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Judge Napolitano talked to Trump about him breaking his promise to release JFK files, Trump said “If they showed you what they showed me you would never build the files either”

Machine transcript:
“You were discussed on the Joe Rogan experience We have that clip from Joe Rogan. We'll show it to you now. Napolitano. Oh, yeah And he said he goes why did you break that promise? Yeah? Why he goes if they showed you what they showed me you wouldn't tell anybody either. I Didn't see that. Yeah, I didn't see that. Yeah. Yeah, that's what Trump said to that judge. Um, if I think There's there's only one reason to hide it the CIA killed Kennedy. You know, sh well I happen to agree with Joe Rogan's comments and Joe. Thank you for discussing this He's referencing the conversation that I recounted that I had With president Trump about two weeks before he left office when I reminded him He hadn't fulfilled his promise to reveal the JFK assassination files and that's when he said to me If they showed you what they showed me you would never build the files either and I said well Who's they and what did they show you? He said someday when we're speaking in there aren't 15 people on the phone ...

00:00:36
The Grayzone: leaked call of ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt reveals the Israel lobby’s concerns with young people and TikTok; it’s not a left right divide: it’s young vs old

Machine transcript:
“[…] Actually, Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League in a leaked call, I guess that was sort of recorded Without him knowing this is a private call among Israel lobbyists stated this openly This is Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADR National problem, all the polling I've seen, ADL's polling, ICZ's polling, independent polling suggests this is not a left-right gap, folks The issue in the United States, the support for Israel, is not left and right, and is young and old And the numbers of young people looking at the masses, you know, massacre was justified as shockingly and terrifyingly hot And so we really have a TikTok problem that shows a problem that our community needs to put The same brains that gave us tech lead, the same brains that gave us, all these other amazing innovations, need to put our energy towards this, like profound […]”

Source:
https://youtu.be/vTiD0Z9Sia8

00:01:06
Matt Taibbi explains more of how the US federal government threatened social media companies to achieve censorship, beyond Section 230

Machine transcript:
“[…] Has there been a strong enough argument made that the kinds of emails that you have covered so well in the Twitter files really did constitute an order? Or did the plaintiffs here properly bring in and make the case that statements by the president or others about Section 230 were sufficiently coercive? Was that case made? I think that's a much stronger case than even plentiful emails, even magging emails, even voluminous emails saying we don't like X, Y, and Z policy. And finding trouble, and having trouble differentiating that from the kind of flacking that we know all exists in the realm of the media, traditional media. Yeah, again, it's so different from what goes on in traditional media. We did several Twitter file stories about, for instance, an episode in early 2017 where the Senate Intelligence Committee was not happy that the companies were stonewalling them on turning over evidence pertaining to Russian, the possible Russian, bot activity, or what ...

00:03:53
Alastair Crooke: a well-informed spook’s analysis of the “ISIS” terror attack in Moscow; was it Ukraine behind this? Maybe yes.

Summary of his main points:
1. Attackers were mercenaries, not jihadists (they did it for money, not martyrdom).
2. The Ukrainian ambassador to Tajikistan (where the attackers came from) is a (former?) Ukrainian intelligence operative (is he referring to Faizullo Kholboboev? I couldn’t find a source to back this up).
3. Alexei Danilov, who is the secretary of the National Security Council in Ukraine said things on TV shortly after the attack seeming to take credit for it.
4. ISIS-K is an invention of the western intelligence services.

Machine transcript:
“[…] let's start with the tragedy in Moscow over the weekend. From your experience dealing behind the scenes with governance, do you think that any intelligence community consensus seriously believes that this was just ISIS-K on its own? - I'd be very surprised. The ISIS-K is really a sort of cover story, I think, because really, ISIS-K is not real. It was a parallel to ISIS that was created by the Western services as Saudi ...

Alastair Crooke: a well-informed spook’s analysis of the “ISIS” terror attack in Moscow; was it Ukraine behind this? Maybe yes.
Podcast clip: Alexander Mercouris: the CIA and all the other western intelligence agencies have extensive blackmail files on all major figures and work feverishly to prevent anyone from succeeding in power who isn’t compromised

Machine transcript:
“[…] The new Gardet back to CIA blackmail issue is implausible that Miqueur, recent, incomprehensible war-like posture be stimulated by the near cons, indeed CIA has certainly leveraged on this suddenly emerging figure from nowhere back then. The recently leaks on his private life. May suggest it. You may be absolutely correct. I know I have been contacted by others who think the same as you that these leaks and his sudden vault-fast have not come out from nowhere. I mean that they are connected in some way. My own view about this, and I've said this many times, is that I think that the intelligence and security services, not just the CIA, but all of them across Europe, and it's important to say that within NATO it impairs to me that they work in harness. I think they maintain massive, comprehensive, to use the Russian word on everybody, on pretty much everybody in the political system. I think by the way also that they make sure that anybody who is not susceptible to that kind of compromise ...

Podcast clip: Alexander Mercouris: the CIA and all the other western intelligence agencies have extensive blackmail files on all major figures and work feverishly to prevent anyone from succeeding in power who isn’t compromised
Podcast clip: Dan Bongino: interview with Mike Benz, explains how the US empire works, the blob, the deep state, the CIA, NED, etc

Machine transcript:
“[…] And you expose kind of start to finish the massive operation that's been going on for a long time about the blob. I hate to term the deep state. I don't know if you agree, Mike, because they're not all state actors. So maybe that's a good place to start. What exactly is the blob and how are they altering electoral politics in the United States and elsewhere? Yeah, that's exactly right. So the blob is not my term. That's actually a term that came from Obama's deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes in the second half of the Obama term when they're starting to be pushed back from the substructures underneath Obama within the permanent Washington and its outer rim in the private sector, where he referred to the foreign policy establishment as being the blob. That is what Obama wanted to do domestically, he could basically do. But anything on foreign policy had to get the permission of this alien. It gets its name from the 1950s movie, the blob of this sort of amorphous, ...

Podcast clip: Dan Bongino: interview with Mike Benz, explains how the US empire works, the blob, the deep state, the CIA, NED, etc
Always feel free to repurpose material from me as you see fit

Feel free to email me: [email protected]. By all means feel free to take anything I say or write or publish in any context and use it as your own. Everything I do is 100% open source and public domain -- I positively disclaim copyright as in CC0 (creative commons zero) to everything I do, without exception. No need to ever mention me. In fact I prefer anonymity as it encourages people to evaluate a thing on it's merit rather than its source. It's always the message that matters, not the messenger.

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[Official Russian Propaganda] TASS: Russia does not want war with Europe and isn’t pursuing it; Russia only has a problem with western elites pursuing aggression, not western citizens

“[…] Russian President Vladimir Putin has slammed allegations that Russia is planning to fight against Europe as utter nonsense.

"As for the allegations that we are planning to invade Europe after Ukraine, this is utter nonsense meant solely to intimidate their population to make them pay more money," he said at a meeting with military pilots in the Tver Region.

He noted that this narrative unfolds "amid the slumping economy and deteriorating living standards." "This is absolutely clear and is acknowledged by everyone. This is not propaganda. This is what is really happening. They need to justify themselves, so they are intimidating their population with a potential Russian threat while seeking to expand their dictation onto the entire world," Putin stressed. […]”

“[…] Russian President Vladimir Putin assured that Russia will not cancel the world culture, like the West does with the Russian culture.

"There are many [world culture] achievements in the countries that we ...

[Official Ukrainian propaganda] Kyiv Post: SBU head Vasyl Malyuk (Ukraine’s “KGB”) admits to assassination campaign targeting many inside Ukraine and Russia, including Darya Dugina; also admits infrastructure terrorism on oil refineries, bridges

“[…] An assassination campaign “possibly” run by Ukraine’s national spy agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), has killed more than a dozen Ukrainian citizens collaborating with the Kremlin in Russian-occupied territory, the agency’s senior officer, Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk, said in Monday evening televised comments.

Speaking in an hour-long interview with the national broadcaster ICTV, Malyuk said secret operators since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion have targeted “very many” individuals responsible for war crimes and attacks against Ukrainian citizens and operated deep behind “enemy” lines, including in Russia.
[…]
Malyuk claimed that the assassination campaign, run through networks of secret agents and clandestine operatives, has prioritized Ukrainian nationals collaborating with Kremlin occupation authorities to arrest and torture other Ukrainians, but that formally, Kyiv cannot take responsibility for the killings and attempted killings.

“Officially, we will ...

