Los Angeles yesterday, when immigration officers and about 90 National Guard members descended on MacArthur Park with 17 Humvees and four tactical vehicles in what looked like a military operation, appears to have been designed to intimidate immigrants and Trump’s opponents.

And today, Trump suggested he could take over New York City if voters elect Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. He then suggested the administration could take over Washington, D.C., as well. “We could run D.C. I mean we’re, we're looking at D.C. We don’t want crime in D.C. We want the city to run well,” he told reporters. "We would run it so good, it would be run so proper, we’d get the best person to run it…. We want a capital that’s run flawlessly, and it wouldn’t be hard for us to do it.”

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/08 ... 822f941191

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/officials-p ... s-0143b5f1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... l-workers/

https://apnews.com/article/noem-trump-t ... 086bcfb1de

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/fema-res ... cient-noem

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/medical-g ... =123531646

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/opin ... iller.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump- ... 025-07-08/

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2 ... e-00442065

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/08/politics ... pons-pause

https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-gov ... as-losers/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/us/p ... ories.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... tel-trump/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-la ... 025-07-08/

https://thehill.com/homenews/5389137-bi ... committee/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... elligence/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads ... for-trump/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump- ... rcna217483

https://apnews.com/article/california-i ... 4e03480497

https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -photo-opp

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-s ... =123581492

Bluesky:

ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3ltihvbnhfk2v

atrupar.com/post/3lthtizfawy2h

atrupar.com/post/3lthhwchvtw2h

[admin]

Max Blumenthal : What Netanyahu Expects From Trump.
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom
Streamed 11 hours ago



Transcript

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here
for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday,
July 9th, 2025. My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us
now.

Max, thank you for accommodating my
schedule. I want to spend some time with
you on Prime Minister Netanyahu's
visit to Capitol Hill. He spent a day
in the White House, was there for two
days actually, and some time on
Capitol Hill in in the Capitol meeting
members of Congress. Was this
about his domestic political needs and
the photo ops that will help him?

[Max Blumenthal] In many ways it was about
flattering Trump,
nominating Trump for the Nobel Prize,
which is the kiss of death, meaning he
won't get it. I believe Pakistan had
nominated Trump for the Nobel Prize 24
hours before he bombed Iran. It was also
about Netanyahu getting Trump's consent
for turning Gaza into some kind of
concentration camp, which Netanyahu's
defense minister had announced the day
before and, quote unquote, "voluntary
migration." The real focus is on Gaza
right now. It was about permanent
war. It was about getting consent for
Netanyahu, or Israel in general, to
continue the Lebanon option, not just in
Lebanon, where it's violated the
ceasefire 4,000 times, but also Iran,
if Netanyahu is seeking permission
to wage strikes in Iran with US
assistance, US guidance systems, if Iran
attempts to reconstitute its nuclear
program.
But ultimately, this was about
Netanyahu
staying in the limelight, remaining on
the world stage, being close to Trump,
which has domestic
repercussions for Netanyahu. And what's
so fascinating about this, just one more
point, is Netanyahu never speaks to the
Israeli press. He almost never
speaks to Israeli journalists, although
he manipulates the Israeli press. And on
this trip, he uses it kind of as a stage
to speak back to the Israeli public. But
he's avoided one of the most important
American journalists who just
interviewed the Iranian president,
Masoud Pezeshkian. And that's Tucker Carlson,
who has tried on four occasions to
interview Netanyahu, and he has avoided
him.

I would imagine
Netanyahu is fearful of being
interviewed by our mutual friend,
especially after
what he did to Ted Cruz, and made him
look ridiculous. Well, he helped Cruz
make himself look ridiculous. Is
Netanyahu in trouble politically at
home? Do the Israeli people blame the
destruction of one-third of their
country on his ill-guided
attack on Iran?

[Max Blumenthal] Well, the Israeli public supported that
attack on Iran, and so did the
opposition. And you saw one of the
key opposition figures, Netanyahu's
former defense minister, Yoav Gallant,
actually co-author a piece with the
colonial cheerleader, Nile Ferguson,
supporting those strikes. Pretty much
the entire Israeli political spectrum
lined up in favor of Netanyahu attacking
Iran. I think 85% of the Jewish Israeli
public supported the attack on Iran.
None of them expected the ferocity or
destruction of the retaliation, did
they?

Well, this is more of a debate inside
Iran right now, and it's a quiet
debate. But people I know inside Iran
have
mixed feelings about what took place.
Not because they thought they were
resoundingly defeated by Israel, but
many of them think that they
should have kept going, that they had
Israel's number, and that they would have
been able to establish much stronger
deterrence if the war had lasted longer
than 12 days, and that Israel was
actually losing the war of attrition.
That's the way many from Iran saw it.
And they're kind of being,
they're facing pressure to
basically be quiet. The Iranian government wanted it. It
seems clear from Pezeshkian's interview
with Tucker, the tone he struck for the
American public, that the government
wanted to keep negotiations open. And
that's how the reformist side in Iran
sees it.

So from my point of view, I think
they have a point. Israel was
suffering.
Yes. And the United States, and
Trump has even said this himself, and
Steve Bannon, his former chief of staff
said it, they saved Israel from a real
disaster, because Israel started an
open-ended conflict that it could not
finish.
Here's the Iranian
foreign minister.
I'm not sure where he is speaking. It
appears as though it's the United
Nations Security Council, but it's not.
But he's making some very, very
interesting statements about the rule
of law. Chris, cut number seven.

What the Israeli regime, and subsequently the
United States committed, were no less
than an unprecedented breach of
international peace. The fact that the
developing non-nuclear weapon state has
been attacked by two nuclear armed
regimes with the support of at least two
more nuclear armed states that are also
permanent members of the United
Nations Security Council, is only
appalling and extremely consequential.
No rule of law or logic allows anyone to
target the IAEA monitored peaceful
nuclear facilities of another state
simply out of a speculation that the
facilities may sometimes be used for
weaponization.

