Israel v. Iran, the Push for Globalism, and America's Obligations ｜ A Critical Compass Discussion
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of the Critical Compass podcast, we discuss the recent events between Iran and the United States, the Trolley Problem, and the Iron Dome. Also, we talk about how to deal with a runaway trolley problem.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Or let's say that Israel does do a severe overreaction to Iran,
00:00:04.900
sends however many munitions and however much, you know,
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but let's just say that something very heavy, very serious gets.
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With a much, where we're not talking about it in the way of,
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yeah, 99% of the drones were destroyed by the Iron Dome,
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Um, how, how can the U.S. just at that point say,
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Now we're staying out of it when one of our, uh, most,
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one of our most vocal allies, like that we've been vocally allied to,
00:00:44.640
is now in a hot war with one of our most vocal enemies over the last decades.
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Like, how, how are they supposed to stay out of it at that point
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and not be massive hypocrites on both fronts, right?
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Hello, welcome to the Critical Compass podcast.
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a quick clip on the recent events between Iran and Israel.
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James, uh, said that he had an interesting, uh, problem for me,
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He knows that I'm a, uh, a philosophy major by, by education.
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Um, first of all, I've got a solution to the, I found a solution online.
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So Mike, how about you describe what the trolley problem is just in simple terms.
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And then what the, what the dilemma actually is.
00:02:05.800
So, so the trolley problem is a, is a, uh, a famous, uh, thought experiment of, uh, utilitarian
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philosophy where maximizing happiness or minimizing harm is, should be your ethical guiding principle,
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So in, in the trolley problem, usually it's presented as, uh, you have the, the choice.
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Uh, there's a, there's a runaway trolley and you're in control of the, of the track switcher.
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And on one side of the track, it are, uh, you know, in this case, five strangers.
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And on the other side of the track is one family member or your wife or your husband or
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So by a strictly utilitarian lens, the proper ethical action should be to divert the trolley
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onto your loved one, which is obviously much harder to do than five strangers, but that's
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So there's that, that's the source of the dilemma as I know it.
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Have I summed it up well for how you're going to blow my mind?
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Those are the two choices and there is no other choice.
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You can either, you can either go on the bottom track or the top track.
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So I learned that there's actually a technique and this has been known for a couple hundred
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So what you do is as the train passes over the switch, you let the front two wheels go.
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So the bottom, the back to the back, the backside ends up on the other track.
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The only problem with this, it is supposed to derail or slow down the train, but depending
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on how, if it, if it can articulate, if the, the wheels are able to turn, you may have a sliding
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train that might just mow down and like, it might mow down everybody.
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So it is a high risk, high, high reward situation.
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You're the, in, in that solution, you're the only one who is allowed to have any sort
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Cause the train train rolls over and it's in flames at this point.
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Is it to a, uh, if, uh, if a trolley, if a trolley kills everyone on the tracks, did it actually
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The, uh, now, now you can, uh, rest knowing that there aren't just two, two options to this
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Well, with, uh, with that, uh, let's move into, uh, an equally ridiculous situation.
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That's, that's what happened this week was the escalation of things.
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And I guess everybody's, the media is losing their mind over this rocket attack by Iran.
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Do you think this really could be the start of world war three?
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It depends on how willing people are to like support sides.
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Cause that's always, it's the kind of thing where an event happens and then countries are
00:05:34.400
roped in because they feel obligated to defend or they, they've got a certain agreement that
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Um, it does feel like in this, in this case, like the public will maybe starting to, I think
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with the last month, like it seems like there's less people that feel happy about both sending
00:06:02.960
money overseas and, or supporting the actions of Israel or what, what, what they're doing right
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Or is, should we be funding any, anybody in the middle East?
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Is that part of our mandate as a, as an international partner, as a, as a, you know, Canada does this
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thing where we, where all of our politicians publicly support Israel and then also make
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public pronouncements as often as possible about how many refugees from Palestine will
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I doubt that they do, but at least on in Canada, we like to, uh, talk out of both sides of our
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mouth a little bit there, but obviously the, the, I, I suppose what the primary concern for
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people looking at this from a geopolitical standpoint might say is that, well, Israel and Palestine
00:07:06.580
is one thing because Palestine is, uh, you know, even, you know, discounting the amount of
00:07:12.980
damage that they can do with, with what Hamas is able to accomplish.
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Iran is a nuclear power and they have a long history of very tense relations with the U S.
