Israel Outraged as Brazil President Lula—Rightly—Compares Gaza Assault to Holocaust. PLUS: Coward & Fraud Bernie Sanders Refuses to Call for a Ceasefire. Latest on Assange Appeal
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Israeli Outrage (6:06)
US Blocks Ceasefire Again (44:09)
Cowardly Refusal (54:45)
Assange’s Last Chance (1:06:47)
Ending (1:20:52)
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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, a major diplomatic crisis has erupted between Israel and Brazil with the Israelis labeling Brazilian President Lula da Silva a, quote, Holocaust denier, declaring Lula persona non grata and banned from the country and requiring the Brazilian ambassador to meet declaring Lula persona non grata and banned from the country and requiring the Brazilian ambassador to meet Israeli
Meanwhile, Brazil has recalled this ambassador from Israel and made very clear that Lula has no intention to apologize in any way for the remarks he made that so enraged Israeli officials.
This conflict began when Lula, long a critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, along with U.S.
foreign policy in places such as Iraq and Ukraine, invoked the specter of the Holocaust when accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
The Brazilian leader told reporters on a trip to Ethiopia, quote, what is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel and other historical moments, adding, but it quote, did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.
Lula's speech was filled with condemnations of Hamas on October 7th.
It was really a nuanced attempt to condemn the West, and especially the US, for keeping this war fueled while doing little to nothing to provide basic humanitarian aid to prevent mass starvation among Gazans.
But clearly, when one mentions the Holocaust in connection with Israel, fury and outrage will ensue, and everything else We'll be forgotten.
And that's exactly what happened in the wake of this controversy.
All of this comes as the International Court of Justice continues to hold hearings on South Africa's formal accusation that Israel is guilty of war crimes.
So beyond the now well-worn debates over the Israeli war in Gaza, now in its fifth very dark and destructive month, this serious diplomatic incident between Israel and the world's sixth most populous country gives rise to some really interesting and vital questions, such as who owns the memory of Nazism in World War II?
Is there anyone with the legitimacy to dictate how the Holocaust can be discussed, by whom, what lessons can be derived from it, and with what political agenda it can be served?
Given how often we hear various American enemies being equated with Hitler and Nazis, it happens all the time, are there specific countries now whose actions are immune for some reason from comparisons with the worst abuses of World War II?
And if so, what is the immunity based on?
We'll examine these questions because of their relevance, not only to the Brazil-Israel crisis or even the war in Gaza, but also to broader discourse on wars and foreign policy.
Then the UN attempted for the third time to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
For the third time, that resolution has the overwhelming support of almost every country on the planet.
And for the third time, the Biden administration has isolated the United States from the rest of the world in order to protect Israel and ensure that this war can continue.
We will look at the Biden White House's ongoing defense of Israel, what progressive D.C.
leaders like Bernie Sanders and AOC are doing to assuage angry left-wing and younger voters who are vowing not to vote for Biden over his support for Israel, as well as the ongoing cost to the U.S.
from this devotion to Israel at a time when most countries have turned against it.
Finally, as we reported at length on last night's program, today was the start of the first day of Julian Assange's last attempt in a British court to avoid extradition to the U.S.
where the Biden DOJ intends to put him on trial for espionage charges and where he faces the rest of his life in an American prison.
We will tell you the latest about what happened today inside the London courtroom and what is Assange's last chance to convince the British judiciary not to extradite him to the United States.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
The question of how Nazism and the Holocaust can be invoked is something that we have discussed many times on the show, in large part because it is a virtual certainty that every time the United States in large part because it is a virtual certainty that every time the United States has a new enemy they want you to hate or they want you to go to war against, they will immediately equate them with being the new Hitler or somehow
A couple of months ago we produced a reel of literally close to a dozen people in the last decade alone in Syria and Libya and Iraq and Iran and in Gaza and of course in Russia and on and on and on of leaders of all these countries that the United States government wants you to hate being accused of Nazism and Hitler and being ready to perpetuate another Holocaust.
It's a very common rhetorical tactic.
The Brazilian leader, Lula da Silva, who was elected narrowly over Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, made comments in Ethiopia on Sunday in which he was asked about Brazil's criticism of Israel's war in Gaza.
Brazil has been very critical of that war, like most countries have.
And he gave remarks in which he invoked the specter of Nazism and the Holocaust in order to try and give historical context to how he understood the conflict in Gaza that has created immense diplomatic crises in a way that's very surprising.
First of all, let's show the supercut that we have where you can first see how common it is in American political discourse to hear the Holocaust and Nazism and Hitler tossed about for any leaders that the United States government, the U.S.
media want you to dislike.
Okay, we're going to have that in just a minute.
I think it's a very interesting context.
We won't show you the whole thing, but we're going to show you just a little bit of it, just to remind you of how common these sorts of comparisons are.
Are we going to have this?
Ready?
This is just a last minute addition.
There we have it.
Let's go ahead and show it.
What you said, and do you still consider that to be the case?
I said a year and a half ago that the year is 1938 and Iran is Germany and it's racing to acquire nuclear weapons.
Well, if that's the case, then we're in 1939.
There is evil in the world today.
It's always been there.
For a free people, the choice has always been the same.
Call it by its name and face it with courage.
Or lead from behind and hope it goes away.
The lessons of history are clear.
The strong survive and endure, while the weak are forgotten.
In a dangerous world, it's time for American leadership.
Not surrender.
Arabia.
But I've seen that you called the Ayatollah Khamenei the new Hitler of the Middle East.
Absolutely.
Why?
Because he wants to expand.
He wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much like Hitler.
All right, so you get the point.
If even MBS in Saudi Arabia is calling the leader of Iran the new Hitler, Saudi Arabia Saddam Hussein was called that multiple times, Gaddafi, Assad, Putin, on and on and on and on, Ahmadinejad in Iran.
That gives you a sense for just how common it is for this to be tossed around.
Now, here's what Lula said.
On February 18th, this is an excerpt from a Reuters report and he's speaking in Portuguese, which is the language of Brazil, but the English translation is provided on the subtitles by Reuters on the screen.
This is Lula on February 18th.
This is what has sparked one of the most intense and rapidly unfolding diplomatic conflict between two major countries that we have seen in quite some time.
Here is what Lula said.
What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments.
In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.
