Debasification - The Grayzone live

0:01Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to the gray zone. Sorry to keep you all waiting uh for so long. I was still setting up the show and there were new stories coming in that we wanted to make sure we had in our notes. So, um yeah, apologies for that.

0:21Was it a busy week? I mean, I guess so, but there there's always, you know, it's getting busier and busier.

0:31Uh, I wanted I wanted to prepare a segment about the ICC basically being destroyed before our eyes by every country controlled by Israel, including, I guess, the one I live in. So, uh, that held me up. Anyway, welcome back, Aaron.

0:49It's been a couple weeks.

0:53Well, welcome back to you. I mean, uh, you were in Iran and, uh, for people who haven't seen it, you did a great report back at Bus Boys and Poets the other night in DC where I understand you were accosted by some, uh, Iranians who weren't happy that you were documenting the aggression against their country and the massacres of their own people. Like, I I guess they support those things for whatever reason, but uh, yeah, if people haven't seen that, they should check it out.

1:21Um yeah, I mean that was not prepared. I just I went and parked. Uh a friend who was in inside said, "Yeah, there's some monarchist protesting you outside." And then I came around the corner and there was like a couple maybe more, but I saw a couple monarchists with a huge sign.

1:4140,000 killed by Iran, you know, with the fake death toll of the January protest riots. and they were, you know, at the door at basically at the entrance to mess with me. and they uh you know normally under normal circumstances I would have probably just ignored them [snorts] but uh I had just been in Iran for a week and I was going in and out of the rubble of what were once people's homes or a hospital or even a synagogue that had been blown up which these people were and these people were cheering it on. I mean, the day after the Mino massacre, these monarchists were marching through the streets of Georgetown, dancing and

2:28partying and celebrating, and this was what they wanted. Uh, and I remember seeing a house that had um been not a house, a whole apartment block, you know, Gaza style with families living on top of one another that had been blown up by US bombs. and I found some children's clothes in it that were like the children were like the age of my it looked like my kids clothes. Uh, and that was really poignant. So, it was like I just kind of snapped when I saw them still out there, still daring to show their faces in public. Uh, after all of what they did, I mean, you you barely even see the clown prince Resa

3:07Palvie anymore. He was begging for the US to bomb and they should be ashamed, but they weren't. So I kind of just said like what the hell are you doing here?

3:17And then and I said you know you guys celebrated after Mob. It was actually the day that the parents in Minab were burying their kids that this happened.

3:26And so they you know they said actually that was a military base. Who put the military base there instead of justifying the Minab massacre? So then you know it escalated from there with me telling them just how I really felt that they're the biggest sellouts I've ever seen. like they're worse than Miami Cubans.

3:44And um I don't know, something a lot of people might have missed was there was like this jogger like local yuppy and booty shorts who intervened on their behalf and started screaming at me.

3:54>> So I just had uh some choice words for him. And then I went in and did my talk which you can see on our YouTube channel at the gray zone. And I think it was a great talk especially that I mean not because of what I said but because of the Q&A section sess yeah section or session. Uh so many Iranian Americans from DC showed up and you know these were not um necessarily the typical Islamic Republic supporters. Many of them were secular but they are horrified by the war. They're organizing against it. Um and they're organizing in defense of Iran's sovereignty.

4:31uh and you know I we so you can hear from them. I think it was you know we had some great exchanges but it really informed crowd because for many of them it's their it's the country they came from.

4:44Um and I know you have an even more important announcement which we've been waiting for for a long time. So tell us about that.

4:53>> Yeah. Well my new book uh on the Ukraine proxy war their blood are bullets. There it is.

4:59the hidden story of uh the proxy war in I'm still working on the subtitle so that's actually going to change but you can see it there it's called their blood our bullets the hidden story of the USRussia war for Ukraine uh it's available for pre-order now I've worked on it for a very long time a lot of people have been very patient with me as I've uh put it together uh and I'm grateful to everyone especially or books uh who's publishing this for their patience and their support and yeah it comes out in the fall, the late fall, and uh it's available for pre-order now, and there's a link to it in the show

5:34notes of this episode.

5:37>> Well, congratulations on that. I like the cover. It's the hidden story of the USRussian war for Ukraine. So, what's your elevator pitch?

5:49I got to work on that. But uh basically the u the story we've been told is that this was a uh fight in defense of democracy and territorial integrity. And it's the opposite. The US has exploited Ukraine and its internal divisions to bleed Russia. And in the process the US has undermined its own democracy by criminalizing disscent by you know uh enlisting progressives in support for cold war dogma and a neoonservative agenda and it's been a disaster foremost for Ukraine but for the whole world and uh the book tracks that from the broken promises about NATO expansion NATO expanding to Russia's borders US

6:30sabotaging arms control treaties ignoring Russia's security concerns, backing a coup in Ukraine, encouraging the ensuing civil war, blocking so many peaceful alternatives that could have prevented all this, and then keeping the war going uh by blocking another peace deal that was brokered early in the war.

6:49So essentially about how the US has used Ukraine to uh bleed Russia and it's called their blood are bullets because Oliver North the uh Iran Contra figure bragged in talking about Ukraine that it reminded him of what Reagan did in the 80s and supporting the death squads and Central America and supporting the mujahedin. Uh he said you know just like those people the Ukrainians are willing to use their blood and our bullets and he talked about what a great thing this was. So that's why it's called their blood our bullets.

7:18That's how this war has gone on for so long is uh you know I guess Slavic lives don't matter in the west.

7:28How many have been killed? Hundreds of thousands. I mean certainly hundreds of thousands wounded. The global economy suffering enormously and as Ukraine's drone swarms hit Russian oil infrastructure, oil depots. Western media is celebrating. This is like the the good war.

7:48Uh, this is the liberal war. This is the Democratic Party's war. That's why I think this book is so important because the lies haven't been punctured. The lies haven't been exploded the same way the lies of, you know, Israel's occupation of Palestine or the Israeli directed war on Iran have been exploded in broad daylight for so many people who are paying attention. this war just for so many including you know highly educated people in the US it just seems like it was just a Russian invasion for Putin to reimplement the re you know reinstitute Russia's strategic peripheral depth and start to um bring

8:30the Soviet Union back to life. That's really what it's about. It's about Putin's aggression, but there's a deeper story there. And this is a book I think you can kind of once you once you really um dig into this book and your footnotes I I know how you you operate and you've been pumping out these um Substack posts which have kind of chronicled the war and the lies of that have kept the war going. Um you know having this book at your fingertips is kind of like a compendium of corrections to lies. Uh >> and it's what we need to actually stop this war.

9:06Lindsey Graham uh recently passed away and uh you know there was of course all this critique of his uh wararmongering legacy especially in the Middle East he was a bloodthirsty wararmonger but yet if you look at Ukraine every single progressive Democrat in Congress has voted in lock step with Lindsey Graham >> and there's so little >> was like always on stage with him no officer to me >> yeah but not even but I mean like Richard Blumenthal all sure like Senator but like even progressives you if you look at Bernie Sanders how does his voting record differ from Lindsey Grahams when it comes to supporting the

9:44Ukraine proxy war eventually Bernie voted against one war funding bill because Biden lumped funding for the Ukraine proxy war and funding for Israel's genocide together so Bernie was forced to finally vote against it but he didn't want to Bernie even said if the Ukraine funding was separate I I would have voted for that so Bernie Sanders has a virtually identical voting record with Lindsey Graham in recent years when it comes to funding the Ukraine proxy war and when Bernie Sanders the top progressive is voting in lockstep with the top neocon Lindsey Graham >> I think it's worthy of some reflection

10:17and there hasn't been that at all on the progressive side and that's the side I care most about because that's how I still identify and so that's what I hope uh this book will help contribute to >> I'm just going back and uh back into the uh archives I mean I'm going back to April 30th, 2022. The entire squad, AOC, Ilhan, Omar, and company voted along with Ro Kana and every Democrat in the House in favor of the massive Len lease arms shipment to Ukraine, which is designed to escalate the war. And the only ones who voted against it were Republicans. So again, I mean, that really highlights why this book is

10:55important.

10:56Uh, and now Trump has sort of taken on the war as his I mean it it doesn't look like Trump is has any interest in ending this war at this point.

11:06>> The only thing Trump has done differently is he's not going to Congress to ask for more money. But one of the reasons why he's not doing that is because right before he took office in April 2024, so you know, like a few months before the election, Biden, with Republican support, including Trump's blessing, passed another $61 billion in Ukraine proxy war funding that basically keeps the war going indefinitely. And it was designed to avoid uh any disruption by Trump. So it basically locks in proxy war funding, what like whatever Trump wants to do. And so Trump hasn't had to go back to ask more money because there

11:38is so much. And also he's forced NATO to spend more money. That and that's another aspect of this. You know, all the fear-mongering about Trump pulling out of NATO and all the Russia gate fraud that you know Trump was a Russian agent. What meanwhile what Trump was doing was badgering NATO to spend even more money on the military-industrial complex to raise NATO military spending for every country to 5% GDP. And the only state that didn't go along with that is Spain, which you know Trump is has been attacking. So while Democrats, and the book talks about this too, while obsessing about this fiction of Trump

12:10being a Russian asset, Trump is actually getting NATO to spend more money on the military-industrial complex. And that's another outgrowth of this Ukraine proxy war is, you know, supporting militarism uh and taking money away from social spending. So again, another thing that in a different era progressives would be concerned about, but now they're all in lock step behind >> and scrapping the intermediate nuclear forces treaty for example. Um what what was the other one? The >> open skies treaty.

12:39>> Before that it was the ABM treaty under Bush. But yeah, that's Trump open skies INF and new start because new start the last treaty limiting the nuclear weapons stockpiles of both countries that expired in February and Russia offered like an informal one-year freeze which is the most basically that could be done and Trump rejected that. So right now officially there are no more constraints on the nuclear weapons stockpiles of the US and Russia and everyone just yawned because of years of brainwashing uh you know uh uh like coming from Russia and the Ukraine praise war that it was good to have a confrontation with

13:13Russia.

13:15>> Yeah, we're getting uh some comments uh one one commenter said they're reading uh Benois Par's book on the Ukraine conflict. one of the few critical books on this I think. Did did you interview him?

13:30>> I did. Yes. So, Ben Pere is a former uh monitor with the OCE which was on the ground in the years after the Maidon coup of 2014 monitoring uh the civil war that the US helped start by backing the coup in 2014. And uh we did interview him last summer about his experience. I think you were one of the first in this kind of >> in in this sphere to interview him. We also have a commenter comparing your book to Steven F. Cohen's war with Russia and calling it kind of a continuation. And I know Stephen was kind of a mentor to you. So that's a great comment. And uh you know I do think this book is a tribute to Stephen

14:12F. Cohen's work because he went out he went out swinging.

14:15>> He did. He did. and he was vilified for it and he was isolated and progressive shows that used to have him on as a featured expert shunned him in the last years of his life and uh that was because of the Russia game mania and so yes I'm absolutely trying to continue on in the tradition that >> Stephen F. Cohen uh carried forward.

14:36Absolutely.

14:38>> Well, should we uh continue on Ukraine since we we started with Ukraine? We do have a Ukraine section. I want to talk about Iran and the escalating war which is possibly moving into its most dangerous phase. But I mean, do you want to >> Yeah. Well, you know, um Lindsey Graham recently passed away who was a stalwart champion of the Ukraine proxy war. He was the guy who bragged four years ago.

15:05Four years ago this month is when he offered that infamous statement that as long as we keep supporting Ukraine, they'll fight to the last person. Yeah.

15:11>> And he thought that was a good thing. So he recently passed away but Ukraine has found I think a suitable replacement for Lindsey Graham when it comes to uh MAGA support uh prominent support and that is Laura Loomer who has just touched down in Ukraine to offer her new her prof her support for the Ukrainian government after years of being a supposed critic.

15:37>> Yeah. Um do we have her on screen? We do not.