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So do we have a situation here where, I mean, neither of us are experts on this, but when the,
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uh, Ukrainian, uh, Russian war broke out, what seems like forever ago now, but I think it's been,
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Um, a lot of people were calling that a proxy war, you know, essentially in everything but
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name, a proxy war between the U S and Russia because with, with Ukraine as being the, the
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front on which the battle took place, will we have another situation where the U S again
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finds itself in a proxy war with Iran via Israel?
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It depends on like if a conflict happens, well, are they providing auxiliary support or are
00:08:12.680
they sending weapons or are they like, they're ultimately adding fuel to the fire and I'm
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sure Iran's not going to be happy to be like, they're not going to be happy with the U S if
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So it's one of these cases where the proxy war seems to, even the suggestion that you're going
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to play that role sometimes makes that outcome more likely because you are falling into these
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patterns and somebody rises up against that perceived threat because it's kind of a missile
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measuring contest at this point of like how many weapons do you have?
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And, um, but I, I think there's some potentially some disagreements about like, well, there's
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a perception of, well, why would Iran do such an unprovoked, terrible attack?
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And Israel has a right to defend themselves against this unprovoked attack.
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Like I've heard that more than a few times kind of, uh, mentioned in, yeah, I've got this
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up here and referencing exactly this, this is, uh, I'm not exactly sure who this person
00:09:23.920
is, but, um, it's, it's quite a big thread and we'll, we'll link to it.
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But, um, this was, uh, it was fairly thorough and it's, uh, in its analysis, but, you know,
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so asking, we, we have Iran launching drones and firing missiles at Israel, but why exactly
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And, and here's, here's sort of why, uh, Israel, so as, as this person has said, and other
00:09:49.360
people have corroborated this, of course, uh, Israel attacked Iran's consulate in Damascus
00:09:53.900
last week, which killed seven senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including
00:09:59.460
a senior general, uh, hitting a country's diplomatic mission in a third country is generally seen
00:10:04.920
Now, to be fair, when you have a lot of IRGC figures, including a top figure in a consulate
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building, it's very, very, very unlikely, uh, it's very, very, very likely they weren't
00:10:19.720
They were probably planning slash coordinating military-related stuff, uh, i.e. you can see
00:10:27.840
So this thread kind of goes on a little bit, but, uh, generally speaking, the thinking is
00:10:33.440
that, uh, earlier on in this thread, he talks about Middle East deterrence, uh, and the,
00:10:41.200
the general notion that, you know, as is the way you play the game in this theater is, uh,
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you know, somebody does a strike, you strike back.
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Generally speaking, they're of equal measure when you're talking about powers like that.
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Uh, it, I don't know if it was this person's, uh, um, conclusion, but I, I do know that I
00:11:06.760
read from more than one person, uh, the general feeling was that the drone, the drone strike
00:11:13.420
on Israel, of which Israel, I believe, um, neutralized like 99% of the drones, like there
00:11:21.940
And I think there was one death and it was the person who died was a Muslim.
00:11:27.480
Um, uh, it's hard to know how much of any of this is propaganda.
00:11:38.360
So, so the, the idea was that this was not a real attack by Iran.
00:11:45.200
This was more of a face-saving measure of, listen, you, you killed one of our guys.
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We're going to make a big show of, you know, sending some armaments your way, but we don't
00:11:55.440
This is just a, this is, you hit us, we're, we hit us, you hit us, we're going to hit you
00:12:02.280
And, and then we can put this particular event to bed.
00:12:07.020
What, what are your, what are your thoughts on that kind of assessment?
00:12:10.180
The hasn't, hasn't that kind of a push-pull relationship been shown with many other countries?
00:12:17.180
Like, this is not something that, like, just happens in the Middle East.
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Like, you would expect some kind of response if, like, if this happened to the U.S., like,
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you, you'd expect them to strike back with something or, like, make another strategic
00:12:36.320
move or a display of force or be like, well, like, we don't accept you doing an unprovoked,
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like, attack with no consequences, no retaliation.
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It's the, the kind of thing, like, well, if you don't have any kind of response and it happens
00:13:01.560
So at least on this, it's like, well, it's the message of, like, if you do this, we have
00:13:11.200
I don't think that was a, they're obviously smart enough to know that the Iron Dome is this
00:13:17.040
advanced protection system that can shoot down the majority of drones and missiles.
00:13:22.560
So if they were really wanting to do harm, would they just waste, like, is this either
00:13:30.060
the, just the dumbest attack or was this just a demonstration, like a, a gesture to them?
