Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - May 18, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 .

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 i believe i'm still on mute randy

00:02:34.640 and we're on yes good morning and welcome to western standard time i'm of course a rather

00:02:45.680 western standard time that's of course the western standard mixed with my show's name

00:02:49.840 at the same moment let's try that again shall we all right miss q hello and welcome to mountain

00:02:54.940 standard time i'm your host nathan guida and of course today i'll be joined by john c thompson

00:02:59.980 a founding member of Civitas, a member formerly of the McKenzie Institute when it came to strategic

00:03:05.220 global initiatives and strategic thinking around the world. He's going to explain to us a little

00:03:09.560 bit more what's going on in Israel and Gaza and everything else that's happening in the Middle

00:03:13.420 East. He's going to give us some perspective on that. He's going to be on at 9.30 Pacific,

00:03:18.080 10.30 Mountain. Remember to like and subscribe. Subscribe to the Western Standard on the website

00:03:23.640 and support us. We don't get a big check from the Liberals every year to indoctrinate you

00:03:28.000 with nonsense and fake news like CBC does. And of course, subscribe to us on YouTube and on

00:03:33.380 Facebook. Help our numbers go up and you will be notified when we go live. To my opening statement,

00:03:39.700 conflict in the Middle East is nothing new. But after the period of relative stability during

00:03:44.360 Trump's presidency, which saw landmark peace agreements signed and former enemies become

00:03:49.660 allies in order to counter an ever more aggressive Iranian regime, the region has again descended

00:03:55.660 into chaos, and this time at unprecedented speed. We will leave rehashing the questions about the

00:04:02.060 state of Israel, past territorial claims, and what is now happening in the region to our guest,

00:04:06.860 who is an expert on such matters. For myself, the two most important points are the following.

00:04:11.360 First, Israel has a right to exist. The second, those living within the West Bank and Gaza are 0.95

00:04:16.180 being used as political cannon fodder by some very evil people. Israel's detractors have often

00:04:22.080 declared that it is an illegitimate state. Of course, unlike most nations today, Israel only

00:04:28.440 exists because of an act of law, as well as recognition by the international community at

00:04:33.360 its inception. No state is perfect. No government is without fault. But Israel is the only country

00:04:38.980 that started as a democracy approved by other democracies. Israel remains a democracy today

00:04:46.180 with liberal values around free speech, economic rights, and private association. It is legal,

00:04:51.340 for example, to be a homosexual in Israel. Try doing that in Palestine. That's not going to 1.00

00:04:56.300 work out for you. It's not going to work out for you in all the surrounding nations. But if you

00:04:59.760 are in Israel, you probably will live and cherish and move on in life. The fact of the matter is 1.00

00:05:06.920 that I once heard there were LGBTQ lobbyists that were pro-Palestine, anti-Israel. You know, 0.63

00:05:12.800 there was a sign out there somewhere that said literally gays for Palestine. And that makes

00:05:17.840 about as much sense as a pacifist in favor of an arms race. So what we need to understand is that

00:05:23.660 even while being in near constant threat of invasion all the time, war and indiscriminate

00:05:28.380 rocket attacks, Israel remains a democracy with mandatory conscription and the rigorous debate of

00:05:33.720 ideas. All the while, those who live in the Gaza Strip or West Bank, let alone the nations that 0.93

00:05:38.740 surround the state of Israel on every side, cannot allow their citizens to vote lest they oust their 0.61

00:05:43.380 overlords the proof is in the pudding residents of all non-israeli parts of the levant exist at 0.95

00:05:48.820 the pleasure of the strong men and terrorist groups that run them the palestinian authority

00:05:52.460 doesn't tolerate any dissent issues aren't brought up for debate or plebiscite that is to say voting

00:05:57.460 right the press doesn't get to criticize those in charge the people who the pa rules are essentially

00:06:03.680 treated as slaves and human shields and we need to understand that like it is slavery it's entirely

00:06:08.640 slavery, and it's wrong. There is a place for legitimate criticism of Israel and the leadership.

00:06:14.040 Of course, the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or as he's affectionately called Bibi

00:06:19.580 by many, is literally fighting to keep his role just so he will not be indicted for various counts

00:06:25.420 of, well, cronyism. But an honest assessment of Israeli policy still reveals that life for even

00:06:31.600 the most maligned person in Israel is far better than on the other side of that checkpoint. And 0.85

00:06:37.000 Israel doesn't call for the destruction of Arabs or Palestinians or any particular racial group

00:06:42.400 or ethnic group or religion. Israel simply wants to exist. Perhaps Israel and her neighbors are

00:06:48.160 doomed to perpetual conflict, but the scriptures do say otherwise in that old prophecy, for someday

00:06:53.020 they shall beat their swords into plowshares and they shall make war no more. I've grown up,

00:07:00.620 of course, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict my entire life. I mean, we all have since basically

00:07:06.780 the inception of israel but the issue of course uh deep down inside of it all is is that of course

00:07:13.860 you've got two religions that are opposed you have people groups that technically speaking are

00:07:17.760 of the same ethnicity if you're a semite uh you are that's that's an entire part of that area it's

00:07:23.340 a subgroup of the arab uh ethnicity so that's that's a thing ironically being anti-semitic

00:07:28.820 doesn't necessarily it's come to mean anti-jewish but technically speaking the semite ethnicity is

00:07:33.860 not just uh jewish people and indeed there are lots of jews at this point who are not semites

00:07:39.300 right uh strictly biologically speaking in their in their heritage but the point is that what what

00:07:46.100 kind of hits me between the eyes with all of it is that when it comes to israel and palestine

00:07:51.300 there just never seems to be a solution there never seems to be a way of kind of dissolving

00:07:57.140 this conflict and finally and finally getting to the end but i think a lot of that has to do with

00:08:01.220 vested interests i think whether you're talking about arms dealers uh or clearly selling weapons

00:08:05.940 probably to both sides but certainly to the palestinians whether you're talking about the

00:08:10.340 role of iran and the various other agitation that happens from the rest of the muslim world

00:08:15.380 channeled through uh hamas and through uh the other terrorist organizations that are that are

00:08:20.500 around israel and trying to infiltrate israel and finally if you look at even even kind of the

00:08:26.660 agitation that happens within within israel itself it's not that it shouldn't have self-criticism

00:08:30.980 But it does have elements within its own society that, yes, they're allowed to have their criticism.

00:08:36.780 But throughout the wider Western world, there's a deep resentment of Israel.

00:08:41.820 To what end? I don't know why.

00:08:43.380 I don't know why anybody thinks that Israel deserves any more resentment than any other country does.

00:08:47.700 There's plenty of other countries that have done worse things.

00:08:50.160 And Israel is just the newest country on the block. 0.94

00:08:53.620 It's the newest kid on the block.

00:08:54.920 And it's had some struggles and it's made some bad decisions in the past every now and again.

00:08:59.480 but ultimately it fights a fundamentally defensive tactic when it comes to to these attacks so i

00:09:06.060 don't i don't really understand why that's uh that's the case but we actually have john on the

00:09:12.000 line right now he's a little bit earlier than i expected him but that's fine we're going to bring

00:09:15.960 him on right away and we're going to talk about what's going on with israel and palestine uh john

00:09:21.880 welcome to the program it's good to have you back uh of course you were literally employed to think

00:09:27.180 about geostrategic initiatives and what that had to do with things what is happening right now

00:09:32.920 why is it happening and can you walk us through a little bit of what's of of why the middle east

00:09:37.660 is always so unstable why can't we all just get along well you're asking the question people have

00:09:44.680 been asking for 3 000 years um and anything that colors of the middle east is got all sorts of

00:09:53.580 dimension to it. Nothing is simple. Just as a sidebar issue, for example, the civil war in

00:10:00.240 Syria. A lot of people think it's a regular rebellion against the Assad family. There are

00:10:06.680 at least three dimensions of the civil war in Syria that most people don't consider.

00:10:13.080 Part of it is the Sunni-Shia split that's been going on almost since Muhammad died 14 centuries

00:10:20.840 ago. It's also the split between sort of the modernists who think that the Middle East should

00:10:28.020 develop in a new direction and the Salafists who literally are, you know, clinging to that 0.76

00:10:35.080 old-time religion who want to think that the way forward is by going backwards the way Islam used 0.99

00:10:42.540 to be. And of course you also have the other dimension which has been going on for 500 years 1.00

00:10:48.660 is the fight between the Persians and the Turks over who gets to rule the Arabs.

00:10:55.380 And, you know, those are three dimensions you have to consider in one war.

00:10:59.700 So, I mean, if you look at things in Israel and the Palestinians,

00:11:04.940 again, they're just a whole series of shades and a whole series of mentions.

00:11:09.640 But some things are very simple. 0.91

00:11:12.360 For example, the Israelis want to be left alone.

00:11:16.420 Actually, most Palestinians do, but, you know, the Israelis have a democratic society, contentious, many debates.

00:11:27.060 You know, they still haven't got a written constitution, but the Knesset is one of the liveliest places for democratic discussion on earth.

00:11:36.600 And, of course, the Palestinians who have, you know, it's not generally known, unless you spend time on the West Bank, as I have, and talk to Palestinians.

00:11:51.020 And that's just yearning for new leadership.

00:11:54.540 The problem is that Palestinian society is based on an absolute rejection and a hatred of Israel. 0.51

00:12:02.460 So the Israelis are free with their opinions. 0.66

00:12:05.720 I mean, if you've got three Israelis, you've got four opinions, all of which are defended quite strenuously. 0.85

00:12:13.820 Palestinians normally have two, one public, which they share, and one private, which they share very, very rarely. 0.75

00:12:22.340 And the younger kids don't even have that second opinion yet. 0.85

00:12:26.620 It's the older Palestinians who believe that or wish that they could actually live more stable lives without their current leadership.

00:12:36.660 And it's one of the most interesting discoveries I've ever made.

00:12:39.780 And most reporters miss it.

00:12:44.340 With what happens in the Middle East, I mean, you couldn't blame some people.

00:12:49.080 I mean, we should always be paying attention to things.

00:12:51.820 But some people have grown very tired of the various conflicts and the perpetual war.

00:12:57.080 People just don't really understand.

00:12:58.720 They can't have a grasp of it.

00:12:59.880 If someone comes to you and honestly says,

00:13:01.600 try it, help me understand, even in just concrete terms,

00:13:05.600 what's happening in this latest conflict.

00:13:08.120 What sparked this?

00:13:09.420 If they couldn't understand everything else,

00:13:10.980 they couldn't understand the 67 war

00:13:12.620 and everything else that's happened between Israel and its neighbors.

00:13:16.360 In this precise instance, there seemed to be a relative peace for time.

00:13:21.820 Now, all of a sudden, there's rockets flying again.

00:13:24.080 What has happened?

00:13:24.840 What has failed? 1.00

00:13:26.860 Well, the simplest thing was Ramadan. 0.60

00:13:30.540 And the simple thing also was that the Palestinians or the Palestinian leadership, and remember, they've got two sets of leadership, have been sidelined.

00:13:40.560 They were losing.

00:13:41.360 And so this was, first of all, an attempt with a minor issue about some people defaulting on their rent in East Jerusalem that are built around Ramadan to let the Palestinian Authority, Abbas and company, get back in the spotlight again so they could resume their street credibility and hopefully get the checks flowing again. 0.93

00:14:06.840 Let's face it, Palestinians are poor, not their leaders. 0.92

00:14:11.360 know they they live very very well they bought very sticky fingers um but the second thing of 1.00

00:14:17.920 course is you've got hamas that's in rivalry with the palestinians so the palestinian authority 0.57

00:14:24.320 provoked the street punch-ups in jerusalem and uh everything around the alaska mosque

00:14:31.040 and then the hamas derailed the palestinian authority by bombarding israel and so you've

00:14:39.760 got two arab factions both of it should have been sidelined and don't like it playing off against

00:14:45.840 each other about how much they hate israel and and hatred of israel it's funny how far how far

00:14:55.200 spread that is there's there were protests apparently you can't you can't you can only get

00:14:59.600 covet at church in canada uh or in the western world so you you not at costco not at walmart

00:15:04.880 And apparently not at pro-Palestinian protests.

00:15:08.560 Nothing wrong with trying to say, hey, think of the children.

00:15:12.260 I don't want anyone innocent killed in any conflict ever.

00:15:15.840 I certainly don't. 1.00

00:15:16.720 I was raised by Mennonites. 1.00

00:15:18.160 I don't think that the death of innocents is fair. 0.87

00:15:20.860 But at the same time, the idea that somehow, as if Israel had invited this attack, or as Israel was the aggressor,

00:15:28.420 how do things get so twisted here in the West?

00:15:30.700 How is Israel always cast as kind of this villain in Western media? 0.98

00:15:34.880 Well, to get to there, you have to sort of go back to the beginning of the Palestinian

00:15:41.440 movement, which actually began before there was an Israel back in the 1920s.

00:15:48.180 But if you then look at, say, when Israel became independent in 1948, a lot of Arabs

00:15:55.660 were persuaded to flee their homes by other Arabs.

