In this special, three of the most insightful minds in the field join me for a conversation about a world where power and profit overshadow the pursuit of peace. Joining me for this special are Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and my dear friend, Seymour Hersh, Jeffrey Sachs, the world-renowned economist, and a man who pulls a face that makes me love him so much. If that's what he does when asked a tricky question, what does he do when he's asked a difficult question? What is it good for? War! This is a world Where Power and Profit Overtakes the Pursuit of Peace. When Donald Trump and Noam Chomsky are singing from the same hymn sheet, when Cornel West and Tucker Carlson agree that there is a machine at the heart of our culture that fires the conflict of war, is the military-industrial complex. And what does that machine do when it s all they don t ask anymore? They don't ask anymore. Not a word, not a word. They just do what they want. What do they do when they want more war, more war? What are they want? And why is it so important that we don't know what they're doing it? and why does it matter? Is it because it's good for them? or is it bad for us ? And how can we stop them from doing it anyway? Well, we'll let you know what we think about it, shall we? In this episode, I'll tell you what I think of it, and you tell me what you think! in the comments below! Thanks for listening, you're going to see the future. - you're gonna see the Future! You're gonna love it, you'll get a lot more of it! - Tom Bells! Thank you, awakening wonders! In the future, you awakening wonders, - Eds. - Eddings, Eddy, Eddie, Edi, Gav, Gareth, Gareth and Gareth, Rachael, Raffaele, Rennie, Rocha, Gave me a call, Raldsy, Radeep, Rene, and Gave you a copy of this episode of the show, and I hope you enjoy it, right? - EDDIE, RONALDS, RAY, RYAN, R.E.
00:01:30.000It's probably attention-seeking on some level, Seymour.
00:01:33.000I've come from the world of entertainment, probably haven't entirely let go of the idea that I'm a sort of a physical representation of the radical stance that I take in my own journalism.
00:02:08.000The FBI, acting on behalf of its counterparts in Ukraine, asked Twitter to censor a whole list of accounts and also hand over their information to Ukrainian intelligence.
00:02:22.000This is a world where power and profit overshadow the pursuit of peace.
00:02:26.000When Donald Trump and Noam Chomsky are singing from the same hymn sheet.
00:02:29.000When Cornel West and Tucker Carlson agree there is a machine at the heart of our culture that fires the conflict of war is the military-industrial complex.
00:02:38.000First, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and my dear friend, avuncular curmudgeon, Seymour Hersh, lifting the lid on the Nord Stream pipeline from the comfort of his armchair.
00:03:02.000It's probably attention-seeking on some level, Seymour.
00:03:05.000I've come from the world of entertainment, probably haven't entirely let go of the idea that I'm a sort of a physical representation of the radical stance that I take in my own journalism.
00:03:19.000I don't know if the word radical is the right one, but we'll let that one stand.
00:03:23.000You want me to take the hat off, because I'll do it out of respect for you and your prize.
00:03:27.000I don't want to see what's there, but I will tell you something.
00:03:29.000I was fascinated, as I told one of your aides just a minute ago, by the Condoleezza Rice quote, and my pay for this performance here will be if somebody sent me a link to that.
00:03:48.000You're ahead of the curve with that idea.
00:03:50.000But that's that's been a prominent theme in the American conversations about oil.
00:03:59.000And it is a fact that Norway which did help us has more than doubled the amount of oil natural gas rather is shipping out to Western Europe.
00:04:07.000It had about nine or 10 percent its way up.
00:04:10.000And so you can't work, you can never cut out mercantile interests, but there were probably much more immediate interests of war in Ukraine, etc, etc.
00:04:20.000But that's a fascinating point that you were making.
00:04:22.000Anyway, so I got something out of this.
00:04:56.000Sir, firstly I will credit Gareth who makes the show with me for his research that led to our use of the Condoleezza
00:05:03.000Rice clip and our general approach is to challenge the dominant
00:05:08.000narrative that we are given through mainstream media which all and once was the domain of ordinary investigative
00:05:17.000media which seems to have become deeply sanitized in the last 20,
00:05:22.00030 years increasingly we are seeing whether it is Chris Hedges or
00:05:27.000Glenn Greenwald or yourself journalists that have been prized for their investigative
00:05:33.000work being if not demonized certainly subject to something amounting to smears
00:05:39.000The White House has already denied your story and I'd like to ask you What do you think has happened to journalism in the last 20 or 30 years and why we're not presented with complex narratives that undergird reporting with the kind of economic, financial, military and geopolitical interests that usually lead to events like the Ukraine-Russia conflict or indeed an event, broadly speaking, within the remit of that narrative like the Nord Stream Pipeline sabotage?
