Consortium News

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu this week used the seat of world diplomacy — established to pursue peace — to spread their vile supremacist ideologies. Ray McGovern & Rick Wolff. Watch the replay.

Two genocidal maniacs portray themselves as the leading lights of the Middle East and the world from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly.

1. Trump Says He Decides Fate of Nations

2. Netanyahu’s Paranoid Aggression

3. Lavrov Speaks and Kiev Lies

Plus the U.S.-China summit in Washington.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 to among other things, end the “scourge of war.” While it has unsurprisingly failed to do that, the U.N. remains the seat of world diplomacy where a certain decorum between nations is the rule, creating an atmosphere for dialogue.

In steps Donald Trump who began Tuesday’s speech at the GA by beating his chest proclaiming himself king of the world: 

“Our economy is the envy of the world.

Our military is the most powerful on earth.
Our technology is second to none and we are leading in virtually everything.

Our energy is fueling the planet.
America is rising.

Our nation is growing.
Our power is expanding.”

But of course America doesn’t have an empire.

“We’ve invested more money in the United States military in the past 12 months than ever before,” he reminded everyone, including the leaders of nations sitting in the audience whose innocent people are slain by that military. “And this term, it will be $1.5 trillion.”

He reserved special venom for America’s latest victim of unprovoked violence:

“For 51 years, the fanatical Iranian regime has ruled by bloodshed and mass murder, spreading death and carnage and chaos across the entire Middle East and beyond. They were the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no more.”

Trump dare not look in a mirror.

For there he would see the face of the real bully of the Middle East, who, with bases of smoldering ruins in the region, is bully no more.

He said: “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East, or even the world.

Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?

Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

He threatened genocide from inside the United Nations.

Then the man commititing genocide spoke two days later. Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech encapsulated the paranoia, aggression, projection and Chutzpah of an expansionist Israel. It’s all there in one speech. He opens by telling all the “moral cowards” who hadn’t left the hall yet to leave now. There was indeed a mass walkout of 77 nations as soon as he began to speak.

And then he told the tale of victim Israel surrounded by hostile Arabs. If you go into someone’s neighborhood and start kicking people out of their houses and occupy them you’ll be surrounded by hostile neighbors too.

Before Netanyahu spoke, Qatar’s emir called Gaza a “genocide in every sense of the word, and a stain of shame on the conscience of humanity.” Lula of Brazil referred to the “genocide of women and children” carried out by the Netanyahu government. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called it a “genocidal war” against Palestinians.

King Abdullah of Jordan condemned the “de facto annexation” of parts of the West Bank, the “forced displacement” of Palestinians as a “war crime,” and said Israel’s “appetite for expansion” threatened the whole region. He said Gaza and the West Bank were two elements of the same Israeli strategy.

But Netanyahu said that accusing Israel of genocide was “the lie of the century.”

Despite Trump’s desecration of the General Assembly hall he received polite applause from a packed house. Might makes right.

The media criticism was relatively mute given his savage remarks.

Has the world become inured to the man at the head of the most powerful army in history threatening to wipe out an entire civilization? That he could actually do it lingers in our minds.

At the Security Council Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov laid out in detail the historical context of the war in Ukraine, which Western leaders and media routinely excise from the story, while the Ukrainian foreign minister said Putin was at your door about to enter if he is not stopped.

Little accomplished in Xi-Trump meeting. No deal on AI except a hotline and another meeting in November.

At the Security Council the U.S. stood out as the only country that thinks AI breaking free of human control and endangering humanity is a hoax.

The World This Week, Episode 36: “Shameless”

Joe Lauria with Professor Richard Wolff and Ray McGovern

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited from YouTube captions for clarity and readability. We removed timestamps and nonverbal cues, corrected apparent transcription errors, and trimmed repeated filler while preserving the speakers’ words and meaning. Speaker labels appear where the captions make the speaker clear. Names and quotations should be checked against the recording before publication.

Joe Lauria: Welcome to The World This Week, episode 36: “Shameless.” This week Trump says he decides fates of nations. Netanyahu’s paranoid aggression and Lavrov speaks while Kiev lies. I’m Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News. The United Nations was founded in 1945 to among other things end the scourge of war. While it has unsurprisingly failed to do that, the UN remains the seat of world diplomacy where a certain decorum between nations is the rule, creating an atmosphere for dialogue. In steps Donald Trump who began Tuesday’s speech at the general assembly by beating his chest and proclaiming himself king of the world.

“Our economy is the envy of the world. Our military is the most powerful on earth. Our technology is second to none and we’re leading in virtually everything. Our energy is fueling the planet. America is rising. Our nation is growing. Our power is expanding. But of course, America doesn’t have an empire. He says, “We’ve invested more money in the US military in the past 12 months than ever before.” And he said that to an audience of leaders whose people have been the victims of that military power. “This term, we will spend 1.5 trillion dollars,” he boasted.

And he preserved a special venom for America’s latest victim of unprovoked violence. He said, “For 51 years, the fanatical Iranian regime has ruled by bloodshed and mass murder, spreading death and carnage and chaos across the entire Middle East and beyond. They were the bully of the Middle East, but they are the bully no more. Trump dare not look in a mirror. For there he would see the face of the real bully of the Middle East, who with bases of smoldering ruins in the region is bully no more.

He said, “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than ever was before? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Donald Trump threatened genocide from inside the United Nations. The man committing genocide spoke two days later.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech encapsulated the paranoia, aggression, projection, and chutzpah of an expansionist Israel. It’s all there in one speech. He opens by telling all the moral cowards, that was his words, who hadn’t left the hall yet to leave now. There was indeed a mass walk out of 77 nations as soon as Netanyahu began to speak. And then he told the tale of victim Israel surrounded by hostile Arabs. If you go into someone’s neighborhood and start kicking people out of their houses and occupy them, you’ll be surrounded by hostile neighbors, too.

Before Netanyahu spoke, Qatar called Gaza “genocide in every sense of the word and a stain of shame on the conscience of humanity. Lula of Brazil referred to “the genocide of women and children carried out by the Netanyahu government. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called it a genocidal war against Palestinians. King Abdullah of Jordan very friendly to the West. He condemned the “de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank.

The “forced displacement of Palestinians as a war crime and said Israel’s appetite for expansion threatened a whole region. He said Gaza and the West Bank were two elements of the same Israeli strategy of expansion. But Netanyahu said that accusing Israel of genocide was “the lie of the century. And he says we vaccinated Gazans for polio that proves that we’re not committing genocide. Of course concerned that polio could go into Israel itself.

Despite Trump’s desecration of the general assembly hall, he received polite applause from a packed house. Might makes right. The media criticism was relatively mute given his savage remarks. Has the world become inured to the man at the head of the most powerful army in history, threatening to wipe out an entire civilization? That he could actually do it lingers in our minds. At the security council last week, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov laid out in detail the historical context of the war in Ukraine which Western leaders and media routinely excise from the story while the Ukrainian foreign minister said Putin was at your door about to enter if he’s not stopped.

Meanwhile, Trump and President Xi Jinping of China met in Washington over three days and virtually nothing happened except exchange of gifts and visiting of museums etc. There was no deal on the artificial intelligence crisis except a hotline was set up and they’ll meet again in November. At the Security Council on AI, the US stood out as the only country that thinks AI breaking free of human control and endangering humanity is a hoax. Joining us today to discuss all of this is economist Richard Wolff, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts and the New School in New York.

And returning to the world this week is Ray McGovern, former CIA Soviet analyst and briefer of presidents. Rick, what does it say about a world that has largely accepted Trump threatening genocide from inside the UN?

