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July 8, 2021 - Jimmy Dore Show
01:05:50
20210708_TJDS_20210708_podcast
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Hey, renowned linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky is on the line.
Hello.
Hi, Jimmy.
Thank you for having me on your show again.
Noam, the world is facing catastrophic threats, the likes of which have never been experienced before at the age of 92.
What keeps you learning, teaching, and motivated during this great upheaval?
Just smoking out of a beautiful pipe, the best half.
Nothing added to it, just ice and water.
Some people like to use butane and all sorts of bullshit to extract the best sticky, but I prefer it clean.
In other words, all you're getting are those beautiful, oily heads of the bud.
Okay, but what do you tell young people who are disillusioned with the concept of constant activism?
I used to get a lot of bad read from a guy named Lester.
He had a seven-foot bong.
What?
In essence, it's a metaphor for why progressives must revitalize the labor movement.
Where are you at with dabbing nowadays?
He's still into dabs or what?
He's still into dabs.
Hey, that's pretty strong pot, Noam.
Jimmy, do you ever think about stuff?
Well, I mean, yeah, of course, but I would imagine a great writer and thinker like yourself would do it constantly.
I have written over 150 books on linguistics, history, and political thought, but I never enjoyed a single minute of it.
Why?
Because it took away from my high time.
Even your book, Manufacturing Consent?
No, that was totally written by weed.
And the book cover should have read by Noam Chomsky and Weed.
Oh, I won't write unless I'm properly zoned with my exotic playlist.
It consists of a psychedelic collection of Turkish jazz punk from the 1970s.
How do you prepare for a writing session?
Personally, I like to jump straight to a blunt, followed by a bong.
That's when you really start leveling up.
The secret is learning how to roll while you're driving with one knee.
*laughter*
I've seen people do that.
I've seen people do my old college roommate.
Anyway, Noam, I really don't think this is a good look for you.
Remember a while ago when I told everybody that once Joe Biden is president, we can push him to the left.
Yes, I remember.
Well, I don't think that's going to happen.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha.
That's not going to happen.
At least not in the foreseeable future.
What do you mean by foreseeable future?
Like before the sun explodes into a million beautiful colors.
That's not very helpful, Noam.
Speaking of the sun exploding, have you seen my lighter?
No, I haven't, Noam.
I haven't.
Help us.
Don't worry, Jimmy.
We will get you through times of no money.
Better than money will get you through times of no weed.
Yeah.
What's my advice?
Don't get burned later.
Establishment media sets of farm and spit and so good luck the bullshit we can't afford show hey we have some sad news uh ladies and gentlemen uh Donald Rumsfeld former U.S. Defense Secretary he died at 88 so
it's really sad and uh i'm sorry did i say sad they say the only the good die young and boy does that guy prove it huh boy what is it about these cretins that live that long it's just amazing um the onions headline said um they said weapon of mass destruction found dead found dead photo of rumsfeld you get banned off twitter for saying that
our yeah when john mccain no who was it when rush limbaugh died yes our friend uh johnny graz made the joke the joke was uh rush limbaugh now is dead on the outside as he is in the inside which is i think a good joke solid solid right solid yeah yeah it's a good joke and they banned him from twitter for that or they gave him a penalty he had he'd be like a suspension time out.
Yeah.
Donald Rumsfeld's a
two-time u.s defense secretary who was a key architect of america's divisive wars in afghanistan and iraq has died at the age of 88 and we're still living in the wars that he said he created rumsfeld people are still dying and being killed and maimed and crippled in those wars that he started isn't that fantastic rumsfeld famously said there are known knowns there are things we know we know we also know there are known unknowns that is to say we know there are some
things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
Jesus Christ.
I'm sorry.
I don't know why.
I forgot.
I don't know if there's a hell, but if there is, I know who just gained a resident.
How about that?
Rumsfeld heeding neoconservative voices around Bush.
He pushed the idea that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein possessed weapons
of mass destruction the u.s launched a war against iraq in 2003 he was one of the voices him dick cheney and go apparently remember george bush said god was the one who he consulted go remember that oh yeah oh what a life huh what let's remember what it what let's remember the life of donald rumsfeld with a trip down warmongering lane painting donald rumsfeld life in a positive requires so
much sanitation we're going to have another shortage on hand sanitizer the war costing thousands of lives and trillion thousands of lives thousands of lives at least hundreds of thousands of iraqi lives they only count american lives that's what they're saying yeah that's uh yeah that's an interesting that's interesting right thousands of like No.
The war costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives and trillions of dollars, has now outlasted Rumsfeld.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
Remember when George Bush laughed about that at one of the White House correspondence dinners?
He played a video of, showed pictures of him looking under his desk.
Nope, no WMDs under there.
And everyone laughed.
Look, no, not out there.
Rumsfeld gave the orders that resulted in the abuse of torture of hundreds of prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.
This should be at the top of every obituary.
That Donald Rumsfeld was architect of a torture program and is an unbelievable war criminal and depraved human being.
Yeah.
Remember this?
This was the day before 9-11.
So this was 9-10, 2001.
Watch this.
Pentagon.
The day before 9-1-1, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war, not on foreign terrorists.
The adversary is closer to home.
It's the Pentagon bureaucracy.
He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.
In fact, it could be said that it's a matter of life and death.
Rumsfeld promised change, but the next day, the world changed.
And in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.
My 03 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending.
More money for the Pentagon when its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25% of what it already spends.
According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.
Well, let's give him some more money then.
Can you imagine if that was the case for Social Security?
We can't track $2.1 trillion.
So you're getting more checks now.
Isn't that amazing?
Can you imagine any other Department of Education?
We can't fuck $2.1 trillion.
Trillion.
They can't.
I don't know what they know what happened to it.
He's admitting this the day before 9-11, which is a weird coinky-dink.