Mr. President, my people stayed
steadfast and resolved in defense of our
homeland against these blatant acts of
aggression, and the aggressors had to
seize their criminal attacks following
the hero heroic resistance of our strong
armed forces. We will definitely
continue to defend with all force
against any future aggressions. But this
is not over. As long as the Israeli
regime's lawless behavior is supported
and justified by its backers and
apologists, it is a shame that the
international community has been unable
to do anything meaningful to end the
genocide of Palestinians for the past
two years and stop Israel from occupying
Arab lands in its vicinity.
He was at the bricks conference in
Rio de Janeiro but addressing via remote
the UN security council. Uh
what did you think?
Well, the UN security council I mean the
UN itself has proven worthless and Iran
has just left the IAEA which I'll
discuss in a second. But this is Abasar
Ragi appealing to the emerging
uh multipolar world for support
uh diplomatically and probably
suggesting a call for military support
in what could be the next phase of this
conflict with Israel because Europe
had supported effectively supported
obviously along with the United States a
criminal, unprovoked attack that
violated every precept of international
law against Iran, killing offduty
commanders, nuclear scientists,
civilians in a surprise attack that also
was waged by Mossad sleeper cells. Uh
uh China's shei was not present at
bricks, nor was Vladimir Putin. I think
if Putin had taken that long trip, there
was a chance, I don't know, there could
have been some sabotage of his plane.
There is an ICC warrant which did not
apply to Netanyahu who had just flown to
Washington actually flying directly over
Rome where the Rome statute was signed
with the permission of the um Greek
president, the Italian prime minister
and I believe the British PM Kir
Starmer all the way to the US in
violation of his ICC warrant. So uh
Aragchi is appealing to this part of the
world, the multi-olar world to uh
support international, support Iran
diplomatically, but also I mean there's
talk of Iran seeking China's HQ9B
air defenses which scored a blow
against India for Pakistan in those two
countries conflict. And there are
reports that Iran is also seeking J10
multi- multi-roll fighter jets from
China. these could be gamechangers in
establishing deterrence for Iran if
China's willing to supply them. China's
denied reports that it's supplying the
air defense systems, but Russia was
supposed to supply its newest line of
Sukcoy fighters and they're delaying
with Iran. And so Iran is turning to
China increasingly for support and you
know has historical enmity with Russia.
You can't blame Iran for wanting to
leave the IAEA. It became an arm of the
MSAD.
Well, it always has been or it has
been for years and we know this
thanks to
um Private Chelsea Manning and Julian
Assange. If you actually go back to
2009, there are some really significant
leaks about the IAEA
and its incoming director Yukia
Amano. It turns out that according to
those leaks, Jeffrey Pat, I don't know
if you remember him, he was the US
diplomat who was on the line with
Victoria Nuland plotting the coup in the
Maidan in 2014. Basically saying who was
going to be the leader of Ukraine after
they overthrow its elected government.
Before that role, he was prior to being
US ambassador in Kiev, he was the US
charge at the IAEA and there are um
State Department cables showing him um
stating that Ammano has promised that he
will be on the American side that can
support his nomination and that he will
maintain ambiguity in public but do what
the US wants in private. particularly
on Iran. This is 2009. Ammano was
then replaced by Grossi after suffering
a mysterious illness and dying. And GCI,
Raphael Gross, the current director of
the IAA, has announced his intention to
run for secretary general of the United
Nations. If you want if you want to be
the head of the UN, you need the US on
your side. you need Germany and all the
European powers basically P5+1
who were in charge of negotiating
with Iran when in fact the IAEA as a
multilateral institution should have
been in charge. Um and so GCI clearly
has been groomed as well by the United
States and by Israel for this role and
was never going to be an honest broker
with Iran. And it's obvious because of
what he did just days before Israel
attacked. He introduced a resolution for
the first time declaring Iran in
violation of the non-prololiferation
treaty which set the stage for Israel to
stage this attack and claim that they're
rescuing the world from Iran's evil
nuclear program.
Will Netanyahu be satisfied with
anything less than Iran becoming like uh
Libya or Syria?
No. Um Israel will be at war for the
rest of our lives until every country
surrounding it is completely neutered
and reduced to a a backwater like
Jordan. Jordan being the Hashemitrun
Neo colony which actually claimed credit
for taking down 20% of Iran's ballistic
missiles fired towards Israel. That's
what Israel wants. that's and it it
intends to do it through obviously
through genocide in Gaza, through
constant bombing in Lebanon until it
exhausts Hezbollah and forces some kind
of civil war there. We I could go into
more detail. It did that through
Netanyahu's claimed credit for regime
change in Syria, which has reduced Syria
to a despotic
uh hell hole run by a former al-Qaeda
figure who is now desperate for uh
Western support. And Iran is next
obviously on the target board along with
Yemen. Israel has been bombing Yemen
consistently for the last week, but it
can't seem to take out those pesky
Houthies. But it's endless. It's just
endless warfare
until it can consolidate its dream,
which will come through the Abraham
Accords. The Abraham Accords require the
full compliance of the Gulf States, the
wealthiest supposedly Arab countries.
And those countries, the United Arab
Emirates, Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
after paying Trump a trillion dollars,
they wound up seeing the US bomb Iran
and get them targeted with Iranian
ballistic missiles. They saw Israel
uh giving being given far too much
latitude and far too much power to uh
enter into a partnership with that
country. And I think they're a little
bit frightened at this point of the
Abraham Accords. I think what they
witnessed with the amount of support
that Trump has given to Israel has set
the Abraham Accords back as has the Gaza
genocide which is anything but complete.
If you saw what happened in Beth Hanoon
two days ago, 14 Israeli soldiers
severely wounded, five killed in one
attack. Um the resistance is still
fighting and Israel has no way of
dislodging them after almost two years
of reducing Gaza to rubble.
Here is I don't know if you know this
fellow a member of the Knessa by the
name of Zivka
Foge or Fogle. Zivka Fog Fogle. Yeah.
Right. Sounding
uh like he's a member of the Nazi high
command. Chris number one. The war we
are fighting today which we embarked on
the 7th of October is a war against a
Nazi enemy that threatened the existence
of the Jewish people in the land of
Israel. That is the whole truth.
So the prime minister decided the prime
minister decided to do it sequentially.
I'm with him. No problem. Let's do it
sequentially. You eliminated you dealt a
a severe blow maybe even more than that
to Iran. Now the time has come to deal
with the Gaza Strip. How do we do that?
You take off the gloves, stop the
humanitarian aid, cut off electricity,
cut off water, start destroying and uh
uh expel voluntarily, so to speak,
voluntary migration the Gazans. There
are no uninvolved people there, no
innocents, no one who isn't guilty. As
far as I'm concerned, they're all Kamas
members. At the end of the war, there
should be two images in the Gaza Strip.
First, not a single Gazan remains and
all 50 of our hostages, 49 male hostages
and one female hostage, both living and
deceased their return to the state of
Israel.
Does this mentality deny the personhood,
the humanity of Palestinians?
Well, it's nice to have this for the
future Gaza Holocaust Museum and if
there were international law for any
future prosecutions, which we don't see
taking place anytime soon. Zika Fogle
was really speaking to the Jewish
Israeli public which according to there
are many polls a recent one from Penn
State shows that the vast majority of
Jewish Israelis hold genocidal attitudes
and see no distinction between the
civilians of Gaza and Hamas. So he's
appealing for popularity and he's also
articulating a plan that is essentially
in place now that the defense minister
uh Katz Israel Katz has announced a
concentration camp to be built in
southern Gaza where 600,000 people from
the Moasi zone which is basically
internally an area of internally
replaced displaced refugees living in
tents will be put into a biometric
prison in southern Gaza that they won't
be allowed to leave. There will be four
aid distribution hubs inside this
concentration camp supplied by the Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation, which is run by
American mercenaries and Reverend
Johnny Moore, who's a a Trump crony, a
Christian Zionist Trump crony, but it's
basically a front for Israel. and uh
that that will be expanded that system
will be expanded throughout Gaza as
people in Gaza are incentivized to
leave. It's about ethnic cleansing
ultimately because what is Gaza? Gaza is
a reflection of the ethnosuppreist logic
of Zionism where most of its inhabitants
prior to October 7th had been forced off
the land of what is now called Israel.
Over 85% were refugees living in an open
air prison. They were restive. They were
resisting and they threatened the
demographic purity of the state of
Israel if they came back. So Gaza was
just this warehouse. And now Israel has
the opportunity to clear out the
warehouse of surplus humanity by pushing
them into Egypt or Europe or somewhere
else and then taking as much land as
they can in Gaza. and then the
demographic problem is relieved. So what
we're seeing through the comments of
Spikop Fogle, the Nazilike comments of
Spikop Fogle, is how the logic of
Zionism perpetuates the Holocaust
on the backs of Palestinians
almost endlessly.