00:16:00.900 There was also, of course, some sort of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis.

00:16:07.140 But the main part was that Arabs were told, you know, get up, the Jews are coming, flee. 0.81

00:16:14.040 And the ones that stayed behind have become Israeli citizens, fully functional members

00:16:18.360 of society, and quite prosperous. 0.96

00:16:21.000 The ones that left were then turned into a demographic weapon by the Arab states of the 0.92

00:16:27.840 time to constantly be a pressure on israel so in the palestinian community in the west bank and the 0.95

00:16:36.560 gaza strip from the start your credibility your potential for leadership rests with an eternal 0.99

00:16:45.840 hatred so if you actually grow tired of it and a lot of palestinians have to publicly express that 0.99

00:16:54.320 well for uh since the 1940s actually since the 1930s palestinian arabs who thought they could

00:17:02.400 get along with the jews have been murdered by the extremists and you know to this day again

00:17:08.400 you know what you say publicly and what you say privately are very different because if you have

00:17:14.080 if you express your private opinions publicly um do you remember like 1984 and hate week

00:17:21.280 in the the original novel yep hate week happens quite often among the palestinians 0.54

00:17:28.160 and if you've been known to be moderate to think you know maybe we can do better and we can get 1.00

00:17:33.200 rid of this you know a lot of sticky fingered scoundrels that we've got leading us and and

00:17:39.600 you know find a new future uh you're the one who could end up uh hung from a lamppost and that's 0.99

00:17:46.080 And so that's, again, one important reason why a lot of Palestinians keep their regrets and other opinions to themselves just because they don't want to be singled out.

00:17:59.700 When it comes to Israel itself, a very prosperous nation, obviously still doing development, still incredible intellectual property rights as well as technology.

00:18:12.320 it it's a very prosperous place and it's incredible to have you know this tiny tiny

00:18:17.540 little country right surrounded by all these much larger countries that are far better endowed and

00:18:22.020 have oil and all sorts of things going for them and yet it really does show you the difference

00:18:26.580 in leadership what what do you think makes israeli leadership uh distinctive or is it their citizens

00:18:32.440 too is it is the universal enlistment and conscription is that what kind of makes israel

00:18:37.400 different than its neighbors oh no i mean you've got widespread conscription in a number of other

00:18:44.520 countries um and actually it's kind of weird but i uh if you've been in the streets of egypt

00:18:51.720 or jordan you know gun shops are a lot more common than you might know you know they've got a fairly

00:18:58.600 wide arm firearms ownership but you know these are these are well-armed societies it's actually also

00:19:04.440 strange you know Muslim societies are also for the most part with some obvious

00:19:10.980 exceptions pretty quiet you know they they don't go into crime against each

00:19:15.040 other as much as happens in other parts of the world but that's also an aside 0.91

00:19:19.560 but the main thing is the Israelis are different in a number of ways and most

00:19:26.880 people I think that's one reason why anti-semiticism always flares up because

00:19:33.060 if you look at the Jewish religion and remember I'm Catholic so I'm not not

00:19:38.100 Jewish I'm speaking as an outsider here but it is a society I mean the Jews have

00:19:43.860 a holiday given over for debate you know you you go to the synagogue and you're

00:19:50.960 debating moral and ethical issues all night it's just one of their holidays

00:19:58.140 the other thing is that 2 000 years of diaspora is taught the jews one thing you know the local 0.75

00:20:04.540 prince muslim or christian you know can deprive you of all your gold all your treasure everything 0.85

00:20:11.340 all your property rob you of everything but he can't get after the stuff that's in your head 1.00

00:20:18.140 so you know there's been a long long stress on education and again if you look at the jewish

00:20:25.180 religion you know when you're uh especially if you're a teenage boy i mean your intellectual

00:20:31.820 abilities are tested and examined and honed uh it's a way that for example in the catholic church

00:20:38.220 the jesuits copied the jewish model and again we've looked at the jesuits have turned out you

00:20:44.620 know all sorts of intellectuals and scientists for centuries well i mean jews are very well

00:20:52.220 represented because you've got this very very long tradition of harvesting people's intellect

00:20:58.700 and honing it and working on it and that's why among other things why the israel is just so

00:21:05.420 got such an outsized reputation um especially you know in in physics in medicine and chemistry

00:21:14.940 um the world is on the edge of some very interesting changes and a lot of those changes

00:21:20.780 are being led out of schools in israel you know uh your grandchildren might live to be healthy

00:21:27.980 able and active well into their second century that's going to come from israeli schools

00:21:34.620 projects are working on already for everybody you know it's just it's one of the the things

00:21:40.380 that goes on there so it's this society that's got this outsized ability uh to produce people 0.96

00:21:49.020 of genuine talent the other thing though is that you know if you look at Israeli

00:21:54.300 politics they debate all the time it's an interesting thesis I'm not I mean

00:22:02.220 you'd probably know who Victor Davis Hanson is but have you ever read his

00:22:05.820 book carnage and culture I haven't well it's it's he was asking the question

00:22:11.880 about 20 years ago why is it throughout history the Western world is always you

00:22:16.980 know ever since you know the ancient Greeks kicked the crap out of everybody

00:22:21.060 else and part of his thesis was that you know we're always arguing debating so 0.56

00:22:29.280 we're producing new ideas you know you go into a number of examples quite

00:22:36.220 quickly but say for example one of the most brilliant military naval victories

00:22:41.200 in history with Salamis when the Persians were near nearly destroyed

00:22:45.240 Athens. And the Greeks had won this incredible naval victory, but it wasn't without a furious

00:22:51.980 debate among themselves first. And the Greek leader actually sent a message to the Persian

00:22:59.880 emperor, the Shah, and basically said, we're about to escape. You better block us. And that

00:23:06.480 lured the Persian navy into an ambush in which they were massacred. You know, so debate and

00:23:13.100 dissension and, you know, new ideas, you know, it's a strength actually.

00:23:18.640 It sounds like it's weak, but consensus, universal consensus is a lame way to go for any society.

00:23:27.600 All right, sit in the Knesset building and listen.

00:23:31.240 They debate.

00:23:32.740 They are arguing all the time.

00:23:35.480 And that actually means that they produce a number of really incredible ideas.

00:23:39.460 for example the Israeli Mossad is legendary for its influence it's a small organization it's not

00:23:48.280 that large and not that well trained but they think and you know they are not orthodox by any

00:23:56.320 means I mean orthodox in terms of their approaches to intelligence and they've achieved results after

00:24:02.440 impressive result time after time well it's like that across the board for just about every

00:24:07.140 institution in the interim let's speak a little bit more about the knisset uh and of course the

00:24:13.200 fact that we have a certain prime minister who's in charge right now that's benjamin natalianu

00:24:18.100 yeah he's been around for a little while uh he has won incredible victories uh by the skin of

00:24:24.280 his teeth over and over again combining with the lucid party and and with uh the ultra orthodox

00:24:29.660 and using using his if there was anybody who was ever a wheeler and dealer it's bb he's done an

00:24:35.140 incredible job while also fighting some conflicts in that time as well uh between between israel

00:24:40.780 and their neighbors is is he the focal point or is the kinesit backing him up which way will the

00:24:47.100 kinesit vote on this next this next question are they going to continue to back him up he's going

00:24:51.660 to win election again if this conflict continues what's happening um i wish i knew um because again

00:24:59.340 it's Israeli politics are very strange in fact actually some of the real experts on Knesset

00:25:05.400 politics are Palestinians not just the Palestinian leadership and ordinary Palestinians I mean I

00:25:14.220 remember one of the many conversations I had with the taxi driver in the West Bank he said 0.85

00:25:21.180 there's a waiting for the Israelis for the Jews to decide who they are and again they understand

00:25:27.300 kinesis politics very very well i mean it's almost second nature to them um and there's

00:25:34.660 a constant stew and yes it does mean that minor groups have actually had an outsized influence

00:25:40.180 because you know even before bb other israeli leaders had to hold a coalition together

00:25:48.020 and remember israel still doesn't have a written constitution they've never been able to agree on

00:25:53.220 one you know it's what's going on is uh it's very british like in some ways consensus and precedent

00:26:01.140 and custom which of course has served england very well i mean technically speaking the magna

00:26:09.000 carta could be discarded tomorrow any part of their constitution could be rewritten or written

00:26:13.940 out or or set aside um that hasn't necessarily worked out very well in canada or the united

00:26:20.300 States having a locked, dead, stuck constitution, trying to get people to agree on amendments and

00:26:27.720 everything else. Canada's never accomplished it. I don't think America has accomplished it since

00:26:32.180 Nixon got rid of the draft. Yeah, but the Israelis just keep going forward, coming up to crisis after 1.00

00:26:41.200 crisis after crisis. And that includes the domestic politics and still moving forward. 0.74

00:26:46.060 and it does mean though that everybody in the country pays close attention and has an opinion

00:26:51.860 but as i said that's not just the the jews that's the arabs as well let's walk back a little bit to

00:26:59.680 your own experience of your time there um you've you've spent time in the middle east you've spent

00:27:04.860 time in israel and in the surrounding area what what's your personal impression of of what's

00:27:10.560 happening on the ground in in the middle east what what are you picking up there that we can't

00:27:15.000 really get through tv or through the media well one thing and this is something that's uh really

00:27:22.080 alarmed the palestinian authority leadership is that uh i guess again this is very complex

00:27:30.980 all sorts of levels through it and again some brilliant intellectuals have looked at it and

00:27:36.900 described it which means you know they produce books that have been very very illuminating and

00:27:41.380 nobody in the Western world has read them but one of the the issues that's

00:27:47.920 gone on inside the Arab world since the First World War has been about what way

00:27:54.220 forward and you know where do we go from here the Bernard Lewis in his book what

00:28:00.280 went wrong said you know you have two questions when things have collapsed and

00:28:04.380 you know who did this to us or alternatively why did this happen and you know who did this is one

00:28:15.660 what is comfortable question to ask because then you can blame someone why did this happen is

00:28:21.740 actually focusing on one's own internal problems so i mean if you look since the 1930s and 40s

00:28:29.420 you've had sort of two driving forces in the arab world one of which are the salafists you know and

00:28:37.100 that is uh a radical sect of the the sunni uh islam which basically says the the way we go

00:28:46.460 forward is by going back and looking 14 centuries ago you know bring back that old-time religion 0.89

00:28:54.940 and remember the salafists are behind al-qaeda they're behind isis uh they also helped create

00:29:01.180 both the palestinian authority and then lost control of it um but also they're behind hamas

00:29:09.500 the second side were the ones who sort of looked outside and said okay we've got to find a new

00:29:14.380 solution but a lot of them tended to look at the communists or the nazis so you know you've had

00:29:22.700 since the second world war this sort of tension inside the arab world where on one side you have

00:29:29.580 nationalist militarist dictators you know such as you know who led iraq you know who led syria who

00:29:37.980 led egypt for many years and then they've been focused on the muslim brotherhood which is a

00:29:42.860 salafist organization so you know they've been fighting each other constantly over the future

00:29:48.220 well around 2002 a number of arab intellectuals very very damn again they the arab world can

00:29:56.140 produce some very very brave intellectuals that they have but they looked and they said you know

00:30:01.660 we got to stop this every time we start making social progress in the arab world somebody either

00:30:08.220 you know a general you know or a militarist or the uh the salafist points at israel both you know

00:30:14.940 what about them and refocuses the the desperate need for modernization on the

00:30:20.440 Arab world in the Israeli Palestinian parameter and that has worked for 50 0.59

00:30:26.880 years to derail any social development in the Middle East well if you look very 1.00

00:30:34.260 carefully the last few years last couple of decades what you've got especially 1.00

00:30:39.000 with the Gulf Arabs in Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf states it's a 0.99

00:30:43.620 realization that the oil prosperity is going to run out they've got to transition themselves and 0.54

00:30:50.040 again there's been very very slow constant development and one of the things that happens

00:30:56.100 and you know Trump took some credit for it because he had a hand in doing it but he also remembered

00:31:01.920 that the Arabs had to themselves recognize it's time to have a new approach to Israel so for the

00:31:08.640 last five years or so you know you've got the growing relationship with Arab

00:31:13.680 states with Israel because they want trade with Israel they want advantage

00:31:18.820 you know with all this new technology and they have other problems to focus on 0.53

00:31:23.940 because remember the Turks and the president of Turkey is a Salafist in 0.74

00:31:29.700 case you know people don't know and the the Persians are still fighting it out

00:31:35.820 amongst themselves but they still both believe that they could should rule the arab world

00:31:40.140 not arabs so the saudis you know have been starting to reform the gulf arabs have been

00:31:47.180 starting to reform but one of the ways they're reforming is to regard the palestinian

00:31:51.740 palestinian authority as dead weight as an anchor to the past so they've been stopping

00:31:57.820 payment for it and that's cutting into the personal income of the leadership of palestinian 0.88

00:32:04.860 authority and they hate the fact that the uh large sections of the arab world are normalizing

00:32:10.780 relations with israel that's another reason why this has erupted it's a way of actually

00:32:16.780 seeing if they can put a stick in that particular set of spokes and stop israel's normalization

00:32:24.540 of relations with a number of arab states

00:32:26.780 one of the things that we were all hoping uh might be for the better and it happened in my

00:32:34.620 lifetime i remember writing about it uh at my old gig was was of course the arab spring

00:32:40.780 so we had hopes that the arab spring would mature uh into democratic arab countries that the

00:32:49.760 middle east would finally become uh full of liberal democracies not by invasion or imposition

00:32:55.500 or kind of neoconservative ideas,

00:32:58.840 but rather by their own people rising up and saying,

00:33:02.580 you know what, we're getting a bad deal.