Richard Wolff: Well, in my judgment, looking at this historically, which is what I try to do, I see all of this as the last gasp. And I recognize that by calling it last, there’s a little bit of wishful thinking going on here. the last gasp of four centuries, maybe five centuries of imperialism. We are still living out the consequences of what started in the 17th century, maybe even a bit earlier. And that was the capability indeed the forced march of a new economic system capitalism.

A system based on the employer employee relationship so different from the lord surf or master slave relationships that went before it. This capitalist system, as people know, even though they don’t understand the implications, is a system based on expansion. The successful capitalist enterprise, whether it’s large or small or medium, is the one that makes a profit, as good a profit as possible, and then plows that profit back into the business to grow it.

Because growth is a condition of survival. That’s what competition means. A system that has to grow. Every one of whose elements has to grow on pale of dis on pain of disappearing. If you don’t if you welcome and install an economic system based on expansion, you then quickly discover that wherever the capitalism starts in London or in Rotterdam or in Paris, it will after a decade or two run out of local food, raw materials and workers and it will need to draw those in or go to where they are.

And that’s the history of the last four centuries. Capitalism drew the people from the countryside into the urban industrial center or it went out there and took over the areas of the world beyond where capitalism began and it thereby produced for the first time in human history a genuine world economy. an economy in which every corner was linked to every other corner by one or another supply chain to use the modern language. The problem was, and that’s what we’re living through, that the way the capitalist system did it was awful.

It rendered three quarters of the world poor. Drawers of water, hewers of wood. the desperate poor who remain the desperate poor and it concentrated all of the wealth taken from everywhere in the world to North America, Western Europe and Japan. And we are now living through and historians will remember this time as the time when finally the majority the global south the third world we have a dozen words to capture it have said no more no more. We are living in the anti-colonial phase of history.

But we haven’t we haven’t finished with the colon. And the colonial phase is holding on in a kind of fantastic and desperate way. And let me conclude by listing for you the way. One of them is Netanyahu who is presiding over a classical settler colonialism and takes one sentence in the speech he gave at the UN to simply say how silly to think of us as colonial. There is no other way to think of you. And that’s not because of you particularly. It’s because of everything I’m saying.

But let’s not stop there. the war in Ukraine. That’s if you listen to the leaders of Europe that are leading the charge. They want to fight Russia. They want to defeat Russia and they want to carve Russia, the largest country on earth by geography, into a dozen little countries that can then be assigned as the new colonies for France and Germany and Spain and Britain. And you know why they think like that? Because that’s what they know. They know how to be rich on condition of having an empire.

And when India stopped being a British one, when Africa stopped being a French one, they never lost the idea they have to have an empire if they’re going to be rich. And they’re waging war now on the one place they can look at and imagine recreating an empire. And now the last one, a crazed president who tells us every week he’s going to take the Panama Canal. He’s going to take Greenland. He’s going to make Canada the 51st state. He’s going to snatch the leader of Venezuela out of his bed and take over.

What is this if not a fantastical recreation of an empire above all the crazy American one? Why crazy? Because of Trump? No. Trump is a symptom. The United States is what it is. Because when the war ended, when the colonial four centuries ended up with the leading colonial countries, Britain, Germany, France, Russia, destroyed one another in two world wars a few years apart. That was the gift. The ultimate gift of colonialism to the world was the most savage wars the human race has ever seen.

And when the dust cleared, only one country was left standing in 1945. All of the others had wrecked each other because air power wasn’t welldeveloped. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans had protected the United States. And here’s what happened. In 1945, the United States inherited all of the other empires. They simply moved in and took over. And it made the United States, of course, the greatest empire the world had seen. And the second half of the 20th century produced wealth here, the likes of which had never been seen.

It could even be spread to the upper reaches of the working class. Why not? There was so much of it. It’s all over now. That’s what it means that Russia winning in Ukraine. That’s what it means that the little country relative to the US of Iran can styy the big one in the in the Middle East. Wow. And of course the crucial thing which needs to be understood is that what makes all that possible is the fact that one of the global south countries not only has risen up and said we won’t take it anymore but managed to economically develop faster than any country in world history and I’m talking about the people’s republic. of China so that it is now a competitor of the United States which the United States has not had in the past century.

The Soviet Union never came close. You put all that together that’s what we are living through and the histrionics of Mr. Netanyahu is simply the rantings of another imperial leader who just doesn’t get it and is going to shake his fist like Don Quixote against social forces he cannot begin to understand.

Joe Lauria: Ray, if you could follow that up. to me there’s not enough outrage. Although I there’s a lot from Ray from Rick right there. What is your reaction? Pretty good at 9:00 in the morning too, I have to say. Yeah. Go ahead, Ray.

Ray McGovern: I just want to say firstly that I wish I had Rick for economics. I mean, this is all like, hello, that’s not what I learned six decades ago. I mean, hello Columbus way to and so forth. So, I’ll just pick up on a couple things that Rick said. I think he’s actually exactly on the mark. he talked about a last gasp. I think that’s true. there are inherent dangers in last gasp, of course, and we talk about that later. but he also said that people are desperate. the US, Europe, and all the colonial powers that long since have should have learned that their reign is coming to an end.

They’re desperate. And Rick used the same desperate word for the poor that have been exploited for four or five centuries by this system. And I would just like to say that the poor are coming into their own now. and Iran is the best example of that. these people have built up their country because of the threat, because of the embargos and everything else. they have raised in an almost biblical sense the widow, the orphan, the refugee, what the Hebrew scriptures call the anoim, the hated poor, the people you want to get out of the country, you want to you just want to subjugate forever.

And that biblical concept of justice is unamerican for God’s sake because it inclines sharply toward the poor. It is not an equal thing where justice means a blindfolded lady who can’t no it’s tipped to the poor. So this is this is magnificent in terms of biblical standard as well. the Chinese you know I kind of maybe I’m naive but the Chinese keep saying we want to be partners not competitors even much less enemies you know I mean c can’t we kind of oh here’s an idea how about how about live and let live or maybe how about win-win would that would that be a good idea and I think They’re sincere about that, but the empire is not going to settle for that.

Only problem is the empire has run out of weapons. Okay? And u there’s just such a such a feeling of illusion that Trump would tell Tucker Coulson. Tucker tells us eloquently just three days I think before the 28th of February when Trump unleashed the dogs of American war together with the dogs of Israeli war on Iran. What did he say? I have it written down here. Tuck Tucker Carlson told NPR that when he warned Trump in the Oval Office just days before February 28th he said what the war would cost and what the implications would be.

The answer he got from Trump was listen please quote in the end we all die anyway period end quote. So I just want to kind of kind of put myself in puchin or she’s place. How do you deal with a well he’s not only a genius now he’s a stable genius. My kids are making fun of stable. Oh so he worked with horses. No stable means not instable. Right. So now he’s forced to recognize all the people are saying he’s instable. So he’s a stable genius. And what’s he going to do? all I can say is that from the Russian and the Chinese point of view, thank God they’ve sized this guy up as somebody who needs to be treated with kid gloves while confronted in a very positive way. and the best example of that is the readout from the Chinese from visit here in Washington.

I just want to read the first two paragraphs. We can go into that later if you like. But quote, number one, the two sides agreed constructive US China relationship based on stability, fairness, respect, and reciprocity. Number two, here’s the key. China and the United States support each other in successfully holding the APAC economic leaders meeting and the G20 summit. The two heads of state intend to attend each other’s meetings. Oh, what’s that all about?