15:46It was Loomer and Zalinski an excerpt. Well, let me just preface it. I actually uh let me just preface this. Um Laura Loomer spent the week before going to Ukraine attacking me. main like like heavily focused on me, which I suspect is part of her uh contract with the Israeli government and that she was getting fed notes and talking points by not just Israeli lobbyists, but by Israeli officials. Um because I've seen the way these talking points get passed around um to people who have no idea what the hell they're talking about and how they just read a script and they all echo each other and all of it has to do

16:37with me being sort of like responsible for Joe Kent and like I somehow employed Joe Kent's wife and it always starts from there and she started with that when I went to Iran um and you know she starts declaring that the the Treasury Secretary should launch an investigation. Scott Bassen should investigate me and see if the IRGC was paying me and blah blah blah. Um I you know I wasn't paid a single tooman or scent to be there.

17:03Uh I paid for my travel like I don't do that. She does and now we can clearly see it. Julia Ayafi just asked her like you know who paid for your trip was it the Ukrainian government and she said no I like have donors. Anatoli Sheree, who is an exiled former Ukrainian opposition lawmaker who would be killed if he went back to Ukraine under Zilinski because it's such an undemocratic place, claimed that Lumer received as much as $2 million for this trip. And she has reversed all of her positions on Russia.

17:38She was a contributor to RT. She said Ukraine correctly uh was supporting entire regiments of neo-Nazis who sigh and have Nazi tattoos and worship anti-Semitic Nazi figures like Roman Shukovich and Stipan Bandera.

17:55And now she's totally reversed it and says, "Oh no, you know, I was just duped by Russian propaganda." And that's really she's just waking up. She's having an awakening.

18:04And you know, we we and and so you know, instead of kind of being allowed to just see Ukraine or make it look like she's just seeing Ukraine, Zalinsky just adopts her and makes sure that Laura Loomer is elevated to, you know, a higher level than um who who's visited him before in the past. Like a lot of B and even A-list Hollywood people have come and visited him and they would just get like quick meetings where they'd shake his hand like Ben Stiller.

18:32>> Yep. Ben Stiller.

18:33>> Orlando Bloom. like who who else?

18:35>> John Penn. Sean Penn, of course, >> John Penn, you know, really was into it.

18:39It was like a real groupy. But Loomer gets like an interview in the middle of the presidential palace and they really emphasize how much this is a state sponsored important propaganda trip. It comes on the heels of Candace Owens going to Russia. And anati Shere's theory was that Ukraine saw Candace Owens, the most popular, one of the most popular political podcasters, go to Russia and they said, "We need to get someone who's popular uh from the other side who's just and and of course Loomer, you just like lay down lay down the cash on the dresser and she's going to I mean, she's going to work for you.

19:17Uh you're a client." So that's what happened. But I've never met a Laura Loomer fan. Like if you like talk to like politically engaged suburban moms who are kind of like pilled, you're going to meet some Candace Owens fans.

19:33Laura Loomer is not like a real organic phenomenon. The the only reason that she's valuable to them is because she's supposedly close to Trump.

19:44So we've been hearing for weeks, Aaron, that Ukraine is winning again or could be winning. Like the Atlantic Council has a paper about how Ukraine is winning because of its drones. Um they're, you know, there all kinds of rifts emerging.

19:57In reality, they're not winning. Um and they're suffering on the battlefield, but it seems like they're winning to many people. And this is kind of the message that, you know, those who want this war to continue are sending. But I really think if you're winning and you're confident and you suddenly have a new um you know just a new swagger in your step, you would not bring Laura Loomer to the presidential palace and pay whatever you paid. That's not a show of confidence to me. That's a show of desperation that and concern about keeping Trump on their side. Here's an excerpt from >> Ukraine that showed that uh only 17% Now

20:37I saw that uh there were some internal polling from Ukraine that showed that uh only 17% of Ukrainian people have a favorable view of the United States which I'm confused it's not higher because we send them so much aid uh in defense against Russia and also the opinion towards Ukraine and the United States is not very favorable and so I just wanted to share with you as somebody who was anti- Ukraine and who did consume a lot of Russian propaganda I used to write articles for RT I wrote about five articles and I regret doing so and I've come to realize that I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda and I came to believe a lot

21:09of untrue things about Ukraine. I used to think that this was a country full of Nazis. I'm just trying I'm just trying to convey to you how sometimes optics if things are not done in a very precise manner how it can be conveyed and how much damage can be done to your country's image if because the Democrats I think they really exploited your visit. I want to ask >> but can I tell you honestly? Yes.

21:30Honestly, sorry. Sorry. [laughter] for the things what I tell you what I will tell I think if I knew or if I really could be involved to elections maybe Democrats could have a little bit better result.

21:44>> Well, we don't want that. [laughter] >> We don't want that.

21:50>> I mean, first of all, the fact that he has to like interrupt her and say, "Hey, hey, Laura, can I say something? You know, uh, I'm the president of Ukraine.

21:57Do you mind if I talk in between your monologue?" That's a little awkward. Uh but also uh I don't know what he's referring to there. By the way, he did get involved in the last election. He actually, this was one of the reasons why Trump hated him is because he he toured with Democrats to a weapons factory in Pennsylvania and him and Josh Shapiro signed some bombs together just as like uh as like people like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley did to bombs in Gaza. So he actually did get involved and that's one of the reasons why Trump was like fresh with him when he came to the White House. So, I don't know what

22:30he's and and and Ukrainians have gotten involved, too. In 2016, they they also helped Hillary Clinton's campaign, and that backfired on them as well. And there's the for people watching, there's Josh Shapiro and some Democrats and Zilinsky signing some bombs to go drop on uh ethnic Russians and the DOM bus.

22:49>> Josh Shapiro wishes they were going to Gaza to drop on demographic [clears throat] threats, but you know, this was the PR.

22:57[sighs and gasps] This was the uh photo op he got. There's Zalinski and Ukraine's ambassador. Yeah, you can see her interview skills are really top level. She's very charismatic and there are no Nazis in Ukraine.

23:14That's why Zilinski sitting across from a woman who just recently celebrated the mass shooting, a lethal mass shooting at a mosque in the United States.

23:26like he's sitting across from a Nazi.

23:29She's just a Judeo-Nazi.

23:31>> He's sitting across from a woman who called for the US military to massacre millions of Muslims including journ as well as journalists and you know including myself who are happened to be in Thran during the funeral of Ayatollah Kame. I mean that's a pretty Nazis-esque call. I know Mark Levvin also made the same call.

23:52This is someone who's lusted for genocide in Gaza, who celebrates the flattening of Gaza.

23:59There are no Nazis here. This is a great way of refuting that.

24:04>> Yeah. And uh she's sitting across from a Ukrainian president who just like keeping to recent events.

24:10>> Yeah. the the influence of ultra nationalists uh including people who worship neo-Nazis uh is so strong that Zilinsky recently gave a state reburial to a Nazi a Nazi ally uh Andre Melnik who was a leader of the UN the organization of Ukrainian nationalists who uh collaborated with the Nazi occupation and was involved in the massacre of Poles and Jews and Zilinski is under such pressure from the ultra nationalists, neo-Nazis, that he gave Melnik a state rearial um and also renamed a Ukrainian special forces unit after the UPA, the Ukrainian insurgent army, which also was complicit in the massacre of over

24:56100,000 Polish people. And what makes this all the more striking is that, you know, Ukraine is an ally of Poland, but the influence of the neo-Nazis right now is so strong that Zilinski felt that it was in his interest to risk alienating Poland, which he did. Poland protested this move because Zilinski is celebrating forces that massacred tens of thousands of Polish people. But he felt compelled for whatever politically that he had to do this. And so Poland has protested this and they even withdrew a civilian honor that they gave to Zilinski. That's actually how influential neo-Nazis still are inside

25:32Ukraine. And again, it's not a question of how numerically large they are.

25:36They're not a large number of people.

25:37So, it's not filled with Nazis. But the pro but the point is they have because of their muscle and their violent intimidation tactics, they have huge influence to the point where Zilinski felt like he had no choice but to alienate a key ally to honor a neo-Nazi.

25:51>> Yeah. I mean, here's President Naroki of Poland accusing Zalinski of uh he said Zilinski has determined has demonstrated that Ukraine in terms of the mentality of glorifying bandits and murderers from the Ukrainian insurgent army is not ready to be part of the European family.

26:12Pretty harsh words. There's no place in the European family for bandits and murderers who killed women and children who murdered Poles. Such bandits cannot be glorified and the UPA cannot be glorified. Even an Applebomb's husband, Ratislav Sakorski, the foreign minister of Poland, condemned this.

26:29>> Wow. Wow. I didn't know that.

26:31>> So, he has to. I mean, he just has to.

26:32So, [sighs and gasps] >> maybe he had to like sleep on the couch that night for condemning Ukrainian Nazis.

26:41>> And again, these are people who have threatened to kill him going back many years. like you can go like year by year like like you can find an influential militia leader uh in Ukraine threatening to kill Zilinski if he makes peace with Russia essentially before Russia invaded and afterwards too. So yeah, of course now he's going to say, "Oh yeah, we don't have Nazis here except for the ones who have threatened to kill me every single year except for the ones who are now forcing me to honor Nazi war criminals and rename military units after them."

27:12So the uh Loomer visit was intended to sort of galvanize MAGA support for Ukraine. And MAGA doesn't exist as an organic grassroots movement anymore.

27:24It's basically Trump who shared the interview and everyone who's basically paid to support Trump or has some kind of skin in the game or is involved with Israel in some way. That's basically what MAGA is. or a contingent of over 50 um or more boomer Fox News watchers who are transfixed by corporate state media. That's pretty much it. That was her job. And then, you know, she's going to attack the uh woke Reich of Tucker Katarlson and Candace Owens and on behalf of Ukraine. It really feels like the battle lines are drawn. The battle lines are clear now and everyone who supports Trump would be supporting Dick Cheney and George W.

28:14Bush in 2006.

28:17It it it's like, you know, Rich Lowry and the National Review and the American Enterprise Institute and the Neocons rebranded with red caps.

28:29That's it. Maybe they're a little bit more anti-immigrant than Bush was, but that's it. I mean, there's there's no difference now. Tucker is totally done with this fake movement. The con is revealed and JD Vance is now there is also their target and he's claiming that there is an op to destroy his presidential ambitions. they're getting behind Marco Rubio or someone like Rubio. And that's what we have to look forward to is uh another term of another second Bush term if the Republicans win and Josh Shapiro vying for the Democratic nomination.

29:12The Democrats are se cy top Democrats or liberals are celebrating Laura Loomer's visit. Remember, this is someone who uh recently celebrated a mass shooting at a mosque in the United States, who is one of the you one of the most prominent racist commentators in the US.

29:34And liberals are just saying, "Oh, well, she had a change of heart. It's just, you know, she saw the light finally."

29:41And we can't really blame Zalinski for bringing her there.

29:46This is David Axelrod. This was Barack Obama's campaign manager. This is the guy who basically made Barack Obama from a wooden graduate student and author into a seemingly charismatic president who duped zillions of Americans.

30:03>> When you see her sitting with Zilinski, part of the reason your jaw is on the floor is not just because, >> by the way, I mean, remember Erin Bernett's visit to uh Kiev in 2023?

30:13It kind of precaged the Loomer visit. I mean, she was just drooling over Zalinski.

30:19Anyway, here here it is.

30:20>> She had these opinions about Ukraine which were based on propaganda and and and a lack of any kind of experience there. But were because she has said other things. I mean, she said if Kla Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center. She said can't even watch a Super Bowl anymore because immigrants have literally ruined everything. And there's a lot more where that that came from, right? So the image of her sitting across from Ukrainian President Zalinski in that context is incredibly powerful.

30:51>> It is. And why powerful?

30:55All I could think of is my goodness the things one has to do to save their country. Uh and I think he decided this is something he had to do to save his country because uh you know she they call her an influencer but the person she influences that he cares about is Donald Trump >> and if this is what it takes then this is what he's going to do.

