SUNDAY SPECIAL: THE TRUTH ABOUT UKRAINE
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Summary
In this episode of Human Events Daily, we are joined by the Editor-in-Chief of the National P pulse, Mr. Rehman Kassan, to discuss the Maidan revolution and the events surrounding it.
Transcript
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ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard to today's sunday special here on human events daily and
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this is a conversation that we've been meaning to have for a long time and this is a guest that
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we've been meaning to have for a long time it's very tough to get on his schedule his dance card
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is always always full but we finally got him on ladies and gentlemen here with us today is the
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editor-in-chief of the national pulse mr rehim kassan finally finally i feel and and there's a
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reason that we wanted to get you specifically and it wasn't just because you finally got rid of the
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purple light on your podcast studio it's because we wanted to do an episode all about i guess we're
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going to call this the truth about ukraine and to have an honest conversation about what's going on
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in ukraine why we're talking about ukraine why we're involved in ukraine why the world is focused on
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ukraine um and we're not going to sit here and say uh you know putin is amazing or zelinski is amazing
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no no we need analysis we need geopolitical analysis and i wanted to bring you on because
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you yourself were there when all of this began in 2014 the maidan revolution which is something that
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comes up again and again if you read i guess i would say independent media coverage of the situation
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because in the mainstream media you will not hear any talk of this the maidan revolution the this this
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people refer to it as a coup by the way the the founder of stratfor referred to the maidan revolution
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as a textbook example of a modern coup a color revolution something we talk about all the time
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yet when you go to anything cnn uh even fox generally they will just say putin invaded crimea in 2014
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and they take that as the start of modern history raheem is that the truth
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no it's not even close um you know the the the prevailing period of of you know the the um
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consequences with which we live uh with all of that actually i believe truly started uh in about 2008
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in the financial crisis and the specifics for which we can we can get into um but the maidan revolution
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itself uh really was i mean there's no real other way to describe it than a coup and it was a coup
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that was not just uh sponsored by the state department of the united states at the time
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and and all of the apparatus coming out of washington dc but predominantly the way i was seeing it from
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london at that particular point in time was a coup that was being um fought for uh by brussels and for
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brussels so so this remains before we go to down the down the the line of this what what was the
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maidan revolution let's say someone has no idea what you're talking about how would you describe it
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in in a quick summation uh the madame revolution was when uh hundreds of thousands of people uh were
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the numbers we were given at the time and i certainly when i was there never saw hundreds
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of thousands of people um but we're told that all these people came together because they wanted a
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more uh liberal western focused you know forward-looking progressive ukraine and the nasty prevailing
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putin allied uh president uh was was trying to drag them backwards into into soviet uh you know time
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so this this president his name was yanukovych he had been elected duly elected president of ukraine
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uh voted for by a majority of the citizens of ukraine you can go and look and i don't even know anybody
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yeah under national observation right that there were any election integrity issues with this
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whatsoever and he pursued if if you actually look at the campaign itself what he pursued was a strategy
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or a policy of neutrality of neutrality with uh with russia vis-a-vis the military so but he wanted
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more economic expansion with the eu so it was sort of this idea that there'd be an eu economic agreement
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but without the nato component whereby in they would get try to get the benefits of a financial
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relationship with the eu but not necessarily present present a military threat to russia
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well you you have to go a lot further back into understanding the the premises of geopolitics
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especially in that region to kind of understand all of the you know geographic and ethnic and all of
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the different elements to it cultural elements um all of it but but but what we were looking at in
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2014 is a situation whereby look was was the president of ukraine uh more russell-elect yeah
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of course that would be like saying you know the prime minister of canada has to necessarily take
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an uh an antithetical position to what's going on in the united states at any given juncture at any
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given time just because you don't like the regime in washington it was a stupid premise to start from
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but it was the premise that really uh began the overthrow of his government it was regarding
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for me this is why i bring the brussels thing up because a lot of people think uh and and in the
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united states it's it's it's easy to see why they think that that necessarily all the bad foreign
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policy decisions are emanating from washington dc were that only the case we may have a foreign
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policy apparatus in the western world that we could solve but it's not just in one place it's spread