Ukraine_s_Secret_Service_Boss_Details_Assassination_Campaign_vs._Kremlin-Loyal_Occupation_Officials.pdf
Transcript: Chuck Grassley: “Grassley Sets the Record Straight on Oversight of FBI-Generated 1023 Document”

Today, I want to take the time of my colleagues to set the record straight yet again about an FBI investigative report that's been generated that goes by the number 1023. And I do this because the breathless media is misreporting requires that I come to the floor to give a historical reorientation of the facts and the evidence. As I've said all along on the center floor, I and Chairman Comer of the House made the 1023 document public for this single purpose. That purpose is to force the FBI to do what the taxpayers pay the FBI to do. And that is investigate, in this case, the information contained in that document that goes by the number of 1023. It's all pretty simple. I didn't promote or vouch for the allegations in 1023 as the truth, like some confused Democrats in the partisan media, have falsely said. I pushed the FBI to do their job because that's my responsibility to the taxpayers and the people of Iowa. Now some confused Democrats and partisan media have returned to their favorite line, falsely saying that our effort to get the FBI to do their job is somehow peddling Russian disinformation. It's kind of like a nervous tick to all of them. For years, they falsely said the same thing about my and Senator Johnson's Biden family investigation, even though our investigation was based on Obama, Biden, administration records, and really on authentic bank records. Some Democrats in the partisan media apparently don't care about observing and reading the facts. Well, this senator does care about that. So let's discuss the facts of the matter that they either missed or more likely are choosing to ignore because it doesn't fit their narrative. The whistleblower's within the Justice Department, who came to me, said the FBI had this document, the 1023, in their position now three years ago, June of 1920, three and a half years ago, in fact, because that document is dated June the 30th, 2020. Those whistleblowers that came to me were right. The whistleblower said the FBI considered its confidential human source to be credible. That confidential human resource, source, which I'll simply describe today as the FBI source, formed the basis of the 1023. If you're following television, we now know the name of that FBI source, but until he was arrested, I did not know his name. The FBI said the same to Congress and used the credibility of that source, the credibility assessment of that individual as he accused to even withhold the 1023 from Congress when we first asked for it. Even ranking member Raskins of the House committee confirmed that the FBI told Congress that the FBI source was credible. The FBI found their source so credible that the FBI gave their source the authority even to engage in illegal activity for the FBI's criminal investigation. And yes, I want to make clear. The FBI said that he could do illegal things in his work for the FBI. The FBI told him that he may even have to testify in court based on the information he provided. In fact, the FBI said that this source was so credible that the public release of the unclassified 1023 could put his life at risk. And then when they used the excuse, it could put his life at risk for releasing it is another excuse that they used. Now let me be clear. The FBI consistently and publicly vouched for their source. Then the other week, the Biden justice made this source's name public for the world to see. So if you watch television, you'll get his name off of television. Apparently the FBI's excuse to withhold the document from Congress, as you can see, was pure smoke. However, the FBI said releasing the 1023 could put their employees a confidential human source, life in danger. The FBI's conduct is of course obviously observed, observed, and a disservice to the American people, that means a disservice to the American people when the FBI doesn't do its job of following up on investigative reports as they did in this case for three years. So you can see those same whistleblowers were right about the FBI believing that their source was credible. The FBI's source served as a source for many years, dating to the Obama administration, roughly 2010 as I recall. According to the Justice Department indictment, the FBI source worked for the federal government and was paid by the federal government. So again, those whistleblowers injustice were right. Whistleblores said the FBI failed to investigate the allegations in the document. So let me refresh this history by giving you the timeline. According to the Justice Department indictment, the FBI finally interviewed the FBI source on September 27th last year. We made the 1023 public just a few months prior to July 20th, on July 20th, 2023. Clearly, the FBI finally acted because of our release of the document. In other words, we embarrassed them. And by that time, as I've said, by my timeline, the document was over three years old. Three years they didn't do their job that the FBI ought to have been following up on. So the 1023 sat with the FBI collecting dust until we and Congress acted. My releasing the 1023 got the FBI to do its job that they should have been doing three years before. So I think it's legitimate in this political climate we're in this year, a presidential year, to ask the question, would special counsel Jack Smith have waited years to act if the 2010-23 was about former President Trump. Those whistleblores were right about the FBI's failure to investigate. I started my oversight relating to the FBI's failure to investigate the 1023 on October 13th, 2022. So I didn't have the document in my possession. I knew about it from the whistleblores, but what information I got from the whistleblores without actually reading the document, I sent a letter to Attorney General Garland, Director Ray, and U.S. Attorney Weiss to ask this very simple question. And I quote from the letter, "What has the FBI and the Justice Department to include U.S. Attorney Weiss done to investigate." I also asked for an array of documents, including travel documents, that the Justice Department has used to indict the source. And I also asked before I had read the document, for the same records again, this would have been after we released the document. So I correct myself. I asked the same records again on October 24th, 2023. I said this on May 3rd, a year earlier. What we don't know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. I asked on May 5th, 2023, about the 1023, quote, "I wish I could say that I knew it was true or untrue," end of quote. On May 9th, 2023, I said quote, "My focus right now is on the FBI and the Department of Justice. What have they done with this document?" Meaning 1023, end of quote. On June 1st, 2023, I said quote, "We're responsible for making sure the FBI does its job, and that's what we want to know," end of quote. I came to this floor in the Senate on June 12th, 2023, to say to my colleagues this, and I quote, "Here, with this 1023 document, I've been referring to throughout my remarks, the Biden Justice Department, FBI, must explain to Congress and the American people what, if anything, they've done with this information, and they need to show their work. We're not accepting their word for anything. We're seeking documentary proof of what they did to investigate the matter or their failure to do so," end of quote. Even after Comer and I publicly released the document, I said this on July 25th quote, "I want to make sure what my oversight focus is, and we'll be holding the Biden Justice Department and the FBI accountable to explain to the American people what they did to investigate and what they found. What did the Justice Department and the FBI do to investigate the information contained in 1023? Did the Justice Department and the FBI follow normal investigating process and procedure or try to sweep all this under the rug because of political bias? More precisely, did the FBI and DOJ seek to obtain the evidence referenced in the document? Did the Department of Justice and FBI seek to interview individuals relating to the 1023? And if not, why not? If so, one way or the other, what did they find? And that's end of the quote from what I said here on the floor of the Senate last year on this very subject. Let me say that one line again, so everyone hears me, one way or the other, what did they, meaning the FBI, find? All these partisan media outlets, if they had a shred of intellectual honesty and decency, could report those facts and hold the FBI accountable for their failures. And of course, our congressional request after another, one congressional request after another, when unanswered to the Justice Department and the FBI. So considering that deafening silence and the FBI's assertion that the source was credible, we made the 1023 public to force the FBI to do what they're paid to do to do their job. They were supposed to be investigating this matter three years ago and doing it, not for Chuck Grassley, but for the American people. If Congress didn't ask for transparency and accountability, in other words, us in the Congress doing our oversight work, we'd break faith with the American people just like the FBI didn't do its job and broke faith with the American people. And you know what else? The Biden administration hasn't answered. My and Senator Johnson's oversight request. Let's not forget, there's a larger investigative picture here other than just 1023. Senator Johnson and I released two reports in 2020 as part of our Biden family investigation. We gave a series of floor speeches, introducing bank records, connecting the Biden family to communist China financial interests. Then on October the 26th, 2022, we sent hundreds of pages of those bank records to use the U.S. attorney vice. So then this question is appropriate. To my Democrat colleagues and more importantly, the partisan media that's not doing their job are those authentic bank records that Johnson and I made public. Is that Russian disinformation? How Chairman Comer, Jordan and Smith have built on, built and advanced upon the foundation created by Senator Johnson and this Senator. So here's the question. Where's the Biden justice department regarding those bank records and potential money laundering? Where's the Biden justice department regarding Biden family members registering under the Foreign Agents Act? Another question, the Biden justice department appears to, appears concerned about their FBI sources contact with national, for nationals. So where's that same concern regarding the Biden family foreign connections? Are the justice department and the FBI sitting on it just like they did with the 1023 for at least three years? Here's another question to pose to the media and my colleagues. If we didn't make the 1023 public would the FBI have interviewed the FBI source or would he remain on the taxpayers payroll for another 10 years continuing to misinform the FBI and by misinforming, I presume that's the reason he's sitting in jail now in Las Vegas, waiting trial or waiting whatever they have to do to follow up on the arrest? What will happen to the defendants if this sources information was used for a conviction or a plea deal? This is really quite the mess for the justice department and the FBI and it's one of their own making. My oversight investigations are done without regard to power, party or privilege. And I backed that statement up with asking you to remember I'm the senator that did a transcribed interview with Donald Trump Jr. when Donald Trump was president of the United States. That's when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I also ordered my staff to interview other Republicans during my crossfire hurricane investigation. And you know what? If I had the gavel today, I'd bring more Biden's to Congress to testify because the American people really deserve the kind of nonpartisan oversight that I've been conducting for years. And remember this and it's pretty simple. If the FBI came clean years ago about this document 1023, we wouldn't have had to release that very document. I wouldn't have had to rely on whistleblowers to make this public. So this guy still could be working for the FBI for another 10 years. Instead, these people played games, withheld the document from Congress and provided false and misleading information to Congress and the American people to not want to come clean on what they did with 1023. We all know that transparency in government brings accountability. Now folks are being held accountable because of my congressional oversight. My oversight will continue. The FBI has a lot of explaining to do for their continued shortcomings and actions in this case. When will the media ask the FBI to explain? I've just explained it for the American people. I'd like to see the media cover this instead of talking about rights and disinformation when this issue is discussed in print media and on television. Mr. Chairman, I yield before.