$2.3 trillion with a T. That's $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.
Boy, that could have came in handy during COVID, huh?
During the pandemic.
$8,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.
And that was 20 years ago.
They couldn't account for $2.3 trillion.
Imagine how much it is now.
So this is my favorite Donald Rumsfeld.
He's going to the White House correspondence dinner, and this is my favorite thing.
Oh, I've met him.
Why are you here for tonight?
It's the correspondence dinner.
Okay.
Enjoy your evening, sir.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Hello, folks.
Hey, welcome back.
Thank you.
Mr. Secretary.
War criminal!
Arrest this man!
Arrest the war criminal!
I wish I had some hands right now to arrest this man!
He is responsible for the death of millions people in Iraq!
War criminal!
Arrest this man!
War criminal!
War criminal!
Arrest this man!
War criminal!
You protected your man responsible for the death of millions of Iraqis!
Shame on you!
War criminal!
Here comes the war criminal Donald Rumsfeld!
War criminal!
He killed people in Iraq!
War criminal!
Donald Rumsfeld!
War criminal!
He killed people in Iraq!
War criminal!
That's a war criminal!
Thank you.
you So there you go.
That's my favorite Donald Rumsfeld clip.
Ron, would that be yours also?
I love that clip.
I still, I think it'd be so great if somehow Code Pink managed to have a war criminal on his name tag.
Yeah.
I want to get his name tag for dinner.
So tip of the hat to Code Pink for doing that.
And not tip of the hat to mainstream media who didn't report on that.
No, of course they didn't.
And of course, if you go watch today, they're going to say a bunch of nice things about him.
The worst thing they'll say is it was a mixed bag.
Donald Rumsfeld was a mixed bag.
He ordered a torture program, murdered millions of people, ripped up the Constitution, got us into an illegal war, but I don't know what the good part.
They'll say good things.
They'll find out something.
He streamlined the Pentagon's blah, blah, blah.
Or some bullshit.
They'll say something.
Okay.
They'll bring up who he was friendly with.
Yes, everybody.
They'll bring up other politicians he was friendly with.
Like, oh, you had a bromance with Derber Derper Derper.
That'll be what they say.
That is what they'll say.
Well, there's a break.
There's a break in the Julian Assange case.
Right now, you know, Julian Assange is being persecuted by the Democratic administration, Joe Biden, previously by Donald Trump's administration.
Guess what?
The key witness.
And wait till you find out who this witness was.
The key witness in Assange's case admits to lying in the indictment.
Are you ready?
Are you ready for this?
Boy, the case was bulletproof up to now, though, haron?
Boy.
Yeah, exactly.
It's such a bogus.
And that's why, you know, I mean, I've been, you know, reading up on this too.
And I almost feel weird when I say the case is falling apart, even though that's true.
The case is falling apart.
But I feel like sometimes when you say that sentence, it's almost like there's an implication that the case was ever put together in the first place.
Yeah.
You know, so it's like this ridiculous, bogus case that should have never even gotten close to this point in the first place has somehow gotten even more absurd to the point where you could not pitch this as a movie.
And we're about to get into it.
A major witness in the United States Department of Justice's case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the WikiLeaks founder.
The witness who has a documented history with sociopathy.
Could you believe this?
Sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial Fraud made the recent admission to having continued his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.
I really want to read that again.
The witness who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and why this is their key witness against Julian Assange.
They got a guy who's got a history of mental illness like this and crazy sexual assaults that they're now going to give him immunity for if he lies about Julian Assange.
Do you see how the United States government puts their case together?
They're so upstanding.
They're such good people.
Well, and there's more to it than that, too.
He was an FBI informant against Julian Assange since 2014.
And he, you know, has committed numerous amounts of fraud.
At one time, he was embezzling money from Wikileaks themselves.
Yes, we're going to get to that.
That's in here.
That's right.
So this is exactly the kind of people the FBI work with on the regular.
Just so you know, when someone says FBI informant, a lot of times this is who these people are.
They have criminals with criminal minds and they're trying to frame someone.
The FBI is.
They're trying to frame someone so they get some smoke like this who's committed sexual crimes is going to go to prison for the rest of his life.
And they tell him, hey, lie about this guy we're trying to frame.
We'll let you off.
And so they do.
And he admitted that he kept his crime spree going while he was working for the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Wow.
Sigurder Thordeson, that's the guy's name.
He was recruited by the U.S. authorities to build a case against Julian Assange after misleading them to believe he was previously a close associate of Julian Assange.
Hey, we need a star witness.
Find us a professional liar who's been found guilty of embezzlement and sex crimes and has been an FBI informant.
In fact, he had volunteered on a limited basis to raise money for WikiLeaks in 2010, but then he was found to have used that opportunity to embezzle more than $50,000 from WikiLeaks.
This guy that they're getting to testify against Julian Assange got convicted, got caught stealing from WikiLeaks.
This is their star witness.
Wikileaks' investigation of the embezzlement is what led the young man to turn state's evidence.
Jesus.
Again, can't imagine that this guy wouldn't tell the truth about something.
Can't imagine.
Cannot imagine.
One of the charges in the indictment of Assange, based on Thornton's testimony, is that he tried to hack into the computers of members of parliament and record their conversations.
Thordson now says, in fact, that Assange never asked him to do either of those things because that would be a crime.
But Julian Assange never encouraged anybody to commit a crime.
So the thing that's supposed to be the smoking gun, turns out never happened, was made up by a serial criminal.
Thornson also alleged in the indictment that he and Assange had attempted to decrypt a file stolen from an Icelandic bank.
Thornson now says that the file in question had been leaked, not stolen from a defunct bank, presumably by a whistleblower inside the bank and had been shared online by many others, all of whom were trying to decrypt it to understand what had precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.
And by the way, a publisher can publish that stuff and it's not a crime.