Jeffrey Epstein Client List, by Ryan Dawson: Page One
https://www.youtube.com/@RyanDawson109
https://sonar21.com/the-epstein-client- ... o-publish/
The Epstein Client List — Why is Trump Breaking His Promise to Publish?, by Larry C. Johnson, 9 July 2025

Switching gears because this is such
a hot story this morning. Was Jeffrey
Epstein a Mossad asset?

Well, Alex Aosta, the Florida
prosecutor, declared him to be said that
he belonged to intelligence. Um, I think
he was told to um to basically retract
that comment.
Uh, a Saudi passport or Saudi ID card
was found in Jeffrey Epstein's
belongings. among his belongings after
he died or supposedly committed suicide.
His partner, his his wingwoman,
Galileain Maxwell, who was convicted of
trafficking minors to him exclusively,
not to anyone else, was the daughter of
Robert Maxwell, who received a
practically a state funeral in Israel.
um what had had Mossad Chiefs at his
funeral and his last phone call was
to Samuel Pisar who was the father and
uh the the the stepfather of Tony
Blinken who is his fixer who was also
the head of the French Jewish lobby.
Robert Maxwell was definitely a Mossad
agent. So there all these connections to
Jeffrey Epstein through the Mossad. Uh
but really ultimately maybe Jeffrey
Epstein's ultimate legacy was helping
elect Trump by convincing a bunch of low
IQ MAG dupes that Trump was going to
take on the deep state and release all
these Epstein files. And at the end of
the day, as Trump himself said, Trump
didn't want to ruin a bunch of lives by
releasing what he considered phony
material, which could have come back and
harmed him. No one was closer or in in
US politics to Jeffrey Epstein than
Donald Trump.
Why did anyone think that Donald Trump
was going to be the one to expose the
Epstein network? Well, they were dupes.
They were bamboozled. They were took.
They were the butt of a PT Barnum
joke. And now, I mean, I just look at
them and and laugh as I see this this
gigantic online social
media meltdown of
MAGA.

Here's Trump yesterday at a cabinet
meeting very defensive.
Chris has edited this down. Very
defensive when this issue was raised.
Chris,

[Trump] are you still talking about Jeffrey
Epstein? This guy's been talked about
for years. That is unbelievable.
Do you want to waste the time on it? Do
you feel like answering?
I I don't mind answering.
I mean, I can't believe you're asking a
question on Epstein.

In February, I did an interview on Fox
and it's been getting a lot of attention
because I said I was asked a question
about the client list and my response
was it's sitting on my desk to be
reviewed. Also to the tens of thousands
of video, never going to be released,
never going to see the light of day. to
him being an agent. I have no knowledge
about that. We can get back to you on
that. And that's it on Epstein.

Well, she has driven a wedge down the
middle of MAGA because you're right.
Many, many people believed Trump
ordered it released. A federal judge
ordered it released. She herself ordered
it released. Now they're saying the list
doesn't exist. I don't think any I don't
think people that are involved in this
issue believe that. But I'm just
fascinated with Epstein's international
connections. And you just outlined
them. I forgot about Robert Maxwell.

Well,
hey, maybe maybe there's nothing there.
Maybe they couldn't find anything. That
that's a possibility. But Pam Bondi said
that there was this black book showing
that hundreds of people had been
involved in raping minors. She said this
on camera.
Yes.
So did Dan Bonino. And he said but and
he said it's going to take down the
Democrats, you know, the Clinton
Network. He said this again and again
when he was, you know, on his Rumble
show
and now he's deputy director of the FBI.
So, it looks like obviously a gigantic
bait and switch to dupe Trump supporters
and then Donald Trump has to shut the
whole thing down because I mean Donald
Trump was Donald Trump allowed NBC to
come into a party and film him partying
with Jeffrey Epstein and Buffalo Bills
cheerleaders while Trump commented
whispering in Jeffrey Epstein's ear
that, you know, certain cheerleaders
were hot. the cheerleaders were like
grinding on Donald Trump and he was
dancing with them and showcasing himself
as this great lethario and Jeffrey
Epstein was right there by his side.
There's photos of Bill Clinton with
Jeffrey Epstein. There's, you know,
Clinton's on the on the logs on the
Lolita Express, but there's no nothing
as vivid as the footage of Trump with
Epste. Epste also talked about his
friendship with Trump to the reporter
Michael Wolf. There are damning audio
recordings and the Democrats never did
anything with this. I said on Twitter
yesterday or or X before Grok had a
complete Hitler and meltdown. I said um
that that this should have been the
focus of the Democrats attacks. Kamla
should have brought it up in every
debate. Trump Epstein was real, but
instead they focus on Trump Russia,
which was a gigantic hoax and it had no
currency among voters. Trump Epstein
would have hurt Trump among young males
of among women, among all these groups
he won, among the Democrats, but the
Democrats wouldn't touch it for some
reason. And the reason is because the
Democrats were also on Epstein's books.
So, this is a scandal that I think helps
discredit the two-party system. And we
will see Trump in as he exonerates
Epstein and all of the people supposedly
in Epstein's blackbook continue to focus
on arresting the poor in Home Depot
parking lots and throwing them in
private prisons run by Geog Group, the
top private prison contractor in the
country whose former top lobbyist was
seated right next to Donald Trump in
that briefing, Pam Bondi. And borders
Tom H. Homeman was a highly paid
consultant to Geog Group. So what I'm
saying is the Trump administration has
nothing to gain financially out of
releasing the Epstein files and that's
all they seem to really care about and
so they're going to focus on their
bottom line and enriching Trump's
family.

