We need to talk about ideas. Good ones and bad ones. We need to learn stuff about the world. We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking, and entertaining review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days. We need to sit back and listen. to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Mmm. Well, what happened in the last 14 days, dear listener, because due to Cyclone Alfred and power outages and internet outages, we didn't do a podcast last week. So we've got 14 days to catch up on

and Trump is a cyclone of content. Um, just keeping up with him for the past few hours is enough to fill a podcast.

for several hours. We'll do our best to get through stuff. I'll tell you the agenda shortly, but first of all, I'm Trevor, aka The Iron Fist, up there in regional Queensland. Scott, the Velvet Glove. How are you, Scott?

Good. Thanks, Trevor. G'day, Joe. G'day, Trevor. G'day, listeners. I hope everyone's well.

In Peter Dutton's electorate of Dixon. Suffering from Crohn's disease and Peter Dutton

is Joe the tech guy. Evening all. Which one's worse,

Joe? That's debatable. I mean the Crohn's disease is under control most of the time. Do you think

Eli Watsoname has got much of a chance in unseating Dutton or not?

I don't know. I would assume, I don't know how much this electorate is because it's not in the city enough to be. Um, on board with, uh, renewable energy. They might have bought into the coal bullshit. So, how much of an impact she'll have, I don't know. And really, other than her managing to knock him off his seat, what good it would be to have her in? Because she'll be a liberal in any other name.

There you go. Alright, well, we're going to talk a little bit about personal experiences in Cyclone Alfred. And, um, and then, um, I thought it's always good to start with the Australian news. And do Trump and international stuff later. But of course, Trump's been so busy, he's included Australia in his agenda. So, we've had issues with tariffs that Australia's subjected to. So I'm going to talk about the Australian reaction to the US tariffs. And what our pathetic Labor government and their LNP opposition have offered to do to try and um, get around those tariffs. Uh, so we'll talk about that. We will talk about some other crazy ideas. Bernard Keenan Crikey says we should join NATO. Um, Dutton says we should join the Coalition of the Willing in Ukraine, for God's sake. And we've got some crazy hate speech laws. That have been introduced into this country on the back of a spate of anti semitism i. e. the caravan and various graffiti events which turn out to be Nothing to do with anti semitism and all to do with just criminal gangs paid by an international group And so we changed our laws Based on a spate of anti semitism that the authorities are now telling us was not anti semitism at all. So

There was um, that uh, independent senator down in the ACT, what's his name, um, the former rugby player.

Mm, Pocock.

Pocock, yeah. He's actually saying that they should repeal that now. Yeah. Because I agree wholeheartedly with him, it was just a load of nonsense. And even at the time I thought to myself, you don't have knee jerk reactions in laws like this. But apparently you do.

We'll talk about all that, and then we'll get onto more Trump, because we'll talk about his stoush with Canada. We'll talk about what it means to Australia, we'll talk about Iran, Japan, Panama Canal, Greenland, um, and then some more free speech stuff, because in America they've just arrested a guy and trying to deport him, he's a permanent resident, and uh, he was organizing protests against the Zionist genocide. And, uh, they've just shuffled him off into a cage somewhere. Nobody knows where he is. That's the non authoritarian democracy of the United States. And UK and Australia are following a similar path, and we've got a frau, you know, not a good story of an Australian being charged. With a crime that's normally used when you insult a police officer, but they're using that to charge him because he declared that Zionists are terrorists and People saying well, that's just about a political ideology Surely we shouldn't be throwing people in jail for that, but he's being charged with all that. And, in the fourth or fifth hour of this podcast, we, um,

when I say we, it'll probably just be me and Joe. Because Scott's going to go to bed after the first hour. I'll go to bed

in an hour,

yeah. There's all sorts of stuff we could talk about,

um, Ukraine. And the fact that the EU is now re arming, supposedly. And I, I've got a whole bunch of information about Ukraine that we could get into. So, so yeah. If you want to pick and choose amongst those topics, I will, at the end of this podcast, pay particular attention to the chapters this week. If you've got a good podcast app, um, or maybe in the notes of whatever you're watching on YouTube, whatever. Um, if you want to skip sections, If you're an international visitor to this podcast, you don't really care about Australian news. Just look at the subjects and the chapters and scoot around at your leisure. There's four people watching live at the moment. You are welcome to make comments. We will try to incorporate them and without any further ado, um, guys, Cyclone Alfred, um, some people think it was a fizzer, but I beg to differ. Well, I think the

Gold Coast copped it a hell lot worse than what Brisbane did though.

Yeah,

um, there's been some interesting conspiracy theorists about how it was, um, trying to scare us all, you know, it was another COVID lockdown for no reason, uh, you know, had it hit as at its predicted intensity, uh, it would have done a lot of damage. Yes, we were lucky that we were lucky, you know, there was a bit of erosion on the Gold Coast beaches. We lost some trees down, we had some major power outages, but I think one person is missing, presumed dead in New South Wales, and that's it. Yeah, we've been relatively lucky. Flash flooding in lots of places. 1. 2 billion.

1. 2 billion has been knocked out of the GDP, I reckon.

Yeah. Um, on the Queensland budget, but realistically all things considered. Um, yeah, having, having been through Atlantic storms. What we got here in, um, northern Brisbane suburbs, 20km inland, was, was no worse than a standard stormy night back where I grew up.

Mm. I was on the Gold Coast, and, uh, Koolangatta, facing due south, and I can say that, sure, the winds were, were were strong, and the wind was coming inside, you know, the rain was coming in sideways, but probably not unlike what you get in a really severe Brisbane thunderstorm type situation. It just kept going on and on, of course. Um, so in terms of wind and rain, not so bad. But just the continual rain, uh, like the local golf course has lost something like 200 trees, which, um, a hundred have fallen over and another hundred have to be knocked over, sort of thing. So, but, um, the big thing I want to talk about is, is the loss of power. Like we were without power for three days. You know, and there are lots of people in that predicament. And guys, um, multi storey buildings, there's a lot of them on the Gold Coast. You can build one of those and you do not have to put a generator in as a backup power to run elevators. Mains power is lost. There is no requirement. It's extraordinary, because these places are full of old people who can't possibly walk downstairs. Um, they can't manage two or three, let alone 21 stories or something like that. Like, it's a really dangerous situation. After a few hours, the emergency lighting, um, batteries run out. So the stairwells are completely dark, and if somebody needs to get out, they've got to walk. Impossible. There are thousands of people who are trapped. on their floors, if there's a medical incident where they've got a heart attack or something like that, they can, they're stuffed. And by the end of two days, if nobody knows they're there. And they haven't prepared. These people are starving. So, by the end of the second, uh, day, I was lucky. Our building had a generator that kicked on for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. And I managed to cook up some extra food. On the second night, spoke to, um, building managers and they said, Oh, there's a couple on level 20 who are doing it tough. So I went up there with them. With a pot of hot rice and slow cooked beef, one of the better ones I've actually done. And they embraced me and were kissing me and thought I was the messiah and they were really struggling. They were starving.

So did you tell them to, uh, not vote for Dunn? No, I didn't

give a political speech. But there's some people in serious trouble, um, in these buildings. And I just can't believe that you can build one of these buildings and not have a generator. Of some sort. So, um, yeah. That's a rule that should be changed, I reckon. If you can afford to build a multi storey building, it wouldn't be that much extra to put a generator in to at least run one lift. Um, in an emergency, so,

yeah, Hmm. Well, I actually, um, as soon as of course we had power cut, I still had, um, mobile access. Hmm. Because I'm just down the road from the telephone exchange and the mast is on that, so it's got a backup generator. I started getting adverts for generators. Yes. So I went online to look and of course, nothing in stock. Uh, we've got some that we could possibly start shipping in the middle of April. Yeah. So, um, But I discovered actually four wheel drive Supercenter had one left in stock up in Toowoomba. Uh, and my daughter had two and a half hours remaining to get a hundred hours for a driving test. Yep. So on Friday we went for a drive to Toowoomba, uh, to pick up a generator, which I paid at the whole $418 for,

but that could run your fridge and other stuff.

Oh yeah. Yep. Um, it's three kilowatts, so that's. Basically, uh, it'll run everything that you could run on a 10 amp plug. Right. So most of the household. Most of the house, it probably wouldn't run the stove and it wouldn't run the big air conditioner. It'd probably run the small air conditioner in one room. Uh, it would certainly run the fridge and the TV and the internet connection. Because again, I'm on a fiber. Uh, the far end of it was up and running. It was just, I'd lost the power to my local

box. Yeah, well, I am waiting six months and I'm going to buy one, Joe. Because the other thing about this, dear listener, is in the good old days, when there was a storm and a tree fell on power lines, they'd send a crew out to fix it in the middle of the night, with the rain and the wind still howling. But, um, these days, because of workplace health and safety and whatnot, They basically look out the window and say, well it's too windy, it's too wet, and we're not going to send any crews out, so what previously might have been a 12 hour sort of outage now becomes a two to three day outage because of um, the delay in starting the work.

Yeah, um, I had a discussion a while back with a friend of mine who works for the local council and, um, the move away from the old style copper wire telephones, in the olden days, you had, your phone was physically connected to the telephone exchange. The telephone exchange had batteries and a generator. If you lost power, your phone would still work, and if you dialed triple zero and the trunks to the triple zero call center went down, it would at least switch you through to your local police station. Now, everything runs on NBN. Mostly out of a node at the end of your street, which has maybe four hours worth of battery.

Um,

even if that is up, if one of the main lines, I mean, not so much in Brisbane, but certainly up north, if the, if the fiber optic gets cut, um, everything is switched through Sydney and Melbourne. So you've got zero comms. Um, even if locally everything is intact, if your one main or your two cough fibers out of town get broken, that's it. You're isolated. And I think that there has already been talk about. Um, emergency backup, I think on satellite, for mobile phones. And the government is talking about a medium term plan, but it's not going to be tomorrow.

Well, from personal recent experience, I can

tell you that being without power for three days gets really uncomfortable.

Even though we had it for a couple of hours, morning and night, with the generator. Get yourself a generator in a few, you know, when the prices get back to normal, because yeah,

it's uncomfortable. I also worried we were going to lose water. Fortunately, we didn't, but my bathtub was full.

Yeah, in the meantime, if there's another incident, I know where to go, Joe.

Yeah, got a spare room. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, so that was that. Um, uh, yeah. You know, boomers will still complain, of course,

in the building. One guy was blaming Chris Bowen and renewable energy for the power going out. For God's

sake. I know.

If you'd had renewable energy on your If you'd had solar on your Rooftop. Yeah. Maybe you'd had enough power.

Yeah. And some of these boomers will complain about anything like

one was complaining in the lift about. They'd lost, of course, uh, the generator, back up generator didn't work in their apartment, so they lost power completely and all their food spoiled. So they were expecting the body corporate to compensate them for the loss of the food in their fridge. It's

like, for God's sake. I

think Sky, I've got a theory that Sky News and the Courier Mail, it's all such outrage and anger that it just, these people who sit there watching it. Become angry people. Um, world. I think there's a hell lot world railing the world.

I think there's a hell of a lot to that.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you only have to look at some of our friends and everything like that. That started reading some rightwing nonsense and how they have changed, but,

but haven't. Old people always being get off my lawn anyway. I don't know. Yeah, but you know, you look at

me, I've got grey hair. Trevor's got grey hair. You don't have any hair. And none of us are angry. We're not

angry old white men. No,

we're not. It's not like we get

on a podcast and bitch about the world. Yeah, we are

probably pissed off about parts of the world. But we actually channel our anger in one, one direction.

That's right.

We're

still smiling. We're laughing about it. It's good. It's a good humoured whinge, at least.

Talking about old people and generators, did you hear that four people, I think, were poisoned? Uh, I don't know if it was this event, but four people were taken to, um, uh, hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning because they'd run a generator in their house.

Um, I did hear that. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. There are some, there are some clueless people around.

Yeah. And,

you know, up here. They actually have warnings and that sort of stuff saying if your power is cut out, do not use your generator indoors, have it outside, have it well ventilated, you know, there are some braindead people around.

Right. Um, let's start with the tariffs that, um, that were announced by, Basically, for everybody. Um, and, this was, um, going to apply to Australia for, um, affecting our sort of, Exporters of steel and aluminium, yeah, and there were attempts by, um, Albanese government to get special favours to be exempt from sort of worldwide imposition of this tariff. And it fell on deaf ears and Trump said, no, everybody's going to pay the 25%. So.

Everyone doesn't have to pay the 25%. American taxpayers have to pay the

25%. Good point, Joe. It applies to everybody. Good point. And, um, of course, the commentary was from the opposition. Well, if we were in charge, we would have, um, had a better negotiation with Trump and we would have extracted some sort of deal. And that Albanese didn't even go over there, and if he'd have gone over there, then he would have got, you know, some exemption, and Albanese said, well, heaps of others actually went, and they didn't get an exemption, so, Um, as part of the wash up in all this, though, it turns out that the Albanese government has made an offer to Trump, somehow similar to the Rare Earths sort of deal, that Earths. What's that? We have a lot. Yes. And it looks like the Australian negotiators were like, oh, we've got a lot of rare earth, maybe we can offer them to Trump in return for not being, uh, having our, Stuff subjected to this 25 percent tariff.

We're talking about, what, 1 billion worth of exports to the United States?

It was less than half a percent of GDP. I think Friendly Geordie's, I've been watching a lot of him recently, did a whole thing about the tariffs and went, in terms of impact to our economy, it's absolutely nothing. Yes. And, um, it's the American taxpayers that'll end up paying it and they won't like it for long. This isn't going to last. Why should we do anything? Yes. He'll get sick a bit soon.

Yes. But it seems like this fucking Albanese government was going to give away these rare earths in a special deal to the US. at a super cheap rate.

So my understanding is they are horrible to process. Hmm. And, you know, although we have lots in the soil, we want them to be taken offshore to be processed in some third world country, like the United States. Yes. Or the

PRC, that's where they do most of the earths, is in the PRC. Because they don't have the, um Environmental controls.

Yes. And nor will America after four years of Donald Trump.

No, exactly. They won't.