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thinly across the western world and one of the power bases that it that emanates from is brussels and i
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think people need to realize that as well because when we get into discussing what's going on um in
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ukraine now we also have to particularly take stock of the fact that there is a very different brussels
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view a european view to the american view and there is a very different american view to say the british in
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a post-brexit world view of all of this they are not necessarily as aligned on a lot of these things as
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people think they are but what ended up happening in medan was the replacement of a as you say a duly
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elected a democratically elected government i was there when it was happening uh my hotel was
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in the middle of a street with with when you walked out of the front doors the government lines uh about
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50 yards one side dug you know not dug in but sort of um you know they have they have the the shields
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in the streets and the protester line about 50 yards on the other side and and they were pretty much
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dug in what they were doing was welding barricades into the streets in front of them and then behind
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you had tens tens of thousands of people now when we went around and tried to figure out what was
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causing this who was behind it why was this really going on and i have to be completely honest i had
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absolutely no knowledge of that political situation on the ground when i landed in in kiev that that trip
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but it became very clear to me two things number one that the protesters who were trying to lure
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ukraine into a sort of more progressive um uh you know situation and with with europe and and all of
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that stuff that was going on all of those people had eu flags and there was an eu tent in the middle
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of the square that were handing out like information leaflets here's why you should hate russia you know
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things like that but having said that on the other side um because most of kiev's uh institutions
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are liberal left-leaning progressive whatever you want to call them and and and european facing and
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in a lot of senses funded by europe as well funded by brussels um you didn't have much of a counter
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protest from the government from yanukovych's government uh supporters in in ukraine at the
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time because guess what jack they lived outside of the cities they weren't going to come into kiev
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to counter demonstrate against against you know what ended up being a coup um it was it was really the
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the ukrainian people's uh own fault in that sense of being led down this path by brussels um it's a
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very similar thing to a lot of euroskeptic nations out there right now my own uh included that we we
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had to have the general public understand what is going on in brussels for us to opt to leave
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the ukrainians are now going the other way right and this of course that you you mentioned the primrose
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path this of course is meersheimer's original statement at the time from 2014 we talk about
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meersheimer's current warning all the time here on the program that the united states is potentially
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escalating two conflicts in which we could find ourselves in a dual a two-front global war with
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vis-a-vis russia we're already obviously in a hot war with russia but also potentially with china
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in the straits of taiwan so what you're talking about though is exactly what meersheimer said in that
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speech that brussels was leading ukraine down the primrose path saying you'll get eu uh uh you'll
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you'll get eu membership you'll get a full uh free visa access you'll get schengen zone which of
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course means visa free travel throughout the eu uh potentially sponsorship at eu universities
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jobs financial investment you'll get you'll come into the nato shield you'll get all of these things
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and what meersheimer's point was that and of course the response is and all you have to do is
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overthrow your president and if you overthrow your president then you're going to get these things
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and meersheimer of course responded that you are leading them down the primrose path to be getting
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wrecked by russia because of course russia has always looked at ukraine as a buffer state the word ukraine
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ukrainica is a portmanteau of the words at the border so if you're uh if you understand slavic if you
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understand the language of the region what you're saying is at the border or the border lands it's
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always been a border land and that's exactly how moscow views the entire thing and of course they view
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nato as a a threatening military alliance and this is why immediately afterwards and i remember this
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you were there in in kiev i was uh working as navy intelligence at the time uh in 2014 i would have
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just become an officer i was for a prior enlisted than one officer but i remember saying that even
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and this is me even as a china analyst looking at it saying well you know russia is uh their their
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black sea base is is permanently uh permanently ported at sevastopol which of course is in
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crimea i don't think the russians are ever going to just give that up
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yeah and what what meersheimer talks about is effectively the the contra sybil right it's it's
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from from the aeneid when um aeneas goes to see the prophet and and talks about building a new um
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you know new city a new alliance um in in in modern day italy and is told you know this is what enoch