Who's the person that you referred to
as seated next to Attorney General
Bondi?
No, no, I'm talking about Bondi herself.
She was a top lobbyist.
Oh, I'm sorry. For I misunderstood that.
You're right. You're right. Perhaps the
least qualified attorney general in
the modern era, but but it's an iota
more qualified
competition there
than Matt Gates, the original.
I would have loved to have seen Matt
Gates in this role like as Trump tries
to disappear the Epstein files.
Max, only you can can touch these
things with your delicate touch. Thank
you very much. Thanks for all we've
been through. Thank you for uh
accommodating my schedule. All the best.
We'll see you again soon.
Thanks a lot, Judge.
Of course. And coming up later today,
maybe a little bit more about Epstein,
but mainly Iran and Israel. Colonel
Larry Wilkerson at 1:00. And at 3:00,
Phil Geraldi, judge Napoleon for judging
freedom.

[admin]

Everything You Need To Know About War With Iran (w/ Alastair Crooke)
The Chris Hedges Report
Jul 10, 2025

Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke uses his geopolitical expertise to break down the global complexities of the US and Israeli war with Iran — from variables involving China, Russia, trade deals with the Gulf States and more, there is much to be considered when analyzing the implications of this latest conflict.



Transcript

[Music]
The 12-day conflict between Israel, the United States, and Iran is not over. It
is the first phase of what could become an endless war, much like Israel's decades long sporadic war against
Lebanon. The attacks on Iran, as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, was
based on a lie. Neither US intelligence nor the United Nations concurred with
Netanyahu and Trump's claim that Iran was weaponizing its enriched uranium.
Israel was able to inflict significant damage on Iran, including what it says were the targeted assassinations of 30
senior security officials and 11 senior nuclear scientists. But Israel and the
United States do not appear to have, as Donald Trump insisted, obliterated
Iran's nuclear weapons program. At best, it probably set back any enrichment
program by only a few weeks or months, should Iran decide to build a bomb.
Iran's surfacetos surface missiles probably caused more damage and casualties than Israel expected. But
because the Israeli air force had virtual control over the skies of Iran, it was able to find and hit those
launchers with increasing efficiency. by shredding the nuclear agreement with
Iran in Trump's first administration, which the Iranians were abiding by, and then allowing Israel to carry out an
attack while negotiations were ongoing with Iran. The United States and Israel
have effectively shut the door on any diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
The failure of European governments to condemn the bombing, a flagrant violation of Iran's sovereignty, has
only widened the divide between Iran and the West. Rather than weaken the Iranian
regime, these attacks have enraged Iranians, especially young Iranians, who
poured into the streets in the millions for the funerals of the victims of Israel's attacks. It has hardened the
resolve of Iran's rulers, who have suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and
rejected calls by the Trump administration to resume negotiations. Joining me to discuss the fallout from
this 12-day war and what comes next is Alistister Crook, a former British
diplomat who served for many years in the Middle East, working as a security
adviser to the EU special envoy to the Middle East as well as helping lead
efforts to set up negotiations and truses between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and
other Palestinian resistance groups with Israel. He is also the author of Resistance, the essence of the Islamist
Revolution, which analyzes the ascendancy of Islamic Movements in the
Middle East. You can find his work at conflictsforum.substack.com.
Let's begin with a question I have has puzzled me since these attacks began and that is why it was so easy for Israel to
take out Iran's air defenses which were a mixture of Iranian produced air
defenses of course but also Russian air defenses. Uh
well there's a certain deception about um what happened there. Um, I know that
is advertised um by Israel and by many in the United States that there was open
skies and that Israel could actually come across and def destroy the air
defenses. Uh, that actually is not true. Um, in fact, if you look, you'll find
there is not a single video. Many people were taking, you know, shots from their
smartphones and things. not a single video of an Israeli aircraft uh over
Thran or um Iran as a whole. What happened? It's it's really very
interesting because it has a very important impact. Uh what happens was
that um well before the 13th of June
surprise attack um that Israel mounted on Iran um uh Israel Mossad and his
special forces um were prepositioning anti-tank strike
anti-tank weapons um from Kurdistan area uh from Herbiel and the Kurdistan area
of Iraq across the border. into um Iran quite close as close as
they could get um to uh the air defense systems uh that were present. And then
um special forces Israel and the Israelis have admitted they had special forces in Iran at that time. And the
special forces then were using coming and using ballistic missiles guided by
American um software. um uh the battlecape software system uh onto the
targets that they wanted. Now, there were no aircraft crossing um into uh
Iranian airspace except that some aircraft from Israel flew right along
the north of Iran, which is very mountainous and really deserted into
Aabaijani airspace. And from Azabaijan
um uh Israel launched drones, attack drones. They didn't have such a big
warhead, but they also then flew down the Caspian till they were opposite
Thran. And from there the um Israeli planes fired these latest cruise
missile, ballistic cruise missiles. Those are the ones that hit Thran and
made a big impact on on it. Now, so it was a very complicated setup um that had
taken months, if not years, for Mossad to put all of those into position to
infiltrate people, preposition them. What took out the Iranian air defenses
in that first day was actually a cyber attack. Um a really major cyber attack
on their air defenses. Um and they managed to undo that and to correct it
with 8 hours 8 hours after which their air defenses uh were working again. And
you can see there's evidence, we can see quite clear evidence that that happening. Why was Iran in such a
vulnerable position? Well, that's quite interesting too because actually uh uh
on that day the 13th of June scheduled long scheduled and with the Iranians
expecting to go to talks on the Sunday with Witkov um in Oman and the Americans
to talk about the nuclear program. Um the IRGC had a big um program, a big
exercise prepared with naval and other ex forces engaged with us and some of
the missile launches were actually exposed and put out because of this big exercise. I think it involved the the
Chinese too as well. But so they were all in the headquarters in a single room
in the headquarters uh when Israeli um decapitated
um the line commanders of um the IRGC and the military staff who were all
preparing for this big exercise and they were taken by surprise and the decapitation happened. What happened
with the um civilian um uh scientists?
They were killed um by spike missiles fired directly and small ballistic
missiles fired by probably the special forces. I'm not quite sure. Into their homes, precise strikes into the homes uh
killing them and their families too. um I think it's 11 10 or 11 um scientists
uh were killed. So that was really um uh what happened. Now the most important
there are two important things that flow from this. The first is this setup is
not repeatable. You can't I mean the it was a very sophisticated
longprepared positioning people in the site both from the north from um uh
Azabaijan and across the border from Kurdistan the
mek coming across to Kurdistan setting all these um up um the cyber attack was
set up and prepared and everything was ready for this but now it's exposed
closed. You can't go back to it. And also that now I mean the Iranian air
defenses are are fully operational. They're getting more air defenses from the Chinese. Um so it won't be the same.
You can't just repeat that operation. And the tr the talk about open skies was
very deceptive was really a lie. It wasn't open skies. Um it was actually
something rather different. um that happened. So that's very important that you know it's not something can be