31:16>> When you see her sitting with Zilinski >> I mean it's first of all uh the things he has to do to save his country. He's presiding over the destruction of his country. uh what he's trying to do is save his political career and the grift he has going. Even right now in Leviv, which is a stronghold of Ukrainian ultra nationalism, you have massive protests against these press gangs, these uh military officials who go around kidnapping young men to send them off to die. And of course, these are working-class young men who get kidnapped. People with elite connections don't get sent off to war. And so even

31:50in Leiv, a stronghold of Ukrainian ultra nationalism, I think the only area that that Zilinsky actually uh didn't win in 2019 because in 2019 when he ran for office, he was running on a peace mandate. Uh so even in Liv you have these protests and recently there was one where they tipped over a military van holding some people who were kidnapped to go off to fight. And this has been happening all across the country. So this idea that like Zalinski in meeting with Laura Loomer uh is trying to save his country when really he's presiding over its destruction. Um that's but again if you're a liberal

32:26this is the program you've been enlisted in believing that sacrificing young Ukrainians is equal to saving the country.

32:33>> Yeah. Um well I'll get to it in a second. just I wanted to uh reinforce your point, but here's another uh top liberal commentator, Nicholas Kristoff, leading liberal humanitarian interventionist columnist at the New York Times, someone who's taken a more uh critical view of Israel in recent months. Uh but now he says, "I disagree with Laura Loomer on a thousand things." like, "Oh, we're just having a principal disagreement on whether um Muslims are people." Uh, but I admire her willingness to rethink Ukraine and go there. One of the things we pundits aren't good at is admitting when we're wrong, let alone seeking out information

33:18that contradicts our priors. She has the courage to do just that.

33:22>> Oh my god.

33:24Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, by the way, one thing one thing Nicholas Kristoff won't do is admit he's wrong in propagating the Hamas rape hoax. Even as he did, by the way, you know, important reporting on Israel's actual sexual violence, he still hasn't admitted that he uh was wrong to promote the Hamas rape hoax, which was used to wage the very genocide that he that he claims to oppose. But anyway, yeah, of it's I'm sorry. like um on what planet does like an open bigot like Laura Loomer deserve any credit?

33:56Especially when what she's being credited for here is like coming around to believing that Ukraine should be sacrificed in order to bleed Russia.

34:03That's essentially what Nicholas Kristoff wants to applaud Laura Luma for. She's she's running a business and anyone who pays her gets her services. And basically what she does is she smears, defames, attacks, dehumanizes anyone who's in the way of the objectives of the malign force that's paying her. That's what's going on here.

34:27>> So she's going to now be an attack dog.

34:29Uh and loo like, you know, you're going to get lumored if you are, you know, getting in Ukraine's way, which is funny because, uh, well, she wasn't on the major Miro Vorets Ukraine kill list. She was actually on other kill lists that I was on just a year ago.

34:48>> It's pretty clear what's going on. I mean, she attacked the judge who was sentencing this Medicare fraudster Joseph Schwarz as an anti-semite for prosecuting him. like one of the biggest fraudsters in history who Trump of course pardoned because like Kabad uh and Loomer but uh you know why was she attacking that judge? Why did she take an interest in that? According to ProPublica, she was working alongside Schwarz's own lobbyists. So that like how how can Nicholas Kristoff claim this is some principled person? It just shows that it doesn't just show like the degradation of of the Trump administration or

35:32Ukraine or the right-wing. It also shows how degraded and desperate liberals are to continue to sell this war that they're portraying someone like her as even capable of courage when it's just pure political prostitution.

35:46>> Like in the past, you know, again, I've never paid attention to her, but like she's so she's claiming now she underwent some sort of conversion. So, which means before she was >> I never paid attention to her to either, but it's like suddenly you have like a predator outside your window who's like scraping at the window.

36:01>> No, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

36:02>> So, I have to pay attention because like I'm a target.

36:05>> Of course. My point is before when she was saying things that were supposedly critical of the Ukraine proxy war, would I ever for a second like be like, "Yeah, well, you know, I disagree with Laura Loomer on like whether or not Muslims are human beings, but I'm glad that she could see that NATO is using you." No, of course not. Like when someone is an is an open bigot, you don't give them credit for anything. They should be shunned and their motives should never be taken uh at face value. But apparently liberals can't comprehend that.

36:33>> Again, it's not just the bigotry, it's the mercenary quality of it all, which is just so obvious. It's so clear.

36:41>> That's all it is.

36:43>> Uh and you know, that's also what MAGA is. They're all just a bunch of mercenaries like uh Cat Turd or Captive Dreamer or any of those accounts that are boosting everything Trump does.

36:55They're all on the payroll. Like it's not like they're just organically doing it because this is something they deeply believe in. Um well, yeah. I mean, yeah.

37:03And we're going to talk more about this, but look at Russia Gate. Like Russia Gate was a total neoccarthite scam, but look what the Trump administration is doing now. They just put out that report basically saying that Cuba like they're basically casting Cuba in the role that in the role that liberals cast Russia for back after 2016 which Cuba controls everything. Cuba's behind Black Lives Matter.

37:23>> Cuba's behind every single uh people's movement.

37:28Cuba's pulling the strings of all these uh progressive figures and they're all doing they're all doing the exact same thing. You know, you think maybe after being like framed as Russian assets, they'd learn a lesson, maybe apply some consistent principle, but no, it's just actually they're taking the same playbook and actually it's even it's it's way worse than Russia G.

37:46>> Let's just briefly cover that and then we'll get into Iran since you brought it up. Uh this is the State Department's video like video preview of this insane report Cuba the capital of communism which asserts that Cuban communist operatives have infiltrated the US government at the highest level.

38:11>> A stunning new report out from the state department. It details a decadesl long Cuban influence campaign right here in the US. So the State Department report is titled Cuba, the capital of 21st century communism.

38:25>> The State Department today, they published a bombshell report.

38:28>> Virtually every left-wing radical violent terrorist group in the Western Hemisphere has at some point relied on support from Cuba.

38:35>> And we have 90 mi from our shores, a failed state that also happens to be [music] friendly territory for some of our adversaries. Cuba continues to host a pretty substantial collection intelligence sites on behalf of the Chinese and [music] the Russians. We've had successive American presidents say that the Western Hemisphere is going to be a priority and they never do it. And the president has made it a personal priority.

38:55>> We've known a lot about this, but the fact that it's inside this official report [music] from Secretary of State Marco Rubio is really important.

39:07So, [snorts] you know, you can get a sense of what uh what what this is about from that, which is on the I mean that that really highlights I mean, if you read the report, it might become a little bit unclear, but that preview really highlights what this is about, which is justifying a military invasion of Cuba.

39:31That's what this is about. And then if you read the report which I actually did it's clearly written by AI and what it's whoever the human participants were were operating in my view under the guidance of Steven Miller but on behalf of Marco Rubio the guru the godfather right now of the Gusano industrial complex because he controls the NYSE and the state department and therefore is enacting the decadesl long agenda of the South Florida Miami mafia, which is to destroy Cuba's government and take it over for the Fardo and Bakardi families and take over the take the land and turn it into like a you know just just completely privatize

40:23everything. Um, but the report is 80% of it focuses on the 1960s and early 70s.

40:32And it looks like Steven Miller's underlings just fed the entire uh over the the the entire catalog of David Horowit's front page mag and discover the network's articles into a like clawed AI and it pumped out this hysterical pamphlet. It's basically a long David Horowitz pamphlet about how radicals in the 60s and 70s still threaten and haunt us today. And it even includes, you know, Billys and Bernardine Dorne, Bernardet Dorne, uh, meeting with Barack Obama in their living room. Obama's involved. There's a picture of Karen Bass, the outgoing mayor of LA, with the Veneramos brigade in 1972.

41:25So the the the mayor of LA is involved in this conspiracy as well. So is uh V aka Eve Enler, the author of the vagina monologues because she went to the wedding of Jodie Evans who is a code pink co co-founder and code pink has gotten money from Roy Singum who is you know under investigation by the US.

41:47Singham has sponsored the people's forum, you know, this kind of like event space NGO in Midtown New York. And so the People's Forum has been subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee.

42:00And you know, so they're drawing all of these connections into some kind of McCarthyide investigation. And Rubio actually declares and this booklet actually declares that McCarthy is an inspiration for what they aim to do and that this is an actual blacklist and that they do aim to neutralize communism or socialism in the United States to the point where they're targeting the DSA which is basically a wing of the Democratic party and Zoran Mdani is of course named and targeted in this as is Hassan [ __ ] who they would like to seek to investigate because he went on this Cuba tour or like Cuba solidarity

42:39delegation.

42:41Uh and so pretty much everyone is involved. They want to target the entire left and neutralize the left. But the that is a secondary or even tertiary objective. The real objective is to justify military intervention in Cuba.

42:58They need there to be some threat. Rubio has declared it a failed state. Uh why is it failing? Because oil is totally blockaded and their electricity grid has collapsed. There's no way for them to power the island. People are suffering a humanitarian crisis brought onto it by the United States. Somehow it's still a threat and so it needs to be invaded.

43:18The it the problem is Cuba still held on despite this siege and they're waiting too long. Midterms are coming up. Maybe Trump won't win. Maybe Rubio won't win and they'll miss their opportunity. So this is it. And I think there's a very real chance of a military invasion of Cuba based on this deranged recycled David Horowitz screed report uh pumped out under the watch of Horowitz's understudy Steven Miller and Marco Rubio.

43:49>> Think about this recent run of secretaries of state Mike Pompeo and then Anthony Blinkin and then Marco Rubio.

43:57It's just been an absolute nightmare.

44:00None of them interested in diplomacy.

44:01All of them interested in using their office to make life miserable for people around the world. And in Marco Rubio's case being Cuban for, you know, his own country of origin because he wants to restore the days of Batista when uh gangsters and American propheteers ran Cuba. Um and the report also talks about the Cuban role around the world in a negative way and mentions Cuba's intervention in Africa. Yeah, how dare they fight apartheid >> in places like Angola where Cuba's intervention there was actually very helpful toward defeating apartheid South Africa as Nelson Mandela openly gave Cuba credit for and this report openly

44:42is just casting apartheid essentially as a good thing and also dismisses Black Lives Matter as a as a foreign plot and like the George Floyd protest it's all it's all Cuban and uh >> what the liberals portrayed or the Democrats portrayed that as a Russian plot.

44:59>> That was a Russian plot under the Democrats. And now that it's Republicans, now it's now it's a Cuban plot. And both plots are used to ferment war. But in the case of Cuba, it it's uh it's far more sinister because Cuba is uh very vulnerable just off the coast of the US. And that's why the US can do things like collapse its its power grid.

45:20you know, at least I mean the cost of to Russia have been huge and it led to a war in Ukraine which has been massive, but um at least Russia can defend itself. Cuba has been subjected to this criminal blockade going back decades and it it's average people who are suffering the most.

45:39>> Well, they I think they will suffer more following a US military invasion. And that's not to deny there are people on the island who want relief badly and will, you know, there are some young people there who run around waving US flags in central Havana and demand a US military invasion.

45:58>> Of course. I mean, if all you know is suffering because your country can't function because it's being, you know, deprived of all the basics one needs to survive. Of course, you're going to develop attitudes like this. You'll you'll welcome anything >> to end the torment. That's the point of of these US campaigns is to make the people suffer enough so that they just give up and they uh don't care about things like sovereignty anymore because they just want to survive.

46:22>> Well, this administration is effectively at war. I mean, the United States has been effectively at war with Cuba since 1960. Uh but this administration has escalated it and there are domestic repercussions and it's intended to justify repression. The only thing standing in the way is the Bill of Rights and the courts.

46:42It's it's why I mean it relates to my targeting returning from Iran, which Laura Loomer has essentially taken credit for. She said she called the State Department. She called the FBI.

46:53She called the Treasury Department.

46:57Um, this is what they want to do.

47:03people in the United States of America proudly flying communist flags and symbolism.

47:10You forget what it was like under the red scare in the late 40s and early 50s.

47:15My goodness, they even thought you were a communist sympathizer. You'd be fired from your job. You would be under scrutiny. You couldn't even have any communist ideas. And now it's almost become popular to have these communist ideas. I have to ask you these what now people are calling the legacy Democrats, the legacy left. Where are they? Because this is really scary that there are so much popularity and again watching these uh hearings with Brandon Gil when it comes to the Smithsonian, what they are pushing, these ideas are being pushed on on our youth and our kids all through college. Are you worried about this?

47:50Could this actually seriously take over in this country? Well, I'm I'm very worried about it.