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Transcript: Dave Smith: “Ben Shapiro Breaks Down Russia”
Shapiro knows nothing about Russia or Ukraine and is a neocon

 So this is from a few days ago, Ben Shapiro, our good friend, who does many segments on me, always make sure to mention me by name and send his audience over here, and I appreciate that. He did an episode kind of laying out his foreign policy positions and how he sees world events and how they've transpired. And it was just, I thought it was such a great opportunity to kind of contrast his neo-conservative view of the world, versus the more, say in our case, non-interventionist libertarians, or even the America first, or just the "I'm a sane person who doesn't want to blow up people and destroy the world," like from that perspective, very different from Ben Shapiro's. I know Ben Shapiro doesn't self-identify as a neo-con, but he is a neo-con any time it matters. Anyway, let's go through this and respond. One of the great qualities of dictatorship is that dictators can hold the line even as democracies start to fade. That, of course, is the theory of pretty much every dictator across history, when faced with a democratic rival. That is certainly the theory of Vladimir Putin today, whether it is in Ukraine, or whether it's with regard to him just killing the people who oppose him, people like Alexei Navalny. And it's becoming very clear this week that Vladimir Putin is now settling all family business. This is the week where he has the ability to build a set of people. Okay, so I don't know if you saw this thing about this Navalny guy, Rob, but it just came out that one of the top Ukrainian intelligence guys said that he died of a blood clot. This is so, already you have this scenario where Ben Shapiro doesn't actually know what he's talking about. He's just deciding that Putin is taking care of all family business right now. That does not seem clear at all. And in fact, it was a little bit suspicious of the timing of it, right? Like it's like the timing like while the U.S. is debating over this additional $60 billion, Vladimir Putin decides now is the time to do this assassination. Like it's possible that he's just the dumbest person on the planet, or is possible that this isn't at all what's going on. And just like when everybody was jumping on the story about the ghost of Kiev, or the story about how Vladimir Putin was dying, or the story about how he was about to be overthrown by that militia that he pissed off, people jump on these stories because they suit their narrative. And none of it's actually clear that that's happening at all. I got to ask Alex Mulvaney, I know this is crass, but him dying in prison, this is not an endorsement of Putin sending him to a work colony, or whether or not he had him killed in that prison, or if maybe the blood-cock condition was escalated by harsh conditions. Does that change anything to our relationship with Russia or view of Putin? Is that a reason for more or less warfare? It's just the fact that a dictator took out a political enemy. They're trying to turn Donald Trump into a political predator's here. They're not having a lot of success with it. What does it mean to change in any way? Yeah, because the Western countries or the U.S. would never kill somebody for a political outcome that they wanted to see. We would never. Anyway, it's just kind of childish and silly. I'm looking for the Clinton's friends. The Clintons just have a lot of coincidences. Alright guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, brand-new sponsor who were thrilled to have on board, and that is my Patriot supply. Listen, things have been a little bit wacky over the last few years, and I'm not trying to be an alarmist and say that everything's falling apart, but I do think I speak for a lot of us when I say I'm more aware and concerned of making sure I have what I need to keep my family safe in the event that things could get worse. If that's you, go check out MyPatriotSupply.com. They've helped millions of American families prepare for the uncertain future. Many of them start with four-week emergency food kits by ReadyHour. With 16 food and drink varieties, there'll be no food boredom. With over 2,000 calories per day, there'll be no starvation. And sealed inside ultra durable packaging, these meals last up to 25 years in storage. Stock up on all the food kits your family needs at the website at MyWebsightPrepareWithSmith.com. Get each ReadyHour four-week food kit for $60 off and also get free shipping. Protect yourself, protect your people. You're not ready if it's not ReadyHour. Start preparing at PrepareWithSmith.com. One more time that's PrepareWithSmith.com. All right, let's keep playing. What it is that he wants, and the reason he feels that way is because of a combination of splits on the right in the United States and a combination of splits on the left in the United States, as well as splits in the European coalition with regard to Russia. When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, there was pretty much unanimity that this was not something that the West could allow to stand. You couldn't have Vladimir Putin simply waltzing into Kiev, taking over the country, killing Vladimir Zelensky, and essentially setting up a puppet dictatorship and turning Ukraine into a second Belarus. You couldn't have that because it would put- Let's just pause it right there. I mean, it's just pretty funny that it's like, well, I mean, is it acceptable in 2014 when there's a violent street push backed by the West that overthrows the democratically elected president, Yanukovych. By the way, his elections were monitored by the EU, and they said they were legit elections, and so the democratically elected president being overthrown by a violent coup backed by the West and installing a pro-Western regime. Is that okay? So anyway, I mean, I know that's a fact that these guys don't like to grapple with, but yeah, that happened 10 years ago, which is not that long ago. Anyway, let's keep on it. Russia directly on the borders of a wide variety of NATO countries, including Hungary and Poland. Okay, I'm sorry. This is going to take us a long time to get through, but it's so funny. Isn't it so funny? I mean, we can't have Russia right on NATO's borders. It's just like you can't even like, how can you say that out loud? It does like, it's like the jokes. Like you see these like memes on Twitter and stuff, but they'll be like, well, if Iran wasn't a hostile government, why would they put their country right next to all of our bases? Wait, what? Yeah, okay. Well, like NATO is the one who's been expanding East, okay? And that NATO expansion. If you're going to say we can't have Putin right on NATO's borders, well, then how would it not be reasonable for Vladimir Putin to be like, I can't have NATO's NATO right on my borders. And the NATO expansion began way before the Russian war in Ukraine. So again, this is just, I don't know, this is all silly. It also, you know, if Ben Shapiro started saying, okay, Vladimir Putin's taking care of all this family business now. And why is he doing that? What's his mindset? And then gets into all these things when it's not even clear that he's taking care of family business right now. So not only are you getting the thing, I mean, maybe, maybe that's what happened, but we don't know that. We don't know that for sure at all. And like when Ukrainian intelligence officials are saying we think it's a blood clot, it's reasonable to assume, like they would be in, they would be incentivized to say he killed this guy. And he's going to assume that that's plausible, that that's what happened. And anyway, it's so now he's going off on this whole thing based on what Putin's mindset is. But he's not doing this based on like Putin has said this. See, anytime one of someone like me who's been a huge critic of this war from the very beginning, anytime someone like me will say, look, Vladimir Putin has said over and over and over again, these are my issues with the West. These are my security concerns. These are my demands. This is my red line. And then people will be like, oh, that's just what he says, but blah, but then they just go, no, this is really what he wants. But they're not even looking at what he says. They're just getting inside of his head. Like I'm not claiming that like I can read Putin's mind or I know what's in his heart. I'm telling you what he said over the years and what's reasonable and what's not reasonable in what he said. But Ben Shapiro is just telling you, this is how he, this is what he thinks based on nothing. Anyway, let's keep playing. But certainly threatened former Soviet satellite states like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all of which are deeply fearful of a Putin led incursion into their territory, Finland as well. You couldn't have it because Ukraine actually is a relatively major producer of products like wheat and oil. And mostly you couldn't have it because Vladimir Putin has interests that are antithetical to those of the West. For all of the talk about over the last 25 years about how Vladimir Putin was just on the cusp of moderating how there was going to be a moment when Vladimir Putin was welcomed into the family. And then just one more point. With the, as far as the stuff goes, like kind of a similar point that I was making to the, the, the coup in 2014 in Ukraine, but you know, think about this argument that Ben Shapiro's making that we couldn't have Russia intervening in Ukraine. We couldn't allow that because, because like they make wheat, you know, so like we couldn't allow the Vladimir Putin to go into Ukraine. But think about that argument when at least what Vladimir Putin has been saying this whole time is that he can't allow us to intervene in Ukraine. And I don't know like how good you are at geography. You could like picture a map in your head, but Ukraine is a lot closer to Russia. And also like, if we're going to sit here in the United States of Americans and say we can't have him intervening in Ukraine, isn't it totally reasonable then? And if then statement, if we can't allow that, then it's pretty damn reasonable for him to say he can't allow that. Okay. Just like the most basic point, but all right, let's keep on. That never happened. Every single president of my lifetime has tried a reset with Vladimir Putin. George W. Bush famously looked into Putin's eyes and thought he had a sense of his soul. And then you had Barack Obama who literally sent Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state to Moscow to give them a button that didn't actually say reset, but was supposed to be a reset button. And then you had Vladimir Putin being offered flexibility by Barack Obama in 2012 in the lead up to the 2012 election. And then Donald Trump came into the office and the basic assumption was that Donald Trump was going to lead to a warm relationship with Putin. And I have Joe Biden who came into office and was immediately pretty soft on Russia in terms of sort of geopolitical, strategically, as George W. Bush once put it. Now that that take has been false. Sure. I've got a lot to say about this, but go ahead. That sounds like, what is that, four presidents in a row that didn't really have a fight or a war with Russia. And I don't remember any hostilities or incredible