They know that Trump loves meetings. He loves to be he was excluded from victory in over Japan way back in September of last year. He doesn’t want to be excluded anymore. So, they’re they’re playing in a transparent way. This is the second thing in eight paragraphs. only later do you come to any substance at all. But the overweening imperative that the Russians, Chinese, and I hope to a degree the Iranians feel is not to not to get this guy out in front again and able to do these things.

Last thing I’ll say is I don’t think anybody has mentioned the spoils of war. My god. here from the you Joe. I’m I’m I was thinking about you probably feeling really grateful that you’re not reporting from the UN anymore. My god, the spoils of war. You know, now that rang a bell. Okay. Yeah. It goes back to the Latin when the centurions when the big generals came back from the war, they got the spoils. Okay. spoilia optima was the Latin phrase. That’s what they got from conquering in imperialistic way of the nations.

Now, I don’t know if Trump knows that. He probably was thinking back this was Senator William L. Morsey who talked about Andrew Jackson. Those were the spoils of war, you know. So you Marcy was a senator in New York and so he’s talking about spoils of war in a different sense but in an electoral I suppose in a political sense but you know all this stuff going on. I think there’s great danger. Who knows what Trump’s going to do? We all have to die sometime, right?

And the good news it seems to me is that the Russians and the Chinese and to a degree the Iranians are acting with appropriate restraint. Sometimes I wonder about the Iranians. if Netanyahu thinks he needs to do something inextremist, I will not rule out the fact that we will use the nuclear weapons that are at his disposal and then all bets are off. Well, you say they treating Trump with kid gloves. I think they need to treat him with psychotropic drugs. but Ray, yes, I was going to ask you something.

Rick, but go ahead, please. Well, I think one thing I take away from Netanyahu’s speech, which is worth reading for this reason, is you get a sense of how far gone these folks are and again it goes back to my thesis. If you are trying to do something which the historical conditions in which you are trying to do it make it impossible, you are setting these people up to become crazy. It’s like the old experiment of the psychologist when they when they raise the piece of food and the dog jumps to get the piece of food and as the dog jumps you raise your hand so the dog can’t reach the food.

So then the dog jumps higher but you raise it. You keep doing that a few times and the dog goes crazy because it there is a qualitative transformation after you have a quantitative repetition. Four centuries ago, you could do settler colonialism. I’m talking to you from New York. This is a settler colonialism that succeeded. It exterminated the people that were here. You know, a few remnants rem remain in the so-called reservations in this country, but they are a test testimony to what happened to all the others.

It took a century and a half or longer depending on how you count to accomplish settler colonialism in the United States. But you can’t do that now. We don’t live in a colonial era. Those things aren’t possible. One of the reasons we all are amazed that the Palestinians stay in the Gaza Strip and the Iranians stay committed to their position is that they all believe that history is on their side. And they’re right. It’s the Americans and the Israelis who are trying desperately to do again or to hold on again to what is no longer in the cards for them.

And if you keep trying and it doesn’t work, Israel is more isolated today than it ever was. All the boasting of Mr. Netanyahu, we won. We won. We won. It’s almost funny. You are now surrounded. Everybody hates you. The United N Mr. Trump told BB Netanyahu, “The whole world hates you.” Even Mr. Trump got that message. Every vote in the UN repeats it. Th this is not a victory. The only way that’s a victory is that they’re not dead yet. But given where they’re going, they’ll get that, too.

And sure, if you have that mentality, and if you add to that and Mr. Trump’s deep insight that we all die eventually, well, then maybe you’ll do it now a little sooner. Some years ago, in a class I taught here in New York City, I had a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations who took my class and I got friendly, a very nice young man. and I got friendly with him and we talked about the Israeli situation and that was the first time I had ever heard anyone say and he said it and he said it as an Israeli and as someone working for the Israeli government if we go down he said looking at me across a cup of coffee we’re going to take everyone with us.

The kind of speech you heard from Netanyahu is the kind of speech you would expect from someone who also has that point of view. The whole world is against us. We will defeat everybody. We can defeat all the Arabs. Just watch us. that this is craziness, but it’s the craziness of Don Ciote who is with his lance on his threequarters dead horse going to overcome all the windmills in the world and watch him go trotting off until the first windmill hits him right in the head.

No, it’s an amazing spectacle, but we shouldn’t be surprised given what else the colonial era has done. This is its end. It can’t even muster except in a few people like Netanyahu the old traditional effort to suggest that what colonialism was bringing civilization, God and glory to all the people as a missionary appointed by Jesus Christ to perform this noble activity. I mean, this is the end of it, but it’s a very scary ending, which really shouldn’t surprise us.

Well, that’s what I want to ask you about, Rick. This process of an empire dying is a very long one. And let’s look at Spain. You mentioned Donahote. The Spanish Empire seemed to be long gone. It lost all most of its colonies in South America, but not all of them. And eventually it had to be defeated in war by none other than the rising United States empire. An empire that began really the time of Cromwell who went to war against the Spanish Empire in the in this hemisphere ended with the McKinley era not that long ago.

And so my question is this got to be war. There was war that finally killed off the Spanish Empire. It destroyed itself taking so much gold. its economy is screwed up or whatever from the from South America. But it was war that defeated Spain finally and other empires died because they lose wars. Now the US has lost a number of wars. You see they inherited these empires. Let’s for example the Vietn Vietnam was inherited from the French and look what happened when the US tried to hold that down.

Afghanistan, Iraq, now Iran. How many more wars have to be lost? How when will they give up? In other words, and the one difference between the era of other empires ending and this one, as Ry alluded to, is nuclear weapons. Will a desperate empire in the past, if they had the ultimate weapon, will they use it? The answer is I think they will. You know, the United States already used it once before. It certainly can do it again. but I’m looking at a different thing.

I’m looking at it this way. The United States and Israel are now the two countries alone in the world in many way not just in the Middle East but really much pretty much across the board. Yes, there are all kinds of former colonies now independent who are very unclear in the leadership that they have how far gone the old colonials are whether they are better advised to quit them and go over to the China Russia let’s call it by what it is the bricks alliance because that’s what it is and they’re very worried They’re very They don’t want to be the ones that go over before it’s ready.

They don’t want to be punished by the United States and Europe before they can be protected by Russia and China. What we are living through right now is the experiment of those who are making the choice, those who are joining the bricks. Iran joined the bricks. A bigger and better example, India, which is literally wobbling. You know, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran back in February, Mr. Modi of India was quiet. He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t make a big deal. Oh, you shouldn’t do it. You should. And Mr. Modi at that time was a member of bricks, as was Iran. As was China, as was Russia. Now, six months later into that war, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting about three or four weeks ago, there was Mr. Modi denouncing the attack on Iran, talking about the need to honor the assassination of the Ayatollah, which was a great crime. Whoa. Mr. Modi has drawn a conclusion wobbling back and forth between the United States and Russia or basically between the West and the newly emerging bricks.

He seems to have realized his earlier tilt towards the old colonialism was the wrong way to go and has changed it dramatic. That kind of back and forth and I’m not sure it’s over in India. Don’t don’t don’t misunderstand me. Those countries are learning two things. Number one, the wonderful opportunities to play the declining colonial game against each themselves. You know, Russia was once a colonial power, too. And yet, they’re members of the bricks.

They want to play the two sides against each other and get more benefits for their own economic development. I understand that. that’s they’re taking advantage of the decline of the West to this point. But the West is not going to let them do that. They’re going to have to choose Russia and China making them do that, too. But since the United States foreign policy is you got to do what we tell you or we’re going to hurt you a got a awful lot. They’re pushing they are pushing these countries into the BRICS alliance.