It was very, very funny, very funny when I see the rich world announcing that it is stopping contributions from humanitarian very funny when I see the rich world announcing that it is stopping
I am left wondering how big the political conscience of those people is and how big is the heart of solidarity of those people who are not seeing that in the Gaza Strip there's no war going on.
It's a genocide.
It's not a war between soldiers and soldiers.
It's a war between a highly trained army and women and children.
So that was a speech that caused so much uproar by the Israeli government.
And I guess we should add before we get into the substance that that last statement, the last part of that statement, mainly that Gaza has no trained army.
They have no air force.
They cannot fly.
They have no real military of any kind.
They're not a state.
It's not really a war.
It's not a war between two armies like the way you say it is in Ukraine and Russia.
It's a attack by one of the world's most sophisticated militaries, financed and backed by the most powerful government on the planet, which is the United States, providing it all the arms it wants and all the weapons and bombs that it uses and all the money that it needs.
To attack one of the most densely packed populations on the planet, filled with civilians.
It's a population of 2.2 million people in Gaza, 50% of whom are children.
50% are under the age of 18.
You add into that women, and that constitutes 75% of the population.
And then innocent men, you're up to 80, 85% of the population, at least.
And yet you have just a complete massacre for five months now.
Here from the New York Times, February 19th, it describes or summarizes the results from Lula's speech.
Here's the headline, Brazil's president angers Israel after comparing war in Gaza to the Holocaust.
Israel said it had asked for a meeting with the Brazilian ambassador.
Mr. Lula's statement outraged Israeli officials.
The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on social media in Hebrew that the remarks were, quote, shameful and egregious.
He said that Brazil's ambassador will be called into his office on Monday for a, quote, reprimand, adding that no one will harm Israel's right to defend itself.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel echoed those sentiments in his own social media post.
Mr. Netanyahu accused Brazil's president of, quote, trivializing the Holocaust and trying to harm the Jewish people and Israel's right to defend itself, and said that, quote, comparing Israel to the Nazi Holocaust and Hitler is crossing a red line.
I just want you to remember that.
Netanyahu said that comparing Israel to The Nazi Holocaust and Hitler is crossing a red line, even though, as we just saw, Israel frequently, as does the United States, compares its enemies to Nazis, to Hitler.
Countries in the world can freely be compared to Adolf Hitler, to Nazis.
The Holocaust can continuously be invoked by the West and its allies to accuse other governments or regimes of being barbaric and savage, but Invoking that argument, or that historical lesson, when talking about Israel, says Benjamin Netanyahu, representing, I think, a significant bulk of opinion in the West, is quote, crossing a red line.
In other words, you're free to use that example for almost every other country, but not Israel.
Israel is exempt from any lessons that you might want to derive from the Holocaust.
Quote, Mr. Netanyahu added in a separate statement that Mr. Lula has, quote, disgraced the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and demonized the Jewish state like the most virulent anti-Semite.
I just want to ask for one second.
I just showed you Lula's quote.
And actually, and as I said, the speech itself was much more nuanced.
It was vehemently denouncing Hamas and the attack on October 7th and the use of sexual violence and threats of it, he said, and the attacks on civilians that were inexcusable and indefensible and the use of hostages.
He talked about all of that.
But even if he didn't, even if he had only said the part that we showed you, the part that's circulating on social media, In what conceivable way could that be anti-Semitism?
He's criticizing the actions of a state, of a government, of political leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, the people running this war.
He's criticizing them for insufficient concern for the lives of civilians.
In what conceivable way is that an argument that is expressing animosity toward Jews generally?
Obviously we know what this is.
This is the attempt that Israel always uses and its supporters here in the United States to accuse anybody who criticizes Israel of being anti-Semitic.
They have conflated the Israeli government with Jews generally, even though, especially in this war, the war in Gaza, So many prominent Jews and ordinary Jews around the world have been among the leaders, the most vocal opponents of the war in Gaza to claim that somehow criticizing the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu as an attack on all Jews is exactly the tactic that Israel supporters complain about when done by
Now in case that wasn't enough, here's what the official Twitter account of Israel said today.
or xenophobic or transphobic or whatever to stifle debate and destroy people's reputations.
It's exactly the same thing.
Now in case that wasn't enough, here's what the official Twitter account of Israel said today.
Here was a playful little tweet about Brazil and the Brazilian flag posted by this account World of Statistics.
And they asked, what comes to mind when you think of Brazil?
And the state of Israel, the official Israeli account, took this tweet and above it wrote, quote, before or after Lula went full on Holocaust denier.
This is insanely dishonest, if not stupid.
What Lula was saying was that we don't have a historical precedent for what is being done in Gaza, the level of civilian destruction, the disregard for human life, unless you go back to the Holocaust, when the Germans tried to murder all Jews.
Now, you may not agree with what Lula said, in that comparison you may think it's overboard, but in no conceivable way is it Holocaust denialism.
It's in fact the opposite.
It's using the Holocaust and the evils of it And drawing lessons from it about how human beings can be dehumanized in order to condemn what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.
Now, again, whatever that is, it is not anti-Semitism and is not Holocaust denialism.
Not in any conceivable way.
Now, one of the reasons that the Israelis acted so emotionally, so full of rage, Is because the reality is that Brazil is a large and important country.
It's the sixth largest country in the world by population.
It's the largest country in South America.
It has very important oil reserves and environmental resources.
It's the world's 10th largest economy.
And Lula, for better or for worse, you may hate him or not, but the reality is that he is a very credible figure on the world stage.
He's not Nicolas Maduro.
He's not some leader of a small African country that has no respect.
Brazil's diplomatic corps is regarded as being among the best, if not the best in the world.
Brazil has always been able to maintain a significant presence on the world stage, and especially when Lula was president from 2002 to 2010.
Brazil worked a lot to build an independent profile, independent of the United States and of other blocs.
And was effective in negotiating all sorts of diplomatic arrangements, including attempting with Turkey to solve the crisis that had arisen during the Obama administration between Iran and the United States by negotiating a deal between Iran and the United States to try and resolve that crisis.
And so for someone like Lula to come out and say something like this is a huge deal for Israel.
And already you're seeing the effects here from the city paper of Bogota, which is the paper in the capital of Colombia.
You may recall last week when I was traveling, we interviewed the top advisor to President Petro, the newly elected president of Colombia, elected in 2022.
We interviewed Gustavo Bolivar, who's his close advisor.