So that's why it's a big deal.
If it's leaked, you can publish that.
That's it.
You can publish it.
Now, if Julian Assange stole it, that would be a crime.
He didn't.
The indictment further claims that Assange used unauthorized access given to him by a source to log into an Icelandic government website.
In reality, the login was legally Thordson's and Assange never asked for it.
Thornson now says.
How more ridiculous can this get exactly?
Hey, turns out one time Julian Assange just barred the guy's HBO Max login.
That's all that ever happened.
Yeah.
So here, and Edward Snowden, he waited and said this is the end of the case against Julian Assange.
And Glenn Greenwald also said it should be, and it should be.
But I wouldn't doubt that the United States comes up with another guy to say garbage about him.
There's no case.
There's never been a case.
And they're torturing a guy right now.
He's being tortured.
They're trying to kill him in Belmarsh.
Wow.
So there it is.
That's the big story.
It broke a couple days ago, and we're just getting to it now because we haven't been in the studio.
But Ron, anything you want to add to this story?
I mean, it's fantastic.
Just to summarize, for everybody at home, just to summarize, this is a guy who has been found guilty numerous times of fraud, who has been found guilty numerous times of sex crimes, who was an FBI informant regarding Julian Assange to the FBI since 2014.
I would not trust this guy to turn off the oven in my worst enemy's apartment.
It's somehow he's, I mean, it's remarkable.
And this whole court case so far, to quote my buddy over in the UK, Gordon Dimmick, calling this a kangaroo court would be an insult to kangaroos.
That's how ridiculous it is.
But the fact that this guy was even approved as a witness and how that conflict of interest wasn't seen right away or was approved regardless is mind-boggling to say the very least.
I mean, this is, if you're still undecided on this thing, or if you're still like, oh, well, but Trump and blah, blah, blah when it comes to Julian Assange, what freaking planet are you on?
Well, you're on Planet Young Turks.
Well, you know, I hope there's some people watching this who maybe they've only heard the corporate nonsense narrative when it comes to Julian Assange.
And I hope that this is changing some minds.
I really do.
I really hope some people are seeing this and they realize, oh, we haven't been told the full story, have we?
No, you haven't.
They've been bullshitting you for four plus years about this.
And it's a crime against free press big time.
And the guy's being tortured for no reason.
Yeah, I can't.
Even an establishment puke like Chris Hayes said something nice about WikiLeaks and said he was a journalist and not a hacker.
So even Chris Hayes snuck that in.
Well, I hope he goes further and covers this then.
And maybe he has.
I don't know, but I sincerely hope he does on a platform like that.
I would be super interested to see how much they've covered this at MSNBC.
Yeah, and I don't know if they have at all.
I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had, just like the OPCW whistleblower story, they won't touch.
So, Joe Biden, it's happening.
So, why is it important to push back against news shows that push pro-war imperialism talking points about Syria, like we, like Aaron Matte and I have been doing against the number one online news show, The Young Turks?
Why is it important?
Because guess what?
The U.S. just conducted airstrikes against Iran-baked militia groups in Iraq and Syria.
That's why.
Because they're using that as a pretense for war.
They always have.
They always will.
Joe Biden is nothing but a tool of war and a murderous, rapacious oligarch.
And just so you know, why is he doing this?
Because nothing will fundamentally change.
We started bombing Iraq in 1992 and we haven't stopped.
And we haven't stopped.
In a statement, the U.S. military said it targeted operational and weapon storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one location in Iraq.
Okay, then.
No questions then.
That's it, I guess.
The strikes came at the direction of President Joe Biden, demented President Joe Biden.
The second time he has ordered retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed militia since taking office five months ago.
Biden last ordered strikes in Syria in February in response to rocket attacks in Iraq.
Hey, we're so worried about Iran.
We're going to bomb Iraq and Syria.
USA.
He's definitely getting that Nobel Priest Prize.
No, you're damn right.
Here it comes.
As demonstrated by this evening's strikes, President Biden has been clear that he will act to protect U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said in a statement.
So he's acting to protect U.S. personnel that is stationed in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Sudan, Lebanon, where else are they?
Where aren't they?
Where aren't they?
We have a thousand military bases all around the world.
They're not home.
That's right.
They're not home.
Yes, dropping bombs is definitely good for your U.S. personnel.
Nothing says safety like a 20-year war with no end in sight.
Yeah, it's all about keeping us safe.
That's what that's about.
It's all about keeping us safe.
Iran called on the United States to avoid creating a crisis in the region.
Certainly what the United States is doing is disrupting security in the region.
And one of the victims of this disruption will be the United States, said an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman.
Biden and the White House declined comment on the strikes.
We live in a country where the leader can bomb countries and say absolutely nothing about that.
Just let that sink in.
He just bombed another country and he doesn't have to talk about it.
What?
Yeah, it's amazing.
And the best part is, he's not going to get asked about it much.
No.
Either.
No, that White House press corps, you think that Russian state media during the Cold War was something?
The media in the United States is worse.
Worse, which is why we live in the country we live in.
We have a thousand military bases.
We're spending a trillion dollars on bombs every year that nobody wants or needs.
And people are living under every bridge in America.
Yeah, they clap for him when he drives a freaking car.
But Biden will meet Israel's outgoing president at the White House on Monday for a broad discussion that will include Iran, U.S. efforts to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal.
Why is he meeting with a president who's not going to be president anymore?
Why is he meeting with that guy?
Why is he meeting with him?
Does that make any sense to anybody?
That would be like after Trump lost the election, he went and had meetings with everybody around the world.
Why would he do though?
Why would anybody?
This doesn't make any sense.
Biden's dropping bombs like they're his campaign promises.
Dropping student debt?
No, dropping bombs on Syria.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel fine.
Here's what Glenn said.