00:06:10.000Well, I think one of the problems, look, it's you're asking, you know, you're throwing you're throwing the ball to me.
00:06:15.000And, you know, this is this is all I brood about a lot, because I worked at The New York Times in the 70s and had a great time, was never sort of blocked from writing stuff.
00:06:30.000The bottom line is that I think what a secret source now is for the people, many of the people who write for the major newspapers, is a press secretary who, you know, says, come over here, I'll tell you something a little different than I've told the other guys.
00:06:47.000I just don't understand why they're not jumping on certain stories.
00:06:50.000Certainly this story is, I could just tell you a friend of mine, I have a wonderful old friend who escaped from the Middle East, became an oil man, became very rich and very happy.
00:07:00.000Living in France now, he wrote me after this, after the story, and he said, he said, oh, oh, Cy, he said, my nickname, he said, you've become a master in the deconstruction of the obvious.
00:07:13.000I mean, what was so hard about this story?
00:07:15.000We know Russia didn't do it, because if they wanted to, they could turn a valve.
00:07:19.000And so, I guess, is Macedonia a member of the NATO?
00:07:25.000You know, where do you go for the next possible suspect?
00:07:38.000My old newspaper, the New York Times, of which I did all sorts of stuff on the CIA and Watergate and Vietnam for them, hasn't touched the story.
00:07:48.000Neither has the Washington Post, which is another two great main sheets.
00:07:54.000I don't think the Wall Street Journal has.
00:07:55.000The rest of the country, some people have.
00:08:29.000But it can't just be about the fact that I don't name sources.
00:08:33.000I spent, you know, nine years at the New York Times writing about the CIA going after Allende and going, you know, and all that stuff, killing people abroad without naming sources.
00:08:42.000I mean, you know, either trust what I do or you don't.
00:08:45.000Yes, I know that you also wrote about Abu Ghraib, significant revelations there, and about the mass murders in Vietnam of civilians.
00:08:54.000And the banalization of the media space is a theme that we touch upon frequently, the infantilization of us as the audience class.
00:09:04.000Even with the current escalation of tensions between the USA and China through the sanctions around semiconductors and of course the rather more visually stimulating and sensational story that accompanies the balloon and indeed the shooting down of the balloon.
00:09:28.000I asked somebody about it, my friends, and I said, what's going on with the balloons?
00:09:32.000Of course, they've been there forever.
00:09:35.000Maybe you could argue they could take photographs of what a satellite can see much better.
00:09:40.000But basically, the last wave, the unnamed car-like with the American press so full of it, It turns out the federal government has a contract with the meteorology department or whatever it is, weather department at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and that is one cold place.
00:10:30.000One of those things was shot down was one of those units that is sent up by a university under but paid by the government.
00:10:36.000to go over the arctic circle and report on you know in case there's an extreme wind uh wind uh wind i don't know what the cliche is when the wind goes down in a in a down a downdraft and you know and and since there's no official station there who wants to be there to run a weather station and so they they're basically a remote weather station that's what they shot down whether they're going to talk about it in the next couple of weeks and uh uh the the we've we've put about what Actually, I don't know how many hundreds of billions of dollars into a new fighter, the F-22 that's coming online.
00:11:22.000But we paid a lot of money for the F-22.
00:11:25.000And its first kill was the first balloon that one that one came over, was discovered over Montana.
00:11:34.000That he knows exactly what he's doing.
00:11:37.000When he landed, you know, in World War Two, your guys and your Spitfires and us and our P-51s, you took care of every mission, but you put a little, you painted on the side a decal for the kills.
00:11:47.000We did the same in Asia when they are P-51s.
00:11:52.000So the pilot of this F-22, getting the first kill of this plane, painted a balloon On the side of his life, socialized.
00:12:22.000How do you feel then about the context that has to be said frames the Nord Stream Pipeline story, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the years of infringement upon former Soviet territories, the 2014... You're not allowed to say that!
00:12:39.000How dare you say that, that there might have been reason Behind, you know, the language used, the language, it was done in 1990, the first agreement not to go east, when East Germany joined West Germany, that was in NATO.