00:33:04.660 This is a bad deal.

00:33:05.940 We have cell phones, we have technology,

00:33:08.500 we have cars.

00:33:11.000 Why can't we have a modern government 0.98

00:33:13.580 and throw off the fetters of their ancient regimes

00:33:17.220 and strongmen regimes and try and create,

00:33:20.220 and their post-colonial regimes and create democracies?

00:33:22.720 One of the places where that spiked up probably strongest and where we thought for a brief moment that things might change was Egypt.

00:33:31.120 And then, of course, Egypt fell apart and the military had to take over in order to keep it from falling apart worse.

00:33:38.180 So what what happened with the Arab Spring?

00:33:40.880 Can you walk us through that a bit?

00:33:42.180 Was there any hope in it or was it a kind of false flag or a myth cue in the West?

00:33:47.480 We didn't really understand what was happening.

00:33:49.060 well there's one dimension with the arab spring that is the point that we keep forgetting all

00:33:56.240 the time and if we look back at our own history like what really drove the french revolution

00:34:02.240 what was the real cause for your cause in 1848 the year of revolutions in in europe

00:34:10.520 food food prices what drove the nazis you know cheap bread what happened in the arab spring

00:34:21.200 as a result of 2008 and the fiscal future basically every investor in the world was

00:34:28.420 driving the price of food up because that seemed like a reasonable way to make a profit

00:34:32.300 food prices climbed enormously and throughout the air and when food prices go up people start

00:34:38.720 getting nervous about where their next meal is coming from so again food prices drove the arab

00:34:44.400 spring then what happened was you had all the you know the democrats you had all the the performers

00:34:51.280 you had all the people who thought that the world should modernize but if you look you know from um

00:34:59.360 well tunisia where it started you look at libya you look at what happened in egypt particularly 0.91

00:35:05.840 who was the concerted opposition that was able to take most advantage the Salafists and you know

00:35:14.120 the Muslim Brotherhood you know basically won the the first election in Egypt and then all of a sudden 0.99

00:35:19.820 the Egyptians went oh yeah we have made an incredible mistake get them out so there was

00:35:25.160 a lot of support for the military which represented the other view to try and take things over because 0.64

00:35:32.000 egyptians were more comfortable with that the salafists you know the muslim brotherhood were 0.98

00:35:37.120 more dangerous remember that the muslim brotherhood is banned in a lot of the arab world as it is a 1.00

00:35:43.200 dangerous organization and yeah we know in canada we've got members of parliament who are members 1.00

00:35:50.640 of the muslim brotherhood yeah it's one of the the points where a lot of westerners do not 1.00

00:35:57.280 really understand how subversive and how dangerous this particular organization is where arabs do 1.00

00:36:05.600 so the egyptians you know they made a promising start but again it's sort of like you know 1.00

00:36:11.440 germany in the 1920s you've got all sorts of different uh political parties all sorts of

00:36:16.960 different opinions but in the meantime you've got the communists and the nazis duking it out

00:36:22.080 over who gets to rule over germany with a whip hand and you know which one of them won

00:36:30.080 and it and it could have been different and that's the thing that people don't seem to

00:36:33.040 understand there could have been entirely collectivist but but well and i mean not

00:36:37.600 that nazism is actually right wing we can debate that all day but the point is that

00:36:41.280 an entirely collectivist and tyrannical civilization in germany but it being colored with marxian

00:36:47.840 dogma instead of fascist dogma and people don't seem to understand that at all they just think

00:36:52.880 it was all doomed to happen one direction but it wasn't no i mean the uh the communists very nearly

00:36:58.640 one um but again in the arab world you know that pluralist uh tendency the the intellectuals keep

00:37:08.720 pushing keep working hard towards reform and we're seeing them even in such unlikely places in

00:37:15.280 saudi arabia that they're slowly winning another aspect of things that a lot of people don't quite

00:37:21.680 realize because again it's too subtle especially for most of the slogan shouters but since 2005

00:37:28.800 2006 the saudis have warmed up a lot to the israelis remember in 2006 when uh hezbollah

00:37:36.400 and lebanon started firing rockets in northern israel and faced that short war and right after

00:37:44.000 that you had uh well 2006 you had a whole series of interesting meetings between the saudi foreign

00:37:50.720 ministers and the israeli foreign minister you know they kept accidentally and not on purpose

00:37:55.600 meeting in airports all over the world and then having you know short discussions with each other

00:38:01.440 but one of the things that the saudi said to the israelis you know next time you fight hezbollah

00:38:06.800 finish them off yes also uh an expression that's been made about hamas you know again

00:38:15.360 the arabs know that the salafists are their enemy it is one of the uh the principal barriers they 0.57

00:38:22.800 have to modernization but the salafists you know their their player in the palestinian community 0.98

00:38:31.120 is Hamas. And once again, they derail discussion away from the Palestinian Authority and have made 1.00

00:38:38.880 it more militant. Maybe something that you can help our viewers and those who are listening to

00:38:47.580 the podcast understand a little bit better. Again, thank you for tuning in to our show today. We're

00:38:52.580 talking with John C. Thompson about the Israeli-Hamas conflict that's happening, well, as we

00:38:58.480 speak one one of the things that's that's hard for people to understand especially when it comes

00:39:04.300 to saudi arabia and the pivot that's happened or perhaps even what's happening with iran is of

00:39:09.840 course the attack that took place that we now know happened from israel into iran using data breaches

00:39:16.420 etc uh to try and overblow the reactor and they were successful in doing so they certainly stymied 0.73

00:39:22.900 their nuclear project was that the moment that the arab world knew it could trust israel better

00:39:27.980 than it could trust iran that israel which probably has nuclear weapons they've never conceded that

00:39:33.420 but i mean they could build those things like tonka trucks no problem they have the intellectual

00:39:37.900 capacity they have the technology they have the resources so they have nuclear weapons um but the

00:39:43.420 but the iranians they had to be prevented from doing this is that was that the proof or was

00:39:47.820 israel just doing it for its own sake was it trying to prove something to the other arab nations or

00:39:52.060 or was it trying to just preserve itself?

00:39:55.620 Well, there are two interesting dimensions to this,

00:39:58.560 again, which go back a long way.

00:40:01.260 But remember in 1982,

00:40:05.940 the Israeli Air Force flew a daring long-range strike

00:40:11.240 into Southern Iraq to blow up

00:40:13.120 Saddam Hussein's first nuclear program. 0.82

00:40:16.540 And accidentally, and not on purpose, 0.78

00:40:19.440 jordanian air force was not anywhere to be seen and the saudi air force was down the farther

00:40:27.520 southern end of the country playing a major exercise while the israelis flew over jordan

00:40:33.680 flew over saudi airspace to enter into southern iraq and bomb a nuclear reactor you know so again

00:40:41.440 there's always been a pragmatism a time when you cover off one eye and don't see what's going on

00:40:47.280 um another thing was like a very interesting discussion because remember the the threat of

00:40:55.020 the Iranian nuclear weapon has been around for a while but the last time I was in the West Bank

00:41:00.120 talking to Palestinians I remember this one conversation I had the a number of Palestinians

00:41:07.260 are aware that you know because they see it with Hamas all the time that if you die as a result of 0.89

00:41:15.000 jihad that's a good thing you go to heaven which means that you know as far as hamas is concerned

00:41:21.080 or as far as the persians are the iranians are concerned collateral damage to muslim populations

00:41:28.360 is not something that troubles them again there are palestinians who know that and i remember

00:41:34.200 talking about the the new emerging iranian nuclear missiles that maybe it may have been coming up

00:41:41.320 about 10 years ago i still remember this talk to this one palestinian he just sort of pointed

00:41:46.760 the hills and he went you know jerusalem is right over there and my family's here

00:41:52.680 you know the iranians won't care if they nuke tel aviv and we get killed by the fallout

00:41:59.240 you know again privately they were encouraging the israelis they wanted the israelis to act

00:42:05.000 more strenuously against the iranian nuclear project there's a third thing to consider and

00:42:12.280 again it's too subtle for most observers these days especially the press but the saudis you

00:42:19.080 know again are big believers in subtle diplomacy 10 years ago they bought a bunch of chinese medium

00:42:25.240 range ballistic missiles and they're based near riyadh they could reach tel aviv yes theoretically

00:42:34.360 But they selected the model that could also reach as far as Tehran.

00:42:39.620 And that was a signal of the United States. 0.62

00:42:41.900 You know, we're prepared to get involved in nuclear escalation 0.91

00:42:45.180 if you don't act and stop Iran from getting the nuclear weapon. 0.85

00:42:50.680 Remember, the Saudis back in the 1970s were paying for the Pakistani bomb. 0.78

00:42:56.500 So we wouldn't be too hard for the Saudis to go to Pakistan, 0.91

00:43:00.540 buy a few warheads and over a weekend become a nuclear power.

00:43:06.100 But they're not threatening the Israelis with this. 0.69

00:43:09.600 They're more concerned about Iran.

00:43:11.920 So again, the whole issue about Iranian nuclear weapons is a lot more complicated.

00:43:17.580 What happened with Iran?

00:43:20.020 I mean, we all watched the movie. 0.57

00:43:21.860 We're all aware that, you know, 1979, something went really sideways. 0.99

00:43:26.800 Iran was a pretty liberal, even decadent place. 0.53

00:43:31.280 The Shah of Iran, the relationship with British oil, 0.74

00:43:34.580 British petroleum, to be precise.

00:43:36.880 And, of course, the fact of the matter was,

00:43:39.060 it's Persia, which is ancient, rich civilization

00:43:41.980 that had lots of pagan roots long before it became Muslim or Christian,

00:43:45.820 because there was lots of Christian,

00:43:46.960 and, for that matter, Jewish Persians as well.

00:43:50.980 And there still are today, actually,

00:43:53.180 or at least the descendants of them.

00:43:54.540 But the point is that that Iran or Persia, as it used to be called, was this this rich culture, kind of a hangover going all the way back to Byzantium.

00:44:03.500 It still had a lot of these trappings. And then out of nowhere in 1979, things just blew up.

00:44:08.120 And we're now dealing with an Iran that wants to murder everybody and literally wants nuclear weapons to bring about the 12th imam. 0.95

00:44:15.140 What happened over there? Well, how many times have you seen a very complicated rebellion or insurrection? 0.98

00:44:24.500 being totally derailed and captured by the extremists. You know, that's an old lesson

00:44:31.380 in history. I mean, remember, there were two revolutions in Russia, and the Bolsheviks took

00:44:38.980 over. If you remember to Nicaragua in 1979, the original rebel coalition that overthrew Somoza had

00:44:49.620 all sorts of dimensions to it but somehow or other the marxists took over both revolutions 0.81

00:44:56.100 in iran again you had a whole collection of people who were opposed to the the uh the shah

00:45:02.020 and thought it was time to topple him but the extremists took over so i mean again the ayatollah

00:45:09.140 khomeini came back and khomeini is the shia equivalent of a salafist in fact he had since

00:45:17.140 the 1940s been studying the the salafist movement and been copying them in many respects so what

00:45:24.420 you've got is the equivalent of i hate to say this a fusion of the nazi party and or the the bolsheviks

00:45:32.180 running iran uh since 1979 and a lot of iranians cannot wait for them to go and if you look at the

00:45:40.820 structure of modern iran you can see stuff you know the iranian revolutionary guard corps

00:45:48.180 it's like the ss in nazi germany you know they've got control of the police they've got their own

00:45:53.860 paramilitary organization that mirrors everything in the military the iranian military gets second

00:46:00.580 call for recruits second call for uh equipment and is on the exterior of the country the

00:46:06.900 revolutionary guard corps is based by every population center you know that's just one of

00:46:13.060 the examples um big thing is uh ordinary iranians have shown their displeasure with the regime

00:46:20.500 time and time and time again but the regime is full of these you know autocratic old bastards

00:46:27.860 and the people who've made a money and a living supporting the regime so when the 0.88

00:46:37.560 Iranians are you know hitting the streets and protesting again they get 0.88

00:46:41.600 shot by the police because the cops are all part of the system that's how they 1.00

00:46:48.480 make their income most Iranians cannot wait for the mollus to go in fact 1.00

00:46:54.740 actually um here's one interesting thing that again most people don't realize about uh iran but 0.80

00:47:03.300 um the mullahs you know especially the ones who are wearing a white turban

00:47:08.900 that signifies that you know they claim they're descended directly from muhammad 1.00

