Biden Again Isolates The U.S. To Protect Israel; Will The Trump Admin Be Any Different On Israel? U.S. To Send Ukraine Civilian-Killing Landmines
The U.S. once again votes against U.N. demands for a cease-fire in Gaza. The Biden administration has consistently proven its loyalty to Israel; will the next Trump administration be any different? Plus: the U.S. authorizes sending civilian-killing land mines to Ukraine.
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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.
Today I'm not really sure where I am.
I know that yesterday I was in Florida somewhere where I recorded a two-hour...
interview and conversation with Tucker Carlson that he and his team have now posted on YouTube, on his X account, and various other places.
It was a really wide-ranging conversation about many different issues that I highly recommend.
I really like that format of being able to sit down with somebody with whom you have a lot in common but not everything and be able to just explore issues for two hours at a time.
And who cares if I'm disoriented about where I am?
I need to stop whining about that.
We have a show to do.
The work and the matter at hand is what matters.
I don't need to know where I am in order to do that.
So what is this matter at hand?
Well, first of all, for the fourth time in the last year, the Biden administration isolated the United States from the rest of the world by using its veto power to reject a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The vote at the UN Security Council was 14 to 1.
U.S. allies such as Britain and France, both permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, all voted yes.
Only the United States alone rejected the resolution.
It's not the first time they've done so.
All of this comes as undeniable evidence of massive atrocities in Gaza at the hands of Israel continue to mount.
While many believed, or at least argued, that Joe Biden was only supporting and arming and financing and protecting Israel due to pre-election political concerns, the fact that the Biden administration is still, with the election well over, going to such extreme lengths to protect Israel and its wars, even at the expense of our own standing in the world and our own interests in the world, shows how embedded this pro-Israel fanaticism, really more like a religion, is in both political parties.
And then we will examine what is happening with this U.N. resolution and explore whether there is any reasonable chance that the Trump administration will be different or better on this question.
Then, Joe Biden, or whoever is acting in his name, seems genuinely determined to provoke a serious escalation in the Russia-NATO war in Ukraine while a lame duck on his way out of office.
Biden...
And when I say Biden, it's with scare quotes because we don't know who actually is acting in his name, is doing everything possible to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to retaliate and escalate.
As we reported at length last week, that includes even authorizing the use of attackums to strike deep inside Russia.
Even though the Ukrainians cannot operate those missiles on their own, that means that they require the active participation of either the U.S. and or NATO militaries to use them.
Meaning that the militaries of NATO countries, including the US, are now active belligerents in the war.
And not just in the war in Ukraine, but are actively bombing Russia, the country with the world's largest nuclear stockpile.
Today, Joe Biden reversed himself on another red line, sending civilian killing landmines to Ukraine out of desperation that the Russians continue to advance rather rapidly westward toward Kiev so that peppering that country with mines that explode upon contact is somehow wise. sending civilian killing landmines to Ukraine out of desperation that That's what Biden announced today they were going to do.
These kinds of landmines have an extremely ugly and disastrous history.
They're an act of desperation.
Everywhere they were used, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Laos, Nicaragua, they continue to kill people, usually kids, for many years to come after the war.
Since they remain dangerous and undetonated unless and until someone walks into one or touches it, which happens frequently, especially with kids who play in open fields, who find that and don't know what it is.
There have been many, many deaths that way for years, even generations, after these mines are used.
Whatever else is true, watching the 81-year-old Joe Biden deliberately escalate a war as a lame duck president, a war, remember that Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end, is one of the most reckless and dangerous abuses of power we have seen in some time.
That's true of Biden's escalatory posture in general, but specifically the use of landmines.
Crosses all sorts of moral and ethical lines.
We will evaluate all of those.
Before we get to that, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Over the past several weeks, the members of the UN Security Council, both the permanent members who have veto power, which is the United States, Great Britain, France, China, and Russia, have been arduously Great Britain, France, China, and Russia, have been arduously negotiating with the other 10 members, with the General Assembly at large, a resolution that would finally bring to an end the horrific war that Israel has been waging in Gaza.
And essentially, the entire world got behind a resolution and the content of it, which most of the world, if not all of the world supports.
And yet, earlier today, and this is the fourth time this has happened in the last year, the United States separated itself from the world to stand alone and the UN Security Council and use its veto power to prevent approval of the resolution that obviously, the United States does not want Israel to end this war, even though the United States is paying for it, arming it, and doing everything possible to continue it.
And it wasn't just that the U.S. used its veto power, it was that the U.S. stood alone as the only country in opposition to it.
Here's the video of what happened earlier today at the UN.
Will those in favor of the draft resolution contained in document S slash 2024 835 please raise their hand.
Those against?
Yes.
There you see the U.N. representative.