turmoil between us and Russia for the last 20 years. Yeah. Well, he started that conversation with Bush. That's eight years. Then you got Obama for another eight. So that's 16. Yeah. But the problem is a Trump that's four. So that's 20 years of no problems. But the problem with Ben Shapiro's summary of all of this is that it's just so superficial. Like he's going, well, Bush said he looked into his eyes and saw that he was a good man. And Hillary Clinton went over there with her reset button. And Donald Trump talked about having gay talent with Russia and being friends with them. And Joe Biden, I don't even know what he means by this. Wasn't it war with him for the first year of his administration or something like that? And it's like, look, all of that is true. But that's right. If you only pay attention to what they said and don't cover it all what any of them did, then you'll get you could be left with that impression. But let's go through a little bit more of this. And this is just some of what was done. Okay. With some of what the American presidents have done during all of this time period. Okay. George W. Bush also tore up multiple treaties that we were in with Russia. Every single one of the presidents that he just named oversaw NATO expansions moving east. George W. Bush also put dual use rocket launchers into Poland when his justification was that they were there to make sure that Iran can't nuke Europe with the nukes that they don't have. But Vladimir Putin saw this as a direct security concern. He's mentioned it over and over and over the latest of which was in the interview with Tucker Carlson. He's talking about this in almost every speech he's given that I've read or listened to over the last 10 years. Okay. So there's George W. Bush and I'm just rattling off some. We could go up on this for a long time. Barack Obama attempted to overthrow in allied government of his in Syria and he successfully backed the overthrow of the government in Ukraine. These are kind of big deals. They didn't even mention an arm in the jihadist in Chechnya, but whatever. So Donald Trump got us tore up the INF treaty or withdrew from the INF treaty. Donald Trump sent weapons into Ukraine while they were in the middle of a civil war that was a direct result from the coup in 2014 that Barack Obama and Joe Biden backed. You can go listen to the Victoria Newland phone call right when she's talking about that. She goes, we're in play. We got to glue this thing. She says, there's going to be in the new government. Here's who's not going to be in the new government. And who do they say is going to get on the phone to give him an ad a boy? She says Joe Biden, the vice president at the time who was very involved in the Ukrainian policy. Part of the reason why his son got such a sweetheart deal from that barista, my Ukrainian gas company. So yes, I mean, Ben Shapiro, if you just want to have the most superficial way, like if your understanding of politics is like, I watch the view once a week, then yes, this would be what you know that the president said nice things about Putin. If you actually like read books and know what actually happened, no, they were all taking more and more aggressive aggressive postures toward Vladimir Putin. And Putin during this time was over and over again, asking them to stop, even asking to join NATO at one point. They're like Vladimir Putin for much of his time was kind of asking like like the other side to all of these these points is like he had Hillary Clinton there. And I wasn't Putin who did it, but it was like Clinton and one of his guys and they pushed that button together and he met with George W. Bush and he was giving us information and offering his services after 9/11. If you recall, it was Vladimir Putin who warned the United States of America about the Boston Marathon bombers and was like, keep your eyes on these guys. These are radical jihadists and of, you know, we didn't do a good job with that information we were given. But anyway, it's just it there's much more to this than Ben Shapiro is, is, you know, explaining. And of course he's doing this because as all these war hawks do, they start from their conclusion and then they work backward. The conclusion is we want to support this war. So now let's work back from there. Oh, look, all these presidents were nice to Putin and look, it still ended up being this. So then as Joe Biden comes back into office, you can't remove it from the context that Joe Biden was the guy, you know, back in 2014, it was kind of the point man on this Ukrainian operation. So that's something that Vladimir Putin sees too. And meanwhile, all along this whole time, he had always maintained as I've talked about at nauseam, but the there's the net means net memo that you can read yourself, which was a private cable that Julian Assange leaked. That's the only reason we know about it. This was not for the public. This was for this was Burns who was the Russian ambassador sending a cable back to the then secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, in which he explains in no uncertain terms that Ukrainian entry to NATO is Putin's red line. And like it's the memo is in diplomatic language, but he's basically saying this is his red line and he's not bluffing. This is the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vladimir Putin and he will go to war over this. And he says in the memo that he doesn't want to because he doesn't want to go to war, but he will he will feel like he has to if you if you put Ukraine and NATO. And a couple months after that at the Bucharest summit, they announced that they were putting Georgia and Ukraine and NATO. Okay. And this is the very beginning of real trouble in that relationship. And essentially, though, I mean, we can get into more of this later, but this is what the fights all been over and people who pretend it's not are diluting themselves. It's just it's the evidence is overwhelming. And we'll probably get into more of this as we keep playing. But yeah, let's go back to Benny boy. It's time and time again. Vladimir Putin is a highly intelligent, highly skilled adversary of the United States. His interests do not align with the interests of the West. The chief Russian motivation and this has been true for literally centuries is territorial ambition. This has been true since the time of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. And if you want to go back even further, this has been true. Okay, it's by the way, I don't care whether it's Vladimir Putin when he opens his 30 minute interview with Tucker Carlson talking about what the Ukrainian relationship with Russia was in the year 1300. I don't care if it's the Zionists who go back 2000 years ago and say the Jews were the ones living there. I don't care if it's Ben Shapiro who's saying Russia's um Russia's motivation is territorial expansion. And then he goes back, oh, we can go back hundreds of years or thousands of years. All of these arguments are ridiculous just on their face. It's always when people don't want to deal with the recent history and what's actually been happening there. You cannot say that because in the year 700, the Russians were an expansionist country there, therefore Vladimir Vladimir Putin's motives must be that. This would be ridiculous and nobody would ever apply this logic to the United States of America or to any of the countries that are their allies. Oh, well, like, I guess, I guess then that must be England's motivation to, right? I mean, hey, England and France, they're funding the war with us. Look at their history. What have they done? They've been imperialist colonizers. So then they must be this is all ridiculous. It doesn't mean anything. And no, it's not clear at all that Vladimir Putin's main goal. In fact, there's no evidence to suggest that Vladimir Putin's main goal here is to expand his territory. And in fact, in 2014, after the coup in Ukraine, they when they had a plebiscite in the Donbass region, now you can trust this or not. Okay, this isn't my point. Maybe they weren't legitimate. These were not like verified by the EU, not that the EU is the end all be all, but they did they held elections and Donbass voted again. Maybe you think it's illegitimate. That's actually beside the point here, but they voted to be part of Russia to leave Ukraine and be part of Russia. And Vladimir Putin said no. So if his motivation really was territorial expansion, he would have taken the Donbass region then when he had the perfect cover, which was, hey, look, they voted. This is what they want. It's a large percentage ethnic Russians in that region. So hey, and they had already basically attempted to secede from Ukraine. That would have been the time to do it if this was just his if that was his real motivation here. But what he's been saying the whole time and what tracks is that actually it was security concerns. And that actually he had basically come to a place where the West was going to give him no assurances that his brightest of red lines would be crossed. And they had kind of already crossed it. They were already doing NATO joint military exercises with the Ukrainian military, and they were already shipping weapons in to Ukraine. And that he's like, well, I mean, if you're doing joint military exercises and you're shipping weapons and they're basically a de facto member of NATO. That is the motivation here. Vladimir Putin has been explicit about this as have even Western leaders when they were being honest. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, Oxygen Health Systems. Now you can jumpstart your health and wellness with a hyperbaric oxygen. Benefits include a boost in energy levels, decreased inflammation, anti aging benefits, improve your memory and your overall brain function and it increases melatonin for better sleep. Owning a home hyperbaric chamber from oxygen health systems is now within your reach and oxygen health systems chambers integrate progressively advanced technology with amazing new features. Fits comfortably in your home. The Lux Air hyperbaric chambers from oxygen health systems is unique in the industry and considered the Tesla of portable hyperbaric chambers. Take advantage of the $500 savings on Lux Air hyperbaric chamber today at oxygen health systems.com and make sure to use the promo code problem at checkout one more time. That's oxygen health systems.com promo code problem at checkout. All right, let's get back into the show. But anyway, let's keep playing. The fact is that if you look at Russian history or have any sense of Russian history, Russia's great leaders are always measured by the amount of land they control, which makes a certain amount of geopolitical sense if you are Russia because again, Russia is a giant step, meaning it is open to invasion from all sides. And so if you're Russian, one of the things that historically you have attempted to do is expand your borders so as to prevent invasion from all sides. Now, at a certain point that defensive justification becomes an offensive strategy in which you're invading sovereign nations that exist all around you and attempting to control top down, Russia has always been an empire since the time of Muscovy. And now you are watching as Vladimir Putin tries to expand the boundaries of what he sees as his new empire in himself compared himself to Peter the