Hmm. So, um, what have I got here? So, we find out these things through, well, as a journalist, Philip Kuroi, writing in the Financial Times. So, he's the one who revealed that Australia's critical minerals reserves are being used as leverage to try and persuade the Trump administration to reverse its decision on the steel and aluminium tariffs. And, um, um, What does he say here? So the Prime Minister said the government had put forward a range of propositions to the United States. Those discussions are continuing. Diplomacy is best done in that way, he said. And Foreign Minister Penny Wong revealed Australia's, um, access to Australia's critical minerals. was part of the negotiations. And this is the quote from, uh, Penny Wong. President Trump's administration has talked about the importance of critical minerals and has talked about the importance of America gaining more secure domestic supply arrangements and changes to the global market on that, Wong told the ABC. She continues, Now, Australia obviously is a country where we are blessed with many critical minerals. You would anticipate, being as disciplined and as focused as we are, of course, we listen to those signals.

God's sake, just,

we're so disciplined and focused, we listen to the signals that earths. She says, I'm not going to go through our national media, the step by step negotiations. Um, so, um, Bernard Keane in Crikey wrote a pretty good article on this saying, you know, first of all, who said you could go and give away our minerals to these guys on some sweetheart deal that is an offer to everybody? You never, you never asked us whether we wanted that. There's been no debate about it. You've just, you've just gone ahead and done it. Where's the discussion? These trade deals are always held in secret, and we find out about them later, and it's all a done deal. And, um, and he makes the point that you just made that, uh, this sort of aluminium and steel industry sales to the US are so poor, it doesn't matter in the scheme of things. It's a rounding error in our GDP, and we're getting our knickers in a knot. All it takes is for Donald Trump to just, out of his bum, pluck out a 25 percent tariff. And then just sniff around and see what goodies people are going to offer.

He can coerce out of people.

Out of people.

It's just

like the schoolyard bully, wandering around the schoolyard, threatening people. Give us your lunch money. Exactly. And Australia is toadying to this guy and not only handing over its lunch money, it's, it's saying, Oh, I've got some more stuff I can give you as well. And, um, And, oh, can I please be your friend, as you walk around the schoolyard beating up on other people?

That's, that's where we are. It's pathetic.

I couldn't believe the UK was tonying up to them. I can believe it. No, but I mean, honestly. So the US is going, oh, you're screwing us over on this, that and the other, and the UK, I mean, there was talk about, for us, going, alright, Pine Gap doesn't exist anymore. Get your troops out of there. Uh, the UK could go, uh, Diego Garcia and, um, uh, Ascension Island, wave goodbye to your, uh, so Diego Garcia is the US forwarding positioning for the, it's the Indian Ocean.

Yes, near it, yes.

Yeah, and it's a, it's a huge US logistics hub.

Southeast of India out that way. Yeah,

so, so basically if the US lost that, they've lost their, uh, what they call forward positioning for the whole of that area. The, the world.

Yeah.

So they would then have to do logistics out of Hawaii.

Mm.

Um, and Ascension again is mid Atlantic.

Yeah. I mean, this is all the perfect opportunity for labor to say, the Orcus deal's off,

fuck that submarine deal. That's it's off. Like.

Well, Alex has just said in the chat. Rep up the free trade agreement. Yeah,

all the things that we wanted to do, or need to do, now is the time. You know, Trump was the guy who said, you know, when a supplier gives you a bill You cut it in half. Did we play that clip once or? I

swear I heard it very recently.

Yeah, and you know, well, maybe we should be doing the same with the Orcas

bill. The problem with this submarine deal, it's so bad. It's the one deal that Trump doesn't want to

cancel. You saw the, the Trump who negotiated this, was it NAFTA?

It was the new NAFTA agreement. Somebody said you did.

Yeah. So if he's, if he's going to walk away from that, I say we don't have any responsibilities with change of US government. Just ignore all agreements.

It's one of those things. I've got a couple of mates in the U. S. that I actually email them about every now and again and I sent them something today. It was a, um, it was that prayer service in the Handmaid's Tale when the commander was in front of all those handmaids at the Washington Monument. And it said, um, Handmaid's Tale was a work of fiction, not a tutorial.

It's turning out to be very prescient.

Yeah, I know and I sent it to him and I said, you know, I, the first email I sent to him I said, you know, um, have you exchanged your usual greetings for people by saying, you know, may the, may the Lord open or whatever it is, you know, when, when they say, yeah, blessed be the Lord. Under his eyes or something like that. Yeah, under his eyes is how you say goodbye. Yeah,

anyway, Bernard Keane says, um, the biggest concern is Is this Albanese's strategy for dealing with Trump, trying to bribe him with gifts so he won't beat us up? Does Albanese and his team seriously think that they are preemptively caving in to a bully who's going to protect us? Um, there is something deeply, perhaps terminally, stupid, visionless and craven about this government. Uh, I agree with all of that. Um, uh, just lacking in guts. And you know what guys, like now They're still talking about this, giving away minerals in a special sweetheart deal, and they're not expecting a reversal on the steel tariffs. They're hoping now to avoid the agricultural tariffs that are going to be announced in April. So, so they've already So they're offering this stuff now, a rare earths deal, hoping to get agricultural favours. Just pathetic.

America's agriculture is fucked because they're exporting the people, they're deporting the people who do all the work.

Yeah. Crops are in the ground, they can't,

they can't pick them. So we won't be selling anything to them in terms of agricultural Yeah, tractors or whatever. Um, so, and if we're selling them fruit and veg that's twice the price, well, so what? They're going to pay it because there's nothing in America that people can buy. Yeah. So let them. I don't care.

But, you know, the same way we had a free trade agreement with China and that got kiboshed over insults. Right. And, and our free trade agreement with America is just being kiboshed, like, at the whim of this guy. And these free trade agreements. It just demonstrates we could never trust these guys to deliver the subs that we don't need anyway. Even just free trade agreements themselves, there was an article in Crikey about just as a matter of just general practice, they're useless. So they're negotiated by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, uh, in secret meetings, except Lobby groups are often allowed to see the drafts. The public are never allowed to see the drafts until they've actually been agreed. Uh, so there's no proper scrutiny. And, um, does anyone do a proper assessment? No. At no stage is a genuine independent assessment done of the deals. And when a deal goes before Parliament, um, there's an assessment done by DFAT, the guys who negotiated it. So they're doing their own, they're assessing their own homework. And genuine independent bodies with expertise in economics Um, like the Productivity Commission, don't get a say, and the head of the Productivity Commission, Peter Harris, complained about this, about not being allowed to assess the Trans Pacific Partnership deal in 2015, because the government said it would take too long. And um, so they just divert trade from one market to another, and um, and assessments done by different groups, like the Productivity Commission. Look at these trade deals and find that, um, we don't benefit from them, and industry doesn't benefit because it just creates hoops that they've got to jump through to try and, um, comply with the arrangements, and, uh, yeah, all in all, they're no good for us anyway in terms of, um, free trade agreements, so, uh, all they do Is, create problems where guys like Clive Palmer purport to be a Singaporean company And then enter arbitration disputes Trying to argue when we don't let him mind something he wants to mind

Well if he's a Singaporean company, then he can't stand for election

Well he can

Well, he can because he's an Australian citizen. And he's not actually. Well, obviously he's not. No, it's, it's not him as a Singaporean, it's a Singaporean company. Yes. Right. That he's actually selling. But if he's the majority

shareholder in a Singaporean company, well, then he's a Singaporean citizen as far as we're concerned.

Well, yeah, I know, but it doesn't work that way.

Yeah. That's one way of looking at it.

Yep. Anyway, what are people's, sorry. I was about to say with Trump and bribing, you've heard he's trying to roll back the law that says you're not allowed to bribe, American companies can't bribe, um, foreign nationals, foreign companies for deals.

I didn't hear that. He's trying to roll

that back.

Okay.

I wonder if it's also for him, whether he's trying to get some sweetheart deals.

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. That really wouldn't

surprise me.

Um, some of the commentary, um, Somebody said Trump will probably invade us if we take Pine Gap away. Because these are the sorts of things we can do. We can just say, well, get your military out of here. Or, get your spies out of Pine Gap. Um, um, you know.

We'd have to actually have a look at the Pine Gap agreement, whether or not we could actually just boot them out.

What does an agreement matter, Scott? No, exactly. Agreements no longer matter with these guys. If he's tearing up agreements,

we can tear up agreements.

Age old agreements, like the border between the United States and Canada. Yeah. He says, that's not valid.

You know, what did he, what did he call it? He said it was a fake border or something like that. Yeah. It was a line

drawn on the map by, no, that was between US and Canada. It was a line drawn on the map by people, you know, borders don't normally go on straight lines. It must be artificial and therefore it doesn't exist.

Yes. So, agreements, loyalty, they mean nothing

to this guy. It's all

starter fresh,

so. So he's expecting us to play by the rules, but he doesn't need to. Of course not. Yeah, exactly.

That's a bully. Yeah, and the spineless Albanese government should just grow a set of balls and just Reset the things that needed to be reset like Orcus like a number of military installations in this country Run by the Yanks for God's sake but they won't do it

I think Alex, he's just brought up a, um, comment there. He said that the shared intelligence is quite valuable if we get nothing else. I don't know how much intelligence we do actually get from Pine Gap. I would have thought that was more under the auspices of the Five Eyes Agreement. So we could rely on the Kiwis. Indeed. For that sort of thing. We could just cut the yanks out entirely.

Yeah, I mean the Yanks have got the biggest budget, but given that it's all going to be driven by Putin anyway

It's always going to be what drawn by Putin.

Driven by Putin.

Oh, yeah, of course it will be.

What's being driven by Putin?

The American budget.

Oh right,

everything Okay,

between Putin and the Israelis.

Well, I wonder whether you know, because you know Trump has turned around and ignored all of his intelligence agencies in the past.

Hmm

He, he, in front of the press said, no, no, no, I'm taking Putin's word. They didn't interfere in our elections, despite 17 intelligent agencies in America saying they did.

Yeah, but you know, the more I read into it, I really think that he's actually a Russian, not an agent, but a Russian asset. I mean, he returned from the Soviet Union, purchased a, you know, suddenly got loans from banks and everything else that he didn't have a didn't couldn't even get. He barely had a pot to piss in at the time. And then he ended up With three hundred and five million dollars and buying a hotel somewhere or other and he's just that's where it all started from You know,

anything is possible.

Yeah, certainly Putin knows how to handle him. And Putin as a strong man He admires Putin.

Hmm,

and I think Putin is going he's an idiot. I can play him Whether or not he's actually compromised by the FSB Of which there is reasonable amounts of information Uh, he's certainly played by Putin for the idiot that he is.

Yeah, absolutely. He could just as easily

be compromised by the Israelis.

Well, uh, no, that's the other parts of the American government, not Trump.

Why not Trump?

Uh, he doesn't seem to have the relationships.

He's doing everything they want.

Well,

at the moment, yes. So if actions, if actions mean anything, Um, you know, you could, you know, you're looking at what's happening with Putin and he's, and what he's doing in Ukraine and just basically his actions, and saying, oh, he's Putin's puppet. Well, you could say exactly the same about what he's doing. A

whole load of other things. He's Putin's puppet, not just in that one place. Right. And has been for 10 years. Right. Okay. All right.

Well, um, A recent poll by the Australian Institute of a couple of thousand Australians, um, that's a reasonable number, um, told us that most Australians prefer a more independent foreign policy than they would prefer a closer alliance with the U. S. Absolutely.

44

percent wanting more independence as opposed to 35 percent of idiots wanting a closer alliance with the U. S. And, um, and the poll also revealed that more Australians feel Donald Trump is a greater threat to peace than either Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. There you go, so, uh, where's that one, um, uh, half of Australians, 51%, think Donald Trump's election is a bad thing for the world. Um, and, uh, half of Australians, 48%, are not at all confident that Donald Trump would defend Australia's interests if Australia were threatened, compared to only 16 percent of idiots who are very confident that he would do so. Oh,

God.

Um, and, yeah, who's the greatest threat to world peace? 31 percent think Donald Trump, uh, 27 percent Vladimir Putin, and 27%. Xi Jinping. So that's what Australians are thinking. It's good. Crikey is an interesting rag.

You see stuff in

there. Some of it's good. Some of it's crazy. It's a real shame Guy Rundle left, um, or was sacked. But, um, Bernard Keane Who's he running for now? He's not doing anything. I haven't seen him anywhere. So I don't know. Yeah. Bernard Keane, um, you know, just now I thought really good in terms of, um, talking about these tariffs. But, also in Crikey, Bernard Keane says,

Australia needs to join NATO. He says Australia needs to back European efforts to bring peace in Ukraine. And think about seeking to join NATO. Um, Australia's operating in a lonelier world and needs friends fast. And he says, offering participation in a peacekeeping mission should be seen as Australia's application to join NATO. Scott or Joe, do we need to join NATO?

Well, I think something Article 5 would be useful. And I'm not saying necessarily any particular country is going to invade us, but Certainly, it's a lot easier to fight with allies, certainly with New Zealand and possibly other ones in the, um, area.

I don't think that anyone, you know, okay, the only potential aggressor in the world is either Russia or China, but China has got to go a lot, all the US, yeah. You know, you've got three of them, you've got the Russians, the Americans and the Chinese. They're the potential aggressors. The only one that scares the shit out of me is the Americans. Because they've got a big enough army, they've got a big enough navy, they can get across the Pacific and all that sort of stuff. They'd blow up everything on the way here, and then they'd actually deploy and that sort of stuff, and they'd be invaders. The Chinese, it's going to take them a hell of a long time to get down here. They've got to go through a whole slew of nations that are relatively friendly to Australia. That, you know, we'd have plenty of warning about them, and if we had decent sort of long range missiles and decent air force, we'd be able to cull their, cull their invasion fleet.

We would, we would give the Americans a bloody nose as they sailed across the Pacific.

It's not easy. It's not easy to, it's not easy to move an army an incredibly long way. Now, the Japanese tried and they came a cropper. You know, yeah, that was probably because the Americans got involved, but

But systems are a lot more sophisticated now. Oh, they're a

hell of a lot more sophisticated now. I've got no doubt about that. Small

drones are able to disable large aircraft carriers.

Yes. Yep.

So, uh, yeah, so anyway, the idea that we should be joining NATO is just ridiculous.

