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July 19, 2024 - Jimmy Dore Show
59:27
20240719_TJDS_20240719_Podcast_-_71824_2.27PM
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Hey, I'll see you on tour in Las Vegas, Chicago, and Grand Rapids in Chicago.
It's stand-up and a live panel show.
Go to jimmydor.com for a link for tickets and make sure you go to jimmydor.com.
It's the Jimmy Dore Show.
Okay, so you see this, and a lot of people are starting to believe this cartoon, just so you know.
And it's getting to the point where it's hard not to believe this cartoon.
And why do I say this?
Well, this is from CBS News.
Snipers were stationed inside the building as the Trump shooter climbed to the roof.
What?
They had snipers, three snipers, not stationed on the roof, but they were inside the building.
What were they going to snipe if someone broke into the building?
Were they shooting mice?
What the?
They had three snipers inside.
Are these Uvalde snipers?
Is that where these cops come from?
This is real.
I'm not making that up.
I wouldn't find these.
I wouldn't trust these snipers to find Waldo.
And by the way, whatever they, here's my little tip to these snipers.
Whatever they're paying you or paid you to play act this little scenario out, it's not going to be worth it for you in the long run.
You know what they do to people once they don't need them anymore?
Okay?
Look what they did to Oswald, Jack Ruby.
Just take a look.
If I were these snipers, I would make statements immediately that I'm not suicidal.
Here, this is real.
This is another tweet from CBS News.
One of the snipers inside the building that the shooter climbed on, one of the snipers inside saw the attempted assassin outside, looking up at the roof, observing the building, and disappearing.
When you say disappear, you mean like David Blaine, David Copperfield kind of disappear.
You mean that kind of disappear?
You mean like he went like this and then he was gone?
Or you just stopped looking.
You couldn't see him anymore.
He disappeared.
What?
Anything is possible if you believe in magic.
Was this guy Chris Angel mind freak disappeared?
What do you mean disappeared?
This is real.
Watch this.
Here's the story.
There were three snipers stationed inside the building the shooter used during Saturday shooting.
The operations plan had them stationed inside the building, not on top of it, inside the building, looking out windows towards the Trump rally.
Why inside the building?
Why would you ever be inside the building?
Why wouldn't you be outside the building looking at the Trump rally?
Why would you be inside the building?
Okay, so it makes no sense.
This doesn't make any sense.
Unless this was some kind of nefarious plan.
They had them inside the building looking out the windows.
The information about three snipers being inside the building was first reported by Beaver County County.com.
Wow, that's quite a name.
One of the snipers inside saw Thomas Matthew Crooks outside and looking up at the roof, observing the building and then disappearing.
Again, what kind of, what kind of disappearing.
When you say disappear, it means like you're looking at him and then he vanishes in the thin air.
That's disappear means.
You mean then he walked out of your line of sight.
That's much different than disappearing.
No, I was walking at him.
All of a sudden he just disappeared in the thin air.
That's disappearing.
I saw the guy and then he walked away and I couldn't see him no more.
And so, you know, that was that.
I didn't jump through the window and go get him.
I wonder what they did do.
What did they do?
Well, Crooks came back.
So the guy disappears, according to them.
So they lose sight of him.
They do nothing.
They don't jump through the window and go get him.
They don't run outside the building.
Crooks came back, sat down, and looked at his phone.
At that point, one of the snipers took a picture of him.
Well, you certainly want to put that in the scrapbook, right?
You know what?
I don't want to miss this.
This is a guy who's about to shoot Trump.
Let's get a picture of him.
Let's not open the window and point our guns at him and tell him to get down.
Let's not do that.
Let's take a picture of him.
This is honestly guy.
If it wasn't written by CBS News, I wouldn't believe this happened.
There's nothing that Alex Jones ever said that it could come close to being as crazy as this.
Or me, by the way.
Reality is always stranger than fiction.
So they take a picture of him.
They don't open the window, point their Guns at him and tell him to get down.
They just take a picture of him.
What happens next?
Well, Crooks then took out a rangefinder.
And so then the sniper radioed to the command post.
Again, the sniper didn't open the fucking window and point his sniper rifle at Crooks.
Crooks disappeared again.
They disappeared again.
No, you mean he got up and walked away again without the sniper doing a fucking thing.
He then came back a third time with a backpack.