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powell got in trouble for sighting in 1968 that there will be rivers of blood uh this was the the
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like you said the primrose and mishima says the primrose path and it has now led to where ukrainians
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have become refugees i was listening to a report from ireland actually earlier this week and they
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were talking about how you know it's only a couple of hundred i think refugees that are that are in
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ireland from ukraine but they are being made to feel less and less welcome as this war drags on
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and as the general public suspects that you know it's not these people's fault that they're refugees
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but it's certainly the fault of the nation that they come from that they've ended up in a position
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whereby it's now the uh western taxpayer that is being made to to shoulder the overreach of as i would
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say brussels as a lot of people would say um and washington dc but but there are distinctions and
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there are not just distinctions in in what got to this point of war um you know active conflict
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in the region as a result between those different power bases across europe in the united states
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but also they all see an end game differently and and i think one of the reasons that we're not
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if you go and look in the media today and you type in ukraine into into google news or or go on
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the guardian or the bbc or foreign policy magazine they will all tell you the same thing some of the
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most independent fair and balanced journalism on uh on ukraine by the way no but what is the same
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thing they're telling you now the same thing they're all telling you is well we don't know
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we actually just don't know well hold on a minute you know a year ago you were certain of of certain
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factors here that played into you know right down to what vladimir putin had for breakfast and how
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that might affect his thinking over the course of the day i remember when he fell down the stairs
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due to his parkinson's right and suddenly we're in this information vacuum where they're all throwing
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their hands up and going well we don't know well they don't know because they were led down this
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primrose path and it hasn't turned out that way now i i want to go back and tease out before we get to
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end game which i do eventually want to talk about but i want to go back and tell the start game
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right so you mentioned there that so i was talking about this from the 2014 perspective and say thinking
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that you know we had my don then of course we had so that's the overthrow russia takes crimea
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donbass kicks off but then you get the minsk accords uh but then of course just two years later
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really a year and a half later you get brexit which of course that's you and then six months after
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that or so you get the election of trump and that's me sort of um that you you also have a
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connection there being paul manafort and paul manafort of course who we've had on the program
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here on the sunday special who walked us through the fact that he was president yanukovych's uh
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campaign manager prior to being donald trump's campaign manager in 2016 and of course it was
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uh these sort of pro maidan legislators in ukraine that end up coming up with this this fake black
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ledger saying that he's taking all this money the whole thing was fake but of course it interfered in
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the american election arguably the the largest and most effective foreign interference in the
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american election why because paul manafort actually resigned due to it in march of 2016 so you actually
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had the resignation of a presidential campaign i wouldn't even talk about this anymore by the way
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uh and this of course is in the midst of the creation of the steel dossier and russia gate and
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everything else and the fact that you did have the embassy of ukraine inside the united states
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uh with people working with victoria newland uh with people like the chalupa sisters alexandra
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chalupa uh spreading around these these rumors that eventually become compiled in what's later called
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the steel dossier that there was absolutely a very strong uh ukrainian touch to this but what what you
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said is even prior to that you mentioned 2008 and you mentioned the financial crisis so walk me through
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that how does 2008 lead us because remember prior to 2008 and i understand by the way there's people who
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uh you know we're sort of the you know elder millennials but but for zoomers and other folks
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out there you know it's it's hard to just to explain what the post 9-11 period and i've just come from
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new york we were up there taking care of something and i i remember very vividly uh what it looked like
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where there were two smoking craters in lower manhattan and i remember this this overwhelming
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sense of someone must pay someone must must be be punished for what's been done to us i later served
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at guantanamo bay so of course in the wake of that you get the invasion of afghanistan you get the
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evasion of iraq and we're told by the neoconservatives and the neoliberals and that we must uh take control
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of the middle east we must turn the middle east into a democracy we must do nation building in the
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middle east nobody was talking about a place called ukraine for an entire decade and yet all
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of a sudden now if you look at things today you couldn't even name the prime minister of iraq you
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couldn't name who's in charge of afghanistan other than the nebulous oh the taliban but you know we've