Yeah. I just think it's time for us to do away with, um, alliance groups and everything else. It's the men that they were, they served their purpose during the cold war. The Cold War is over.

It is.

I think Europe has a very good reason to have an alliance. The problem is, um, the centralised command structure. Because every country is going to want control of its own troops. And that's going to be the hardest. There's going to be duplication of things because every country won't want to rely on the others. For their own offensive capabilities.

It's one of those things, like, you know, had the EU, you know, the EU's got to make a decision about whether or not it's going to become a, uh, United States of Europe. Exactly. It could well become the United States of Europe. In which case, you could have a central government in Belgium, not Berlin, because you can't go back to Hitler's time or anything else.

And you can't go into France because the Germans remember Napoleon.

Yeah, exactly. It's never going to happen. It'd take a long time, but I do think it is on the cards.

It's never gonna happen. They'll never have a centralised government. It's impossible. Too many different cultures, different competing interests. Never gonna happen. So

I think if you ask the Poles, they'd actually rather be I think the Poles would actually rather be dictated to by Brussels than what they would be by Moscow.

If you split up the 50 American states and gave them the opportunity to reform, they'd never be able to do it either. No, exactly.

Yeah, absolutely they wouldn't. Yeah. Interestingly, Estonia and Poland are talking of, they've already pulled out of whatever accord that bans landmines, they're also looking of pulling out of the accord that bans cluster munitions. They, um, the Finns, the Estonians, well, all of the Baltic states and the Poles are very worried, um, that a Russian army is going to attack, maybe not soon, but. Putin is

It's fanciful. Putin isn't We'll talk about it later when we talk about Ukraine. It'll be about midnight by the time we get there.

It's just,

Putin isn't out collecting land for the fun of it. Uh, with an imperial design.

No, I think he

is. Jeffrey Sachs Says that and I'll give you his credentials later on

and we know that Jeffrey Sachs is a Russian mouthpiece

So easily said but I'll talk about him later.

I've Just watched a nice series of all about it. What series was that? Um, by a guy called Sarcasmatron, I think, all about Alder, but, but he's, he's actually documented, yeah, the various bits and pieces and, you know, it's not just his opinion. This is the evidence behind what he's saying.

Right. Uh, send, send that to me later and I'll make a

video. Well, I, right. It's for one hour videos.

Yeah.

Interested

to see it.

Okay.

Um, getting back to, um, the coalition of the willing has been, is how it's been described.

When was it, when was

it phrase used previously? Well, it was used by the, uh, Bush administration, the second invasion of Iraq.

You would think, you

know, it's not a phrase that goes down well, I wouldn't have thought. And, and when you're cobbling together a coalition to take on Ukraine,

calling it the coalition of the willing, just immediately says to people, I've heard this before and it didn't turn out real well. Um,

do I really want to do this again? So, um, so basically Albanese put out a statement saying that, I thought

this was a peacekeeping this time. Well,

yes. But, I mean, the group is called the Coalition of the Willing. I'll talk about in a second what the statement actually says, but, um, uh, yeah, so here we go. Um, tonight I joined a Coalition of the Willing virtual meeting hosted by, um, Keir Starmer along with Zelensky, leaders from Europe, Canada, New Zealand. I reiterated Australia's strong and steadfast support for Ukraine. And restated that Australia will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. By the way, remember those enlightened days when a foreign minister stopped an ex soldier from heading to Ukraine on the grounds he was preparing to fight with the notorious neo Nazi Azov

battalion?

Mm. It wasn't that long ago

that we stopped a guy

going overseas to fight for Ukraine.

Mm

hmm. Because they were crazy neo Nazis over there.

Oh no, the Azov battalion was crazy neo Nazis. Yes, well they were part of the Ukrainian army. Yeah, they were. They were useful idiots. They died. Oh, they're still there? No, they're not. Oh, they're all

gone, aren't they?

Yeah, so the Azov battalion, if it still exists, was denazified a long time ago. Weren't they? But at one stage, yes, they were a very useful nationalist. group who were on the front line.

I thought the Neo Nazi group was in Kursk and were one of the ones who were captured recently.

No, the Neo Nazi group was Wagner PMC and they seem to have fallen to pieces for some reason.

On the Ukrainian side? No, no, on the Russian side. No, I'm talking about the Ukrainian Nazi side. Oh, yeah,

so the Ukrainians had their Nazis fighting the Russian Nazis. Yeah,

well they'd still be there, some of them. I think most of

them are dead.

Who knows? Anyway, We're supporting a country, we're not so long ago, we wouldn't let people go and fight for them, because they were neo Nazis. Anyway, Australia stands with Ukraine and will continue to do so for as long as it takes, but the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do, and it's in Australia's national interest. Because what happens in the Euro Atlantic has serious implications in our region, the Indo Pacific and vice versa. Oh, it doesn't? Completely separate.

No, but the problem is if, if Putin can steal parts of a sovereign neighbour, then, and the US does nothing to intervene and Europe does nothing to intervene, then other strongmen get the hint that they can go and invade their neighbours. And that might well happen in our area, in the Indo Pacific.

It's such a long vojo. But anyway.

Um, so East Timor might happen again. I don't know if the Indonesians are particularly expansionist at the moment.

I don't believe they are. You know, I think they've, I think they've, I think they've got what they've, I think they've got the territories that they want and everything else. There may well have been some discussions and that sort of stuff that are probably around about. 20, possibly even 30 years old, where we were actually concerned about our nearest neighbor. But, I think that since then, the relations between our two countries have moved in the right direction. And I think you can count them as a friend now. Yes. You know, we don't have an alliance agreement with them. However, they're one of those countries that the Chinese would have to pass through if they're actually going to come here and invade us. And I think the Indonesians would probably give them a bloody nose if they did actually come over here. Hmm.

Just getting back to this statement by, um, Albanese, um, uh, what does he say, here's, this is a struggle not just for the people of Ukraine and their national sovereignty, this is a struggle for the international rule of law. The

international rule of law, meanwhile, as we will discuss later in this podcast, Donald Trump is proposing to annex Canada. He is, he's intentionally, he's intentionally

putting tariffs on them to weaken the economy to make it easier to take it over. He's reclaiming the Panama Canal. He's, he's going to acquire Greenland. And, a whole bunch of things that he's doing. Not a peep out of this fucking Albanese government about any of that. The French on the other

hand, apparently have a nuclear missile sub parked in um, Halifax, Nova Scotia at the moment.

Oh, to support the Canadians. Yes. Well, they haven't said as much. Jay, they would be supporting the people of Quebec. Well, that's what I said. Who are not real Canadians, according to the other Canadians. No, no, they are real Canadians.

They hate each other. The non French and the

French Canadians They

have actually united in this very much demand that they not become part of America.

Yes, they have a joint enemy in that. Yes, and that's Donald Trump. So they'll unite to fight America off. Yep. And having accomplished that, they'll go back to fighting amongst themselves because they despise each other. Oh yeah,

you know, the secessionist, the secessionist movement will start up again once the Yanks have dispatched Donald Trump.

Yeah. Uh, but just what a joke. This is a struggle for the international rule of law, yet our ally, America, is, is just on a rampage of breaking international rules of law, and we don't say a peep about it.

Well,

he hasn't

yet

invaded. Yeah. But he's talking about it. He's saying these things, these agreements, don't apply, so. Ah, at the end it says, We have a proud tradition of supporting peace through 80 years of contributions to international peacekeeping missions. Of course, peacekeeping missions, by definition, require a precondition of peace. So, he seems to be saying that, um, it needs to be a peaceful place before we would send a peacekeeping mission. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair enough. True. Yeah. Still on Australian news. Those hate speech laws.

Uh huh. In the

show notes that the patrons get, which for this particular episode, I reckon it's going to go close to 60, 70 pages, um. For the show notes, so, remember, um, Oscar Grenville from the Socialist Equality Party? Remember we've had those guys on twice? I remember them being on, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, Oscar has written a, um, a piece, uh, on their website, uh, all on these hate speech laws. Quite forensically, going through, um, how the caravan was basically declared re that the Federal Police knew almost straight away, within 24 hours, that this was not a genuine anti Semitic attack. And the story of the police is that It's by criminal gangs who then tell the police about this load or cache of explosives in the hope of getting reduced sentences for people already behind bars. So it's a complicated story like that. Also, the graffiti attacks, there are about 12 of them, it also has been revealed that they were not anti Semitic ideology based attacks. These were were small time criminals hired to, to do this. So, he, he raises two points. That basically, the New South Wales Premier certainly knew that these were not anti Semitic attacks when he passed laws and promoted laws in New South Wales. Increasing fines for hate speech and increasing, by definition, his hate speech. Saying, we need these laws because look what's happening. At the time that he knew that these were actually small time criminals, uh, causing mischief for people unknown. And perhaps Albanese knew as well, but we don't know exactly when Albanese was told. Uh, about these. So that's number one. And number two, having passed these laws, um, because of the outrage that's been whipped up, um, they were passed for sort of really under, under a false pretense. And plenty of people are saying, we should not have passed these laws, they include things in the federal case of minimum mandatory sentences for Nazi emblems and swastikas and things like that. So, you know, if you were, um, somebody wanting to have hate speech laws increased. And you hired a bunch of thugs to do graffiti on places, uh, and then lots of stuff is written in the paper about isn't this terrible, Australia is being, succumbing to sort of an anti Semitism wave. And then la dee da, within a few weeks, New South Wales and the federal government passed laws, beefed up laws. It's quite pathetic, isn't it, that we've kind of fallen for a pathetic trap? I

wonder if any of them can be used in any ways for an interesting purpose.

What do you mean?

Well, um, if a religious leader was to make hateful remarks about another group.

It certainly is going to cause people to, to think twice about criticising. What Israel's doing.

No, no, but I mean if you could go look the Christians have been doing hate speech under these laws and you Demanded that you know, the Archbishop of Sydney was arrested under these laws How long the laws would stay in the books?

Yes, if a major, uh, mainstream religion fell foul, um, yeah, how long indeed? Well, they just wouldn't charge them.

Well, but I mean, you could then kick up a stink going, we're applying this law unequally. Yeah,

nobody listens, Joe.

Talking of swastikas, did you know that the Finnish army had swastikas on their equipment up until into the 2000s?

No. Yeah. Why?

Because they had it before the Finland was allied

to the Nazis. No, but I mean, they had it even before the Nazis were a thing.

Oh, really? So it was an emblem they used before it became synonymous with

Correct.

Nazi Germany, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, probably should have ditched it earlier. Even though it may have had different meaning to them.

I discovered that walking around the tank museum with a Finnish friend.

And I saw a

tank with saw stickers on it and he's going, oh, that's a Finnish tank. Right. From the 1970s or whatever it was.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm just, I think that,

um, in that, uh, museum, in that, um, what do you call a, a cathedral in, in Christchurch? They had swastikas all around the, um, the whole, right in the, in the, on the walls.

Yeah. So only 11 parliamentarians, um, uh, voted against those new hate speech laws and they were all, uh, basically independents, uh, all greens. So, um, this is where the main, major parties just coalesce on stupid ideas, so, yeah, um, what else have I got here, um, alright, before we move on to, what are we up to time wise? Scott! How long are you going to stay with us before you need to go to bed?

I don't know, we're in about 10 minutes. Alright,

you signal when you're ready to go. Um, uh, before we get on to Trump, just, just can't keep bypassing Gaza, so, um, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, I've now signed an order to cut off electricity in the Gaza Strip immediately. Enough with the talk, it's time for action. And of course, electricity is used in desalination plants. So, uh, the ceasefire that was organized has been breached. It's just a continual genocide for the poor Palestinians in Gaza. Um Yeah, just keep going on. And speaking of, um, genocide, Syria. So now there's a, a war has begun in Syria, where the Alawites and Christians are being systematically attacked and murdered. By the Jihadis. Gee, who would have guessed that that would come about? And, uh, so everyone was applauding that, um, Assad was kicked out. And, of course, Jihadists were installed and applauded by the West. Oh, they're different now, because they're not wearing khaki. The leader's got a suit on now. They're just butchering people they don't like of different religions. Well,

it was left to the Russians to, um, defend the peace in Syria.

Yeah, well, it was more than they could handle, they figured. So, what'd you disappear for? What happened then? Say again? Did you disappear somehow then?

Yeah, I just lost connection.

All right, okay. Um, okay. Trump. Ah. Let's talk about Trump and Canada, first of all. So, I mean, how serious is Trump's claims on Canada? And the New York Times reports that Trump, in an early February call, challenged the border treaty between the two countries and told Justin Trudeau he didn't like their shared water agreements. So the detail of the conversation between Trump and Trudeau, in subsequent discussions, between officials have not been previously fully reported, but the New York Times claims to know about it on the condition of anonymity by four people. with first hand knowledge of their content. So these are unnamed people. New York Times, bear all that in mind as to how much you believe.

I'm

gonna believe a fair bit of it to tell you the truth. So, on those calls, Trump laid out a long list of grievances. Um, and he brought up something fundamental. He told Trudeau he did not believe the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid. And he wants to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation. And that border was established in 1908. Kind of one of those international rules of law type thing. Uh, that people are really keen on most of the time. And Trump also mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers between the nations. Which is regulated by a number of treaties. Um, so In subsequent calls, there was one between the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who had not yet been confirmed by the Senate, and Canada's Finance Minister, Dominic LeBlanc. And in that conversation, Lutnick, um, called and issued a message, according to several people familiar with the call. Uh, Mr. Trump had come to realise that the relationship between the United States and Canada was governed by a slew of agreements and treaties that were easy to abandon. And that Trump was interested in doing just that and he wanted to eject Canada out of an intelligence sharing group known as the Five Eyes. He wanted to tear up the Great Lakes Agreement and conventions about how they share and manage the various lakes up there and that he's reviewing military cooperation and blah, blah, blah. So, well, you can't blame Trump. I mean, those Canadians are always causing trouble, aren't they?

It's just, you know, they are the most polite people in the face of the earth. You know, they just don't ever cause any offence to anyone else. But like that, um, new Canadian prime minister said, yes, we are overtly polite. But if you push us, we will push back, you know?