Great just a couple of years ago after the invasion of Ukraine. Yeah, let's pause it there. This just sounds like the dumbest analysis I've ever heard that the proof that Putin wants to expand is that historically, so like we expanded West, can you say the exact same thing about the foundations of America? Well, yeah, it's like if a rising and expanding. Yeah, like if if Trump compares himself to Andrew Jackson, that's not proof that he's going to scalp an Indian. You know what I mean? This is the dumbest argument ever. And even by his own argument, if he's going, well, look, Russia has been invaded many times and they're concerned about that. It's like, oh, maybe then they'd be concerned about their largest, most important strategic neighbor being a part of a hostile military alliance. Like, how is that not reasonable? All right, let's keep playing. And when you watch the interview that he did with Tucker Carlson, where the first 35 minutes is dedicated to his idea of Russian claims to Ukraine, which he actually sort of makes the claim that Russia has claims to Poland and Hungary as well, when he says that sort of stuff, we actually didn't actually stoned out what he actively thinks. Now, there are a bunch of people on the left who think that Vladimir Putin is doing this because he is offended by the muscularity of the West that if only the West had been more conciliatory toward Vladimir Putin, then Russia would not in fact be an adversarial force. Everything that Vladimir Putin does is blow back to the West. That is the theory of people on the left who are very much vacillating with regard to what Vladimir Putin is trying to do. And then there are a couple of theories on the right. And those theories range from the blowback theory, people ripping that off from John Miraschimer, the foreign policy scholar who I think is wrong about a great many things. John Miraschimer has sort of theorized that it's NATO's expansion that drove Putin to invade South Ossetia, for example, in Georgia, or drove Putin to invade Crimea and that on Basir region. Okay, so hold on, let's just pause for a second. And first off, John Miraschimer is 100% right about all of this. And John Miraschimer has forgotten more about Russian history in while we're recording this show than Ben Shapiro ever knew. And you should, I highly recommend people go listen to him and read him. He is all over this stuff. Look, the stuff in South Ossetia, there were so what happened there was this was like a breakaway province in Jordan. And there had been Russian peacekeepers there for years. And I had mentioned the Bucharest Summit in 2008 when it was the NATO announced that both Ukraine and Georgia would be would be come members of of NATO. And they didn't give a timetable for it or they didn't like officially start the paperwork, but they announced that this was going to happen. And this was George W. Bush who pushed it through. And it was Angela McCordle, a geez, what am I? Angela McCordle. It was Merkel in Germany who like opposed it. And this is why they weren't actually brought in there. They just they settled on this compromise of world announced that they're coming in. And why did Germany oppose it? Because they were terrified that it would provoke the Russians. This isn't like just some abstract theory that Mirasheimer has here. This is like, look, so anyway, they announced Georgia and Ukraine were coming in to NATO. And then Georgia got got ballsy and attacked South Ossetia. And then Vladimir Putin responded and went to war with Georgia to pretend that that had nothing to do with the fact that it had just been announced that they were going to join NATO is ridiculous. Anyway, we'll get it. Let me let him finish his point here, but getting into the idea that there's this that blowback is somehow a leftist theory. Let's just let him play because he says a little bit more on that originally in 2014 and then invade the rest of Ukraine in 2022. That theory again, is and did anything else happen in 2014? Oh, Vladimir Putin. See, so the story is that there was a bloody street push that overthrew the democratically elected government in in the democratic, critically elected president in Ukraine, who had just decided to not join the EU and instead do a deal with Vladimir Putin. And then he got overthrown in a violent street push that was backed by the West. And then because the people in the eastern part of the country, that was their guy, they tried to break away. And we're like, screw this, this government's not legitimate. And then a civil, a civil war broke out and Vladimir Putin essentially sent special ops in like this, this story, this is what happened. Then Shapiro's retelling of it is in 2014, Vladimir Putin sent special ops in like, how can you just leave out that whole other part? That was pretty big. And even if the people want it, you know, like the people out there who try to argue that like, no, it wasn't a US backed coup. That was a totally organic, a totally organic revolution paid for by Soros NGOs or whatever, you know, like, it's like, okay, you're right. It was a totally organic revolution that just happened to have US senators and state department representatives in the middle of it. You know, Victoria, Newland just happened to be handing out sandwiches to the protesters, but there's no US involvement in that. Like, okay, come on, let's let's operate in the real world here. All right, here, let's keep playing is coincident with the left wing blowback theory of American foreign policy that dates all the way back to people like Howard's in a non Chomsky. We'll get some more on this. And then you can kind of go through this from our sponsors. No, I don't. He's doing well enough for those sponsors. He doesn't need our help. But this is just, look, this is the tactic that people use this like left, right game. So Ben Shapiro, of course, is speaking to a self identified right wing audience. And so he's like, Oh, this is all a bunch of lefty stuff. Blowback at all. It dates back to Howard's in. And so this is the lefties. And now some of these right wing people are actually believing the lefties. Do you know who coined the term blowback? The CIA are central intelligence agency. Those lefties at the CIA are the ones who coined the term blowback. And what blowback means is that there are unintended consequences to covert American policy. And what's interesting about it is that because the policies are covert, and so the government's not telling the American people that they're doing them, when the blowback comes, the American people have no way to note it's like, why does Iran hate us so much? Why does the Iranian government hate us so much? It must be because they're radical Islamists. But it's like, Oh, no, you don't know that our CIA overthrew the government in Iran. And that's why they hate us. The idea of blowback is as simple as understanding that there are reactions to things. It's in say it's not a left wing idea. It's it's the most basic human understanding of how human beings work. Do you think the war on terrorism had anything to do with 9/11? Did 9/11 make us want to make more of the people willing to support politicians to go on these into these wars? Of course, it would be insane to pretend like if someone were to tell you they go, no, no, no, Americans didn't support George W Bush invading Afghanistan and Iraq because of 9/11. It's just their, you know, Christian, you know, expansionist mindset. And look, I could tell I could think of examples in the year 1300s where Christians were killing some people. So clearly that's all it was. It's like, no, this event, you kill a bunch of people somewhere and that pisses a lot of people off. And now they're ready to come kill some of your people. That's essentially blowback. And the idea that it, you won't even entertain the idea that expanding a military alliance that was started with the purpose of opposing Russia. Okay, that has started many aggressive wars, many of which were not in Russia's interest, that they're expanding that all the way up at encircling Vladimir Putin would, you're just discounting that that would have a reaction. He doesn't actually care about that. He's screaming at the top of his lungs that he does care about that, but he doesn't actually care about that. Here, let me just in case, because I mean, there's so many sources on this, but let me just, as Ben Shapiro is saying that, that there's no, you know, there's blowback is just like some left wing theory that this is just like, I mean, there's this John Meersheimer guy. And I think Howard Zinn said something about it, totally leaving out that like also Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and lots of people on the right have acknowledged blowback because you're insane not to. Now, how's this? Let's hear from NATO's secretary general, Jen's Stoltenberg, I might be mispronouncing that name. But I don't know if you remember this rub, but this was from late last year. He kind of, you know, every now and then where they say the thing they're not supposed to say. So here, here, this is the, again, this is the head of NATO who's saying this. This is the secretary general of NATO. Quote, President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us and was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that. He went toward to prevent Nathan continuing this is the head of NATO speaking, was not the lefties or John Meersheimer. He went toward to prevent NATO more NATO close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. So you can see Stoltenberg here is he's, he's still trying to sell the thing and he's saying, well, look, he wanted no more NATO and look now NATO's expanding even more because these countries are scared that he's going to invade them. So he was trying to make the point that Ahov Vladimir Putin so dumb and we're so smart because we're getting what we want and he's not getting what he wants. But he kind of gave away the game while he was doing it, didn't he? He totally admitted that Vladimir Putin all for and look, I know dude people will say when you talk about this, are you defending Vladimir Putin? Why are you you seem to be disagreeing with the guy who's criticizing Vladimir Putin and correcting the record on his behalf? But it's not a defense of Vladimir Putin because he's still wrong to invade the country. But this is what happened. The head of NATO is telling you he oh, he just wanted us to promise that his biggest neighbor would not be an our military alliance. That's what the whole thing was over. Not territorial expansion, not something that happened in the year 1300. It was that simple. The request was I don't I can't have Ukraine in your military alliance. They can be neutral, but just promise me you won't put them in NATO. I need that in writing and the and that here is the head of NATO telling you and we said, nope, suck on that. We're never putting that in writing too bad. And if you're promising to not invade, if we if we put this in writing, the answer is no. That's what happened here. Sorry. Might be a bitter pill to swallow if you've been eating up all this propaganda, but that's what led to this war and the fucking head of NATO admits it himself. So it's not just that Vladimir Putin's been saying this for years and it's totally plausible. I mean, let's get real dude. Like just all you have to do