Two days ago, Biden ordered illegal bombing raids on Syria and Iraq, and none of the people who spent the Trump years pretending to care so deeply about the Constitution and rule of law uttered a peep.
Why?
Because they themselves are lawless frauds who wore a costume for four years.
That's exactly right.
People like, and they said, here it is.
There it is.
Look at Black Lives Matter.
You got the LGBTQ colors.
You got everything coexists.
Is that what that says?
Jesus.
They should put hashtag MeToo on there, too, and then just drop bombs on everybody.
So we have identity politicized killing people with bombs, which is fantastic.
America is terrorizing and bombing the Middle East again.
We're the terrorists.
We're the imperialists.
We're the bloodthirsty, murdering psychopaths.
We're the bad guys.
This is without Trump.
Congrats.
Congrats.
Okay, anything you like to add to that, Ron?
Because that's depressing.
And everybody's okay with it in America.
And none of the journalists are going to make us think about it or even ask.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't mess with that summary.
We have an economy of war because we are an empire, and we will see the same end as all empires do.
And what we're doing around the world is repulsive.
And you have a complicit media who refuses to bring that up because they get advertising from defense contractors in oil and gas, which profits from war.
They get it from Wall Street.
They get money for us.
If you see a bank commercial, that's Wall Street money.
And Wall Street has lots of money in the military-industrial complex invested.
And they also have it in the fossil fuels.
And so that's why the news is the news because they're funded by the people they're supposed to be investigating.
Yeah, and they don't even try to be subtle about it anymore.
I mean, they just have these commercials from these weapons contractors.
It's like, who are they trying to reach with this?
Is anyone in the market for a new tank?
No, they're just buying favorable coverage.
Hello, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
Jimmy!
This is President-elect Joe Biden.
Oh, hello, Mr. President.
How are you?
Jimmy, I'm doing pretty damn great.
Thanks for asking.
Glad to hear it.
Jimmy.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
It's starting.
What is?
I named my old friend John Kerry to be the nation's first climate czar.
He's going to fix everything, Jack.
And how exactly is he going to do that?
By scowling at carbon like some kind of weird ghoul.
That's how.
Oh, I see.
Okay, I got it.
Anyway, this is all great news.
Well, if you say so, Joe.
You don't believe me?
Just look at the Dow Jones, JV Jones.
It hit 30,000 on this news.
I'm not really sure that that helps most Americans, though.
Yeah, you're probably right.
But 30,000!
Holy cow, that's a lot of Dow.
How do you plan on ensuring average Americans get a fair share of this skyrocketing Wall Street wealth?
Jimmy, I plan on appointing another czar to do just that.
And what happens when the person you appoint to this position is just another corporate lackey who has no tangible interest in helping the American working class.
Ah!
That's why they're going to be a woman of color or an LGBTQ.
So you're not allowed to criticize them or what they're doing.
Uh-huh.
Hey, Mr. President, I don't have a job and I can't feed my family.
Your administration isn't doing enough to help me.
Oh, yeah, well, you some kind of racist?
Sit down and shut up, Paul Connor.
God, for that guy to be able to hide behind that is fucking amazing.
Of all people.
It's pretty slick, isn't it?
Yes.
Call me slick, Rick.
Yeah.
How heartbreakingly cynical, Joe.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Hands, you're welcome.
We like to make every year fresh and full of surprises.
The past few years has been, what's Hunter going to do?
Jesus.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Although, I will say every year we do go around the table and say what we're thankful for.
Ha ha ha!
And And what are you thankful for this year, Joe?
The fact that I was nominated by the Democratic Party and have now somehow become president-elect in defiance of the better instincts of every thinking American.
It's a miracle.
Jimmy, I truly see the hand of God in there.
Okay, well, you have a nice...
But you stay home and don't go anywhere.
You're not rich enough to survive!
Ha ha ha ha!
Here's another mensch, a friend of the show who passed away, Senator Gravelle.
He was one of a kind.
Senator Gravelle was the guy who read the Pentagon papers into the Senate record so that the American people would have a copy of it and they could read it.
And that took a lot of courage to do that.
But he's been a courageous guy his whole life, or he was.
And here, I just want to share some of the highlights of what he had to say.
You're right.
I made that statement.
But that's before I had a chance to stand with them a couple, three times.
It's like going into the Senate.
You know, the first time you get there, you're all excited.
My God, how did I ever get here?
Then about six months later, you say, how the hell did the rest of them get here?
And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me.
They frighten me.
When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices.
I remember when they were all saying that.
Hillary Clinton was saying that for sure.
That nothing's off the table when it comes to Iran, meaning nuclear weapons.
He was the only one who would call them out for that.
I got to tell you, I'm President of the United States.
There will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices.
To my mind, it's immoral, and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy.
Let's use a little moderator discretion here, Senator Gravelle.
And of course, anyway.
Oh, that's a weighty charge.
Who on this stage exactly tonight worries you so much?
Well, I would say the top-tier ones.
Top-tier ones.
They made statements.
Oh, Joe, I'll include you too.
You have a certain arrogance.
You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country.
I got to tell you, we should just play get out.
Just play get out.
It's their country.
They're asking us to leave, and we insist on staying there.
And why not get out?
What harm is it going to do?
Oh, you hear the statement, well, my God, the soldiers will have died in vain.
The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain.
And they're dying in vain right this very second.
You know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain?
It's more soldiers dying in vain.
That's what's worse.
Wow, now that's a presidential debate.
That's a guy who knew how to bring it.
Here's more.
Want to hear more?
We have no important enemies.
What we need to do is begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals.
And we don't do that.
We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together.
Who are we afraid of?
Who are you afraid of?
Brian, I'm not.
And Iraq has never been a threat to us.
We invaded them.
I mean, it is unbelievable.
The military-industrial complex not only controls our government, lockstock, and barrel, but they control our culture.