Usually it's the U.N. ambassador, but that is her deputy, and he alone raised his hand.
You see the British representative who is presiding over the U.N. Security Council.
She herself raised her hand and favored the resolution, one of the U.S.'s closest allies, a major ally of Israel as well, the U.K., Also, France, every other member of this body except the United States that just raised its hand and voted no, standing alone to do so for the fourth time in the last year.
The result of the voting is as follows.
14 votes in favor, one vote against, zero abstentions.
The draft resolution has not been adopted owing to the negative vote of a permanent member of the council.
No, you can say if you want, well, who cares?
The United States should just follow its policy preferences and do what it wants, and who cares what the rest of the world thinks?
But so many vital U.S. interests depend upon the U.S. being part of the international community of having allies that respect it, which believe that it's acting morally in the world.
And the more the U.S. isolates itself in order to protect wars like the one in Ukraine or the one in Gaza, the more China's argument that the world is better off with China rather than a world led by the United States as a rogue nation using military force around the world to promote its own interests becomes the more China's argument that the world is better off with China And that's why so many countries have been migrating away from U.S. and Western influence toward the influence of the Chinese.
The U.S. has a long history of doing exactly this.
Here from Middle East Eye earlier today regarding the history, the 49 times the U.S. used veto power against U.N. resolutions on Israel.
Quote, The first, Resolution S-10784, expressed deep concern, quote, at the deteriorating situation in the Middle East and was aimed at Israeli aggression on the Lebanese border.
In 1975, the year civil war broke out in Lebanon, Resolution S-11898 called, unquote, Israel to desist forthwith from all military attacks against Lebanon.
Again, the U.S. was the only veto.
The U.S. vetoed similar resolutions in 1985, 1986, and 1988. Resolutions condemning Israeli settlements, Considered illegal under international law were blocked only by the U.S. Only by the U.S. in 1983, 1997 and 2011. In 2004 and 2006, the U.S. refused to call on Israel to halt wars against Gaza, which together killed hundreds of civilians.
In June 2018, the U.S. vetoed a Kuwait-drafted measure that condemned Israel's use of force against Palestinian civilians.
Israeli forces had killed dozens of peaceful protesters in Gaza during the March of Return protests.
Since the beginning of the war, the U.S. has blocked a resolution aimed at recognizing Palestine as a full member of the United Nations.
And the question that I would submit to you is why does the U.S. government continue to throw away its own moral standing in the world, a vital form of soft power for our government, and to allow China to intensify its argument with much greater efficiency and persuasiveness that the U.S. is a bad actor in the world, a rogue country that just does what it wants on its own and uses its military force to throw around and do so?
Why is this one foreign country so worth giving up so much for?
Four billion dollars every year right out the door, paying for all their wars, paying for their military, giving them everything they want, protecting them in every way, vowing publicly with loyalty oaths to always do anything that Israel demands, members of both political parties.
Why?
Why does this continue to happen?
If you really want the answer, you can read the great book in 2006 called The Israel Abbey by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, really asking a rhetorical question.
We've covered this many times before.
One of the...
Key anchors of the Israel lobby, AIPAC, celebrated this veto today and gave the U.S. government, the Biden administration, a pat on the head for their compliant behavior.
Here's AIPAC tweeting, Just as a context, the key context for why this is going on now, There have been all sorts of reports, increasingly documented reports, And not just from whatever agencies people have been trained to regard as steadfastly anti-Israel or anti-Semitic or whatever.
Basically, any media outlet, any aid organization that has ever contradicted the Israeli government or criticized in any way immediately gets branded anti-Semitic, signaling to people that they're supposed to ignore it, and explain away everything they conclude, everything they observe, everything they document as a byproduct of hatred for Jews.
But there are all sorts of aid organizations, including Oxfam, that deals with world hunger, led by Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain, who was a stalwart supporter of Israel his whole life, that have been warning that famine is killing people in Gaza.
Famine, mass famine, deliberately imposed as a result of a blockade of humanitarian aid.
Here's the BBC today, just as one example.
Their headline, Virtually no aid has reached the seas, North Gaza, in 40 days, the UN says.
As you may recall, the Biden administration, right before the election, two weeks or so, issued a letter to Israel saying, you're blocking humanitarian aid and food from getting into northern Gaza.
We don't find that acceptable.
If you don't make strides and progress toward reversing that, we will consider seriously cutting off arms shipments to you within 30 days so the date fell conveniently after the election.
And the Israelis made very clear they weren't going to do any of that.
They laughed at the U.S. every time the U.S. issues these red lines or demands.
In fact, Israel went backwards.
They imposed more stringent blockades.
They prevented even more food from entering northern Gaza.
There's a humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza of a kind that's difficult to explain.
We need the whole show and more to do it.