00:47:14.260 so a lot of iranians look at them go okay how the hell do these arabs get to end up running us 0.51

00:47:19.780 that's that's one of the things that comes up the second thing is the mullahs themselves

00:47:26.800 are starting to recognize that iran the first post mullah iran might be something the world

00:47:33.100 has waited for for 14 centuries a post-muslim society a lot of uh iranians have been going

00:47:42.960 back quietly to zoroastrianism i've talked to people who've done missionary work in iran very

00:47:50.160 very carefully and underground but there's a whole generation of iranians that have wanted want

00:47:56.240 nothing to do with islam anymore you know i remember the some of them saying if these guys

00:48:01.920 are the perfection of islam then i'm out of it it's gone and so when the when the uh the regime

00:48:10.240 collapses it'll be something the world has not seen before but there's also uh 42 years of 0.67

00:48:17.540 grievances that'll have to be worked out there's there's a whole bunch there to unpack and we can

00:48:24.480 come back to some of it in a little while but but one of the things that strikes me is that just

00:48:29.100 like any empire and especially any any empire where there is a domination instead of a freely

00:48:34.120 associating society there's a praetorian guard that is that is taking care of those in charge

00:48:40.120 a reference to Rome, of course, the army is kept in the hinterland to ensure it does not rebel and

00:48:45.460 doesn't take over the capital. And the Praetorian Guard is kept close to home to protect the emperor

00:48:50.020 and his closest members, closest advisors. Something that kind of comes to mind, though,

00:48:56.800 is if that's the case in Iran, then what went wrong in Iraq? Because as far as I can tell,

00:49:03.860 Saddam Hussein, as far as a manager of his own people, brutal as he was, did manage to keep 0.69

00:49:09.400 stability in his particular part of the region once he was gone everything fell into complete 0.58

00:49:15.240 chaos and and so regime change in iraq didn't work why didn't they do regime change in iran instead

00:49:22.200 why were they focused on iraq instead of iran and then what happened once they did take the

00:49:26.760 regime out in iraq well here's one of the the curious things about iraq if you look at their

00:49:33.880 history in the last you know the 20 or 30 years since saddam hussein took over you know iraq was

00:49:41.240 held together through state terror there were a lot of people killed there every year i mean the

00:49:49.400 iraqi the kurds were almost in a perpetual state of rebellion you had all these other groups you

00:49:55.320 know the marshes down in the uh the bottom end of the tigers euphrates were almost entirely

00:50:01.480 exterminated and saddam hussein was again from the sunni population which is a minority ruling

00:50:12.360 over a she a large shia population and doing so through coercion the death rate in iraq since

00:50:22.200 saddam hussein was toppled is actually slightly down from a normal year under saddam hussein 0.54

00:50:28.600 You know, for all the uproar and the terrorism and the civil violence we've seen, it's actually more peaceful than it was in a typical year under Saddam Hussein. 0.96

00:50:40.540 But again, this is a society that really shouldn't have been created. 0.80

00:50:48.080 There should have been different boundaries drawn right after World War I.

00:50:50.860 yes uh all those colonial officers on a tuesday afternoon in rainy england just drawing away in

00:50:59.380 their fanciful world um i recall uh from of course a book that i'm sure that you've referenced many

00:51:05.180 times i think one of the best books ever written on the subject paris 1919 by margaret mcmillan

00:51:09.940 uh in the introduction they make a point that they had surveyors go out through silesia and

00:51:16.260 throughout east prussia uh after the fall of germany and after after the defeat and and the

00:51:22.020 armistice and and they were surveying and they were trying to figure out where they were going

00:51:25.300 to draw the lines for poland they asked him if he was a pole or a hungarian or a lithuanian

00:51:30.500 and he simply responded i am a catholic of these parts

00:51:35.380 well yeah let's i mean you go back uh right after the first world war there was three

00:51:40.820 different armed rebellions in silesia over whether they're going to be poles or germans

00:51:45.380 And the grievances there festered and were, again, played out in 1939.

00:51:51.820 coming back to the middle east it so we have this this this plethora of peoples uh various

00:52:00.560 ethnicities various cultures reaching back to literally the beginning of time the cradle of

00:52:05.800 civilization pre-history and all of history forward is is is some of it just in the soil

00:52:12.200 maybe that sounds a bit fatalistic or deterministic perhaps too philosophical but

00:52:16.460 Is it just a crossroads of culture and conflict that in this Levant and in the Fertile Crescent, people are always going to be at odds and it ends?

00:52:27.560 Or was there ever a time of stability and prosperity and peace?

00:52:32.480 And can that be reached again in some of these areas?

00:52:36.320 You know, that's a good question.

00:52:38.180 It's an interesting one because, again, you look historically, you know, there's been peace usually imposed by an overwhelming outside power.

00:52:46.460 um but you know peace inside the middle east well actually israeli society is quite peaceful

00:52:53.180 um and there are some things that i hadn't been expecting to find when i first went there

00:52:58.700 but for example um bedouin you've got in various parts of israel you've got

00:53:06.540 bedouin who are not a part of any civil society and in fact are actually live independent of the

00:53:13.180 borders camping in various places and moving back and forth and you know jordanians egyptians

00:53:21.420 israelis you know look at their their movements and their passage and you know that's the bedu

00:53:26.860 likes to see someone keeping up the old ways and ignore them or they used to be until the

00:53:31.980 salafist started recruiting among them um i've also it's kind of interesting um this one time

00:53:40.620 i was in israel i was at a conference and i was down in in herzalia which you know again most

00:53:46.380 people don't realize that israel is really even more than southern california a beach culture

00:53:53.100 and you know and you've got a lot of beach there um but i was uh sort of you know taking my notes

00:53:59.580 that i'd taken because i'd been on the west bank and in jerusalem and east jerusalem and

00:54:04.940 israel and talking to people again and so but here was my last days and i had my laptop down 0.96

00:54:11.820 but i was watching and all right i'm a dirty old man um there were some very well filled bikinis 0.99

00:54:18.300 down on that beach and you know it was lovely to see but i suddenly realized that these were 0.74

00:54:24.620 they're god's people john so that's that's fine god makes beautiful people and his people are

00:54:29.900 particularly beautiful so there you go well the thing is this was a bit of an epiphany that came

00:54:34.780 up um there were arab israelis and jewish israelis you know uh the jews were boys and girls the arab

00:54:44.060 israelis were mostly boys but you know they were all on the beach i wonder well where are the arab

00:54:49.180 girls and suddenly i looked up the path coming down from the town of herzalia and again it was 0.85

00:54:56.460 a whole mess of arab girls who looked pretty much in a bikini like their israeli cousins 0.95

00:55:03.340 uh but right behind them was granny in traditional weather uh traditional dress coming along like a 0.96

00:55:08.780 sheepdog with a herd of lambs uh they came down to the beach a young jewish man basically found 0.64

00:55:16.700 granny a deck chair uh offered it to her she settled in went to sleep the girls went off in

00:55:22.300 all directions and you couldn't tell who was who in no time at all the epiphany was that leave them

00:55:28.780 alone get the the the hate mongers out and people will find their own solutions and again you look

00:55:38.060 inside israeli societies there are a lot of arab israeli and jewish israeli uh families you know

00:55:45.660 they celebrate two traditions there are in the schools in the institution both people together

00:55:52.540 working you know and and living side by side getting along very harmoniously

00:55:58.060 it can happen if they're left alone but the palestinian authority and hamas i mean the 0.98

00:56:05.340 only thing they can sell is hate and that's all they've got and they just keep pushing it and 0.99

00:56:10.300 pushing it and again the arabs who are living under their control can't protest because protest 1.00

00:56:17.980 is fatal so they just have to quietly go along and some of them again are yearning for a different 1.00

00:56:24.620 life you know they um one of the most interesting people i talked to one of the first time i was on

00:56:30.860 the west bank was a caddy you know a muslim traditional judge um and he was high in hiding

00:56:37.820 he was actually in the vatican enclave because he'd spoken out and the palestine authority

00:56:44.380 arafat's people were looking for him to kill him uh but i still remember exactly what he said

00:56:52.220 and uh you know i quoted exactly just remember that uh rafa is the southern east uh southwestern

00:57:00.860 most town in the gaza strip and janine is the northeastern most town in the west bank

00:57:06.060 and he went you know from 1970 to 1994 arafat wasn't a part of our lives he was off causing

00:57:14.700 a civil war and trying to take over jordan causing a civil war in lebanon and running an international

00:57:20.220 terrorist group and we were quietly learning democracy from the israelis in our towns and

00:57:26.620 in the universities they built with us then he came back and it used to be that tens of thousands

00:57:33.900 of us were working for good money inside israel and now nobody is and i could drive from rafa to

00:57:40.700 denine and no one would stop me and now there's a hundred checkpoints and the thing was we weren't

00:57:47.020 even asked if we wanted arafat back there was some sort of you know consultative uh process

00:57:53.740 tacked on to the oslo agreement but that was like putting lipstick on a pig you know that's 0.88

00:58:03.900 and the jewish world where you can't have pig um lipstick on pigs that's funny 0.92

00:58:09.740 so if if this is the case if just leaving them alone would result in peace why why have we done 0.82

00:58:19.280 interventionist movement or did we not do enough intervention i remember the beginnings of the

00:58:23.680 iraq war very clearly i was only a child i was 13 or so but i remember very clearly the vigorous

00:58:30.860 debates going on in the United States and in Canada. Of course, Canada opting to stay out of

00:58:35.980 Iraq, having already gone into Afghanistan. But we've played around in Afghanistan. We certainly

00:58:41.380 supported Iraq, not maybe in our own votes, but definitely sold armaments to the United States

00:58:46.860 and to various players, definitely did logistical support into Iraq. Were these regime changes

00:58:54.700 worthwhile or would people leaving them alone lessen the body count if it's about leaving them

00:59:00.860 alone what what point do you leave people alone do you help topple their dictators or do you just

00:59:05.880 hope and pray that someday democracy takes root well again it's sort of interesting but actually

00:59:12.760 remember regime change is America's sucker bet they can't resist and if you go back in American

00:59:20.880 history i think there's an incident around 1820 where you know one of the first royal uh american

00:59:28.640 navy ships is in the south pacific you know in in some of the the islands of the time i think it was

00:59:35.920 samoa you know the samoan islands or so on and the uh the navy officer writing back to congress

00:59:42.880 going i came in and they now have the congress and president and you know all's good he went

00:59:52.640 in among you know the pacific islanders and imposed an american style government which of

00:59:58.240 course fell apart the moment his ship disappeared over the horizon again but if you look at the

01:00:03.440 the americans the number of times they've interfered thinking that they're improving

01:00:06.960 things and again you look at iraq when in 2003 when they moved in they just couldn't resist

01:00:16.480 you know the original idea was to basically uh pull off you know um what they call you know 0.86

01:00:23.920 the british used to call a butcher and bolt in the 19th century when they go into afghanistan

01:00:29.840 you know standing jump you know this is romfeld's original idea was a standing jump

01:00:34.400 by surprise from pre-stocked military equipment in kuwait and saudi arabia go to baghdad in the

01:00:43.980 weekend and then come back in other words basically say you know sudan you cannot defend

01:00:51.200 your society you're helpless behave or will come get you so a raid a raid done but at the level of

01:00:59.700 of a world army not just a platoon yeah and well a corps you know basically

01:01:07.940 50 000 troops but with pre-stocked equipment no warning jump jump and gone and it was just

01:01:14.980 you know a reminder behave we can get you anytime but no again you know all the other advisors in

01:01:22.980 the bush administration had to you know we can improve this and change that and build this and

01:01:28.180 create a new wonderful democracy no it was a mistake and it's america sucker bet and they

01:01:35.300 they keep making it and we probably would have been you know jason saddam is saying

01:01:43.940 might have been a lot more stable in the long run

01:01:48.260 so we have we have the iraq example and then we have the afghanistan example so in iraq what you 0.65

01:01:55.140 had was again no question a butcher a terrible human being essentially keeping the post-colonial

01:02:01.360 borders post-world war world war one borders together of this formerly british protectorate

01:02:07.020 by sheer force of will and terror and some very terrible acts but nonetheless keeping it together 0.97

01:02:13.520 and and there was there was a functional society deeply evil functional in afghanistan you have

01:02:20.480 kind of an opposite situation you have a bunch of tribal leadership and really various debates on

01:02:25.820 the loyalty of the various push tin and whoever else is running around with a bizarre little

01:02:30.760 you know arm that goes all the way to china on that river valley there a very bizarre little

01:02:36.600 place and and then on top of all that you you just you try and get in there and take out uh well

01:02:43.300 you're trying to find osama bin latin supposedly though i think everybody knew he was in pakistan

01:02:47.020 begin with but the point is that if if if you're trying to do this and you're trying to impose a

01:02:51.580 democracy on on this tribal situation that's still living as if it is the 14th you know 14th or 15th

01:02:57.660 century what was that that was never going to work either but why did they fail they failed

01:03:03.660 differently they both failed but but what happened in afghanistan versus what happened in iraq

01:03:09.020 well what happened in afghanistan is the same thing that always happens in afghanistan

01:03:13.100 You know, there was a whole mess of bumps when the Afghan invasion was first proposed

01:03:19.260 in 2001, you know, graveyard of empire, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 0.92

01:03:24.540 Actually, no. 0.59

01:03:25.500 Afghanistan is very easy to invade. 0.99

01:03:28.060 It's very easy to occupy. 0.97

01:03:30.120 Problem is, there's no incentive for staying there.