We talked to him about all sorts of issues involving Colombia, the region, the fight against the drug war, but also Colombia's condemnation of Israel in Gaza and why Colombia felt compelled to do that.
when the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, came out, quote, "in complete solidarity with Lula today on Gaza, escalating tensions again with Israel." Quote, "Colombian president Gustavo Petro made it very clear on his social media platform, X, that Brazil's Lula Nasia Lula da Silva had, quote, "spoken the truth" when he mentioned that there is a, quote, "genocide in Gaza and thereby deserves his complete solidarity."
In his most recent statement to 7.5 million followers regarding the Israel-Hamas war, Petro underscored that, quote, thousands of children, women and elderly civilians are being cowardly murdered and that truth must be, quote, defended or barbarism will annihilate us.
Petro called on quote the entire region to unite immediately to end the violence in Palestine and emphasized that the ruling of the International Court of Justice on Israel quote must generate application and consequence in the diplomatic relations of all countries in the world.
Now all of this invokes a very important debate about Who is the owner of the discourse about the Holocaust?
Who gets to dictate how the lessons of the Holocaust, the lessons of Nazism, the lessons of World War II get applied?
Remember, the State of Israel didn't even exist at the time that Nazi Germany was defeated and the concentration camps liberated.
That was done by the United States and the UK and Russia, the Soviet Union.
The Allied Powers, they lost many, many lives in order to do that.
And you can say the lessons the Holocaust belongs to Jews who were the primary victim of it, but not the only victim.
But six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, obviously a gigantic event in the history of international Jewry.
But it's also a lesson for all of humanity and for the countries that fought wars in order to battle against Nazism.
And oftentimes the people who are invoking the Holocaust in order to condemn the actions of Israelis and specifically the treatment of Jews are some of the leading Jewish intellectuals on the planet.
And that isn't only the case now.
It's been the case almost since the creation of the state of Israel.
Earlier this week, the Polk Awards were announced.
They're the second most prestigious award for journalism after the Pulitzers.
And a Polk Award was given for essays to the American-Russian-Jewish writer Masha Gessen, who is a writer for The New Yorker.
And on December 9th of 2023, Gessen wrote an article entitled, In the Shadow of the Holocaust.
Where essentially the discussion was that Gesen had gone through all sorts of sites in Germany and in Europe looking at Holocaust monuments and came to realize that especially in Germany, especially in Europe, the Holocaust has to become this shield, this weapon to immunize Israel from criticism.
When in fact the lessons of the Holocaust were seen almost from the end of World War II as something far more universal than that.
And this was the sub-headline, quote, how the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.
And this is a really interesting incident, remembered, recalled by Gessen.
And for this essay, Masha Gessen had an event to speak in Germany, and that event was canceled after Germans complained that this article was anti-Semitic, even though Gessen is a Jew, a born Jew.
And was speaking for a lot of Jewish critics of Israel.
And one of the things Gessin recalled was a historical event involving the Jewish-German philosopher Hannah Arendt who wrote essays reflecting on the Holocaust.
She went to the Nuremberg Trials.
She observed Adolf Eichmann on the stand.
And coined the phrase, the banality of evil.
She was shocked that these Nazis who were being tried at the Nuremberg trials were not these monsters breathing fire.
A lot of them just seemed like banal accountants carrying out their duties and their orders.
And she described that as the banality of evil.
That it's not often the crazed psychopaths who engage in the worst conduct, but oftentimes just the good, decent man doing what he's told.
Adhering to societal norms.
And this essay recalled the following, quote, in 1948, the year Israel was created and founded, three years after World War II ended.
Hannah Arendt wrote an open letter that began, quote, Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the, quote, Freedom Party, a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and fascist parties, end quote.
Gessen then wrote, quote, just three years after the Holocaust, Arendt was comparing a Jewish-Israeli party to the Nazi party, an act that today would be a clear violation of the IHRA's definition of anti-Semitism, which is the piece of legislation that has been enacted in Europe to criminalize, as anti-Semitism, certain types of criticism of the state of Israel.
So here you have one of the most prominent Jewish philosophers and writers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt, invoking the Holocaust to condemn far-right nationalists in Israel during the formation of the state of Israel for using Nazi rhetoric and Nazi tactics and a Nazi mindset toward Arabs.
That was redolent of what she saw at the Nuremberg Trials.
There was never any sense that Israel or Israelis or Jews were somehow off-limits to having the lessons of the Holocaust applied to them the way that Benjamin Netanyahu tries today to insist Israel is immune and that only anti-Semites would do.
And then Gesson talked about the trial of Adolf Eichmann and wrote the following, quote, here was the devil himself.
The prosecution argued that Eichmann represented but one iteration of the eternal threat to the Jews.
The trial helped to solidify the narrative that to prevent annihilation, Jews should be prepared to use force preemptively.
Arendt, reporting on the trial, would have none of this.
Her phrase, quote, the banality of evil, elicited perhaps the original accusations leveled against a Jew of trivializing the Holocaust, but she wasn't.
But she saw that Eichmann was no devil, that perhaps the devil didn't exist.
She had reason that there was no such thing as radical evil.
That evil was always ordinary, even when it was extreme.
Something, quote, born in the gutter, as she put it later.
Something of utter shallowness.
Arendt took issue with the persecution story that the Jews were the victims of, as she put it, a historical principle stretching from Pharaoh to Haman, the victim of a metaphysical principle.
In other words, the lesson of the Holocaust was not that Germans are uniquely evil, nor that Jews are uniquely vulnerable to atrocities being committed against them.
The lessons of the Holocaust
was that human nature being human nature can lead groups of people if they feel sufficiently threatened or scared or persuaded by their tribe to hate another group of people so much that they dehumanize them to the point that they have no trouble treating them like subhumans like just extinguishing their lives without value and that the lessons of the holocaust were universal and humanitarian
And not about one group of people victimizing another.
And it wasn't just Hannah Arendt who emphasized the universality of the lessons of the Holocaust.
It was also the judges and the prosecutors of the Nuremberg trial.
The Nuremberg trial was an incredible event.
The Americans, when they defeated Nazi Germany, with the immense help of the Soviet Union, captured a lot of Nazi war criminals.
And they could have just executed them all on the spot.
That's often what was done in war.
But they decided instead to hold a trial that the world could watch.
In part so that these inevitable executions would have a legal justification to them.
I mean, these were not fair courts.
They were going to result in Convictions, this was a form of victor's justice but still putting a legal process on it elevated it and made it more civilized unlike say the way that the United States decided to kill instead of capture and try Osama Bin Laden.