They control our culture.
And that's why Senator Gravelle last presidential election, who did he endorse?
He endorsed Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders.
He had a dual endorsement.
Why?
Because Tulsi was courageous enough to tell the truth about our foreign wars and to tell the truth about Syria.
And not that, and so he endorsed her and Bernie.
Not that Bernie and her don't have flaws.
They do.
All people have flaws.
But he endorsed Tulsi based on her anti-war or her truth-telling about Syria.
Put it that way.
And you can understand.
I mean, that's the biggest issue.
So here he is when he was on our show.
Here we go.
The difficulty we have with mainstream media communicating what it needs to communicate for our democracy to stay vibrant.
The reason why mainstream media doesn't do that is because mainstream media, along with the government, is controlled lock, stock, and barrel by the military industrial complex via Wall Street.
And that's the reason why you'll never get a straight cut at the news that you need to hear.
That's why you're never going to get this news you need to hear because it's funded and owned by the military industrial complex in Wall Street.
He's 100% right.
Here's one more video.
Alaska's 41-year-old Democratic Senator Mike Gravelle held a mock meeting of his subcommittee on buildings and grounds with only himself present and began reading aloud the 7,000-page Pentagon secret report in public.
The papers prove that for 20 years we have been victims of our Southeast Asia policy.
I was frightened to death over releasing the Pentagon Papers.
I had no idea whether I was going to prison.
All I could think of is my country is killing people.
We're maiming Americans, and this is terrible.
And so I was overcome with emotion.
Not patriotism, just emotion of something you love dearly that has gone astray.
He continued until exhaustion and emotion overcame him after one o'clock this morning.
I collected myself and I asked.
Now, keep in mind, I'm the only one on the committee.
I ask unanimous consent to put all these papers into the record.
And I've got the gavel and I slam it and I say, hearing no objection, so ordered.
That's it.
Papers are out.
They're in the Senate record.
And that was a big, big deal that he did that.
That's a real patriot.
That's a real human being because his allegiance is to humanity and not to a piece of land or to a corrupt government.
We have become a nation ruled by fear.
Since the end of the Second World War, various political leaders have fostered fear in the American people.
Fear of communism, fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, fear of people based on race and religion, fear of gays and lesbians and love who just want to get married, and fear of people who are somehow different.
It is fear that allows political leaders to manipulate us all and to distort our national priorities.
100%, 100%.
And that's why a guy like that could never be president because he goes against the power centers in American culture and society.
He tells the truth about the power centers, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.
And you're not going to become president unless Wall Street and the military-industrial complex say okay.
That's how it goes.
Barack Obama got more money from Wall Street than John McCain did when he ran against him.
Remember that.
Barack Obama's entire cabinet came from an email from Citibank.
You know that, right?
That's who runs this country.
Don't be a chump and think that it's the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
Those people serve power.
And so when you vote for anybody inside the Democratic or Republican Party, you're voting for Wall Street and you're voting for the military-industrial complex.
So when you vote for AOC or you vote for Rashid Tlaib or you vote for Roe Khanna or Mark Pocan, you are voting for Wall Street and the military-industrial complex because I don't know if you've noticed what they're doing is they're there to prop up the party and the party serves the power.
So a vote for them is a vote for Wall Street and a vote for them is a vote for the military industrial complex because they ain't going against the party at all.
And they're 100% corrupt.
100% corrupt.
What is the definition of corrupt, Jimmy?
I'll tell you because apparently Kyle Kalinsky doesn't want to look it up.
The definition of corrupt is acting dishonestly for money or personal gain.
So when he tells you that the squad is, by definition, not corrupt, it's because he's not looking up the definition and he's giving you a false definition of corrupt.
That's a fact.
And now everybody sees it.
And so here is Mike Gravelle.
And this is, I'm going to shorten version of his, this was a commercial that got him a lot of attention.
Do you remember this commercial when he ran for president?
Do you remember this commercial?
Do you remember this commercial?
That's the whole commercial.
That was the whole commercial.
I remember that.
That's the whole thing.
still going Can you imagine that guy being president?
He would be like.
I'm going to end it because it just, but if Mike Gravelle became president, it would be like he would be like the opposite of what Trump was.
Like he would be as it would be as entertaining as Trump as president, but it would be all for good reasons.
Like, what?
He's cutting the military budget in half?
Can you do that?
What?
He's closing down all our military bases in the Middle East.
Can you do that?
He's investing money into job programs.
Can you do that?
That would be the kind of thing.
He's disbanding the CIA.
Can you do that?
It would be crazy like that.
Anything to say about Senator Gravelle, Ron?
Absolutely.
I mean, he went down a fighter.
He was active till the very end.
And I guess the last thing I want to say is I highly recommend his book.
I believe it was the last book he published before he died, The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution, a Legislature of the People.
He put it out in 2019, and it breaks down what a people's legislature really means, how we have the right to build one, and how the Declaration of Independence gave us that right.
It's not a very long read, but there's a lot of substance in there.
It's not a very long book, but you're going to want to reread each page, basically.
And it took him 30 years to compile.
So, you know, and I sincerely hope that someday his idea comes to fruition.
And we do have a people's legislature in this country.
It's a long way away, but I hope we all live to see it and rest in power.
Rest in peace.
So I just wanted to do this because I found the videotape, so I want to show it.
So Aaron and I, as we talked about, have been the targets of a smear campaign by the Young Turks.
And Jenk Uger even Went on the Hill to try to smear me as a Nazi, and he got caught lying.
And here it is.
Everything he's saying, by the way, he could be saying into a mirror.
This is a huge projection.
Again, if you know anything about Jungian psychology, it's a huge projection right here.
And we're going to show it to you why we're going to show the facts how it is.
Your thoughts on the ongoing feud with Jimmy Doris, which I know a lot of our viewers aren't following very closely.