repeated. It Israel can't do this next week or the week after. It would take months if possible. But in the meantime,
Iran is of of course operating in around a bill in Kurdistan. You've probably
seen there've been many explosions and attacks there. Um in the north, removing
paluchis and refugees from across the border from that area. Uh and there is a
tough conversation taking place between Russia uh and alf the head of um
um aeri um state and also um from Iran. So uh
there is a great deal of tension there by from Azabaijan and Russia about
different things. Um but uh it used to have good relations but now it's very
tense indeed there. The Russians suspect um that not only those tactics of
infiltration of saboturs um were done um if you like during that
attack on Russia's strategic bomber force um out of Kazakhstan but they
think that some of them were done by part of the illegal and criminal gangs
uh who are aeris as well as Russian citizens. Um and behind us, uh Russia
sees the hand of Turkey and NATO, um for both the attack in Iran and also the
attack, um that was that took place, I think it was called the spiders web
attack on those strategic bombers that were out in the open on again the day
before peace talks were taking place. Let's talk about the American strike.
it. You know, correct me if I'm wrong. It was my understanding that uh the Israelis did take out air defenses to
open a corridor for American bombers. Uh but maybe that's incorrect. Uh and
secondly, let's talk about the what is it? 408 kilograms of enriched uranium. I
think they're supposedly at 60%. Uh but let's talk about the the uh the American
strike. Uh uh well, the the Americans
warned these Iranians beforehand um either I think probably through the
Swiss embassy in Tehran or or through equally likely through Oman. Um warned
them in advance and also told them it was once and done i.e. it would be one
strike finish, end of the pro process. So they passed out information to the
Iranians and I believe I can't budge for it perfectly but my understanding is
that the Russians said to them look just let it happen. It's much better just let
it happen. You probably won't it won't be as damaging as as as it may be
advertised. Just let it happen. And it's true because on that time it's fairly
clear there was no evidence you can see of any great um uh if you like um uh uh
you know uh air defenses being used or mounted or explosions. Iranians tell me
I was in Iran just before this happened. Um the Iranians tell me it was very quiet that night. There was nothing
happening. So they just came in. They did what they wanted to do and then they
then they left. What success they had? Well, you know, nobody can really say. I
mean, at this stage, anyone who tells you or says they know, um, I don't think
is telling the truth because the only way you know, there are about five entrances to Fordo. Five different
entrances. Two of them were blocked up with soil by the Iranians before the strike, two days before. And the whole
basis of this depends on a very controversial piece of um if you like
mechanics. Most of those entrances to the fordo uh
base have got blast bends in them. In other words, if there's an explosion, it
can't go any further. It can't reach the centrifuge hole. Centrifuge hole, don't
forget, is at 800 m depth in this mountain. And then there is an event and this is a
source of controversy in America as anywhere else is according to the
Americans and who briefed Trump the vent had no if you like bend in it. It was
vertical straight from the surface down to the um to the centrifuge. And many
experts um um professors from MIT and others are very adamant and saying it's
unbelievable that the Iranians would have put blast benz in all of the entrances but have forget to do it in
the in the vent. Well, I don't know the answer to that. Um you'll have to go and ask um um the professor about that. But
um yes um 4 days beforehand there were trucks at Fordo and the Iranians and
there's some some I think there's some reasonably reliable reporting that the
um highly enriched uranium was removed and probably deposited in this other site called
Pickax Mountain which is also quite close to Kong. Uh, and I would think
it's probably hidden there somewhere. It's even deeper than Fordo, by the way. Um, but it it's never mentioned because
it seems to be off the the radar. Anyway, I think that is probably where
it is. But until the Iranians clear one of these entrances, I mean, which they
deliberately blocked up to sort of stop pressure rising um and go into the uh
hall. uh we won't know how much uh damage is done uh but I think the
isvahan one also is very deep and it's quite likely that centrifuges were not
destroyed at Isvahan nantaz is different nantaz is very old it's there from the
sha's time it's mostly on the surface I remember passing it and you could you know it's there and you see it um but
they put the centrifuges down I think between 60 and 80 m. So I I mean maybe
they're badly damaged. Who who who knows? But they don't need many centrifuges. One of the thing that this
professor from MIT Postal Tosl says that you know once you get to a certain point
in the enrichment process then it becomes exponential. You just have to do a tiny bit more and that you're up at
90%. So I mean you know they don't need many centrifuges to have survived.
the the pilots talked about seeing explosions. Um but uh what I heard that was in fact
not a good sign. Yes, that's right. That is a sign that there was a blast
bend on the on the vent and so the blast was coming up and that's why he had a
spectacular view of explosion because it hadn't gone down to the um centriuge
floor. it had come up and was at the surface. So it isn't necessarily a a a
good good indicator of that. So that that was really uh the gist of it that I
think it it was clear, you know, that Trump wanted it. And um we know quite a
lot about that day because um uh uh someone and I I I wrote about it since
you um um and I'm sure you probably know Michael Wolf who's written four books on
Trump and he was talking and calling you know he works by calling interlocutors that
Trump has just spoken to on the phone and he says it's a really reliable way of finding out what Trump is thinking.
because he says the same question to each interlocutor and it's not really a question. So on the 12th it seemed that
um on the 20 second rather the day of the American strike um uh Trump was
quite anxious according to Michael Wolf and he kept asking people I mean is it
is it going to work? Is it going to be a win? Is it going to be I mean a gamecher I'm hoping for a gamecher. We want
something that is perfect and this will be you know a big headline and a big win
and I want the headline we won and uh so he says um there was you know an element
of sort of lack of confidence almost and Trump I mean he went on saying the same
thing you know this is what it's got to be in boom out in boom out ceasefire
And um so that's how it was presented. And actually, you know, this suits the
Iranians quite well because um he he says, you know, and insist obliterated.
Everything has been obliterated. There's nothing left. It's all over. No nuclear program. Well, this is fine from the
Iranian point of view because they say, "Well, then uh to sort of Mron and others who saying, well, well, the IEA
have to go back and sort of inspect and find out what's going on." And they say, "But you, it's you who say it's all
over. There isn't a program, so why do we need the IEA in there at all?" In fact, the IIA are already out and their
return I mean I really I'm not exaggerating this. They need huge
bodyguards if they ever went back to Iran. They are hated with a huge
intensity um by the ordinary population be because they believe that
particularly the assassination o of the scientists and the identification of
them came from um the IEA artificial
intelligence program Mosaic which is one of the if you like um Alante stable of
targeting systems which rely relies on imputing motives to people, not on
evidence. This is where you get the great disparity with Tulsi Gabbard, for example, because what the IA were using
was this data gathering process, examining 400 million pieces of data,
social, what you read on your social platforms, where you move, who your
children play with, all of those things. Just like Palanteer uses the same system
in Israel and in Gaza to impute to Israel uh to Iran uh uh the idea that
they are not being honest in moving the enriched uranium that they're not
declaring things. And so that's what happened on the 12th, the day before the
Israeli attack on Iran. The board of the IAA on the basis of this evidence said,