is ask this question and just asking the question answers the question. Does Mexico have a right to be in whatever military alliance they want to? Does Canada have a right? I'm not saying should they have a right. I'm saying do they? What would the US do if Mexico joined a military alliance with Russia or China? What do you think the US government would do about that? And we all know the answer. They would overthrow that government the next day and install a government that we liked better that wouldn't be in that military alliance. And you could say that, well, I think Mexico ought to have that right. And it would be wrong for the US to do that. Okay. Fine. Fair enough. Maybe Ukraine ought to have the right to join whatever military alliance they they want. But we ought to have the right to not join a military alliance with them. So why is it in America's interest? If the biggest nuclear superpower on the country is making a pretty reasonable demand, which is like, you know, I can't have your military alliance all the way over here, a demand that we ourselves would make of any other country as well. Why wouldn't we just I'm just saying, put it in writing. You could have avoided this entire war. Not only could you have avoided the war, if you had allowed the negotiation process and not sent wars, Johnson there to kill that, but that you could have avoided the war altogether. And you know, people can come back and say, well, Vladimir Putin could have just not invaded and that would have avoided the war too. And like, yeah, okay, fine. But he did. And you got to be honest and say, even the head of NATO is saying he offered you the only thing he was asking for was just tell me you're not going to do this. Because you know, basically what is Vladimir Putin saying at this point? All the way back in 2008, he's been on record telling the Americans like this is the brightest of I'm not fucking around red lines for me. You can't do this. And what's he telling them in late 2021 when he sends them this written request to put it in writing that you want he's saying, Hey, it sure looks like you're fucking doing the thing that you said, you know what I mean? That I said was my bright line. Can you please put it in writing? And the head of NATO even says explicitly that this was his condition to not invade the country. You remember at the very beginning of the war when the whole like a Pentagon kept telling us there was going to be a false flag attack and then Vladimir Putin was going to invade and all this stuff. It's like, Oh, yeah, they never mentioned this today. They never went, Oh, well, here's the thing. As he said, he wouldn't invade if we would just do this thing and we told him to go fuck himself. So by the way, he might do the thing pretty soon. Anyway, let's let's keep playing for a few more minutes, see if there's anything else worth shredding. Russia is actually a bulwark against secular leftism. That Russia actively is is a highly religious country that is that is very anti much of the left wing ideology with regard to say gender and sex and sexuality that the West has fallen for. And so they've built up in their minds a lot of people the idea that because Russians are socially conservative as a general matter, which they are, that this is somehow what Vladimir Putin represents as opposed to he has a population that is socially conservative and also that is not his actual ambition. His actual ambition is not in defense of say social conservatism. His ambition is in defense of Russian territorial ambition. It's a category error. In other words, for many people on the right, maybe on the right have made that same category error, for example, with sharia law countries in the Islamic world. It's suggested that because those countries are quote unquote socially conservative, that somehow those countries have a commonality with say American conservatism, American Christian conservatism. All right, you can just pause it right there. So I don't know who Ben Shapiro is talking about. I have seen like some people on Twitter say stuff like that. I cannot think of any influential right wing person who's said that like, yeah, sharia law, that's the way to go. Those guys, this way, you know what I mean? You have traditional relationships and you don't have LGBTQ plus stuff going on. I've heard some some right wingers on Twitter say stuff like that. And yes, I think it's pretty stupid. Sure. Yes. North Korea doesn't have problems with a fucking I don't know, like degeneracy on the streets, but you know, they actually have problems that's a whole lot worse than that. So, but that's not a good way to go. We could just have our government stop subsidizing all of this insane stuff and they'll probably clean itself up. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is small batch cigars. Many years ago buying cigars online wasn't as easy as they've made it with small batch cigars. Well, you could find a great selection. You never knew how the cigars were treated before they arrived on your doorstep. 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All right, let's get back into the show. Again, I guess I agree with Ben Shapiro on this one. I just don't know who he's really responding to. And the argument that Putin is because he cracks down on the gaze. Therefore, he's like an ally of the conservatives. I honestly, I all I heard was John Stewart claim that Tucker Carlson believes this even though he's never said it. I don't know who else is actually making that argument. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know who's showing me the prominent right way or who's making that argument. Let's keep playing. Servitism, American Christian conservatism. And the answer there is no, they really don't. Their ambitions are not the same as your ambitions. And what this really reveals is a schism in the United States broadly writ and in the West broadly writ Europe as well. A schism about whether the West has any sense of internal solidity. What are the values of the West? Because if Putin is able to split the West on the basis of perceived values or perceived anti Westernism. And that says there are a lot of people in the West who really don't like the West very much on the one hand. And a lot of people in the West who believe that the greater threat to the United States might be their neighbors who disagree with them about social politics as opposed to people like Vladimir Putin, not the Vladimir Putin is a direct threat to people in the United States like right this instant. But he's a very large indirect threat to people in the United States because geopolitics actually matters. And he cut off shipping routes when you destroy the sources of international friends. By the way, let's just pause it there. And I think by the way, this always this is always what the war hawks have to fall back on. It's like, well, okay, sure, he's not a threat in any like conceivable way that you could think of, but geopolitics matters. Shipping lanes. I always yell that one out. Shipping lanes. We got now trade, right? That's really important shipping lanes. Shipping lanes. That's why war because of the shipping lanes. By the way, I can't tell you how many times I've heard this from the war hawks. So let me just say these, as I just read to you, right, however you feel, maybe you think Ukraine should be a NATO. I don't know how you still think that after listening to this show, but probably my audience doesn't really think that. But let's just say you thought that you could still acknowledge that like, I mean, we should have just agreed to not put them in because if you care about Ukrainian defense, that turns out not agreeing to not put them in NATO was not the best thing for the defense of Ukraine. And in fact, the country's been decimated as a result of your refusal to guarantee that you wouldn't admit them. Okay, so this war is a goddamn disaster. If you care about Ukraine, you should be opposed to this war. The fact that peace negotiations were thwarted intentionally to continue the war, the fact that we've funded it so they can continue it, so more Ukrainians can die has been an utter disaster. Obviously, what's going on in Gaza right now is just a humanitarian catastrophe. Every damn day, I see another thing of some baby dying, being suffocated to death under rubble. It's just horrible. None of these war hawks can defend the war in Iraq. John McCain, John McCain admitted in his memoir that the war in Iraq was a mistake. The war in Afghanistan was a 20 year catastrophe that just saw the Taliban have more control and cooler weapons than they had when we launched the regime change war against them. The war in Syria led to 500,000 people dying and failed to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. It also led directly to the rise of ISIS. Libya, just a nightmare. The country is still in shambles after that. Yemen was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world for seven straight years. And oh, by the way, now we pissed the Houthis off so much that they're picking a fight with our shipping lanes. Okay, but see, none of these guys can defend any of these wars when they actually take on what's going on here. I mean, they could do what Ben Shapiro is doing here and just bullshit about what happened in this war in Ukraine, but they can't actually take on the issues and defend them. They can't defend any of these wars, but then they'll go geopolitics, shipping lanes, as if the conversation is really about whether we should maintain shipping lanes or not, or somehow it follows that if we should maintain shipping lanes, then we also have to go on mass murder campaigns and drop bombs on people and fund every war around the country. Like there's any connection between the two, but I'll just leave it with this. And then we'll wrap up. Just think, listen, maybe I can't convince everybody who's listening on a anarchal capitalism or a pure stateless libertarian society. You should be convinced that they're starting to freeze pretty bad. God damn it. How about now? It seems to smooth out. Okay, maybe I can't sell you on full libertarian anarcho capitalism or something like that. But just think about this. Okay, let's say we drastically reduced the size and scope of governments. Think about how much more profit there is in business now without all of the taxes and regulations, right? Businessmen are making a lot more money now. And think about how much money is on the line, having international shipping lanes open. I think the incentives would probably take care of this. I think these business interests would be they'd be pretty incentivized to make sure they paid for some security, make sure they kept some shipping lanes open. It is such a bullshit, non-existent problem that market forces would solve very quickly. And think about the enormous amount of monetary burden that taxes and regulations put on business. If you just removed that, there'd be plenty of money to even just buy people off to give you access to their shipping lanes. This is all just a nonsense argument. Sure, I can't defend any of the wars, but shipping lanes, geopolitics matters. Yeah, geopolitics matters. Nobody's saying it doesn't. Like, it really matters that the West refused to guarantee Ukraine wouldn't be admitted to NATO. It really matters, particularly to Ukrainians. All right, that's