The Americans after World War II decided to capture and try The Nazi war criminals who were responsible for the Holocaust.
But they also did it because they wanted to present the evidence of the Holocaust to the world, knowing that otherwise there'd be a lot of people who denied the Holocaust, who doubted the Holocaust.
Of course, to this day, there still are people who doubt it, despite the abundance of evidence offered at this trial and elsewhere proving it.
But what they really wanted to do, above all else, was to create universal principles going forward that applied to all countries, not just Germany.
That would govern and limit their conduct in future wars because what they had seen from World War II was not that Germans were capable of evil, but that human beings were.
And they constantly emphasized, the Nuremberg trial, judges and prosecutors did, that the Nuremberg trial would only be valid, would only make sense, would only have purpose and value if the principles it established Applied to every nation going forward.
Here is what the lead prosecutor, the American lawyer, Robert Jackson, he had previously served in the U.S.
Dust Department and became the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, said in his opening statement, quote, What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners, these Nazis, represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust.
We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.
They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarisms.
And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.
We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their people only when we make all men, all men, answerable to the law.
This trial represents mankind's desperate effort to apply the discipline of the law to statesmen who have used their powers of state to attack the foundations of the world's peace and to commit aggressions against the rights of their neighbors.
Does any of that sound like Israel was intended to be immunized or excluded from lessons being drawn about the Holocaust or that somehow a state of the Jews was somehow immune from the worst temptations of human nature?
The exact opposite was true.
They repeated that over and over.
And so you can dispute whether or not this comparison is appropriate on the facts but to claim that any invocation of the Holocaust as a way of criticizing the government of Israel's behavior is inherently inappropriate or anti-semitic or Holocaust denialism is deceit of the highest order.
And let me just remind you of what the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant sat on October 9th about how this war would be conducted.
It's October 9th, 2023.
This is what he promised.
I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.
There will be no electricity, no fuel, everything is closed.
We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.
We're not fighting humans, we are fighting animals.
Human animals.
And we will act accordingly.
And how will we act accordingly?
We are blockading the entrance of food, water, electricity, or anything else into the Gaza Strip.
A complete blockade of everything necessary for the survival of 2.2 million people in Gaza.
Now, the reaction to that was very intense.
And the Israelis agreed to a tiny number of small humanitarian corridors Where the UN tried to get in some amount of food and water.
Nowhere near enough.
One-thirtieth, one-fiftieth of what would be necessary just to keep the Gazan people from dying of starvation or treatable disease.
All those stories we've heard of.
Women and children having limbs amputated without anesthesia, without medication, without painkillers.
There are basically no hospitals operating any longer in Gaza.
They've all been destroyed.
There are credible reports of children in Gaza already dying of starvation because no food can get in.
Here is Senator Chris Van Hollen.
He is a Democratic senator, a very ordinary one, by no means part of the progressive wing, a longtime vehement supporter of the state of Israel, has voted for funding for Israel's Iron Dome, has voted to weigh in on the side of Israel, both in the House and the Senate, every time it had a conflict with its Palestinian neighbors.
And yet, listen to what he's saying about the reality of the situation in Gaza.
This is from February 12th last week.
Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food.
In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true.
That is a war crime.
It is a textbook war crime.
And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.
So now the question is, what will the United States do?
What will we do?
What will President Biden do?
President Biden must take action in response to what is happening.
Now, that very same Chris Van Hollen, who denounced what Israel was doing as war criminality, That same week voted on a package that sent $17 billion to Israel to enable them to continue doing what they're doing.
What he just described as war criminality, which makes him an accomplice to war criminality as well, because he also wanted the $60 billion that bill provided to go to Ukraine.
But the fact that he was willing to acknowledge these realities given his steadfastly pro-Israel record should tell you a great deal about just how extreme the atrocities in Gaza are.
Here is the UN World Food Program whose only point is to prevent starvation on the planet On February 20th, 2024, UN Food Agency pauses deliveries to the north of Gaza.
Quote, The decision to pause deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip has not been taken lightly, as we know it means the situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger.
WFP is deeply committed to urgently reaching desperate people across Gaza, but the safety and security to deliver critical food aid And for the people receiving it must be insured.
In December the integrated phase classification report compiled by 15 agencies warned of the risk of famine in northern Gaza by May unless conditions there improved decisively.
At the end of July after delivering food to the north we reported on the rapid deterioration of conditions.
In these past two days our teams witnessed unprecedented Levels of desperation.
You're talking here about an agency that works in every horrific conflict on the planet.
In Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East.
And they're describing what's taking place in Gaza as unprecedented levels of desperation, which is what the Israelis promised Benjamin Netanyahu on October 7th, after the Hamas attack.
said we are going to extract a price from our enemy unlike anything ever seen, unlike anything they have ever paid.
He vowed an unprecedented war on Gaza and that's exactly what we now have.
A level of destruction of civilian infrastructure and civilian life unseen since the wars of the 20th century, since the Holocaust, since World War II, which is what Lula was saying.
This report went on The latest reports confirm Gaza's precipitous slide into hunger and disease.
Food and safe water have become incredibly scarce, and diseases are rife, compromising women and children's nutrition and immunity and resulting in a surge of acute malnutrition.
People are already dying from hunger-related causes.
There are people in Gaza Dying from starvation, the worst possible way a human being can die, the most painful way of suffering and dying, when the body shuts down because of lack of nutrition.
Quote, Nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centers in the North found that 15.6% or 1 in 6 children under 2 years of age are acutely malnourished.
Tell me, what more do you need?
In order for historical events like World War II and Nazism and the Holocaust to be invoked, not as a way of comparing the number of people killed.
Obviously, the difference between 30,000 and 6 million is enormous.
Nobody was suggesting that was a comparison, a numerical or quantitative one.
It's a qualitative one, a one about mentality, about dehumanization, about the complete disregard for civilian and innocent life.
Here from CNN, February 20th, UN experts demand investigation into claims that Israeli forces killed, raped, and sexually assaulted Palestinian women and girls.
And before you start questioning these sources, just please be honest.
The United States is the most pro-Israel country on the planet.
That's why Israel is by far the biggest recipient of American aid over many decades.
Because both political parties are profoundly and intensely pro-Israel.
Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama sound exactly like John McCain and Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio when it comes to the question of Israel.
They're completely pro-Israel.