Yeah. So, I mean, this is just a friendly ally who's done nothing wrong. And, um, possibly because Trudeau laughed about Trump in previous international meetings. Um, could be a reason why he's got a personal grudge against the Canadians. But, uh So anyway, it's quite, quite serious, the threats that are being made to the Canadians and of course, Australia says nothing, um, you know, no words of support, nothing, um, so, um.

Well, maybe the Britain should just say, well, you know, the ceasefire at the end of the American War of Independence was not valid.

Yes.

And that actually America is just, um, uh, British territory again. Yeah,

and just to see what happens. I mean, it wasn't only a couple, you know, it's only a few hundred years ago, so it's only a recent document. Well, exactly. Yeah.

I'm sure the other Commonwealth states would join in.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, um, yeah. Bob Carr, former New South Wales Premier, former

Federal

Foreign

Minister. Foreign Affairs Minister.

Hmm, says, time to drop rhetoric about shared values. The US does not believe in a rules based order. It's committed to a ruthless pursuit of national interests. And in as predatory a style as it's bullying can get away with. So, um, yeah. Some people would say, Oh, we can't say anything nasty about, um, Americans. We have to tiptoe around them. Um, but, um, let's see what Yeah, somewhere I've got a clip here. Malcolm Turnbull. What did Malcolm Turnbull say about This is Malcolm Turnbull being interviewed on the 7. 30 report. And the interviewer starts off by saying, Well, we've got to be diplomatic. We've got to tiptoe around these things. Um, and here's what, uh, Turnbull had to say.

There was nothing erratic in what you said, but you're still making an argument publicly. Is it easier and better for Australia in this acute moment, when the tariff decision is obviously being made, if diplomacists are given the maximum opportunity to operate behind closed doors without Your intervention. I never thought I'd have to defend free speech here on the 7. 30 report and I'm, I'm glad you're, you're, you're, you're a little bit embarrassed raising that with me, aren't you? No, no, no. The matter is we have to speak up. It's just a question about the moment that we find ourselves in. So I'm just, I think what I'm asking is what leads you to say it at this time? What, what is it that Trump is doing that has become so egregious that you have to speak out? Look around us. I mean, the, the, the impact Trump is having on the world. on the Western Alliance, on markets, on our economies. I mean, these are matters that we have to talk about. We cannot continue this bipartisan gaslighting that is going on at the moment, where there are these massive changes in Washington affecting us and the whole world. I mean, look at the extraordinary treatment of Canada. Efforts to basically cripple Canada's economy in order to bully them. Into becoming the 51st state. I mean, you know, it is, this is, this is all unprecedented. But yet, if you look to our political leaders, there's nothing wrong with AUKUS, everything's fine, the relationship is fine, nothing's changed. Let me come back to AUKUS. Well, it has changed. Let me come back to AUKUS in a moment, because the question, I suppose, goes to, if you compare how, uh, former Prime Minister

I thought

that, uh, was well said by Malcolm Turnbull.

Absolutely.

What's wrong with this current group that none of them can talk sensibly like that?

I don't understand it. I would have thought that someone would have actually stood up and said no, you know, it's um, anyway, he's probably one of the more sensible ones from that side of politics.

Anyway, it's not just Canada, it's not just Australia, Trump is imposing the 25 percent tariffs on imports from the EU. Even though he loves the EU, he just has to do it.

No, he doesn't like them. He feels that the EU was set up to screw over America.

Yeah, but he still loves them. Let's, let's get it straight from the horse's mouth. Here we go.

Uh, we have made a decision. We'll be announcing it, uh, very soon. And it'll be 25%, generally speaking, and that'll be on cars and all other things. And European Union is a different case than Canada, different kind of case. They've really taken advantage of us in a different way. They don't accept our cars. They don't accept essentially our farm products. They use all sorts of reasons why not. And we accept everything of them, and we have about a 300 billion deficit with the European Union. Now, I love the countries of Europe. I guess I'm, uh, from there at some point a long time ago, right? But, uh, indirectly, well, pretty directly, too, I guess. But I love the countries of Europe. I love all countries, frankly, all different. But the European Union's been It was formed in order to screw the United States. I mean, look, let's be honest. The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That's the purpose of it.

He's such a great man that he loves, he loves them despite the fact that they're screwing him over. He

admires somebody who can screw you over quite well. Well, he does, but historical revisionism will Oh, God. He's indirectly related. His mother is fucking Scottish. Yeah.

So yeah, 25% tariffs on the EU stuff. Um, that's, uh, that's coming. Um, Walmart went to its Chinese suppliers and said, uh, you know, there's 10%, um mm-hmm Uh, tariff thingo. Um, we really don't wanna, you know, have to pay that. Well, it's gonna cause us a problem. So what we want you to do is to reduce your prices by 10%. They said that to their suppliers, so that we can maintain our prices here. And, um, the good old Chinese government hauled in the Walmart, uh, people, and, um, and basically told them, stop. Uh, don't put pressure on our suppliers like that. Um, that's not going to happen. And, uh, what they say here, um, A post on Wednesday, a social media account linked with the state broadcaster, said the retailer was called in the previous day. It said that Walmart's alleged demands on Chinese suppliers risk disrupting the supply chain and harming the interests of businesses in both China and the US, and thus may breach commercial contracts and undermine the stability of market transactions. And, um, uh, if Walmart continues down this path, it may face consequences beyond a government summons. So, that's one way of dealing with a bully American company, um, is to say, not so fast, stop it.

Yeah, the Americans who voted him in need to suffer the consequences. Yeah. Absolutely,

I just think to myself, the yanks have actually got to actually see what he's done.

Yeah. Oh,

but it's all Biden's

fault, you know that.

You know, it's all Biden's fault because he's a dickhead, you know, it's

Greenland. It just doesn't stop there. Greenland. How much is he gonna pay for Greenland? Not a rule.

What's the price tag?

Let's see.

Well, maybe no price tag. You know, look, we're gonna have to see what happens because, uh, Denmark, we need this for national security. We need Greenland very badly. You look at the Russian ships, the China ships, they're all over the place there. you know, surrounding now they have for a long time. That's a lane. But we need that for national security. So I don't know that Denmark has any right title and interest and we're going to find that. But I can tell you, you saw the clips that were released. The people of Greenland would love to become A state of the United States of America.

No, they wouldn't. I'll cut that one, Stuart, because

Chinese and Russian ships, they're in the shipping

lines. There was supposed to be a referendum on, um, Greenland's autonomy. And the Greenland government apparently have called it off. For the time being. Because they want to be part of, um, Denmark and NATO.

Right, right.

Because they're, I don't know what it was, it's not, it's a couple of hundred thousand people I think. It's not a huge population.

I see, so, so they're worried about invasion from Russia. And they want to be part of NATO. Even though it is the Americans who are threatening to

take their land. Is that where we're at? No,

no, but um, Article 5 says that anybody who puts boots on the land

Like, they want to be part of NATO in order to stop the Americans.

Yes, and Canada's also part of NATO, if I remember correctly.

If they really want to stop the Americans, they should join an alliance with Russia. It might be the way to do it.

Well,

maybe.

That's

the sort of lateral thinking they should be doing.

I mean, the French have offered the French nuclear umbrella.

Literally? An umbrella?

Yeah.

What does Vance, what does J. D. Vance say about Greenland? I think it's a similar tune about national security. Let's see what he says.

Do you expect the U. S. to acquire Greenland? I think it's possible, Maria. So, so here's the thing that I think a lot of Folks don't appreciate about Greenland. It's really important to our national security. There are sea lanes there that the Chinese use that the Russians use that frankly, Denmark, which controls Greenland, it's not doing its job and it's not being a good ally. So

it's not doing its job. It's not being a good ally because it's allowing Chinese and Russian commercial ships. So he does have beautiful eyeshadow though. Like for good.

All right, Scott. Um, yes. You're gonna head off? Yes I am. No worries. Good night everyone. See you next week Scott. Yeah, I'll see you

next week. Bye now. Bye.

Joe, you were still with me for a while? Yes.

Alright, that's a

bit more JDV than that. How are we going to solve that problem, solve our own national security? If that means that we need to take more territorial interest in Greenland, then That is what President Trump is going to do because he doesn't care about what the Europeans scream at us. He cares about putting the interests of America's citizens first. There's another angle to this whole Greenland thing, Maria, that people don't realize. You've got probably 55, 000 people living on Greenland who are not actually happy with Danish government. They've got great natural resources there. They've got an incredibly bountiful country that the Danes aren't letting them develop and explore. Of course, Donald Trump would take a different approach if he was the leader of Greenland.

Why do I get the feeling that, you know, in the not too distant future there's going to be a colour revolution in Greenland? There's going to be protesters in the street.

Why would there be a colour revolution? They don't work.

They do for regime change.

Well no, they don't.

Work in Ukraine.

Well it didn't, because Putin tried a colour revolution for the last 10 years, it didn't work. No, no, it's not

Putin

who does the colour revolutions, it's the Americans. No, no, but he

followed the American plan, exactly as it was written in the book.

We'll get on to Ukraine in a second. Ah, what else have we got? Oh, actually, and just Trump on, what did we do, we done Panama? Trump on Japan. That's a quick one, 20 seconds.

But we have an interesting deal with Japan. That we have to protect them, but they don't have to protect us. You know that? That's the way the deal reads. We have to protect Japan. And by the way, they make a fortune with us economically. There's another case, but we have to protect Japan. But under no circumstances do they have to protect us.

Yeah, he actually asks, who made, who would make that deal, Joe?

Strange that it's, it's almost like Germany's not allowed to build up a large army for some reason. They, they're just not pulling their weight in NATO. I can't figure out why. Yeah. It's not like they were conquered in the 1940s and were told that they weren't allowed to have a standing army and the rest of the world would provide their security on their behalf.

Yeah, it wasn't like Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan is a clause. Um, outlawing war as a means to settle international disputes involving the state and, uh, drafted following the surrender of Japan and, um, and basically drafted by the allies who imposed it on Japan and, um, and basically renounces their right to sort of have an army. I mean, this was imposed by the. Victoria's allies on the Japanese.

Yeah.

So, so yeah. There's a trip around the world and I missed out the Panama Canal. There's similar stuff. Basically he says, we're just reclaiming the Panama Canal. And, uh. Well it worked. Um, what worked?

Well, um, the Chinese company that owned the Panamanian port has sold it to some American company.

Right. Probably thought this is all too hard. Getting out of here. Probably. Do I have that one on? Let me just see if it is here. Actually, I do have this one. Seven seconds. Trump on Panama.

My administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal.

Yeah. There we go. In case you doubted me. Free speech, Joe. Mm

hmm.

So, starting with America, Mahmood Khalil, um.

Oh, yeah.

Um, so, he's a chap who was involved in, um, sort of negotiating on behalf of protesters and other people in one of these university protests, and he seems to have a pretty scrupulous record, um, no substantial dirt has been dug up on him. He was just a negotiator. Hasn't said anything too bad. He's a permanent resident, married to an American, and um, basically got picked up by the sort of, is it Homeland Security or whatever they're called there, and um, dragged off. Um, and they're going to deport him. Um, his lawyers have not been able to speak with him, but he knew that he was sort of in at risk and already had a team of lawyers ready and they immediately lodged documents at like four o'clock in the morning after he was taken away. So, um, so basically he's just been calling for an end to the genocide in Palestine. And, um, And he's been arrested and carted away and, you know, some people will say he's a terrorist and we're just going to get rid of people like that. But he's done nothing remotely like being a terrorist and has done nothing remotely supporting terrorism and, um, and basically what this will come down to is an obscure provision in the American law where Marco Rubio. If he comes to the opinion that an individual is a risk to national security, then there's an ability for

him

to deport. We might have, and there might be circumstances where somebody is a risk to national security. Like you might know that they're a spy or something like that. I don't know. But just a guy organizing a university protest, um, protesting the genocide in Gaza, is being deported, you know, an attempt to deport him out of the country.

Supposing a terrorist organization.

So, that's what they're saying. But he is simply protesting the genocide of Palestinians, so, oh boy, um, that will be interesting to see what happens there. And, um, um, you keep looking at the chat. By the way, in the chat, good on you, Alex is busy in there, Essential Lord Don as well. Um, Leonard Hartbottom is in there. And, uh, a few others, keep chatting away. Alison was there earlier. Um, so, that's going to be a test for the American system. I mean, when people talk about the battle between democratic, liberal, freedom loving, civilization countries. As opposed to those authoritarian regimes where they lock you up for nothing. Like, you gotta remember these sorts of incidents where a permanent resident, legally in the country, married to an American. She's eight months pregnant with their baby, whisked away, and unable to talk to the lawyers, and probably taken to a different state. Um, you know, mad rush. Like, these are the sorts of things happening. Um,

I would say that, um, he's no different from Erdogan or who's the Hungarian, all that.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so yeah, it's free speech in the free world until you say free Palestine. Um, and they really cracked down on Columbia University and basically threatening that university. Uh, by cancelling grants that the university relies on unless they adopt a hard line against protesting students. So, um, so, bully boy tactics again against a university, um, basically threatening the entire collapse of the Columbia University. If it doesn't, bend the knee, kiss the ring, and, and do what the government wants in terms of dealing with protesting students. That's authoritarianism. Um, that's UK, that's US. In the UK, here's a clip where a British policeman tells protesters That they're not allowed to protest, unless they're supporting Israel. I

don't know if you got a chance to see this one, Joe, um, beforehand,

let me, I hope it's here now, I've said that, UK police, here we go.

If you don't do that, you are in breach of those conditions, and you could be arrested. What if we support Israel? Are we okay to stay or not? I think I made it quite clear at which site it was about. If you are in support of Palestine, then you are breaching your conditions. And if you are in support of Israel, we can stay? If you are in support of Palestine, absolutely. Congo, Sudan? So what is this about? What is it about? I understand if we can't protest at all, but like If we protest for Palestine, Sudan, Congo, we can stay. If we protest for Israel, we can stay. Just to make this clear.

What do

you think of that one, Joe?

Ah, it's free speech. Admittedly, there is no free speech, I think, in the UK. Oh. Yeah. No, it's elective enforcement of the law. I agree.