Do you have anything to his most recent?
I would say comments on that issue.
Everything he says is over the top, ridiculous.
It's lies.
I mean, his lies about me are endless.
He says I'm in favor of bombing Syria.
I've never said that.
He's a preposterous liar.
He's a ridiculous liar.
By the way, I caught one.
He's a preposterous liar.
I'm a preposterous liar.
Well, here we go.
Let's just enjoy this video, shall we?
So I'm curious, Jimmy, that you might agree with that, that this doesn't accomplish much and hence what's the point.
But does that mean that if it did accomplish more, you'd be in favor of it or no?
He means bombing Syria.
Would I be in favor of bombing Syria if it accomplished a lot?
Is this where you go nuclear?
This is, well, this is where this is, this is where I show another gear.
I don't go nuclear.
This is where I actually show another gear.
Watch this.
So you're against it under all circumstances.
So under all circumstances, I'm against it because it's just more war and there's no reason to it.
Certainly not the reason they're giving us.
I have a hard time believing that Barack Obama gives a shit about the civilians in Syria.
I really don't think he cares.
And because if he did care, that was really the solitmask test of innocent people.
Why aren't we bombing North Korea?
Why aren't we bombing?
Because we can't.
Isn't that fair?
Look, I'm going to take you guys on on that.
Okay, because so we can't bomb Russia if Russia uses chemical weapons because we don't want to start World War III.
You're right.
Absolutely, right?
Okay, but why don't we take the low-lying fruit?
Okay.
Like send a message wherever we practically can.
So not only is Cenk for bombing Syria, he's for bombing anywhere we practically can.
Thank you.
North Korea, I'd love to decapitate all the leaders in North Korea.
He'd love to go do a coup in another country.
He'd love to decapitate all their leaders.
What are you talking about?
And set that country free.
But we might lose Seoul South Korea and millions of people.
We can't do it, right?
And if we can do it in Syria and help some people, well, okay, that's a good place to start.
Well, the reason why you can't selectively enforce the law is because it breeds disrespect and contempt for the law.
So if you're trying to uphold international law selectively, you're doing the exact opposite.
You're undermining international law.
So if you wanted to really set a line, you would have went after Israel for using phosphorus in Gaza.
You would have gone after the United States for using phosphorus in Fallujah.
If you wanted to, if you cared about international norms, you would have maybe bombed America because we illegally invaded Iraq and a million people were killed, displaced other millions, countless.
How many thousands of innocent people were killed in that?
That was an illegal war.
We lied about it.
Where's our what?
If nobody kept us in check, somehow we have to still keep other people in check.
I said it yesterday, you can't have Tony Soprano giving out parking tickets.
It doesn't fucking work.
Yeah, but if you, but here's the, yes, it's totally hypocritical, but then we're paralyzed and can't do anything.
And if Tony Soprano is elected sheriff, he's going to hand out parking tickets.
And no one's going to respect it.
No one's going to pay that ticket.
You can't have the mafia giving you a parking ticket.
People aren't going to respect that ticket.
They're not going to respect the law.
That's going to breed more lawlessness.
And when we see you selectively enforcing it, you can't have Tony Soprano selectively enforcing the parking laws.
You can't have Tony Soprano, the biggest criminal in the town, selectively enforcing parking laws.
And so that's why, and so good.
I mean, that's my good friend Ben Makowitz, and there he is arguing for war.
They're all pro-war.
It's a problem.
Okay.
I disagree.
I think we could start being consistent.
I think we could stop torturing people in Guantanamo.
I think we could stop torturing people in our own prison systems.
There's a lot of inhumane shit happening right here that we could fix first.
Why do we got to do this?
Because that's not what it's about.
So I'm pushing back against the idea that Ben was forwarding and Jenk is forwarding that when we bomb, we're bombing because we try to help people.
If we wanted to try to help people, we would end our torture program.
We would close Guantanamo.
We would end our criminal justice, that racist criminal justice system.
We're the largest penal colony in the world.
We could start right here if we wanted to help people.
They're not bombing because they want to help people.
That's the point.
They're not bombing to help people.
They're bombing to do imperialism and to steal natural resources for corporations, like they always have.
You guys keep pretending.
You think this is about chemical weapons?
This is so ridiculous.
I don't know what it's about.
I have to speculate because the government is lying.
A lot of people said, well, this is a sentence because of Iran.
We have to send a message because Iran might try something or North Korea.
We have to send a message.
And I'm like, so this isn't about this.
And so now we have to kill other innocent people to send the message that you're not supposed to kill innocent people in a worse way.
It's just so backwards.
I can't believe that I have to argue this point.
I think you're right on the second half, which is that it's crazy that we have to kill innocent people to send the message that we shouldn't kill innocent people.
And I think that that's it.
I don't know what the message is, and I don't think there's some here.
I don't see it.
No one's presented it to me.
You haven't presented it here either, which you even said you don't know.
But like, I don't get why it would be, except for the reasons.
I just think those reasons, and so do you, those reasons don't have, those reasons aren't strong enough.
I think that when we live in a world where 100,000 civilians are killed in Syria, right, or 100,000 killed in Syria, many of them combatants, but many of them civilians, right?
Most, almost certainly not.
And then for two years, that goes on, and we live in a world where Wolf Blitzer gets to ask on CNN, why don't you think anybody cares about Syria?
Like, well, you don't talk about it.
Nobody talks about it.
Nobody talks about it.
Nobody showed us those bodies.
Then we get a moment where chemical weapons are used and we see the bodies and we have this reaction.
Inconsistent as it may be, people reacted differently to that because they saw it.
And all of a sudden, there was intense coverage of Syria.
My hunch is if we'd had that kind of coverage, if we'd seen 400 dead babies on month three killed by a missile strike or executed in a room, then maybe there would have been a movement to attack then.