01:03:32.960 So after a while, you get bored at the cost and you leave.

01:03:35.640 And that's, you know, the Persians, the Mongols, the British, even the Russians, and us, you

01:03:45.580 know, and the Americans and their allies, went in, occupied Afghanistan, couldn't stabilize

01:03:52.460 it, and are leaving. 1.00

01:03:56.760 All the Afghans, I mean, the hillbillies, especially in the South, have to do is outweigh 1.00

01:04:02.260 whoever's in the towns and in the lowlands and that's the same thing they've done for a thousand 1.00

01:04:08.400 years and and for a thousand years i mean afghanistan has been unconquerable we all know

01:04:16.720 that uh it features all the way to sir arthur conan doyle's sherlock holmes that's where of

01:04:22.620 course uh dr watson was stationed he was in afghanistan during that british version of

01:04:28.160 afghanistan a century and a bit before the current british version of afghanistan

01:04:33.680 if we were never going to get anywhere with afghanistan and if we had literally history

01:04:37.440 going all the way back to alexander the great explaining that afghanistan was unconquerable

01:04:42.000 why did we do this well again originally it's trying to defeat the taliban uh hunt down al-qaeda

01:04:52.320 and then leave but once again you know the american sucker bet kicked in let's build a

01:04:59.980 modern nation state you know that's and like playing legos with wearing boxing gloves

01:05:07.520 you're just not putting the pieces together it's not going to happen 1.00

01:05:11.120 does afghanistan have an industry other than opium

01:05:15.080 well um being themselves you know

01:05:22.080 fair fair it it i think that was the other half of it as i kind of i as i learned more about the

01:05:31.680 afghanistan war i kind of sat there and thought to myself wait a minute like even if you were to

01:05:37.160 build a modern nation state in afghanistan like i don't think they're going to start pumping out

01:05:40.820 the equivalent of a toyota or even a lot of tomorrow what what would they sell and but the 0.96

01:05:46.480 thing is they're already selling it they they grow poppies in afghanistan and and they sell an awful

01:05:52.620 lot of poppies and and and the product thereof which of course is opium and heroin well remember

01:06:00.380 though there are also sections of afghanistan trapped by the borders that were drawn by others

01:06:05.760 You know, there are people who speak, you know, Persian.

01:06:09.860 There are people who speak, you know, Tajik.

01:06:12.900 You know, there are people whose affinities go with Central Asia or Persia.

01:06:18.900 And then you've got, you know, the Pashto, whose affinities are also in northwestern Pakistan.

01:06:27.960 You are basically, they are a law unto themselves.

01:06:31.600 You know, people who have always been there.

01:06:33.700 And I remember talking to a friend of mine, he's a Canadian military officer, and I think he has three Afghan medals on him.

01:06:44.440 He'd been there, did three tours.

01:06:46.860 But before the first tour, you know, they were consulting with people who'd come out of Afghanistan here in Canada.

01:06:54.120 What do we do?

01:06:55.260 and uh this one girl had talked to him and she said well you know i i come from afghanistan i

01:07:02.320 know that society very well said if you go into that area you're going to end up in these little

01:07:07.940 villages talking to little old men who will nod and smile and nothing will ever change

01:07:13.800 if you want to change things you have to kill them all and he's you know we can't do that that's not

01:07:21.220 the solution.

01:07:23.820 She said, okay, well, it's not going to change.

01:07:26.640 And it hasn't.

01:07:29.840 I mean, it was an interesting pivot by the Trump administration in its last year that

01:07:34.700 they were now negotiating with the Taliban to try and get a peace deal and get out.

01:07:40.360 We've been there for 20 years.

01:07:43.300 Obviously, Canada has decamped from Afghanistan, though I'm sure there's still various operations

01:07:48.640 going on in afghanistan that we don't get told about but but the official line is that canada

01:07:54.200 has gotten out of afghanistan and the the americans are still there it's been 20 years

01:07:59.820 this is going on longer than vietnam what what are we gaining at this point why why is anyone

01:08:06.680 still there if everybody left tomorrow it'll all go it'll all go back to the way it was and we can

01:08:11.520 just admit that we wasted a lot of blood and treasure but it what what did we learn from our

01:08:16.560 experience as Canadians? What are we learning as the West from this experience?

01:08:20.780 Well, in the Canadian Army, it was their first

01:08:24.400 practical experience of counter-referencing since the

01:08:28.160 Riel Rebellion in 1885.

01:08:32.360 That's about it, really. A lot

01:08:36.460 of different method, a lot of different tactics,

01:08:40.220 experience, but in the long run,

01:08:44.000 And it's sort of, yeah, a lot of people who had been in Afghanistan are saying, you know, we thought we were doing good, you know, but nothing good that we did has lasted.

01:08:55.640 You know, the schools that were built for girls are now sheltering goats.

01:09:00.140 You know, that is the way of it. 0.96

01:09:03.060 So, I mean, yeah, what did we do there?

01:09:06.800 Well, for, you know, for one brief shining moment, you know, Camelot was flowering. 0.70

01:09:11.420 You know, it was a possibility that we could create a modern Afghanistan that allowed the country to stand up on its own feet.

01:09:19.820 And Afghan history reasserted itself.

01:09:26.140 And and and history, you know, history perpetuated itself with the death of Osama bin Laden. 0.54

01:09:32.780 I believe that was 2011 was when they caught him, well, caught him, killed him, got him,

01:09:40.560 shipped him off to sea. The thing is that, again, it felt anticlimactic because it didn't end

01:09:47.880 anything. We're still there 10 years later. And what is the answer? If you've captured and killed,

01:09:56.220 whether it's you know

01:09:57.980 there was

01:09:59.780 Saddam Hussein

01:10:02.720 there's been a capture and kill

01:10:04.580 of several

01:10:05.380 wicked people in the last

01:10:08.620 20-25 years and various

01:10:10.660 assassinations of

01:10:12.160 well I mean the last one was Soleimani

01:10:14.620 in January

01:10:16.700 of 2020 they managed to get him with a drone

01:10:18.660 strike so these evil

01:10:20.520 actors are taken out but has anything

01:10:22.560 improved? Has anything changed? Just drone warfare

01:10:24.920 or assassinations or even these pushed or insurrections or supported regime changes,

01:10:30.520 are they actually making the world a better place or is it really the result of the military

01:10:34.380 industrial complex? If you go back far enough, you could have the same conversation with a captain

01:10:45.100 of the Pharaoh's charioteers working in the upper Nile. You could have the same discussion

01:10:54.620 with a roman legionnaire coming back from the roman frontiers with a uh a chinese crossbowman

01:11:01.500 from the the wall you know what good are we doing well ultimately i mean again what we saw with uh

01:11:08.620 bin laden is if you are not occasionally policing in these areas and keeping an eye on real

01:11:15.260 troublemakers you know the trouble that is in the outside areas will come back and get you

01:11:21.580 you know they i mean that was the point about afghanistan it was it got so unstable there was 0.98

01:11:26.300 like a million and a half refugees in the western world you know opium had become the national

01:11:31.660 industry and you had all these terrorist groups they were running their bases there and and so

01:11:38.460 if you're not policing them and you have to police them occasionally by going in and you know hitting

01:11:46.300 doing the equivalent of hitting people with a truncheon trouble is going to come and get you 0.78

01:11:51.420 but you know that is also the price of civilization and that's the price for the pharaohs for the 0.71

01:11:57.180 romans for the chinese for the british and for us you know you've got to get involved sometimes 0.74

01:12:04.700 but to try and stay that's a lot more expensive and it doesn't work

01:12:09.740 to me and again it goes right back to the west bank or goes to the um iranians there is you know

01:12:19.940 a desire to a strong desire to improve you know to to actually modernize to set these conflicts

01:12:27.320 aside uh and there are people there are really good people on the west bank who are trapped by

01:12:34.400 that conflict and they can't do anything about it but if we impose a solution on them it won't work

01:12:42.400 though up but stand back and maybe when they reach for their own solution we do what we can to help

01:12:51.600 you know someday you know it's actually interesting again if you want to compare the uh

01:12:58.640 the Palestinians with the Israelis look at the residents of the other presidents of the countries

01:13:06.600 you know this palace built over Ramallah that you know Abbas lives in and remember that again you

01:13:17.960 know his sticky fingers and the sticky fingers of officials have diverted money from everything you

01:13:24.500 know, to their own accounts. Or you look at the palace or the residents of the

01:13:30.340 Israeli president, much more humble, much more modest. You know, there's a big

01:13:36.680 difference. And someday the Palestinians are going to come after the likes of 1.00

01:13:42.580 Abbas and the rest of them and get rid of them. There are Palestinians who 1.00

01:13:46.560 really want to have normalized relations with Israel, you know, to work, to be 1.00

01:13:52.940 able to freely visit hospitals no longer have the checkpoints um but they can't do it as long as they 0.81

01:13:58.860 have their leaders and again uh remember hamas took over in the gaza strip they killed hundreds 0.66

01:14:06.860 of palestinian authority figures you know it is a violent interval person are in there i mean

01:14:13.100 Hamas has got no legitimacy 0.93

01:14:20.240 except what it

01:14:21.580 has at its gunpoint

01:14:23.840 so I mean

01:14:25.280 the people who are going on about

01:14:28.140 Hamas and thinking that somehow

01:14:29.780 these guys are legitimate rulers of Gaza Strip 0.98

01:14:32.380 have no idea

01:14:34.660 of what the Gaza Strip is like

01:14:36.300 and what Hamas has done there

01:14:37.860 something that occurs to me

01:14:42.180 is that maybe we can talk a little bit about those multifaceted dimensions a bit more when

01:14:46.800 it comes to the Syrian conflict. The Syrian conflict is complicated, to put it politely,

01:14:53.840 and it's been going on now for several years. So it's hard to really know what the initial

01:14:59.660 instance was. But we have the Arab Spring come to light. We have Bashar Assad be challenged in

01:15:08.820 his authority he he looks like he's going to lose there suddenly seems to be there will be this sort

01:15:13.740 of almost like almost like the beginning of the spanish uh the spanish civil war uh this sort of

01:15:19.560 it was that multifaceted for that matter you have international actors you got like weapons coming

01:15:23.540 in from god knows where you got people who are are you know anarchists you got people who are uh

01:15:28.320 theocrats like it's it's all over the place but but the point is that you have this beginning

01:15:33.300 and and everything looks so hopeful for a few minutes there and then it felt like the obama

01:15:37.780 administration wouldn't back up at least who appeared in the media to be the good guys though

01:15:42.320 who knows if they were or the kurds and which are not the same people and then and then it all just

01:15:48.500 fell apart and it looks like the kurds are going to get squished into a uh you know a thimble and

01:15:53.520 thrown into the sea what what happened here uh well if you look back in 2011 2012 when the trouble 0.53

01:16:03.820 in Syria started, what I thought at the time was that actually, the best thing he could 0.60

01:16:11.680 actually do was to stand back and let Assad do what he's always done.

01:16:16.540 Because you actually remember that Syria is, well, most of the Syrian population are Sunni

01:16:24.580 Arabs. Assad was based on a ruling coalition of Druze, and again his own 0.82

01:16:35.080 particular Shia 12ers, people that lived high up in the mountains in western Syria.