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moved on and so we're not told that we have to care about who's in charge of these areas even though
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at one point they were the most important thing of the world so you know to use the the current
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nomenclature you might call it the current thing so now the current thing is ukraine but why have we
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always been in search of a current thing and i think this is the the thesis of what you're getting
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at with 2008 so walk us through it well um the current thing is is is basically what um you know
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was was known as the going concern in in geopolitical theory for so very long it's it's it's almost the
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same phrase i don't know why we've even changed it and the going concern is is is what motivates
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um nations to act in in in you know geopolitical ways that are perhaps sometimes uh rational but
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but more often than not appear to be irrational um nowadays and and you know i just want to come
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back to early 2000s post 9-11 world for a second because because you have to go there to understand
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where we're going to end up very shortly with this current uh you know confected crisis um
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philosophically and geopolitically what the prevailing western regime the neoliberal
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world order regime of of people who you know the government we've been we've been going with uh with
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the bd formulation by the way the globalist american empire the gae and and i hear that totally but i think
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i think it it actually downplays a lot of the malign influence that emanates from london and
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brussels on this as well i agree with you on that that there is it is an axis yeah but let's let's take
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it as a as a as a as a means by describing it um what they had effectively doing here this is my my
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perspective on this is is purchasing about a hundred years more and and they're buying it in blood
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they're buying a hundred years more at the helm they're buying a hundred years more of this same
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kind of conflict going on in eurasia you know we have always been at war with eurasia we will always
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have been at war with eurasia and and in a large part that was because of the uh lack of feasibility
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of forever wars in the middle east and and it wasn't necessarily because of the the the loss of life
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although that played a massive part it wasn't necessarily um the cash that played a massive part
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there what what i think has gone on here is um the the regime could care less where it wages war
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the elites want war no matter where it is right i mean we're already talking about a next presidential
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cycle and wondering you know whether iran is going to be back on the table you know john bolton's now
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giving interviews again to the bbc tank talking about his interest in that regard but the reason
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the middle east stuff didn't sell was because the the world order became uh you know effectively run
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by far left progressive masquerading as liberals and for those people you just can't be killing brown
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people that can't be on the television every day it can't be in magazines the new york times
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cannot have the bloodied corpses of young brown babies everywhere and so they had to pick
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you know a less pigmented enemy here and and immediately after the financial crisis you see
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lots of different uh weights bearing down pressure bearing down on the big corporate financial
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institutions more regulation more scrutiny more ombudsman uh we had a ban on banker bonuses
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in the united kingdom for so long and so the money necessarily looks to somewhere where the money is less
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scrutinized and so a lot of these institutions um investment hedge funds all of that started to look
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at well you know maybe we don't pull the money back into these places which are heavily um you know
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scrutinizing our behavior right now i wonder what where where in 2009 did the guardian called the most
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corrupt country in europe that was ukraine and not only that by the way you mentioned the the sort of
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you know intersectional issue of waging wars in the middle east but there's also the religious angle
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as well that uh those are muslim countries and that you know place like ukraine place like russia these
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are predominantly christian areas i mean not to say that they're 100 christian but obviously it's it's part
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of what's been uh considered you know the eastern part of the church for over a thousand years going back
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to the great schism that when you look at this and and i want to get into this this question you have
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though by the way so i remember there's that great julian assange quote where he says the reason for
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the war is the continuation of war because what they're doing is a money washing of the tax basis
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of your own population they're not what it's it's not about extracting the money from these areas like
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like libya or syria which i mean go look at by the way the cast of characters in syria that the whole
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country was smashed apart by uh barack obama by hillary clinton when they were president and secretary
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of state respectively and of course lots of people went along with this from conservatives as well like
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like rubio like john mccain when he was around like lindsey graham of course you see the same cast of
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characters in ukraine in 2014 that were all in on libya that were all in on syria but the point is
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so the money starts flowing these these write-offs keep coming this printing keeps happening and yet