So these guys have seen this guy now three times.
They seen him with a scope.
And now they see him with a backpack and a scope.
And what do they do?
Nothing.
They don't do anything.
They don't do anything.
They don't do anything.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The snipers called in with information that he had a backpack and said he was walking towards the back of the building.
Why wouldn't you open the window?
Why wouldn't you break the window?
You just let this guy with a scope and a backpack walk around.
You got three snipers inside the building.
Are you only there to snipe people if they're inside the building?
Officers believe that Crooks might have used an air conditioning unit to get on top of the roof.
There was also a ladder that I'm sure wasn't just pre-planned and laid there for him.
I'm sure.
That would be crazy conspiratorial think.
So he was there, but then he disappeared.
So everything's okay.
Oh, he's disappeared.
There's no threat.
The guy disappeared.
Probably just some small game hunter who wants to catch a pigeon for dinner.
By the time other officers came for backup, why did you need backup?
Why did the three snipers inside the building not take matters into their own hands?
They had to wait for backup.
By the time the officers came for backup, he had climbed on top of the building.
Oh, chagrin.
We had to wait for backup.
Why did you have to wait for backup?
You have a rifle.
Chagrin.
He made it onto the roof.
This is mental.
So by the time the officers came for backup, he had climbed on top of the building and was positioned above and behind the snipers inside the building.
I don't know what that means behind the snipers inside the building.
That doesn't make any sense.
Two other officers who heard...
The snipers stayed inside the building.
They were afraid.
They're like, Uvaldi cops.
Hey, there's a 20-year-old out there with a backpack and a rifle.
I'm staying inside.
You guys call some other cops.
Two other officers who heard the snipers call tried to get onto the roof.
State police started rushing to this.
I'm going to show you a video of them rushing to the scene in a second.
State police started rushing to the scene, but by that time, a Secret Service sniper had already killed Crooks.
So they just let this guy walk into an area that they're supposed to have completely cordoned off.
Completely.
There's just some guy with a backpack, a rifle, and a scope just walking around, and nobody does anything.
Does that sound believable to you?
Because it doesn't sound believable to me.
So was this one of those situations where they thought someone was pulling a joke on him?
And so they ignored it?
Like, oh, they would, look.
Look, there's a guy out there with a scope.
Okay, I bet it's a sniper.
Oh, look, he disappeared for the third time.
I'm not, I ain't falling for this one.
I'm not, I'm not.
Let's watch.
So here is CBS News interviewing the head of Secret Service and listen to this bullshit.
Investigators now trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down.
I'm going to guess it wasn't because a 20-year-old kid got on top of the roof with a rifle.
They're trying to figure out if it, hey, do you think we've properly locked it down?
Hey, do you think that door on that Alaskan Airlines jet was properly bolted?
We're going to try to figure that out.
Coming up seemingly unimpeded.
Let's start for this.
Investigators now trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down.
The shooter climbing up seemingly unimpeded, about 400 feet from the stage with a direct line of sight on the former president.
Should that roof have been secure, period?
That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point.
And so, you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.
And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.
From inside.
You're afraid somebody's going to break in and steal something?
You secured.
By the way, that's called not securing the building because someone was able to climb on top of the roof and shoot the president.
We secured the building.
I don't think you know what the word secured means.
Secured would means you have someone on The outside of the building patrolling the building.
Having three numskulls from Uvalde inside doing nothing is the opposite of securing the building.
You know, also to point out that she first came out and said that it wasn't under their jurisdiction.
Yeah, first she said it was.
That's right.
And now she's saying that it was because it was a slope.
That's suspicious.
Wait, you want to see what the slope looks like?
Whoa.
Look at that slope.
This guy says, I'm surprised that law enforcement aren't wearing safety harnesses due to the extreme pitch of this roof.
That's the slope.
It wouldn't have been safe to have these guys up there on that slope.
How are they doing it now?
Do they have glue on their shoes?
And even after he was shot, he didn't fall off from the fence.
Is anybody supposed to believe this?
Does anybody believe this Secret Service lady?
Does anybody?
Because now you have to believe this was a setup.
You have to.
For her to say, yeah, we thought about it, and it's too much of a slope.
So we thought we'd put three snipers inside of a building.
They see the guy three times.
They do nothing.
They wait for backup.
I see nothing.
Let's listen to the rest of this.