00:12:54.000We wanted to make the combined country, and don't forget, The Germans had a real problem because after World War II, when they wanted to get back into civilization and be accepted by other countries, get in the international groups like NATO, they spent a long time murdering people in Western Europe and bombing it and destroying it.
00:13:13.000And so Willy Brandt was the guy that said, we're going to be a money bank for you guys.
00:14:34.000And then we start putting missiles in the border in Poland that we claim are defensive, but in a half a day, they can be turned into offensive weapons.
00:14:53.000So it's what I hate to see in the paper, in my newspaper, for example, they keep on describing the Russian attack as being without provocation.
00:15:06.000I'm very troubled by my president and his immediate foreign national security team, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland, whose husband is one of the leading neocons Who got us, helped convince Dick Cheney to go into, that the solution to 9-11 and Al Qaeda was to attack Iraq.
00:15:30.000One of the great non-existence relations.
00:15:36.000But anyway, those three, I call them Winkum, Blinkum, and Nod.
00:15:40.000Nod, if you, I don't know if you have that child story there, but we have it in our country.
00:15:44.000The first thing they do is they meet the Secretary of State in Alaska with the Chinese and start telling the Chinese what to do about their own domestic problems.
00:16:56.000So Germany always had the chance, option, of opening up the pipeline any time they wanted.
00:17:01.000And who cares about the pipeline in summer?
00:17:04.000But comes fall, comes winter, and that's when you're going to need it.
00:17:08.000The Russian natural gas has been supplying Germany and Western Europe with cheap gas for, what, a dozen years, and the economy's boomed based on cheap gas.
00:17:27.000They had a mild winter, but it's getting very cold now.
00:17:30.000The leading companies are getting the price of gas is going up enormously.
00:17:34.000Companies like BASF, which is the largest chemical company in Germany in the world, has been talking to China about maybe moving some assets there.
00:17:43.000The consequences of knocking out the pipeline economically are disastrous.
00:17:48.000As again, as you said, Norway is getting more gas and Norway was a big player in us with the project.
00:17:53.000But the key, the key thing is when the president told the intelligence community, I want this, I want this, I want to see if I have an option.
00:18:05.000I think the thought of, in my understanding was, the thought of the community was, we're going to do what the, we do what the president wants.
00:18:11.000That's what, that's the whole idea of having a CIA.
00:18:14.000I mean, if you're the President of the United States right now, this guy can't get a thing through Congress.
00:18:19.000But tomorrow, if he wants to, he can take a walk in the Rose Garden with the CIA director and somebody can get hurt the next day.
00:18:24.000That makes you feel pretty good, particularly if you can't have your way anywhere else.
00:18:29.000And so, I mean, that's one of the reasons I think the CIA is a very dangerous community, but full of a lot of smart people.
00:18:36.000Anyway, it was always to be an option.
00:18:39.000And what happened is, he didn't exercise.
00:18:43.000They were going to do it at one point when they had cover in the summer.
00:18:46.000They had cover because of a, there was a big, the Baltic Sea is not a, there's no oil there.
00:18:53.000And the idea of having a bunch of deep sea divers start digging around would have been exposed any problem, any thought of getting away with taking out the pipelines.
00:19:03.000It just would have been too obvious, too seen.
00:19:06.000But there was an exercise, NATO exercise last summer.
00:19:21.000And by that time, the community itself had thought there was no reason to do it anymore.
00:19:27.000You know, it was there as a potential threat, but he'd already started the war.
00:19:31.000And by September, the one thing that was interesting, I've always been among a group of journalists and people in the community have been very skeptical about the chances of Ukraine to win a war against Russia.
00:19:46.000And you know, if you know the history, when in this when in Stalingrad, when the Germans got their great defeat, the Russians are losing 2400 dead and wounded every four hours in the final days of the battle, and one just kept on going.
00:20:04.000So far, in the war against Ukraine, I'm sure in the beginning it's correct that Putin or his generals underestimated the willingness of the Ukrainians to commit hara-kiri, as they have been.
00:20:16.000But by September, it was clear there was real trouble.
00:20:18.000Among other things, the corruption was so wild among the top, even including Zelensky.
00:20:23.000They were all fighting for what percentage of the money they're going to steal.
00:20:27.000There was a lot of fighting and brooding about that, even today.
00:20:29.000And so as a corrupt regime, it never was going to be accepted in the NATO.