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Transcript: Judge Napolitano: “Col. Douglas Macgregor: How Close Is WWIII?”

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, February 29, 2024. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. There's nothing to laugh at, but one of the viewers, Colonel, just wrote in and said, I'd like to hear Colonel McGregor conduct one of these interviews in a Scottish brogue. [LAUGHTER] Just a normal man. He's asking the wrong man. By the way, brogue is Irish. When you say Scottish, they mean burr. Oh, burr. OK, actually, he didn't say brogue. He said, Scottish accent. I incorrectly called it a brogue, but thank you for the correction. There's very little to laugh at, so the humor is out of the way. And I need to speak to you about Israel and Gaza. And also, your crane, I want to start with your crane. I want your comments on the French president. And I won't characterize them. I'll let you watch what he said. And then you can tell me if you think this is crazy or profound. President Emmanuel Macron two days ago. [SPEAKING SPANISH] There is no consensus today to send ground troops in an official, endorsed, and sanctioned manner. But in dynamic terms, nothing should be ruled out. I think there's a lot to unpack there. First of all, is the essence of it crazy that nothing should be ruled out. And secondly, as he's suggesting that French troops may be there in an unofficial capacity. I think demand is certifiable. Let's get that straight. He's talking about effectively declaring war on Russia. And that's what people don't seem to understand. You send conventional military formations into Western Ukraine. You're going to end up at war with Russia. And I think President Putin has made that clear repeatedly. He's not going to tolerate any external intervention. And while he certainly doesn't want to war with NATO, he's made it clear that if any NATO members send their forces, organized forces into Western Ukraine, with the intention of fighting Russians, they would be at war. One of the things that needs to be kept in mind, there is always the outside possibility that Macron made this public statement so that everybody else in the NATO alliance could immediately distance themselves from him, which is exactly what's happened. Virtually everyone has said, out of the question, we won't do it. Even the United States in a feet of, I guess, a fit of reasonableness decided to say it's out of the question. So perhaps that was the reason it was done. But otherwise, it makes no sense. Here's one of those responses, the Chancellor of Germany. Is it? NATO is not and will not be party to the war. That remains the case. We do not want Russia's war against Ukraine to become a war between Russia and NATO. We agree on this with all our allies. This also means no German participation in the war. To put it bluntly, as German Chancellor, I will not be sending any members of the German armed forces to Ukraine. Our soldiers can count on that, and you too can count on that. It's easy. Do you know if there are French or German special forces there, perhaps out of uniform, perhaps cold contractors or mercenaries, but they are truly military personnel of Germany and France? I can't confirm or deny it. I know that British and American special ops forces and small numbers have been on Ukrainian soil. There's a question about it. Some of the attacks that you've seen with drones at sea and some of the missile strikes, they have undoubtedly been assisted enormously by the British SAS. I'm told SAS elements or British special ops elements also play a role in Mr Zelensky's security. But as far as anything else now, I cannot confirm it. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that there are others on the ground there to help or assist in some way, but I haven't seen it. New York Times had a lengthy piece. I'm sure you saw it. It was somewhat weird. It appears to have been leaked by the CIA, because there's a lot of padding on the back of the CIA, claiming that the CIA has 12 bases. I didn't know they called them bases when the CIA builds. I thought that was what the military built, but whatever. I want to get into a thing about terminology. In Ukraine, I am sure the Russians know exactly where they are and what's going on there. But my point is, how much help is the CIA providing to Ukrainian intel and Ukrainian soldiers? Can an argument be made if American special ops out of uniform or in uniform are helping Ukrainian military personnel use American equipment? If that military equipment is being used to send projectiles into Russia, if the projectiles came from the United States of America, Colonel, is the United States starting a war against Russia? Well, strictly speaking, I think you can argue that we have been a covaligerent, along with many of our lives on the basis of what you just described. I mean, that's an easy argument to make. But bear in mind that President Putin in the contrary to popular belief in the West, has never wanted a war with the United States or its allies in Europe. Never has never had any aspirations to move West to attack anybody. It doesn't now. I think it's important to understand that there are a couple of realities that have dawned on the people in the West. Number one is you can tinker on the margins of this war and pretend that you're having a profound impact. And that's what we've done. But you're not going to fundamentally influence it. Secondly, if you actually provoke the Russians to the point where they feel compelled to fight back, and I'm talking about the introduction of conventional military power, we have no integrated air defenses in the eastern border of Western Europe. In other words, between us and the Russians, there is almost no air defense, air and missile defense capability. That means that in the event that there were a conflict or confrontation, and we attack them with air power, which is what a British Admiral recently said, we might do, we would lose badly because tens of thousands of missiles that we could not stop would rush through and attack every conceivable airfield, port, or installation of any military significance in Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, France, Italy, and the rest of Europe. There's nothing they can't reach. I don't think that comes up for discussion very much. And then we have this assumption that our air power, on which we've depended almost exclusively since the end of the Second World War for any kind of strategic impact and long range attack, is probably not going to survive contact with all of the Russian air defenses. Right now we see new air defenses springing up in Syria, northern Lebanon, Iran. I think we're going to see more of it in parts of Iraq. And I think it's going to challenge our air supremacy. It hasn't been there before in any great numbers. It's going to start showing up. We are accustomed to no enemy in the air. Well, the enemy is a missile and it comes in the form of air defense and anti-missiles. And that's going to change everything. So I think everybody has sobered up and concluded what Schultz said. The other thing is Schultz and most of his colleagues are on very thin ice. They're close to being voted out of office and he's trying to say, "Please, please, please. I'm not going to send you to war. Relax." And the Germans will not tolerate a war against Russia. They didn't sign up for it. They don't want it. Here's what President Putin said. It's just the 27-second clip as part of one of his longest speeches. In response to President Macron, in response to some other nonsense that came out of Poland, you and I emailed about it. I'm going to ask you about Poland in a minute. And also what the Prime Minister of Great Britain said a week and a half ago that caused his predecessor, who's now the Foreign Minister to try and pull back from. But here's cut number 12, Chris. Here's President Putin threatening war over this. They should eventually understand that we also have weapons and they know it. I just said it now myself, weapons that can hit targets on their territory. Everything that the West is coming up with now, what they threaten the world with, it can result in a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and therefore the destruction of civilization. You surprised to use language that strong, Colonel? No, not at all. I think he thought it was absolutely necessary to make it unambiguously clear that if you attack Russian territory, we reserve the right to respond with whatever we think is appropriate up to and including nuclear weapons. That's why you possess nuclear weapons in this age. It's really almost exclusively for territorial integrity and protection. And I think he wanted to put to rest, if there was any question in anybody's mind, what happens if you attack Russia, this is the answer. So I think it's a very good way to put the whole issue to bed and I think that helped to convince Schultz and everybody else to forget it. How dangerous is the leadership of Poland and their inclinations toward a war with Russia? You mean the incredibly stupid comment by Anjay Shduda saying? Yes, I do. You and I emailed about that with a Polish friend of ours. Yeah, let's talk about it. The world would be better off if no Russia existed. The only thing one can conclude from this sort of thing is immense stupidity. And that's putting it mildly. Anyone who is Polish has more sense than that. I don't know where he's from. He must be from another country. Most of the Poles I know are more sensible than that. It's absurd. It's stupid. We should ignore it. Unfortunately, we cheer it on because we're led by a small minority of people that are very well financed and determined to do whatever they can to harm Russia. But it's not going to happen. By the way, to get back to your 12 CIA bases, that's very interesting because normally when something like that is deliberately leaked to an outlet like the New York Times, which is contributed to the fiction that Ukraine could win and Russia was going to be defeated, it indicates that we're close to the end, that at some point in the near future, we're simply going to quietly leave. You know, that's what we do. When we create disasters, there's no other way to do it. We just pack our things, get onto the boats, get into the air, and we go home. I think that's coming. And I think that's what the real meaning is because otherwise, they would never have told us that. Chris, play a cut number nine. Here's the deputy secretary of state who has blood on her hands because of all she's been doing over there for so long. But I'm going to ask you after listening to her, at her bombastic worst, if she knows that the end is coming, please listen Colonel for the last five or six words she uses, claiming inexplicably, crazily, that our involvement in Ukraine has made the United States safer. Without sending a single US soldier into combat and investing less than one-tenth of one year's defense budget of the United States, we have helped Ukraine destroy 50% of Russia's ground combat power, 50%, and 20% of its vaunted Black Sea fleet. Ukraine has taken off the battlefield, 21 naval ships, 102 Russian aircraft, and 2,700 Russian tanks. By every measure, Ukraine's bravery and strength, its resilience, has made the United States safer too. Does this woman know that she's lying? Oh, absolutely. There's no question about it. And she has no reservations whatsoever about doing so. Remember, this is an ideologue. This is a globalist, neo-con, whatever you want to call it, revolutionary, who has determined that she's going to destroy her enemies. Now, Russia is not the enemy of the American people, but she thinks it's her enemy, and her friends' enemies. And Ukraine is utterly and completely destroyed. You know, you've got over a million casualties and one-half million dead, 500,000 at least. I'm told this now up to about 530,000 dead. The entire Ukrainian population is still under, you know, Zelensky's control lives in mortal fear of Zelensky and his regime. That's what people don't seem to understand in this country. They're afraid to speak up and express any opinion at all. Nobody wants to fight anymore, and people certainly don't want to be utterly annihilated by the Russians. So they're dealing with a secret police that can show up at any time, arrest people, imprison people, shoot people. The NKVD is really the model for Zelensky and his friends, and that's what's going on in Ukraine right now. So no, Ukraine is destroyed as a nation. She could care less. And the interesting part is, and I don't know about her numbers, she may have some of that correct, especially