The officials are trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down.
The shooter climbing up seemingly unimpeded, about 400 feet from the stage with a direct line of sight on the former president.
Should that roof have been secure, period?
That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point.
And so, you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up.
We wouldn't want to put, we wouldn't have anybody risk their lives to save the president.
By the way, that's completely bullshit.
A sloped roof.
And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.
Cheeto says the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter of the rally where Trump was.
The local police were responsible for the outer perimeter where the gunman was located.
So that's the latest story.
Well, guess what?
The sheriff says the building used by shooter wasn't our responsibility.
A Pennsylvania sheriff said his agency wasn't responsible for protecting or securing the building that the shooter used to attack Saturday's rally.
So I'm going to guess the Secret Service lady is lying and is a saboteur of our country.
Is that too much to say?
That's my guess.
CBS Pittsburgh station KDKA TV reporter Andy Sheehan asked Butler County Sheriff's Michael Sloop if there was enough communication from the Secret Service about securing that building.
I can't speak to that.
Why would you?
Why would the sheriff be able to speak to that?
You know, as far as the building goes, I don't know because it wasn't our responsibility.
But they did have a very good briefing, Sloop told KDKA TV.
And like I said earlier, somewhere along the line, you have a briefing and you identify, adapt, and overcome.
And there are a lot of well-trained police officers that totally have the ability to do that.
So all these well-trained police officers, three snipers inside the building, see him three times, do absolutely nothing.
How is that guy allowed to get in there?
How is that area not cordoned off?
Well, that's the whole thing.
And how when the sniper, at the very least, see a guy with a scope and a backpack disappear, he doesn't go code red, get the president off the stage, lock it down, till we find this guy.
They don't do that.
Sloop also said his agency wasn't asked to sweep that building.
No, the sheriff's office was not asked to do that.
And I don't know whose responsibility that would have been if that was in their plan.
Uh...
Thank you.
Boy, these guys really know how to do their job, I'll tell you that.
Here's a...
Here's a local official describes police conference.
So they did.
So there were two cops.
So the cops inside the building didn't do anything.
The snipers, they didn't do anything.
They didn't do anything.
So they called for backup instead of just pointing their rifle through the window and telling the guy to get down.
They didn't do anything.
They called for backup.
So then a bunch of, you want to see the bunch of Keystone cops?
Here's the backup.
Watch this.
Watch this.
There's a fence, and none of these cops know how to get over or through this fence.
They just stand there.
They're just standing there.
What's that motherfucker?
And then they get a car to kind of try to break the fence open.
Look at them all standing there.
These are the highly trained cops.
And nobody's helping somebody get up and fence.
And by the way, what they should have done, you don't, right at the gate is where it's the most reinforced.
What you're supposed to do, you go take one of those poles out and just anyway, but these are the cops.
They called for back.
They couldn't.
How did that guy get in there?
How did the shooter get through this fence?
If you got 40 cops sitting around with their thumb up their ass, waiting for another guy to drive through the fence with his car, and he can't even do that.
Like, why wouldn't you have the guy floor it?
Now they bring this guy over with some kind of cutter thing.
And nobody's still getting over the fence.
Nobody's still getting over the fence.
Now they're trying to climb underneath it.
Look at this.
and then they come to another fence they're like oh what do we do over here oh single file everybody single file no no no pushing No pushing.
Single file.
This is real.
This is real.
These are the people that they had protecting the policeman.
But president.
So here's the local official.
Here's what he has to say.
They did in fact see an individual on the roof with a weapon.
He saw the shooter.
I like how he says they did, in fact, see an individual.
You mean you saw the shooter?
At least the news person knows to say that.
You mean they saw the shooter?
An individual.
So he admits, yeah, they saw the shooter.
And what'd they do?
They did in fact see an individual on the roof with a weapon.
He saw the shooter.
He did.
Your officers are on patrol.
They hear that there is a suspicious person on the rooftop.
What did your officers do?
So our officers in the area started to converge on the building.
My understanding is they did a full so nothing.
They didn't do anything.
They did a full perimeter.
Perimeter walk of the building.
Weren't able to see up on the roof.
They weren't able to see up on the roof.
Well, somehow that kid, that 20-year-old shooter, was able to get up on the roof.
Why weren't the cops?
There was a ladder there.