47:57>> Of course, it's Randy. Fine. He might not actually be wearing his keepa there because it [clears throat] wasn't about Israel. But, you know, you're not allowed they don't you're not allowed you shouldn't be allowed to have communist ideas and they're frightened. They're there they're there def there there definitely is a fear there uh that there's a backlash because the economic situation the average American is declining. No one can afford in the middle class to actually own a home. Home sales are like rich people selling homes to each other at this point.

48:31Whitecollar workers are going to have their jobs eradicated by AI. Trump's job program is to build data centers and fuel the AI counterrevolution or revolution. He's backed by all of these tech warlords including Mark Andre who is a also was an understudy and student if you can call him that of David Horowitz uh and his business partner at his venture capital firm is David Horowitz's son Ben Horowitz. These are the people behind Barry Weiss. They're the ones who are really behind MAGA and they're all militant Zionists. This is the program. They're afraid of a backlash. They're afraid of uh you know

49:14Luigi Manion multiplying and you know they'll be Luigi and then suddenly Mario will crop up. They're they're they're actually they actually are afraid or they're fueling that fear among the 1% and they wanted to use it to justify a massive crackdown. And the crackdown is expanding into pretty much everyone they named in this report all across the anti-war left. And a lot of them are people like we know where we had media Benjamin on the show like two weeks ago.

49:43She's named they want to take down Code Pink because Code Pink is a gadfly. Code Pink is constantly in their face in Congress in Randy Fine's face when he calls Muslims dogs and calls for, you know, not justifying the genocide in Gaza, but celebrating the genocide in Gaza. They're the ones who are there. I always say media is one of the the few actual reporters on Capitol Hill who's asking real questions of them. So they want to just they they don't want any opposition at all.

50:14>> Sure.

50:15>> So we know those people and uh I'm friends with them. I'm allies with a lot of them. I'm not allies with others, but you know, guilt by association. Yeah, I'm guilty of of associating with many of those people. So um the the uh ring of repression is expanding rapidly and that's what the the purpose of this AI generated paranoid report is.

50:47I don't know if there's much to add there but uh I expect more this week this coming week. Uh, I expect the repression to increase this week as along with the threat of war in Cuba. As Donald Trump's war on Iran continues to fail.

51:07Trump reignited a war on Iran. No one really understood why in the US. A new Washington Post Ipsos poll finds like only about 20% of the US public thinks the war is worth it. Remember on February 28th the war started for really two reasons. Although Trump didn't take much time before that point to justify the war. He just let Netanyahu tell him to launch decapitation strikes. And then he started, you know, working backwards to justify the war to the American public. Uh it's about the Iranian nuclear file. We can't allow these crazy mulas to have nuclear weapons. They threaten the whole world. He actually

51:43said they're they threaten the United States with a nuclear strike and they need freedom. And that certainly that that changed into uh we will destroy Iran's civilization overnight. Trump failed to get the nuclear dust. Lost the first phase of the war. Basically lost the war within a week when Iran closed a straight of Hormuz. Went to aou a ceasefire so that in in JD Vance's words the US could restock. Iran government signed theou presumably so they could get oil out onto the market and get out from the US siege. and also just demonstrate that they're willing to negotiate even though they know the US is a perfidious

52:23government that will violate theou. the US violated it and then it went back to war um earlier this month while I was in Iran and began striking the southern areas of Iran, Sir, Keshum, uh Chabahar to open up the straight of Hormuz to reclaim control of the straight of Hormuz which was open before February 28th. So the whole point of the US war now is to get back to the status quo ante that existed before the failed war.

52:56And how is the US doing? Well, this was Jan July 18th following strikes by the US on Iranian military infrastructure as well as critical infrastructure and civilian infrastructure like bridges. Iran finally started hitting back hard and they started hitting US bases in Jordan that had not been targeted before and their missiles have uh increasing accuracy. This is the MAFA Salti air base in Jordan where soldiers were not sufficiently protected. Here's some footage of that.

53:33I'm not showing you yet because I um didn't put it on screen.

53:52Seems bad. Seems pretty bad. This was flown by a US soldier.

54:04Those soldiers were not being protected in hardened shelters.

54:08And what were they doing there, by the way? What are they doing in Jordan?

54:14They're protecting Israel.

54:18No US soldier is going into battle to defend the United States and def to defend our security. When was the last time soldiers repelled an attack on the United States from the US quote unquote homeland? Hasn't happened in my lifetime. They went to war in Grenada.

54:34They went to war in Panama. They went to war in Iraq. Now they're just that they're stationed all over this region to defend Israel's strategic depth and to threaten Iran on behalf of Israel.

54:47It's pretty sad. And why are the soldiers why are they joining the military?

54:52>> Well, the Trump said that all of them felt very strongly that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear weapon.

54:57>> Yeah. He spoke for the dead soldiers said as if he like was like channeling their souls and said yes that they all told him that they felt strongly that Iran should have a nuclear weapon. So justifying his fake pretext for getting them killed.

55:13>> This is why Yeah. This is what you know Isabella Gonzalez and so many Latino and Latina soldiers from southern Texas are really fighting for. That's why they joined. They didn't join because it's a way one of the few ways to move up the rungs of the US class structure and maybe finance a college education.

55:34It isn't a glorified mercenary army.

55:36It's actually, you know, true believers.

55:38Just like in the UK where a new poll shows that 6% of Britain's British citizens are willing to fight for the UK in a war against Russia. 6%. Uh here's some more footage of that strike in Jordan. This is what US soldiers have been uh left with.

56:13>> Well, this goes on for three minutes.

56:18Oh god, I just I just fast forwarded.

56:20Doesn't look good.

56:28Air raid sirens >> guys off the walls if we can get a TV.

56:35>> Anyone watching uh you know who's like turning 18? Are you ready to enlist? You want to sign up?

56:42Be all you can be.

56:46Be a goish bull bullet stopper for Israel.

56:51That's your role in Jordan, which is run by a half British blue-eyed king who's maintaining a repository warehouse of Palestinians, surplus Palestinians on Israel's behalf, whose intelligence services are basically run by Israel in the US, who has no choice whether or not to have these bases.

57:18And so several soldiers died in those attacks and uh or died uh trying to disarm explosives from a downed Iranian drone in Jordan. And here they are. And they clearly look like um you know ideologically inclined neoconservatives who would fight to denuclearize Iran.

57:42Actually no they look like the American working class.

57:46And guess what happened with them?

57:49Angel Rampersad, Isabella Gonzalez, Tyler Feehan, and Michael Emanuel Swinton. So, two brown soldiers, one black soldier, and a white soldier from the working class were killed while uh Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Ya, partied in Miami.

58:14And they were removed by the so-called Department of War from the official death toll of 18 American soldiers or service members killed in this war. They were removed by the Trump administration. They don't even count as fallen in in this in this war. That's how proud they are of this the Trump administration is and Pete Hegath is of this war, by the way, because supposedly the US is in a ceasefire. So they're they're they're covering up these deaths that we all know occurred and they're trying to actually minimize these soldiers service that I mean I can't I can't even think of a bigger insult

58:57is every day >> ready to join >> I mean every day there Trump is flashing his contempt for soldiers for facts and uh but yet We haven't seen I mean people are suffering but there's I mean has there been a massive anti-war protest since February? Not really. Um it's just a weird time. I guess people feel under Trump it's so demoralized and feels it that it doesn't matter because it's not because it's it's a basically it's a quasi authoritarian government where the popular will just make any difference whatsoever. So people don't even feel compelled to go out and protest. But the contempt he shows for his own soldiers

59:40by placing them in danger, denigrating them, and then now not even counting their sacrifice officially. I mean, it's quite striking.

59:50>> Well, uh there there will be protests if there are large numbers of Americans killed as in Iraq. That would take place during a ground assault on something like Chabahar, which would inevitably fail.

60:06the Iranian regular military and IRGC's much much stronger than Iraq's Iraq's military which basically folded away into an insurgency and still managed to kill hundreds [snorts] of American soldiers and wound many more. Um, this would be a disaster politically for Trump, but it's it's possibly on the horizon as the US attacks border areas between Iraq and Iran. It suggests they could be prepping some kind of ground assault. I mean, I would think it would be in the south around the straight of Hormuz, but that wouldn't really matter. you know, they could hold Chabahar, but then they would be easy targets for mobile

60:52artillery, for drones, for ballistic missiles. Um, there are many ways they could be hammered. FPV drones could enter the picture, the kind we see really hammering Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.

61:08It wouldn't be pretty. Uh, this would actually play to the strength of Iran.

61:12And you know, you you know, just because they would be physically in on the coast of the Straight of Hormuz doesn't mean that Iran couldn't still enforce a blockade. Um they can still remotely attack ships. They don't need to be on the mountain tops above the straight.

61:28None of this makes sense. And then I would think the the protest would begin when the Democrats would use their various no kings astrourfed entities to send people into the streets. The whole point of No Kings is kind of like to to water down more what you could call radical demands and anti-war activity and force all the anti-war forces into this broader mass of like MSNBC boomers.

61:56But I mean during the Iraq war, the protests were not just like all organic.

62:01It just move on and their giant mailing list, email list, and the unions and the Democrats sending people out into the street. Um so it it really would take this broader infrastructure to bring people out to protest a war, but the war is just completely unpopular. It's never going to be more popular.

62:23and uh the military. I mean, the way that Trump has treated the military throughout this conflict, the the joint chiefs from the from the top to the bottom, there isn't much desire to wage this war in the US military. Remember Dan Kaine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was leaking to the New York Times and Washington Post about coming munitions shortages if Trump attacked Iran and was basically saying the US is going to lose.

62:50So the chairman of the joint chiefs was against the war, but you know, he has to follow orders. And then at the bottom of the totem pole, you have these workingass soldiers. Where do they come from? I I used to substitute teach in uh LA or like suburban LA. When I was breaking into journalism, it was a good job to like allow me to pay my rent while I did articles on the side. I was at Alhhamra High um east of LA and other high schools and like the amount of manipulation of students and pressure on students and enticement that would take place on these high school campuses from military recruiters was insane. They

63:31would actually have them come into the classroom and like all the chum in the class like I had and like if I wore my ID card the lanyard would say army.

63:39There'd be calendars for the army.

63:41They'd come in the class and say, "Who uh wants to come to RO ROC?" And you basically get to leave class and participate in ROC. The job recruitment center, it was all military. There were uniformed recruiters walking around the high school trying to just bring people in. It was just non-stop. And this was like a workingclass public high school.

64:02LA County had the highest level, I think, of combat deaths, highest rate of combat deaths per capita in the Iraq war. And they were they were brown soldiers, Latinos, and many of them were actually being promised citizenship to join. So that's what the US military is.

64:19Compare that to I think the the motivation of an Iranian military and what we saw after Ayatollah Khame's funeral with like 35 million people participating in the funeral.

64:32There's no comparison.

64:35>> Well, uh you mentioned that uh the Pentagon brass is not keen on a ground invasion, but the people who Trump's been listening to throughout this whole regime change war, they are. And that includes Mark Tissson, the former speech writer for George W. Bush turned Washington Post columnist. And uh this is what he said.

64:53>> Why I asked?

64:54>> Okay. So we we stop the fighting in the ceasefire in the 20 yard line. We take it into the end zone. We do another about we have about 14 days of of combat where we have to take out all the targets that we have available. We take out the we took out 85% of their domest of their defense industrial base. We take out 95% of it. We set back all their programs and we further into the nuclear dust. Then we stop major combat operations. We impose the blockade. We open up Cara. We open up the straight of Hormuz. And then we go and we help the Iranian people overthrow their regime the same way that the United States. We

65:20have muscle memory doing this. We liberated 400 million people during the cold war without boots on the ground. We armed we armed the mujahedin. We armed Yidita Angola. We helped solidarity. We helped charter 77 in Czech Republic. We know how to bring down regimes without boots on the ground. We helped the Iranian people. Trump has been tweeting out every day now for the last several days pictures of Iranians being executed by the regime. He's standing with the Iranian people. Let's help them overthrow their regime, weaken it militarily, and then help them do the job and finish it. I [snorts] mean, Mark

65:44Tissson talks to Trump and is considered a trusted adviser. So, he sounds like a complete clown, but what he's saying should be taken seriously because he has Trump's ear. And I mean, one problem with what he's saying, I mean, putting put aside like the historical he's bragging about arming the mujaheden, which then led to al-Qaeda. He's bragging about uh >> You need a >> He's arming Savimi, the CIA arming simi in Angola.