And then, of course, when it came time at the end of 30 days for the U.S. government, the State Department, under Joe Biden, to say whether they were going to cut off aid as they threatened to do, given that there's no progress, the State Department fabricated progress that Israel supposedly made that no one in the world believes they actually made, even while speaking the State Department fabricated progress that Israel supposedly made that no one in the world believes they actually made, even while speaking out of the other side
One of the dynamics that has arisen here is that the government of Israel and the people of Israel, Israeli citizens, not all but large majorities, believe that it's the role of the U.S. government to serve Israel.
There was and is a big banner hung in the city of Jerusalem.
That was on the front page of the Israeli daily newspaper, Heretz, which read as follows.
Here you see the banner.
It says, Congratulations, Trump.
Congratulations.
Trump, make Israel great.
And there you see a picture of Donald Trump with a merged American and Israeli flag.
So a lot of members of Congress wear this pin with the dual flags of the United States and Israel.
Some use the United States and Ukraine.
There are key administration officials like Amos Hochstein, who's in Lebanon, who's basically running U.S. policy in the Middle East toward Israel, who is a former member of the IDF, the Israeli military.
I personally think someone who serves in the military of a foreign country should be barred from having key foreign policy roles in the United States.
And then major members of the media, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, worked as a prison guard in a Palestinian detention facility on behalf of the IDF. The journalist for Axios, who has been declared to be the best journalist over the last year because of the subservient reporting he's done on Israel, is himself a...
I'm a citizen of Israel, born in Israel, and he too was in the IDF until last year.
He was a member of the reserves of the IDF until last year.
And you see these people up and down the government, up and down the media, who worked for AIPAC, who were in the IDF.
But then on top of that, you have a certain sector of evangelical Christians led by people like Mike Huckabee, who's now been appointed by Trump to be the US ambassador to Israel, who believe that Israel has to be strong and united, not for the national security interests of the United States, but for religious dogmas, not for the national security interests of the United States, Religious dogma.
They believe that the Bible requires Israel to be fully united, to have everything from the river to the sea.
To borrow a phrase from Likud's platform that Benjamin Netanyahu and his son have used many times to describe what their aim is, namely that Israel should rule everything from the river to the sea.
And a lot of people like Mike Huckabee support that because they believe that that's the prerequisite for the Messiah returning to earth.
Here today was John Thune, the senator from South Dakota, who has just been elected the Senate Majority Leader, the Senate Republican.
And he held a little press conference today where he was setting out the priorities of the new Republican Majority Senate.
And here's how he laid out his priorities.
Well, it's been over 13 months now since Hamas terrorists waged war against Israel.
And for the past year plus, Democrats have struggled to support our ally Israel and has literally fractured the Democrat Party.
He said Democrats have struggled to support Israel.
The Biden administration has sent tens of billions of dollars on top of the $4 billion the United States sends every year to Israel to pay for the war.
The United States ships every weapon, every bomb, every missile that the Israelis demand.
As we just showed you, the United States continuously sacrifices its own self-interest and its own standing in the world to protect Israel, even if it means isolating itself from the rest of the world.
There's nothing more that the US government could conceivably do for Israel except officially transfer control of the US Treasury and the Pentagon directly to Benjamin Netanyahu.
Effectively, that's been done, but I mean officially, to make it official.
This idea...
That Senate Republicans have, that a lot of conservative pendants have, that Joe Biden has been dragging his feet on supporting Israel, that he hasn't been sufficiently supportive of Israel, is an absolute fabrication.
It shows how extremist Washington is when it comes to supporting Israel.
The American president has paid for Israel's wars, has armed Israel's wars, has protected Israel, has refused to put any limits on what they can do.
And somehow the position of the Republican Party is Joe Biden didn't do enough.
The Democrats have struggled to support Israel.
What more could they have done?
What more do you want them to do?
We're going to talk about whether Donald Trump would be any different.
The question is, how could he be worse?
People say, oh, Trump is going to allow the Israelis to do whatever they want.
He said that that is going to be his policy.
And a lot of his key appointees have also said that.
But there are no limits on what the Israelis do when it comes to the United States.
So here's the rest of John Thune.
For example, we are expecting tomorrow Senator Sanders to offer a resolution denying lethal aid to Israel.
The refusal to have our allies back And the hesitation to call out anti-Semitism in our own country has consequences.
It enables bad behavior and bad actors around the world, and it encourages others to abandon Israel in their time of need.
Now, you have the International Criminal Court, or the ICC, and its prosecutor pursuing warrants against Israeli officials.
That is outrageous, and it is unlawful.
The ICC rogue actions are a threat to our ally Israel, and left unchecked, it could pose a threat to America in the future.
I am calling on Leader Schumer to bring a bill to the floor sanctioning the ICC, which the House has already passed.