00:20:51.000He's throwing in, for whatever he can, the fear he had was that since Germany controlled the new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, the one that was just built and was just stopped.
00:21:29.000It just said just stored there would have been perfectly safe.
00:21:32.000And so I guess that the Biden thought was I want to keep I want to keep any possibility that the Germans and the Western and with the rest of the Western Union, which is which is going to start getting cold.
00:21:47.000It's it's he did in late September will open up the pipeline and then be at the mercy of Russia.
00:22:03.000And once you took away that weapon, West Germany, if West Germany cannot open up the pipeline anymore, Germany rather, and the European allies of NATO, well then they'll keep on supporting us in the war.
00:22:16.000They won't have the option of saying, we quit.
00:22:18.000We'd rather have Russian gas than join you in a war that you can't win.
00:22:23.000And that's what I think the dominant thinking was.
00:23:23.000It's just, it's fascinating, Seymour, to speak with you with your evident experience and cruel sarcasm when it comes to sartorial matters and hats in particular, to learn that these patterns appear to be Increasing and exacerbating over time that a short time ago you could rely on an organization like the New York Times for anti-establishment radical reporting and now they are a mouthpiece of the establishment.
00:23:52.000It's interesting that the Ukrainian conflict, you know, much of the aid that's being offered Ukraine passes from the Pentagon through the military-industrial complex.
00:24:02.000Many of those weapons and assets appear to be quite difficult to track and in the subsequent post-war
00:24:08.000reconstruction of Ukraine, BlackRock are handling that and there is an aim for 100% digitalisation of Ukraine.
00:24:17.000So it certainly seems to be a nexus of a great many stories that coalesce around corruption
00:26:01.000And when Biden wanted to whistleblown, blew it up, the people who, in the community, we're talking about really the creme de creme, were really appalled by it.
00:26:12.000They saw it as him making a political Him deciding I'm going to keep Germany and Western Europe cold and broke because I want to try and win this war in Ukraine, a war that he cannot win.
00:26:26.000The trick that you must, that I will tell you that I've learned in my long, as you said, many, many years, is presidents love wars because they're good for ratings.
00:27:56.000You can find Seymour's incredible work at seymourhersh.substack.com.
00:28:04.000Tell us about how we should understand the recent news of the failed mutiny of Prygoshin over there in Russia and how it's being reported on by the mainstream media.
00:28:17.000Is this a self-contained issue and do you think this is a false flag event to distract us from the failing Ukrainian counter-offensive?
00:28:25.000How does this sit into the whole Russia-Ukraine narrative, sir?
00:28:28.000Look, I think the one thing we know is how it's being used by the U.S.
00:28:33.000and the U.K., and it's being used to prolong and expand the war.
00:28:40.000Because we have a war machine in the United States.
00:28:44.000I don't really know which generals are running the show right now.
00:28:49.000But we have a war machine that wants an expanded war with Russia.
00:28:54.000So, whatever is the actual story here, and we don't know about multiple possible outcomes, what the media are reporting is no questions, other than saying, you see, Putin is at the end, and now we
00:29:12.000can—basically, the implication is just we continue and we destroy Russia. So you see it in
00:29:19.000every mainstream newspaper in the U.K.
00:30:13.000Because we have pushed into an incredibly disastrous war, first and foremost disastrous for Ukraine, because the Ukrainians that are dying, We provoked the war.
00:30:27.000We refused to negotiate over the core issues, mainly NATO enlargement.
00:30:33.000And we have a media that is so driven for more war.
00:30:40.000And utterly without the idea of asking a single question, just like the questions you're asking.
00:30:46.000They're not even raised in our newspapers.
00:30:50.000But this has been like this all along.
00:30:55.000So whether this is a godsend that now we can say we should have more war because we're about to defeat Russia, whether this is actually CIA played a role in this?
00:31:12.000Somebody should actually explain some of these things.
00:31:15.000Whatever it is, what they want is war.
00:31:19.000The point you make, by the way, is an extremely important one, which is the so-called Ukrainian counteroffensive is killing Thousands and thousands of Ukrainian young men who have been pulled off the streets, put in front of Russian helicopter gunships, put in front of Russian artillery, are dying by the hundreds or thousands per day.
00:33:22.000I think, Geoffrey, after we finish our conversation, you should have a look at the dome of St Peter's.
00:33:27.000I think you want to have a little glance at the Sistine Chapel ceiling and take in a couple of Caravaggios to unwind, because it seems like you need it.