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you have to spend the money somewhere and i think what you're getting at with your point is that so
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the money starts being pumped out of these central banks but if you if you spend the money in a way
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where it can be scrutinized like i don't know revitalizing new york city like rudy giuliani did and
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obviously president trump um when he was a developer would played a huge part in the revitalization of
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manhattan but there's an easier way to do it and there's a way where you well not so much easier
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but there's a way that you can make a lot more money doing it and that's by going to one of these
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far-off areas and i remember there's actually reports in the early iraq invasion where there
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were soldiers and i'll never forget this interview i want to say it was it was late 2002 early 2003 just
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as the invasion was kicking off and one of the soldiers mentioned why do we have representatives
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of the world bank and the international monetary fund with us as we're going in in the early stages
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of iraq yeah yeah that's right i mean you know a lot of people will hear the sort of the themes that
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we're talking about and and be like oh you know that that's a conspiracy theory or that's a bit of a
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leap actually it is it is the occam's razor of argument on this point which is that money necessarily
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looks for the path of least resistance i mean that was their argument to remain for britain to remain
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in the eu remember the the greatest argument that they made every single day was well you know uh
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money and financial services and trade that all can be done easier if we're part of the same block
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and so and so you know what you're really seeing here we really should come up with a
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a better um acronym in in for for this is is you know the european union is necessarily a protectionist
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block for itself it doesn't do a particularly good job of being protectionist of itself
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but that's what it's there to do you also then have a wider concern i've heard their exports are
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having some energy cost issues right and energy is and energy is a critical part of all of this right
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is is where you buy your energy from who you get your energy from um what that looks like is again a lot
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of the way that the money flows here well i actually on that point i'd love to throw this
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out because there's so many uh fancy ways and models that we could use to describe it but
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i'll just say this to folks listening have you ever driven past a gas station because you know the gas
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costs more there to drive a little bit further to go to the gas station where you know it's cheaper
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even if you have to pay cash you might even go to the atm to pull cash out that's exactly what happens
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on a geopolitical scale all the time every day it's the exact same thing because they want more
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bang for their buck they want more gas more petroleum for their dollar and so i i've used this phrase that
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i always i borrow it from a professor that i had even when i was in uh undergrad where you know and of
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course the french whenever they're solving a murder or you go to the agatha christie and hercule
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poirot used to always say uh sure she la femme right you know look for the woman whenever there's a
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you know some some foul play but in international politics if you want to understand things sure she
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so i i i'm interested in this i'm interested in taking your your your um metaphor there and kind
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of butchering it because uh it's almost like in this case we've driven past the gas station which has
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cheaper gas um because it was not politically correct to buy from the poor brown man who
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couldn't understand what you were saying and you couldn't understand him so you've driven further
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down the street and you've got more expensive gas but at least you look the same and can talk the
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same language sort of thing well it's also that you own that gas station right well well you are you
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are establishing a dominance over over that territory yes i mean it's it's it's it's it's it's very low
00:25:30.240
level gang warfare at that point and and you know which if i remember correctly the the british had
00:25:36.000
some involvement in in in persia in iran over something to do with the gas you know i i just
00:25:43.440
maybe i'm remiss remembering this i i thought there was some kind of of of situation that the british were
00:25:49.280
very there's a company it's called bp i don't know i'm just i'm probably just making conspiracy
00:25:54.240
theories again we also had some some bp um in in down in mississippi as well um it's not it's not
00:26:01.440
been our proudest company uh an export but um i think this bears teasing speaking of coups by the way
00:26:11.120
yeah well this bears teasing out right all of this all of this conversation because because we've now
00:26:15.680
jumped from from 9-11 um you can make a direct link from you know a post uh invasion of iraq post
00:26:22.720
invasion of afghanistan world i mean almost immediately post by the way right like very
00:26:27.760
quickly people like you and i have figured out this is this is a disaster and that has informed
00:26:32.480
our opinions about what's going on in ukraine now for a lot of younger people who are watching this
00:26:37.440
who have you know sympathies with what with the ukrainian side of this uh rather than sort of a
00:26:42.800
more neutral and and peace uh dominant side of this um fine we understand it's not like we don't
00:26:49.200
understand we we sympathize with the same things that you sympathize with we've just been down this
00:26:53.680
road before and we know what it looks like and sounds like to be spun a yarn uh about why people
00:26:58.800
should die and by the way if you want to know where this road ends go look at kabul airport last year
00:27:03.440
or the end of you know was it september 2021 just that's where it ends well and that's not even the
00:27:08.800
end though is it because now because now look at the look at what's going to happen in that country
00:27:12.640
look at where that country's alliances and allegiances are going to be look at how that's going to