01:16:42.460 And historically, you know, these people have been persecuted quite viciously by

01:16:49.060 the lowland Arabs except that you know when the the workers party sort of the

01:16:56.800 regime as it matured you know these minorities got into power and actually

01:17:03.460 they were part of the coalition that supported the side now the thing is you

01:17:09.740 know the whole Arab Spring and the idea of democracy yeah there were people who

01:17:13.240 were talking about democracy but if you look at the the real rebels that were

01:17:18.000 actually trying to overthrow Assad at the time, the Salafists had come out, you know,

01:17:25.240 the same people that were behind Al-Qaeda and everything else. 1.00

01:17:30.120 And if they won, you know, they would end up massacring the Druze, massacring the Baryonite 0.88

01:17:36.240 Christians, massacring the Shia up in the mountains, you know, could have killed a million 0.99

01:17:42.780 people. So maybe it would be best to let Assad do what he was doing, except that, of course, 0.97

01:17:50.160 outside influences kept coming in on both sides. And again, your analogy of the Spanish Civil War 0.81

01:17:56.760 is very apt. You had the Nazis and the Soviets busy running things, moving their arms in, 0.83

01:18:05.540 providing advisors and away you go so it's now been nine years of a non-stop conflict in fact

01:18:13.540 actually the one positive thing you can say about assad is that he is sort of behaving a little bit

01:18:18.020 like franco you know who had to listen to what the uh the nazis and the the fascists from italy

01:18:24.900 were saying but maybe he's got his own private agenda that he isn't going to be part of a larger

01:18:31.140 system you know but iran is all over his regime right now and uh you know the revolutionary guard

01:18:40.740 corps hezbollah one good thing about the civil war in ira um syria is it's killed a lot of members

01:18:49.700 of hezbollah and killed a lot of revolutionary guard corps types um that's actually weakened

01:18:55.540 their hold in some respects on both lebanon and iran respectively and and something else that's

01:19:04.180 kind of to to note there too just with the direct correlation to what happened with the spanish

01:19:08.820 civil war is the the big international element of course the reason we know so much about the

01:19:13.540 spanish civil war isn't just from the other documentation it's from the personal stories

01:19:16.820 of those who had come from first world countries other countries throughout the west and went and

01:19:21.540 served in the spanish civil war mostly on the left-wing side but but in uh both in both in

01:19:28.020 various parts of the middle east but especially in the syrian conflict as as we've seen uh with

01:19:32.860 returning uh freedom fighters or they returning terrorists we don't know uh but there have been

01:19:37.700 many international uh people not just ethnically connected with the region but people who just

01:19:42.640 felt uh that they needed to stand in solidarity with what was going on there for good or bad

01:19:47.080 reasons. And they went and found their way into Syria and joined militias and participated in the

01:19:53.040 war. So there's a real direct correlation there as well. Yeah, there's the equivalent of the

01:19:59.080 international brigades. And again, it's an ugly situation because it is an ideological war. It's

01:20:07.440 also very much a racialist war you know it's arabs against marionites and druids it's um 0.93

01:20:16.480 you also have you know the players who are supported by the turks the players who are

01:20:20.480 supported by the iranians you know some of the players are supported by the saudis or by saudi

01:20:26.080 money and the the americans interfering again very ineptly especially uh under obama and making

01:20:34.400 trouble worse you know and of course you know you had the americans were still there under trump

01:20:40.800 and he was looking for a way of getting out but it's it's a mess and it was there was an easy uh

01:20:49.920 idea an easy solution in 2011 but you know that's not popular with statesmen you know the idea that

01:20:56.800 you stand back and and let things take their natural course it's actually kind of uh reminds

01:21:02.800 me i guess the first time i was in the west bank i made a lot of use of a driver translator that i

01:21:09.760 had to search for very carefully because i didn't want one that was hired by the pa and would be

01:21:16.000 taking me on a potemkin tour i wanted to be able to talk to you know the store clerks and waiters

01:21:21.520 and and sort of ordinary people on my own i found someone who could handle it but uh the time we

01:21:28.320 spent together was something like an education for him and of course he was also concerned because

01:21:33.200 at that time the israelis were putting up a security fence uh a wall if uh there was a risk

01:21:39.760 of a sniper firing into israel or a fence in in more general areas but uh he i think he'd learned

01:21:47.120 something about some of the his own people from the questions i was asking and where i was looking

01:21:53.360 and um i still remember when uh driving back in into jerusalem and i was you know my next stop

01:22:01.040 after that was tel aviv but he said you know is there ever do you think there's ever going to be

01:22:04.960 peace between us i said i i think so but you know he maybe the wall has to go up first because this

01:22:11.120 is when the second intifada was underway and things were a little too tense and again i remember his

01:22:18.800 quote very well he said you know there's one thing i really hate and next time we're talking

01:22:24.160 with israelis can we just find one intermediary that we both trust you know to handle negotiations

01:22:31.520 for both of us i'm tired of all these people running in trying to get a nobel peace prize

01:22:37.440 and stamping all over the place and making a mess

01:22:42.320 you know it was interesting you know that this was a a young man he was about 10 years younger

01:22:48.080 than me at the time you know with a with a family but he had just seen so many people rushing in

01:22:54.960 and you know the roadmap piece and trying to impose something and the hope that they somehow

01:23:00.160 rather get international recognition for solving something that was unsolvable

01:23:04.320 but actually if you stood back and let people find their own solution it was possible

01:23:12.400 something that i wanted to ask you about uh right from the start and i'm glad we're getting to it

01:23:16.880 now is what does strategic thinking look like when it comes to a canadian perspective on these things

01:23:23.360 obviously we have large minority populations from some of these regions we also have our own rest

01:23:29.360 of populations here of populations fundraising for causes back home last time you and i were

01:23:35.840 discussing on the show here we did talk about how canada has always been a recruiting ground for

01:23:42.240 insurgency or the money to help with insurgency uh right wing left wing communist fascist

01:23:48.640 nationalist uh today even today uh there are there there are people get charged with with uh

01:23:55.200 funding trying to fund uh for the ethnic ethno state at home what what does strategic thinking

01:24:01.200 look like when it comes to that when you were involved with this what did it talk about was it

01:24:04.720 just was it just game theory was it honest discussions of like the nuts and bolts of how

01:24:10.160 many how many hulls are out there how many tanks was it more around well we just don't want the

01:24:14.960 russians to take over the arctic what what is strategic thinking when it comes to canada a

01:24:19.440 place that's the second largest country in the world but not exactly known for having a very

01:24:23.680 large or well-equipped armed forces given uh given our lack of procurement strategy

01:24:29.440 uh well thank you because i i now have a chance to take a cheap shot at the our current government

01:24:35.360 which deserves every cheap shot they can collect um but the traditional canadian view of uh our

01:24:42.880 our security policy has actually been based on the first world war and the second world war

01:24:49.360 you know you look at all this idea of peacekeeping and everything else and you know the whole baby

01:24:53.600 blue un thing and so on that wasn't altruism that wasn't boy scouts with rifles that was actually

01:25:00.800 our naked self-interest is that we don't want regional problems getting out of hand and creating

01:25:07.760 a wider war that drags us in so that we lose another 45 000 or you know 65 000 people and

01:25:18.480 threaten our government stability for decades um that's why we're there and that's why we're

01:25:24.960 interested in this thing and keeping an eye on on these regional problems that is that is

01:25:31.120 canadian security policy in a nutshell keep the uh these problems from getting too big

01:25:37.840 but the the other side of things yeah you know we've seen now that the trouble between the uh

01:25:45.280 gaza strip and you know their shelling of uh cities in israel has led to demonstrations here

01:25:52.000 where again canadian jews got physically attacked and there are people who've been getting all

01:25:57.440 sorts of hate mail because again you've got you know those romantics on the left you somehow or

01:26:04.240 other think this is a simple morality play of of good versus evil and they proved you know they

01:26:10.400 could not be any more wrong and of course the other thing is that the religious side things 0.98

01:26:15.200 Because we've got Salafists here.

01:26:16.940 We've got plenty of Salafists here. 1.00

01:26:20.140 So, yeah, I mean, this has already created some instability inside the country. 1.00

01:26:25.640 And we've really got to be paying attention to this. 0.98

01:26:28.500 But in the long run, you know, the stability in the Middle East is going to rest with Israel.

01:26:36.860 Their technology, their prosperity, their stability guarantees everybody else. 0.67

01:26:42.760 because remember israel is the main point for arabs who are worried about iran you know that

01:26:49.480 they want to have good relations with with israel israel is the element of stability

01:26:56.040 and what you're seeing now by the pa uh and by hamas is trying to underwhelm uh overwhelm that

01:27:04.760 stability trying to destroy it so things can be as chaotic as ever because they personally find

01:27:11.000 profitable maybe just before we go back into the region itself we can talk a little bit about the

01:27:19.320 fact that for some reason the the grits the liberals in canada the democrats in the united

01:27:26.120 states it whenever whenever regimes change hands uh to say our own regimes our own governments

01:27:33.880 somehow you know harper and the tories they were always clear where they stood they stood with

01:27:38.360 israel right that was it that was it that was clear that was what was going to happen when you

01:27:42.660 get justin trudeau involved justin trudeau is making pivots towards some rather unsavory parts

01:27:48.140 of the of uh the muslim canadian world and the islamic congress this is not of course a denigration

01:27:54.240 of any one of the muslim faith it's a but it's a statement of fact that people of dubious character

01:27:59.600 or intent are very close to this current prime minister and the same is true of the democrat

01:28:05.400 president in the united states how did this happen how did it happen that left-wing governments

01:28:10.460 throughout the west uh just came to side with the palestinian authority and with and with any enemy

01:28:16.120 of israel and somehow right-wing governments throughout the west have remained faithful to

01:28:20.480 israel well i think the first thing is that most political thinking is not that deep 0.97

01:28:28.620 and for for the left for the progressive side you know i hate to say this but cowboys and indians

01:28:37.640 it's a simple morality play you know here are the israelis the you know a modern nation state 0.72

01:28:44.100 and it looks like they're cracking down on the palestinians you know all the complexities of 0.70

01:28:49.760 an asymmetrical relationship you know a hundred years of history all the different dimensions

01:28:56.920 escape them it looks like a simple morality play and so the only engagement with it is emotional

01:29:02.600 it's not logical you know in fact actually it's one of the things you've seen a lot of media

01:29:07.400 commentary is sort of ignore this ignore that ignore this it all boils down to this well no it

01:29:13.080 doesn't it actually demands that you have some education well um that should be informed yeah

01:29:25.000 and biden is uh i'm afraid to say this but yeah it looks like he doesn't keep his concentration

01:29:33.080 any longer than about two minutes and trudeau is the worst educated worst brief worst prepared

01:29:39.720 prime minister we've had since 1867 i mean bar none there's been no one worse than him

01:29:47.640 and that is very clear they are not experts in any part of uh

01:29:51.720 of diplomacy and then that that is a major problem um the other side of i guess it's

01:30:00.280 pretend progressive credentials again the palestinians uh well the pa got to play a lot

01:30:08.600 with the soviet bloc you know they've got very good uh progressive qualifications if you don't

01:30:16.680 look that closely so once again the sort of the natural allegiance there um and the third thing

01:30:23.560 of course is domestic politics sometime around 2006 2007 in canada the jewish vote became smaller

01:30:31.800 than the muslim vote so in canada you know you've got all sorts of politicians paying attention to

01:30:40.120 what they think are muslim uh issues without again being that well educated because again it's

01:30:48.440 is a history in canada but politicians are often not paying that much attention to the details

01:30:55.800 um there are for example iranians and many iranian canadians would love canada to list

01:31:01.880 the iranian revolutionary guard corps as a terrorist entity but you know somehow that

01:31:06.360 that would be you know might affect the iranian vote there's this idea that somehow or other there

01:31:11.680 is a a monolithic muslim vote a monolithic arab vote and the belief that there is and so you get

01:31:20.760 the very simple solution for problem the i mean to try and appeal to people that and they're not

01:31:29.940 even considering any of the details in there i think it's funny that we still entertain the idea

01:31:35.500 that there is a monolithic vote anywhere.

01:31:38.040 I mean, I'm sure that just as we,

01:31:41.560 if multiculturalism was real,

01:31:43.340 that would mean that we would all mix

01:31:45.520 all of our various ideas all the time. 1.00

01:31:47.760 Perhaps we'd keep our somewhat ethnic

01:31:49.260 and religious belonging, 0.96

01:31:50.460 but we would wear different clothes,

01:31:52.200 we'd go to different restaurants

01:31:53.320 and we would all be able to have

01:31:55.540 a small L liberal sort of attitude

01:31:58.540 towards issues of our time

01:32:00.220 and kind of live out the values of the enlightenment.