So why don't we go to the international court?
We don't have a right.
We don't prosecute them.
This is a crime.
So why don't we prosecute them?
Why don't we put out a warrant for his arrest, Assad's arrest?
Why don't we do it like that, like the rest of the world does against Dick Cheney and George Bush because they're war criminals.
That's why they can't travel internationally.
Why don't we do it that way?
So let me build off of Ben's point.
So, Jimmy, if you're saying we've been hypocritical in the past, right now we're hypocritical.
In the very, very recent past?
Right, currently.
I agree.
yeah, I agree, of course I agree with you, right?
That's not the sensible position.
That's the correct position.
It's a matter based on facts.
Okay, you're right about that.
But by the same point that Ben was making during the civil rights movement, we could have said, I mean, you're telling me that the country that has, you know, enslaved these people, that has oppressed them, that has segregated them, that has done all this stuff, oh, now you're going to trust them to do civil rights?
Well, you got to start somewhere.
Yes, you're right.
We were a giant hypocrite and we were terrible, etc.
And part of the reason, you know, look, this is goofy because I just saw the butler and it had this scene in it.
But JFK in that movie says, I didn't know this was my country.
And to put the movie aside, most, a lot of people saw that kind of vicious racism for the first time.
Vicious.
I mean, they've seen other forms of racism throughout, right?
But in the North, the West, et cetera, they're like, oh my God, look at what they're doing to those people.
It's the first time they saw it on tape.
So it changed them.
So is it possible this is the same where we actually see the dead kids and it changes opinion a little bit?
Plus, this is the beginning to fixing our hypocrisy.
First of all, no one thinks this is going to solve the problem.
No one thinks this is going to stop him from using chemical weapons again.
Yet we're still going to do it.
I think some people think that.
I think that I think that if we punish him harshly enough for using it, it could dissuade him from using it in the future.
How many innocent people do you have to kill to make that happen?
I don't know.
But if we don't do it, I don't know.
Well, how could you be advocating killing innocent people if you don't have a number for how many we have to kill?
What?
He's advocating.
But do you see the argument that's going on?
Do you see I'm the only one against all of them and I have to push back?
That's the way it was all the time over there.
That's the way it was with Russia Gate.
That's the way it was with the Mulberry.
That's the way it was with all their garbage.
So they're in lockstep with the mainstream.
Lockstep.
Lockstep with the MSNBC.
It'll be pretty hot.
You talk so if you do really talked just a few minutes ago about the alleged and probable use of white phosphorus weapons in Israel earlier this year.
Now, Israel says they did not use it in its weaponized form.
It has both weaponized and non-weaponized forms.
It can be used just to screen troop movements and things like that.
We even use it for that purpose.
So if we don't punish Assad for using chemical weapons, doesn't that send a message to Israel in the future?
That even you like they're not.
Oh my god, come on, John, I was with you until you said that.
No, no, I'm not saying Israel is going to be like, oh, what if the U.S. bombs us for using chemical weapons?
I'm not saying we're threatening to bomb them, but I'm saying that it's not just, we're going to talk about the red line.
I totally understand that.
Do you see how you have to bread yourself in pretzels if you want to call yourself a progressive and be pro-war and imperialism?
Do you see how you have to bet?
You see that even they have to call each other out on their bullshit.
Chemical weapons are banned internationally.
It's not just because Obama said something two years ago that all of a sudden we developed some sort of opposition to chemical weapons.
Yeah.
They're banned and that ban is supposed to mean something.
And just because the rest of the world won't step up and actually say these weapons should continue to be banned and a threat should go behind that ban.
Does that mean that just because the rest of the world won't do anything, we shouldn't stand up?
Oh, by the way, I didn't know this at the time, but America was still making cluster bombs, which are considered a war crime.
So we were making cluster bombs up until just a few years ago, right?
Right in the Northeast.
I think it was in Connecticut.
I'm not sure.
Don't quote me.
But we were making cluster bombs.
Okay.
Sari?
Listen, on that point, on that point, I agree 100% with John.
Now, Jimmy.
Hold on.
Hold on.
No, no, Steve, hold on.
Let me address the panel.
Okay.
Jimmy, I got to ask you this.
Okay.
So is there any red line for you?
So if we don't bomb them, right?
And Assad goes, great, there's a green light, man.
So hold on, hold on.
So he thinks, okay, well, they're not going to do anything.
And he's right.
We're not going to do anything, right?
So he says, okay, well, if I got free reign and these guys have been a pain in my ass for two and a half years, that's it.
I'm going to unleash serendas on all of them, okay?
So last time I killed 1,400, this time I'm going to kill 140,000 with chemical weapons, and nobody's going to do a goddamn thing about it.
Do you, I mean, so what's your take on that?
One, that won't happen.
Two, that's not on us.
These are legitimate positions, right?
But I'm curious what your take on it is.
And is there any line where you would say, all right, let's come on.
We got to do something.
Well, this idea that the answer to a war crime is more war is what I'm rejecting.
So I don't think you're saying, is there anything?
Can the Sad do anything so horrible that you would okay some missile strikes?
Isn't there another way to handle a war crime?
Aren't you supposed to go to an international court?
Don't you go to the U.S. Wait, wait, don't you go to the UN and you try to get the UN?
You try to rally the world.
Aren't there non-violent ways to deal with this first?
Or you just immediately, even before the UN has its report in, you just go ahead and we got to bomb these guys.
So this rush to war is so ridiculous because I don't think that's why they're going in, Jenk.
And if you think they're going in for chemicals, I'll have to respect that.
But I don't think that that's why they're going in.
Okay, so listen, I do think they're going in for chemical weapons because they have no interest in Syria.
They let that war fester.
We're occupying a third of Syria right now.
What are we occupying?
The oil and their wheat fields.