On a bipartisan basis.
And if he refuses to act, our Senate Republican majority next year will.
We will stand with Israel and make this and other supportive legislation a top priority in the next Congress.
So huge numbers of working class voters, non-white working class voters, just went to the polls to elect Donald Trump based on their anger that the U.S. government wasn't doing enough to improve their lives materially.
One of the main complaints was we can't afford groceries and food, but we're sending tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars over to Ukraine and Israel to finance them while there's no money at home to improve our neighborhoods, our infrastructure, our schools, our communities to bring down inflation.
And in response to that, less than two weeks after the election, the new Senate majority leader of the Republican majority stands up and says, legislation to further support Israel is going to become a, quote, top priority.
A top priority.
Not the lives of American citizens.
Not addressing all the grievances that the American voting population expressed in their election and their polling data and their exit polls and their focus groups.
No, none of that is the top priority.
The top priority is somehow finding a way to do even more for Israel.
When Mike Johnson got elected to become the Speaker of the House back in October of last year, the first thing he did was a traditional ascension up to the podium where the Speaker presides over the House and gives a speech laying out what the priorities of his speakership will be.
And here's how Mike Johnson defined his top priority now that he was Speaker.
Extraordinary crisis right now.
And the world needs us to be strong.
They need us to remember our creed and our admonition.
Turmoil and violence have rocked the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
We all know it.
Intentions continue to build in the Indo-Pacific.
The country demands strong leadership of this body, and we must not waver.
Our nation's greatest ally in the Middle East is under attack.
The first bill that I'm going to bring to this floor and- What is the first bill you're going to bring to the floor, Mike Johnson, now that you're the speaker?
Is it a bill to bring down prices?
Is it a bill to address the fentanyl situation?
Is it a bill to deal with the crisis at the border?
Is it to make Americans have better jobs?
Is it to rejuvenate their communities?
To improve the healthcare system and access to healthcare?
All the things that Americans have been complaining about for many years.
Is that your top priority?
That sounds exciting.
You're now the new speaker.
You're saying what your top priority is.
Not one of your top priorities.
Your top priority.
Can't wait to hear it.
What is it?
The first bill that I'm going to bring to this floor in just a little while will be in support of our dear friend Israel, and we're overdue in getting that done.
Both parties applaud like trained monkeys because they've seen what happens to people who don't.
AIPAC spends $15 million on a congressional primary, just floods the district with amazing amounts of money and removes them from Congress the minute they deviate from any of this.
Just think about this.
Mike Johnson last year, John Thune this year, said their top priority is legislation to do even more for Israel than the United States already does.
I don't even know what that could be.
One of the reasons why people in Jerusalem and throughout Israel believe that Donald Trump is there to make Israel great is because Donald Trump gave a speech in September at a Republican Jewish conference event that was overseen and attended by Miriam Middelson, who gave Trump $100 million in this campaign.
Trump said that was exclusively for Israel.
Miriam Middelson cares about only one issue.
That issue is Israel.
He said that nobody was a more frequent visitor to the White House in the first term than her now deceased husband Sheldon and Miriam, and that every time they would come, he would give more to Israel, and they would come back a week later and ask for more.
And he'd be like, give me a week.
Give me two weeks.
I just did everything for Israel.
I'll do it more for them.
And here's one of the things that Trump proclaimed he intended to do in the second administration, the second term, if he were to win.
We're going to take back our country, and we're going to make Israel great again, and we're going to make America great again.
We're going to make them both great again, greater than ever before.
Is that the proper role of the United States president?
To make Israel great again?
You might look at that banner and say, that's some bizarre entitlement that people in Israel believe that that's the priority of the US government.
They probably heard Trump saying that.
We're going to make Israel great again.
Can't imagine Trump saying that about any other foreign country except that one.
Now, there's some diversity in Trump's cabinet.
I talked a lot about this with Tucker on that interview that I mentioned that I hope you'll watch.
Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr., Pete Hexth to an extent.
But one thing they all have in common, every last one of them, it's like the admission price to the door, is they all have proclaimed the same sort of loyalty and devotion to Israel.
So when people ask, is there any possibility that Trump will be better, I say, first of all, he can't be worse.
There's no way to be worse.
The United States gave Israel everything he wanted in exchange for nothing.
And the only issue is Trump's unpredictability.
He has had some personal tension with Netanyahu.
He has said he wants this war over.
I think he prides himself on resolving wars and conflicts through deals.
It's something that he likes to do.
And so, certainly Kamala Harris never gave any sign at all that she was going to abandon Joe Biden's blind loyalty to Israel.
And while there's good reason to believe that Trump won't, it's just the unpredictability of Trump that at least provides some chance.
I certainly wouldn't bet on it.