The Bricks aren’t doing that. The Chinese don’t have 700 military bases around the world. They are not dropping bombs all over the place. They are not shipping weapons all over the place to fuel these sorts of thing. The irony of the Chinese, if you understand, is they are doing business on both sides of the war in Iran, and the war in the Middle East. Americans don’t understand that, but it is the case. China is the number two creditor of the United States.

They hold $700 billion dollar of US Treasury debt. That means the United States government collects from you, Ray, from you, Joe, and from me, and from everyone watching this program, taxes. And the taxes we send to Washington, a good chunk of them are taken by Washington and shipped to Beijing as interest on the debt, which the Chinese use, among other things to help their friends in Iran. Which means when the Chinese lend to the United States and get the treasuries, they’re helping us fund our war.

And then they use the interest to help the Iranians fight on the other side of the same war. The Chinese are playing a very careful game. And the United States can’t afford to do any of that. The big giant is hamstrung by the situation the big giant has created. If you become the empire of the world, granted inadvertently by the self-destruction of all the old empires, you’re stuck. That’s why you have to worry if an obscure trade straight of hormuz that nobody ever heard of is blocked because you’re the global empire.

You need all the water to be freely navigable. You can’t handle it. And here’s where I think the answer to what you asked is, Joe. It’s becoming intolerable inside Europe and inside the United States to pay for all of this. And therein lies, I think, the Achilles heel of all of this. We can avoid a war. Not if the Iranian people rise up. That’s Mr. Netanyahu’s dream. Mr. Nat Netanyahu’s real worry is that the Americans and even the Israelis will rise up and say this is not working.

We are in greater danger than we have ever been. You keep telling us we have to fight because we have no choice. But the fight you tell us we have no choice but to wage is not working for us. A good chunk of Israel is in ruins. The northern part of Israel has been wiped out by the bombs and the missiles of Hezbollah. How much more are they going to be able to tolerate? How much more is being cut back here in the United States? Last week, Mr. Vance announced that 750,000 American families have been gleefully pushed off the Obamacare roles.

What? What? Okay. Now somebody is going to tell those 750,000 families that their money that they is not available to give them health insurance is being used to maintain a dying empire. is not a good story to tell. Even the lame duck Democrats will say that. Won’t mean much by it, but they’ll say it. And as they do, they’ll be digging the grave of this final gasp of a colonial mentality. Joe, you’re you’re muted, Joe. Okay. Well, I’ll jump in. Go ahead.

Yeah. Go ahead, Ray. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I was tempted to be a little bit more optimistic here and say that, well, you know, people are talking the Chinese are massaging Trump and they’re going to see him in China in November. They’ll all get together in probably in Miami in December. And you could work these things out. I mean, you mentioned Oliver Cromwell. Well, my Irish grandmother and grandfather have told me stories about Oliver Cromwell.

And just going up to the present, what I see the silver lining was that people say that it took 800 tries, but they finally worked out an agreement with North Northern Ireland in 7576. So that worked out. And now that’s gilding the lily because the north of Ireland and the republic, neither of them had nuclear weapons. I mean, it’s that simple, it seems to me. And so, I’d like to just get back to what Netanyahu does in extremists. what he would tell Trump about what he intends to do or what he would not tell Trump.

And I think that’s the real thing we have to face into. I don’t think you tell Trump you just go ahead in extremism. It’s a sanction. Pull down those pillars of that temple after he gets some inspiration from God. Go ahead. You should get short here, but I’ll give you some more strength and you can do it. And he does. So I really worry about that. and not only that but our capability to figure out what’s going on particularly the notion of the AI entering a situation where one of the one of the NSC National Security Council directors for non-prololiferation and nuclear arms has said that you know almost every day certainly every week across his screen would come warnings about a nuclear threat, you know, and they had to address it and they had meetings every week and so these things are constant.

Now, what happens with AI? Oh, we can handle them all, right? I get 100 a week. We can handle them. My god, we’re going to turn this over with no human intervention. I mean, that worries me greatly. not only with respect to what Netanyahu might do, but what any what any decent Russian might do if there’s no escaping the fact given the AI indications that there’s an attack on Russia or similarly China. So that’s what worries me and there’s no little league to guild here.

I think we have to face into it and make sure as we are in this program that we do all we can to alert other Americans to these real dangers. the more so since in my view 80% of the backdrop for all of this is that we have a president who is not only unpredictable but he’s not a stable genius. As a matter of fact, he’s not a genius at all. He’s incredibly unstable. How do we handle that? Unstable Rick, you I wanted to ask you if you had something you wanted to say.

No, go ahead. Okay. So, you basically this is a race between the people of the United States and Israel to stop their governments from going forward with the madness and the road that they’re down. And you said on a previous program that one of the ways for the people to stop believing the noble lie of their society that there America is spreading democracy and it’s great and it has humanitarian interests and while there’s no economic or geostrategic interests there’s no empire that people start believing some of this when wars are lost and again we saw after the Vietnam war was lost there was a huge awakening in the country and led to the church committee and we began to examine some of the crimes that the intelligence services had committed and that was shut down when Reagan came in and we talked about the city on the hill.

The whole lie came back. The noble lie came back again. where are we at right now in terms of the people getting fed up with the li looking through the lies. Now the Netanyahu government is he’s in trouble. There’s these new revelations. The New York Times added to what Harets had reported that he knew about October 7. He was warned by the UAE and he knew the date that the New York Times nailed that down. I don’t think Karet had done that. So, this guy’s in trouble.

Does it matter if he doesn’t win the next election? will the Israeli people be able to say enough because their polls show that 90% of them Israelis more or less have supported the genocide? Yeah, I think it’s a different situation in Israel from what it is in the United States. I mean that’s obvious but in just the regard you ask. So let me try to answer that Israel has a fundamental problem. It either has to work out a live and let live relationship with the people into whose land they were inserted.

Let’s remember the British were the colonial power that owned and operated what we now call the Middle East. The French had a little bits of it. The Germans tried but never really got very far in it. It was a British area, you know, like India was a British area. and the British gave to the Zionists their foothold in that part of the colonial. So it what the Palestinians had no say and no power to do anything other than get out of the way. And if they didn’t do that, the Israeli the Zionists had the connections to get the money and the weapons with which to overcome the Palestinian.

That is the truth. Not the silly his biblical I mean a leader of the world power which obviously Neta Netanyahu not but you have to admire Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump their tone deafness in the United Nations really, you know, you’re in the United Nations, you’re quoting the Bible as a source for your position. You’re in trouble and you don’t understand who you’re talking to. You think you’re back home. You’re not. You’re not. The Bible isn’t an authority for most of the people on this planet and never was.

I know this is hard, but it is the truth. So, what are you doing? And then there’s Mr. Trump, the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. Two institutions that were formed immediately after the two world wars because of the horror of what the war was devoted above all else to no more war. And you talk about annihilating PE. What the hell is the matter with you? You can talk about annihilation all over the place. Why would you choose to do it there?

If you have to go to the bathroom, find a toilet. Don’t go into church, sit in the pew, and do it there. That’s not the appropriate place to do it. The hell’s the matter with you? You know, well, are you crazy? And the answer is yes. Yes. All right. So the American the Israeli people have to come to the realiz and you’re right Joe they haven’t done that yet the majority have to come to the realization that the road they’re on is a road with a disastrous ending.

It’s not providing security. It’s making them more vulnerable than they ever have been. There is no winning if you are to quote him one half of 1% of the land occupied by Arabs. Given that number that you gave us, Mr. Netanyahu, putting yourself at war with all those people is really stupid. Don’t do that. You have to come to some agreement. You’ll have to give some concessions because that’s a better chance for you to have some security. All right, that’s so that’s the issue and that issue can be won and Harets and the people in Israel who could push that will eventually I think come exactly to that position and here in the United States it’s just the same old ancient guns versus butter kind of issue.