66:11>> Yeah, exactly. He's bragging about siding with South African apartheid in Angola. Forget all that. But like he's advocating things that the US has already tried. They tried all this already. This was the point of the regime change war that Trump launched on February 28th. They they've tried all this. It didn't work. And all that's left now is for Trump to accept that Iran's going to control the state of Hormuz.

66:33Uh rather than continue to get US soldiers killed over it. if he just accepted that he could have an end to this thing and he could walk away and he could pretend that he won. But he's not doing that. In fact, right now he's ramping up US military assets in the region. So, I think I think we're going to see this weekend, especially after markets close, what Trump is going to do. Is he going to basically return to full-scale war or is he going to finally take an off-ramp? And if people like Mark Tissson have their way, it it's war.

67:07Mark Tissson was a former Bush adviser.

67:10He is basically a voice for Netanyahu along with Mark Levvin and Ben Shapiro in Trump's ear and I I guess Laura Loomer. and he actually called for the US to murder Iran's entire negotiating team through an act of aerial terrorism by bombing their flight coming back from Pakistan where they were negotiating with JD Vance under the protection of the Pakistani military which the US supports. He is a a a subversive plant for Israel in the Trump administration.

67:43And this and and the effect of continuing this war has actually been the title of this live stream, debasification, not just entrenchment of Iranian control over the straight of Hormuz, devastation of the global economy. And as you said, Aaron, Trump is going to probably escalate this week.

68:04Oil has already been driven to $100 a barrel which means the global economy will suffer unprecedented harm at this point. Time is on Iran's side there. Uh strategic oil reserves are running out.

68:16This is the effect of this war and the effect of this war is a massive black eye to US empire. The Aluade air base which was like the one of the main bases main air base for the US in the region in Qatar has been totally evacuated. New satellite images. This is uh Will Shrivever. This is a good account to follow. New satellite images show that all US aircraft have now been evacuated from the Aldafra air base in the UAE.

68:45American bases in the Persian Gulf region are no longer tenable. The King Fisal air base in Jordan was evacuated.

68:52The Moaf Sauti air base we saw that footage from earlier has been pretty much evacuated.

68:59uh barracks at uh the Ali Alam air base were just hit by Iran. They're increasingly unable to maintain these very exposed bases under increasingly accurate Iranian ballistic missile and drone fire and they're moving all their assets into Israel and Jordan, but mainly Israel. And Israel's becom becoming one of the only assets the US can maintain. But it's not really an asset. It's a liability. And it's Israel guiding this war. Bezel Smotrich, the Israeli uh finance minister saying, "We don't want to enter this war at this point.

69:36It's going really well for us. We don't need to enter because the US is fighting this war on their behalf." And the US taxpayer is paying is paying for it to offset the cost to Israel as our militaries merge.

69:51And then, you know, meanwhile, Trump is being told by Mark Tissson to escalate because we had all these great victories during the Cold War.

70:00Here's what Ben Shapiro, another guy.

70:02I've never met a Ben Shapiro fan.

70:06Here's what he's saying.

70:07>> And upset. It feels like things are stalemated. I get why people are confused.

70:11>> Listen, guys, I get it. I get you don't like this war, but you have to listen to what I have to say because it's actually we need more.

70:20This is an acceptable loss of Goyam and upset. It feels like things are stalemated that they're getting broader and more difficult. Why? Well, because what the American people want is victory. There's this bizarre notion in foreign policy. [laughter] It's bizarre. The American people want to win. that the American people are deeply worried about the immediate cost of war to the enemy, that the American people that we can't handle the ugliness of war for even a day, that every conflict has to be totally antiseptic.

70:53And here I'm not even talking about the American willingness to undergo casualties. No one in America wants American casualties. It's tragedy and a horror. We do understand that war does come along with casualties and we are willing to undergo those casualties in pursuit of an end and a victory for America. But as far as the idea that for example America we can't hit Cara Island because the Iranian people would then be deprived of oil resources.

71:19The American people are I should say not particularly concerned about that. We are far more concerned with why we're there not winning. I think what we actually ought to do is say an eye for everything. If you touch a ship in the straight of Hormuz and we kill the head of the IRGC, we kill Halib, we kill your entire leadership class. Again, we destroy south powers and we destroy hard. One drone and that's what happens.

71:43One drone and we kill everyone that you could possibly negotiate with who are like reformists.

71:50>> Well, Trump said something similar this week when he said that, you know, for now for every uh ship that's hit instead of Hermos, we're going to destroy a power plant inside of Iran. So maybe I'm not sure which came first, Ben Shapiro or Trump, but maybe Trump was listening to Ben Shapiro where where he got that new uh threat from.

72:09>> They're all saying the same thing.

72:10You're right. And they're echoing one another. And these are the these are the neocon ludnik talking points. Here's the uh you know the Latino Ben >> Shapiro.

72:23you rule out breaking >> I I think I saw you know guys I saw Arachi their foreign minister who the other day say or something about their policy is an eye for an eye the president's policy is a head for an eye honestly that's what it's going to be I mean they will pay a very heavy price for the things they do they're already paying a very heavy price you guys don't know because you don't cover it you're not in Iran you're not in the street they don't have a free media but they're going to continue to pay a very heavy price their industrial base has been decimated their defense industrial base has been decimated they're losing

72:46launchers they're losing radars every single night they are suffering billions of dollars in damage and their economy is a disaster but despite all that these people who are calling us every Okay, begging, let's do a deal. They send us messages to other countries, third countries, and they're running out of countries to send. Even I had countries here coming up to me. Oh, I just spoke to the Iranians that want to do a deal.

72:59Problem is, every time these people do a deal, they either break it or after they make it, they want to change the deal.

73:02Oh, they're probably not ready to do a deal yet, but they will be soon because the price they're paying is very high despite their tough talk and the flowery language and their stupid Lego videos they put out. I've never seen them. They put these things out on social media.

73:10>> I I feel like he has seen the Lego videos >> too. Yeah, including there's a new one about him. Um, >> yeah, >> I feel like he's definitely seen them because uh or else why would he go out of his way to express such annoyance with them >> and uh check out my interview with the director of those videos at the Greyzones YouTube channel. It's pretty interesting. We talk about how they get in the heads of MAGA and top Trump figures. But Rubio's echoing Ben Shapiro, they're calling for a campaign of terrorism to accomplish very murky, dubious military goals which don't seem achievable. And this is the problem with

73:48what Ben Shapiro is calling for is let's say they hit Car Island and blow everything up. Although the US is suffering a munitions crisis, Iran can retaliate and can escalate and it can destroy oil infrastructure across the region including of countries that are like paying Jared Kushner and his affinity partners billions of dollars.

74:12We're talking about Saudi Arabia and the UAE which are basically Trump partners.

74:18They will be destroyed.

74:20Kuwait, Bahrain, those countries have Kuwait is 30 is 30% Shia. Bahrain is 40 or 50% Shia. They will be destabilized.

74:29Their desalination plants could be destroyed.

74:32This will also plunge the global economy into a depression. It will be the, you know, Zionist Ben Shapiro depression.

74:40That's what we could call it. People will move into Shapirovilles all across America, uh, in tents on rivers. It's going to be bad. So Iran can do enormous amounts of damage. Just attacking, you know, Iran's oil infrastructure doesn't stop Iran from retaliating. So they don't actually have a plan that to win the war. It's just a plan for terror for its own sake. And who who would who would really want that plan?

75:07Who's which what's the only country that would benefit from that? It's Israel.

75:12This is this is the thing. Like everyone's trying to figure out what the objective is here and what does victory look like for Israel. There isn't a clear there isn't a clear definition of victory. Opening a straight of Hormuz for Israel is not necessarily victory if Iran's uh the Islamic Republic comes into power for Israel. Victory is state destruction and societal destruction of Iran. And I saw that that was clear to me when I was there and I saw the amount of civilian infrastructure that was targeted including like a major volleyball stadium in Thran. that major scientific uh research school. Um

75:51>> yeah, Sharif University's AI center.

75:54Yeah. like they need to destroy Iran as an independent country because they can't allow Iran or any country in the region to be anything but a third world backwater, a desert backwater that with with starving people and and migration flows going to Europe that make Europe more right-wing and more, you know, with more pro-Israel governments. That's great for Israel. Israel doesn't get affected by any of that. So, they just want to keep the US waging this war for as long as possible. And all of these figures you're hearing, don't even pay attention to what they're saying, like or or you can pay attention to it, but

76:32they want more US soldiers to be killed because it will increase Trump's resolve to continue the war.

76:39Uh, and they want simply more destruction of Iran. That's all they want. And they're only trying to benefit this tiny little apartheid colony in the Middle East, which is steering the Trump administration's policy through the ghost of Lindsey Graham, who will be honored this Monday in Washington by guess who?

77:08I mean, anyone can guess. Benjamin Netanyahu. is coming back to Washington to give his um employee Donald Trump more orders and he's going to honor Lindsey Graham.

77:21So there you have it. Two weeks ago, guess who was in Washington? We just learned Roman uh Gooffman, who is the new Mossad director. Isn't that strange? Like he came to Washington and then suddenly the war restarted like right after he left and we didn't even know he was here. And then suddenly Israel started putting out new fake intelligence about they found some new Iranian plot against Trump magically. And they also found this was in the Wall Street Journal I think that Iran was like moving some enriched uranium around. Uh amazing like the timing that all this comes and Israel discovers this.

78:00>> Yes. [snorts] So uh then Netanyah is going to New York, right?

78:10Uh and um he's going to be at the UN. He's going to be calling for more war on Iran.

78:23That's where he's going to make his case as Israel attempts to destroy the UN, the ICC, which we'll talk about in a second. Uh, and for the first time we have a New York City mayor who isn't attempting to arrest a Palestinian figure as we saw Rudy Giuliani to have Yaser Arafat arrested at a at a performance of Beethoven's ninth symphony after Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize and basically gave away the store with the Oscar Awards in 1995. We have a mayor in New York who's calling to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu according to the ICC warrant.

79:05>> Max, if you could uh uh try to do something with your mic because it's it's a little muffled.

79:11>> It's muffled.

79:12>> Yeah.

79:15>> Can you hear me any better now?

79:17>> Yeah. Yeah, that's better.

79:19>> Okay. It it might be because I have like um like like a chaotic sonic environment around me caused by um some younger members of the Blumenthal family. I don't know. But this is supposed to be a dynamic mic.

79:37[snorts] My studio is a little bit more exposed than it used to be. Anyway, so Manny, I don't know if we need to play this whole address, but basically this is it. He called for Netanyahu to be arrested by those who have the authority to do so.

79:56Federal officials, there are no federal officials willing to do it. His NYPD chief, Jessica Tish, is basically a a Zionist ideologue from a very pro-Zionist family. So, she's not going to do it.

80:12But he is, you know, he he's sitting before an American flag and a New York municipal flag using his authority at Gracie Mansion to call for the arrest of a foreign official according to the ICC if he comes to New York.

80:29I feel like it's shaping the the political environment going forward for other officials to do this and to reap political benefits. This has been retweeted like a million like half a million times. Millions and millions have shared this. Manny is benefiting from this display of willing from his desire to enforce international law against the Israeli prime minister. And then you know there are others who are think he should do more and you know we can get into that but what are your thoughts?

81:05I think what he's doing is extraordinary and uh I I just don't like look everybody operates within constraints including the mayor of New York City and the fact that New York City is coming out and calling for the arrest of Netanyahu and legally I think he's right. I don't think he can um because of the immunity that a a foreign leader gets when they come to New York for the New York the general assembly. Um, I believe that legal rationale, but he's using this platform, I think, in the most effective way he can, which is to speak the truth, and that's to call Netanyahu a war criminal. And I I think it's

81:42excellent. And I just don't, you know, like if people have criticisms of that, well, I just don't know like what more you want from the guy. And look, the fact that he's even in that position, it's pretty, it's not easy to be mayor of New York City. And he achieved that. And I think now he's using his platform for a really noble effort. So I don't look I I I haven't seen much of the criticism, but I I just don't know what more they want Mana uh to do.