Ah. And then, here in Australia, burgatory restaurant chain owner, Hash Tayeh, has been charged with using insulting words in public for a chant at a pro Palestinian rally in the CBD last year. So this is in Australia. His chant was that all Zionists are terrorists and basically there is a law, um, which is typically

unjust. I'm sure there are some Zionists who aren't, but,

uh, yes, you know, uh, an inaccurate chant Joe, for sure. But, um, nothing about Jews, just Zionists, people who are in favour of the, um, Zionist project. Um, so there's a law which says, which typically is used when somebody is insulting a police officer.

Yes.

And it's, it's making an offence when someone behaves in a riotous, indecent, offensive or insulting manner. is the, um, particular offence that they're trying to nail this guy with for essentially political speech because he's talking about Zionists, not Jews, not race, not ethnicity or religion, the political ideology of Zionism and, um, and he's being charged. Um, with that, so, it's believed it's the first time that a potential political speech has been deemed a criminal offence that breached the insulting law, and, uh, the charges are normally levied for using abusive or obscene language against police officers. Joe, we've often been quite pedantic on this podcast distinguishing, uh, Jews and Zionists. Our

Federal Attorney

General, Mark Dreyfus. Who is Jewish said the label Zionist is used not in any way accurately when critics use that word, they actually mean Jew. They're not really saying Zionist. They're saying Jew because they know they cannot say Jew. So they say Zionist or words such as Zio or Zio. How do you feel about that Joe?

Um, I suspect that he has a vested interest given that, is Dreyfus not a Jew? I, I would suggest that he's deliberately conflating the two to, um, uh, quell dissent against Israel's particular, uh, policies.

Yep.

I mean, hopefully the magistrate will see through it, presuming it's a magistrate.

Now Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, the label Zionist is used not in any way accurately. When critics use that word, they actually mean Jew. How can you say that blanketly about everyone? Yeah. And um, Zeddy Lawrence, Executive Director of Zionism Victoria said, given the overwhelming majority of Jews in Victoria, Australia, and indeed the world, would identify as Zionist. Besmirching the latter is akin to painting a target on the former.

I don't know that that's true.

I don't either. I know it's not. Okay. Yeah. So, um, yeah.

And again, uh, it's kind of, do you believe in Zionism in that the Jews should have a state? Or do you believe in Zionism as in the Jews should be on the East Bank?

Hmm.

Yeah. I think they

Different forms of Zionism out there.

Absolutely.

Hmm.

So you could be fully in support of a Jewish homeland in a place that was negotiated and bought from willing participants as compared to an invasion in 1948, which you think was unlawful.

But, you know, Joe, the point on all this is that. Zionism is a political idea. It's an ideology. It's an idea.

Correct.

And we should be able to criticize ideas.

Yep.

And we should be able to criticize people for holding ideas.

Yep.

If we think that they're bad ideas. And that is completely different to people having an attribute which is involuntary. You know, your race, your, your gender, your sexuality. When people are subjected to criticism, uh, for these things, um, you can understand that as a protected attribute. But when it comes to ideas, um, It should be possible to insult ideas and people holding ideas without being worried about them breaching any law. Because, um, ideas should be up for debate.

But this was always the case with Islamophobia.

Yes.

Where criticism of the religion was taken as being a fear of brown people.

Correct. And this is where, from day one on this podcast, I've tried to say to people, when it comes to the anti discrimination laws and hate laws, Religion, at the behest of Christian groups usually, has been lumped in to these anti discrimination laws as if it is a gender, as if it is a skin colour. It's not. It is just another ideology. And some of the ideologies, religious ideologies, are particularly distasteful and we should be able to insult them and the stupid people who hold those, uh, some of the more unsavoury religious Ideological views, without fear of being, um, trotted off to court, breaching some rules. So, there's a distinction between ideas that people hold and physical attributes that people have, uh, through no fault of their own, and we, and we don't want people to be discriminated against or subjected to insult because of, of attributes over which they have no control.

Mm.

But if people have control over their ideas. Uh, and their stupid, harmful ideas, we should be able to pipe up and say so, and it's becoming increasingly difficult.

But if you're brainwashed into your ideas, how much control do you have over them?

Well, that's true. And of course, a number of the laws that have been drafted do include religion. They don't include Zionism.

And

so there's an attempt here where, um, to quell and to suppress debate about what Israel's up to. That people are trying to say sort of commentary about Zionism is also a commentary about Jews is therefore a religious Commentary and subject to all of those discrimination and hate laws that have been created and are getting beefed up As we speak so that's where we're at in a sort of a

Yes.

Over here? Roughly? Hmm. Mary Kostakidis, former SBS presenter, currently before court on the stuff she said on Twitter. Um, if you criticize an ideology in public, you can now be charged with a crime by police. But only if that ideology is Zionism. Communism? Or Marxism? Or Feminism? Or Liberalism? No worries, just go for it. Just don't dare criticise Zionism. They will put all stops out to put you in jail. At this point we might ask, just who are the police working for? Apropos the argument most use of Zionists. Arguably, most Australian women are feminists. But most of us aren't crazy enough to want people who criticize feminism in jail. Good point. Ah. So she was talking about the Ashteya case there, so um, ah. And meanwhile, six Melbourne Jews labelled anti Semites by prominent lawyer Mark Leibler. Famous Jewish lawyer, have made a formal complaint against him to the Australian Human Rights Commission. So six Jews, labelled by another Jew as anti semitic. Yes. Have taken him to the Human Rights Commission. Um, and what did he say that caused them to do that? He said, Nothing but nothing is worse than those Jews who level totally unfounded allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the state of Israel. They are repulsive and revolting human beings. Their relatives, who were murdered by the Nazis, the role models for Hamas will undoubtedly be turning in their graves. Their avowed anti Zionism is clearly no more than a cover for the reality that they are vicious anti Semites. And the group that he was talking about said, hang on a minute,

we're Jewish. That sounds like hate speech to me.

Well, allegedly, Joe, we'll, we'll, we'll, that's what these people are alleging. We'll see how that all pans out. Finally on this topic. Um,

I think they did manage to roll out some, um, concentration camp survivors who denounced the Israeli government for their behavior, going, we've seen this behavior, probably going, we've seen this behavior before and we're shocked that it's happening by Israeli people.

Yes. Careful, Mark Dreyfuss would say, well, that sort of anti Zionist talk is actually anti Jewish talk and you're an anti Semite. Because all, you know, people are purposefully using Zionism as code for Jews.

It's the

word that we need to use.

Well, because I'm a Jew.

Joe, we spend all this time arguing over words rather than denouncing genocide. Well, exactly. 11 days before the Hamas attack on the 2023, the Palestinian writer Mohammed L. Kurd published an essay entitled, Jewish settlers stole my house, it's not my fault they're Jewish. In it he addressed the very distinction which Mark Dreyfus insists critics of Israel and Israeli policy in Australia are not genuinely making. So this um, Palestinian writer said, we were instructed to distinguish Jews from Zionists with surgical precision, L. Kurd wrote. It didn't matter that their boots were on our necks and that their bullets and batons bruised us. Our statelessness and homelessness were trivial. What mattered was how we spoke about our keepers. Not the conditions they kept us under, blockaded, surrounded by colonies and military outposts, or the fact that they kept us at all. Palestinians living and increasingly being murdered under Israeli occupation. I'm surely entitled to wonder how the semantic violence we practice with our words dwarfs the decades of systemic and material violence enacted against us by the self proclaimed Jewish state. Worthwhile remembering that all this talk over Words. Meanwhile, hardly any talk about the actual genocide itself. Ugh. Ukraine, Joe.

Mmm.

Um, so the Europeans are talking about a massive rearmament program because they can't rely on the Americans anymore. And, um, this guy tweeted, as a German, I just want to

get this straight. Yes. The entire Western world wants us to build up a huge army, march through Poland and fight the Russians if necessary. Yep. Just writing this down so there's no mistakes in future. Yes.

That was a good tweet. Mm hmm.

Um, the whole point is that Europe doesn't have a, the necessary defense equipment, weapons, personnel, to sort of. To do anything. I mean, with, with the Americans not offering, if the Americans pull out, there's nothing that Europeans can do. They don't have enough.

No, my understanding is, um, the Europeans don't have the heavy lift capability and, uh, NATO was always US led. So the command and control structure until recently was always headed up by a US general.

So, um, so even though they might plan to rearm Europe, it's going to take a long time to do it. Um, uh, you know, as Farrah Farkas wrote something about that, but I'll just let that one go. Um, Oh, regime change, Joe. Hmm. Should we talk about that?

Yeah.

Literally. Uh, yeah. Okay. Senator Chris Murphy, American guy.

Mm hmm.

Speaking in 2014. Mm hmm. So let me see if I can find the right one on him. Here he is. Um, I might pause it a few times during this, so, um, So this guy's talking 2014, and he was on some sort of European committee, blah, blah, blah. So,

here we go. I think it was our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovych from office. Now, uh, the question is, what can we do to support this new government? There's going to be a lot of talk about an assistance package. With respect to Ukraine, we have not sat on the sidelines. We have been. Um, very much involved, uh, you know, members of the Senate who have been there, members of the State Department who have been on the square, the administration, the Obama administration passed sanctions, uh, the Senate, uh, was prepared to pass its own set of sanctions, and as I said, I really think that the, uh, clear position of the United States has in part been what has helped lead to this change in, uh, regime. So, um, I know that there is merit in the claim that, um, the United States, sort of has these principles, and then we selectively apply them. We get involved in certain places, and then we don't get involved in other places. But, um, I think if ultimately this is a peaceful transition to a new government in Ukraine, it'll be the United States on the streets of Ukraine who will be seen as a great friend in helping make that transition happen. This is really about Supporting one of the biggest, most important countries in the Eurasian region, um, be able to determine for themselves what their future is. And it looks to people like this is the United States and Russia once again, uh, fighting, maybe not in military terms, but on economic terms, in, uh, a country that we both care about. But really, ultimately, I think this is about us supporting the wishes of Ukraine. Um, you know, the, the, there is a U. S. interest, uh, here. We are in the middle of negotiating a new trade agreement with Europe. Um, to my state, it's enormously important. We do 40 percent of our trade in Connecticut with Europe. Um, if Ukraine is part of the European Union, um, and thus is part of this new trade agreement with the United States. That could result in billions of dollars in new economic opportunities for the U. S. So, we do have an economic interest in the Ukraine being part of the European Union, and we shouldn't be shy about, um, making clear that interest. that Yanukovych was elected, uh, for the first time in 2010 for one five year term? That elections were scheduled for 2015? Uh, the second point is Uh, why is it okay for foreign ministers from other countries to show up during protest movements, uh, let's say in Ukraine, like the foreign ministers of Poland and, and then Germany, and support the protesters against the current government there? Wouldn't it be something similar to, um, the foreign ministers of, let's say, Mexico and Canada showing up, uh, during the Occupy Wall Street movement and saying, yes, we agree that your government is corrupt? And the third point is, why isn't the West and America talking about the fact that, um, A large or significant portion of the Ukrainian opposition right now is made up of, uh, far right, um, politicians including from the, uh, the party Svoboda, which openly is fascist and xenophobic and they said that they don't want to join the EU because they consider the EU to be a bunch of gays and Jews, just as well as they say that they don't want to join the imperialist Moscow regime. Um, let me, let me take, take all those, uh, very quickly, one at a time. Um, you're right, America, which was elected, and I mentioned this before, Um, I, I understand the difficult position here, which is that, uh, Yanukovych was elected and we are not in the business of encouraging, uh, rebellions and revolutions, uh, on the streets against elected leaders because we ultimately think that elections, as you mentioned, are the place in which you should settle your differences. The, the issue here is that, um, Yanukovych lost his legitimacy to govern when he used force to try to break up these protests and the United States, Um, didn't go on to that square in any meaningful way, uh, until, uh, the president tried to break up the peaceful protests. That's why Senator McCain and I went. And we certainly got a lot of grief from people asking why two U. S. Senators are going to the square to support a protest movement against an elected government. We did that because we think that there were human rights and civil rights that were violated there, and we've always stood up for that. Uh, for that concept. And again, I think that answers your second question as to why you had, um, foreign ministers and foreign leaders who were on that square. It was because we're standing up for the idea that people should be able to lodge, protest.

So, you know, three things. One is boasting about their involvement in regime change.

With sanctions, yes.

Um, and Being on the ground in the square.

Yes.

Second was, uh, less important, which was, you know, my state's going to make money out of economic stuff, who cares. But the third one was, oh look, you know, why are you overthrowing democracies? favour of democracies? And his answer was, well, we had to move in for humanitarian reasons.

Yeah.

Because of the

Because of the violent crackdowns against protesters.

Of the violence. So, so this is the key part of all that, I reckon, is if you want to, um, an excuse for regime change, all you need is a violent protest. And, and the question is, It's always hard to determine who is responsible for the violent protest.

Yeah, those poor Burkitt were forced to beat the people senseless in front of TV cameras, weren't they?

There's, and there's lots of evidence about Um, about the violence not emanating, a lot of violence not emanating from the government side. Like, if you, if for example, you've spent, I don't know, 5 billion in, um, propaganda in the Ukraine, which the Americans admit to. And if, for example, you are working, you know, Yats is your guy, because you're caught on a telephone call,

um, so you're, you're trying

to That's interesting, the telephone call, Yanukovych approached the, um, the leaders of the protest movement, and said, if you break up this protest, I'll have three of you, no sorry, I'll have two of you. two of the leaders as ministers in my government. So the three leaders of the protests went to the U. S. embassy and said, all right, we've been given this opportunity. What, what do you think of this? And so there was a debate inside the U. S. office that was bugged by the FSB, uh, that they were talking about, was it a trap, you know, what was the downside? And they basically said, one of these three guys is a neo Nazi. So if two of you come in as ministers, the neo Nazi is going to be left as the sole leader of the protests, which doesn't look good because then they can dismiss the protests as being led by a neo Nazi. So of the two that's remaining, which one is going to take up the ministership inside this government? And the answer was Yatz is our guy. Yatz is the guy with the most experience, he's already served, and what happens, he was the guy who was the leader of the opposition party. And when the government fell, the leader of the opposition party, strangely enough, became the interim prime minister, or president, whatever he was. Right. And did the EU want him? Uh, I don't know whether the EU wanted him.

Oh, it was just that when Newland said, fuck the EU. No, I think that was something else.

Anyway. But what he doesn't hear, because it was in Russian, was the conversation from the Kremlin at the same time, talking to their people in Donetsk and Luhansk, who were saying, now is the time to revolt, we will come in and aid you.