I’ll give you just one clear example. The defense budget this year is in the neighborhood of $900 billion dollar. The proposed defense, excuse me, war budget, we don’t call it defense anymore, which is at least a moment of accuracy. The War Department is scheduled to go from 900 billion this year, this fiscal year, to 1.5 trillion the next fiscal year. That’s an increase of $600 billion or 23 of the budget in one year. Where is the revenue to pay for that?

There is none. No source of revenue could do it. The only one that he tried to fake as doing it, tariffs, was taken away from him by the Supreme Court and it wouldn’t raise that amount of money anyway. So, if you’re going to stay with it, you’re going to have to borrow more money than anyone had planned. And what time of the day is it? It’s a time when long-term borrowing by the US Treasury is costing five and a half% higher than it’s been for 30 years.

The government can’t do it because people won’t lend to a government that’s 40 trillion in debt and borrowing and increasing its borrowing at this rate. Nobody will lend to such a government. So the interest rates go up which means the interest cost of carrying the debt go up. This is these are not sustainable arrangements and they’re going to have to be met by budget cutting elsewhere or tax raising elsewhere. And either of those actions will provoke in the American people all kinds of unpleasant thoughts such as what in the hell are we doing all around the world?

And I think with the that weak part of the Democratic party, the so-called progressives, at least talking about it, you’re going to get enough [snorts] activity, programs like this one and all the rest of independent media that it’s becoming dangerous to do what I’m describing because there are enough people to point it out. And I think you that’s what you’re seeing when Tucker Carlson says, as I believe he did last week, that he wants Republicans to remove Trump from office on grounds of the 25th amendment.

I think you are beginning to see the cracking of his MAGA base and that’s the only part that still supports him. If that goes, his isolation itself will encourage people to be critical. I also think that his fight with the Smithsonian Institute, his fight to preserve the myths of America is a symptom and his building of monumental architecture, his deification of him. These are all, I think, symbols of the US realizing they’re losing the population.

They’re losing the imperial belief in their people. Ray, but Joe, I would Yes, I agree with you. But let me just add what I’m impressed by is that the people who really run this country, the major shareholders, the CEOs at the top of the come, they’re happy with him. They have allowed him in there. They have allowed him to come back after the first term. They have allowed him to do it all. I think we are witnessing also a growing awareness in the United States of who runs the show and therefore who can put this character in that position.

Leave him there, follow him and wow, where’s Jamie Diamond saying, you know, it’s not a good idea. Where is he? He’s busy raking in the money. It sort of raised point about the spoils of war. If you follow Mr. Trump, if you buy oil stocks when he says there’s a deal coming and then you sell them when they bomb and the price of oil goes up and then you buy and you sell and you buy and you sell, which I believe he and his family are busy doing. Well, then I heard Mr. of Diamond, the head of Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in he said it too the other day.

The economy is pretty good. I don’t know what planet he’s on. The economy is not very good. Everything that I’ve ever been trained as an economist to look at the distribution of income and wealth is crazy in this country. The inequality is off the chart. McDonald’s has lost a third of the value of the shares. Nobody can afford a Big Mac anymore. What do you think is going on? The rents are out of control. Nobody can do anything. Half the country can living from paycheck to But for Mr.

JP Morgan, the economy is great. And Mr. Trump says the same. The economy is great. They have to say it because it isn’t. But that’s not a sustainable long-term solution. It’s great for them, right? Rick, do you mean that Dick Cheney was lying when he told me and others that debt doesn’t really matter? That we can borrow as much as we want? He was lying. My god, that’s No, it’s not so much lying. It is the fantasy of a politician. That’s our system.

It’s it’s not you know I didn’t like Mr. Cheney either but look at our system. We have the ruling class the business the big business community. They want the government to do all kinds of things for them. Maintain 750 military bases so nobody touches anything that we need around the world like messing with the straight of our moves. All right. They want services but they don’t want to pay any taxes. Then there’s the mass of people. They want services, too, and they don’t want to pay any more taxes.

Well, how is a politician going to function if his constituents, the business community upon whom he relies for donations and the mass of people upon whom he relies for votes, if they both want services galore, but no taxes to pay. They found the solution. The solution is borrow the money. That way you can pay for the services and you don’t have to tax them. Since the mass of people can’t lend money to the government because they don’t have it, where’s the government going to go?

It goes to the rich and it says to them, “I’m not going to tax you. I’m going to do you a favor. I’m not going to tax you. I’m going to put as many taxes on the mass of people as I can. And if you know the history of our taxation system in the 20th century, it began on the rich and it ended on everybody else. That’s how it was evolved over the wonderful century, the 20th century. So they go to the rich and they say, “We won’t tax you. Tell you what, we’ll borrow the money from you instead.

We won’t tax you. that’ll be a big deficit and then we’ll go to you to lend to us to cover the deficit. So instead of paying taxes, you can make a loan to us after 20 years. We’ll give it back to you and meanwhile we’ll pay you interest every year for the niceness of a loan. Which would you rather have? Be taxed or you’d have to be a, you know, a very seriously disturbed person not to understand what’s good for you. So that’s why we borrow. It’s the politician’s fantasy that he can get a solution to the absurdity of American politics.

But it only works for a while until the level of debt is such that when you go to the rich and you say, “I want you to,” they say, “No. We want to pay the taxes now and be done because lending to you is dangerous. you may not pay back. And by the way, we are not that far. We are not that far from having armies of our farmers of our poor people marching into Washington demanding on the edge of their pitchforks that they get services that they get taken care of.

They don’t want a war. And they are going to say to the government, we are not going to allow you to take our tax money, ship it to China and Japan rather than provide for us enough to eat. -. No, that’s what always happens when you lend money to Argentina and they don’t pay back. That’s why the people of Argentina say, “We’ll make a revolution if you keep taxing us and sending the money to the banks in New York. won’t happen. Will not we will destroy you.

At that point, the politicians pick up the telephone, call the banks in New York, and say, “We have some terrible news for you. We’re not paying you back ever.” Is that possible? Argentina has done it a dozen times. The United States did that in the 1930s. We rewrote we restructured loans in this country. If you owed money on a 10-year loan, the government came in, rewrote it, you now owe on a 30-year loan. Why? Because that means much less each year that you have to pay back because it’s stretched out.

That’s what’s going to happen. That’s a polite way of saying we’re not giving you the money you thought you were going to get this year. And in a in an economy as debtridden as we are a reminder, the level of government debt greater than ever in history, the level of corporate debt in the United States now, greater than ever in history, and the level of homeowner debt, greater than ever in history. We are a debtridden, we don’t know what will happen in the event of defaults because of the net of debt that is everywhere in our society.

When people go out because they want to go to the local bodega and get a plastic bottle of water, they use a credit card. That’s debt. We use debt for everything. And therefore, we don’t know how that debt will bite us in the rear end when things go wrong. Rick, I would like to ask you whether you think that this consciousness this revolt in a word by the farmers with pitchforks and the workers whether that consciousness is likely to come first here in the United States or in places like Germany where there are major demonstrations against the government where Folkswagen, my god, Folkswagen has , 3 minutesclosed his factories, not making any cars anymore and laying off thous hundreds of thousands of workers. my notion is that it might come first there just because I think the dire effects of this are going to show themselves first there. probably.