And so is the American media, which follows the U.S.
security state and the U.S.
government.
So please don't suggest that corporate media outlets in the United States are anti-Israel when the exact opposite is true.
And they're quoting a report from the U.N.
And if you want, you can disregard the U.N.
as well.
And every other organization, media, humanitarian that criticizes Israel, you can just immediately assume or dismiss them as being anti-Semitic.
And then what are you left with other than taking the claims of the Israeli government?
These are people who have been in Gaza, who have risked their lives to administer lifesaving aid.
These are where these reports are coming from.
Quote, the allegations include extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment, rape and sexual violence, according to a statement by the Office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights released on Monday.
It did not detail how they did their fact-finding, but they referred to photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances reportedly taken by Israeli troops and uploaded online.
The experts, who are part of the largest body of independent fact-finding and monitoring in the U.N.
human rights system, expressed their concerns over the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women and girls since the Hamas attacks on October 7.
The U.N.
experts further said they were distressed by reports of quote, multiple forms of sexual assault against Palestinian women and girls in detention, including quote, being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officials.
You take the number of deaths in such a short amount of time, the amount of bombs that have been dropped on an overwhelmingly civilian population filled with young children and women, the utter cruelty of blockading food and water and electricity and fuel so that hospitals can't function, so that people who are wounded or buried under rubble can't be rescued, who are just left to die.
Now having children die of treatable infections and starvation.
And if you want to say that you think it was exaggerated or overstated for the Brazilian president to invoke the Holocaust when condemning Gaza, you can go ahead and say that.
Although I'll remind you what he actually said.
He said, this is unprecedented in modern warfare.
We have to go back to the Holocaust to find something like this.
He didn't say they were the same.
But under no circumstances can it be the case that the Israeli government gets to dictate how the Holocaust is discussed and remembered and how lessons are drawn from it.
That they get to go around applying Hitler and Nazism and the Holocaust to their enemies, but nobody can possibly invoke that when it comes to Israel.
That was never the intention, including by Jewish intellectuals, when forming the post-World War II framework of how we think about the Holocaust and the rules and the international order that we just created to avoid its repetition in the future.
The recognition was all human beings, including Jews and the state of Israel, are capable of these kinds of abuses.
And that was why those lessons were intended to be universal and not off limits when it comes to one country or another.
There was a another attempt at the UN today by basically the entire world to enact a resolution in the UN Security Council to call for a ceasefire in Gaza
It's the third time it happened and here from Reuters you see that the Biden administration blocks a ceasefire call with the third UN veto in Israel and Hamas war.
Let's put that graphic on the screen if we can.
The Reuters article, there you see the headline, and there you see the UN ambassador, Linda Greenfield Thomas, raising her hand, the only person raising her hand, to vote no on this resolution.
Third time that's happened.
The United States alone, on the Security Council, protected Israel with its veto power to ensure that this war continues.
Quote, 13 council members voted in favor of the Algerian drafted tax while Britain abstained.
U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, signaled on Saturday that the U.S.
would veto the draft resolution over concerns it could jeopardize talks between the U.S., Egypt, Israel, and Qatar that seek to broker a pause in the war and the release of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Demanding an immediate unconditional ceasefire without an agreement requiring Hamas to release the hostages will not bring about a durable peace.
Instead, it could extend the fighting between Hamas and Israel, Thomas Greenfield told the council ahead of the vote.
This is what the U.S.
has been saying since the start of the war.
Every time it blocks a UN resolution for a ceasefire, it says, oh, we're only doing this because a real ceasefire is going to come.
And we're now five months into this war and there is no ceasefire.
Here were some extremely bizarre remarks.
From Linda Thompson Greenfield, Biden's ambassador to the UN, at a press conference after she yet again isolated the United States from the rest of the world by vetoing the resolution for a ceasefire in Israel.
Here she is explaining her rationale.
We intend to do this the right way so that we can create the right conditions for a safer, more peaceful future.
And we will continue to actively Now, if you think it's intemperate or insensitive for Lula to invoke the Holocaust when condemning the Israeli war in Gaza, despite everything I just went through, what is it for the U.S.
ambassador to justify the vetoing of a ceasefire resolution by saying they want a final solution?
I mean, that is what she actually said, just in case you missed it.
We intend until we reach a final solution.
It's a very least unfortunate and quite undiplomatic phraseology, I would say.
Now, in case you think that this is confined to the Biden White House, this is a point I keep trying to make is, I think a lot of conservatives, including ones who like my show, who watch my show, who agree with me on a lot of my reporting except this, Oftentimes like to think that Democrats and liberals, like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, are people who don't agree with them on foreign policy, especially when it comes to things like Israel, like the Democratic Party is completely anti-Israel.
This is a complete and total myth.
What makes AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby so powerful is that they have their hands on both political parties.
They fund both political parties.
And one of the last things that Joe Biden or that Barack Obama did before leaving office, he did it in October of 2016 on his way out, was signed a record breaking deal for the United States to guarantee a payment to Israel of $40 billion over 10 years, basically $3.8 billion a year in military aid, a lot of which has to go to buying weapons from American manufacturers, but arms manufacturers, but not all of it.
And Benjamin Netanyahu was effusive with gratitude and praise because that's the American worker transferring $4 billion every year to Israel on top of all the money we give them on War Start.
And that happens whether they're a Democratic president or a Republican president.
Which is why you just saw Joe Biden's ambassador to the UN being the only person to raise her hand at the UN today to block a ceasefire.
France didn't do that.
Britain didn't do it.
They abstained.
China, Russia, no other country did it.
Nancy Pelosi, you may recall about a week ago or two weeks ago, suggested that pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States, including ones outside our house, were being controlled and financed by the Russian government.
She called on the FBI to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters.
Here was Nancy Pelosi today in an interview.
When asked about not just the Israeli war in Gaza, but also U.S.
support for that war, here's what she said.
I found these remarks very revealing.
If you don't like what Israel is doing, and the President has made it clear that some of what Israel is doing he doesn't like, and you go on supplying them with hardware to do those things, you own this operation every bit as much as they do, don't you?
No, we don't.
We have always supported Israel as our national security friend, largely because it was in Israel.
We've always supported Israel as our national security friend, she said.
This is why.
Sorry, our national security friend.
Israel has always been our national security friend.
We've always supported Israel, she said.
But for some reason, even though we're providing them with the arms and the money for this war in Gaza, she still wants to say we're not responsible.