82:12>> Um I don't I don't know what else he can do to arrest Netanyahu, but and he has encouraged protests.

82:21He could the qu one question is could he prevent the NYPD from protecting Netanyahu to make it more difficult for Netanyahu to come to New York City?

82:36>> That's a question. Um he Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But like one thing I I think at least I would think about if I were mom Donnie, if I were a public figure is that, you know, if you sometimes if you really push things to the limit, you'll get killed. Look at Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, Dr. King. So maybe some people at that public level make a choice to like operate at a certain level of speaking the truth, but maybe not going as far as they could.

83:09And I can't fault someone if they're thinking about trying to stay alive for not going as far as they possibly can and still operating within certain constraints. Maybe because they want to live. Like I I think that that's probably a factor.

83:21>> I don't know if that's a factor. Like I don't think that's affecting his calculus on whether or not, you know, he should do take certain acts to arrest Netanyahu.

83:32>> Well, I'm saying they already want to kill him. Here's a >> like I'm saying is if I was at that level in light of what's happened throughout history, in light of what happened to Malcolm X and Dr. King and Fred Hampton, I don't know. That's something that would probably cross my mind.

83:48>> Well, he's not a private citizen. He has protection. He uh and I don't I don't know if that's a factor. I don't know what I I think if if the power was there, it might have been executed. and everyone who is thinking of entering public life who's watching this who want who is campaigning for office uh are you afraid are you going to be a step back from taking on Israel because you're afraid of assassination there's a candidate in New Hampshire who's running for Congress named Howard Heath I think he's running as a Republican he's a libertarian and he received a letter from the same figure who sent or or

84:29figures who sent me a death threat which arrived in my mailbox signed your dead meat y o rde d- e t tell telling me that I'm on a list and that I'm [ __ ] signed the committee he got the same letter many other figures have been getting these letters and it's some of them are just like and and I've been in touch with them some of them are just like academics who challenged uh pro-Israel repression on campus and got called out by Zionist media groups or Zionist institutions accused of anti-semitism and then suddenly these letters show up. So it's like what should should what can you do to avoid being threatened by these

85:09psychopaths affiliated with the Jewish Defense League who are basically terrorists in you know waiting in the wings in our country who are being activated by more mainstream Zionist institutions. What can you either have to basically just retreat or uh go into battle, go into political battle and I mean here you have a candidate who's endorsed by uh track Apac Howard Heath and he's getting these death threats. I assume other candidates are I'm sure Ilhan Omar gets many death threats. The return address on the envelope was Rashida Talib's field office. Rashida Talib has reported these letters to the Capitol police.

85:51So, and and I'm I got the letter, you know, and I'm being targeted, too. So, what am I gonna what am I going to do?

85:57The mom Donnie is like probably their biggest target right now. We published a film which was an inside kind of hidden camera. It wasn't a hidden camera, but we pub published a film by a filmmaker who joined Betar openly as a Jew. Betar being a group that has now been closed by the New York Attorney General Leticia James because of their support for Jewish terrorism and he got more access to them than any other filmmaker anyone that I've seen and got them on camera.

86:29Their leader Ron Terrosian and another and like his lieutenant joking about planting a bomb in um mom Donny's car that's in the film.

86:40So yeah, I agree, Aaron. Like these the more uh Israel's challenged at the higher higher levels, the more they're going to resort to the kind of tactics that they've employed in the region where they kill journalists, they turn pagers into weapons. But is that going to stop people from enforcing international law and like following their convictions? It should not. And you know, >> Well, I don't want people to be intimidated.

87:08>> Well, sure. And it hasn't stopped M Donnie. I was just trying to >> Yeah.

87:12>> You know, imagine what it'd be like to be in his shoes. And I just don't understand people. I mean, to accomplish what M Donnie has already done is pretty extraordinary. And I just don't see how it's productive to try to tear him down when he's like he's doing a good job as mayor and he's calling on Netanyahu as a war criminal. He's saying things that no one else would say. He's setting an example. He's setting the bar for the rest of the Democratic party to follow.

87:34So, look, I um I just don't see what's productive about tearing down Manny when I think he's doing something pretty heroic.

87:42>> Well, I think if a Jewish terrorist or Jewish fanatic were to carry out a crime like that or, you know, a King David hotel bombing in this country, I don't think they'd recover. I don't know how they would recover from that.

88:02and they're already in a major PR crisis as they're acknowledging uh for some reason they they really like think that I'm wet has some piece identifying me as like the a top PR threat to Israel and says you know it's how anti-semitic influencers turned hate into a multi-million dollar industry I was a multi-millionaire [laughter] great uh illustration there Um, and they say, you know, they're calling me Blumenthal Junior.

88:39Like my dad, Max Blumenthal.

88:41>> Yeah. So, because you have a father, you're now a junior. Okay. Yeah. That's >> right. I I had a politically influential father. I guess that's what they're trying to say. I compare Israel to a part era South Africa and the American South under racist Jim Crow laws. Now, that was the old me before October 7th.

88:59Israel is something much worse now.

89:00>> Yeah. I mean, that's way too kind to Jim Crow.

89:03>> We're dedicated to any US military intervention around the world. All right. Well, so are most Americans at this point. And uh we claim that uh Israeli society is steeped in racist and fascist culture while its leaders use the memory of the Holocaust to justify violence against Palestinians.

89:20Oh my god. Like, did I actually say that? That's conspiracy thinking.

89:26>> What else did I say? That's crazy. After October 7th, Blumenthal claimed that Israel deliberately fabricated and exaggerated reports of Hamas's atrocities in order to quote gain legitimacy for genocide.

89:38Whoa. Um I I really sorry, guys. I went that far. I mean, 40 beheaded babies, that was real.

89:46>> He argues that Zionism is a form of cult is a form of cult that both feeds on and requires anti-semitism in order to survive politically and financially.

89:57Yeah, that doesn't make sense at all.

89:59[laughter] Last month, after a devastating earthquake in Venezuela, he posted that Israel was quote infiltrating Venezuela under the guise of a humanitarian aid delegation. What am I crazy? They just were there to help.

90:13>> I mean, they were just there to help a country that had removed the Israeli embassy and ended all ties with Israel in 2009. They weren't trying to infiltrate.

90:21>> I mean, I really wish that weren't true.

90:23Uh, but those photos of Deli Rodriguez greeting Israeli officials, it's one of the most depressing sites I've seen in a long time.

90:33>> So, yeah, I guess I was on to something there. We're going to talk about that in a second. Um, but Israel is facing an unprecedented public relations crisis.

90:43It's never coming back. The American public is never going to support Israel again. The Europeans are going no one no one in the world except for elites and those who are ideologically Zionist and live in like this hermetic world of Christian Zionism or Jewish Zionism support it. It's nobody else. It's over.

91:05And some Fox boomers who like seeing Muslims getting blown up. That's it.

91:10It's and they're going to die.

91:13So what will Israel do? it has no way out of this except to bomb its way out to and to criminalize us and to try to um de-educate the American public. I saw Ben Shapiro and and Batia Angar Sargon, whoever she is, uh or whatever her name is, uh they're they're constantly um praising the less educated voters who vote Republican and earn less money. And like I think that's what they want most Americans to be is to be like cattle so that they won't have the awareness to actually challenge the special relationship. There's nothing else Israel can do. Uh and yeah, assassination, it hasn't worked in the

91:59region. It's not going to work here.

92:01It's going to backfire.

92:03Uh Aaron, you brought up the sad scenes of Israeli military in Venezuela.

92:11Um, I guess we we could like introduce the next segment by talking about this and then I I want I want to hear what happened at the OPCW because I think this relates to what I want to talk that relates to what I want to talk about in this uh I guess last segment.

92:27Um, this is a post I just titled hostages. Nicholas Maduro and Celia Flores, his kidnapped wife, the abducted legitimate president of Venezuela, were had a day in court. I think that's Barry Pollock, their lawyer.

92:44They're they're hostages of the US regime. They were kidnapped. Their guards were murdered right in front of them. And they may have been sold out. I don't know. Something strange is going on in Venezuela. They've just allowed Israel to waltz right in. This is on the official Instagram account of Deli Rodriguez meeting with Israeli military officials and intelligence officials.

93:08Uh this is pretty sad. They're there to supposedly help after this earthquake which has killed thousands uh especially in the just outside Caracus.

93:22And I say you know she's a hostage too.

93:24Deli Rodriguez had a uh had a secret indictment, which I revealed at the gray zone for her arrest. And the Trump administration is now removing that secret warrant because she's doing everything they seem to want. And this is one of the major things that they want is they want Venezuela to be part of the Isaac Accords, which is the Abraham Accords for Latin America, which gives Israel total control over Latin American economies, intelligence sharing, military sharing, and you know, economic exploitation uh for of mineral wealth and oil wealth.

94:07And there it is. This is it. Ugo Chavez kicked out the Israeli ambassador in 2009 when Israel started bombarding the Gaza Strip during Operation Castled.

94:19Uh the first time I ever saw Deli Rodriguez in public and I' I've interviewed her. I've met I met her on several occasions. The first time I ever saw her in public, she was speaking before the people's assembly in uh Kacus wearing a kufia. She was wearing a kufia to try to demonstrate her solidarity for Palestine. Well, that solidarity was certainly funible as were any revolutionary principles that Ugo Chavez preached because this is it.

94:49Again, I said, you know, before I'm not going to defend her. There's nothing to defend there. It doesn't mean I'm going to just kind of maliciously attack her because she is a hostage.

94:59But they were invaded.

95:02And then this is what happened today.

95:07background was our last segment. So Ran Mandani, the mayor of New York, called to arrest the prime minister of Israel according to an ICC warrant. And I would assume if Vladimir Putin were to go to New York, Mandani would say he should be arrested as well just to be concerned.

95:24>> He did say that and he said he would.

95:26Yeah, >> he did say that.

95:28>> Yeah.

95:28>> Uh the ICC warrant for Netanyahu is for genocide. He's was conducting mass killing and ethnic cleansing and is attempting to continuing to seek to ethnically cleanse and destroy the Gaza Strip. The warrant for Putin was for relocating thousands of ethnically Russian minors to the Russian Federation in the middle of a war to moving them out of a war zone and they were supposedly like kidnapped and disappeared except uh that no one's like we kind of know where they are. Anyway, Kareem Khan, the ICC prosecutor who introduced both warrants for Putin and Netanyahu. And Netanyahu is former defense minister, Yo Galant, he's now

96:09cooked.

96:11There was sexual harassment allegations suddenly conjured up or introduced against him after he introduced that warrant for Netanyahu.

96:21And now a majority of nations has voted that he must leave. And Ken Roth from Human Rights Watch has posted over 80 times on Twitter X calling for Khan to step down.

96:35>> Of course. Of course.

96:38>> Ken Roth, who campaigns for regime change everywhere, including places like Venezuela.

96:43>> Yeah.

96:43>> Not surprised at all that he was an open cheerleader for getting rid of uh the chief prosecutor of the ICC who was holding Netanyahu accountable >> and regime regime change. Yes. And then the final ingredient here and this is all this week. All this week. Okay.

97:03>> Uh the the Kareem Khan's accuser suddenly appears and materializes on Christian Amur, one of the biggest military interventionists on you know in liberal media. Ken Roth calling for a step down and Marco Rubio at the State Department is calling for sanctions on the ICC for this warrant against Netanyahu and just wants says we have to end the ICC. It's an official call from the US government to end the ICC. So what happened today? This is the saddest thing yet.

97:36Felix Placencia Gonzalez, who I guess he's the new foreign minister at Venezuela, declares that Venezuela is leaving the ICC right after Israel infiltrates Venezuela.

97:49It's firm and irrevocable decision to denounce the Rome Statute and initiate its definitive withdrawal from the ICC in accordance with article 127. And it's, you know, it's doing it in the most disgusting, cynical, and phony way by claiming that the ICC is biased against leaders from the global south as if, oh, the timing. We're not going to notice the timing. We're not going to notice that like the US is trying to destroy the ICC and Israel is trying to destroy the ICC because they actually indicted a white man who is a the leading Jewish supremacist in the world.