in the Black Sea fleet, but Russia is not a maritime power, and frankly, surface vessels to them are irrelevant. Everything hinges on submarines. Secondly, Russia today as a military power is stronger and greater than it's been since the early '80s, and it might well grow stronger. The Russian general staff has been told to look into the potential for the mobilization of 800,000 additional troops. Now, I hope that doesn't become necessary because the only circumstances under which I can conceive of that being useful is if they are compelled to cross the Niepah River and go west. And that happens only, only if no one will sit down and negotiate with Moscow. And if you listen to the Tucker interview with President Putin, he repeatedly said that he was open to negotiations and looking for a way to end the conflict, not because the Russians are losing, that's absurd, but because he knows how destructive and pointless the war is and he has no wish to continue it. I was moved by a statement by the retired, a German general and former chair of the NATO military committee saying that Putin has no intention whatsoever to conquer Ukraine, notwithstanding what Mrs. Newland, what the President Biden, what Tony Blinken has said, and it made me wonder, do your colleagues, retired senior military people in Western Europe, have this general sober view that you do, or do they have the maniacal view of the American neocons? I would tell you that many do share what you call a maniacal view for the same reasons that you have many retired four stars and senior officers in the US armed forces express similar views because they're on the payroll. They're paid handsomely by forces, by entities, institutions and the media in their governments that are ultimately beholden to this ideological co-toury of the ruling class. These are what I call Western oligarchs, billionaires who are essentially buying political support and buying up retired officers and paying them to say what they say. You're not going to hear anybody like Petraeus or keen or the rest of these people stand up and suddenly start telling the truth, that's not what they're being paid to do. So this requires a one say Russia is going to lose. This retired general four star whose words motivated me, he's an outlier. Very much so. Yeah. Well, you agree with him, obviously. I mean, look at what President Putin said to Tucker Carlson, look at everything else. He said, there's no indication whatsoever that he wants to, or you choose Joe Biden's phrase, take Ukraine. Well, remember the idea behind this entire proxy war was Russia is weak. It can't withstand us. We can disrupt it and we can ultimately pull down the Putin regime because the population doesn't support him. These are the fundamental assumptions, all of which were false. They can't back away from those assumptions. And unfortunately, we're stuck with the outcome, which as you see is the very opposite of everything they said. Anybody with any sense who looked at it objectively would have reached the same conclusion. But these people, we're discussing, I don't know what the right phrase is to describe them, this ruling class that dominates Western Europe and the United States is very similar. They're all ideologically committed to something that however false, however wrong, must be upheld and maintained to the bitter end. Switching over to Israel and Gaza earlier today, hundreds of Gazans were online to receive flour and water from an aid truck and more than a hundred were mowed down by the IDF. Another example, in my view, of the barbarity with which Prime Minister Netanyahu and his folks have conducted this horrific ethnic cleansing in Gaza. What will it take for a state actor to enter with force of arms to stop this? Well, what you just described is ultimately required. But one of the key assumptions under pinning Israeli operations from the very beginning was that, first of all, from the Israeli standpoint, anything you do against the Arabs is justified because after all, they are animals, exactly as Prime Minister Netanyahu described them. That's the first underlying assumption. Anything you do is justified. Therefore, it's not a war crime. You're doing something in service of the Israeli people and the Israeli cause. Secondly, the assumption was that the Arab states are too weak. They're essentially burdened with enormous domestic problems. Egypt has 100 million people living on an infrastructure for perhaps 40 million. They have to be fed. They have to eat. They have to live. There has to be some measure of order. They can't risk a war. Jordan is not as populous, but it too has internal contradictions. Doesn't want to risk a war. Therefore, pretty much whatever you want to do, you can do because the rest of the peninsula are Arabs who are very wealthy and living well, they're not going to put anything at risk to help their brother Muslim and Christian Arabs up in a place like Gaza or on the West Bank. Then finally, you have the buildup of Israeli forces on the border with southern Lebanon right now. I suspect that if they grant some sort of temporary cease fire because it will be temporary, if they get it in Gaza, they will try to exploit that temporary cease fire to launch a war on another front this time against Hezbollah. They've already started by bombing in northern Lebanon. That will widen the war. That will create opportunities for others who are now standing quietly on the side and doing nothing to begin to seriously contemplate intervention. However, the Israelis believe they have this unassailable trump card. They have control of the government in Washington. Therefore, by definition, control of the United States Armed Forces, particularly air and naval power, that they can employ at will to do whatever they like. I know that they're betting very heavily if they go into a place like southern Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, that they expect strike packages provided by air and naval forces in the United States to support them. Who do you think will blink first in southern Lebanon? Hezbollah, by blink first, I mean, given first, Hezbollah or the Israelis. I mean, the last time this happened, the Israelis cried uncle and put up a white flag in one home. Right. The difference between what happened the last time and what could happen this time is that the Israeli population truly believes that there is no alternative to the annihilation of the Arabs on their soil and anyone on their periphery that they insist represents a threat to Jews. Therefore, they're embarked upon this campaign to rid Israel and its surroundings from any threats. So I think the Israelis will press ahead. The population will support it. And again, they're betting heavily that we will show up and reinforce them. The question then is what happens after that? The peninsula Arabs are obviously not going to do a great deal, but they can finance others who will. The real question in the region is Turkey. What will the Turks do? The Turks have been in Egypt. They held private discussions with the Egyptians. General Sisi was very happy with the outcome of those talks. I rather suspect that Egypt, which is viewed as a former Ottoman possession, will not be abandoned by the Turks. Then the question is what do the Turks do once the Israelis press into southern Lebanon? That will depend upon Iran. I'm not sure the Iranians are prepared to sit and watch the southern portion of Lebanon alter utterly pulverized and his blood is destroyed. So then the question is, does this become wider? Do we end up at war with Iran and not simply in a supporting role for Israel? That obviously would be mona from heaven to put it bluntly for the Israelis or so they think. All of these things then open up other possibilities. The Russians aren't going to allow us to destroy Iran. The Russians would not stand by and allow such a thing to happen to the Turks. They may not be close friends and allies, but they are in good terms. I'm certain the Russians would intervene to support the Turks to the extent that they can, as well as the Iranians. Then of course, China is in the background, lives in fear, then it will be denied access to the oil and gas that it desperately needs from the Persian Gulf and the food that comes to it from West Africa or East Africa rather. So it's too soon to say, it's going to take another month or two. I would say again mid to mid April to late May for things to coalesce, but we stand an excellent chance of seeing a real regional war breakout that will ultimately be directed against us as well as Israel. Are there American special forces on the ground? I think I know the answer to this because there's a picture of Joe Biden shaking hands with them and then the White House took the picture down. American special forces in American uniforms intermingled with Israeli IDF somewhere in Israel. Oh, absolutely. No question about it. I know that some have been wounded and probably some killed that went into the Gaza Strip. I don't know the details, but clearly we are very involved there to help and assist. This is the problem that Americans don't come to terms with because quite frankly Americans aren't focused on any of it. The United States population is focused on the southern border. The nine, 10 million illegals that are poured into our country, the deterioration and the rule of law, the failure to deal with the criminality, the disintegration frankly of the United States at home. Those are the things that Americans are focused on and I'm really interested in the Middle East. They certainly were never interested in Eastern Europe, but what I see happening is a gradual disengagement from the Ukrainian catastrophe and we will treat that pretty much as the way we treated Vietnam. Well, that's over. Stop talking about it. The media will comply and people will then focus elsewhere and I suspect that will be largely in the Middle East. The question is how large the conflagration in the Middle East becomes before we finally intervene ourselves in some way and say stop. We're a long way from that. Right now everyone is pleased, just punched, to sit back in Washington and watch Gaza annihilated. I'm going to prevail upon your aptitude for domestic American politics. Were you surprised that a hundred thousand Democrats in Michigan voted none of the above the other day when the alternative was the sitting president of the United States and do you think Joe Biden would take us to war in the Middle East with some scatterbrained idea that a wartime president has a better chance of getting reelected? You know, I don't think Joe Biden is going to take us anywhere. If he did, he'd need more than the GPS. I don't think he's a driving force of any kind. The people that are making decisions are really behind the scenes. They're the ones shaping policy. They have lots of facades. You know, Blinken is a good facade. Newland is a facade. All of these people are front men, if you will, for the people behind the scenes making the decisions who have all the money. Look what's happening in Congress. Do you see anybody expressing any concern about the humanitarian catastrophe we caused in Ukraine or the humanitarian catastrophe that's rapidly developing in Israel that could not happen without us? I don't see it. So I'm not surprised. I just don't know what it means. Everybody I talk to says, well, we'll get to the election. Then there'll be change. I think increasingly people are looking at it and are saying change. Where does the change come from? Who's going to change anything? Somebody was lecturing me the other day because you know, I have great affection for President Trump, but he pointed out to me, well, Doug, I understand that, but keep in mind it, when Trump was running for office in 2016, everywhere he went, he listened to crowds of thousands, tens of thousands, chant, build the wall, build the wall. Ultimately, what did he do? As soon as he was elected, he decided that he needed to address Obamacare. There's a lack of confidence that anybody will stand up and do anything that is really fundamentally in the interest of the American people. Colonel McGregor, thank you very much, my dear friend. Thank you for your time. And thanks for your analysis. As always, I know you're busy and much in demand, and we greatly appreciate it and hope you can come back next week. Thank you, Judge. Thank you. A brilliant, sophisticated American patriot. Coming up at four o'clock, another American patriot, Professor John Mearsheimer, and at five o'clock, Scott Horton, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. [Music]

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