So if, if for example, you're involved in regime change multiple times around the world, Yeah. And the CIA is involved in regime change. Yeah.

Apparently not very good.

From, from the beginning with Mossadegh in Iran.

Mm

hmm. There's, there's a litany of times where the CIA goes in.

They've been accused of a lot. The question is actually how competent they are. And apparently that's debatable as to exactly how competent they are.

Well, uh, they're pretty competent in Guatemala, they're pretty competent in Chile, they're pretty competent in Iran, like, like they've, they've done it on a number of occasions. They've

generally supported an already existing person. They've, they've helped somebody get into power.

Right.

And, and quite often they've, um.

So, so you don't think the CIA has a program, an intentional program, Of going into countries that they want to convert to a pro Western viewpoint, of providing propaganda and of supporting opposition elements. In those countries, you don't think they're into that? I

do, but, uh, I don't know how successful they've been.

If, if for example, you get to the point where you've spent 5 billion, which they admit to. Yeah. In Ukraine. Mm hmm. To, for propaganda purposes. Did they poison an opposition leader, possibly?

Did they poison an opposition leader? Dodgy shellfish,

you know, strange,

disfiguring. I'm

not saying the Russians are innocent. Oh, no. I'm not saying for a minute that the Russians did nothing.

So maybe the Americans did it because they saw the Russians stepping in and they went, well, maybe we should be doing our own bit of. Who

cares who's first?

Right.

You could argue for, you

know,

who started. Who knows? We'd never know, would we? If you accept the proposition the CIA is in the business of regime change and installs US friendly

But that would suggest that the U. S. was interested in Ukraine and by all, so Bush was, but by all accounts, um, uh, Obama didn't give a fuck about Ukraine.

But we know they spent 5 billion on propaganda in Ukraine. That's on the record.

And is it propaganda or is it just, um, the usual, uh, investigative reporting?

No, it was on, it was on journalists and, and news outlets that they funded that provided a pro Western viewpoint and they provided money for people. Because my understanding

is they've provided money for independent journalists. I don't know how much of that is pro Western journalists, but a lot of it was just exposing corruption. And Ukraine was a very corrupt state. Five billion

dollars worth?

Over what period of time?

I'm not going to convince you, but here's the theory that I'll put forward. Is if you have spent five billion dollars on propaganda in the Ukraine, Yeah. And. Um, uh, you've got a democratically elected government that you don't like, then according to that American, if there is sufficient violence, then that is a green light to then dismiss the legitimacy of the democratically elected and to back. A, a, a rebel uprising or a, a,

an

unelected group who comes in and takes power. So essentially what he was saying was, we don't overthrow democracies until there's a human rights issue is what he was saying. And if you were cynical, you could think to yourself, well, let's create a human rights issue and nobody will know who's responsible. And that gives us the green line. That's, that's where, you know, you can disagree with me as you obviously do, but that's a

theory that, that But if you've spent five billion and the Russians have spent 50 billion, um, you know, how, how effective is the American propaganda? It's a drop in the ocean. So don't forget half of Ukraine is within range of Russia's TV transmitters.

Yes.

And we know that the Russian TV transmitters are not unbiased.

Yes.

So, at least half of Ukraine is getting biased propaganda from the Russian Ministry of Propaganda.

I'm not

So, so maybe the Americans were funding just purely independent journalism.

Uh, maybe, Joe.

Oh, and this, this is the problem with this.

Well, the problem is you put up both theories and then people saying which one sounds more plausible to them, so, because we can never prove beyond.

No, and, and, and this is the whole point of FSB disinformation is to muddy the water. So you're never quite sure.

But any disinformation,

on both sides.

So one, that's one side I've put forward, and thank you. You put forward the other side that says,

actually, no, it's the, you know, the other side.

Because, because the FSB we know is great at running disinformation programs. And unlike the Americans, they're not looking for an instant payoff. They will. do things that take a long time to mature. This has always been the KGB back in the cold war would train up people who were raw recruits in the hopes that in 20 years time they would be in a position of power and would be of use to the KGB.

Uh, I think the track record of the Americans on this sort of thing is pretty good. So I wouldn't, uh, I wouldn't put them as the underdogs when it comes down to a propaganda

war. But again, the whole colour revolution thing. Uh, there is a known playbook that was written by some pacifist who was saying how great color revolutions were and why America shouldn't be doing, uh, getting involved in wars that in fact they should be doing these color revolutions. And Putin followed the playbook and it didn't work, which is why he had to invade in 2022.

So, let me, um, Jeffrey Sachs, because I've talked about him a lot, and you're going to give some contrary stuff on him, which will be good. So he was invited to speak to the European Parliament, um, recently. So I've got a transcript of what he had to say. So I'll just start with the first part of some of his qualifications. Uh, in it he says, I've watched the events very close up in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine very closely for the last 36 years. I was an advisor to the Polish government in 1989, to President Gorbachev's economic team in 1990 and 1991, to President Yeltsin's economic team in 91 to 93. and President Kuchma's economic team in Ukraine, 93 to 94. I helped introduce the Estonian currency. I helped several countries in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia. After the Madan, I was asked by the new government in Ukraine to come to Kiev, and I was taken around the Madan and learned a lot of things firsthand. I've been in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years. I also know the American political leadership close up. Our previous Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen, was my wonderful microeconomics teacher 52 years ago, and we've been friends for a half century. I know these people, I say this because I want to explain, in my point of view, it's not second hand, it's not ideology, it's what I've seen with my own eyes and experienced during this period. So, Jo. Any reflections on So

he fucked over the Russians by helping them screw up their economy and introduce an oligarchy. Uh, the same Is that what he

recommended?

I don't know, but he was going on about how

he advised them. Yeah, but you don't know what he, you don't know what, you don't know Joe what his advice was and whether it was taken.

Well then what's his use if his advice wasn't taken? Why did they keep inviting him?

But Joe, if you don't know what his advice was, like they might have dismissed his advice or they might have been able to take his advice for other reasons, like they might have said Don't do these things because you're going to get screwed. We don't, I haven't gone into what his advice was, but, but he's a guy who's on those credentials.

Yeah. So he's deep into the economics of these countries. I, yeah.

And not just Russia, but, um, Poland, Ukraine, Slovenia, like. Um, invited by the new government in Kiev to come in. So, um, you were saying earlier that he was like a Russian stooge or something. Well,

yeah, I mean, he's obviously, he's got Russian talking points.

Yeah, but, you know, if the Ukrainians thought that, would they invite him in at that point? Well, maybe they didn't know at the time. He's got a reputation of 30 years. Yeah, he's a, he's such a well known operator in this field, they weren't like who the fuck's Jeffrey Sachs, they invited him in because they knew who he was.

And okay, he's, he's an expert in money, but that doesn't mean he's an expert in revolution.

Yes,

but, okay.

But, it does mean, I think, that he's a guy with credentials that he has been, um, In the place, yeah. In the place and seen this. But I thought you were going to say something about him being a Russian stooge or something.

Oh no, no, no, sorry. I, he, other than him repeating Russian talking points. Right. He may be just what they call a useful idiot.

Right. Okay.

No, no, I, I, I've got no evidence that he's been paid off by the Russians. Ah, right. Okay. Then

nothing sort of sinister in any sense. No. Like that. Right. All right. So. That's his, um, uh, that's what I think are reasonable credentials for somebody to commentate on what's

going on here. I'll go on and stop me at any point if you want to, Joe, but,

um, but I'll just go on with some of the things that he, how he outlines things. Because I say all this and, um, John says he's got a bridge to sell me. So, um. Okay, this is from his speech. The United States came to The View, especially during 1991, and then with the end of the Soviet Union, that the U. S. now runs the world, and that the U. S. does not have to heed anybody's views, red lines, concerns, security viewpoints, international obligations, or any U. N. framework. When the Soviet Union ended in 91, The View became even more exaggerated, and I can name chapter and verse, but The View was, we, the U. S., run the show. Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and many other names you would have come to know literally believe this is now a U. S. world and we will do as we want. Incidentally, Joe, um, you mentioned he knows economics, but, um, it should come through in this, but he, he deals with a lot of military and foreign policy people that he has very good contacts with, so. It is beyond just the economics, but anyway, what happened after 91 is that the United States decided that unipolarity meant that NATO would enlarge somewhere from Brussels to Vladivostok step by step. You will recall February 7th, 1990, Hans Dietrich Geschner and James Baker spoke with Gorbachev. Genscher gave a press conference afterwards where he explained that NATO will not move eastward. And understanding was reached that NATO will not move one inch eastward. This was an agreement, albeit verbal, and it was ex

But apparently it was extended by James Baker. Right. But as soon as that, as soon as the president heard, he said, no, that's not true. Um, basically revoke that. So he revoke it? Well, he said, you've made that offer, take that offer back. It's basically, that's Not on the cards. Was that

ever communicated to the Russians?

Uh, apparently, no, because, hang on, Gorbachev, Gorbachev was under the impression that it was. That

it was revoked.

No, no, no, no. Apparently Gorbachev went off believing it was, uh, on the cards, but apparently they had said, no, it's not.

Well. So there was some confusion about it. In this article, well, in his speech, Sachs says, it was explicit and is in countless documents. Just look up National Security Archive of George Washington University and you can get dozens of documents. It's a website called, What Gorbachev Heard About NATO? Take a look, please, because everything you're told by the U. S. about this promise is a lie. But the archives are perfectly clear. Many of the documents are here and here. So he's got links for those. Patrons who get the show notes, you can click on the links. If you're not a patron, maybe you should become one. Anyway. So the decision was taken by Clinton in 94 to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine. This is a long term US project. It's not due to one administration or another, this is a U. S. government project that started more than 30 years ago. A 30 year project, Ukraine and Georgia were the keys to the project. Why? You surround Russia in the Black Sea and you deny Russia access to the eastern Mediterranean. The U. S. idea was that there would be Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, all in NATO. That would deprive Russia of any international status. By blocking the Black Sea and essentially neutralising Russia as little more than a local power. So, Joe, that would be, you know, you've often said, well, what about Finland? Why aren't they, you know, and I said, well, Finland's different.

But all you need is Turkey blocking the Bosphorus. Turkey controls the Bosphorus, and as we found out in the First World War, if Turkey is against you, you're screwed.

Well from the Russian point of view, losing, um, according to Sachs, it was the US idea that by getting Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey and Georgia, then that would be crippling Russia. Anyway, um. Bombing Belgrade 78 days straight in 1999 was part of this project. We'll get on to, uh, that later. So, NATO enlargement started in 99 with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia was extremely unhappy about it, but these were countries still far from Russia's border. Russia protested, but of course to no avail. This is all of course still, uh, Jeffrey Sachs speech to the EU. After 99, the next round of NATO enlargement came in 2004 with seven more countries, the three Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At this point, Russia was pretty upset. The second wave of NATO enlargement was a complete violation of post war order agreed at the time of German reunification. As everybody recalls, because we just had the Munich Security Conference last week, Putin went to the Munich Security Conference in 2007 to say, stop. Enough is enough. Of course, the U. S. did not listen. By 2008, I listened to Mr. Saakashvili in New York City when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations. He told us that Georgia is in the heart of Europe and as such would join NATO. I walked out and called my wife and said, this man's crazy. He's going to blow up his country. A month later, war broke out between Russia and Georgia, in which Georgia was defeated. In 2008, as everybody knows, our former CIA director, William Burns, who at the time was a U. S. ambassador to Russia, sent a long diplomatic cable back to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which famously entitled, was entitled, Niet means Niet. The message was that NATO enlargement was opposed by the entire Russian political class, not just President Putin. We know about the cable from Julian Assange. Believe me, not one word is told to the American people. Um, uh, we have Julian Assange to thank for the memo. As you know, Yankevich was elected as a president in 2010 on the platform of Ukraine's neutrality. Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know, I was He

was elected on the grounds that he was going to integrate with Europe because The, um, Ukrainians had seen how successful Poland was in integrating with Europe mm-hmm. And how Poland's economy was now much larger than Ukraine's, and they wanted a, a slice of that action.

So, okay. I'll get onto more of Yakovich later. Yakovich Yakovich. Thanks. Yeah. Um, um, he says, oh no, I was there on and off during these years. What Russia was negotiating in 2010 was a 25 year lease. to 2042 for Sevastopol Naval Base. That's it. There were no Russian demands for Crimea or for the Donbass, nothing like that at all. But as soon as

Sevastopol was part of, was a Russian lease, then Ukrainian territory wasn't, um, a sovereign. So it couldn't have joined NATO.

Uh, NATO doesn't allow people to join if they've leased out a naval base.

So you have to have territorial integrity before you can join NATO.

So why were they applying to join NATO?

Um, because, well, they wanted to

Were they going to renege on the lease? I don't know.

So basically Europe, no it wasn't Europe, it was the US. The US gave them a plan that said in however many years, once you've done these things, you could be possibly allowed to join NATO if every member country agrees and votes and says you're allowed in.

Did they actually sign the lease?

Yeah, Yanukovych signed the lease, and also, uh, Parliament passed a law that said the President wasn't allowed to make any form of, um, alliance with any other country.

So the Russians must have been worried that the lease would be cancelled if the Ukraine was going to join the NATO.

I don't know why. When they were, as far as I know, there was no talk about joining NATO until after 2014.

So, I'll keep going. There were no Russian demands for Crimea or for the Donbass, nothing like that at all. The idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian Empire is childish propaganda.

Except that, um, Putin has said. That Belarus and the Ukrainian people are all one people and that historically Peter the Great owned a huge area of land and Medvedev, who was prime minister, sorry, was president whilst Putin was prime minister, has said that Ukrainian is a made up thing, made up country, it doesn't really exist, they're all one people, they're all Russians, and you know, it's, it's all a farce.

Yeah, he also said Khrushchev should never have given, um,

Ukraine away in the way it

did. That didn't mean he was, but he was also saying what's done is done. Who,

Medvedev?

No, Putin.

Yeah, yeah, but Medvedev, who's also, uh, Putin's right hand man.