Here's her explanation.
I've always supported Israel as our national security friend, largely because it was in our interest to do so.
Largely because it was going to do so.
We had shared values and only democracy in the region.
The behavior of Netanyahu is, in my view, inexcusable in terms of how it has affected the collateral damage to children and families and the rest.
But nobody can take away the right of any country Now, one of the interesting things that Democrats are doing, because they know they have to criticize Israel, even though they want to keep funding and financing them, they're never going to cut off financing and arms to Israel, but they know they have to placate their angry liberal base because they fear that they won't go for Biden if they don't at least criticize Israel, is they keep now trying to cast this as some sort of partisan issue.
But the problem with the Israeli government is that it's a right-wing government, as though if you replaced it with the alternative it would somehow be better.
Everyone of any stature in Israel, whoever anyone is that has any chance of replacing Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel, fully agrees on and supports completely what Israel is doing in the war in Gaza.
It has nothing to do with left versus right.
It's the country of Israel that supports this almost overwhelmingly, Israeli citizens, even though a lot of them hate Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is very unpopular.
It's not because they oppose the war in Gaza.
They are angry about that the Israeli intelligence agencies didn't attack the attack on October 7th.
They're angry at the way that Netanyahu has prosecuted the war, the way he's handled the hostage situation.
He was already deeply unpopular.
Remember, before this war, there was a virtual civil war in Israel over the attempt to strip the judiciary of its ability to review laws for constitutionality.
So, this is what Nancy Pelosi is trying to do, but you notice at the end she always says, of course we're going to keep funding Israel, of course we're going to keep arming Israel, Israel is our friend, and Israel has a right to defend itself.
Here's the rest of this.
Joseph Burrell wondered aloud why the U.S.
isn't doing more to have its warnings taken seriously in Jerusalem.
If you believe, he said, that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide fewer arms in order to prevent so many people being killed.
He's got a point, hasn't he?
Israel is very well equipped with weaponry.
There's nothing that we have sent since October 7th that has contributed to this brutality.
In the longer run, they're in a dangerous neighborhood, and we will continue to support Israel.
For let's total lie, Biden has been transferring enormous amounts of weapons to Israel since October 7th.
Just like Obama provided the bombs in real time to Israel when it was bombing Gaza in 2014, I just want to make the point that it's a very bipartisan policy.
The Democrats are as much on board with the support for Israel and its war in Gaza as any pro-war hawk in the Republican Party is.
Bernie Sanders is probably the person I find most loathsome in all of this because, as I said, One thing you cannot criticize the Israelis for is that you cannot say they hid their intentions about what they were going to do in Gaza.
They were very clear about what they intended to do, which was destroy Gaza.
And when it mattered, and when it was hard, believe me, to stand up and oppose what the Israelis were doing in Gaza, to oppose the United States support for it in October and November, when it actually mattered, Bernie Sanders was running around defending Israel Opposing a ceasefire, insisting that the Israelis were acting properly, and defending Biden for arming and financing Israel.
And Bernie Sanders has begun to change his rhetoric solely because there are polls showing that the Biden administration is endangered by Anger over the left.
In fact, anger over the left, including against Bernie Sanders.
Here from the New York Times, you see an article, November 30th, on Israel's war against Hamas.
Sanders faces a backlash from the left.
The progressive disappointment with the Vermont senator, a liberal icon, reflects a broader divide among Democrats over the war.
And it talks about how Biden's reelection can be imperiled if this continues for so long.
And the anger at Bernie Sanders is because when it mattered, When it was hard to stand up and oppose what Israel was doing, the emotions around October 7th were very high, and anyone who did it suffered a significant cost.
I can assure you Bernie Sanders was cheering Israel on.
And only in the last two months, when he knows it doesn't matter, When the Democratic Party needs him to show angry liberals and angry leftists and angry young people that there's still a home for them in the Democratic Party, because Bernie Sanders is also angry with Israel, only then did he become willing to criticize what Israel was doing.
And even then, he's doing it in the most mealy-mouthed way possible.
Here is a remarkable interview, and I want to credit the journalist Yeah, it's Ashkara from Navara Media who did a great job in trying to press Bernie Sanders, who's in the UK, on exactly what his position is.
And you tell me whether you think, again, he's definitely willing to criticize Israel, now that it doesn't matter anymore that he needs to do so politically, but just listen to how he refuses to give his real opinion on any of the questions she's asking.
In addition to stopping the billions of dollars in military aid that Israel gets from the United States every year, would you back calls for a cultural, sporting and economic boycott of Israel?
I am nervous about economic boycotts of any country, to be honest with you.
Now, that is an absolute lie.
The United States has an economic boycott of all kinds of countries, of Cuba, of Venezuela, of Syria.
And Bernie Sanders supports all of those.
He's not opposed to economic boycotts of countries.
Let's go on.
But right now, what people want to do, they can do what they want to do.
But right now, again, my job as a United States senator, and I'm kind of leading that effort in the Senate, is to tell Netanyahu that he is not going to get any more USAID.
Did you feel nervous about the boycott movement against apartheid South Africa?
Was that a concern you had at the time?
So, that's a good question as well.
One of the things that took down the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980s was exactly the kind of economic boycott Bernie Sanders just said.
He's unwilling to support.
So she asked him, well, what about your views of South Africa and the boycott against apartheid South Africa that was called for by the black people of South Africa trying to end apartheid?
Were you also against that on this principle of yours that you don't support boycotts?
And here's what he said.
Uh, what I thought that as an apartheid state at that point, it was important to put pressure, but people can do as they want and what, you know, that's all.
Do you think that it's right that British citizens and American citizens can go and fight in the IDF when, as you say, there are such profound humanitarian concerns in Gaza?
Well, I think if British and American people want to do that, I suppose they have the right to do it.
Now, that is not a universal right.
You don't have the right to go and fight in the Russian army, or to go fight in the Syrian army, or to go fight in the Iranian army.
That will be treason.
You will get charged with treason if you do that.
But Bernie Sanders saying, but for Israel, yeah, if you want to go fight for Israel, as a lot of Americans do, people make a big point of the fact that among the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th were Americans.
That's because a lot of Americans go and fight in the Israeli army.
And there may have been some hostages who were just visiting.
There were hostages representing, I think, nine or ten nations, including Thailand and Brazil and other countries.
But a big reason why there's so many Americans in Israel is because Americans go and fight for the Israeli Defense Force, something you're allowed to do, even though you're not allowed to do that for every other country.
