Ben Cohen was one of the few liberals in the U.S. to speak out against the Ukraine War in the early 20th century. He was also the co-founder of Ben & Jerry s ice cream, a company that bears his name.
00:04:45.340So how do you, how is that relevant to right now?
00:04:49.400I think that those actions that the U.S. has done over the years back in his time and pretty much continues to do to essentially run the world in a way that benefits the elites in the United States ends up causing a lot of resentment,
00:05:11.280ends up being the cause of a lot of wars, ends up being the cause of a lot of immigration and people trying to flee countries that are economically or politically unlivable.
00:05:28.560And if you go back to the root causes, you find out that there were, you know, some great liberation struggles in these countries and the U.S. was on the other side.
00:05:43.660What's interesting is that Spendley, General Butler, wrote that, you know, years after he left the Marine Corps, he was a hero in World War I when we were, you know, working to stop the Kaiser.
00:05:54.940You know, many Americans killed to stop the Kaiser.
00:05:58.300No one even remembers what a Kaiser is.
00:06:29.920The way a lot of people see it is, you know, this little country, Ukraine, got invaded by this big giant Russia.
00:06:39.400But I think what you need to understand is what provoked that war and how it could have been prevented.
00:06:48.100You know, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. made promises to Russia that they're not going to expand NATO eastward.
00:07:00.960And then we proceeded to expand NATO eastward.
00:07:07.600As a matter of fact, you know, there was – the government was not going to do that until the weapons manufacturers set up this committee to expand NATO, which was essentially the CEOs of the weapons manufacturers lobbying Congress to expand NATO.
00:07:30.820So, I mean, geez, if you're a weapons manufacturer and you expand NATO, they're going to buy a lot of your stuff.
00:07:38.900Why would the – well, first let me ask, do you think it's a reasonable request by Russia not to have NATO expand to its borders?
00:11:03.380This is a chart of the federal discretionary budget.
00:11:07.400That's the amount of money that Congress has each year to allocate to the various departments.
00:11:13.520So the big red one on top that gets over half, that's the Pentagon.
00:11:19.280And these little slivers are like, you know, USAID, the education department, the health department, community development, whatever else the country does.
00:11:33.480But in terms of stuff that would actually be helpful to people living in their daily lives, it's all sucked out by the Pentagon.
00:11:44.600You know, Martin Luther King gave this speech.
00:11:47.880And he talked about the Pentagon being this huge demonic sucking tube that sucks out the lifeblood of things like housing, schools.
00:12:06.720You know, everybody's school budget is always, you know, in the red.
00:12:11.840Or, you know, can't raise enough money, got to get rid of teachers or whomever.
00:13:21.360They're giving political donations to the legislators, legalized bribery.
00:13:29.420And, yeah, it's definitely a conflict of interest.
00:13:35.200So that, the pie, if I were to look at the, if you didn't tell me what country that was, and you said, here's a country that spends half of, more than half of its entire discretionary budget on weapons and troops.
00:13:48.520I would imagine a small country surrounded by enemies.
00:13:53.400I would not imagine a continental-sized country with totally independent resources, enough energy, enough food, doesn't really need anything, that's separated from the rest of the world by the two biggest oceans.
00:14:40.520And, I mean, Gorbachev said at the time, we will deny you of an enemy.
00:14:49.020And, you know, I assumed that the Pentagon budget was going to, you know, drop hugely because that was the whole justification for it.
00:14:59.380But what the Pentagon did was that they came up with what was called the two-war scenario.
00:15:07.180So now, instead of the Pentagon budget being structured to defeat the Soviet Union, now what they said is it needs to be structured to fight two medium-sized wars in two different places at the same time.
00:15:27.780And what do you know, that's going to cost just as much as we were spending on preparing to fight the Soviet Union.
00:15:51.040It's interesting because Russia collapses, the Soviet system collapses after seven years in 1991, the summer of 91.
00:16:01.140And I kind of assumed, I think everyone assumed that we would take the win.
00:16:06.340Like, we were having this Cold War all these years, and they collapsed, we won, and then we could be friends and move forward because there are no more Soviet communists left.
00:16:40.520Because our Cold Warriors, who for their whole life, you know, fighting the Soviet Union, that's what they were about, they wanted to continue the Cold War.
00:16:58.000They wanted to continue having Russia as this enemy.
00:17:03.620So, fast forward to 2022, February, and the conflict in Ukraine starts, and we're told that this is just, like, out of nowhere, like, who could have known?
00:17:18.060And Putin wants to expand the Russian border, you know, all the way to Vienna, or all the way to London, or who knows?
00:17:40.540You know, starting with the end of the Cold War, there was a promise made to Russia that, kind of in exchange for, I think it was taking down the wall in Germany, that we're not going to extend NATO eastward.
00:18:00.800And I think it was James Baker, the Secretary of State, that made that promise.
00:18:06.480And then we proceeded to expand it eastward.
00:18:12.420There was one tranche of countries, and Russia was up in arms, and they objected in the most strenuous language, but we did it.
00:18:22.180And then we added more countries a bunch of years later, and Russia was up in arms, objected in the most strenuous language.
00:18:32.220And, you know, there might have been a few more.
00:18:34.780And then there was a statement that Ukraine was going to become part of NATO, and Russia objected in the most strenuous language.
00:18:47.840And then Russia started gathering some troops on the border, and again said, in the most strenuous language, that we will not tolerate having Ukraine part of NATO.
00:20:14.160I mean, you read the whole rest of his book, and he says at the end, you know, I, you know, these anti-war protesters, they're really good people.
00:20:26.640But you're never going to stop the military-industrial-congressional complex until you take the profit out of it.
00:20:36.940That's what's driving all this shit, is the profit that these corporations are making on making weapons, which are more and more lethal.
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00:52:39.100i think uh most people involved in the process are not uh are playing little roles in the process they're just trying to do their small part well