00:33:35.000Now, we live in a bewildering and beguiling media space.
00:33:39.000We live in a landscape where we're offered cage fights between prominent billionaires like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
00:33:46.000A sense of mad, demented carnival descends.
00:33:50.000As you say, Legitimate legacy media spaces seem incapable or unwilling to ask the pertinent and necessary questions when we find ourselves on the advent of a potential crisis of previously unseen proportions.
00:34:06.000An ambition to carve up Russia is a bold one indeed.
00:34:11.000To embark on a secondary campaign agitating for war with China seems Outrageous!
00:34:18.000To have a political sphere devoid and divorced from debate, open conversation, where reasonable, rational figures like RFK that offer anti-establishment perspectives and diplomatic solutions ...are regarded by the mainstream as hysterical pariahs who cannot be engaged with, with the liminal space in which discourse can take place ever shrinking.
00:34:45.000These people are too far to the right.
00:34:48.000The role of independent media is clear, that it's necessary and important that we ask these questions, that we have to behave responsibly, that we have to have one eye on what's beyond simply reporting and move towards Activism and campaigning and participating in this conversation in perhaps more political ways.
00:35:09.000When you see us move from a state of crisis around the pandemic around which it's playing, it seems that we were lied to extensively into a geopolitical crisis like the current one where we are continuing to be lied, where it seems evident and obvious that behind these events are sets of interests that can be observed, diagnosed and tracked.
00:35:30.000At what point does this begin to coalesce around a political movement?
00:35:34.000And do you feel that, given that the systems we live within, electoral, political and financial, delivered us into this state, how likely is it, even with the candidacy of a figure like RFK, who's joined us here on Rumble, both as a guest and now as a contributor, how likely is it that this system will allow him to make a reasonable impact?
00:37:50.000Never discussed in our media the fact that there was a draft agreement put on the table.
00:37:55.000Then, in March 2022, we know it now because of an interesting point.
00:38:02.000There was nearly a signed agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the war, and the United States stopped it.
00:38:12.000And Naftali Bennett, who was Prime Minister of Israel and an informal mediator then, when You know, he has a long interview where he describes at the last moment the United States came in and stopped it.
00:40:22.000Why, Aaron, when you've got such lovely brown eyes?
00:40:26.000Yeah, this came out recently in the Twitter files.
00:40:30.000The FBI, acting on behalf of its counterparts in Ukraine, asked Twitter to censor a whole list of accounts and also hand over their information to Ukraine, to Ukrainian intelligence.
00:40:43.000I was among the people that Ukraine wanted to be removed and wanted to get my information.
00:40:49.000And Twitter said no, because they pointed out that It wouldn't be such a good look if, you know, we're censoring Western journalists.
00:40:56.000And the FBI said, OK, but it's just weird that it was Twitter that had to tell the FBI that maybe you shouldn't be censoring journalists, period, especially on behalf of a foreign government.
00:41:07.000As to why Ukraine would want to do that, I don't know.
00:41:10.000I just like to spread factual information about this proxy war and how it could have been avoided.
00:41:14.000There were all these chances at diplomacy before the war and after the war.
00:41:17.000They've all been sabotaged by the West.
00:41:20.000I don't think it's good to use Ukraine and sacrifice its people for a geostrategic goal of bleeding Russia.
00:41:26.000I don't see how that's in anybody's interest but U.S.
00:41:30.000And because I say stuff like that, they wanted me censored.
00:41:34.000Here is the email just to show that Aaron's not lying, that this isn't disinformation, it's evident truth that we can demonstrate there.
00:41:44.000I had a conversation recently with someone that said that there's a kind of form of Occidental imperialism in the assumption that Ukraine aren't able to decide for themselves what the best response to a criminal Russian invasion ...is that Ukraine is an independent nation and it's somehow patronizing to assume that the narratives of those of us that live in anglophonic countries supersede their own long-standing tensions with Russia.
00:42:16.000How do you reconcile the fact that Ukraine do have their own intentions with what appears to be the observable fact that this is somehow beneficial to NATO and the military-industrial complex?
00:42:31.000Ukraine, of course, has the right to resist an invasion, but that doesn't necessarily obligate us to fuel the war with our military aid and intelligence support, which is what the U.S.
00:42:46.000And that's why Lindsey Graham said, the senator from South Carolina, said that as long as we aid Ukraine, they will fight to the last person.