Really thought a whole lot about it.
Do you think they should have the right?
Look, I think what the Israeli government doing now is horrible, and I'm not quite sure why people would want to be, you know, part of that effort.
She then tried to ask him several times as well, would you say that Israel is guilty of genocide?
And he, as he's done many times before, has refused to give an answer.
As I said earlier, that for the first two months, Bernie Sanders was singing a much different tune.
Here he was on Face the Nation in December of 2023, about exactly two months after the October 7th attack.
And he was asked about whether he supports a ceasefire in Gaza.
By this point, something like 10,000 Palestinians had been killed, many thousands of children.
And here's what the socialist senator, the independent senator from Vermont said.
In terms of a permanent ceasefire, I don't know how you can have a permanent ceasefire with Hamas who has said before October 7th and after October 7th that they want to destroy Israel.
They want a permanent war.
I don't know how you have a permanent ceasefire with an attitude like that.
Now, Bernie Sanders got a lot of support for saying that, including from the biggest pro-Israel activist group, AIPAC.
Which promptly went to Twitter and said, Thank you, Senator Sanders, for your strong opposition to a permanent ceasefire with Hamas.
There are people who from the start opposed the Israeli war in Gaza and U.S.
support for that war and who still do.
And then there are people who supported the Israeli war in Gaza.
I know a lot of people in my life who did that and still do.
And on some level, I can at least respect the intellectual consistency of that.
People in my life said, look, what happened on October 7th is an absolute atrocity.
No country can allow that to happen.
And whatever Israel needs to do to go prevent that from happening again, I support that.
And those people have continued to this very day to maintain that principle.
What Bernie Sanders and so many other Western liberals did was stand up when it was so politically cheap to do so.
When it took courage not to do it and stood up and applauded the Israelis and said, we support the right of the Israelis to go in Gaza and do what they want to do.
Knowing that the Israelis would do exactly this because Israel said it would.
And now what's happening is two things.
One is there's the political need for Bernie Sanders to now suddenly change his tune so he can try and attract the young voters and the left-wing voters who once idolized him so he can lead them to go vote for Joe Biden.
But I think the bigger motivation is actually the more ignoble one, which is that Bernie Sanders doesn't want the pile of corpses in Gaza on his conscience or on his legacy, even though he absolutely is responsible for them because he cheered this for a long time when his opposition actually could have made a difference.
And a lot of these Western liberals who cheered Israel when there was so much pressure on them to do so, Now we're suddenly saying, oh my, this is too far.
I can't support this.
This is what they supported.
This is what they encouraged.
This is what they enabled.
And now suddenly they don't want it to be on their legacy and their conscience that they supported it, even though they did.
So they want to pretend that now they're against it.
And you cannot let them rewrite that history.
No, again, so much of what is going on here is the fact that there's a desperation to try and ensure that Joe Biden wins this election.
And one of the ways this is being done is by trying to have left-wing leaders feign opposition to U.S.
support for the war in Israel, even though it's incredibly insincere and it's impotent.
But whatever else is true, if you are somebody who vehemently supports Israel, if support for Israel is a primary priority of yours, I truly believe you owe the Biden administration a lot of gratitude and support and praise.
Because it is hard to imagine, in fact, there's no other country on earth that has done more, has been as steadfast in support of Israel generally and the war in Gaza in particular, Then the Biden White House has been continuously sacrificing U.S.
standing in the world, U.S.
credibility in the world, U.S.
soft power to isolate the United States from the world in defense of Israel.
There is no other government doing that other than the Biden administration.
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Today was the first day of what is expected to be a two-day hearing in London that is Julian Assange's absolute last judicial step to try and convince a British judiciary to offer some degree of independence and defiance against the American attempt to extradite him in order to put him on trial in Northern Virginia Under espionage charges.
Now, we went through the entire history of this case last night.
If you want to review it, you can watch our segment from last night where we took you step-by-step through the events.
There's also a Substack article I wrote in 2021 that we referenced there as well that takes you step-by-step through the entire case.
But suffice to say, every, and I mean literally every, press freedom and civil liberties group in the West that can rarely agree on anything have all united to say The prosecution of Julian Assange under espionage charges would be the gravest threat to press freedom in the West in years.
And today was the first day where Assange's lawyers made their case.
Tomorrow the government will make its case about why extradition is appropriate.
And it is very possible that if Assange loses this hearing, They will act so quickly to put him on a plane to the United States that he won't even have an attempt, an opportunity to try and appeal to the European courts, which is what his next intended step would be.
He's obviously petrified of going to an American prison.
He and his doctors and his family believe with very good reason that he will die in an American prison.
I don't think people realize how harsh American prisons are and how well understood that is in the world for people who are convicted of national security crimes.
Here outside of the courthouse today is his very impressively devoted and very smart lawyer wife Stella Assange talking about his case today.
And now Stella Assange is going to give you her impressions of what happened in the court this morning.
Okay.
I just want to speak a little bit to you because it's only a handful of us inside the room that actually can follow the proceedings.
So I wanted to tell you about what was going on in there.
We opened and we talked about Julian's political opinions.
I should say, by the way, that Julian Assange himself is too ill to appear at this hearing.
At his last hearing in December, he actually broke a rib when he was coughing.
By all accounts, I haven't seen him since 2017, but I know people who have.
I talked to his lawyers.
His doctors have stated publicly that he is in very bad condition, both mentally and physically, so much so that he's incapable of attending his own hearing.
And what happens when you expose state criminality?
and they are clear, and they're unchallenged, which is to expose state criminality.
And what happens when you expose state criminality?
The United States has taken a politically motivated prosecution against a journalist because he exposed them committing crimes.
and And so what's going on inside this courtroom is to determine the extent of the cover-up.
How is this court going to deal with this case?
We heard That the case was only brought after the United States said that it would do anything to prevent the International Criminal Court from examining an investigation into U.S.
activities in Afghanistan.
And of course, WikiLeaks' evidence in the publication that Julian's indicted over are part of that case.
WikiLeaks has been used as evidence in the European Court of Human Rights and other foreign courts to expose state criminality.
And the United States is abusing its legal system in order to hound and prosecute and intimidate all of you.
Point.
Julian Assange is a broken man.
He's of no threat to anybody.
Why are they so desperate to break him completely?
It's the same reason they won't let Edward Snowden come back to the United States, even though Edward Snowden has no access to any kind of classified information.