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And, and here's a, here's perhaps a more succinct version by, uh, Luke Rutkowski here, who probably
00:13:50.820
people know from, uh, Tim cast and, you know, he's a journalist in his own right outside
00:13:56.500
of that, of course, but so 14 days ago, Israeli strike on Iranian consulate and Damascus kills
00:14:02.340
Iran says seven days ago, Iran offers not to attack Israel.
00:14:06.280
If Gaza ceasefire works victory near claims Netanyahu four days ago, Netanyahu sets date
00:14:12.620
for Rafa invasion, reject ceasefire deal that don't include victory over Hamas today.
00:14:20.480
So, I mean, there's a pretty reasonable order of events that seems to kind of, uh, lean
00:14:27.220
towards what, what I think probably you and I think is the, is the more, um, is the rational
00:14:33.640
explanation here is that this is, this is just a whole lot of, uh, international finger
00:14:38.580
wagging and maybe not, uh, maybe not indicative of a, of a broad scale war.
00:14:42.900
Now that said though, and I w I should have found the tweet, I'll, I'll find it and we'll,
00:14:48.160
But, um, there does seem to be some conflicting reports about what Israel is saying publicly
00:14:56.140
in their own, uh, like military press releases versus what they've told the U S regarding what
00:15:05.420
Um, I can't say with certainty without it in front of me, but something to the effect
00:15:11.280
of, um, Israel telling the U S like, no, like, don't worry about it.
00:15:16.920
And then, and then privately or in their own communication saying, we're going to strike
00:15:23.120
So there just seemed to be some, um, you know, differing reports of what, what the true
00:15:31.400
Um, yeah, the, the other thing to maybe keep in mind or realize is anytime you have a war
00:15:40.940
like this, the people benefiting are the ones who sell weapons and make weapons and finance
00:15:52.600
And, and then you also have the banking industry that finances all of this as well.
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So they benefit from wars and it ultimately is a distraction from things that are happening
00:16:06.080
If somebody wants to put on their full tinfoil hat, the one theory that I heard is that world
00:16:11.680
war three, if it pops off, the fear around it is, would be enough to coerce countries into
00:16:25.960
That's an interesting concern though, cause it's not completely, it's not like it hasn't
00:16:30.700
been alluded to by, you know, people thinking, you know, on a more global geopolitical scale
00:16:39.280
Maybe we do an episode where we pull some of the exact quotes and, um, of the world economic
00:16:45.680
forum and the, the mentions of like the need for global governance.
00:16:52.100
Um, which I guess raises the question of like, well, what happens to the municipal and there's
00:17:00.780
like the self sovereignty of nations when you have these global entities wanting to exert
00:17:06.060
Like, is it possible to have the best interest of all the individuals when the sovereignty
00:17:13.820
Uh, let it be the, the dictates of the who, or the dictates of any other global entity.
00:17:22.020
And I, I, they've expressed that they, I can understand in their mind, they want a global
00:17:30.900
Well, and they have evidence too, from not so long ago that, you know, given the right,
00:17:37.140
um, given the right catastrophe or situation and global instability and unrest and uncertainty,
00:17:45.120
a majority, I don't know if a majority, but I would probably guess a majority of countries
00:17:50.180
in the world all fell pretty easily in line with the dictates of a global, uh, governing
00:18:04.700
The lockdown guidelines and everything that was all referenced back to the who, um, even
00:18:12.320
social distancing, six feet, all these, it was the same everywhere.
00:18:16.220
So that, that's at the government level, but you also have like media companies and tech
00:18:21.620
companies writing into their, um, into their standards and into their code of conducts,
00:18:28.360
referencing the who for their medical guidelines or what you can and cannot say, as well as,
00:18:34.800
um, linking any discussions on climate to what has been established by the UN, even though
00:18:42.980
people will dismiss these global entities as not having any real power, you look at what
00:18:50.360
And it is, you have these ripples, ripple effects through media and what individual countries
00:18:58.420
So it's not an insignificant, um, issue of when they, when they say something, it does change
00:19:12.240
Well, and, and I thought I'm with you on all that.
00:19:16.060
My, my tinfoil hat is firmly on too, but, um, I thought you were going to go somewhere
00:19:21.880
else with that actually, when you, when you started that.
00:19:24.040
And I thought you were going to say what people were talking about before, um, in, you know,
00:19:29.900
what might be the, maybe the overall goal or, or at least a result of what could be called
00:19:36.000
world war three sparking off, um, would be China's invasion of Taiwan.