01:32:02.800 It's kind of ironic that it is our most left-wing

01:32:05.280 supposedly progressive parties uh that stereotype the worst on this count and and further to that

01:32:10.980 i think particularly when it comes to the revolutionary guard and other things like i mean

01:32:14.380 here at home i what the people the reason people are here is they wanted to escape the things that

01:32:21.040 were going wrong in the home country so why would you pivot to that thing that that they obviously

01:32:27.880 were trying to walk away from i don't think there's any syrian refugees that are uh missing 0.50

01:32:32.700 barrel bombs and want to live in a time of terror and unrest well it's um this is one thing i've

01:32:41.800 always noticed is someone who claims there's a monolithic community you know like the black

01:32:47.600 community will not stand for or the you know the first nations community will not stand for or you

01:32:52.280 know the arab community will not stand for this is usually someone representing themselves because

01:32:57.760 there is no such community except in their own minds and in the mind of you 0.99

01:33:03.320 know the more credulous among us because again you know when I talk about the

01:33:09.780 Middle East I say there's different layers there's different complexities

01:33:13.420 it's all backgrounds there's much to consider but that's true for just about

01:33:17.380 everything so when someone comes along trying to sell you a solution that will

01:33:21.520 fit the entire community you know it's usually a solution that's gonna fit them

01:33:27.060 and they claim they're representing the entire community and that's usually the the point where

01:33:31.620 you should stop trusting them what all together and escort them out of the office and tell your

01:33:37.380 secretary i don't want to talk to that guy ever again yeah i i yeah i've got a i've got a monorail

01:33:43.540 to sell you there john it's for all of edmonton okay oh yeah famous episode of the simpsons like

01:33:53.220 every time i see the lrt site under construction i start thinking the monorail song yeah yeah

01:34:02.260 i mean i mean but that's that brilliant thing right i mean i i i used to say this about vitamins

01:34:06.900 this isn't trying to denigrate anybody who thinks that vitamins is the greatest thing ever but i

01:34:10.020 always thought that if people were people were silly enough to buy them and and urinate out

01:34:14.100 98 of the materials and the vitamins you know they shouldn't you should tell them that was a silly

01:34:18.980 thing to do. But I also never believed that I should ban the manufacture of them. I should just

01:34:22.920 shame people into being such terrible people that they would sell these to people. Like, I don't

01:34:28.280 somehow, I don't know if I'm a libertarian. I'm just a moralist. Like, I just feel like shame

01:34:32.540 would be enough on both sides to get the job done. I don't need to build a regime to outlaw

01:34:37.620 vitamins. That's a waste of time and money. Let's get back to the Middle East just briefly here

01:34:42.580 and and just kind of close out on just just the reality of this conflict that we have on our hands

01:34:49.840 right now maybe actually maybe first we could touch on on the Kurds situation we'll talk about

01:34:53.880 that first John what is happening with the Kurds because as far as I could tell out of all the

01:34:58.680 other stuff that was happening when it came to the Syrian conflict the Kurds were kind of

01:35:03.140 indisputably the good guys that seemed to be the one thing that everybody else seemed to be

01:35:08.300 on the same page with and then they just kind of disappeared from the news so did they actually get

01:35:13.580 crushed by the turks or what happened to the kurds well remember there are kurds in iran

01:35:19.740 kurds in iraq kurds in syria kurds in turkey and uh iran has repressed the kurds many times 0.95

01:35:28.860 iraq has repressed the kurds many times the turks you know are absolutely murderers

01:35:35.340 but of course the other sad thing is that after a while we got bored we stopped paying attention 0.99

01:35:42.940 to the kurds the kurds are in the same situation the same trouble they've always been in now

01:35:48.380 they they do have sort of a de facto uh quasi state of their own in northern iraq but again

01:35:57.100 you know the iranians and the turks would both like to close that now and we wouldn't be paying

01:36:02.780 more attention but the western public got bored and tuned it out as happens you know it's too

01:36:12.700 complex too many details we've heard it too often there are other things to pay attention to

01:36:20.300 yeah and usually it means that someone else to be entirely ignorant of it

01:36:26.540 yeah and i i think that ultimately the only the only solution i kind of had to that situation

01:36:32.140 was that there should be a kurdish state but of course i'm kind of slipping into post-world war

01:36:37.980 one thinking there again of uh we'll just make all these little ethno states in europe that'll go

01:36:42.860 fine i'm sure that'll all work out just fine and we all know how that worked out in the end so

01:36:48.300 well it's interesting a friend of mine asked for uh i kind of accidentally wrote a chronology of

01:36:55.420 the second world war and i backdated to uh november 11th 1918 because so many issues in

01:37:03.180 the first world war started with the creation of these you know miniature ethnic states so 0.68

01:37:09.580 if you want to know why the germans were so vicious when they closed in on the polls in 1939 0.97

01:37:15.180 you know they were picking up the uh the book that was written in 1919 and and writing the 0.86

01:37:21.020 next chapter in it you know if the kurds had got their own state you know in in the paris accords

01:37:28.460 well one you know where would it have access to the world's ocean and international trade um

01:37:36.380 but yeah would that have solved a lot of problems today there would be problems that would be

01:37:40.860 missing on the other hand the the kurds would be in border conflicts on every in every direction

01:37:46.780 anyway uh some problems just aren't that solvable not that easily um all you can do is basically i

01:37:55.660 guess with the courage case is make sure they've got enough to defend themselves and that no one

01:38:03.500 persecute them with the same freedom that they used to have

01:38:09.100 as we kind of close out here john again coming back to the issue at hand when the the conflict

01:38:16.220 inside of israel right now between israel gaza between uh the state of israel and of course

01:38:22.520 hamas the the the question of the day i guess is is still is is this gonna is this gonna escalate

01:38:31.720 or are they gonna be able to calm it back down bring down the rockets keep the iron dome going

01:38:37.300 and just and just have this kind of peter out the way it's petered out before or is this is

01:38:42.900 this going to rise especially with the weak administration in the united states let alone

01:38:46.860 our weak administration here and with everybody preoccupied with covid is this going to get out

01:38:51.800 of hand is this not necessarily the big one but is it the stepping stones to the big one because

01:38:56.460 no one's paying attention everyone's looking the other way

01:38:59.500 well here's something interesting for you remember in 2006 hamas picked a fight with israel

01:39:06.680 and showered thousands of rockets in the northern third of Israel.

01:39:11.520 It killed a lot of Israeli civilians.

01:39:14.420 It was the first time this had happened.

01:39:17.120 And Hamas, sorry, Hezbollah has got maybe 70,000 rockets.

01:39:22.160 They've got just as many rockets and of the same type 0.85

01:39:25.920 and from the same source as Hamas does. 0.96

01:39:31.200 But the point is that Hezbollah has not salvoed those tens of thousands of rockets into northern Israel yet.

01:39:41.440 And why is that?

01:39:44.460 I'll tell you why.

01:39:46.500 Most of the leaders of Hezbollah have built themselves very nice homes in some of the best parts of Lebanon.

01:39:54.000 And the Israelis know where they live.

01:39:55.940 So you spend six, you know, eight months getting that pool extension just perfect, 0.99

01:40:03.860 and you want to start firing Fahir rockets in Jerusalem, 0.82

01:40:08.580 there's going to be a thousand-pound smart bomb to the roof of your pool.

01:40:13.700 So they don't. 0.98

01:40:14.980 You know, it's important for Hezbollah to look like they threaten Israel,

01:40:18.340 but to actually really threaten Israel?

01:40:20.660 No, they don't.

01:40:22.500 hamas however the leaders uh when they don't live elsewhere outside of gaza

01:40:29.940 you know they have their bunkers they have their buildings and they make sure they're surrounded

01:40:34.900 by lots and lots of gazas you know children and women put the multiple rocket launcher into the

01:40:42.260 alleyway between an orphanage and a hospital and start firing it's it's harder to solve because 0.58

01:40:48.660 again, Hamas is, you know, anyone who's killed, you know, in the result of the Israeli counter-bombardment 0.94

01:40:57.300 is a martyr, and that's a good thing, you know, welcome. The main point is, can the Israelis get 0.99

01:41:04.820 at Hamas and get their leadership and get a large number of their troops? Well, a large number of

01:41:12.100 their troops are underground, and a lot of their leaders are well hidden. So it takes a while for

01:41:18.340 the israelis to find them but uh you know there's talk about you know 200 dead and so on and so

01:41:24.660 forth and yeah a lot of people forget how this happened and this was actually a very very cunning

01:41:31.860 ploy by the israelis on thursday last week where they got on social media and tweeted that the

01:41:38.820 israeli army was about to close in the gaza and you know they showed pictures of equipment and

01:41:44.500 talked about how they're just about to invade gaza so a lot of hamas went in underground to

01:41:50.900 the tunnels so that they could start firing anti-tank rockets and mortars at the supposed

01:41:55.700 invading israelis and it was a ploy it meant they got in the tunnels away from the built-up uh mostly

01:42:03.940 away from the built-up areas and started moving to where they thought the israelis were coming

01:42:08.180 and the israelis launched a massive airstrike 150 aircraft with ground penetrating bombs

01:42:16.180 they may have actually killed uh a lot more than 200 it may be five or six hundred who knows they

01:42:24.020 crushed a lot of tunnels but again hamas as far as they're concerned you know they've lost

01:42:29.940 19 year old 20 year old men there's plenty more where they came from the the key thing is can

01:42:36.260 the israelis find their leaders and stop their money now that's the whole point because there's

01:42:43.060 more dimensions to this and until they do this is going to limp along but um the israeli defenses

01:42:53.220 against iraq uh sorry rockets coming out of hamas are pretty good i mean the iron dome intercepts

01:43:00.180 about 90 of them there are other defenses um civil engineering is good but problem is

01:43:08.020 um israel is being bombarded by a non-nation state actor which is to say that's not responsible to

01:43:15.220 anybody it's also hard i mean imagine any other country on earth they would put up with being 0.91

01:43:22.260 regularly bombarded no they would they would blast them into existence yeah i mean the point

01:43:30.580 if someone was doing this the united states you know how long how patient would the americans be

01:43:36.180 or the russians or the chinese um so this is gonna i think go on for a little while but 0.83

01:43:42.900 I think if the Israelis start making me. 0.98

01:43:51.840 I think we might have lost John there. 1.00

01:43:54.460 We'll see if he comes back.

01:43:57.060 Just a little bit of freezing there.

01:44:00.140 But we were going to close out the show pretty quickly here anyways,

01:44:04.660 but we'll let John come back if he does come back.

01:44:07.260 I think something to kind of interject here is that to the point of,

01:44:11.620 to the point of how are we going to find the Palestinian leaders and that sort of thing,

01:44:15.260 or how is Israel going to deal with that, whatever.

01:44:17.600 I'll say this.

01:44:18.900 If there's one thing that I've learned from any number of spy movies

01:44:22.120 and conversations with ex-military guys, etc.,

01:44:25.440 it is that people used to joke about dealing with the CIA.

01:44:29.180 People didn't joke so much about dealing with the KGB or the MI5.

01:44:32.780 But if there is a group of people you do not want to mess with, that is Mossad.

01:44:36.680 And that's the Israeli special forces slash intelligence people in in Israel and throughout the world. Let's be clear. They are everywhere. You don't want to mess with those people. They don't make jokes and they don't send their message twice. You get it once or you don't get it at all because you're not waking up.

01:44:57.280 So all I have to say is that whoever is in the Palestinian Authority, if you value your own skin, I would very much encourage you to stop firing rockets into Israel because they will find you and you will not exist anymore. 0.95

01:45:10.640 So I think that's an important point to leave on for that conversation. If John returns, like I said, we'll have him back on in a moment, but we're about to close out the show anyways. We're in the last 10 minutes. 1.00

01:45:21.860 Pivoting from questions of the Middle East and conflicts within the wider world, we'll talk a little bit about the unrest that's happening in Canada over COVID.

01:45:32.800 My dearest beloved just sent me an article that she had discovered on CTV News.

01:45:39.660 We both take a lot of umbrage with COVID and the various restrictions thereof, particularly the mask thing.

01:45:46.520 I don't know if you want to put us as anti-maskers or something like that,

01:45:50.680 but I think it's more fair to say that we have doubts about their efficacy, to use that turn of phrase,

01:45:56.540 and perhaps also that circular question if the masks work why the social distancing if the social

01:46:03.460 distancing works why the mask if the plexiglass works better than both why either and finally

01:46:08.680 if you get vaccinated and you still have to wear the mask what was the point of the vaccine so

01:46:13.620 anyways apparently this is coming to us from ctv a license suspension garnishment of wages

01:46:19.860 jail time possible for those with unpaid public health order tickets and this is coming out of

01:46:25.420 Regina this has been discussed in British Columbia as well so I'm not sure if sorry I made a little

01:46:31.620 ding there I'm not sure if well where everybody's tuning in from but here in British Columbia

01:46:38.280 there's also been discussions that as you renew your license not particularly your insurance I

01:46:43.180 don't know if they're able to kind of trace it that quickly but as you as you go to renew your

01:46:47.580 license and that sort of thing you you could be blocked from getting your license back or perhaps

01:46:53.000 paying, you'll be paying your parking tickets and your speeding tickets, just like when you go to

01:46:57.900 renew your license, renew your insurance, you will have to pay your COVID fines too. Now, of course,

01:47:03.260 COVID fines can range anywhere from, I think, a simple $600 fine or $300 fine for failing to wear

01:47:08.900 a mask instead of a store or whatever that is, all the way up to the $2,000 and $3,000 mark.

01:47:14.620 And again, this article citing, and again, this would be provincial authority because health

01:47:18.340 orders are provincial, just as just as ticketing is provincial. We see again here, garnishment of

01:47:24.460 wages. I'm trying to imagine, again, let's let's just go back in time, right? Let's jump in a time

01:47:29.920 machine. And let's go back a very, very, very short time. Okay, today is the 18th of May,

01:47:37.100 the 18th of May. And the lockdown in BC basically started the day after St. Patrick's Day. And

01:47:43.380 St. Patrick's Day is the 17th of March, I believe.

01:47:48.400 So March 17, 2020 to today is 12 months, and then April, March, April, and May.

01:47:58.040 So we're at 14 months for that in British Columbia.

01:48:01.460 And if you had told me on St. Patrick's Day of 2020 that that was what was going to happen,

01:48:08.000 I wouldn't have believed you.

01:48:09.140 I wouldn't have believed you even a little bit.