Two of the officers went to what appeared to be the lowest point from ground to roof.
One of the officers actually boosted.
Everybody there saw the guy on the roof.
I showed you the video in other videos.
Every people, regular people just standing there said, hey, there's a guy in the roof.
Everybody saw the guy, except the cops.
Everybody there saw the guy on the roof for at least three minutes, except the cops.
Oh, we couldn't see him.
We couldn't, you know, we couldn't see on the roof.
Everybody else could.
The second officer up high enough for him to grab hold of the roof.
When he was able to pull his head up over the roof, he did, in fact, see an individual on the roof with a weapon.
He saw the shooter.
He did.
And what did the shooter do?
Turned towards him, had the barrel of his weapon pointed at the officer.
At that point, the officer's hanging on to the side of the roof.
Yes.
Unable to pull a gun out.
Unable to defend himself.
Unable to reach his radio.
Any of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Strictly defensive movement for him to lower his head, duck, lost his own grip, right?
Fell approximately eight feet to the ground.
That's a steep drop.
It's a good drop.
Yes.
Did he get hurt?
He did.
In that moment, did they realize there's a threat right now to the former president?
They did.
So both the boosting officer and the officer that fell were both on the radio, indicating that there was an individual on the roof that did, in fact, have a weapon.
Who did they radio?
So there was a blanket tactical channel.
Everyone heard it.
Everyone who was on that tactical channel heard.
So everybody knows that there's a guy with a rifle on the roof, 150 yards away from the president.
Everybody knows.
Everybody hears.
So those snipers that actually shot, they heard that too.
So all the Secret Service heard, nobody says, Cold Brad, get the president down.
Nobody.
Yes.
How much time between that radio communication and the gun being fired at the former president?
That I don't.
I don't have that.
Oh, I don't know.
I don't have that information.
Oh.
Well, you know, that crucial piece of information.
Ah, don't know.
You know, the thing that most everybody wants to know?
Yeah.
Those guys, they're not qualified to be cops in the village people.
This is real.
This is all happening.
And everyone's acting like it's normal.
Look at these idiots.
Look at these idiots.
They were chasing somebody with a bunch of drugs.
They'd all be over that fence.
All they have to do is give somebody a hand.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's got a high fence.
It doesn't seem urgent.
You don't like you either at all.
First of all, why wouldn't the guy keep driving?
Why is he just nudging the fence?
We should all stand close.
Why wouldn't he just drive over the fence?
Look at them all just standing there.
This is ridiculous.
You see that guy scary as a helmet on?
This is pathetic.
How can I get through that one?
Yeah, so just to recap.
Three snipers inside that building saw the guy three different times, did absolutely nothing.
They didn't have a sniper on top because the head of the Secret Service said it was too much of a slope.
It was too much of a slope.
That was too much of a slope.
Wouldn't be, it'd be too dangerous for a policeman to be up there.
Too much of a slope.
And the Secret Service says it was up to local police to secure that building, and the local police say it wasn't.
Okay.
Look at the rifles that they're holding.
I know.
The automatic weapons that they have.
That they want to gear and everything like that, and they couldn't get over a fence.
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Joe, we have a special guest with us, the author of this book, Matt Kennard.
It's called The Racket.
He is a co-founder and chief investigator at Declassified UK, a news outlet investigating British foreign policy.
He was a fellow and then director at the Center for Investigative Journalism in London.
His books include a regular army, silent coup, how corporations overthrew democracy, and the newly released second edition of The Racket, A Rogue Reporter versus the American Empire.
Welcome to the show, Matt Kinnard.
Welcome back.
Thanks for having me back.
Well, I just want to, here's a quote about your book from Julian Assange.
The racket is an engaging insider's account of how the United States has spent the past 70 years constructing an intricate web of economic control across the globe.
Let me just read a little bit from the now.
I have to admit, I haven't read the book yet, but I have read the foreword and the introduction, and I am going to read this book.
So I'm going to start tonight.
It is fascinating.
So let me just, this is, it says the public, this is Chris Hedges wrote the foreword.
He says, the public perception of the American Empire, at least to those within the United States who have never seen the empire dominate and exploit the wretched of the earth, is radically different from reality.
These manufactured illusions, ones Joseph Conrad wrote so precisely about, posit that the empire is a force for good.
The empire, we are told, fosters democracy and liberty.