00:19:42.660
And I remember people talking about this when Russia and Ukraine popped off to saying, well,
00:19:49.320
this is, this behavior is a good, uh, embolden, um, the, uh, CCP to make their first like strategic
00:20:00.620
So do you think it's so hard to say, and this is such a broad question, but do you think
00:20:07.020
that that will have, uh, repercussions in that, in that theater as well?
00:20:14.940
It's hard to know, like that whole Taiwan, uh, situation, like it hasn't been, it's kind
00:20:25.080
of been quiet the last little bit because it was ramping up and there was displays of, yeah,
00:20:29.180
like there are some fighter jets that were seen around and there were maybe some displays
00:20:39.640
So like, remember the weather balloons last summer or weather balloons last summer?
00:20:44.460
Just happened to find their way in North America.
00:20:55.540
Um, we're kind of at the point where like anything can happen, nothing's actually that
00:21:00.860
Um, Keith, I wouldn't be surprised to wake up to anything, not to react to it.
00:21:05.940
Like, um, we've tried not to get sucked into every little thing happening and just being
00:21:16.180
Like, and it's fun to get into discussions online, obviously.
00:21:19.980
And, um, there's some subjects where you still have to get to the root of the issue.
00:21:24.840
And it's interesting hearing how other people think there's also part of how some of these
00:21:31.440
situations unfold is it's almost through this like subtle manufactured consent of like, everybody
00:21:43.260
And there's obviously those who just say no war.
00:21:47.700
And they're like, well, let's stop funding any of this, or let's stop playing the role
00:21:51.820
of a global police force of having to show up everywhere and deploy.
00:21:58.820
However, many battalions on the ground and get our aircraft carriers and wherever.
00:22:04.660
And so I, ideally we would say stop the funding, stop enabling any of this and, or just get
00:22:16.040
back to a point of like countries respecting the sovereign rights of their own country or
00:22:22.980
like countries around them with the citizens, et cetera.
00:22:25.720
So, well, and it's hard for the U S I would imagine right now, I mean, the U S is, is handicapped
00:22:34.400
Like, I mean, they've got a zombie in the white house who is inexplicably still in the
00:22:42.540
race apparently, and hasn't been Gavin Newsom'd yet.
00:22:47.660
Uh, and so there, there, there's that front and they're like still trying to find like, you
00:22:54.900
know, Trump, you know, cheated at poker one time.
00:22:58.700
So, you know, we're, we're going to lay another charge on them.
00:23:01.180
Like they're, they're having this internal battle trying so hard to, um, you know, deal
00:23:09.720
And also there's all this stuff kicking off in the middle East and they've sort of over
00:23:14.980
the years had, and even currently have talked themselves into a situation where they're
00:23:21.100
not able to like, let's say that Iran does send, or let's say that Israel does do a severe
00:23:29.080
overreaction to Israel, to, uh, Iran sends, you know, however many munitions and however
00:23:35.280
much, you know, I don't know the terms for these things, but let's just say that something
00:23:39.320
very heavy, very, uh, um, serious gets casualties with lots of casualties.
00:23:49.100
With, with, with a much, with, where we're not talking about it in the way of, yeah, 99%
00:23:54.180
of the drones were destroyed by the iron, uh, iron dome or whatever they call it.
00:23:58.480
Um, how, how can the U S just at that point say, well, okay, well now we're staying out
00:24:05.240
Now we're staying out of it when one of our, uh, most, one of our most vocal allies, like
00:24:11.080
that we've been vocally allied to is now in a hot war with one of our most vocal enemies
00:24:22.160
Like how, how are they supposed to stay out of it at that point and not be massive hypocrites
00:24:29.740
It would be kind of impossible with how many, you think about how close, closely tied the
00:24:38.600
U S is to Israel, both with like dual citizenships with lobby groups, with certain agreements and
00:24:48.540
all that's kind of running in the background behind the scenes.
00:24:51.360
And then you see the decisions that come out on the forefront.
00:24:54.660
It's not surprising that the, the way that U S supports Israel would emerge the way it
00:25:03.660
So with those kinds of pressures, um, I think the, the U S is more likely to be sucked into
00:25:21.360
Um, I think part of it is, I think there's hope in like people taking less, being less
00:25:31.200
agreeable of like, I think there's been a little bit of pushback on some of these things that
00:25:37.040
you think about how many wars we've kind of, like the U S has been subtly brought into and
00:25:44.620
the reasons for going into that war were like later found out to be pretty useless.
00:25:54.000
Don't get me started on the Gulf of Tonkin James.