01:48:10.460 we're going to pivot back to uh john here and we're going to close out our section on this

01:48:15.640 question of the middle east it's good to have you back john uh israel you were talking about the

01:48:20.320 the salvos into israel and uh the point that i just made just as uh as you were gone there for

01:48:25.020 a little while we talked about covid briefly but if i was the palestinian authority i definitely

01:48:29.620 wouldn't be or or hezbollah or hamas for that matter i wouldn't be trying to get into israel's 0.61

01:48:35.400 face because if there's one people that one group of people that scare me like none other it's massad

01:48:40.940 Mossad does not take prisoners, and they will find you, and they will get you.

01:48:45.340 So I don't know why anybody thinks they're going to get away with this anywhere.

01:48:49.240 I think that Mossad will eventually find the leaders of Hamas, and a very brutal example will be made of them.

01:48:56.920 Well, the Israelis have a lot of intelligence deployed opposite the Gaza Strip from all their different agencies.

01:49:05.900 that's one of the issues is that they're always looking for Hamas leaders and a lot of the core

01:49:13.760 leadership of Hamas doesn't live in the Gaza trip anymore you know they lived in Damascus they live

01:49:20.120 in some other other states but it also explains like when the Israelis talk about how they're

01:49:27.500 hesitant to attack buildings because they're often trying to get the people people in the

01:49:33.440 Gaza Strip to leave before they level a building but again you look at a couple

01:49:38.540 of the towers especially I think the the AP tower the tower that had the AP

01:49:42.860 offices if you look at the footage there was secondary explosions the mass had a

01:49:49.460 store probably had a store of rockets underneath the building and the Israeli

01:49:54.080 bomb set that in a store off you know it again talks to Hamas and basically how 0.55

01:50:00.640 careless they are with the lives of the people they claim to be uh representing but they've 0.73

01:50:06.480 killed hamas has killed a lot more people in the ghazan strip than the israelis ever have

01:50:13.600 that fact alone should compel people but again people people aren't told that narrative they're

01:50:17.840 told as if as if israel is dropping bombs from the sky on innocent school children just playing

01:50:23.360 in a yard somewhere that's all and that's all they do they don't do anything else they only 0.89

01:50:27.760 there's only those victims and none others well also another sign of the insanity of hamas

01:50:34.800 remember that hamas gets electricity it's like i mean the gaz's trip gets his electricity

01:50:40.240 and his water from israeli sources and they've been shelling them how smart is that

01:50:48.080 you know again they talk about how their hospitals are overcrowded well that's because

01:50:52.240 their hospitals are also understaffed and under equipped because the money that's come in for

01:50:57.280 hospitals has stuck to the fingers of hamas officials so their hospitals are inadequate

01:51:03.680 and again a long part of the history of hamas of the gaza strip is that a lot of their wounded

01:51:09.200 might end up being treated in israeli hospitals again which are being shelled from the gaza strip

01:51:15.680 i mean hamas is not a rational enemy and no one should ever think that they are

01:51:22.240 it is absolutely mind-boggling that uh that people can kind of get themselves into this

01:51:29.380 cognitive dissonance uh no matter what your feelings might be towards particular ethnicity

01:51:33.500 or whatever it just again your very survival depends on this other group of people why would

01:51:39.780 you bite the hand that feeds you well yeah you're not rational and it's the one thing i learned you 0.51

01:51:46.080 know from the two trips on the west bank and the many times i've talked to palestinians is that 0.99

01:51:50.600 the rational people among them are hoping for an end of the conflict and they know that their own

01:51:56.560 leadership is the barrier towards peace and you know that they can start working with the israelis

01:52:02.800 the problem is is that you know the leadership among the palestinians hamas or the pa i mean 0.92

01:52:11.160 their sole card is hatred of israel and they're not rational and they've done incalculable harm 0.92

01:52:17.200 to their own people time and time again and and and to what end i mean they are no freer they are 0.98

01:52:25.320 no better off since the palestinian authority things have gone worse for them so it's not 0.60

01:52:30.180 this this is nonsense uh and since the terrorist groups took over but it this is nonsense and it 0.73

01:52:35.540 will this aggression will not stand i believe is a certain phrase used by a certain um a certain

01:52:41.600 senior bush at one point and i have a sneaking suspicion that uh that fire and fury will rain

01:52:46.940 down upon hamas rather soon well well there's one last point to consider and of course you know as

01:52:53.020 westerners we always look at an issue like israel and and hamas in terms of right and wrong you know

01:53:00.460 you you've had that discussion many times about you know the legal history of israel and whether

01:53:05.980 or not and this was moral and so these are important questions especially to israelis

01:53:11.180 but remember in arab culture especially with you know the palestinians right and wrong doesn't come

01:53:18.620 into it honor and shame is a more important construct and this also explains part of the

01:53:25.020 motivation is that as far as the palestinians are concerned they're shamed and the only way 0.55

01:53:31.100 they can redeem their honor is by humiliating israel and if you think there's actually going 1.00

01:53:36.780 to be a rational uh and legal end to this crisis no it's going to have to be when palestinians 0.88

01:53:43.580 themselves make the choice that they've done enough it's time you know it's it's failed 1.00

01:53:48.380 it's time to go and move on and do something else but they can't do it with the current crop of

01:53:53.340 leaders that they have an escalation of commitment i believe sheldon claire called it not too long

01:53:59.820 ago a president of national firearms association you uh you get stuck in your codependency and

01:54:05.020 And there's no way out.

01:54:06.180 So hopefully the people in the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank, all Palestinians everywhere, find a way to not necessarily just fold into Israeli society.

01:54:15.660 They have a distinct culture.

01:54:17.200 They have a distinct background, a distinct religion.

01:54:18.820 But they can separate themselves from the people who are clearly abusing them and outright enslaving them and using them for human shields.

01:54:25.700 Yeah, using their children and warping them, stealing off all the wealth that flows into the country for their own personal profit.

01:54:33.920 Absolutely. John, thank you so much for joining us today and just regaling us with your expertise

01:54:40.400 and helping us understand better an incredibly complicated situation, perhaps the most complicated

01:54:45.080 international affairs of the Middle East and the current conflict in Gaza and Israel. Thank you so

01:54:49.440 much. You're welcome. Absolutely. We'll, of course, have John on again in the near future, and we're

01:54:55.320 very thankful for his expertise and what he can share with us. As we close out our show today,

01:55:01.260 Again, I just want to refer back to this point that was, again, sent by my by my beloved to me, who I want it to be very clear.

01:55:09.640 She's way out of my league and I have no idea why she's with me, but we'll talk about that another time.

01:55:13.880 The point is that as we look at we look at this situation where they are literally going to garnish wages and prevent you from exercising your privileges and or rights.

01:55:25.700 I mean, we've already been down this road with assembly and your free speech and apparently going and worshiping in a church.

01:55:32.080 So it doesn't matter what it is.

01:55:33.360 COVID communism is here, hopefully not to stay.

01:55:36.620 But we're we're in the midst of some very serious, well, trespasses, trespasses against our liberties.

01:55:43.220 And now apparently here comes the final stick for for the various carrot of obeying the authorities because we said so.

01:55:51.400 And that is that they will take your money from you.

01:55:54.520 they will take it out of your own two hands i mean the libertarians going off with taxation

01:56:00.040 is theft i mean they they had a grand old time with that argument for for a lot of years but

01:56:05.480 this is something more sinister it's something more insidious right how you wish to respond to

01:56:10.520 this virus outside from somebody literally you know purposely spreading it with intent um whatever

01:56:18.040 the nature of the the virus might be we're not making a declarative statement here about that

01:56:24.280 But the point is that outside of literally, you know, trying to procure the virus and then spread the virus to other people, perhaps not even to yourself, like trying to spread it to yourself, that'd be a different question.

01:56:35.940 And indeed, that used to be the way that we inoculated people.

01:56:38.420 I'm old enough to remember people socializing their children on purpose in order to have them get chickenpox so that they would all develop, of course, their resistance to chickenpox.

01:56:48.980 God knows how many, you know, one in a million children that killed.

01:56:52.080 I have no idea.

01:56:52.960 and of course chicken pox can be deadly very rarely etc and there and it stays with you for

01:56:58.040 life it actually resides at the base of your spine i believe like a few other viruses which

01:57:01.900 don't come to mind right now if we bring my father onto the show at some point he can regale

01:57:05.940 us with with medical advice about that sort of stuff but the point that i'm trying to drive home

01:57:09.840 here is that unless you can prove demonstrably prove that people are trying to spread the

01:57:17.340 violence with intent to kill you have no grounds you just don't you have no grounds so now you're

01:57:25.280 charging people with a regulatory offense which which was made by an ordering council it was not

01:57:30.160 voted on right so this is our ordering council this was a public health order signed into law

01:57:35.280 not even into law into the regulations that we must obey uh by you know the minister presented

01:57:41.000 by the deputy minister given to the minister uh and signed into law that is not a law it's not

01:57:46.720 it certainly wasn't voted on by the legislature people didn't get to weigh their their you know

01:57:51.780 vote on this and and it's just mind-boggling to me that we are now literally talking about

01:57:56.440 garnishment do you know what garnishment means do you understand what blocking people to services

01:58:00.640 is do you understand what that means like this is like cutting people's utilities right like

01:58:05.340 you do this when they don't pay their bills you do this when someone fails to pay their cell phone

01:58:11.860 bill suddenly their cell phone doesn't work anymore except on wi-fi there are consequences

01:58:15.940 these things these are contractual obligations and we understand why they occur in all these

01:58:20.740 other instances but this is the equivalent it is just below the equivalent of refusing to serve

01:58:28.260 someone say that they had called 9-1-1 and they needed your help to to be someone an authority

01:58:33.940 to be a paramedic or to be a police officer or to be an emergency doctor or whatever a fireman

01:58:39.060 and refuse to serve somebody based on we're not quite at ethnicity we're not quite at race we're

01:58:43.940 not quite at religion but we're getting pretty damn close with saying that because you failed

01:58:49.060 to mask you are now going to get a fine from the government for failing to comply so what that is

01:58:55.460 is a bill it's a bill and apparently now on top of all the taxes i already pay on top of all of

01:59:01.740 the ways i must comply with the government in all other ways i now have to pay a bill so i have to

01:59:06.780 mask or i have to pay a bill am i going to get fined for not getting vaccinated this is insane

01:59:11.820 this is completely insane and that will not stand people are not going to stand for that

01:59:18.600 that's not going to happen so again you know we i don't mean to make every episode about covid but

01:59:24.280 it's just i you know she did send this to me and i did want to give that shout out but also it's

01:59:28.360 legitimately an insane point i can't imagine doing that to someone i can't imagine imposing that kind

01:59:34.100 of policy on somebody this is to put not masking and other other trespasses against covid up there

01:59:40.480 with the same level as being a deadbeat dad or not paying your taxes like that's that doesn't

01:59:47.120 make sense you can't equivocate these things this is a false equivalency but we have fallen into

01:59:53.040 this because we're here we're here now the idea that the government really could take your license

01:59:57.840 away for having one beer with dinner because you've made the rates so low the idea that they

02:00:03.520 could come and test you hours after you've already gotten home and you may have had a couple in the

02:00:08.640 backyard we had that law come up from the liberals the current federal liberals this has gotten out

02:00:13.680 of hand it's gotten completely insane and it needs to stop it needs to stop and i've said it before

02:00:19.120 and i'll say it again on the show if everybody just got up tomorrow and started acting normally

02:00:25.280 again and just pretending like 2019 ever never ended and just moved on with their lives washed

02:00:30.800 their hands and maybe didn't cough directly on grandma because you shouldn't be doing that

02:00:35.760 anyways don't cough on grandma that's not okay then then we could just move on with life

02:00:41.680 and i don't understand why our own leadership is so married to this nonsense that they that

02:00:46.880 they are literally holding us hostage i don't get it it makes no sense to me and shame on all of you

02:00:52.000 it's not a joke shame on you if you are in leadership and you are listening to this broadcast

02:00:55.680 right now and you have an iota of sympathy or empathy for that idea of garnishing people's

02:01:01.280 wages and fining people. You are the problem and you should resign immediately and get the hell

02:01:07.800 out of leadership because you are not a leader. You are a coward. End of discussion. So we're

02:01:14.820 going to close out the show on that extremely positive note. But of all things, right, in all

02:01:19.300 things charity, in all things we hope and pray. And that is my hope and my prayer, especially as

02:01:24.620 come up to this Pentecost feast as the spirit comes down, that finally some common sense

02:01:31.400 descends on the people who are supposedly in charge and get us out of this rather ridiculous

02:01:37.680 situation. That was Mountain Standard time. Tune in tomorrow. We have Grant Havers on to discuss

02:01:44.240 what's happening in conservatism in Canada, particularly Alberta, as things fall apart for

02:01:48.140 the Kennedy government. And we're also going to be talking to Mr. Steidel, I believe his name is,

02:01:53.060 of Stop the Spray about a recent report that spraying after cutting down all the trees in

02:01:57.700 British Columbia is a really bad idea that actually creates toxins in our environment. So we shouldn't

02:02:02.020 do that. So that's going to be tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow morning, 9am Pacific, 10am Mountain.

02:02:07.420 Thank you so much for watching.

Western Standard - May 18, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - May 18, 2021

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript