Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Feb. 26, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald

01:11:27

One Year Later, Biden Fails to Unite the World Against Russia. Plus, Week in Review with Michael Tracey | SYSTEM UPDATE #46

One Year Later, Biden Fails to Unite the World Against Russia. Plus, Week in Review with Michael Tracey | SYSTEM UPDATE #46 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good evening, it's Friday, February 24th.
	Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
	Tonight is the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the decision by the U.S.
	and its NATO allies to treat that war as its own proxy war.
	With the U.S.
	alone appropriating more than $100 billion thus far and counting, Almost twice the entire annual Russian military budget and sending so many weapons to that war zone that America's own weapon stockpiles are dangerously depleted.
	For months, we heard from the media outlets aligned with the U.S.
	security state that Joe Biden, with great diplomatic adeptness, had united the entire world against Russia and behind the United States in support of Ukraine.
	And yet, and I know this will shock many of you, These media claims were false and propagandistic from the start.
	Major newspapers around the world this week, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, acknowledged, finally, the far different reality that the world is deeply divided and most of the world refuses to join Biden's call for unity in support of his war policies in that country.
	The reasons for this are complex and revealing and we'll spend some time analyzing what accounts for Biden's diplomatic failure.
	Then as we do regularly on our Friday evening show we will welcome the independent journalist Michael Tracy to analyze the week in review.
	Michael is currently in Munich where he spent the week at the annual Munich Security Conference where needless to say the war in Ukraine dominated.
	We'll talk to him about what he observed as well as a variety of other news events from this week Including an amazing Wall Street Journal article on how more than half of American colleges, more than half, now have a formal snitch system that allows and encourages students to anonymously report one another for using biased words and reading problematic text.
	Many of these systems began as a way for students to turn each other in to the administration for violations of the university's very rigid COVID era rules on masks.
	As a reminder, our episodes of System Update are now available on Spotify, Apple, and other major podcasting platforms the day after the show airs live here on Rumble.
	And so, for those of you who want to support the show or listen in podcast form, you can follow us on any of those platforms.
	It helps boost the visibility of our program.
	For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
	So today is the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, or at least the part of the war in Ukraine that began when Russia invaded with a very large army on February 24th of last year.
	The war in Ukraine has actually been raging for at least eight years, ever since 2013 and 2014, when Victoria Nuland, who seems to end up in charge of Ukraine for the United States, no matter which party wins the election— Got caught on tape essentially selecting who would be the new president of Ukraine.
	And there has been a war of independence being waged in the eastern provinces of Ukraine who don't want to be subject to the rule of a pro-Western, pro-EU government that the United States and NATO played a very large role in ushering in.
	And we've spent a lot of time in this show reporting over the last year on my my written journalism and on the program since we launched on the events of that war in Ukraine, always trying to ask the same fundamental question, which is why is it that the United States government if its perspective and priority is helping to improve the lives of the American people, has sent over $100 billion to the war in Ukraine, which is almost double the entire Russian military budget each year.
	Russia spends almost half on the entire military, its own military, of what the United States has allocated just for that one part of the world, Russia spends 1 15th, not even, of what the United States spends on its own military.
	And the question always is, how does it improve the lives of the American people for the United States government to be engaged in a proxy war over who will rule regions in eastern Ukraine or whether those provinces will decide that they want to be independent or subject to the rule of Moscow.
	We've been asking that question for a full year and we have honestly never heard an answer.
	So instead of revisiting all of that, we will obviously continue to report on that.
	I want to focus instead for tonight on one specific propagandistic framework that was fed to us from the very beginning of the war, namely that Joe Biden had essentially succeeded in uniting the entire world or the international community behind namely that Joe Biden had essentially succeeded in uniting the entire world or the international community behind the United States
	That Russia has been isolated, it has barely any allies, its economy is going to collapse, and everyone is on the side of the United States and NATO believing the world is, that we are on the side of right, They too want to see Ukraine succeed and Russia fail and that was what we were told for months.
	Now this is something that happens in everywhere.
	We are always told that the international community supports the United States and its foreign policy and there's A fairly amusing chart that has been circulated for decades about what the international community actually means.
	You can see it here on the screen.
	This is what is genuinely referred to as the international community.
	The United States and Canada, tiny parts of Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and perhaps Japan.
	And then sometimes you can add into that mix whatever tiny little countries the United States succeeds in bribing in order to be on their side.
	Remember the Coalition of the Willing that supported the United States' invasion of Iraq that included such world powers as the Marshall Islands.
	Because sometimes whoever happens to be on board with the United States foreign policy also gets included but only on an ad hoc basis in the international community.
	This is what the international community really means when the United States media and the US security state, the same thing, talk about the international community and how the international community is united behind the United States.
	Something very odd happened, though, this week, which is that the two largest newspapers in the United States, the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which have been steadfastly supportive of Joe Biden's war policy in Ukraine, both ran very detailed and emphatic articles making clear that that is a propagandistic fairy tale, that the world is nowhere near united
	Behind the United States' effort to isolate Russia and support Ukraine, that quite the contrary, the world is completely divided.
	That while there has been unity in the NATO alliance itself, in Western Europe, and then of course in Eastern Europe as well, which fears Russian domination, the rest of the world, the other continents that actually exist and matter, Latin America, South and Central America, Asia, Africa,
	Many, many parts of those regions, in fact the most important parts, are absolutely not in favor of the United States policy toward Ukraine, do not see the war that way at all, and for very interesting reasons have refused to get on board with the United States foreign policy in Ukraine for reasons that I think are really worth exploring.
	And I have to say that these two articles did a adequate and even in some cases quite a good job in detailing the true nature of how we've been deceived every time we've been hearing this fairy tale, often from these papers, and what the reality is, which is much different.
	So let's take a look at why these two newspapers or how these two newspapers revealed the truth, something they sometimes do, they kind of did it on the same day in the same way, and And it was also, they were also joined in their effort by newspapers around the world, including the largest newspaper here in Brazil that published an op-ed making very similar points.
	And I think it's important to see how the United States is viewed from outside of the United States.
	So often, this propaganda that is fed to us.
	That the United States is in Ukraine because it wants to protect democracy and spread democracy and vanquish tyranny, or because the United States is angry that a country like Russia has violated the sacred rules-based international order, is propaganda that really is for domestic consumption only.
	The only people who believe that Our American media outlets and their employees, and then the people who trust and pay attention to those media outlets, which thankfully is a rapidly diminishing number.
	But around the rest of the world, when you say those things, you provoke a global laughing fit for very good reasons.
	So let's look at a couple of these articles.
	Here's the one in the New York Times.
	The headline tells the story in a pretty direct and blunt way.
	Quote, the West tried to isolate Russia.
	It didn't work.
	Now, have you been hearing this from the media over the last year?
	I know I haven't.
	I've been hearing the opposite, that most of the world is united behind Joe Biden, that he has done such a great job diplomatically in keeping everyone on board behind our policy.
	The reality is much different.
	The New York Times reports, quote, After Russia invaded Ukraine, the West formed what looked like an overwhelming global coalition.
	141 countries supported a UN measure demanding that Russia unconditionally withdraw.
	But the West never won over as much of the world as it initially seemed.
	And let me just interject here, it never seemed that way to me.
	You can go back and look at articles I was writing, and interviews I was giving, and even tweets I was posting, pointing out that in fact, As this article is about to point out, many of the most important countries, in fact, many of the largest countries on the planet and the leading democracies were very much opposed to the United States' foreign policy in Ukraine and were refusing to join in.
	The Times says, quote, another 47 countries abstained or missed the vote, including India and China, which, by the way, happen to be the two most populous countries on the planet.
	Many of those quote neutral nations have since provided crucial economic or diplomatic support for Russia and here you see a graphic on the screen which the New York Times published.
	I think it's a little light there but essentially it is the group of countries that abstained and the circles indicate their population size and here you see China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
	Which essentially are the world's largest democracies right after, in terms of population, right after China.
	And you can now add Brazil into this list as well, which is the sixth largest, most populous country in the world.
	So you're not talking about small countries, you're talking about the largest countries, mostly everyone in the top 20 in terms of population.
	Other than the United States and a couple of its Western allies has refused to join in US foreign policy or is actively opposed to it.
	The New York Times goes on, quote, and even some of the nations that initially agreed to denounce Russia see the world as someone else's problem and have since started moving toward a more neutral position.
	A year on, it's becoming clearer.
	While the West Core Coalition... Actually, before I go on to that, here's the chart that I was just talking about.
	And here you see, again, some of the rationale for why these countries don't see this war as their war.
	As I've mentioned before, when Lula visited Washington this week, or last week, he met with Joe Biden.
	He was pressured, as he was when the German Chancellor visited Lula in Brazil to provide munitions to empower the German tanks that are headed toward the Russian border.
	I don't think it's ever a good idea when German tanks head to the Russian border, but that's what's happening now.
	And Brazil and its leader said what a lot of countries are saying, which is, that's your war, not ours.
	Our war is not with Ukraine or Russia.
	Our war is to improve the lives of our citizenry, so we're going to stay out of the war.
	That's what so many of these countries, including in Africa and increasingly the Middle East and Latin America and Asia, have been saying.
	The Times goes on, quote, A year on, it's becoming clearer.
	While the West's core coalition remains remarkably solid, meaning NATO and Europe, it never convinced the rest of the world to isolate Russia.
	Instead of cleaving in two, the world has fragmented.
	A vast middle sees Russia's invasion as primarily a European and American problem.
	Rather than view it as an existential threat, these countries are largely focused on protecting their own interests.
	Amid the economic and geopolitical upheaval caused by the invasion.
	Why is the US...
	Not focused on its own economic prosperity, its own economic and its own interests and the interests of its citizens, like these other countries are.
	On Thursday, the UN General Assembly endorsed another resolution demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine's territory.
	But China, South Africa, India, and many countries in the global south continue to abstain, underlying their alienation from what they regard as the West's war.
	A lot of world leaders don't particularly like the idea of one country invading another, but many of them aren't unhappy to see somebody stand up to the United States either.
	Throughout Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, many governments with strong official ties to the United States and Europe don't see the war as a global threat and see, instead, their positioning themselves as neutral bystanders or arbiters, preserving as much flexibility as they can.
	Nearly half of African countries abstained or were absent from the vote to condemn Russia, suggesting a growing reluctance in many nations to accept an American narrative of right and wrong.
	Russia has won friends through relentless propaganda, as though the US does not use that, and hard power, with a growing number of countries contracting with Russian mercenaries and buying Russian weapons.
	In South Africa, ties to Russia go back to Soviet support to end apartheid.
	That was when the United States was supporting South African apartheid.
	The Soviet Union was opposed.
	And now the black leaders of South Africa remember that and have greater allegiance to Russia than the U.S.
	Its leaders have seen an opportunity to align more closely with Russia while filling in trade gaps left by Europe and the United States.
	But like many other African countries, South Africa appears careful to balance its growing ties with Russia against maintaining a relationship with the West.
	Latin America, with its long-standing relationship with the United States, voted largely alongside its northern neighbor to contend Russia, but cracks have begun to show more prominently in recent months.
	Colombia recently refused a request from the United States to provide weapons to Ukraine, and when visited by Chancellor Olaf Schwarz of Germany last month, President Lula of Brazil declined to speak in support of Ukraine, saying, quote, I think the reason for the war between Russia and Ukraine needs to be clearer.
	This is essentially laying out what I think is a very interesting dichotomy between countries that are looking at the war in Russia and Ukraine and asking what is the best way for us to promote the lives and material well-being of our own citizens.
	And the answer is by not involving ourselves in this war on the other side of the world that has nothing to do with us.
	These countries are concluding that their citizens' lives will not be improved nor undermined based on the fight over who gets to rule the Donbass.
	Why would South American leaders or Middle Eastern leaders or African leaders be willing to involve themselves in a war over that?
	And I think the same question is one that we ought to be asking of our own government.
	Why is that such an important question for us?
	Who rules various parts of Eastern Ukraine or whether the people of those provinces choose to be independent?
	Now, as I said, What struck me is that article wasn't just in the New York Times, so that was surprising to read there, but also the Washington Post had an almost equally blunt assessment of Biden's failure to unite the world behind the United States and Ukraine, as the media kept claiming that it did.
	There you see the Post article from the same day, February 23rd, The headline is, a global divide on the Ukraine war is deepening.
	Russia capitalizes on disillusionment with the United States to win sympathy in the global south.
	Russia doesn't need to do anything to gain sympathy in the global south.
	The global south regards the United States with great suspicion.
	Because of its own experience with the United States.
	And when they hear this propaganda that the United States is there to fight for democracy, to vanquish tyranny, to support the rule-based international order, they not only remember things like the invasion of Iraq, but also the instability and coups and dirty wars that the United States behind the CIA has often brought to those countries.
	And so they think it's preposterous That the United States would claim that that's what they're doing in Ukraine.
	Again, only American media outlets and the people who listen to them believe that this propaganda is for domestic consumption.
	The Washington Post article says, quote, "In the years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a reinvigorated Western alliance has rallied against Russia, forging what President Biden has trumpeted as a global coalition.
	Yet a closer look beyond the West, beyond the West, that actually exists, suggests the world is far from united on the issues raised by the Ukraine war.
	The conflict has exposed a deep global divide and the limits of U.S.
	influence over a rapidly shifting world order.
	Evidence abounds that the effort to isolate Putin has failed.
	And not just among Russian allies that could be expected to back Moscow, such as China and Iran.
	India announced last week, the world's largest democracy, that its trade with Russia has grown by 400% since the invasion.
	In just the past six weeks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been welcomed in nine countries in Africa and the Middle East, including South Africa, whose foreign minister, Naladi Pandor, hailed their meeting as, quote, wonderful, and called South Africa and Russia, quote, friends.
	Conversations with people in South Africa, Kenya, and India suggest a deeply ambivalent view of the conflict, informed less by the question of whether Russia was wrong to invade than by current and historical grievances against the West.
	Over colonialism, perceptions of arrogance, and the West's failure to devote as many resources to solving conflicts and human rights abuses in other parts of the world, such as the Palestinian territories, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
	The Western countries, quote, are hypocritical, said Vakshar Dutta, a clerk in Kolkata, India.
	Quote, these people colonize the entire world.
	What Russia has done cannot be condoned, but at the same time, you cannot blame them wholly.
	That is a very common view outside the United States.
	The post goes on, quote, this is not a battle between freedom and dictatorship as Biden often suggests.
	Oh my god, it's not?
	It's not a battle between freedom and dictatorship as Biden often suggests?
	Said William Gurmeet, who founded and heads the Johannesburg-based Democracy Works Foundation, which promotes democracy in Africa.
	He pointed to the refusal of South Africa, India, and Brazil to join Biden's Global Coalition.
	That reluctance, he said, is the outgrowth of more than a decade of building resentment against the United States and its allies, which have increasingly lost interest in addressing the problems of the global South, he said.
	The coronavirus pandemic, when Western countries locked down and locked out other countries, and President Donald Trump's explicit disdain for Africa, always have to blame Trump, further fueled the resentment.
	So it's not just that these countries are doing what the United States government should be doing but isn't, which is asking, why am I going to get involved in this war that has no bearing on the lives of my citizens?
	It's also because they understand that this fairy tale that the American citizenry is fed in every new war to garner support for their government's endless war posture is a joke.
	And they know that from their own experience.
	Now, just to give you an outsider's perspective, there is this article in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.
	It's the largest newspaper in the country.
	And just for full disclosure, I have now become a columnist with this paper.
	I just publish a column once every other week in this newspaper.
	And it is an op-ed by a professor of history, Felipe Larrero.
	And essentially, he is making the same argument.
	We translated the headline in a key paragraph.
	It says, quote, "Western double standards explain global South apathy toward the war." He's saying, the reason why the Global South refused to support the United States is because the Global South and the rest of the world sees the hypocrisy of the United States as condemnation of Russia.
	History makes obvious the contradiction between rhetoric and action by Americans and Europeans.
	That's the sub-headline.
	So let me just give you, before we bring on Michael Tracy, this little excerpt here.
	Quote, if in the Global North, Ukraine is winning the battles for hearts and minds.
	In the rest of the world, the situation is different.
	While most nations in the Global South supported UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion and the annexation of portions of Ukraine, this movement has stopped there.
	No adherence to the Western sanctions against Russia, and even less economic or military support for Ukraine.
	Even if we sat aside the elephant in the room, the illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003, remember that?
	Makes it kind of difficult.
	For the same exact people that supported that war, like Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the President of Ukraine for the United States, Victoria Nuland, all of whom supported that illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, to now turn around to the world and say, we are morally offended by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
	Nobody buys that.
	He goes on, quote, the balance is a history of systematic disrespect of international law.
	The UN Charter is clear.
	Unless in cases of self-defense, only the Security Council has the authority to authorize the use of military force.
	That's the rules-based international order.
	You think the United States believes that?
	In spite of that, the US and its allies in NATO, especially the UK and France, disrespected this rule numerous times in the last decade.
	Remember when they just decided to bomb Libya and remove Gaddafi?
	Where was the rules-based international order in that?
	Or the dirty war in Syria that's ongoing?
	The article goes on, quote, and all of that without taking into account the abuses of the self-defense principle by the U.S.
	in the context of the war on terror, which would normalize the idea of preventative attacks against targets designated as terrorists in countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East with dramatic consequences.
	Facing so many double standards, how can one expect governments and societies in the global south to unite impassionately in support of Ukraine?
	It's for good reason that the Western rhetoric based on principles and morals, like the one that has dominated the discourse around this war, sounds hypocritical and brings back the ghost of a colonial past.
	Now, just to put that in context, we all know the long list of countries where the CIA, during the Cold War and since, has engineered coups, overthrown democratically elected governments, all of which made all that Sanctimony about Russia interfering in our sacred democracy in 2016, such a joke.
	When the US interferes in the democracy of other countries, it does so through violent coups and destabilization regimes, not through a few Facebook and Twitter posts.
	Countries wish that was how the US intervened.
	But Brazil is a country that doesn't get talked about much because it happened not to be among the most horrific invasions of the kind, for example, that was carried out in Chile or Indonesia or in Central America, where the United States supported all kinds of death squads and truly brutal regimes.
	But in 1964, the Brazilians had a democratically elected central-left government that defied the warnings of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to cease being so left-wing in their economic policies, such as land reform and rent control.
	And because of their defiance, the CIA engineered a coup that overthrew Brazil's democratically elected government in 1964 and then proceeded to impose a 21-year brutal and savage military dictatorship that lasted until Brazil finally re-democratized in 1985.
	So if you're a Brazilian and you hear the United States doling out lectures on the importance of the rule-based international order and the need to support democracy How do you think you're going to react, having been on the other side of the reality of United States foreign policy for so long?
	And not just the propaganda and the rhetoric that the US media spreads on behalf of the CIA and the Pentagon.
	That, I think, is such crucial context.
	And it's good that a year into the war, the truth of what's happening is finally being Revealed.
	Now, I want to show you a couple videos before you that I want to watch these with Michael Tracy, who I'm delighted has joined us for our typical Friday night gathering for the Week in Review.
	Michael is in Munich, where he's been covering the Munich Security Conference.
	He has a lot of observations.
	He's filled with all kinds of energy and excitement to share those with you.
	Michael, welcome.
	Before we get into this, I just want to show you a video or two that kind of adds to the point and then get your reaction to all of this.
	How are you?
	Are you doing well?
	And have some popcorn while we watch the videos?
	Yeah, you can sit back, enjoy yourself.
	We'll have a little buttered popcorn if you want.
	They're kind of short, so you're going to have to shove your mouth full very quickly.
	I'm very good at that.
	Yes, I heard.
	I think I've seen two before.
	They both involved, I'm going to show you two short videos.
	They involve different members of the Pelosi family.
	Let's start with the elder Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi.
	Here she is on C-SPAN talking about how much admiration, deep admiration she has for George W. Bush.
	First, let's listen to what she said.
	Once again, I'll just say this honestly, that the Bush family is because... She's having a little trouble with her notes there.
	She's kind of stumbling around.
	Let's hope she gets through this.
	Let's listen.
	Once again, I'll just say this honestly, that the Bush family is because of their humanity, their faith, their generosity of spirit, their compassion.
	This is George W. Bush, their humanity, their generosity of spirit, and their compassion.
	George W. Bush, who invaded Iraq and destroyed it, who instituted a worldwide torture regime, who created a due process free Once again, it's an honor to be associated with President Bush in this.
	He said this was his second time to be here.
	in cages in the middle of an ocean who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of a crime.
	This is Nancy Pelosi heaping praise on the deep goodness and benevolence of this man who liberals used to call a Nazi 20 years ago.
	Let's hear the rest.
	Once again, it's an honor to be associated with President Bush in this.
	He said this was his second time to be here.
	I've been here many, many times.
	So I've been with him 100% of the times he's been here.
	Because we were both here for the groundbreaking when I was speaker and he was president.
	So let us again work for peace, work for justice.
	Let us work for peace and work for justice, she said.
	Now, her daughter is Alexandra Pelosi.
	And instead of, like someone might do if they have a very famous mother, try and, you know, kind of forge your own path, she's She has done exactly the opposite.
	She uses the name Pelosi to make sure everyone knows she's Nancy Pelosi's daughter, and she has built her entire career around her mother, up to the point of having just released a documentary about the greatness of her mom.
	And she went on The View to promote it, and she talked about the actual relationship between the Bush and the Pelosi families.
	Listen to what she said.
	I have been so depressed since this happened.
	And then last week I went to Washington to visit my old friend George W. Bush.
	I made a film about George W. Bush in 2000.
	And I consider him, he was always a father figure to me.
	Just in case you thought you misheard that, George W. Bush has always been a father figure to Nancy Pelosi's daughter.
	He's been very good to me in my life.
	Did she just call him that while Bush was in office?
	I don't recall that.
	What's that?
	Did she disclose that she viewed Bush as a father figure while Bush was actually in the presidency?
	No, no, that was back when they were accusing the Bushes of being a crime family, of going to war in Iraq in order to generate profits for the oil industry, of which the Bush family was a part, and detaining Calibert.
	Being theocratic fascists?
	Yeah, and they were constantly comparing George Bush to Hitler.
	Who knew that all along she considered the Hitler of that era to be her father figure?
	That seems to be pretty psychologically disturbing.
	But let's listen to the rest and he's I consider him he was always a father figure to me He was been very good to me in my life He's one of my favorite people right and I may not agree with him politically But he's always been a source of support and straight and we were laughing about the fact that he always invites my mother to events and and One time I went to a thousand points of light a George Bush event in Texas and one of the bushes gets up
	And now a great friend of the of the Bush family now a great friend of Bush family Nancy Pelosi And the crowd is like, wait, what?
	They're confused.
	But you don't know about these relationships.
	But people, even though they disagree in public about certain things, like the Iraq War, Nancy Pelosi voted against it, they had a lot of fights about it in public, but they're still, if you saw them together last week, you would have thought it was a buddy film.
	So the reason, Michael, I wanted to add that on to the articles that I just read about why nobody buys the US propaganda is because they're all kind of cackling about the fact that they fight in public as theater, but in reality, they're all part of the same, literally, the same family, practically.
	And people have forgotten as well that Nancy Pelosi in 2002 and 2003 was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and therefore one of the member of the Gang of Eight that gets very special comprehensive briefings by the intelligence community.
	She was briefed on all of those war and terror programs, including domestic spying on American citizens without warrants, the torture regime in Guantanamo, the due process free camps around the world in the CIA black sites, and approved all of them.
	Never objected to any of it.
	And so this is what the world understands and sees, that the entire American elite is actually united, that their fights are for the American public only.
	It's theater to pretend that there's some sort of grave difference between the establishment wings of both parties, but in reality the Nancy Pelosi, the liberal, Reveres George W. Bush, the supposed war criminal, because they all support the same policies.
	And that's why when they want to go around and say that they're there to fight for democracy and human rights, only certain sectors of the American public, including the American media, believe it.
	I know Nancy Pelosi was at Munich where you were.
	So why don't you share some of your thoughts on sort of this actual divide that the American media is now admitting exists in the world regarding Ukraine?
	Yeah, I saw her staggering out of her car at one point.
	Of course, I couldn't be allowed to approach because it would be very dangerous, potentially, because she might be actually asked a mildly skeptical question.
	But I did see her shivering in the cold of Munich and being guided into her next meeting for such affairs as being presented, as she was, with a bracelet made of Ukrainian bullet casings.
	So she proudly displayed that gift.
	And talk about bipartisanship, Joni Ernst, the Republican Senator, was also there and she took a big, she had a big smile on her face, posing for a photo with a T-shirt with a stylized, like, advertisement on it for F-16s to be deployed to
	Ukraine from the U.S., so that was the whole, that was the fashion style that was in vogue at the Munich Security Conference with these, you know, sassy ladies.
	You know, one thought that occurred to me... Let me just interject there, because I think it's just so interesting.
	So, here you have this Munich Conference, all over the world, you know, the war in Ukraine is being debated, or most countries actually want no part of it.
	Here you have supposedly someone on the very liberal end of the Democratic Party, Nancy Pelosi, With somebody who's presumably a conservative governor, Republican governor of Iowa, Joni Ernst, and on one of the most consequential and divisive questions that, as we just reviewed, is dividing the entire world, they could not be more united
	as always, and you can throw Marco Rubio and AOC into the mix, and then you can throw, you know, Lindsey Graham and Bernie Sanders into the mix, and there's absolutely no daylight of any kind.
	The American elite continues to be so united on all of these questions to the point that, you know, Joni Ernst and Nancy Pelosi are wearing clothing designed to express support for this war, and of course the rest of the world sees that even if the American media doesn't. and of course the rest of the world sees that even
	You know who I even encountered at this Munich Security Conference at the periphery in one of the restaurants that they all sort of retreat to to huddle and have their slightly tipsy, you know, banter about, you know, what's the next weapon system to send over to the Donbass?
	Joe Lieberman.
	He was there.
	He was holding court.
	And remember when Joe Lieberman was supposedly primaried out of the Senate in 2006 because of this vast ideological distance that had emerged between him and his fellow Democrats, particularly on a foreign policy.
	You wouldn't believe in what good spirits he was with his fellow Democratic Senators who were there.
	I saw him, you know, he was like, you know, hugging shitehouses, and they're laughing, and they're 100% on the same page.
	I'm not Pelosi, okay?
	Here's one way to think of it.
	Even if you're of a mindset or if you have a worldview that is like the typical superficial left liberal worldview where you orient your priorities around these kind of trendy cultural issues, right?
	Um, or ideology such as it exists is focused mainly on identity issues, whether it's gender, race, what have you.
	If you're of that mindset, well there's plenty of fodder for you to continue to support George W. Bush.
	George W. Bush and Karl Rove schemed to propose a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage.
	And 2002 as well.
	And 2002, that's how they won the midterm election.
	That was their strategy to get out evangelical voters who were going to go and vote for things like that.
	That was their mastermind strategy.
	Right, but that's not a deal-breaker for Pelosi as much as she might, in other circumstances, posture herself as the champion of LGBT rights.
	I'm not sure what right exactly she thinks needs to be championed at the moment, but nevertheless, that tells you something, because that's not a deal-breaker for Pelosi, right?
	That Bush engaged in this anti-gay, homophobic, tyrannical But you know what would almost certainly be a deal breaker?
	If she and Bush diverged at all on this question of the Ukraine war.
	If there was a gulf on that issue, you can bet that Pelosi wouldn't be standing on stage wherever she was singing the praises of Bush as this one-hole leader and her daughter praising him as this father figure.
	Well, I mean, this is, I think, such an important point.
	You know, if you look at the people who were actually against the war in Ukraine, the people, there are no people in the Democratic Party as we know who are.
	But the people in the Republican Party, Matt Gaetz currently has a resolution pending.
	That's a total nonsense line.
	Funding for the war in Ukraine, I guess he thinks $100 billion is more than enough to spend on this country that the U.S. has no vital interest in.
	Marjorie Taylor Greene has been outspoken from the start.
	Donald Trump has been increasingly vocal about his opposition to this war.
	Ron DeSantis actually came out in a Fox interview and made clear that he thought that this open checkbook for...
	I'll give you a break.
	That's a total nonsense line.
	Don't fall for that, please.
	I'm just telling you, you can either judge a politician's views based on what they claim they believe and tell the public they believe and advocate for, or you can try and divine their internal thought process.
	But all I'm telling you is, as a result of taking that position, he got promptly attacked by establishment Republican outlets like the Bulwark.
	And whoever it is that on this war, as you say, nothing is a deal breaker except this.
	So people like Rand Paul, who in the beginning have been saying, we should audit these funds.
	These are the people who end up being treated as kind of the marginalized and the fringes.
	And what it shows is Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio have a lot more in common with Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff than they do with the members of their own party who are opposed to the war in Ukraine.
	Yeah, and just quickly on DeSantis, because we don't have to get bogged down in this.
	I know you've covered it this week.
	I wasn't trying to divine his motive.
	I just know that the same sort of furor was artificially whipped up when Kevin McCarthy in September, ahead of the midterms, used the same term.
	Blank check.
	I don't know.
	Did you see the interview, Michael?
	It doesn't actually relate to any skepticism of the policy.
	Did you see that?
	He said a lot more than that in that interview.
	We covered it last night.
	He didn't just say I'm against an open check.
	He said, I think this idea that Russia is some grave threat to the United States is preposterous.
	The idea that they're going to go and start invading, and then domino theory, Poland and then Hungary, and then Western Europe is ludicrous.
	They've clearly proven themselves to be a third-rate power.
	There's no reason we should be considering Russia to be a threat.
	He said way more than just, I'm against an open book.
	But anyway, it was actually, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say that.
	My only point is, as you said, that is the way that you get ejected from Let me show you a statement that was bizarrely issued today out of nowhere by the FBI.
	I really don't understand why the FBI decided to have their own foreign policy statement, but here you see it.
	I don't know if you saw it on screen.
	I'm just going to read it to you.
	It's issued in the name of Christopher Wray, the FBI director.
	And it's on FBI official whatever with the logo.
	And this is what he said.
	It has been one year since Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor.
	But the FBI has been working with our Ukrainian partners for years to battle Russian aggression there.
	And we aren't going anywhere.
	The FBI's commitment to Ukraine remains unwavering.
	And we will continue to stand against Russia at home and abroad.
	So this is the FBI kind of knowing that they're not.
	Is that real?
	Yeah, it's amazing.
	Like, what role does the FBI have to play in the war in Ukraine?
	But this is...
	The admission ticket to gaining popularity is if you just, and look, the statement is in blue and yellow too, I'm not joking.
	It was on a blue background, and then the special letters that they want to emphasize are in yellow, and the name Christopher Wray is also in yellow.
	So you have the blue and yellow flag that's being subliminally waived by the FBI.
	Because the FBI knows that they have a lot of problems with conservative voters and with conservative politicians and this is how they get to curry favor with at least the Republican establishment and the media is by declaring their support for Ukraine.
	That's amazing.
	I hadn't seen that.
	I would certainly like to know where in the I-Charter it authorizes the agency, or the Bureau rather, to like have its own autonomous foreign policy seemingly, where it's like pledging to fight Russia as a matter of federal law enforcement, which I have thought about the domestic United States.
	Of course, there are times where the FBI goes to track down a criminal abroad somewhere.
	But just as a matter of geopolitics, it's seeming like it has declared that it's at war with Russia and standing with Ukraine, which, again, is sort of, if you think about what you'd expect the purview of a federal law enforcement agency to be.
	Yeah, I mean, it just has such immense propaganda.
	Now, speaking of bipartisan, this kind of bipartisan club that produces unity and consensus, there's no better example, I think, than Victoria Nuland, who amazingly stays in power no matter which party ends up winning.
	She was in the government when Bill Clinton was president, exercised a lot of influence.
	She then ended up as Dick Cheney's primary political advisor on the Iraq War.
	And you might think that that might have harmed harmed her career, at least in Democratic circles.
	But no, it did not.
	She immediately reappeared in the Obama administration, working in Hillary Clinton's State Department, and then running Ukraine in John Kerry's State Department.
	The only thing that got her out of government was Donald Trump's win.
	She spent four years out of government when Trump was president.
	This is why neocons hated Trump so much.
	And then Biden wins, and she's right back in Antony Blinken's State Department running Ukraine.
	And as you've been pointing out, Michael, you've been doing a lot of kind of historical digging into that era and finding that all of the people who are running this war in Ukraine, beginning of course with Joe Biden himself, We're all people who are part of the club agitating for the invasion of Iraq as well.
	They never go anywhere.
	They always remain in power no matter how grievous their errors.
	What is it that you've been finding that you think is interesting about a lot of these connections that I think history has forgotten?
	Yeah, I think the breadth of Newland's Bush administration is not adequately understood because it wasn't just that she worked on the staff of the vice president's office when Dick Cheney obviously was the vice president.
	She was then the U.S.
	ambassador to NATO under Bush during a fairly period when the momentum around this prospect of Ukraine joining NATO at some point was beginning to germinate.
	So I just happened to come across a clipping today where in 2005, Donald Rumsfeld, remember him?
	I do.
	Great guy.
	He went to attend some sort of bilateral US-Ukraine meeting under the auspices of NATO, and if you find the photo, that was a press photo that was taken from that
	event who's sitting right by his side sure enough it's victoria newland and it was there that rumsfeld affirmed that the united states was in avowed support of ukraine being on a like track toward a nato membership um
	and so so you could see why somebody like newland wouldn't just be like incidentally invested in this ukraine war because it just something happened to pop up on her agenda and she has this real steadfast dedication to upholding the rules-based international order you No, there's a long-standing ideological project that undergirds her sort of fervor on this.
	She also intersected with stuff... This is another amazing one that I actually hadn't known, and I wonder if you did.
	Talk about her being one of the advisors to Cheney, that's true, but before that she was dispatched to NATO headquarters to lobby the NATO member states to provide logistical and operational support to the United States ahead of the invasion of Iraq.
	in anticipation.
	This was in January of 2003, and she was the one who was picked, among everybody in the Bush administration, she was the one who was picked to carry out the plans that were set forth by Paul Wolfowitz, okay, who was...
	If you had to think of anyone who was like the ultimate neocon ideologue, who was like the neocon brain, to the extent that they operate with a brain, that was Paul Wolfowitz.
	He was challenged by him.
	To go and make this appeal to the other NATO countries to provide like complimentary, you know, logistic support to the upcoming Iraq invasion.
	So she played a crucial role in the actual formulation of the logistics that went into launching the invasion of Iraq.
	She didn't just support it.
	She was involved in effectuating it.
	No, I mean, she was critical for it.
	I mean, to it.
	As was Anthony Blinken, by the way, as well.
	This is, you know, this is what I think is so important to understand.
	I think this is really what has happened here is, if you look at elite policy, United States establishment bipartisan policy over the last 20 years, you have these enormous systemic failures.
	The Iraq War is representative of just the broader wild excesses of the war on terror.
	Enormous amounts of money disappearing, all kinds of moral lines crossed.
	The war in Afghanistan, 20 years we were there, we walked out.
	The very next day the Taliban waltzed right back into power and accomplished nothing.
	Huge numbers of lives lost.
	The entire thing was just a gigantic debacle from start to finish.
	And then on the foreign policy front, obviously the most important event was the 2008 financial collapse, which was then managed.
	The aftermath was first by the Bush administration with George Bush's then Secretary of Treasury, who had come right from
	Goldman Sachs, which was Hank Paulson, and then Obama comes in and carries out exactly the same policies as he did with Bush's war on terror that he had vowed to uproot, with Tim Geithner and that whole crowd, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, all of those same people from Goldman Sachs and those same economic circles that saved the Wall Street tycoons who had caused the financial crisis at the expense of everybody else.
	So you have, you know, at the same time that that's happening, Elite media institutions are collapsing, so everything is unraveling in terms of American elite circles, people are distrusting, in the most fundamental ways, the bipartisan consensus, the people who are running our country, independent of the results of elections, and then that has been the value of Donald Trump more than anything is, they got to say, look,
	However much you dislike us, this is something, an evil we have never previously seen.
	This is essentially a Hitler-like figure, and we're going to unite to protect you from this actual evil threat that the likes of which we've never seen, even though Trump was the first president in decades not to involve the US in a new war, to say nothing of not doing things like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and torture and the financial collapse of 2008.
	And what this ended up doing is absolving all of these people of all of the crimes that they committed together, and as a result, they all are continuously in power.
	They're in power to this very day.
	The same group of people that gave you the Iraq War based on lies, that gave you the abuses of the war on terror, that gave you the 2008 financial crisis, they're telling you that they love each other, they're united, even though they We're calling each other all kinds of names.
	They never believed them all along.
	They're part of that same club.
	As George Carlin said, it's a big club and you're not in it.
	And these people are.
	And they continue to exercise hegemonic rule over our politics with no accountability.
	And Donald Trump was the most important thing that enabled them to do that.
	It's what ushered in again these neocons who had been somewhat discredited, the reason why Bill Kristol and David Frump are at the Atlantic and MSNBC and are being cheered by liberals, why nobody even thinks twice about the fact that the war in Ukraine is the byproduct of a Democratic why nobody even thinks twice about the fact that the war in Ukraine is the byproduct of a Democratic senator, Joe Biden, who was the single most important Democratic senator supporting the war in Iraq when
	Victoria Nuland, who just constantly appears among them all.
	It's this rotted establishment that everybody hates.
	And yet they were able to isolate Donald Trump and create this fairy tale that he was essentially the combination, the kind of unholy love child of Satan and Adolf Hitler so that all you had to do was denounce Donald Trump and then immediately prove that you were on the good side of history and all of these people were able to rejuvenate their reputations and hold hands
	And remain in power and run the country as they've been doing for the last 20 years was such immense corruption and such immense failure.
	Yeah, let me give you another layer of that, okay?
	So at this Munich Security Conference, they've started giving out as one of their most valued awards.
	So they have these like awards that they give out to accomplished like aspiring young professionals who want to be a national security operative and You know, write policy papers about which country's government to overthrow next.
	And so this big new heralded award that they bestow yearly now, just recently, is the John McCain Award.
	Okay, so that's on behalf of the entire Western security establishment.
	They believe that John McCain, the personage of John McCain, rest in peace, best represents the Ideological or temperamental or whatever sensibility that they want to transmit by way of this annually bestowed award and Let's just think about what that actually indicates, right?
	Because hopefully there is at least some people viewing this who are old enough to remember when John McCain was actually in a position to be advocating, like, foreign policy prescriptions.
	In 2008, and we even talked about this on the show, I think, the whole, one of the main things that a campaign running against McCain emphasized was that he was totally nuts in terms of his just seismic World-altering hawkishness that he embodied, right?
	And so John McCain was an outlier to some degree even, you know, during the Iraq War.
	Before that, I mean, he wants to bomb Iran.
	I think, you know, at one point when Mother Jones was still in somewhat opposition to this tendency, they like tallied up all the countries that John McCain had suggested bombing over the course of his career, and it was like in the dozens.
	He was behind, he wanted to remove Assad in Syria, he was behind Obama's regime and really Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice's and Samantha Power's regime change war in Libya.
	I mean, then he got Lindsey Graham behind him and eventually Marco Rubio.
	And Joe Lieberman, I mean, these were the people who essentially their entire career was about nothing other than demanding every single conceivable war that benefited nobody other than a tiny sliver of American leads that impoverished the country, made it debt-ridden.
	And you're right, he is the symbol of aspirational values, the thing to which American and Western leaders are supposed to aspire.
	And he really stands for nothing other than all of these wars that the United States has fought in the name of changing governments around the world that have immiserated the American population.
	in.
	Yeah, yeah, okay, and even going back, you know, earlier in his career, you know, McCain was a diehard advocate of, like, all of Reagan's incursions and, you know, proxy wars in the... Nicaragua, El Salvador... Go for it, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, so, but think about this, okay?
	Remember during the Iraq war when McCain was beating the war drums even more bullishly than Bush at times?
	And Rumsfeld, to circle back, criticized old Europe, what he called old Europe meaning Germany and France and in the main Because they're critics of the Bush war strategy and even going to invade Iraq in the first place.
	Those, France and Germany now, have congealed into this same sort of fanatical war fever consensus in 2023, such that they're perfectly aligned now with this kind of, with the essence of what John McCain stood for.
	So, there's, to think about how bizarre that is to contemplate in terms of the scope and breadth of this new pro-war consensus that you could hardly have imagined not too long ago.
	I mean, Germany and France had been on this spectrum of, you know, the Western security establishment where they would usually try to be at least nominally more conciliatory to it, or they'd be trying to push back somewhat on the more maximalist designs of, like, the U.S. or the or they'd be trying to push back somewhat on the more maximalist designs of, like, Now it's all the same blob of just total uninhibited
	And so they don't feel any discomfort at all with having their current values, their current ideological fervor represented in the personage of John McCain.
	No, I'm sure like the head of the German Green Party or like the Prime Minister of Finland, like their dream is to win the John McCain award.
	And you know, the politics are very similar.
	We interviewed Sara Bagenknecht, who's the head of the actual left-wing party in Germany called the Linke, the left.
	And it's a very similar dynamic in France, in Germany, obviously here in the United States, where the only opposition to these kind of globalist or NATO-based wars come from the populist right and the populist left.
	In Germany, you know, you have figures like her working in a coalition now with the Alternative for Deutschland, the ADF party that used to be deemed kind of this, like, you know, white supremacist, neo-Nazi group because they opposed the war.
	I found it super interesting, Michael.
	I'm interested to hear what you thought about that.
	The new Prime Minister of Italy, Giordano Maloney, was widely deemed to be this, like, new Mussolini figure.
	I remember just by virtue of mentioning her victory on Twitter, and I kind of did it in a somewhat mocking way about identity politics, by saying, oh, she's become the first ever woman Prime Minister.
	Well, we wouldn't do that.
	No, I would never do that.
	I just don't know what happened to me on this particular day where I decided to trifle with something as important as any politics.
	And I, you know, said something like, oh, the first ever female.
	She's broken the glass ceiling.
	And, you know, they all so easily provoked, started saying that I'm celebrating fascism and Nazism and she's the heir to Mussolini.
	All that has disappeared.
	She's now in very good standing in Western security circles.
	I believe she's going to meet with Joe Biden soon.
	That narrative completely disappeared.
	You may have noticed.
	Simply by virtue of her steadfast support for the war in Ukraine.
	So, just like in the United States, although there's really no populist left to speak of in the United States where this comes from, but you have to go to the populist right to hear from Trump and Matt Gaetz and, you know, Rand Paul and Marjorie Taylor Greene, opposition to the war.
	The same is true in Europe, but the entire center-left and center-right establishment of Europe, as you say, including in the countries that once kind of harbored contempt for neocons,
	Like in France and Germany where I remember one time I was in a security panel in Paris and I was on the panel with a French intelligence official who spoke with complete contempt in that very French way about not the immorality but just the stupidity of the war in Iraq and of neocons and how, you know, they sold fairy tales to the entire world.
	I think part of it is the internet.
	We're all now feeding on the same propaganda.
	I also think that You know, the United States is so culturally dominant that this narrative about Russia ended up infiltrating so many of these normal liberals in Europe that these governments were kind of forced to adopt this mode of aggression.
	And it's only populist politics that's trying to push back against some of this stuff and say, this is kind of like an insanity, this unified belief In the, not only nobility, but the strategic wisdom of these endless wars against, you know, Russia and whatever the new enemy of the day is.
	I saw that there was a panel apparently talking about removing the Iranian regime, which if the people of Iran want to do is fine, but they had the son of the Shah of Iran who was on the panel, somebody who hasn't been to Iran since he was eight years old when his father was forced to flee by the revolution.
	You know, that was like the classic vintage case of how the United States got blowback by overthrowing the government of Iran, replacing him with a brutal dictator in the Shah who was pro-Western.
	And of course, when the revolution happened, there was all kinds of anti-Americanism because of that.
	Now they're talking again about reinstalling the Shah's son, somebody who hasn't even been to Iran in decades.
	You know, it's amazing that Europe has gone insane.
	And is fully on board with this neoconservative consensus that dominates the establishment wings of both parties in the United States?
	Well, I mean, just to clarify, it wasn't simply that this Munich Security Conference organization had the son of the Shah there for a panel.
	They invited him as the de facto representation for the Iranian state, because for the first time,
	The conference explicitly disinvited, effectively barred, actual representatives of the existing Iranian government, as well as the Russian government, also for the first time, which you don't need to be proficient in rocket science to comprehend that that was a de facto endorsement by this Western security order of regime change in both those countries, at least as an aspiration.
	And yeah, I mean, it was stunning that this was actually being taken as a serious proposal.
	So it wasn't that he didn't just show up to do a panel.
	He did this press availability where he describes this.
	He went around and personally lobbied to all the country's delegations, or whatever delegation says, for external Pressure to be applied on Iran specifically for the purpose of engineering regime change, and he plays coy about whether it's going to be him individually who takes over, but of course, I mean, that's the obvious inescapable conclusion.
	Now quickly on the Green Party of Germany, right?
	Okay, so here's an anecdote.
	I mean, the Green Party of Germany is like almost the most emblematic example, maybe even more so than the Democratic Party in the U.S., of this like total narrative shift to the point where you can't even like Figure out what party he's tethered to anymore.
	They're total fanatics.
	Yeah, well, because they're the foreign minister within the coalition government headed by Scholz in Germany is this woman, Amelia Babbock, I think that's how you pronounce it, who is the most ardent and has been since the war started in badgering Scholz to be more aggressive in deploying weapons and, you know, be even more fulsome in totally abolishing the entire foreign policy philosophy that Germany had been maintaining since World War II.
	So that's out the window, as we know.
	Yeah, because it's generally been a kind of a bad thing when Germany and Russia end up in antagonistic positions regarding wars.
	Things happen that aren't particularly favorable.
	But here's the anecdote.
	So there was a panel that the Mufferins hosted for this Russian opposition faction that I guess they're trying to cultivate and present as the rightful steward to the Russian state.
	Because remember, they're essentially endorsing regime change in Russia as an aspiration.
	So it's headed by Garry Kasparov, of course.
	People may know the chess grandmaster, who's also a full-time anti-Putin activist, and ran for president himself of Russia in 2008, although it's sort of weird what exactly happened there, I'm not sure.
	But on this panel, the point of this panel, it was with a couple of other people, including like the former richest man in Russia, who was imprisoned by Putin, who they were like casting as this, you know, saintly sort of reformer, even though he was like one of the most oligarchs I mean, it's a whole back story, right?
	But they were like trying to put this, you know, a noble sheen on him.
	But the point is that they were more or less in this panel calling for the only resolution to the conflict in Ukraine being ultimately, that's viable, being the removal of the current Russian government and the replacement with an entirely new system.
	So essentially the dissolution of the Russian Federation.
	And this guy stood up to ask a question, I didn't know who it was at the time, but he said, how can we convince our leaders to stop beating around the bush, to just come out and say it and be loud and proud and demand, unfortunately, that we as a collective Western alliance are dead set on, yeah, imposing regime change in Russia, of course, and it's a good thing and we should be, you know,
	I'm confident in our advocacy of that, and I don't understand what the reluctance is on the part of some.
	And I didn't know who this was, so I talked to him afterwards about his name.
	Turns out it's one of the most senior figures in the Green Party of Germany.
	He's not in office now.
	He was a senior official.
	His name is Ralph Fuchs.
	You know, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with the party, and then he ran for a long time like the kind of think tank that's the central think tank tied to the party, right?
	So, like, something like the Heritage Foundation with the Republican Party, but even more formalized.
	And, yeah, he was saying that Gary Kasparov and, like, the people on that panel, as radical as Kasparov is in his, you know, desires for what ought to happen to Putin, this guy wanted it even more, like, belligerently expressed and blunt and, like, this guy wanted it even more, like, belligerently expressed and blunt and, like, So, I mean, that's the Green Party of...
	Yeah, I mean, you know, we're just...
	We're a little over time.
	Normally, I wouldn't care, but I have to...
	I'm going to have to be on Tucker Carlson's show in a few minutes to talk about Ukraine.
	But I just wanted to underscore that because, you know, one of the things that Sarah Vagankinesh said to me that I...
	You know, it's the sort of thing that you think about when you live in a certain country, but don't if you don't.
	You know, she said, obviously, like, Russia has very deep trauma over any signs of aggression emanating from Germany because of, you know, those two kind of very nasty things that happened in the 20th century with those two world wars, including the second one, where there's, like, real trauma if you're sitting in Moscow and you hear about German tanks Rolling up to your border.
	Imagine hearing a member, a senior member of one of the parties that composes the German government, calling for regime change in Russia.
	Germany calling for a war of regime change in Russia.
	This is madness.
	Now just to conclude, Michael, I wanted to talk a little bit about, we're not going to have time, but we'll We'll follow up on this the next week is the backdrop to all of this is the increasing levels of repression of free speech that are accompanying all of this.
	I've been doing a lot of reporting and we're going to devote a show next week to the fact that Brazil is about to, they're poised to become the first country in the democratic world to implement the kinds of laws that exist in places like Saudi Arabia and Singapore and the United Arab Emirates that ban
	Fake news that allowed the government to forcibly remove postings of online that they deemed to be false and punish those who spread it, which will obviously immediately turn into the ability to prosecute dissidents on the grounds that they're spreading fake news.
	They're inviting all the Brazilian leaders in journalism.
	Of course, the journalists are leading this effort and government to conferences in Europe because Europe is looking for laws like this as well.
	We know that they already made it illegal to platform Russian media outlets.
	And there's an article in the Wall Street Journal today that ties into this so well that 50% of American colleges now have a system that allow and encourage students to anonymously report one another to the faculty.
	There you see it on the screen.
	The headline was Stanford Faculty Say Anonymous Student Bias Reports Threaten Free Speech.
	They basically have this system that allows a student if they see and this was provoked because one student saw another Reading Mind Conf, something that you kind of are supposed to do if you're studying history or just an interested person in the world and reported that person.
	for reading the wrong book.
	And a lot of these systems started to enable students to report other students if they didn't have their mask covered with their nose.
	I'm just going to bring that up.
	Yeah, that's where a lot of them began.
	But this whole climate is consuming the West, where not only are these insane policies proliferating, but the ability to dissent over them is becoming increasingly repressed, not through social stigma, but through formalized... not through social stigma, but through formalized...
	What means of criminalizing and outlawing all sorts of dissent?
	You see it in academia.
	You see it in European institutions.
	And now you're going to see it in Brazilian law, this law that Brazil is about to pass under Lula's new government.
	They're looking at it as kind of the test case or the model of how the West and Western governments can seize the power to basically criminalize not just fake news itself, but those who spread it.
	Deeply disturbing as these policies become Even more fanatical.
	Michael, we do need to run.
	I have a cable show to appear on.
	It's not as big as the show I'm currently on.
	It's a show, though, that I do try and go on when I'm asked because I try and help the host out as he develops his own audience, Tucker Carlson.
	I should be on in about 10 minutes talking about Ukraine, but thanks so much for... Can I have like 30 seconds?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Yep.
	Yeah, no, first of all, I'm a little surprised that Lula is instituting this measure because I don't understand the subtleties as well as you, but I would have thought that he would be a bit more skeptical of like the monopolistic power of No, he wasn't one of those.
	The President of Mexico did, Ben, and others, but he wasn't one of the people who did.
	Okay.
	Either way, yeah.
	Actually, being in Germany right now is very instructive on this score because I hadn't fully appreciated how granularly they engage in online censorship.
	If you pull up Twitter and you see, like, an interaction ...you might have had or a thread you might have had in the United States with somebody who's seen as like unacceptably pro-Russia, they actually go through and they've centered individual tweets or even the full account and it pops up with a notification censored at the behest of the German government or something to that effect.
	Or Brazil's government.
	The censorship regime that has taken hold in Brazil makes the US and the EU look like bastions of liberty.
	We're going to do an entire show on it next week because this law is genuinely threatening, not just to free speech in Brazil, but to the entire democratic world.
	Michael, we've got to go.
	I think if you heard that Skype call, that was Tucker's producers neurotically calling.
	Thanks so much, Michael, for taking the time.
	Great job reporting this week from Munich.
	We will talk to you soon.
	That concludes our show for this evening.
	To all of you who have watched this week, thanks so much.
	We appreciate it.
	As always, we will be back next week on Monday at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, our normal time exclusively here on Rumble, and on Tuesday and Thursday for our after show on Locals.
	To join our after show, just join the Locals community where you will have access to my written journalism as well.
	Have a great weekend, everybody.
	Have a great week.
	We will see you back on Monday, 7 p.m.
	Eastern.

▲