98:28Jenna Sudair Benjamin Netanyahu that has nothing to do with this. just suddenly up and decided that hey the ICC's bias they weren't going to do that though when Nicholas Maduro was foreign minister under Ugo Chavez when they were trying to enforce international law and invoke international law and invoke the Vienna conventions when their embassies were being invaded and taken over by Juan Guyaido's forces. No, it's just they just decided it was I want one Venezuelan official to tell me to my face that this is the real reason why they're doing this and it wasn't because this was the quidd proquo or the demand

99:05by Israel.

99:10>> It's just so sad. um you know a country that under under Chavez and Maduro was like you know a leading supporter of international solidarity, international law and years of US sanctions culminating in this kidnapping of Maduro and it all gets slowly wiped away and you know for all the people on the left who spent their time like bashing Maduro for whatever reason whatever sect you know like whatever issues they had with him it's I hope all this forces a re-evaluation of how you want to spend your time.

99:45Like, you know, when you're in a country that is strangling global south countries like Venezuela to to bring about exactly outcomes like this where they become hostages, is it the best use of your time to find issues about the global the targeted global south country that you disagree with or think could be done differently? And um because all that time that was spent like nitpicking and we're seeing this now ongoing with Nicaragua too, like nitpick about certain things, it's like it distracts from the fact that your own government is terrorizing the global south country and doing and setting the stage for

100:20exactly what's being done now, which is basically turning Venezuela into a colony into into a complete hostage and now forced to do things like this. It's just um it's it's very deflating.

100:33This is, you know, I we were attacked for defending Venezuela against the coup that began in Trump's first term. Uh there were attacks on Maduro from Jaccoin, from the nation, that whole part of the left, which wouldn't do so now.

100:51>> Yeah.

100:52>> And yeah, there were many things about the Bolivarian revolution I found inspiring and would have liked to have brought to my country before it's being sanctioned into three great depressions.

101:02They reduced extreme poverty by over 50%. Literacy programs, cooperatives, all kinds of great things. But I was just trying to prevent this from happening because it's the implications go well beyond Venezuela. And now the country that sits on the largest oil reserves is being controlled by the zagosphere and it is it's going to be used for the most malign diabolical interests and its oil is being stolen.

101:33Only $300 million of oil revenue has gone back to Venezuela. Where where is the oil? It's just being stolen. The ICC's Venezuela is now being used to destroy the ICC. It's like it's like the tip of the spear from the global south still technically ruled by a former minister in Chavez's and Maduro's government.

101:57It's a tip of the spear against the ICC which finally has a warrant for Netanyahu. So that's what I was trying to prevent. That's why I spoke in front of Mira Flores palace against regime change and declared regime change begins at home on Venezuelan national TV. That's why I interviewed Maduro and gave him the time a day and let him speak >> and and now you see the consequences.

102:22>> Yeah. And you were very alone in that quest. It's just like, you know, unfortunately progressive politics operates so much like a schoolyard where like some issues just are deemed to have cooties and Venezuela sovereignty was one of them. You remember when you asked AOC like, "Hey, like what do you think about Trump launching a coup attempt in Venezuela?" She said to you, "I'm going to defer to Well, actually, she said, "We're going into a meeting." But what she told the public was like, >> she said, "We'll have a statement later." And she ran away. She really like ran. She was wearing stiletto

102:50heels, but she ran.

102:51>> She deferred to Nancy Pelosi. And what did Nancy Pelosi do? She gave it a standing ovation. Literally, when Trump bought Wang Guyaido, into a state of the union address, Nancy Pelosi gave Wang Guyaido, this fake president who Trump tried to install a standing ovation. So that was a huge uh to be charitable blunder by Democrats to basically just uh a seed to Trump's coup attempt and and now we're looking at the result and yeah as you mentioned uh the Financial Times recently reported that the U Trump has collected $13 billion in Venezuela's oil revenue and no one knows where it is. No one knows

103:27where it is and Trump's bragging about how how we've taken it and it's just like yeah it's just straight up piracy >> and everyone >> piracy they're using two companies and I I reported this and actually the Washington Post first reported it but you know I highlighted it in my piece that I broke about Mauricio Clav Coron who's running Venezuela this corrupt uh mentor of Marco Rubio who isn't even in government he calls himself the Jared Kushner of Venezuela which is these these two companies that are two of the corrupt trading companies on the planet.

104:00Trafigora and VTOL are in responsible for shipping the oil out. And the Department of Justice ended got rid of its corrupt foreign practices division in order to protect companies like that because they were rung up for hundreds of millions of dollars of fines under Biden. Um, we don't know where the money is going. It's just straight up piracy.

104:24It's straight up theft. It's like when the US Marines marched into Porta Prince in Haiti and just stole all the gold >> for uh the boys at City Bank.

104:33>> And Nicaragua's uh also, you know, next on the target board. Democracy Now falsely claimed that President Danielle Ortega called for ending elections. And no, I've been reporting since the coup in Nicaragua, the failed coup attempt that left hundreds dead in which like scores of cops were murdered.

104:54uh by opposition hooligans that the United States was funding pretty much the whole thing through various NOS's, US-backed political parties, US networks that were inspiring and calling for people to go out and riot and kill and burn uh like Cien Porsento notices was funded by the US government. Um Ortega is basically saying no US government funded candidates. Would the United States allow Russian and Chinese funded candidates to run in its elections? No.

105:27And so Nicaragua is now going to be sanctioned more and more for that. It will actually have elections. But look at every other Latin American country in the last year. Every other Latin American country in the last year has had its elections rigged by the United States, by the Trump administration.

105:46Honduras rigged. Bolivia rigged.

105:50Argentina's parliamentary elections rigged with threats of uh pulling an IMF loan. They they they are just rigging everything. So if Nicaragua experiences regime change, you got 3 to 5 million Sandinistas or probably three million Sandinistas, one of the biggest workers movements in the Western Hemisphere.

106:10It's a huge threat to US empire and there'll just have to be a purge and there will never be an election again that will have sovereign Nicaraguan candidates be allowed to run. It's actually the US that wants to eliminate fair elections in Nicaragua as they've done in Honduras where it's going to be impossible for any opposition to the corrupt narotide national party to run as they've done in El Salvador where they have a Trump tied uh crypto crypto dictator Na Boule I mean he's fairly popular there he's not allowing any opposition he had troops march into parliament to shut it down and declare

106:52emergency law. That's what the US wants.

106:55So, don't believe the hype.

106:57>> Well, since you mentioned it, I think we should play the clip from Democracy Now because >> yeah, >> this this speaks to how uh just powerful our propaganda system is that even a progressive show is repeating essentially a State Department lie about Nicaragua.

107:2018 when the government fired on uh massive peaceful protests and killed some 50 people. Um in the last elections in 2021, virtually all of the candidates uh were arrested and have since been exiled and stripped of their citizenship. All independent media and NOS's have been shut down and exiled.

107:38There are no independent political parties. Last year, the constitution was amended to formally do away with the separation of powers and put all all power in the hands of uh the two co-presidents, [clears throat] Daniel Ortega uh and his wife Rosario Mario.

107:52So, this really it's just, you know, it's just m it's just dropping the other shoe. It's just making uh um you know, just ending all the pretense that there are any rights uh in in Nicaragua that there's any possibility of a fair election. And this is this [clears throat] is really, as you know, Amy, I go back in Nicaragua for 40 years and and and to to the time of the revolution. Um, and you know, Daniel Ortega, who who was, you know, who who was part of a group that rose up to to fight off a family dictatorship, has now created a family dictatorship. And it's it's a real tragedy and a dis for the

108:22people of Nicaragua. And this is the context that so like the the question is um so Deian is saying Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says his country will no longer hold election further entrenching the one-time revolutionaries authoritarian rule. And again you as Max talked about he didn't say they're not going to hold elections anymore. said they're going to ban US finance candidates like that that there won't be elections anymore with US finance candidates which is like if you want to criticize that like okay if you in the context of like decades of US terrorism of the country if you have a

108:57problem with Nicaragua cracking down on US backed candidates all right but like that's very different than saying they're not going to have elections anymore >> well Reed Brody works for Ken Roth I mean he is like a Soros operative And Soros is an anti-communist billionaire who wants capitalism and uh wants many of the same things that Trump wants. No one wants to that I mean that would shock a lot of Republicans. But Human Rights Watch has been campaigning for they campaigned for regime change against uh Bolivia's elected government under Ava Morales. Ken Roth celebrated the coup, the the anti-democratic

109:34right-wing murderous coup in which uh dozens of indigenous protesters were murdered in Sata that you didn't hear Reed Brody complaining about that. You saw Ken Roth celebrating it.

109:48Reed I mean this guy and he said 50 people were just shot in a peaceful protest. He's he's just making that up out of whole cloth. It's completely made up. But basically, Nicaragua has a choice now under the Donro doctrine.

110:05Allow all these US backed candidates like Felix Maradiaga, he's like one of the main opposition leaders who's now touring the US campaigning for regime change. His whole career has been sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAD. And allow La Prrena, which was created with millions of dollars of money from USAD and the Choro family, allow them to just run free. Uh, and Miguel Mora from Cien Porsento not Porsento noticius which was like openly calling for people Mora in an interview with me openly called for the US military to kidnap Danielle Ortega and his wife and you know has aired calls to

110:45murder uh to to murder masses of Sandinistas like allow them to run free. I'll have an election. Allow the US to threaten your country. Allow the US to fund them.

110:57Run ads against you. run AI ads just completely meddal and destroy your country or do what you what they have just done which is to ban all that and it's not a good option but those are the choices they face because every single election that Reed Brody and Ken Roth and Christian Anpur and Amy Goodman would support in Latin America will be rigged by Donald Trump and Marco Rubio in support of the most fascistic right-wing Christian Zionist governments who are controlled by crypto scammers imaginable.

111:34>> And this is a similar crowd that freaked out over mythical uh Russian interference where Russia was accused of putting out some social media memes and stealing some emails and that triggered a year yearslong national freakout and talking you know defense of our sovereignty and this is like as bad as Pearl Harbor. So you compare and it wasn't even true but but you compare the freak out over that to like what is then seen as normal in foreign countries which is financing candidates financing riots uh financing uh opposition media that like helps destabilize the country and you know it it's sad that even among

112:12progressive media there's a blind spot when it comes to chauvinism like I you know it just it speaks to how good our propaganda system is that it enlists people in things that They oppose elsewhere but just not consistently.

112:24>> The the left in the US like the Amy Goodman nation magazine left it that doesn't have an analysis that it goes beyond sort of like anarchol liberalism and they just think all governments are bad so we just have to support the people against the government no matter what. And then they get duped into supporting people who are US backed color revolutionaries. That's Amy Goodman's like Achilles heel along with her love for Beyonce. And she was on that State Department Cuba list, like the blacklist that Marco Rubio put out.

112:58Sorry, you're not going to get out from under the blacklist by supporting the same thing that Marco Rubio supports.

113:02It's not going to happen. Uh they see uh that as a form of weakness actually.

113:09But I think all of this discuss, this whole discussion um about the ICC which is just being destroyed because it was set up to be a tool of the global north, what you could call like the Anglo West against the global south.

113:31uh to put on trial, you know, brown and black tinpot dictators and let uh genocidal Western leaders and genocidal Israeli leaders off the hook has now kind of broken the cardinal rule and indicted Benjamin Netanyahu. It's all exposed. The UN has been exposed over the throughout the Gaza genocide. We can see the the FIFO was just exposed massively as another US-rigged supposedly multilateral body. The Olympics, I mean, it's all like Russians can't have flags, but Israelis can when they compete. Come on. It It's all fake.

114:14We see what it is. And the OPCW has been exposed by you pretty much almost single-handedly as one of those same institutions over the Duma deception when in April 2018, jihadist mercenaries backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar staged a false flag event to falsely implicate the Syrian government in a chlorine attack in order to trigger US, British and French bombing of Syria, which was like a key moment in the drive to regime change and towards the final stages of the dirty war on Syria. You've exposed how that was done, how the OPCW rigged the report, basically cooked the report.

115:00um inspectors who wrote the initial report are now out in the open and you have new a new piece about the OPCW which further vindicates what you've written about Duma.