00:27:16.400
transpire for the next 20 25 you know up to 50 years they've just signed a resource deal for uh
00:27:23.120
i believe it's lng oil and rare earth minerals with the chinese communist party of course because
00:27:28.960
of course right well because of course you would i mean you've been you've been occupied by a foreign
00:27:34.160
power for decades who promised you you know the very same thing the primrose path right uh welcome
00:27:40.240
into the international community you will be heralded your president will be fated in the streets
00:27:45.520
you know uh people will throw rose petals in his wake i don't even know the name of any of these
00:27:51.200
people anymore and you will not know the name of the leaders of ukraine in 20 years time as well but
00:27:56.640
you know whose names you should be paying more attention to are the leaders of the the corporate
00:28:02.320
entities that are now being called up you know stand back and stand by to rebuild ukraine well and we
00:28:10.240
saw this at davos we saw that we saw them paraded around and these are names like larry think these
00:28:15.920
are corporations like blackstone uh jamie diamond has been all over the place again um and by the way
00:28:22.080
the new chief of staff for the biden white house is himself one of the former executives from bain
00:28:29.920
capital and this is how these organizations work they sort of have one guy on the left and one guy on
00:28:34.320
the right so a group like bain is perfect for this because here you go well everyone associates them with
00:28:38.880
mit romney because of course he ran for president romney he's a guy he's a man of the right isn't
00:28:43.280
he or is he because when he ran for senate in massachusetts he ran to the left of ted kennedy
00:28:47.280
in 1994 and then when he was governor he signed universal health care and then when he ran for
00:28:51.600
president suddenly he discovers conservatism and the pro-life movement and all of these things
00:28:55.920
but what it's really been all about from day one is just what you're talking about here money
00:29:00.960
and the financialization of everything you know mit romney's conservatism wasn't even it was like a
00:29:06.560
caricature of conservatism right you've got the you're the binders of women and all of that kind
00:29:10.480
of stuff it was that runs in the family for the romney's right well so i i you know i look at all
00:29:18.320
of this and i think back to this this this what that what they're purchasing here geopolitically
00:29:23.040
strategically philosophically what they're purchasing here it's effectively an extension
00:29:26.720
right it's an extension of something that was going rickety and wrong uh which is which is nato slash eu
00:29:32.720
um is that a lot of people you don't really even have to go that far back you can go five six years
00:29:38.560
back and look at the way that donald trump was highlighting to the world what was going wrong
00:29:42.880
with nato how we may even need to start all over again and suddenly those questions have disappeared
00:29:47.200
they're off the table well that's convenient isn't it that suddenly this this this apparatus that has
00:29:51.920
done nothing for so very long while by the way um you know marching around the world proclaiming to be
00:29:59.360
the very basis of peace you know and the eu does this well i i threw a a tweet up this morning as
00:30:06.560
we taped this and i wrote if the globalist american empire existed we would expect to see a military
00:30:13.040
expeditionary arm of the gae with client states of the gae supplying arms and soldiery to this coalition
00:30:19.280
of armed forces for the purposes of enforcing and expanding the gae's authority but nothing like
00:30:25.280
that actually exists of course yeah but again you you see this you see this through far more rose
00:30:30.880
colored glasses than i do i i look at this as as as you know you're sort of your house is falling down
00:30:37.200
and so you prop it up with some bricks that you found down the street um i i you know i don't see
00:30:43.280
this as an empire what you describe as an empire that is flourishing it is it is diminishing and and
00:30:48.480
and the european union is is whether you want to say it's flourishing right but but but i think you
00:30:54.160
see more strength in it than i do um perhaps i think i think we have to look at this in a in a
00:31:00.400
more of a philosophical perspective than in a generational philosophical perspective than
00:31:04.480
than simply a financial and military perspective or an economic perspective here and that is that a
00:31:09.600
lot of people over the course of the next 10 20 30 years are going to start questioning what
00:31:14.880
these institutions are that suck up all of their money profess to speak for them and where they have
00:31:19.120
no moral authority uh vested and and and that was what brexit was about right that was that was the
00:31:25.120
first uh you know real brick out of that wall and as soon you know there is a i can draw you a little
00:31:30.480
diagram i was drawing it just as you were speaking there about about the interest of getting uh out
00:31:36.720
in the eu versus out of the eu and and where 2014 fell in that for so for the video audience there
00:31:42.480
you can see you know where 2014 would fit fit where the uk's uh where the ukraine's interest
00:31:47.680
in joining the eu is going up and the united kingdoms is going down and that that is not a
00:31:52.320
coincidence that is by design the european union understood that it has to have places to expand
00:31:58.080
into if it is not um you know to to shrink with the with the release this by the way is how we should
00:32:04.240
look at all all of the scandals which of course you know people want to go back and look at the playbook
00:32:10.000
we can uh you and i in october of 2020 going through the hunter biden laptop breaking out the burisma
00:32:16.320
deals of the biden family going in and explaining why it is that victor pinchuk and a ukrainian
00:32:22.480
oligarch was the number one donor to the clinton foundation all of this is the same influence peddling
00:32:30.160
that we're seeing this is not the uh these are symptoms these are symptoms of what's going on
00:32:36.960
not necessarily the cause of what's going on and so when we're trying to diagnose what's actually
00:32:42.560
happening with our world uh sure we can we can look at these different things and and like a doctor
00:32:48.480
would diagnose different symptoms of a patient we can examine them and we can learn the way that uh
00:32:54.240
the disease is flowing the cancer is flowing has cancer spread to here is the cancer spread to there
00:32:58.320
but we're also talking about the overall disorder that has caused this cancer and if you live through
00:33:05.280
the 90s you know and i talk about this a lot that you know the 90s were this sort of golden era where
00:33:11.040
there really was a peace dividend and business was booming the economy was booming and growing up in
00:33:17.120
the 90s and i remember this quite vividly and and i i talk about this with my kids a lot is that
00:33:24.720
we had spaceships we had actual spaceships that you could go and see i remember going down to cape
00:33:29.920
canaveral and seeing one on the lander and it was the most amazing thing i had ever in my life at that
00:33:33.520
point and there was a sense of unbridled progress we were going to achieve our destiny and our destiny
00:33:40.640
was to colonize outer space this was the goal right this was the goal of everything and then 9 11 happens
00:33:47.120
and instead we decide to invade the middle east and then try to impose democracy on the third world
00:33:53.600
and then we attempt to extend this to every other place around the globe for some reason that i'm not
00:33:59.440
quite sure of rather than simply focusing on advancing uh human progress as much as possible
00:34:05.920
because for some reason and even jordan peterson's out there uh calling for toppling the iranian