I'm not hoping for it, but I would be happy if I saw it.
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Last Thursday night's show, we discussed in depth the fact that Joe Biden, or whoever's acting in his name,
seems genuinely determined, committed to forcing an escalation seems genuinely determined, committed to forcing an escalation of the war in Ukraine, forcing Vladimir Putin to respond in a way that he has not been willing to respond before because the United States is doing everything possible to force Putin's hand.
One of the things I discussed on that...
That Tucker Carlson show that, as I said, we recorded yesterday in Florida, now I'm here, but is all now posted, was the fact that there's always this propagandistic framework with any American enemy, that there are always these totalitarian rulers that know everything, that decide everything.
Nobody can challenge them.
We're always hearing that about anyone that we're supposed to hate.
But there's a lot of political factions in Moscow.
It's a sophisticated, complex place.
And most of Putin's Pressure, most of the dissent comes from his, let's call it the right, the nationalistic right, that believes that he hasn't been harsh enough in dealing with the Ukrainians and with NATO. And now Biden has authorized, and it's already begun, attack of his missiles that require the involvement of the United States and NATO to launch, launching and landing in Russia.
We are bombing Russia, essentially.
And Vladimir Putin said ahead of time that if the Biden administration were to do that, he would regard that as the United States and NATO entering the war as direct belligerents and would treat them accordingly.
That's why the Biden administration said they wouldn't do it and didn't do it for three years and now on the way out have decided to do that.
And we delved into depth on Thursday night's show, also that conversation now with Tucker, why this is so reckless and such an abuse of power.
Earlier today, the Biden administration announced another step that it had never been willing to take in Ukraine, despite pressure, that now on Biden's way out is what's supposed to be a lame duck.
What he's going to do, leaving Trump, I believe is the intention, with a war that escalates and becomes much more difficult to resolve.
A promise that Trump campaigned on and won on, ending the war in Ukraine.
They're making it almost more difficult, if not impossible, for him to do so.
Here from CNN, Biden administration approved sending anti-personnel mines to Ukraine in another major policy shift.
Quote, the decision comes just days after the U.S. gave Ukraine permission to fire long-range U.S. missiles at targets in Russia, a shift that only occurred after months of lobbying from Kiev.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters on Wednesday that the decision was motivated by Russia's changing tactics on the front lines.
Quote, because the Russians have been so unsuccessful in the way that they have been fighting, they've kind of changed their tactics a bit, Austin told reporters.
They don't lead with their mechanized forces anymore.
They lead with dismounted forces who are able to close and do things to kind of pave the way for mechanized forces, he explained.
Austin said Ukraine's military needs, quote, things that can help slow down that effort.
Now, first of all, the idea that the Russian tactics have been unsuccessful It's the kind of dishonest war propaganda that you should expect comes out of the mouths of senior national security officials whenever they talk about words they want.
The Russians have been extremely successful.
You can just look at the front lines and compare them over the last couple of months and you will see it moving steadily westward toward Kiev.
Ukrainian front lines have collapsed.
No one in Europe or Ukraine believe any longer that a Ukrainian victory is possible.
And the U.S. government doesn't believe this as well.
What he's really saying there is that the Russians had been using tanks primarily and other mechanized equipment to march through the front lines, but now they're using personnel, just soldiers on foot.
And as a result, he said, these deadly personnel, anti-personnel mines, where you just sprinkle mines all over the place in Ukraine, In the hope that some Russian soldier will just walk into one and be exploded, is now the tactic that they're sending there.
One of the many problems with this, aside from the fact that it's another US escalation, a major policy shift on the way out, when Biden's supposed to be a lame duck, when Trump's coming in, in exactly two months.
Is that these weapons are uniquely horrifying and dangerous because the ones that aren't detonated remain there.
It's extremely difficult to clear them.
And they stay there for as long as someone runs into them.
Long after the war is over, some Ukrainian kids are playing, Ukrainian teenagers are walking around.
They see it.
They don't know what it is.
They pick it up in their lives.
And that has happened continuously over decades.
Here from the New York Times, quote, what are anti-personnel mines?
Quote, for centuries, militaries around the world have relied on landmines as a lethal and cost-effective way to defend territory.
Once in place, many of them can stay armed and deadly indefinitely.
For that reason, human rights groups say they pose a grave and indiscriminate threat to civilians.
For years or decades after a conflict has ended, anti-personnel mines are small explosive weapons designed to detonate when a person steps on them or comes close to them, according to Mine Action Review, a nonprofit that monitors the use of these weapons.
Mines have been used since the American Civil War.
They were used heavily during World War II, and American forces routinely employed them during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
According to government records, the U.S. military last used anti-personnel mines widely during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
In 2022, landmines killed 1,661 people and injured just over 3,000, according to the international campaign to ban landmines.