"Oh, Iran is accelerating towards enrichment and therefore to a bomb and
this is it's in breach of its pro of the protocols of the JCPOA. This is um this
is really the pretext for the attack uh on Iran that took place on Friday the
13th of June. that resolution that was prepared and stage managed effectively
by the IEA um to give uh if you like a peg for the Israeli tact to take place
and which is why the uh um Iranians and the Russians too are so distrustful of
the IEA uh and I don't think it's going back into Iran. Well, the UN inspection
teams in Iraq were riddled with foreign intelligence operatives, including Israeli. Uh, one has to assume that's
also true with the IAEA. Oh, it's completely I mean, it's not I
mean, it's verified. I mean we know that they were providing intelligence to the
to Mosad and to Israel about and of course IA insisted on meeting the
scientists involved in the nuclear program and therefore being able to identify them. Whether this was directly
passed on, I can't say. Uh but the Iranians have intelligence which
suggests that it was passed on. I haven't seen the intelligence.
Let's talk about the strikes on Israel. Of course, uh because of military censorship in Israel, we don't know the
full picture. We know that refineries were hit in Hifa. We know the Wiseman Institute was hit. Um it, you know, I
reading it from a distance, it does appear that Israel was probably a little surprised at the extent of the damage
that uh the Iranians were able to inflict. Oh. Uh, I think they were very shocked
by it. They had never been they were attacked as they'd never been attacked before. I mean, they might have been
used to a few Kusha rockets from Gaza, but this was a completely different order. Um the as you say there's been a
complete news blackout but subsequently from satellite images it's clear that at
least five military sites uh were destroyed uh by the Iranians apart from
if you like the main ones which was the uh Aeria which was the equivalent of the
Pentagon um the Mossad headquarters and Helia and various other sites as well as
well those other damages and those other ones are very important because this is
this is key in their economic sense that first of all um there was uh the attack
on Hifur and the destruction of the refinery at Hifur um and that's been
that they the Israelis say will not be able to operate for at least a month um
and then there was the attack on the Ashdod port um which destroyed Um the uh
electric power system there, the generators, the power generators there which uh led to the blackout in about a
third of the country has been restored. But these Israel has three ports. Elat
which has been closed for months and Ashtad both of those were heavily
attacked. Um uh and the economy was really at a at a halt and this is why
Israel you know called to the Omanis and said we need a ceasefire and said the same to Americans we need it and the
other reason was because they were running out of of missiles or of intercept missiles. Um the Israelis
themselves say 93 THAAD missiles were fired by the Americans and the Israelis
in in in that period of the 12 days 93 which is equivalent to 1.2 billion worth
of missiles and which is about 2 to three years uh total production capacity
of THAD missile interceptors during that period. So again, you know, not only can
that operation that they did on the 13th not be easily resurrected, but at the
moment, um, uh, Israel is going to have to wait to re-equip itself, uh, with air
defenses in a in a major way before they could think of attacking. Uh, Iran is
doing the same. Um, the Iranians believe and think that there will be a further
attack from Israel because it's not they believe in Israel's interest
um to accept the Trump assertion that the program is over. that Israel wants
to say that the program is there because that provides them with the cue that to
say yes within the ceasefire we have the right to attack when and as we want onto
Iran if we suspect that they're enriching or moving a uranium we can
attack um at our initiative uh this is what the basis of the ceasefire in
Lebanon is um that there is to be a ceasefire But Israeli has the right to
attack anywhere in Lebanon as it chooses and when it chooses. So they've been
trying to impose the same terms if you like on Iran. And I think that is
ultimately intended to try and you know pull in America to another round of of
attacks because the Israeli position is still and this is very important really
that the Israeli position is uh that simply the uh enrichment program cannot
be defeated by military uh systems alone. uh the only way ultimately to
defeat it is by a regime change uh and the imposition of a of a western uh
style puppet government into Thran because they believe that you know they
cannot kill the technical knowledge or the will to move ahead with enrichment.
So I think uh it's pretty if the west I think there are two triggers that we
should watch this if the west really pushes the Iranians to allow some sort
of oversight or monitoring of the program with a reformed perhaps IA or
whatever. Um, by the way, Russia won't push them very
hard on that because the IA Russia has its own quarrels with the IEA. Um, but
if the West pushes or Trump pushes very hard in that, then I think, um, and it
is required under the NPT, the nuclear proliferation treaty, um, monitoring and
accountability in is part of the treaty. If that is pushed, then I think um there will be an
answer um which is we're leaving the NPT. And if then which is also likely the
Euro3 and the JCPOA push for a snapback of sanctions on Iran
and they've already said uh publicly that they intend to push for snapback
sanctions. part of the whole process of putting more pressure on Iran and then
you know the hope that um Trump keeps saying that they will then come and
offer an unconditional surrender which will never happen but that's the plan
anyway but those two things were likely to push Iran off the MPT what happens
then we have to wait and see but there is a very strong patriotic mood as he
referred to in the introduction that I And what is so striking
is it's the young, you know, the people that people thought were not necessarily, you know, supporters of it
and they are totally totally supporting the supreme leader. He's like a sort of
um celebrity figure now for everyone for for the young and for all. So um I don't
know whether they will decide to move uh towards a weapon or leave it in sort of
strategic ambiguity. Um that's a possibility too.
Well these kinds of attacks always in generate that kind of blowback. I was in Buenosaris
right before the British attacked the Faullands and the regime was about to fall the Huna. uh and then as soon as
the attack began uh these people became national galtier and all these criminals became national heroes. Um I want to
talk about that process because the supreme uh leader has uh I think it was
2003 had had written that it was against Sharia or Islamic law to build a nuclear
weapon. Uh that's perfectly true true but there
is some important element in under Sharia juristp prudence there's a thing
called it which is that you can change law um through reasoning through um uh a
process of reasoning and that reasoning can be changed on the basis of time and
circumstances so that if it's no longer appropriate it because you know world has moved on and
life is different or because of a change circumstances
um then a jurist it has to be a jurist it's not a political decision but a a qualified jurist hal Islam or more
senior can actually change um the law and a new fatwa can be can be issued um
very easily it doesn't need you know parliamentary or or or pew but there is
a majority in Iran run now of people who argue that um it was a mistake never to
go down this route and that um you know this is going to be
something that is going to be really much more and this is something the Russians have alluded to which I think
is quite significant. They're saying actually this whole proliferation process that the West had is actually
back to front because actually it's pushing people ultimately towards a
weapon, not preventing them because this process of going around and just
threatening states, we're going to um bomb you to the stone age if you if you
don't do what we tell you actually has ended. And that's what happened, of
course, with North Korea. I mean, they'd agreed a process of giving it up, but
then more requirements and more requirements were imposed. I mean, it was all agreed and there was going to be
money put in and a new process. Uh, and then the extra demands that Washington