00:34:11.440
government in the name of misogyny and and and i guess feminism which is which is interesting because
00:34:16.240
jordan peterson's the guy he used to point out that allowing women into the workplace wasn't a good
00:34:20.400
idea so i don't know i don't know what happened there but it's it's sort of this idea but why is
00:34:26.320
well i think we all know what happened there um that uh it's sort of this sense of you know why
00:34:31.520
why iran why does iran matter so much why not uh bhutan why not kyrgyzstan why does he specifically
00:34:38.240
mention this country for some reason why is that front of mind um and so we we need to look throughout
00:34:45.520
all of these issues and so when i when i go back to the corruption and you know biden's got classified
00:34:51.840
this classified etc etc it's all being led towards a specific purpose and i've said before i think
00:34:57.920
that the regime the gae maybe maybe you'd like by the way gae better if i said globalist and american
00:35:04.080
empire we just add that word and add the word that's right you might like it better the globalist and
00:35:09.200
american empire but um on the source there's of course there's an argument about the directionality
00:35:15.040
is it uh is it is it brussels in the front seat or is it uh is it washington or is it the city of
00:35:19.840
london but the well that is actually an interesting question i think at first it was brussels in the
00:35:26.160
front seat and then post medan that you know immediately post medan the uh us said okay uh we'll
00:35:34.240
take it from here guys you know you're only going to screw this up you don't know what you're doing
00:35:37.600
uh we have a playbook for this kind of thing we'll take it from here and that's how we've ended up
00:35:42.240
here um because because the united states and the united states you know defense lobby especially
00:35:47.360
will always always push for for greater and faster conflicts and and this is what was really
00:35:53.040
interesting to me you mentioned on this show uh uh last week about the rand corporation report and you
00:35:58.400
specifically talked about ukrainistan i um see i am a listener i um i wanted to read a bit from that
00:36:05.120
report about the duration of this the potential duration of this here because effectively what they're
00:36:10.480
saying is exactly what i said in my newsweek column that i wrote about this over a year ago
00:36:14.880
right in january 2022 when all of this was kicking off um before the war had started in earnest um
00:36:20.720
this is this is what we was what you and i were both saying so let's quote here from rant although
00:36:26.080
a longer war might enable the ukrainian military to retake more territory there are other implications
00:36:30.800
of the war's duration for u.s interests a protracted conflict as perverse as it may seem has some
00:36:36.000
potential upsides for the united states while the war continues russian forces will remain
00:36:40.720
preoccupied with ukraine and thus not have the bandwidth to menace others along the war would
00:36:45.120
further degrade the russian military and weaken the russian economy a long war would also maintain
00:36:49.440
pressure on european governments to continue to reduce energy dependence on russia and spend more
00:36:53.600
on their defense possibly lessening the u.s defense burden in europe over the long run well i mean if
00:36:59.600
if if that isn't if that isn't what donald trump was saying for so very long about everything that
00:37:05.360
was going on over there that trump trump wanted to use the path of peace to get those things done and
00:37:10.560
made far more um progress in that area as a result of that um they have chosen a path of war and it's
00:37:17.200
leading to less good results right and and and we've covered by the way on the show that this region for
00:37:24.880
uh for the russians this is an existential region for them the the donbass the donuts river basin
00:37:31.840
this is the same region that stalingrad finds itself in this is what connects russia which does
00:37:36.240
not have very good sea access very good port access again you know going back to my navy days um they do
00:37:41.760
not have the ability to power project on the open oceans they've never had a strong navy and it's only
00:37:48.000
through them as a regional power going back to mckinder's heartland theory that they're able to impose
00:37:53.440
their influence on central asia on the caucuses etc so if you're able as a military force or an
00:38:00.880
invading power to if you want to uh the the headshot the proverbial headshot on russia is if you can
00:38:07.440
sever what's called the volcograd volcograd gap and this is this is basically where the dawn river
00:38:13.840
meets with the volga river and if you understand anything about russia volga is sort of like their
00:38:17.840
mississippi it's their main river so then you sever their connection from the black sea the caspian sea the
00:38:23.200
cock the the resource rich caucuses uh they're done if you can take this out and what is the city
00:38:28.480
or at least 80 years ago this week what was the city called at the intersection of the volga river
00:38:34.160
and the dawn river stalingrad today it's called volgograd and so when we're talking about the don
00:38:39.040
bass and this region of ukraine this is the front door to that very same region that by the way the
00:38:44.880
germans tried to take this both times in both world wars and both times as we've seen of course
00:38:50.400
uh read world war one history world war two obviously much more famous the uh the bloodiest
00:38:55.360
battle in world history because the russians understand that if you take that region from
00:39:00.240
them they're done for they're done for completely so when we're talking about it in terms of uh oh we
00:39:06.400
want a financial expansion and we want uh we want to keep the money flowing want to keep these games
00:39:11.120
going if for us all of those things right when i say us i mean the gae writ large uh for them they
00:39:16.240
look at it that way for the russians they look at this as an existential threat to them and that is
00:39:20.880
why you're seeing these videos that's why they'll fight so hard for this area because they will always
00:39:25.360
fight so hard for this area well and this is what i think is leading to a lot of confusion i you know
00:39:30.480
i couldn't have said that better myself jack is is the uh the the western apparatus especially the media
00:39:38.160
apparatus not understanding um this existential question as far as as russia is concerned and where
00:39:44.240
they do understand it they still can't make a calculation you know is russia willing to go
00:39:48.960
you know the whole hog the full nuclear nine yards for for you know what what what would you know be
00:39:55.200
best termed as is their own defense of their own you know rational self-interest here um and i think i
00:40:00.240
think that's why we're headed down you know really just there are only two paths here um the first path
00:40:06.080
uh the the the gae would like to extract a full mea culpa retreat um from from uh vladimir putin and
00:40:14.960
then also punitively uh crush him right with with with more sanctions and reparations and just humiliate
00:40:24.080
into defeat well i i do fear that that would be a world war one scenario leading to a world war two
00:40:29.120
scenario you know a very a treaty of versailles um circumstance for russia the other the other part
00:40:35.360
of this is uh this drags on a little bit longer which by the way isn't necessarily achievable with
00:40:40.640
with nuclear weapons in the mix right exactly um and then secondly the the scenario is that um you know
00:40:47.760
this war drags on a little longer as the rand corporation basically alludes to in their report
00:40:52.080
everybody makes a little bit more money um and then they forced us uh well except and then they