So in the same way that you could, so they're talking historically, it should never have happened, but there was also an acknowledgement of water under the bridge. That's what's done is done. But, but

apparently Medvedev is saying that Ukraine doesn't exist. It's, it's a non-entity. It's, and, and Ukrainian is a bastard version of Russian. It's not real. So he's, he's basically just denying them as a race.

Well,

denying them as a people. It, it's not like it's, it's fantasy to say that, but

that you can say that. But that's a, a different thing from, from saying Putin was always going to take Ukraine back because he always thought it was part of the motherland that. And he was determined to take it back. You can have those views, but still, Putin can say, I should never have given that away, but it's gone and it's up water on the bridge, and I can't get it back. Which is what he was saying.

Right. Whilst all the people around him were saying something different.

Well, what Putin says. We've got to deal with what Putin's saying here. Right. So,

um. I mean, Peyton has to look respectable to the rest of the world, whereas his sidekicks can say whatever for internal consumption. I

think it was pretty realistic about that. So, anyway, you can have different views on Peyton's motivation, but this is the Jeffrey Sachs view. Yet the United States decided that Yankevich, uh, Yanukovych must be overthrown because he favored neutrality. and opposed NATO enlargement. Uh, it's called a regime change operation. Um, uh, According to Sachs, there have been about 100 regime change operations by the US since 1947. That's what the CIA does for a living. Please note, it's a very unusual kind of foreign policy. In the American government, if you don't like the other side, you don't negotiate with them, you try to overthrow them, preferably covertly. If it doesn't work covertly, you do it overtly. You always say, it's not our fault. They're the aggressor. They're the other side. Jo, you think their, uh, success, uh, is not so great.

Mm hmm.

Um, according to SACS, in 2014, the US worked actively to overthrow Yanukovych. Everybody knows the phone call intercepted by my Columbia University colleague, Victoria Newland, and the US ambassador, Jeffrey Hyatt. You don't get their evidence, according to SACS. Uh, the Russians intercepted her call, they put it on the internet. Um, um. When the Maidan occurred, I was called soon after. Professor Sachs, the new Ukrainian Prime Minister would like to see you to talk about the economic crisis. So I flew to Kiev, and I was walked around the Maidan. And I was told how the U. S. paid the money for all the people around the Maidan. The spontaneous revolution of dignity. So that's Sachs saying he's told by the new government of how the U. S. paid for the money for the people around the Madan. Anyway, um, Ladies and gentlemen, please. How did all those Ukrainian media outlets suddenly appear at the time of the Madan? Where did all this organization come from? Where did all these buses come from? Where did all these people come from? Are you kidding? This is an organized effort. It's not a secret, except perhaps to citizens of Europe and the United States. Everyone else understands it quite clearly. Then after the coup came the Minsk agreements, especially minced minced two in Minsk two agreement. Uh, it was endorsed by United States Security Council through resolution 2, 2 0 2, uh, yet the United States and Ukraine decided it would not be enforced. Uh, Trump won the 2016 election, expanded armed shipments to Ukraine. There were many thousands of deaths in the shelling by Ukraine in the Donbass. There was no implementation of the Minsk 2 agreement. At the end of 21, Putin put on the table a last effort to reach a modus operandi with the US in two security agreement drafts, one with Europe, one with the United States. He put the Russia US draft agreement on the table, December 15, 2021. According to Sex, he says, Following that, I had an hour long call with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in the White House, begging, Jake, avoid the war. You can avoid this war. All the US has to do is say, NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine. And he said to me, oh, NATO's not going to enlarge to Ukraine, don't worry about it. And I said, Jake, say it publicly. No, no, no, no. We can't say it publicly. I said, Jake, you're not going to have a war over something that isn't going to happen. And he said, don't worry, Jeff, there will be no war. So this is Sax talking with National Security Advisor. He says, they're not very bright people, I'm telling you. If I can give you my honest view, they're not very bright people. They talk to themselves. They don't talk to anyone else. They play game theory. In non cooperative game theory you don't talk to the other side, you just make your strategy. This is the essence of non cooperative game theory. It's not negotiation theory, it's not peacemaking theory, it goes on.

So in terms of the Maidan, I just read a book by an American journalist who speaks fluent Russian, lived in Moscow, and was also at the Maidan, and he was talking to the people who were on the ground, in Russian. Because he said, yeah, these people are bilingual. And in fact, they looked at him as an idiot because he only spoke Russian. He didn't speak both. And he said, these people were pissed off because they wanted to be closer to Europe. And Putin was basically pissed off that they were getting close to Europe and promised to cut off the gas and withhold money. So Yanukovych was between a rock and a hard place. His populace wanted him to be close to Europe

and the

Russians, and the Russians didn't, the Russians wanted him, uh, in their pocket and also the populace were a bit pissed off at the corruption of the whole of the government, not just him. So it was a popular uprising. It was a popular pissed off people. It wasn't just the Americans going, Oh, look, there's 50, 000 people here. Let's give them 10 bucks each because yeah. Because that's half a million dollars, that's not chump change, because you've got to get the money into the country and be able to hand it out. So to suggest that the Americans, that the people were only there because they were bribed by the Americans seems a bit strange, a bit stretching credulity. And he's saying that basically, uh, it was the heavy handed crackdown by the Burkhardt that caused the toppling of the regime. It was, uh, a very scared security. Oh, in fact, it was a very scared. government that was facing a popular uprising. It wasn't even a popular, it wasn't an uprising at the time. It was just people pissed off. And don't forget this was hot on the heels of Putin having a, um, a huge protest against him in 2012. So 2012, when he came back as president, the Russians, uh, and there was also evidence of ballot stuffing. There was a big Russian protest because when Putin handed over power to Medvedev, it was seen as a step forward. And for him to take power back from Medvedev, people were going, what the fuck is going on? So Putin was very worried that the Maidan would spread. that this uprising against oligarchy would spread to Russia. So it was nothing about, he was scared of NATO, he was scared of a popular uprising against him.

So nothing to do with being scared of NATO?

Uh, no, because And were

concerned about NATO entering Ukraine,

being part of NATO? NATO couldn't be part of, well Ukraine couldn't be part of NATO. Because

NATO's

rules said, that because there were, you know, territorial disputes and also Ukraine's parliament had passed a law that said they couldn't join any alliance, so, you know, NATO was a done deal.

Uh, I, I didn't know that the Ukrainian constitution had been changed to say they couldn't join NATO.

Uh, it said they couldn't join any form of alliance.

Um, because. Part of the demand has always been

mm-hmm

That the constitution be changed to say that. So I've never heard, yeah. And, and I, that, that, that's already in the constitution and I'm sure I would've, so Putin has always said, basically for peace agreement, I'm gonna keep Craig era, I'm gonna keep Don Bass. And you must. You

can only have 5, 000 troops. And you must have. And you can't have any troops anywhere that might possibly maybe fire a missile at us. So it was basically, you have to demilitarize half of Ukraine that's left.

The basics has been, I'll keep Crimea, I'll keep the Donbass. and you'll never enter NATO. It's never been said that there's already an existing clause in the constitution saying they can't join NATO.

No. So I think it was, you have to, it was the president couldn't basically, uh, join an alliance without it being ratified by the parliament. Parliament passed this law.

Okay.

So I presume it was, you can't do this unilaterally. So just the president

unilaterally can't do it. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's. For whatever, for what that's worth.

But, but again, until That means the

Parliament could at any time.

Yes, but until the Russians invaded, the majority of people in Ukraine didn't want to be part of NATO. They wanted to be part of the EU.

But when you say they couldn't be part of NATO anyway, well they could, it just required Parliament to pass it. Yes, and the majority of people didn't want it. So, so it was a possibility.

Well, yes, it was a possibility. Yeah.

And it wasn't, it wasn't something they couldn't do. They could if they changed the past law.

Well, yes, but it wasn't a unilateral thing. It wasn't a, and again, people talk about NATO expansion as if NATO is suborning these countries and saying, you must be part of NATO. These are independent countries that choose to join and they have to have a reason that they want to choose to join. Finland and Sweden were at neutral for so long. And suddenly they changed their mind and I can't think why they'd want to change their mind. Um, Poland apparently blackmailed the U. S. into allowing them because the U. S. was against Poland joining.

Right.

Poland literally

Had their blackmail.

So, um, apparently they, I can't remember what the first thing was, but eventually they went, because it was Clinton in power, they started courting the Republicans and going, Hey. We'll support you, we'll give you help, we'll allow you to see more.

And an internal regime change operation in the U. S.

So they were supporting the opposition in the U. S. And so the Republicans introduced a bill into Congress, uh, saying that they would allow. Poland, basically, or I think any Eastern European country to join NATO. All

right, I've let you have your pushback on that bit, Joe. Keep going.

Uh, give me two, well, you carry on, but I need to go for a second.

Well, I have to tell you what, I'll, I'll just, I need a drink of water as well. Dear listener,

two minutes and we'll be back,

because I just got to top up my water as well. Everyone can get a drink. Uh, you still there in the chat room, Alex? Um, I'll go through some comments. Alex, it's been busy. Russia likes compromising people. USA likes replacing with U. S. friendly leaders, um, uh, earlier on essential Lord Don, I think being offended is offensive. Um, Alex, we should be able to criticize anyone doing ethnic cleansing, um, Alex, I saw an anti genocide protest and it was. 20 percent police by numbers, union protest at the same site three weeks earlier and 10 times as many people and had no police presence at any time. Um, Alex says that copper is getting demoted, that was a reference to UK copper. Alex is still there. Essential Lord Don, present. Good. Um, Alex, damn I would love to find out in a few years he wears dresses at home. That's about J. D. Vance. Yes. Um, Essential Lord Don, if we do get into a conflict with the U. S. we have emus and kangaroos as shock troops. Yanks won't know what hit them. Don't forget the drop bears. Essential Lord Don. Um, uh, there we go. Greg Luigi Blackshaw was there at one point, Landon was there, buy more submarines. Um, there we go, alright, I was just going through those. Joe, right, back to, um, back to Jeffrey Sachs speech to the EU. Here's one you're going to push back on as well. What was Putin's intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality. This happened within days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this basic point, not the propaganda that's written about the invasion claiming that Russia's aim was to conquer Ukraine with a few tens of thousands of troops. Come on ladies and gentlemen, please understand something basic. The idea of Russia's invasion was to keep NATO out of Ukraine. And what is NATO really? It is the US military with its missiles, its CIA deployments and all the rest. Russia's goal was to keep the U. S. away from its border. Keep going. Oh, uh. You think he intended to take over the whole country.

So Putin had been told that the Ukrainian people were enslaved by Kiev and were waiting for the Russian liberators to come and they would be greeted with open arms as the liberators. He bought into the propaganda. You think Putin

believed all that?

Yeah. Um, the, the problem with the autocratic regime, the same happened with the Soviet Union. What drove the Soviet Union bankrupt? The Americans couldn't believe that the Soviet Union would go bankrupt because they were seeing the internal Politburo reports that were saying how great the Russian, well, the, the Soviet economy was. The problem was, it was such a regime of fear that people were lying, so, and the lies were going to the top. And this is the same with Putin's Russia. The problem was the military had been hollowed out, but nobody wanted to admit to stealing, you know, billions, uh, out of the maintenance budgets for all the equipment. Uh, and so they reported that everything was working beautifully. And that's what went up to the top. Putin is hiding in his, um, uh, mansion outside of Moscow. He's not on the ground inspecting troops. He's not seeing what's really happening. He's believing what he's told. And he has such a culture of fear around him. that only yes men survive. So he's hearing what he wants to hear. And so he, he was told that when he went into Ukraine, they would be cheering the Russian troops and was very shocked to find out that they fought him every step of the way. You know, they're one people. They're all the, you know, the Russians. Well, the Kiev Rus, uh, you know, it's, it's, yeah, they're all one people. And, and he, again, uh, the, the journalist I was reading said that historically before the war, um, the Ukrainians said the Russians are our brothers, but we are not Russian. They saw themselves as an independent people that had very close ties. Um, and I think that has changed the, the Donbass has changed all that the taking of Crimea changed all that, that the, the, the, um, Ukrainians, they still love the Russians, but they don't like the regime in, in Moscow. And so. When the Russians came, they weren't going, you're liberating us, you're oppressing us. We don't want to be part of, um, Moscow's oligarchy. You know, we want to be closer to Europe. Europe is a much better economy. Europe is a much better, uh, trading partner for us.

So Putin swallowed his own propaganda.

Yeah, which is why when they invaded, they did want to take Ukraine. They thought that they would win it in days. They thought that the Ukrainian army was a rabble. And to be fair, the rest of the world did as well. Honestly, the reason why there weren't, um, Western weapons in Ukraine was because everybody thought that the second most powerful army in the world would take Ukraine within days.

So how do we know what was in Putin's mind to back this up?

Well, we're guessing, but we do know that, um, the, the, the populist media at the time was that the Ukrainians were just waiting to be liberated from the neo Nazis.

Uh, next part's good. When Zelensky said in a few days, when Zelensky said a few days after Russia's invasion, that Ukraine was ready for neutrality, a peace agreement was in reach. I know the details of this because I talked to key negotiators and mediators in detail and have learned much from public announcements of others. Shortly after the start of negotiations, in March 2022, a document was exchanged between the parties that President Putin had approved and that Lavrov had presented. That was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to hear firsthand and in detail what happened at that mediation. The bottom line is this, Ukraine walked away unilaterally from a near agreement. Why did Ukraine walk away? Because the United States told them to, and because the UK added icing to the cake by having Boris Johnson go to Kiev in early April. to Ukraine to make the same point?

Or it was because Ukraine had managed to hold off. Kiev wasn't captured or Kiev wasn't captured and they went, why should we negotiate now? You know, we were in a position where we were trying to eke out the best deal we could because we thought we were facing an army that we couldn't take on and we discovered that it was a paper tiger we were Why would you negotiate a surrender if you think you're going to win?

So the The point of this is, that, um, that Sachs is saying, from talking with the negotiators, the reason Ukraine walked away, was they were told by the Americans to walk away. Well,

he's talked to the negotiators and they've said that, because apparently, Uh, Boris Johnson has denied it, and other people who were there have denied it.

Yeah, so, there's your, you can make your choice, dear listener, as to believing Jeffrey Sachs representation of what the negotiators said, or Boris Johnson.