He can't be a threat to anybody.
It's because they want to set the precedent.
They want to send the message that anyone who challenges them in any way, anyone who exposes their secrets, will be destroyed.
We'll end up like Julian Assange, rotting away and dying in an American prison.
And that's why they'll never let Snowden come home.
They're petrified that these people could be released and be treated like a hero and inspire and encourage more people to do it.
It's an act of terrorism to say if you want to actually do real journalism, If you don't want to be our propagandist and spokesperson like Natasha Bertrand at CNN, or Jeffrey Goldberg who runs The Atlantic, or pretty much the vast majority of people who work in corporate media, if you're not willing to ratify our message and endorse it, if you want to challenge it and expose our secrets, just know that your life is going to be over.
That's what this case is about, above all else.
And the thing that actually sickens me Is that we just spent a week being exposed to all kinds of melodrama and over-the-top indignation about what Russia does to its dissident.
And how that shows how Russia is this evil, repressive country, and right under their noses, these are American journalists doing that and saying that, focused endlessly on Russia, right in front of their noses, under their noses, is the gradual and slow murder of the most pioneering and consequential journalist of our generation, Julian Assange.
Exclusively being punished, as his wife just said, For the crime of exposing criminality on the part of the U.S.
security state, the core job of an investigative political journalist.
It's about criminalizing journalism, yes, for reasons I explained last night, but it's more about creating a climate of fear To signal to any other people who want to stand up to them that they will end up in exile like Edward Snowden or rotting in a prison to death like Julian Assange will.
Here is the comments from Assange's longtime lawyer, Jen Robinson.
I know her personally.
I've had her on my show before.
She's a fantastic, very smart lawyer.
She's been Julian's lawyer for more than a decade in this case.
And here she is talking today about some of the legal issues at play.
And this is courtesy of Free Assange Media, they provided us this interview.
We're joined now by Jen Robinson, a member of Julian Assange's legal team.
Jen, could you give us an overview of what happened today in the courts?
Today we heard the arguments from our side, from Julian's side, from both Ed Fitzgerald Casey and Mark Sappers Casey, outlining our grounds of appeal.
We heard about the first US-UK extradition treaty point, which is that this extradition request is for espionage, which is a political offence, and that's prohibited by the terms of the treaty.
So the very treaty that provides the basis for this extradition request prohibits the kind of request that's being made for Julian.
We say that that's unlawful, under international law, and that it constitutes an abusive process, an abusive discourse process, for the US to knowingly make a request which is prohibited by the terms of the treaty.
She then goes through the other arguments.
We've told you about them before on this show.
The reality though is this.
Look, the attempt to extradite Julian Assange from the UK to the US is so legally baseless.
If you look at the extradition treaty, the way in which the British are prohibited from extraditing anyone for political crimes, for acts that are not crimes in the UK, In the event that a prisoner's physical health would be endangered by the transfer, the UK has previously refused to extradite citizens of the UK on the grounds that American prisons are inhumane and harsh in their treatment of people who are convicted of various crimes.
All of these grounds would be immediate grounds for refusing this extradition request.
But British courts are part of the British government, which is completely subservient to the United States government.
Worse than that, Julian Assange has been depicted since 2016 as a Russian agent, and there is nothing, there is no political force stronger than the hysteria over anything allegedly connected to Russia, especially now.
And so the idea that a British court is going to intervene and defy the United States government, their masters, in order to protect somebody who's widely accused so baselessly I really hope I'm wrong.
I hope these British judges surprise me.
But I don't really think it's about these legal issues, unfortunately.
It's about the political realities of the United States and the UK.
2016, even though that has nothing to do with the indictment, seems very remote to me.
I really hope I'm wrong.
I hope these British judges surprise me.
But I don't really think it's about these legal issues, unfortunately.
It's about the political realities of the United States and the UK.
Okay, now the one bright spot, the one exit from all of this that I can see is that the people of Australia, the country of Assange's birth, the only citizen, the only country of which he's ever been a citizen, Sometimes I see people so stupid, who call Julian Assange a traitor, or say he's guilty of treason, even though he's not an American citizen.
He's a traitor to which country?
As if every human being on the planet, all 8 billion people, including the 95% who are not American citizens, have some primary duty of loyalty to the United States government?
Assange has barely been in the United States.
He visited once for about four days when he gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
So finally, the people of Australia are angry with their government and saying, why aren't you doing more to protect this Australian citizen?
Enough is enough.
And the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, has said publicly and privately, enough is enough.
We want our citizen back.
Now, like the UK, Australia is a subservient ally of the United States, but the United States does need Australia because of this focus on the Pacific, this attempt to check China.
Australia has agreed an alliance with the UK and the US to allow nuclear submarines to be deployed off the coast of Australia as a deterrent against China.
So Australia does have some leverage.
And I actually question whether the Biden administration actually wants to bring Julian Assange onto American soil.
Imagine the circus that would create the constant protests, the media glare, The constant pointing out that Joe Biden will become the first ever president to preside over the prosecution on espionage charges of a publisher of information.
Most of the corporate media that they don't care much about this case has said that they oppose the prosecution on free press grounds because they know it can be used against them.
So they'll have little support as well.
I don't think this is something they want.
Problem is, how do you get out of it?
One way is to just let them appeal to the European courts and have a drag on for another few months or year, which may happen.
But another way is to say, look, Julian Assange is broken.
He's harmless.
He's physically and psychologically crippled.
And we're going to release him to the Australian government who promises to keep a close eye on him and make sure he doesn't cause any more problems.
Just on a personal level, I want Julian Assange out of prison.
This is a personal, on a personal level, it's just a sickening atrocity and disgrace.
But politically, to sit here and watch American journalists, American government officials, American political media elites spend a week Weeping and crying and expressing all kinds of outrage over how Russia treats its dissidents, while our own government, the people that these journalists are supposed to check and report on, are slowly murdering Julian Assange is one of the most sickening things I've ever seen.
But the reason why Assange is such an important person journalistically, the reason why he's It's precisely because our corporate media is so defanged, they're so harmless, they're so obedient.
That's the point.
Precisely the things that make them so repulsive is what makes Julian Assange so threatening and so important.
And that's why there are few things more important from a civil liberties perspective than ensuring that Julian Assange cannot be brought to the United States and stand trial on espionage charges and die in an American prison, which absolutely is the goal of the United States government.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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