Civilians made up 85% of those casualties, half of whom are children.
Syria had the highest number of injuries and deaths followed by Ukraine, Yemen and Myanmar.
Other land mines are commonly known as quote, persistent mines, meaning they can stay armed and lethal for many years.
They use mechanical fuses that enable the mine to explode as long as its internal mechanism stays intact.
In the 1970s, the U.S. military developed a newer type of anti-personal mind, which it calls non-persistent, which incorporates electronics that allow the device to self-destruct after a pre-set amount of time.
However, those safety mechanisms sometimes fail.
Now, just to give you a sense for the risks and the dangers that we're trifling with here, the U.S. is now...
Not just giving weapons to Ukraine with the expressed intent to have them shoot missiles deep inside Russia, kill people on Russian territory.
Imagine if China, Iran or Russia gave weapons to Cuba or Mexico or Venezuela and said these are being given to you with the expressed intent that you use these missiles to bomb targets inside the United States and kill people.
The US would obviously consider that a grievous act of war, not just by the countries that are shooting the missiles, but the countries that are furnishing them with that intent.
What the US is doing is so much worse.
They're not just providing the weapons to Ukraine, they're actively participating in their usage because the Ukrainians are incapable of guiding those weapons on their own.
And as a result, everyone understands and expects that even if he doesn't want to, Putin is basically forced to retaliate because people in his country won't stand for non-retaliation given that the United States is bombing their country.
And here's a little bit of their environment that has been created from the New York Times today.
U.S. pauses operations at their Kiev embassy, warning of, quote, a significant air attack.
The United States Embassy in Kiev issued an urgent warning on Wednesday morning that Russia might launch, quote, a significant air attack.
Closing the embassy and telling employees to shelter in place, the warning came one day after Ukraine's military used American-made ballistic missiles to strike into Russian territory for the first time after receiving long-sought authorization from President Biden to do so.
The Kremlin had long warned that such strikes would be treated as an escalation, and on Tuesday vowed to respond, quote, we will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said at a news conference on Tuesday, quote, and we will react accordingly.
Basically, right now, in order to avoid a catastrophic outcome, ironically, the West is relying upon What they have long recognized is the rational self-interest and restraint of Vladimir Putin.
The cautious party in this conflict has not been the West.
It's been Putin.
Putin has been extremely restrained in allowing all kinds of active Western involvement, NATO involvement in the war against this country.
And a lot of leaders, including American leaders, would have demanded that their government take much more aggressive action to retaliate against that.
And Putin hasn't.
But there's only so long that he can resist his own political pressures on Moscow.
And what I find so extraordinary about all of this is that it genuinely seems as though DC elites, foreign policy elites, have convinced themselves, I don't know why, that the risk of nuclear war is zero, that it's a joke, it's laughable, it's not even something we need to concern that it's a joke, it's laughable, it's not even something we need Thank you.
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were constantly involved in all sorts of proxy conflicts.
It was the top priority of the United States and Russia to avoid ever having direct military conflict between the United States and Russia, Soviet Union.
Precisely because they knew how dangerous that could be.
Not just because there might be a psychotic leader who wants to end the world, just through misperception, miscommunication, paranoia, leaders getting very afraid of what is happening to their country.
Everyone understood that the risk of nuclear war was so high and that's why the United States and the Russians constantly spoke to one another.
Cooperated, coordinated, made sure that they weren't ever getting into a situation where there was a nuclear exchange possible, and all despite that.
And at the same time, culturally and socially, the danger of nuclear war was very central to American political and cultural life.
Young American students were trained continuously how to hide in bunkers, how to listen for warnings and sirens in the event of a nuclear exchange.
It was on the minds of everybody.
Especially because in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, we were only a couple decades away from the actual use of nuclear weapons by the United States and Japan.
And as Trump himself has often warned, these weapons have gotten far, far, far more destructive with each passing decade.
And you can hear the fear in his voice when he talks about them.
He obviously was briefed on them, he obviously understands what their impact is, and he has a very healthy fear of nuclear weapons, and yet no one else in Washington really seems to.
From the start of the war in Ukraine, we had actual articles published in mainstream swampy foreign policy rags like The Atlantic saying, don't worry, even if there's a tactical nuclear war, it'll be fine.
It won't be that destructive.
Here is a person who is the director of the John McCain Institute.
Obviously, John McCain was...
One of the most reckless warmongers the United States has ever had and obviously the institute formed in his name professes a foreign policy in line with his ideology and that is basically let's go to war with everybody and not worry about it.
Her name is Evelyn Farkas.
I believe she ran for Congress as a Democrat and lost and now she has this position.
Here she is on CNN essentially saying why you should just laugh Anytime you find yourself concerned about the risk of escalation to nuclear weapons.