Well, how would you comment on that? because I’m really thinking that the Europeans are even in more dire straits, if you will, than we are on this issue. I think you’re right. I think they’re in greater dire straits and I think it’s already underway. Let me remind you there’ve been three elections in Ger I follow German events because without going into detail, German is my first language. It’s the language I learned as a child. My mother was born in Berlin.

It can’t be more German than that. So I speak German. I always have and I follow events there. There have been three elections in Germany in the last three weeks. Okay. The first one in Zaxon Anhal, a province of Germany that used to be part of the German Democratic Republic, East Germany. the winning party was the alternative futan, the AFD. That is an extreme right-wing party, but it includes lots of workingclass people, lots of people who used to vote socialist in the east, but they came in first.

Why? Because the working class has had it in Germany. There is in case you’re not aware, Friedrich Mertz, the leader of Germany, has worse polling than Donald Trump. So you’re not talking about a stable government. You’re talking about a government whose days are numbered. We won’t have Mr. Mertz and by the next time we all talk together in my judgment. Okay? He’s too he used to be the head in Germany of Black Rockck, the American company. he is associated with the United States and etc.

All right. The second election happened in another part Meckllinburgg and the AFD did very well there. The third election happened in Berlin, the city of Berlin which is its own department. there. The party that came in first was the left-wing party called in Germany dinka which means in German the left. So what’s happening in Germany is that the mass of the voters are quitting all the centrist parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the old socialist party together.

They’re barely getting a fifth of the vote. They used to completely dominate German politics. They get nothing now. By the way, the same is happening in France. In France, the left led by a former communist named Jean Lik Melon, a name virtually unknown in the United States, but a leading pol. He was able to do what no one had done since in the end of the Second World War. bring all the left parties together and to run one candidate. His organization, the largest is called France Unbowed, La France asumse, but his coalition includes the French Communist Party, the French Socialist Party and the French Green Party. together.

The left is the largest block of deputies in the National Assembly that is the ruling body of France. That’s why Americans don’t know about it because it would be very upsetting to understand that France is now already got a very powerful left. Mr. Melanchaw will be a candidate for president next year and may well get it. The head of Spain right now, Sanchez, is a socialist. The Socialist Party there is in power. The Socialist Party in France and Germany is now unimportant because it has been displaced by a much more leftwing party.

Hint, that’s the future of the Democratic Party to shrink into the Bush wing of the Republican party. that is to say nothing displaced by Mr. Trump. And you’re going to see and you already seeing in Germany and France the same thing. The old Christian Democratic center, that’s the Bush Republican. The old center left, that’s the Socialist Party. They have nothing. The far right and the far left are emerging as the power. And what do they have in common?

They want to, I quote now, reset, in the German word, reset the relationship with Russia. What does that mean, no more war in Ukraine? They will not support it. And by the way, that’s the end. The number one support for the Ukrainian side of the war now is Germany. If when that election goes the way it is expected to go in the next 6 to 12 months, that’s the end of the war in Ukraine because Ukraine will then be defeated by the Russians. They already halfway there.

The rest of the will be done. Why do they want that? They want to buy once again cheap Russian oil and gas which is what powered their economic miracle before. And what is closing the VW factories? They have 150,000 laid off. VW makes Audi, makes Porsche. So, it’s the dominant industrial power in Germany. It’s over. They’ve been suffering terribly. Why? To support Ukraine. That would be like asking the United States, please, you know, do without your job, do without your income so that we can fight in Iran when most Americans if put you shown a map can’t tell you where Iran is because Iran doesn’t matter to them and never did.

This is not s these things are not sustainable. They look okay now because the leaders merits in Germany, Macron in France, they are the old the postwar. We’re junior partners of America and we do what America tells us. All that’s who they are. So they do that, but they’re going they are old dead politicians on their way out. Mr. Starmer in England tried to do the same thing. He’s already gone and he’s replaced by another one just like him who will be gone too.

The Labor Party is on its way out and they know it. So you’re going to see theories and the Tories too being replaced by reform. But anyway, right, that’s why I ask Rick whether this consciousness is likely to come first in Germany and then the rest of Europe. It seems to me that you agree that it is. And the real challenge that I see is to the media in those countries. They used to be worse than our media. And that’s saying something. I’ve been in Germany a couple times not too recently, but my god, you know, they’re just and yet and yet you have in Zaken an not only a day, but you’ve got the I think they got 5%.

I think they’re in they’re in the parliament. They’re in the parliament. So, you know, you’ll be able to understand this, but my favorite declaration out of all this comes from one of S’s lieutenants. Her name is Devin Dagdalin. Okay? And I have said this before, but it’s precious. I’ll say it again. Okay? , 12 minutes , 12 minutesOkay. Our first duty amidst this kingdom of lies is not to let ourselves become made dumb. Okay. So that’s flourishing now in the as it’s shown in these elections not only in Zakanhal but in Bern and then in Berlin.

So how long is it going to take for Americans who are equally brainwashed to get their pitchforks and get their workers organized and what’s going to happen in the midterms? Rick and Joe, I worry greatly that there will be interference, there will be martial law, there will be anything not certifying the election. that the 250 years that we’ve had as a republic may have seen it last year if Bush, my god, if Trump does what he I think he’ll do before the midterms.

Well, my guess is that he’ll he’ll declare a victory no matter what happens because that’s seems to be his approach to elections in any case. So, whatever happens, he will declare a victory either a victory that was taken from him or a victory that was a landslide. He referred in the UN to his past landslide, which if you know anything about the voting, it wasn’t. here’s a couple things to keep in mind. The next mayor of Berlin, because of the power of the left party, will be a Turkish immigrant.

It’s a little bit like New York. New York, we have Zoron Mandani. By the way, Zoron Mandani was twice singled out and attacked as an anti-semite by Mr. Netanyahu. Extraordinary use of the platform in the United Nations. Number one, and he was accused of being a danger to Jews in New York City. He didn’t he carefully avoided mentioning that the Jews in a in a strong majority voted for Mandani and that there’s not the slightest sign that they regret it.

A and to show how on top of it is the first time Mandani’s name appears in the Israeli printout of Netanyahu’s speech, his name is spelled correctly. The second time his name appears, it is spelled incorrectly. And nobody in the Israeli embassy before releasing this document caught that. Tells you something about the care with which these people function, but I’m going to do something that may upset you. I’m very worried about what happens if the Democrats win the midterms.

The last time I heard Hillary Clinton, her critique of Mr. Trump in Iran was, “Why didn’t he go in there and finish the job?” I remember that Mr. Biden was more gung-ho against Putin and Russia than even the Europeans were. Now, since Biden left, the Europeans have risen to the challenge and become hysterical as well. But from everything I know about the Democrats, they will continue the war in Iran. They will continue the war in Ukraine. They do not disagree with Mr.

Trump on anything about the basic things here. They may have some tactical or strategic differences, but and that’s consistent with the whole post-war period. We’re supposed to have a part two parties, and we do. We have two parties who differ over the details, but on foreign policy, they proudly announce that they are the same. It’s like what they say about capitalism. The leaders of both parties say they love capitalism. They want capitalism. The Democratic Party establishment is very busy now working very hard against the DSA and any of their people that talk about socialism.

They don’t want anything to do with that. They understand that’s not happy news for their donors and they’ve made their choice. If you would say to me that the midterms would be won by the progressives, the DSAers, that’s another matter. That would be very interesting. But if the regular Democrats get it, that’s what the that’s what the world is voting against more of that. Republicans voted against the Bush dynasty. They wanted something different and Mr.

Trump persuaded them by being vulgar and ugly and all the rest of it that he was something different and he was and he is and he’s held on to a third of the people that way. The Democrats had something like that called Bernie Sanders, but the rest of the Democratic party did to him what the old Republican party was unable to do to Trump. And that’s where we sit and that still is the issue. How is the Democratic Party going to handle everything that is undermining it at the point now?