00:25:57.620
We'll do a whole episode on the Gulf of Tonkin.
00:26:03.700
So I, I, I, I, I, I think there's some good discussions.
00:26:08.920
Um, hopefully this pushback, the awareness is, it's more of a like, well, let's, uh, fix a
00:26:19.380
And, and, and we'll have to talk about Canada and its taxes another time, but like we're
00:26:25.660
sending all this money somewhere else and we're in like quite a bit of debt and we're
00:26:31.180
like, well, why is all that money leaving Canada?
00:26:38.720
Like make sure everybody's doing well first before like sending it all out because that's
00:26:44.840
I guess I'm, I guess I'm just wondering James, why you literally hate immigrants.
00:26:51.460
I was just, I was literally talking about the government funded, it's not government
00:26:56.560
funded, it's taxpayer funded, it's all the taxes.
00:26:58.720
So it's like they, they, they tax everybody and then, oh, you get a little bit back because
00:27:04.440
of the, uh, carbon tax and some rebates because he did some math on this piece of paper and
00:27:12.740
But if you don't like the government spending money on things like other countries and other
00:27:17.080
people and then also financing all those people to come here, that's because you literally
00:27:24.740
That's, that's the simplest answer and it's overused.
00:27:30.960
The, I, I would love to do a comparison of like prior CBC and then new ones because they
00:27:38.120
are saying like maybe immigration's not working out so well, maybe it's unsustainable.
00:27:45.020
Several, several years, several years ago, like it doesn't take much of like seeing how
00:27:50.620
many articles of like Canadian news outlets demonizing individuals for even having another
00:27:58.120
And I think that it also explains why like, um, the only party that is against immigration
00:28:05.580
is a PPC, um, People's Party of Canada and they don't have a whole lot of support.
00:28:10.780
So it's likely that the conservatives are going to win, but the conservatives aren't really
00:28:16.760
They're like, Oh, let's be a little bit smarter about it.
00:28:19.080
We're, we're at a point where like the smart thing would be just to like stop it for a few
00:28:28.060
That they're talking about that in England actually, because that's, they've been, they,
00:28:33.040
they may be in actually more dire circumstances than we are in that aspect.
00:28:38.920
And not only because, you know, they have such a smaller landmass, but because actually even
00:28:47.760
Um, I think Canada's got quite a bit per capita, like one of the highest rates, but I think
00:28:54.100
England's up there as well and they've been doing it for a while.
00:28:57.320
And if you run the numbers, I think 90 something percent of people in Britain in the 1950s were
00:29:20.200
And yeah, I remember hearing Constantine Kissin say just maybe a few weeks ago, uh, something
00:29:26.300
about how I'm not going to remember any of the specifics.
00:29:30.580
I shouldn't even say it at all, but he was saying something about how, like, I think their
00:29:34.280
next, after London, the next biggest city is like Brighton or something like that.
00:29:38.540
Um, and, um, with the amount of immigrants that are being allowed into the, to the country,
00:29:45.140
they will need another Brighton every 20 years or something like just to, just to house that
00:29:51.360
amount of people that compound, uh, into the country, which is.
00:29:55.140
So the existing cities and towns that exist, it just isn't enough.
00:30:02.820
And there's such a small, they're an Island you're not getting anymore.
00:30:06.760
You're there's no more land to, to just copy, paste, copy, paste.
00:30:10.780
Like the cities don't get rebuilt and just duplicated instantly.
00:30:17.080
And even I, I say here in Canada, like, you know, we've got, we've got so much land quote
00:30:21.420
unquote, but also so much of it is frozen tundra that it's inhospitable.
00:30:25.620
So it's frozen tundra or it's being used to feed all the people in Canada.
00:30:42.140
I think this is a good place to wrap up for now.
00:30:56.040
I don't know if that's a ridiculous hope, but I, I hope it amounts to nothing and it's
00:31:00.260
just a whole bunch of saber rattling, but, um, we, uh, we very much shall see.
00:31:07.200
This is being recorded on Tuesday, April 16th for future reference.
00:31:11.280
If on Wednesday, April 20th, something ridiculous happens, uh, and anyone's wondering why we're
00:31:16.760
speaking so glib about it, but, uh, so there you go.
00:31:20.360
Um, the, there are those who will think craziness will happen on four 20.
00:31:25.340
So, Ooh, well, it'll be a, uh, it'll be a fiery situation.
00:31:37.340
The situation will be honestly, at the end of the day, I hope all of this just goes up
00:31:45.220
All right, James, let's get out of here before we say another one.