Here's what she said.
Any time the Russian president threatens use of nuclear weapons, it means he's scared.
Because that is like his fallback when he's very nervous.
Just like, oh, the more the Russians threaten the use of nuclear weapons, the more secure you should be.
Because it's just a sign of how nervous Putin is.
I personally don't think it's a good thing to make the leadership of the country with the largest and deadliest nuclear stockpile on the planet nervous.
That seems like a bad objective to have.
And it's even more foolish to be so cavalier about the possibility of nuclear exchanges when the Russians are feeling besieged.
And now you have NATO Guiding missiles into their country to explode and kill their soldiers and citizens?
What are we relying on in terms of Putin?
We're constantly told he's like this psychotic Hitler figure.
And yet the entire policy is predicated on a belief that he's incredibly rational and restrained and won't do foolish things no matter how foolish the United States and NATO behave.
Note that propagandistic contrast.
Landmines themselves are just awful weapons.
They're acts of desperation.
Just to give you a sense, hear from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor.
Earlier today, the Landmine Monitor of 2024...
Launched on Wednesday, this is the 26th Annual Landmine Monitor Report.
This is what it says, quote, At least 5,757 casualties of landmines and explosive remnants of war, ERW, were recorded 1,983 killed and 3,600 injured for 2023. Civilians made up 84%, 4,300 of all recorded casualties where the military or civilian status was known.
Children accounted for 37% of civilian casualties, 1,498, where the age group was recorded.
In 2023, anti-personnel mines caused 833 casualties, the highest annual number recorded since 2011, and the number of casualties from anti-vehicle mines, 291, almost tripled since 2022 in correlation with increased casualties from this type of mine in Ukraine.
And here is an image that this organization published.
Which is that in 1997, there was an effort by the international community to sign a convention and treaty that bans the use of landlines precisely because of how many civilians it will end up killing for years and decades into the future.
The pretext of this war was that we were there to go and protect Ukraine and Ukrainians and now we're going to, on top of all the other destruction that they've endured, That could have been averted had there been a diplomatic resolution that Keir Starmer and Victoria Nuland didn't block.
We're now going to spread these landmines all throughout Ukraine and let Ukrainian kids die for years to come in the future, once long after the war is over.
And the orange spaces on this map, which include Canada and Mexico, all of Latin, South and Central America, All of Western Europe, most of Africa, Australia.
The real holdouts are Asia, China, and Russia, and India, and of course the United States.
The United States is like, we're not signing on to a treaty to avoid these weapons.
And then here's another chart that...
You can see that these countries, the darker purple they are, the more international aid they had to get in order to try and clear mines from their country in order to avoid these kinds of civilian deaths.
It's extremely expensive to try and clear these mines.
It's often unsuccessful.
Here from CNN in 2016 is a recollection of what happened in Laos when the United States in the 1960s, early 1970s secretly bombed the Nixon administration Laos and used a lot of landmines and just ironically Lloyd Austin when he announced that announcement that I just referred to a couple minutes ago was in Laos when he talked about the necessity and value of landmines Even
though the United States devastated Laos with landmines for decades.
Here's CNN in September of 2016. Quote, my friends were afraid of me.
What 80 million unexploded U.S. bombs did to Laos?
Quote, for two years after the accident, Ye Yang refused to leave his home.
Quote, I couldn't farm.
I couldn't go to see friends as they might be afraid of me, Yang tells CNN. I didn't want to live.
Quote, Yang was just 22 and burning rubbish near his village in northeastern Laos when a bomb blast tore off one of his eyelids.
His top lip and an ear mutilated one of his arms and left him with severe scarring from the waist up.
His wounds were not caused by a modern-day conflict but by the remnants of a war that was waged more than 40 years ago and is still destroying lives in this small southeast Asian nation.
Some 80 million unexploded bombs, 80 million unexploded bombs are scattered across the country.
The deadly legacy of what became known as America's, quote, secret war in Laos, a CIA-led mission during the Vietnam War.
Quote, we were all but forgotten here, says the Laos-born founder of Legacies of War, with a quarter of villages in Laos, a quarter of them, contaminated with UFOs and makes vast swaths of the Laos countryside unformable.
Unfarmable.
They cannot use the land because of all these mines that are just lurking.
That's going to be what's going to happen in Ukraine.
It goes on.
Farmers are also among the worst affected as the poorest are forced to toil the mine-laden fields to feed their families.
Could 80% of people rely on their land to grow food in Laos so they still use their land even at the risk of their own lives?
These are the weapons that on the way out Joe Biden has decided after three years of not sending them that he's now going to send.
Or, obviously, Lloyd Austin has made that decision.