And will they succeed? Yeah, you’re right to emphasize that. You mentioned Hillary Clinton and of course she and her accompllices derailed Bernie Sanders so that he didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell to win the nomination. She’s come to the four again. And of course, Biden is well, I’m remembering Biden’s last State of the Union address where he looked out at this at Congress and he said, “Anybody in this room think that Putin is going to stop with Ukraine?” Yeah.

He’s going to go out to Poland going to all Baltics and everybody get up. Yeah. , 19 minutesMy god. So, how do you explain that most Americans believe that or with Hillary and others coming back into the four will continue to believe that when people in Germany despite their equally bad propaganda are able to say this is a lot of bull, you know, this is bollocks. we want a relationship with Russia. Putin said, “Hey, one of those gas lines is open under the Baltic there.

Why don’t why don’t you open it? Just turn a switch. You know, your economy will be.” So, how do you explain that the United States is in my view behind the rest of Europe? Is it because the economic effects are more potent or more visible there in Europe? Or is it because the media here is more powerful even than its European counterparts? Now I think the basic reason is that as the uni empire of the United States comes under stress and strain whether it be from bricks or from the Iranians or god know from everywhere in the world the United States under Trump made a decision and the decision was we can’t afford the or we don’t want to afford the alliance with Europe.

We cut a deal with Europe. if you play the role of junior partner to the United States, you do the following. You cooperate in making the dollar the global currency. You cooperate in all of it. You know, every time we have a war, we will call it a coalition of the willing, and you send us a few troops and help pay for it. And otherwise, you do what you’re told. If you if you do that, we’ll take care of the defense. They can’t do the United States don’t want to do that anymore.

They don’t they don’t calculate that’s a good thing. And they calculate that their best shot now is to convert the Europeans from junior partners to unhappy bitter tribute payers. That’s a different arrangement. So they say to them, you got to pay for your own defense. So [snorts] you got to come up with 3 to 5% of your GDP devoted to defense. And if you do that and you give us tribute in two forms. Tariffs, you have to accept that we’re putting tariffs on you.

And number two, you’ve got to commit to hundreds of billions of dollars of investment inside the United States. You better do that. If you don’t give us a tribute, we’ll jack up the tariffs. That’s the game. And they and they’ve got that. The Europeans caved and the Europeans are now trying to figure out how they move forward. The problem was all of the leaders of Europe for the last 70 years have been picked and vetted and supported by the United States.

Always. If you if you said something critical about the United States, kiss your career goodbye. If you said something good about the United States, you’d find a lot more money to run your campaign than you otherwise might have enjoyed. All of them are creatures of the United States. Mertz, Starmer, Mron, I mean zero people with no skill, no talent, no charisma, no nothing. But they were good toies for the United States. They are now stuck. The poor schmucks.

They’re stuck because they are the ones by the people linked to the United States. And rightly so. They’re going to go down. Their anger against the United States is what’s what’s destroying them. Their only hope is to distract the people by an even greater enemy. Enter Putin who has to be recast as a new Stalin. He isn’t one. Never was one. There no basis for any of it. Doesn’t matter. Their political survival is wrapped up with an intense wararmongering against Russia.

You know, Putin said to them, “If you move NATO eastward, we’re going to have a trouble.” They moved NATO and took Poland. He didn’t do anything. Same thing happened with the Czech Republic, with Slovenia, with Romania, with Bulgaria, and the Russians did nothing. If he was wanting to take over, he could have and he would have, but he did tell them, “Ukraine, that was part of Russia. That we can’t let you do.” They decided to do it anyway, and we have what we have.

Mr. Putin crossed the red line. You know, he did it. But out of that story to get that he wants to menace the rest of Europe really makes no sense. And if he ever did this stupid thing, the entire population of Europe would be endlessly militating against him. You really want what does Russia want with that? They have the biggest underdeveloped geography on the planet. They can grow for decades with the resources they have. They are active on both oceans.

I mean, stop. There’s no logic to it at all. It is drummed up junk. But Ray is right. Europe is in terrible shape. And if they lose the war in Ukraine, which they are right now well along doing, they will be in even worse shape. And my guess is Macron next year, Mertz this year will be gone. And Mr. Burnham in England soon afterwards they will be gone and a whole new generation of politicians will take over. And you’ll have a population that will be engaged in making arrangements to salvage their economies and they are going to be applying to join bricks.

And by the way, and when that happens, the isolation of the United States will become so enormous that even the media here will have to in their obtuse way. So far, they’ve managed to say about the bricks almost nothing. When I speak to audiences and I talk about the bricks, sooner or later a hand goes up and a courageous soul says, “What is that?” And I’m always glad because I know very well now that the audiences do not nobody has explained anything and the Shanghai Cooperative Organization with very important organization.

Well, they know even less. They don’t even know what that is. They literally, you know, it’s the first time they’ve heard about it. they just don’t know. They United States and that’s in true in Israel, too. But it’s worse in the United States. Israel has some oppositional media. We here in terms of the mass media don’t have it. We just don’t have it. Yeah. Yeah. I just like you just mentioned Rick that about the Israeli press and now the New York Times underscoring that Netanyahu had specific warnings about October 7th. the reason I mention that is I think that there’s a personal element here that hasn’t been referred to yet.

And Netanyahu is personally in great danger. he’s gonna end up in jail. that’s I think an imperative on a fellow who doesn’t stop at anything. Genocide, forced starvation, assassinations, and all that stuff. What is he going to do? if he loses the election, it looks I don’t know how to predict this, but it doesn’t look like it’s going very well for him. And with the Americans now in the nature of the New York Times for God’s sake showing that he lied about all this stuff.

Well, Attitz doesn’t have much of a readership, but the Israelis are going to learn more and more. So, I think let’s let’s say Netanyahu is about to lose or he loses. What’s he going to do? I think you and I share the notion that he will in extremists use his nuclear weapons. So what do we do now? What do we do in terms of warning or terms of letting this consciousness come in? Now this is a real possibility. What do you think? [snorts] Well, all I can tell I can close with a story.

Many years ago, for a few years, I was a professor at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York, in the economics department. And as a young man and just starting out, I got an invitation. Everybody in our department got an invitation from the president of our university at the time, whose name I forget, to come to a reception for an important official who would be visiting our university, who was an ambassador at the United Nations.

They didn’t tell us who, but if you’re a young professor just starting out and you get an invitation like that, you put on a good suit and wear a tie and you go because it’s not smart not to do that. So, with a couple of my friends from the economics department, we went across the campus to the lounge where all of this took place. And lo and behold, the important person that we all greeted, shook our hands, and we chatted for a while was Benjamin Netanyahu, the ambassador to the UN from Israel at that time.

And I didn’t spend more than an hour, maybe an hour and a half, you know, standing around with a cocktail like everybody else, but in little groups. and Netanyahu kind of went from one group to another. So I would say for maybe 15 20 minutes I was in a group of three people talking to Netanyao and when it was all over you know he left in his limousine and we all went back to our offices and on the way back I turned to one of the my colleagues and not knowing what to say I asked him what do you what do you think of that guy? and he turned to me and he said he said he said that is the sleaziest politician I have ever met and I laughed with recognition because that allowed me to say to him you know what before I go back to my office I have to go to the men’s room to wash my hands because I shook his hand and I’m worried that some of the oily came off on my hand.