And we're not letting them rebuild.
We're sanctioning them.
We have a big interest in Syria.
Why?
Because Israel's interested in Syria and Connor's interested in Syria and Saudi Arabia is interested in Syria.
That's why.
100,000 people die for two and a half years because there's no oil in Syria and they don't give a damn about Syria and that's what we've been saying here all this time and that's what you've agreed to and a lot of progressives have agreed to.
Now all of a sudden what changed the equation?
The chemical weapons changed the equation.
If the evidence on chemical weapons comes back overwhelmingly yes, but the Security Council says no, the Congress says yes, you say no.
I'm torn on that.
Here I am back to torn on that issue if it came down to that.
But that's a perfectly legitimate argument to make.
25 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, pre-George Bush, we didn't question Bill Clinton's motives for Kosovo.
We didn't question it and we didn't question it anywhere where we sent humanitarian aid to.
And now all of a sudden we doubt everything.
We think there's some ulterior motive.
I don't.
I think it's this.
I don't think, but I, but then I swing back to Jimmy's point is I think the motive is pure, but I and if I would, who I want to agree with more than anybody is John's point, except I need somebody who's incredibly smart to say, all this over missile have something has no effect Then you're just a 12-year-old teenager who's killing the kid who had nicer sneakers.
General.
Like, then it's just about respect, and it's silly and a giant waste of time.
I know General Westmoreland said after 9-11, he went over to the Pentagon.
I'm sorry.
And the guy told him, hey, guess what?
We're going to go into Iraq.
What did Iraq ever do with this?
He goes, I don't know, nothing.
A couple weeks later, he went back and goes, you're not going to believe this.
We're going to go into Syria.
We get Lebanon.
They're going into the, they got a whole place, plan to reshape the Middle East.
This is right after 9-11.
They had plans, plans to go into Syria.
So I'm just saying, don't think that people ever wanted to do this for a long time.
And I'm not saying that's exactly what this is, but this isn't chemical weapons.
So a couple of things on that.
And I want to go on to what Obama said.
It was generally Wesley Clark.
I'm sorry.
I said Westmoreland.
Yeah, that's okay.
It starts the same exactly.
Yes.
So, and West Clark is right about that.
And we all know, but that was the neocon plan.
And they wrote it out even before they came into the Obama administration.
But I don't think that's what's, I'm sorry, before the Bush administration.
I don't think that's what's playing out here.
Because if you want to go to Syria next, you had two and a half years to make that case.
They never even made the case.
It's not like the neocons don't know how to do propaganda.
You press that button and a wall of propaganda hits the American people.
They didn't press the button.
I don't know why Israel flipped on it, but they did.
So is that part of our decision making?
Have you been paying attention to American politics?
Of course it's part of our decision making.
But I don't view that as nefarious.
I view that as like, I don't know.
Like, if you're Israel, Assad is never going to harm you.
And so the fact that they're now saying we should attack Assad, I don't think that's a bad thing.
Okay.
So now here's that tape we were talking about.
And this shows this is why we're going into Syria.
And it has nothing to do with chemical weapons.
Believe me, the America doesn't give a shit that someone's using chemical weapons.
Here we go.
About 10 days after 9-11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.
I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me.
And one of the generals called me and he said, sir, you got to come in.
You got to come in and talk to me a second.
I said, well, you're too busy.
He said, no, no.
He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.
This was on or about the 20th of September.
I said, we're going to war with Iraq.
Why?
He said, I don't know.
He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.
So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?
He said, no, no.
He says, there's nothing new that way.
They've just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.
He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments.
And he said, I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.
So I came back to see him a few weeks later.
And by that time, we were bombing in Afghanistan.
I said, are we still going to war with Iraq?
And he said, oh, it's worse than that.
He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper.
He said, I just, he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the Secretary of Defense's office today.
And he said, this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
And that's why.
Because the establishment, the military-industrial complex, they want it.
They wanted to go in, and they wanted to overthrow Assad for a long time.
Hey, former President Barack Obama is calling me again.
Hello.
Hey, man.
You see my 60-minute interview?
Yes, I read about it.
Boy, that's Steve Croft.
Can really ask the tough questions.
You mean Scott Pelley?
Like that's better.
Did he do it?
Did he do it this time?
Fuck no.
He did something far more important.
He actually let me open up about my new memoir, A Promised Land.
Oh, God.
Wow, right?
In an exclusive interview.
These kinds of things just don't happen when folks like me are trying to sell their books.
They usually clam up about it and try to stay away from the press.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, Jimmy.
I literally opened up about all 768 pages.
Volume one covers a young brother growing up in Chicago and ends with the conditional release of Osama bin Laden in the Napa Valley wine cave in California.
Wow, Osama bin Laden is living in California.
If you call doing real estate living.
That guy knows about the construction business.
We got a housing crisis going on, Jimmy.
Too many folks aren't pulling up the damn pants to pay their rent.
We need the talent.
And the men man knows the business like nobody's business.
But he was our sworn enemy.
So we're those Nazi Germany folks.
But we reached across the aisle.
And look what they did for NASA.
Hear the words, Jimmy.
NASA, Nazi.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Whose idea do you think it was to let Elon Musk into the space station?
At the end of the day, folks are just folks.
In space.
Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
How do you hear the entire phone call?
You got to become a premium member.
Go to JimmyDorkomedy.com, sign up.
It's the most affordable premium program in the business.
Today's show was written by Ron Placone, Mark Van Landowitz, Dep Zamorano, Jim Earle, Mike McRae, and Roger Rittenhouse.
All the voices performed today by the one and the only of the inimitable, Mike McRae, who can be found at MikeMcRae.com.
That's it for this week.
you be the best you can be and I'll keep being me.
Don't break out.
Don't freak out.
Don't freak out.
I'm not getting it.
Don't don't you don't don't bring out it.
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