Here from the Irish Times in April of 2017 is an article that documents and describes all of the ongoing horrors and killing of civilians throughout Southeast Asia as a result of the United States deployment of these landmines.
And now we're going to bring that to Ukraine, the country we're supposed to be protecting.
And it's going to kill Ukrainians for a year to come, the people that we're supposed to be defending.
Just out of desperation to try and make it harder for Trump to resolve this war.
Oh, actually, we have a video here that is a video report from the Irish Times about the devastation caused by these landmines.
It says an estimated 80 million unexploded bombs were made in Laos dropped by the United States during the Vietnam War.
Here you see an amputee.
Decades later, men, women, and children are still being maimed and killed every year by unexploded ordnance, scattered across farms, villages, and even school playgrounds.
The Cope Center in Laos' capital is a rehab center for survivors where prosthetic limbs are made.
There you see the prosthetic limbs being made.
This is from 50 years ago.
Companies that clear UXO are one of the largest employers in the country.
There you see a person learning to go his way through life without the use of his left arm to learn how to drink with a prosthetic limb.
And there have been many other countries where the United States has done that.
In fact, the United States in the 1980s fought this dirty war against Nicaragua, where it tried to overthrow the government of Nicaragua by arming and funding the Contras of Nicaragua, who were basically terrorist groups and death cults.
And one of the things the United States did was mine their harbors with mines.
And well after the war was over, Sailors and commercial shippers would constantly die by running into these landmines and the Nicaraguan government sued the United States in the International Court of Justice and the court ruled in favor of Nicaragua and said the United States owes Nicaragua some large amount, billions of dollars.
The United States has said, we don't recognize the validity of this judgment.
We're not bound by it.
We're not going to pay.
We don't recognize the judgment.
The United States goes around saying how we have to have a rules-based international order.
These minds are terrorism.
They last for a long time.
I just want to give you a sense for how people see the West.
David Lammy is the foreign minister of Great Britain.
He was one of the people in the Labour Party who was put into this position.
And he's black.
He's from a family that immigrated to the UK from Africa.
But he's a British-born citizen, lived in Britain his whole life.
And he's now the foreign minister.
And he constantly uses identity politics in foreign affairs, saying Russia is racist.
Russia is unleashing all sorts of violence against black people in Africa.
As a black person, he's very offended.
This is the same UK that has been arming Israel relentlessly to blow up schools and villages and hospitals and mosques and nursery schools and civilian tents in Gaza for the last year.
And here he is trying to shame Russia for what he says is their shameful, amoral behavior.
Just as you listen to him saying this, just think about the fact that he is part of a government That has directly participated in the ongoing destruction of Gaza.
Say to the Russian representative on his phone as I speak, that I stand here also as a black man whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved.
Imperialism.
I know it when I see it.
Can you imagine being a Russian official at the UN and being lectured to about imperialism and slavery of Africans by the representative of the United Kingdom?
Which has obviously been a huge empire, the embodiment of imperialism for centuries, and now continues to despite their Minuscule size try to participate by being a servant of the United States and imperial policies And he's like as a black man that African officials don't speak this way this kind of Western identity politics But somehow he's invoking slavery which is done by his country by United States in order to shame the
Russians Here's the rest of this and I will call it out for what it is in this week When I'm here talking to other partners around the world about our shared futures and the future of the UN, Russia is trying to return us to a world of the past.
A world of imperialism.
A world of redrawing borders by force.
A world without the UN Charter.
We cannot allow this to happen.
Ukraine's fight matters to all of us.
The UK will remain.
I mean, you can just look at a modern day map and there are so many places where the borders are redrawn under a barrel by a gun by the British government.
Recent ones, including where the United States and NATO just decided that Kosovo is now no longer part of Serbia.
Which Putin warned was a terrible precedent because a lot of other countries in Europe are sort of taped together by people who have all sorts of different allegiances, like Ukraine, for example, where all of eastern Ukraine feels more Russian, Crimea feels more Russian and not have allegiance to Kyiv.
Certain provinces in Georgia that were the breakaway provinces in Georgia that also identify as Russian and want to be part of Russia and under the governance of Moscow instead of Georgia's capital.
Just the hypocrisy of hearing the British foreign minister go there and give out these lectures, despite everything NATO is doing in Ukraine, in Gaza, all throughout the world.
Just shows you the kind of propagandistic pageantry that these Western countries rely on.
But increasingly, there's another place for them to go.
They're no longer captive to the West.
With a unipolar world led by the United States, they have a at least multipolar world with China, with Russia, with Iran.
And the success of that other faction is driven by the fact that people are sick of Western hypocrisy, of Western lectures, of That they never buy by themselves.
And that's how most of the world sees what the West is doing in Gaza.
It's how most of the world sees what the U.S. and U.K. are doing in Ukraine to Russia as well.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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