00:42:54.000I don't see how it's aiding Ukraine to use them to fight to the last person.
00:43:00.000So, yes, Ukraine has the right to resist an invasion, but it doesn't necessarily obligate us to fuel the war, especially when, and this is a key point, there are diplomatic alternatives.
00:43:09.000This war could have been avoided, and it could have been stopped after it began.
00:43:13.000Before the war, there were the Minsk Accords, which Ukraine's far right and the bipartisan U.S.
00:43:18.000establishment bitterly opposed because that would have ended the war in the Donbass that began.
00:43:23.000After the 2014 U.S.-backed coup, Russia put out proposals in December 2021 that, at minimum, should have been discussed trying to address Russia's security concerns about the expansion of NATO and the, you know, placement of NATO infrastructure surrounding Russia, including inside Ukraine.
00:43:40.000and NATO refused to even basically discuss it.
00:43:42.000So that was a mistake, and that was a case where diplomacy could have possibly averted all this.
00:43:48.000And then after the war, we now have so many sources, NATO sources, Ukrainian sources, Vladimir Putin himself saying that a deal was reached in April 2022, but that Boris Johnson, with presumed U.S.
00:44:01.000So yes, in principle, of course, a country has the right to resist a foreign invader.
00:44:06.000But when there are reasonable alternatives to avoiding it, those at least need to be explored and not blindly fueling this disastrous war, especially when it's pitting the world's top two nuclear powers against each other.
00:44:20.000And one more thing about Ukrainian agency.
00:44:22.000It depends which Ukraine we're talking about, because Zelensky himself was elected on a peace mandate in 2019.
00:44:28.000He was going to end the war in the Donbass.
00:44:31.000He was going to make peace with the rebels and with Russia.
00:44:34.000He couldn't, because Ukraine's far right blocked him.
00:44:37.000They protested violently whenever he took steps towards implementing the Minsk Accords, and some people even threatened to kill him.
00:44:44.000So, this far-right leader named Dmitry Yarosh said that if Zelensky makes peace with Russia, he won't lose his popularity.
00:46:05.000Well, look, Prigozhin's hard to read, and there's so many theories about him.
00:46:08.000Some people say he was working with Western intelligence, and there was Pentagon leaks not too long ago saying that Prigozhin had offered Ukraine the coordinates of Russian military positions.
00:46:18.000He basically had betrayed his own side.
00:46:21.000Now, I found that hard to believe because I don't think Ukraine needs to know where Russian forces are because the U.S.
00:46:32.000On the surface, this could just be what it appears to be, which is that his group, Wagner, was facing a deadline to be incorporated into the Russian military.
00:46:41.000Accordingly, Purgosian was going to be sidelined.
00:46:44.000And this was his way of rebelling against that.
00:46:48.000But what I do know is that this was not the coup against Putin that it was portrayed to be in Western media.
00:46:55.000So, within a few hours of Purgosian launching this revolt, all these neocon pundits who've gotten everything wrong for the last 20 years, from the Iraq war to today, and Al-Babam, Michael McFaul, all these people were all saying there's going to be a civil war in Russia, Putin is done, he might even already have fled Moscow, and of course that didn't happen.
00:47:16.000It took about 24 hours and this thing was done, and The fact that this was not a threat to Putin can be best seen in the fact that you didn't have a single person switching sides and pledging allegiance to Purgosian.
00:47:28.000He had a few thousand of his own forces with him.
00:47:31.000But aside from that, I can't find a single senior Russian official who said that, you know, I'm joining with Purgosian and I'm on his side now.
00:47:38.000So that to me is a reflection that this actually strengthened Putin, although it embarrassed
00:48:15.000Understandably because Russia's always had the advantage and this was only a matter of time before Ukraine would run out of material and also people to sacrifice.
00:48:24.000All these young people being sent off to die in this useless war that could have been prevented and could still be avoided now.
00:48:30.000So I was not surprised to see this hype in Western media because they need anything they can to distract from how badly this counteroffensive is going.
00:48:41.000Last year, the White House said if Russia used cluster bombs, that would be a war crime.
00:48:46.000This year, they're saying they're going to use cluster bombs, and if you don't let them, that would be a war crime.
00:48:55.000Somehow we must not fall into the amnesia.
00:48:58.000Somehow we must remember that a year ago the White House said, oh, cluster bombs, Russia is using them, that makes them criminals.