It spreads the benefits of Western civilization.
These are deceptions repeated at nauseum by a compliant media and mouthed by politicians, academics, and the powerful, but they are lies.
As all of us who have spent years reporting overseas understand, in the late stage of empire, which we're in, the image sold to a gullible public begins to entrance the Mandarins of Empire.
They make decisions based not on reality, but on their distorted vision of reality, one colored by their own propaganda.
Matt refers to this as the racket.
Blinded by hubris and power, they come to believe their deceptions propelling the empire towards collective suicide.
They retreat into a fantasy where hard and unpleasant facts are no longer intrude.
They replace diplomacy, multilateralism, and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war.
They become the pureblind architects of their own destruction.
So we're seeing this happen, play out with everywhere, from Libya to Iraq to right now, Ukraine.
And I'll finish with this.
The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation.
It revels in the despicable beauty of the U.S. military prowess.
It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media.
It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.
The mantra of the militarized state is national security.
If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or a threat of force.
The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil.
And boy, we all, and people who watch this show know exactly that that's true.
We've been living through this, as we reported, starting with the Iraq war, Libya, Ukraine, Syria.
And so, Matt, tell me about what would you, what did you want to get across in this book?
Well, you know, the name of the book, The Racket, it comes from a speech given by Major General Smedley Butler, who was who died the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
And he was a guy who signed up for the Marines in 1898 for the Spanish-American War when he was 16.
And he fought in all, and that's seen as the moment when America became an overseas empire.
There's arguments about it because you could say America has always been an empire because it's always been expanding from the moment it was founded.
But he fought in all the wars of the period in Central America when there were sort of five interventions in Honduras, just one example from 1910 to 1920, invasion of Haiti in 1915.
He fought in China.
And then at some stage, he came to a realization that he'd been fighting for a lie.
He'd been told that he was fighting for national security reasons to protect America.
But he actually says, I realized I wasn't fighting for them.
I was fighting for Brown Brothers Bank in New York.
And he said, what I was was a high-class muscle man for big business.
Al Capone could only operate in four districts.
I operated on four continents.
My racket operated on four continents.
So that's, and he uses the term the racket.
And that's kind of what I wanted to get across: is that the American Empire is a vicious and exploitative system that sucks resources and wealth from around the world in the interests of American corporate power.
And we're told all these illusions that Chris Hedges alludes to are just all fakes to bring the population along with them.
The opium of the people is telling them, oh, we're all about freedom and democracy and human rights when in fact it's all decisions are made basically in the interests of U.S. corporate power.
And the other thing is that most of this book was reported when I was at the Financial Times.
So I was in the belly of the beast twice because I was working at the Financial Times in Washington.
And I saw that you basically couldn't write anything about this at all in the mainstream media.
You can't.
It's impossible.
So you have the most powerful empire in the history of the world in terms of the military prowess.
It's the governing dynamic that governs international affairs, and yet you can't mention it in the mainstream media.
You can't.
You can't get a job if you want to write about this in a rational way.
You can talk about Chinese imperialism or Russian imperialism, but you can't talk about American imperialism.
So we've got this whole silent system that governs the world in an extremely nefarious way that can't be mentioned.
So the book goes along that.
And as Chris says, the system is collapsing now.
I mean, the American Empire was at its height after the Second World War, and it's kind of been in decline ever since, but the decline has accelerated massively now and it's lashing out because it's also got a problem in that It's economically struggling, but it has got this incredible military power.
So it has a comparative advantage.
And I think going forward, it will start using that much more because they want to use their comparative advantage to.
I think the next war is going to be on China.
So here's that famous quote that you alluded to from Smedley Butler.
War is a racket.
It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
It is the only one international in scope.
It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
So, and it's only a handful of people who really know what these wars are about.
So, when you say that you're not allowed to report on the real cause of the war, it's like we turn on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC.
We pick up the New York Times and Washington Post, and they'll never tell you the truth about the Ukraine war for sure.
They always start this, they start the story in the third act, which is when Putin invaded Ukraine.
That's when they start the story.
They never tell you that the United States overthrew their democratically elected government in 2014, installed a puppet because that government didn't want to be in an economic alliance with Europe.
They wanted to be an economic alliance with Putin and Russia because they offered them a better deal than the IMF was offering them.
And so, we were like, well, we're not going to allow that.