imposed on top of the original agreement prompted the the North Koreans to say,
"Oh, hang it. It's not worth it. I mean, it's much better that we should go for a bomb." So I mean the Russians and others
are saying well you know this whole whole non-prololiferation actually the
real proliferators at this moment is is the west because they keep pushing people towards thinking the only thing
that that they need. Um and look what's happened. They bombed um Iran and now
Saudi Arabia is talking about a weapon. Now India is expressing concerns about
it and what the consequence will be. other states will be pursuing it. So actually rather than stopping
proliferation acting to stop proliferation as the west compl says
it's doing it is actually encouraging uh proliferation. That's the Russian view.
Med said that the the vice um uh the vice president said that quite recently.
Well you also have the example of Gaddafi who gave up his program. Exactly.
Exactly. It wasn't too difficult to take away, I remember, because it was still in its packing cases. He hadn't even
unpacked it and it was removed. Anyway, that was Yes, there isn't a good history
by this. Let's talk about the the increased drone activity that apparently is occurring
over Iran and what that means. Uh the Israeli drone activity over Iran
at the moment uh is not attack drones. Uh it is mostly surveillance drones.
They're sort of trying to scope out radar and the sort of the time it takes
for radar to lock onto them and where the radar is. And that is being fed into
the American only. The Americans have this sort of satellitebased battlescape
map that sort of tracks all radar and air defenses so that you can you know um
if you like instruct your missile to sort of do a slalom between all the
impediments to reach your um to reach your target. So that's what's happening
uh uh at the moment. Plus, and I heard this from Thran just um yesterday,
they're under huge cyber attack from all NATO, they say. I mean, there's a big
cyber attacks going. So, I think um you know, both parties expect there will be
another round and um Iran's certainly and Israeli Israel is preparing
for the next stage. So I think you know although Trump and I don't think he
wanted this I mean from everything that Michael Wolf said about those calls
which were you know I just want this to be perfect. I want this you know I want
this to be in boom out finished ceasefire done let's close it we
finished this talk. I think that what Trump is trying to do there is he does
not and Michael Wolf says and I think this is absolutely right. He doesn't think he has the attention span to do a
long drawn out slugfest fight with Iran. What he's trying to do
is shut it down to give him enough space to get back to what really wants which
is if you like this new Middle East business world. This new structure
whereby um Lebanon and Syria and others will be brought into some form we will
have the Abraham Accords 2.0. Um and that through this will open a
universe of business and trading possibilities um through and you know that he hopes
that Iran can just sort of stand on the sidelines and not do anything about it
till he can find some other agreement with Iran. But the main thing is the headline. Let's have a big headline.
We've done it. There's a new Middle East. Everyone's in this new sort of
matrix of money, investments, resources, and of course the resources of Iran
which are so vital to China and also the fact that the Gulf States and that if he
can take that whole, if you like corridor of the Middle East, he can take
it into southern central Asia and disrupt the bricks uh and their
connectivity plans in in in those stan areas Kazakhstan
Pakistan all those areas he can disrupt it and and start moving the economic
sphere into this at the same time that he's doing if you like an attempt to
cage China literally by tariffs structures this and also weakening
Russia um by reigniting the tensions in the caucuses again. Um and so Russia and
Putin is is taking this very seriously and so is China and and they are are
very angry about this. They're angry by the deceit because Putin thinks he was
deceived by those attacks on the strategic bombers just the day before
the Istanbul talks just as Iran is. And China does believes
also uh that um Z was um cheated um by
Trump in in the discussions that they had. So there's a a real sort of sense
of preparing um for a new and wider cold war um that is being pushed. I mean
Kazakhstan in the north. Um that is um I
was in in in Russia around about the time of the crocus um whole the concert
hall that was burnt down. uh and they were Tajiks that had come down who were
found to be responsible and there was a big structure um in Kazakhstan for
recruiting people Afghans and and um Tajik and others and for infiltrating
them into to Russia or to Iran or whatever and now we see that Aabaijan is
engaged in the same idea. Now the reports I can't verify them but uh
recently Russia uh arrested a number of uh Russian citizens and that produced a
dramatic response from Alv who who arrested all the Sputnik journalists and
any many others in Azabai and they roughed them up and they've charged them
with espionage and other uh charges. Um, now there's always been a sort of
criminal groups in Russia or from uh Aabaijan. Uh, they're known as sort of a
mafia there. But this is more serious I believe because it's thinking um the
Russians may be suspecting that these groups were also facilit facilitating
the infiltration of some of those prepositioned units
that were ready for the attack on the strategic bomber um uh system in Russia
uh the spiders web and that uh uh also I
said my John was facilitating the attack on Iran. So Aava and Romania too and the
question of you know Turkeykey's role. Uh the United States is trying to woo
Erdogan with promises of F35s if only he'll mothball the S400s that he
has. And uh I think that the aim is the
Israeli aim is the key to their if you like their new corridor the new um if
you like Abraham Accord 2.0 zero, a business plan right through um to Asia
is that Turkey should persuade both Syria and Lebanon that they have no
choice and incentivize them both to join into this new sort of greater Israel
project. So this is why there's a lot of tensions that all these proposals that
are coming out of America at the moment. Um the intent to sort of cut off um
China from trade by putting differential tariffs on China if they transip goods
through Vietnam or another country. Uh the prospect of new sanctions on Russia.
the attack on Iran as a a a pivot, a key
pivot for Russia and China of the whole brick structure. All of these things
producing a really strong uh response um from Russia I mean has giving has
given very tough response to Trump and this and says we know exactly what
you're doing in the caucuses. we know what you are doing in Aabaijang and we
won't put up with it. And so Russia responded to this by destroying the two
refineries um in uh Ukraine uh that were fueled
from Baku from uh Aabaijan. There was Aabaijan um input that was fueling these two
refineries. this was a is a warning to asan you know stop playing around uh
with with this. So um Iran will be saying something rather similar I
suspect uh to the Azeris. Now, uh I think some people in in in the United
States think even dream of the idea that uh um Azabaijan could invade at the
right moment in in coordination with Israel uh into Iran as the Beluch
perhaps come from another side or the Kurds from the other. But I think that is very far-fetched because 85% of Zeris
are she. Um there is uh the if you like the the leadership is Turk more than
Iranian she but they're Turk either Sunni or or she converted anyway it's
very secular. Um and the you know the Iranians um all the aeris in Iran are
very very loyal to to Iran and you know people talk about you know well the
glass ceiling and I slightly laugh at that and I say well there's one person you probably have heard of who's really
well-known um poet and he writes in the Azeri language uh and he's fluent in the
Azeri language and he is Aziri and That's a supreme leader. So it's not
that the Iseries are completely sort of outliers in Iran.
Isn't that Didn't Israel launch drones from there? Isn't Isn't that a launch point? Exactly. They launched drones and also
um as I say the airspace of Aabai was used um for standoff um firing of drones
that had these new cruise missiles. multiple cruise missiles uh um they
could launch them once they were in Iranian territory. Um I have two
I have two last questions but just uh on Gaza because in the meeting in the White House