00:49:04.000And this year they're sending cluster bombs to that war that they're not involved in other than helping people because they love humanitarianism so very much.
00:49:54.000I know cluster bombs are bad and that civilians might be harmed, but when they're being blown up, I just want you to bear in mind that it was a difficult decision for Joe Biden.
00:50:04.000And that'll be of some comfort to you as you watch your legs and limbs being scattered around some unnecessary battlefield so that faraway people can become rich.
00:50:12.000Weapons are capable of causing massive damage.
00:50:15.000They carry smaller bombs with the ability to spread out over a large area.
00:52:02.000No matter how bad something is, if not doing it would be worse, then we have to do it, right?
00:52:07.000The only thing that would derail that is if you didn't trust those people, then you'd be in trouble.
00:52:12.000But I suppose if they were able to censor information and stop you disagreeing with them publicly, then even you not trusting them would become irrelevant.
00:52:21.000The US has previously condemned cluster munitions use by Russia.
00:52:50.000Some Democrats have said that giving cluster munitions to Ukraine undermines America's reputation as a human rights defender around the world.
00:53:43.000Our reputation of being human rights offenders, this is something that we say all the time, right, when it comes to human rights, when it comes to having those conversations with either our partners or other heads of state, we certainly, the president never shies away.
00:54:04.000Hypocrisy of almost inconceivable proportions.
00:54:07.000Let's see if we can somehow try and understand this without reaching the conclusion that we're being governed by a corporatist, globalist state that lies to us and does whatever it needs to do in order to meet its incentives, and its incentives are always about its own advancement, never about yours, but they have to mask that.
00:54:21.000Let's see if we can reach another conclusion using On Friday, the Biden administration said it would send cluster munitions, weapons that scatter unexploded bomblets, across a wide area, killing and maiming civilians for decades to Ukraine.
00:54:34.000Facing the failure of Kiev's military offensive, the United States is desperately seeking to use the provision of ever more destructive and indiscriminate weapons to reverse its setbacks on the battlefield.
00:54:55.000Critically, the announcement precedes next week's NATO summit in Vilnius.
00:54:59.000At which the United States and NATO are planning to massively expand their involvement in the war.
00:55:04.000So whatever you're thinking about the war, like should there be a diplomatic solution?
00:55:08.000Could we force Zelensky and Putin to the table by withdrawing Western support for this war and preventing military-industrial complex profits from skyrocketing even further?
00:55:16.000All of those ideas, don't worry about them, forget those.
00:55:19.000What's happening at NATO is massive expansion.
00:55:21.000Do you remember when you voted for it?
00:55:23.000You know, you remember when they asked you, because you're funding it with your money, remember when they went, I don't mind a few hours of my working day going towards cluster bombs to blow up children.
00:55:36.000Driven into a corner by its miscalculations, the Biden administration is compelled to take even more drastic measures.
00:55:42.000Yeah, the miscalculation is it's easy to have a proxy war with Russia, an armed nuclear superpower, which people like Jeffrey Sachs have been telling us from the get go.
00:55:50.000The aim of the decision to use cluster bombs, regardless of its long-term impact on civilians, Should we regard its long-term impact on civilians?
00:56:28.000Definitely don't consider a diplomatic solution where two opposed superpowers with nuclear armory have both stated publicly that they will stop at nothing.
00:56:36.000There's only one thing we can solve this.
00:56:39.000In a briefing Friday announcing the move, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan justified the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine as a means of staving off military disaster.
00:56:49.000There is also a massive risk of civilian harm if Russian troops and tanks roll over Ukrainian positions and take more Ukrainian territory and subjugate more Ukrainian civilians because Ukraine does not have enough artillery, he said.
00:56:59.000Sullivan made this statement a little over one month after Ukraine launched its spring offensive, which the American press has touted as an endgame for Ukraine, leading, in the words of retired General David Petraeus, to significant breakthroughs.
00:57:10.000Instead, the offensive has produced a bloody debacle.
00:57:13.000You know that significant breakthrough?
00:57:24.000Far from inflicting a crushing defeat on Russia, the Biden administration has been driven to one escalatory move after another in an effort to shore up the Ukrainian military.
00:57:33.000Because the Ukrainian military cannot defeat the Russian military because of history and the present and reality and some pretty solid stuff.
00:57:41.000We recognize that cluster munitions risk creating civilian harm from unexploded ordnance, Sullivan said.
00:57:47.000But we had to balance that against the risk that Ukraine might not have sufficient artillery ammunition.