It was a guy who just in his face and his speech, you didn’t believe a word. I mean, everything was put on. You know, that kind of person who’s talking to you and looking right through you at whoever else is in the room that might be more important than you are to be speaking to. It just left the word. And I have to admit, I’ve never met him since. It’s always been in my mind. What a what a character. What a chameleon looking to look good to whatever it is he’s dealing with.

Whatever the real person is, you’ll never know. Was that Robert Marshack, the president of CCNY at the time? You couldn’t remember his name? Could have been. I don’t remember cuz I kept just I kept the people who ran that place, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, I went to CCNY right after that and the UN right after he was the ambassador. So, I’m missing Netanyahu. I want to end if I can if you have a few more minutes just to say a few words about this because it’s such an important story.

The artificial intelligence issue. There’s a wide misunderstanding by a lot of people who think AI is only the public fronting chat bots that we deal with Grock chat GPTI etc. But we’re talking about what’s going on in the lab in which they’re creating these neural networks that are they are losing control of these AI agents who are forming together like armies swarms. They make their own laws. They cover their tracks. They disobey orders and they have begun to hack more and more websites of governments.

We’re learning first the Australian prime minister said earlier this week that the Medicare website in Australia had been hacked. And now we hear several American government websites have been hacked not by humans but by these human created but out of control rogue AI agents. It’s a very serious matter because if they get into cyber attacks against electric grids or weapon systems even up to nuclear weapons. This is what the fear is and I think it’s dawning on people more and more very quickly how serious this is.

Ed Snowden said this week in a in a talk via video from Moscow to Switzerland I believe or Sweden I can’t remember that Sam Alman should be put in jail. Alman is the CEO of Open AI which is Chat GBT for creating these systems and letting it get out of control. Ray, talk to me a little bit about this very serious matter that has to be brought under control. And I the United there was a security council meeting last week at the UN about this and only the US said it was a hoax.

And in his , 35 minutesspeech, Trump said he wants to change the name of artificial intelligence to super intelligence, not knowing that the term super intelligence is the thing we’re trying to avoid. That’s what they say in the AI industry is when the AI takes control out of human hands. That’s what super intelligence is. But this is what Trump wants to call it. This is how super ignorant he is. Ray, well, one bright light here comes out of the Chinese account of meeting with Trump.

The two sides agreed to establish a China US AI dialogue to exchange views on the risks and benefits related to AI. China and the US also will establish bilateral communication channel for AI incidents. Well, although they got Trump to agree to that. Okay. but you’re right. You know, there have been really , 36 minutesclose calls. re well when I was briefing actually the first term briefing the president’s daily brief to key matter keep people in the Reagan administration Reagan himself when he woke up early enough and I remember vividly 1983 first you had Reagan saying oh my god the evil empire we’re going to we’re going to destroy it on an open mic and then we had the shootown of K7 on the 1st or 2nd of September.

My god. and the Russians know that we falsified the information on that. Did the Russians shoot down K7 with 286 people? Yes, they did. Did they know it was a passenger plane? No, they didn’t. How do I know that? because we had evidence, firsthand evidence that , 37 minutesthey didn’t know what they were shooting at. Okay. When the US presented their case at the UN, they deleted that part of the intercepted message. Okay. So, the Russians looking on here say, “Oh my god.” So, that’s KL. actually the guy who did the PR who did the video I gave it to the State Department he didn’t know that they had cut that thing out and he wrote a book later saying yeah explaining the whole thing so that’s the first part of September then we have actually almost exactly I did the math here 43 years ago a fellow named Stanisl Petro of a lieutenant colonel in their early warning watch thing.

Oh, he’s told that there are five US ICBMs headed into Russia. Five of them. Okay. so he didn’t sound the alarm because he thought, my god, what does it make doesn’t make any sense to send five for God’s sake, you know? So he delayed and he didn’t do what the script said he should do. And that was September 26th. So 43 years ago yesterday 1983. So he disregarded the radar screens and he saved the nuclear exchange. That was Petro. Okay. Then just two months later we had exercise able Archer in which the president of the United States the vice president for the first time leaders of Europe were all in the scenario.

It looked really real. They went down to Defcon one, right? And we knew that the Russians were really upset because some of our turned agents were reporting. My god, the KBU is KGB. Anyhow, the this McFarland who was the National Security Council, National Security Adviser said, “Oh, we got their attention this time.” And my friends in the in the Soviet part of the anat an analytic section, Mel Goodman first and foremost said, “Yeah, they we got their attention.

They think it’s a real thing. For God’s sake, knock it off.” Well, they weren’t able to make edit. So, they went to their supervisors, Bobby Gates, who was all in the same branch with Mel Goodman in the early 70s. He said, “No, it’s not my idea to make the Russians comfortable. They’re just faking it. And so Mel and a couple others went around Gates up to Bill Casey and said, “Mr. Casey, we’re I’m sorry to do this, but this is really important. The Russians think this is the real thing.

Will you go down to the White House and get him to knock it off?” He said, “Thank you very much.” They left. He went down to the White House and they knocked it off. They took the president, vice president out. And we know from one of our spies in London that they were about well they had they had nuclear tipped fighter bombers on the tarmac in East Germany and elsewhere. So what I’m saying here is that it was human people like my friend Goodman and two others and it was Petro earlier on just two months earlier.

Where is the human factor going to factor in when we have hundreds of these kinds of warnings? Oh, we’re going to use AI, of course, and what will what will happen next? that really frightens me greatly because if AI is pretty much what they’re relying on and there isn’t any intervention possible by Petro or Goodman, where’s that going to leave us? My god, we need to address that. I find it I find it a , 41 minutesgood thing that the Chinese are saying that okay, we persuaded Trump to take this seriously.

We have a established a channel here to work on this. But enough of enough of this thing. This one year, okay, with the downing of the and all this kind of stuff going down, we came pretty close and we’re going to come close again. And I just hope there is still some human input into how these systems work. Well, that’s the thing. Can the humans create safeguards to stop these rebellious rogue chatbot agents, AI agents from doing harm to us? And it’s the jury’s out on that.

That’s a very perilous situation. we’ll give you the last word on this Richard Wolff. Well, in the history, you know, I do a lot of history. I believe that history has the best clues we can possibly find to figure out what’s happening to us. The trick now would be and I share everything Ray said, but the trick now would be to develop an AI that monitors all the AIs and makes sure anything coming up out of AI is referred to human beings and that there be an AI devoted to doing that. that the AI is what’s capable of monitoring other AIs and forcing to a human decision maker anything that looks like it could be dangerous.

They have to do that and in the past they have figured out those kinds of failsafe arrangements. My guess is the Chinese if not the Americans will do it. Well, we have to hope so. We are we are living in perilous time. You know, we the human race, we allowed four and a half centuries of colonialism to produce the kind of world we now have. And that ought to make us a little humble about all of this and aware that having made the world as unequal as we did, creating enormous wealth at one pole and unspeakable poverty at the other.

That this was not an successful arrangement and that we have a lot of work to do to undo the damage. That’s not to fail to recognize things were achieved along the way. They were and we have to keep those. But what alongside what was achieved, unspeakable injustice was committed and that has to be faced and that’s where we’ve been very lax. , 44 minutesThank you Richard Wolff very much for that for joining us today. Thank you Ray McGovern. Thank Kathy Vogen, our producer in Sydney.

Bray is in North Carolina. And Rick is in New York. I’m in Alexandria, Virginia. And I want to sign off by saying face the facts. Forget face the nation. Forget, meet the press, meet the truth. Watch the world this week instead. I’m Joe Lauria. Until next week. Goodbye. Get out your notebook. There’s more. If you are a consumer of independent news, then the first place you should be going to is consortium news. And please do try to support them when you can.

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