115:16>> Yeah. Well, well, there's been some developments recently. So, just to catch people up, the key inspector who challenged the Duma cover up, Brendan Wheelen, he challenged the OPCW for basically smearing him uh at the International Labor Organization, which is like the body adjudicating these matters cuz he worked for the OPCW. And he won his case and the OCW was ordered to pay damages. And over the course of that case, the OCW in trying to like defend their attacks on Dr. Will they admitted that they concealed a key piece of evidence that that was the toxicology finding which ruled out chlorine gas as

115:51the cause of death in Duma and chlorine gas is what the US France and UK claimed was used and and that's what they bombed Syria over this led chlorine gas attack and these toxicologists OPCW consulted said that chlorine gas could not have been the weapon so the OCW covered that up and in the course of their case against Dr. Willen the OCW inadvertently admitted that they said that Dr. willing shared what they called highly protected information and that's a euphemism for censored. They censored this. So that was admitted and uh recently Brazil actually brought this up at the OPCW.

116:24There was a recent meeting of the executive council and Brazil said that the admission that the OPCW concealed what they called highly protected evidence calls into question the legitimacy of the Doom investigation. So that's Brazil putting this forward and like you know so many of the people of our detractors who tried to like silence us over this like they constantly accuse us of spreading Russian disinformation.

116:46Well now they have to accuse us of spreading Brazilian disinformation. So um it's or or Brazilian and Russian uh disinformation because now Brazil's at the forefront of challenging this. But meanwhile, what what also happened was the the OPCW recently essentially rewarded Syria for a job well done, which was regime change. Because the allegation that the former government used chemical weapons, that was integral to the regime change campaign and justifying air strikes, arming insurgents, sanctions, what was the constant refrain? Assad gassed his own people. Assad gassed his own people. So therefore, we had to destroy the country

117:22with the regime change war. And now that the regime change war succeeded in part because of the pervasiveness of the chemical weapons allegations now Syria's been rewarded and the OCW recently restored Syria's voting status at the OPCW u because the it's a job well done like regime change like was accomplished so now Syria gets welcomed back into the fold and Trump did a similar thing where at the at the NATO summit in Turkey he announced that he was taking Syria off of the list of groups that sponsor terrorist terrorism, which Syria's been on since like the late '7s. And uh why did Trump do this is because now Syria's

118:01playing ball. Syria has cut off the arms pipeline between Iran and Hezbollah that went through Syria. And so now they get rewarded. So even though they're led by a former al-Qaeda offshoot, Muhammad Alani aka Ahmed Alashar is the founding leader of al-Qaeda in Syria, a former deputy leader of ISIS, now they get taken off the terror list. And actually Lindsey Graham shortly before he passed away, he explained why uh why they deserve this. Um this this is what he wrote. President Oshar has been a true thorn in the side of Iran.

118:35He has dramatically reduced Iran's influence in Syria, which is a giant step forward for the Syrian people and a blow to Iran. It is time to recognize what he's done regarding Iran and give him the capability to improve the lives of the Syrian people. So implicit in that is an acknowledgement of you know why the regime change war was launched.

118:53It was to weaken and destabilize a key ally of Iran and in the process to deny the Syrian people the right to live.

119:01Because if now you're saying that because the Syrian people deserve a chance to have their lives improved because they're no longer their government is no longer an ally of Iran.

119:09You're saying it was okay to torment them and torture them so long as they were previously an ally of Iran. So Lindsey Graham is admitting that he was willing to torture the Syrian people just to get rid of an ally of Iran. And now that the government's playing ball, as he says, they're a true thorn on the side of Iran. Now they get to be taken off the terror list. And like I think it's a good thing Syria is being taken off the terror list because the Syrian people don't deserve to be punished for anything. The point is they never should have been on there in the first place.

119:35and things like the terrorists are just completely political um tools to wage hegemonic wars as as was the case in Syria. And so now that the job has been done, regime change, Syria's playing ball, now they get to come back into the fold. So they get their voting rights restored at the OPCW and a country led by the founding leader of al-Qaeda in Syria is now no longer considered a state sponsor of terror.

120:03>> Yeah. When when Syria was cooperating with the US after 9/11 on rendering al-Qaeda suspects because there was a mutual enemy, they weren't taken off the list. They're only taken off the list after al-Qaeda takes over in order to help Israel.

120:20>> Yeah. Well, that wasn't enough. I mean, back when Assad was cooperating with Extraordinary Rendition, he was still refusing to cooperate with cracking down on Hezbollah and Palestinian groups.

120:29There's even state department documents about this where they say that yes, Syria has provided beneficial cooperation. Syria even warned the US about al-Qaeda going into Iraq from Syrian territory. So, but that wasn't enough because Syria was refusing to do the same against Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance groups. And so, therefore, they had to be marked for regime change. And now that regime change has succeeded, now they get welcomed back into the fold.

120:54>> Yeah.

120:55It's it's like the what what is terrorism? Like this just exposes what a political phony subjective definition of terrorism the US and whole west operates under. How this whole this whole field of terrorism studies and all the fake terror academics and terror experts, they're not actually interested in combating terrorism. They're mostly just interested in combating the non-state groups that aren't willing to be cowed by Israel. I mean, the founder of the um Treasury Department's um uh terrorism and financial intelligence division who was under secretary of treasury under George W. Bush. He created that whole division to take on

121:49terrorism and defund the terrorists. He used al-Qaeda as uh justification and then wound up focusing entirely on Iran, Hezbollah. I'm talking about Stuart Levy, who was actually >> I was going to say, don't tell me he's Jewish. [laughter] >> Unfortunately, he [clears throat] is.

122:06And he was a student of Marty Parrots from New Republic when Marty was at um Harvard. So, it's like that was like his thesis adviser. So it's kind of like this whole idea of terrorism was cooked up like the whole concept of it and definition was cooked up by Zionists like Benjamin Netanyahu through the Jonathan Institute starting in 1979 coming to Washington and sorry 19 um 89 coming to Washington and starting to have these um off thereord meetings with influencers and journalists and politicians about what terrorism ism is and it's just basically Arabs and Muslims who fight Israel, that's terrorism. Arabs and Muslims who

122:51are terrorists who support Israel or CIA assets, that's not terrorism. That's I don't know. Um that's uh you know preparation to lead Syria.

123:05>> Yeah.

123:06>> By the way, where are all our detractors these days?

123:10>> Like >> oh on issue of Syria.

123:12>> Yeah. One of one of them just wrote an intro for a Near Rosen article at Drop Site. So that that was kind of funny to watch. [laughter] >> It's just amazing, you know. Um, [snorts] you know, like there's something like it's okay to admit like if you get something wrong, like it happens, you know, and I think it's the honorable thing to do if you get something really wrong. if you cheerlead for years for a uh al-Qaeda dominated insurgency which then helps pave the way for the US to then take the aggression even f for the US and Israel to take the aggression even further into into South Lebanon and

123:50>> as Zionist groups openly brag about like there's um a group called what they institute for nearest policy I think they recently published an article saying that uh with Assad gone it's so much easier for the US and Israel to take the war to Iran. bragging about this. So when you're when you're involved in a project where Zionist groups are openly cheerleading and saying that like this regime change in Syria made it easier for us to expand our aggression, you think maybe and and now the the insurgency you said was like, you know, a bunch of moderates and democracy lovers is led by the founding

124:22leader of al-Qaeda. I mean, like, I think the obvious thing to do would be just to admit you're wrong and to maybe say, "I'm sorry for spending so much energy attacking all those people like you, Max, who's who who were against this." Uh, but that hasn't happened yet.

124:36It hasn't happened.

124:37>> Yeah. I'm sorry. I believed all of the um I I I believed all the Troskyists and the Robin Yasin Casab and all the Troskyist Verso reading groups that told me that the local coordination committees were going to take over Syria and that woke anarchists with blue hair and gauge earrings were going to lead in Damascus and it was a people's revolution. I'm sorry I believe that.

125:01Just you could say that but it's whatever. You know, it's nice to see Anna Kasparian out there saying uh the US funded al-Qaeda and armed it like it's better than nothing.

125:15>> Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean that's one rare case actually where where she's taken some some accountability for that but it it hasn't I mean I I saw recent like when you were speaking at bus boys and poets there were still there's at least one prominent person trying to get that canceled because >> they tried to shut my talk that this Syria regime changers who already got regime change and got everything they wanted and got >> Golani in Damascus. They're still trying to shut down my talks because of my view my views on Syria. this one um complete tool of US empire. Maya El Salani her name is she's Egyptian I

125:53guess and she runs some bogus Gulf sponsored think tank called the Tahir Institute but she's also on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. So she's basically a US government asset. [snorts] She was petitioning bus boys to shut down my talk. Like an anti-war cafe to shut down my talk because I got Syria right. And you got Syria right.

126:16>> I mean, it happened to me and Roger Waters a few years ago. We were doing a uh Palestine charity event in London.

126:23And a group of people signed a petition trying to urge the organizers to cancel us. And the the the people behind this petition were part of a group that literally works with the with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

126:35It's like a Zionist organization. So people who openly collaborate with a, you know, pro-Israel lobby group are trying to tell Palestinians who they can host for a charity event. I mean, [laughter] it's it's crazy. And I and I face this, you know, I won this award from CARE, the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Gaza Solidarity Award, and there are people who tried to get that uh taken away from me um because of my views on Syria. So, it's amazing that we Anyway, it just >> if I got an award for for from care, it would be like, you know, those Vietnam vets throwing their medals over the White House gate. I'd be like throwing

127:12that away right now. But anyway, you you I'm sure you deserved it. [laughter] >> Well, I I I like to Anyway, uh it's just it's I whatever people's g like let's take the most charitable like like interpretation. People have grievances for whatever reason. They suffered under Assad. Okay. But uh if if you want to if you think that justifies destroying a country, sanctions, arming an al-Qaeda le insurgency, all those refugees, all that suffering, I I just don't know what to tell you. And certainly, I don't think you have the right to cancel people who disagree with you because they didn't want to see what happened in

127:46Syria and they didn't want to see Israel and the US empowered to then move on to destroying southern Lebanon and trying to destroy Iran.

127:56>> Agreed. Um, speaking of uh events and all that, some people were asking is there going to be Icorus Fest or like a Greyzone day? I don't know. I we we did have like a super chat asking about that. So, I just wanted to respond that there's nothing planned. Um, we had I mean it was a great event last year that we had in Rutherford, New Jersey. A lot of people came and I want to bring people back together while weather the weather's nice. Um, but there were also some I mean it was just organizationally very difficult to do. So I'm looking into something like that. Um, but there there will be opportunities

128:36to get everyone together in the in the future this year hopefully. Uh, the bus boys event was great as I said before.

128:43for I mean it was a packed house and uh so I really appreciate all of you who came out and appreciate everyone uh watching today and for liking this stream, subscribing, subscribing to us on Substack, subscribe to Aaron on Substack. Um you can support us on Patreon or however you see fit.

129:04And next week is going to be a crazy week and not necessarily in a good way.

129:10So, uh it's important to keep your head in this time, not be intimidated.

129:20Uh we'll be back. We'll be back then. Uh yeah, hopefully I'll be back. It's It's always good to meet on Friday and wrap everything up.

129:31Hopefully I'll be back and uh not in like uh like Marco Rubio internment camp, but we'll see.

129:44>> I have a hard stop now. [snorts] Anything you want to add, Aaron? Your book. Let's get on screen again.

129:50>> My book uh their blood are bullets, the hidden story of the Ukraine proxy war.

129:55Available for pre-order now. There's a link to that in the show notes of this episode. And uh yeah, I'm excited for people to read it. Comes out this fall.

130:04>> Their blood, our bullets. Yeah, you can.

130:08I I would get it from or books on their website to avoid supporting Amazon. But you know, if you want if you want to boost Aaron's Amazon ratings on the Ukraine C.

130:17>> No, please don't. Please get if you're going to get it from books. Yeah.

130:20>> Get him ahead of Timothy Snider or whoever. Um all right. Well, anyway, thanks a lot, Aaron. Great work as always. and see you all next week.

130:30Peace.

130:30>> Peace.