00:57:53.000In other words, the Biden administration weighed the cost of killing and maiming generations of Ukrainian civilians against the benefits of killing more Russian troops.
00:58:01.000It decided that the deaths of Ukrainian children from unexploded ordnance was a sacrifice America's oligarchy was willing to make.
00:58:10.000Is there nothing they won't sacrifice that doesn't affect them at all?
00:58:13.000Every line employed by the White House to justify sending these weapons of terror to Ukraine could be used to justify the deployment or even use of tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict.
00:58:24.000They're gonna turn up on your TV one day going, listen, you know, you've always thought nuclear bombs was a bad thing, but some nuclear bombs, American ones that you paid for, are good though because of how they would be not as bad as a Russian one, so we're gonna Yes, the White House would argue nuclear fallout poses a risk to civilians, but this risk must be balanced against the risk of Russian military advances.
00:59:00.000Moreover, the deployment and possible use of nuclear weapons in the conflict will no doubt be on the agenda at the upcoming summit in Vilnius.
00:59:07.000Every official statement by the United States about its involvement in the war is justified on the basis that it is once again saving a country through military violence, this time Ukraine.
00:59:15.000But in sending cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine, the United States has made clear that this is nothing but a hollow pretext for pursuing its aim of prevailing over Russia and China in great power competition.
00:59:28.000Because all of the things they said were true, like cluster bombs bad, cluster bombs good, that's all falling apart and all that's left is, we'd kind of like our economic interests in this geopolitical war to prevail.
00:59:39.000The very words used by the United States and its allies to condemn Russia's alleged use of cluster bombs in Ukraine now fully apply to the US decision to send this weapon to Ukraine.
00:59:47.000How could they not, if it was the principle?
00:59:49.000The principle stays firm, as we always discuss.
00:59:51.000In February 22, the US envoy to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, accused Russia of using cluster munitions in Ukraine which are banned under the Geneva Convention, which we will mention when it's convenient, but ignore when it isn't, and have no place on the battlefield.
01:00:05.000In March 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, we have seen the use of cluster bombs, which will be in violation of international law, he added.
01:00:13.000We also have to make sure the International Criminal Court really looks into this.
01:00:16.000Not previous wars that we've been involved in.
01:00:18.000Otherwise, we're going to have to go to prison as well.
01:00:21.000Literally, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, the war criminals of Iraq will go to jail.
01:00:25.000So we want the International Criminal Court.
01:00:33.000In fact, all these denunciations of Russian actions on the part of the US and NATO were merely hypocritical pretexts for escalating US involvement in the war.
01:00:43.000The decision by the United States to send cluster bombs to Ukraine exposes all of the pseudo-left defenders of US involvement in the war in Ukraine as shameless apologists for the US military's war crimes.
01:00:54.000Are you on the side of cluster bombs or not?
01:00:56.000Is cluster bombs a subject you want to equivocate and prevaricate on?
01:00:59.000If you just said to someone out of nowhere, tapped them on the shoulder, cluster bombs, are they good?
01:01:03.000Oh, tell me, God, what is a cluster bomb?
01:01:04.000Oh, it's like a bunch of bombs that blows up and is indiscriminate and unexploded bombs remain there in the ground for years and kill children and civilians years later.
01:01:13.000Okay, I just want to say that it's now they're using cluster bombs for something you've been coached into agreeing with through propaganda.
01:01:47.000Look over there at the Russian cluster bomb.
01:01:49.000Over 110 companies, countries, easy to get mixed up these days, isn't it?
01:01:53.000Over 110 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions, CCM, which prohibits the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions.
01:02:01.000The United States, which has killed more people with cluster munitions than any other country, is not a signatory.
01:02:05.000Hey, would you sign this, please, sir?
01:02:21.000This latest escalation by the United States must be seen as a warning.
01:02:24.000Washington will stop at nothing to prevent further military setbacks for its proxy force in Kiev and achieve its military goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.
01:02:32.000The same homicidal logic that justifies the deployment of depleted uranium rounds and cluster bombs will be used to justify even greater and more reckless crimes, from the direct entry of NATO into the war to the deployment and use of nuclear weapons.
01:02:44.000And how can you argue with that if at the very beginning, Joe Biden said, in order to support Ukraine, we're going to use cluster bombs.
01:02:50.000Do you notice that at the beginning, they just sort of edged their way in?