00:40:57.920
force the two parties around the table and they say look you know this has gone on long enough the
00:41:01.360
public appetite for it is gone um sorry mr zelinski we're going to shuffle you on here you can be the
00:41:06.560
you know president of some un council on human rights or whatever and um and and we'll just and
00:41:11.520
we'll just we'll move on to the next one and what the next one is here by the way which is which
00:41:16.240
is a great concern look at the read the tea leaves in kiev right now just just in the past few weeks
00:41:21.360
we've seen resignations all across the zelinski government resignations and firings at one point
00:41:27.200
uh tons of people sacked you had the interior minister which isn't uh which isn't like the
00:41:32.080
department of interior here in the united states uh this this is a resource minister he and his
00:41:37.120
entire senior staff were killed in a helicopter let's say incident a suspicious incident in kiev
00:41:44.560
and then just this week igor kolomoisky the number one oligarch who backed zelinski's bid
00:41:51.520
and the very same who founded and financed the azov battalion as well as zelinski's television shows
00:41:57.760
all these different things and had at one point been the say owner but at least say i'll say the
00:42:03.360
money behind burisma going back to 2012 which according to ukrainian reports uh state department
00:42:10.800
backed ukrainian reports that kolomoisky was the oligarch behind burisma this guy is now getting
00:42:17.440
raided and so uh it it may be to your point that the gravy train is coming to an end
00:42:25.520
yes um there will certainly be people in the way of the longer term aspirations of of the people
00:42:32.800
pulling the the the strings and and so and so those things have to be kind of you know lined up and dealt
00:42:38.240
with now so that they don't get messy later on um it's it's not going to be easy for russia though
00:42:43.120
either i mean you you had putin talking in the last week about um you know here we are 80 years
00:42:48.080
later fighting the the german tanks again and and and it and it very much does seem like a a redux of
00:42:54.480
sorts uh the only difference is this time they've got the you know the the the entire apparatus of the
00:43:00.400
western world fighting not not awkwardly alongside them or rooting rooting awkwardly in their favor uh
00:43:06.560
but actively against them and and and this again i mean not to sound like a broken record about it in
00:43:11.280
fact i don't care if i sound like a broken record about it this again goes back to the heart of
00:43:14.880
what so many british people voted for um when they voted to leave the european union you know that i
00:43:19.760
understand that we have different perspectives on on nazism and and who the nazis were um between
00:43:26.080
the united kingdom between the united states you learn different things and we learn and we see it
00:43:29.600
through slightly different lenses um in britain it was very common throughout the brexit campaign to
00:43:37.120
liken brussels with a totalitarian uh german-led um socialistic regime and and that wasn't called
00:43:45.840
nuts or conspiracy or or maybe it was at first but it kind of normalized and so here you can see where
00:43:51.680
the russians are have their have their work cut out for them because even brexiteers in the united
00:43:57.840
kingdom uh notionally at least support ukraine they have they they have successfully driven a wedge
00:44:05.680
between the hostility uh towards brussels the nascent hostility towards brussels um and uh what's going
00:44:13.280
on and what started obviously in in where do you view and with the association agreement a few minutes
00:44:19.280
left but you know perennially you and i of course always cover the rise of the chinese communist party
00:44:24.320
we can't overlook the fact that china has this this strange dual role where they're sort of financially
00:44:30.880
still in bed with the west but potentially militarily still uh still opened up to russia now that's of
00:44:37.440
course in china's interests but where do they stand in terms of this and if russia does eventually
00:44:43.840
become more of an economic pariah after this as the west wants does that make them something of a junior
00:44:50.320
partner to china yeah i mean this is this is the best case scenario um for china if the rand report
00:44:57.440
talks about how the americans want this to drag out because it harms the russian military well the
00:45:01.840
chinese want this to drag out because it harms uh us it harms um nato uh militarily and in if it
00:45:09.840
drags on too long it will harm it in terms of reputation its ability to actually bring peace not
00:45:14.080
just talk about it on pieces of paper in atlantic council think tank meetings um and it will also
00:45:18.720
necessarily harm um a lot of the the the broader eu project and the counterweight and the counterbalance
00:45:23.760
that so many of these people have said for so long right from the from the podiums whether it's
00:45:28.560
in brussels or strasburg or here in washington dc that this was this is what this was built for um
00:45:34.320
the the i don't know whether in the long run what we're talking about is sheer stupidity or whether
00:45:40.400
we're talking about calculated um losses so that others can make calculated gains i suspect it's the
00:45:45.280
latter um but don't rule out the former and certainly don't rule out the former as it comes into spring
00:45:49.920
here um both sides can make major strategic uh errors we may see this wrap up by summer i suspect
00:45:56.000
we'll see it wrap up the early part of next year well i think that would be for anyone who is
00:46:02.160
sympathetic and and we traveled to ukraine last year um in in the summer and we saw the families that
00:46:08.320
are caught up in the middle and they don't deserve this and that's what it comes down to that we you
00:46:11.680
know we play these geopolitical games but at the end of the day there's always families that are caught
00:46:15.200
up in the middle raheem where can people follow you and i hear you have a new sub stack out is that
00:46:19.120
right yes i um i have a sub stack it's got just over 50 53 000 subscribers now which is which is
00:46:29.920
yeah sort of more than i thought would would happen i thought it would be a slower burn than that but
00:46:34.800
but i'm grateful for that it's at raheemkassam.com or raheemkassam.substack.com either one will get you
00:46:40.080
there um the national pulse we're actually undergoing a massive um massive change massive
00:46:44.800
rebrand uh we've got uh more different podcasts coming on board with the network this year um we
00:46:51.680
are actually uh looking at a print version a very exclusive and limited print version um of the
00:46:57.920
magazine and um we are actually looking at the production of what i think will be a very interesting
00:47:03.280
documentary um this year so towards the end of this year at least we should have that too so
00:47:08.000
that's the national pulse.com and the sub stack is just raheemkassam.com
00:47:12.240
raheemkassam thank you so much for joining us here human events sunday special you know i'd like to
00:47:17.280
as as the go home producer angelo sends me a quote i'd like to be able to read you a little just just
00:47:24.160
one line from the great tome george orwell's 1984 which i've always said that i think that we live
00:47:30.640
not necessarily in 1984 but it's basically a combination of 1984 and brave new world you actually
00:47:35.040
need both but here's 84 and then because it talks so much about war and how war is necessary for the
00:47:42.720
dominance of the regime he writes the war is not meant to be won it is meant to be continuous the
00:47:50.880
war is not meant to be won it is meant to be continuous we've always been at war with eurasia
00:47:57.040
ladies and gentlemen as always you have my permission to lay ashore