Well, uh, he said that the negotiators, no, the negotiators had agreed, uh, a proposal. I don't know that he's saying that the negotiators have said that they were told to walk away. Or he's picked this up from other places that the Ukrainians were told to walk away.

Well, what does he say here, um, this was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to hear firsthand and in detail what happened in the mediation. The bottom line is this, Ukraine walked away unilaterally. Why did they walk away from the negotiations? Because the United States told them to. I mean, he's saying pretty much clearly there, he's not surmising it, it's what the Turkish mediators told him had happened. But

again, if you've got somebody feeding you information in negotiations, do you say, oh, I'm going to not bother with that, the Americans have told me? Are you just going to go, no, this isn't acceptable, we're going to walk away, these aren't the terms we want?

Well, you're not going to

say the Americans have told me this.

Well, it's pretty clear from this that the Turkish mediators told Sachs the reason it broke down was because the Americans told the Ukrainians walk away.

And again, maybe the Turkish mediators are guessing this. I can't imagine that the Ukrainians said we're walking away because we've been told to. You're showing your hand, and you don't do that in negotiations.

Well, they were walking away. I can easily imagine, they said, we're walking away, and the negotiator, and the Turkish said, What? Why? We're this close. What are you doing? And they said, well, the Americans have told us to. I can easily imagine it.

Or maybe they said They didn't have

to, they weren't negotiating anymore. They didn't have a hand to conceal anymore. They were just saying, we're out of here.

Well, but why would you even say that? Well, it, it became Or maybe you're saying that as disinformation because they didn't want to say, actually we've turned the tide.

So you could be right, Joe. It could be that the Turkish negotiators either lied or misinf were mistaken as to what happened and passed that on to SACS? Well they didn't do any of that and SACS is making it up, or it could all be true what SACS is saying.

My understanding is negotiations broke down after Ukraine started repel, uh, repelling the Russian attacks.

And not because the U. S. told them to.

Well, maybe they did at the same time, but the negotiations broke down at the time Ukraine was winning.

Okay. So that's the Jeffrey SACS EU speech. So now I've got an article. Do you want to say more about that or I'll just go to the next article? Um, so Yanukovych, why Ukraine spurned the EU and embraced Russia? So this is by, uh, journalist Elizabeth Piper and this was in 2000, December 19th, 2013. So we're going back 12 years. Mm. Written at that time. Not sort of written now, but written back then, 2013. Mm. And um, here's the story, is on September 4th, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych called a meeting of his political party for the first time in three years. For three hours Yanukovych cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine to have closer ties to Russia. A handful of deputies from his party of regents complained. That their businesses in Ukraine's Russian speaking east would suffer if Yanukovych didn't agree to closer ties with Russia. That set him off. Forget about it forever, he shouted at them, according to people who attended the meeting. Instead, the president argued for an agreement to deepen trade and other cooperation with the European Union. Some deputies implored him to change his mind. People who attended the meeting told Reuters, Businessman warned that a deal with the EU would provoke Russia, Ukraine's former master in Soviet times, into toughening an economic blockade, blockade, on Ukrainian goods. Yanukovych stood firm. We will pursue integration with Europe, he barked back, according to three people who attended the meeting. He seemed dead set on looking west. Less than three months later, Yanukovych spurned the EU, embraced Putin, and struck a deal. for a bailout of his country, with Russia investing 15 billion. What caused the U turn? Public and private arm twisting by Putin, including threats to Ukraine's economy, and Yanukovych's political future played a significant part. I don't doubt that at all.

So, so, significant threats by the Putin to the economy.

But the unwillingness of the EU and International Monetary Fund to be flexible in their demands of Ukraine also had an effect, making them less attractive partners. And amid this international tug of war, Yanukovych's personal antipathy to Antipathy towards his jail political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, was a factor. The EU accused Ukraine of treating Tymoshenko unfairly to the annoyance of Yanukovych. The upshot is that Yanukovych, 63, had split his party and his country. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets demanding he step down and the country pursue justice. Closer links with the EU, just a background on Yanukovych, humble roots, likes to be treated with respect and as an equal, a characteristic that has informed much of his reluctance to join the customs union of former Soviet states that Putin wants to create. Colleagues described the Berlian leader as an intuitive politician who cannot abide being patronized. Um, Inna Bohoslovska, a member of Yanukovych's party of regents, said Yanukovych made clear at the cinema meeting his dislike of Russia treating Ukraine a second rate, uh, some commentary about that. Um, Yanukovych felt he was better treated by EU officials, um, one of the players in this. Zivania feels misled by Yanukovych. He tricked us all, it was a complete, utter lie. This is when he said he wanted to go to Europe.

Mm hmm.

Others say Yanukovych's desire to forge closer links with the EU was genuine, but he became dismayed when he felt the EU failed to acknowledge the scale of the financial difficulties he would face if he chose Brussels over Moscow. Yanukovych estimated he needed 160 billion over three years to make up for the trade Ukraine would lose with Russia, and to help cushion the pain from reforms. The EU was demanding, the EU refused to give such a sum, which it said was exaggerated and instead offered, um, Yeah, the EU at the time

said they wanted justification for it because there was huge amounts of corruption in Ukraine and they wanted to prove that it basically wasn't him lining his own nest, feathering his own nest. Uh, so they wanted some detailed accounts and apparently he didn't give it to them. So they didn't give him the money.

To Ukraine, there seemed little prospect of getting the EU, already struggling to help with its indebted members, to offer a better deal. Uh, while then Nick, who was Ukraine's permanent representative for NATO, and others were furious. He told Reuters that when Ukraine turned to Europe's officials for help. They spat on us. Ukraine was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, partly because Moscow was blocking sales of Ukrainian produced meat, cheese and confectionery, and scrapping duty free quotas on steel pipes. Some officials said the restrictions showed what life would be like if Ukraine signed the EU agreement. So Yanukovych's other hope was the IMF. The IMF, like the EU, was unwilling to grant the sort of loans Yanukovych wanted. under a new program and it told Ukraine it would not soften conditions for a new loan and would only offer five billion. So, you know, Kovich was furious. Party members said he believed the IMF had ignored what he saw as reasonable demands. Um, uh, and um, let's talk about Timoshenko, that the EU and the IMF are wanting him to treat Timoshenko better. He'd thrown

her in jail because she'd exposed his corruption.

And um, so he didn't like that. Obviously Putin wasn't making the same demands, Joe. Um, so, Yanukovych was also offended when he found out that Kiev would not be offered a firm prospect of full membership of the EU. Um, so they weren't going to get a full one, um. On November 21, they suspended discussions with the EU. EU negotiators had no time to renegotiate before a meeting in the Lithuanian capital Seven days later, where Yanukovych had been expected to sign agreement With the EU, he failed to do so. Yanukovych knew there would be a cost, whichever way he turned. Spurning Putin would likely bring economic damage. Spurning the EU has brought political damage. You can see, Jay, he was between a rock and a hard place at that point. Um, you can, this article, at the conclusion of it, now this is back in 2013, Ukraine is at a crossroads, and there is a huge boulder there. We go one way to Russia, and we get hit. We go the other way to Europe, and we get hit. We stand still, and we get hit. said, drawing a diagram on a notebook, that it will hurt less this way, he said, pointing to the European direction. I think he might've got that wrong. I thought that was a useful picture painting of, of what he was facing. Also,

Timoshenko, Yashchenko, and Yanukovych had all served as ministers in the former presidents. Power. And then when Yanukovych was kicked out because of the trumped up elections in 2004, um, and Yashchenko took over, he had Timoshenko as his prime minister for a while until he had a falling out with her. And then he took Yanukovych on as his prime minister until he had a falling out with him and kicked him out and took Timoshenko back. So. They were all in their own, yeah, it's not like these are opposition parties. They all had worked together, they had all been in power together, so, um, it's worth knowing that this isn't, uh, complete opposite ends of the spectrum. These people had all been in power together. This, this was minor squabbling between them at various

times. They were friends and enemies.

Uh, yeah, I, um, apparently Yashenko really didn't get on with Timoshenko personally, but she was somebody he could work with.

Anyway, good background on that one, and interesting that it was written at that time. Uh, Joe, we've talked about the Russian economy, I've said it's going gangbusters, you're saying on the ground it's not good for people?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's on a war footing, which means the government is borrowing heavily, uh, cost of, uh, inflation is going up because you've got too few people for too many jobs.

Just a comment in the chat room. Essential Lord Don, sounds like an episode of Home and Away. I

can't say I've ever seen it.

The Ukrainian Parliament. Yes. Could be. Yeah. Thanks essential Lord Don. The seven people watching, just, you could all just say hello if you're there, even if you just

say hello. Um, so anyway, I've got this article from the internationalbanker. com. Um, uh, on October, now this was written November, 2024. Um. On October 22nd, International Monetary Fund released the latest edition of its World Economic Outlook, published twice a year. The report, the report's October issue confirmed that the Organization expects the Russian economy to grow by 3. 6 percent this year. Pretty good growth rate, comfortably ahead of the United States 2. 8, Germany 0, France 1. 1, and the United Kingdom 1. 1. So, uh, healthy growth rate for Russian economy. By June, the World Bank had confirmed that Russia had overtaken Germany and Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world, using purchasing power parity method of GDP calculation. That's a pretty fair effort, Joe. Fourth largest economy in the world.

Yeah. The, the, the Russian government is spending huge amounts of money at the moment. That's going to be great for an economy.

Well, you just, you've got to be selling lots of. Stuff, like that's the, that's the, that's not just the,

the Russian government is buying lots of ammunition.

Yeah. Well, but they're also selling lots of oil and gas and like

the

economy's

at a deflated price. Oil price is a shit at the moment.

Okay. I'm just saying fourth largest economy, Russia doesn't have that many, what's the, what's the population of Russia? Can somebody. How's it, how's it going in terms of

uh,

some good? It's a

hundred million, if I remember correctly.

Yeah. Okay. Um, it goes on. Given the painful economic headwinds Russia has faced since the outbreak of war, how is this possible according to Pet Ya? Eva Brooks, deputy Director of the IMFs Research Department, four key factors explain the resilience of the Russian economy. In the face of sanctions first oil, export volumes have held steady. Second, we've seen a lot of strength in corporate investment. including by state owned enterprises. The third, we've seen a lot of robustness in private consumption that has underpinned growth. And last but not least, we've had the impact from government spending. So four factors there. Well, the headline

GDP, 145 million is the population.

And how does that, James, compare to as it rank in world populations? Like if it's the fourth largest economy. But what's its population ranking, um, compared to other countries?

Oh, it's going to be, I mean, there's a lot of countries in the global South. So yeah, China's a billion, um, India's a billion, uh, Indonesia's a few hundred million.

This is like Brazil and the U.

S. is 300 million.

Yep.

So it's probably 10th.

So fourth is pretty good result in terms of economy. Anyway, um, while headline GDP figures do indeed impress, that's not to say Russia does not face distinct downside risks. Bank of Russia recently confirmed the country's. inflation rate at 9.

8%. Um,

that's why interest rates are at 21%, which are things you've said, Joe. Um, inflation is being supported by tightness in the Russian labour market with unemployment record low 2. 4 percent and a growing labour shortage in many industries, forcing wages upward at a rate that is outpacing labour productivity growth. Real wages are skyrocketing, Janice Kluge. While they're spending money. Real wage, real wages are skyrocketing, says Janice Kluge, an expert on Russia's economy with the German Institute for International Security Affairs. You have people who hardly earned any money before the full scale invasion, who suddenly have huge amounts of money. Mm

hmm.

So Joe, I've been saying that actually Putin's popular because lots of Russians are doing very well. Mm hmm. And okay, inflation is high at 10%,

but

wages are outpacing inflation. So there are a lot of people doing a lot better than they did before. Absolutely. Yes. So, um, uh, so with extra money in their pockets, Russians are experiencing a healthy consumer boom. Um, they're consuming like crazy and this consumption creates domestic demand. Um, interest rates high, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, so yeah, that's the story on the Russian economy. James, thank you, James. Uh, ninth in terms of population, fourth in terms of GDP, um, inflation high, but real wages outpacing inflation. That's the Russian economy in a nutshell. They, um, they've been under sanctions so long that they've kind of figured out ways to get around it so they're not worried about American sanctions anymore. You mentioned Joe Ratkomladich? Yes. And he was charged with Um, genocide, but he was cleared of genocide.

No, he was charged with two counts of genocide, one of which he was cleared and was found guilty on the other charge.

See, I've got, I've just got from Wikipedia.

Yeah.

Is that wrong?

Look further down the article in Wikipedia and it says, He was found guilty of genocide in Trebinica, and is serving a life sentence for it.

See, uh, uh, what did I got to, I don't know.

Yeah, he was found not guilty of another, um, set of war crimes.

See, I, okay, I was reading this speech. He was sentenced, he was sentenced to life in prison. After being found guilty of ten charges, one of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and four of violations of the laws of customs of war, he was cleared of one count of genocide.

Yeah, so that was the eleventh charge. So he's found guilty of ten and cleared of an eleventh.

Ah, I'll have to read that again. I'll have to go back to that one. Because I thought that was just the answer to that one. You want to talk about genocide in, in, um, just, um, before we do, let's just quickly, let's go back to that one. But, um, I think Kursk has been overrun now, Joe. Are we like the, the Russians

have been saying it's overrun. I don't know.

We've also got, um, Elon Musk threatening to take out Starlink. That's a reason, dear listener, why, why billionaires are dangerous, when they can decide the course of the world.

Yeah, and Poland got into a big argument with him, because Poland are saying, but we're paying the bill. It's not like they're getting this for free.

Right. And

lots of countries are looking very closely at any relationships Starlink on the grounds that if Elon fails, he can turn it off on a whim. Do they want to be doing business with him?

Yeah. Um, you know what? I reckon at 10. 24 I shouldn't have in the can of worms on NATO and Um, all that, and Serbia. I'll do that for next week. Okay.

Bye, do you need to be up early? I've actually got a hospital appointment tomorrow morning.

There you go. Dear listener. Oh, James. India, China, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, Russia, Ethiopia. There we go. Right. Thanks for everyone in the chat room who's still there, all six of you, that was a long episode.

Scott'll be heartbroken you missed out.

He'll

be

thankful.

We'll be back next week with more.

Bye for now.

Alright, goodnight everyone.