uh when reporters were allowed in uh Trump and Netanyahu were talking about
depopulating Gaza that they you know Netanyahu very cynically said it's not a
prison. uh people who want to leave, of course, there's enforced starvation since March 2nd, uh should have the
right to leave. Uh just your thoughts on what's happening in Gaza.
Uh uh what's happening in Gaza is um that
Netanyahu and the right are intent on first of all pushing all the
Palestinians into what amounts to a concentration camp in one small part of
Gaza. They will be put in but they will not be allowed out of it. And it is a
stage towards it's politely called voluntary uh expatriation but it is of course
mandatory um uh if you like um removal uh of the population from Gaza. Uh and
the same is going on in the West Bank. Huge process. um Smrich is in charge of
this aspect and there is a real um effort being made because they think
they believe they can persuade Trump to annex most of the West Bank. But
settlers have moved in into large areas. New settlements are announced all the
time. It is uh the annexation is a foot in in the West Bank as in Gaza and I
think I remember Smatri was always very very clear about this. I remember
listening to him about about 6 years ago or so and he said listen listen this is
our plan you know to remove all the Palestinians from the area and he said
but you know as it is with the legal system it's difficult what we need is a
big crisis or a big war and when that happens we will complete the project
that's what we're looking for and that's why they're always sort of playing around with the Temple Mount Alaka uh
looking to use that perhaps as the pretext to sort of trigger um a
commotion in the whole Muslim world. Alakar is a, you know, neuralgic point
in the Muslim world that they could use this as the ability to sort of create
the crisis that they could then under the pretext of an emergency really move
um finish off the depopulation of Gaza uh and also much much of of the West
Bank drive. But does that does that mean they would they would drive the Palestinians and try and drive them into Jordan and they would drive the
Palestinians and Gaza into Egypt? They the Egyptians and the Jordanians have been adamant that that's not going to
happen. Yes. But I mean you know they are pushing them closer and closer to the
Rafa gate and you know what what's going to happen if they open those gates and just push
them out you know um a million or so Palestinians. Um it's very very
sensitive in Egypt. The Egyptians are really um ordinary Egyptians. The
Egyptian army is very angry with Cece about his ineffectual response to what's
happening in Gaza. It could explode. The whole the whole Egyptian element could
explode in in this process. Uh, of course there'll be some sort of public
relations exercise of sending a few Palestinians to I don't know where, but somewhere to say, "Oh, no, they went
voluntarily." But of course, that's not what's what's planned is planned is
another Nagakba from Gaza. And um, and it's unfolding sadly, unfortunately.
And um, I you know, nothing I mean
uh you know the the Hamas demands
are not met by this proposal. This is why I don't I think what we will get is
probably some sort of ceasefire, but it's a ceasefire designed to allow the Israelis to resume the um attrition of
Gaza. Um either because they'll claim it broken down or because they'll claim um
you know the 60 days are are over. And the Hamas position remains unchanged. We
want an end to the war. Uh we want the removal of all of the Israeli troops
from Gaza and a reconstruction of the the strip. And of course um the WhitF
proposal uh does none of those things. It doesn't provide for an end of the war. There will still be Israeli forces
inside Gaza um during the ceasefire and after. uh and the proposals for
reconstructing it is um quite different to be done by client uh Arab states and
we should just draw that parallel between decapitating Hamas I knew Abdul Aziz Rantisi one of the co-founders of
Hamas assassinated with his son in 2004 a long litany of Hamas
leaders who were killed uh uh and of course it the It it it disrupts the
organization without question. But uh uh just because Israel has decapitated
Iranian leadership ultimately, I mean, I'll get your feet on this, but it
ultimately uh uh doesn't uh disrupt the system.
I think that's exactly what we saw in Iran. I mean, you know that actually, as
so often has happened, Israel decapitates the moderates and the
younger generation that come in are much more hardline than, you know, they're
rather elderly. I mean, some of the IRGC, you know, are veterans from the
Iran Iraq war and, you know, the younger much more are much more vigorous and
much more um determined than the older ones. Um, and that's what's happened.
Uh, and I don't think, you know, I don't think I think what we've seen is the other part of this great equation that
was supposed to come out of Washington. um uh Hezbollah have said categorically
they will not accept any process that leads to their disarmament. Now this may
end up in civil war in Lebanon. It could do. It's very it would you know what the Americans are pushing very very hard um
in every way to disenfranchise, depoliticize, demilitarize
the she who are the majority in Lebanon. Um and um they it it won't happen. I
mean they've been down that route in the past as you know and it's not likely to
happen. Let's just close with the next Israeli strike. I mean which
you know you talked about how Israel views ceasefires. This is writ large in
Gaza where Israel violates every single ceasefire they make uh to quote unquote
mow the lawn. That same kind of mentality will most likely be used to
again make strikes against Iran if in Israeli eyes they feel they are
reconstituting uh military defenses or a nuclear program. what's what do you how do you
picture that uh strike and the consequences? The next one,
I think the first thing which is really important to to say is that um and you
know we follow the Israeli press very very closely, the Hebrew press, I mean not just the English language press. Um
uh it's very clear that they know now after what has happened. I mean they
sustained much more damage than they had expected that they cannot attack Iran
without full unstinting American support. Now the question is is that
going to be forthcoming and I think one of the things that um I feel might stop
it is the question of of the MAGA. I think the MAGA are really
quite unhappy. You know, there were two issues in the American election, immigration and
forever wars and MAGA um you know came and also there is a quite a number of
Democrats, young Democratic voters who supported Trump mainly because he
promised peace and no more war. not necessarily for the other part but certainly for that they are starting to
filter away and it's also in in the mega
you've seen I mean Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and everyone who there's
a big push back against it they have um Trump has a majority I think you correct
me if I'm wrong about three in both houses in in the Senate and the in the
House it's small and midterms are just over a year away. So I think he is going
to be worried about the internal position his the MAGA uh position and
that and that was obvious almost when Hex came in spoke and he said he went on
you may remember it he made a statement I think on Fox News saying look we're not attacking Iran per se or the Iranian
people we're just attacking um the uh the the nuclear program. I think, you
know, we're not wanting to have a war with Iran. We're just trying to, you know, sort sort the spat out. So, I
think he will because, you know, with only three, it would be quite feasible
if he gets stuck and locked into a long bloody conflict um in Iran. And it would
be because Iran's got surprises for the United States and for Israel. uh if it
moves to another phase, everyone is preparing for another phase. If it does
that uh you know he may find that you know at the end of it I mean it will be a very different world. I mean one can't
even rule out if there is a change at the midterm elections you know impeachment and things might come back
onto the agenda. Well, you know more about that than I, but it's it's a it's
a generous moment and I think he's right to be concerned about it because it's from both ends of his. It's the young
and it is the MAGA who are both, you know, don't want uh a war um a big war
in the Middle East particularly. Great. Thanks. Uh and I want to thank uh
Sophia, Victor, Max, Thomas, and Diego. uh who produce the show. You can find me
at chris edges.substack.com. substack.com [Music]