So, we overthrew them.
And they never tell you that that government started shelling the Russian-speaking people in the eastern part of Ukraine called the Donbass, who didn't want to go along with that coup government.
And then there were peace agreements that who broke Ukraine broke.
And so, this is all, they never tell you any of this in the press.
So, you're saying that when you worked for the press, you weren't allowed to sell.
So, how did they tell you you're not allowed to report the truth about war?
It's a good question because it doesn't work like that.
It works like that in an authoritarian dictatorial system, which we don't have.
But thought control is much more sophisticated in societies like we live in.
So, it happens in a much more insidious way.
You basically just become culturalized to the system and you start slowly thinking like everyone else.
And if you don't, you'll be out, which is what happened to me.
And so, so I kind of started just taking a piss-ready because I knew I wasn't going to stay there and I knew I'd never had this access again.
So, I started testing the system, the propaganda system.
So, for example, a good simple example is: for some reason, after you've worked long enough in these places, you'll write Iran-backed militant group for Hezbollah, but you won't write US-backed Wahhabi dictatorship for Saudi Arabia.
Why?
They're both true.
So, I started putting in those prefixes that you're not allowed to put in or just get sort of brainwashed out of your head.
And they would actually be taken out.
They'd be excised if you kept them in there.
And if you talk to most journalists on the inside, they're not saying they don't think that they're, they don't think that they're part of a propaganda system.
They think they can write what they want.
But I would say to them, they can write what they want because the proprietors like what they write.
And if you start writing something different, you'll be out the door, which is what happened to me.
And as you say, the whole system operates on different dynamics than we're told.
We're told they operate on ideals.
And this has been at the heart of American myths from time immemorial.
And same with Britain.
No country goes abroad and says, We want to take your resources and we don't care how many people we kill to do it.
They always say, they always dress it up in nice theories about bringing wonderful benefits to the population.
It's all rubbish.
And actually, I saw it on the inside because I was at the FT in Washington in Obama's second term.
So I was going into the White House and interviewing people all over Washington.
Then I went to Wall Street.
And, you know, some people on the inside, they talk openly in ways that you wouldn't expect.
I remember going to one investment bank and we were talking about the war in Iraq.
And they were like, well, obviously, we went into Iraq to get 20,000 barrels of oil a day.
And they thought it was funny that I thought I would think any different.
So there are people on the inside that don't imbibe these theories, which is what Chris Hedges was talking about, about how in the late stage of empire, the people in Washington start to believe their own propaganda and then they start making irrational decisions because they're basing it on irrational theories.
But it's a mixed bag.
Some of them, some people are true believers.
And you know what?
I kind of respect the real politic people more because the ones that really annoy me are the liberals, like the real politic people who say, look, we go around the world and we want to ransack countries.
That's what we do.
Fine.
At least you're honest.
I mean, I don't agree with it, but at least you're honest.
It's the liberals who say, oh, no, we have this wonderful system that operates on these democratic principles and human rights.
And then a bad person like Donald Trump comes and messes it all up.
Donald Trump hasn't messed anything up.
He's just the more exaggerated form of what they do as well.
But that's the point: this is a permanent government.
This is a permanent war economy and it can't change.
You can't vote against it.
The closest thing you can vote against it, unfortunately, is probably Donald Trump.
But then Donald Trump talks to talk.
But when he was in power, who did he put in his cabinet?
He put in people like Mike Pompeo, Elliot Abrams, all the worst neocon warmongers there are in Washington.
So you can't effectively vote against it.
And that is why the system is crumbling, because people are desperate to elect someone who can actually take on the system that has been destroying them for now 40 years.
I think in real terms, the average American worker has not had any wage progression at all in 40 years.
And so they're looking around and they're thinking, well, who can I vote for?
They can't vote for anyone who's going to take it on.
And then Donald Trump talks in these terms, which are anti-establishments.
So he gets popular and the liberals can't handle it.
So that's why it's all crumbling.
The system is destroying itself.
So Aaron Matte has said on this show, he makes the case that the reason why it's, because my whole life, the establishment loved Donald Trump, right?
They give him his own television show on network TV for over 10 years.
They gave him Emmy nominations.
They loved him.
He was on every late night talk show on the cover of every magazine.
He golfed with the Clintons.
They all went to each other's weddings and their kids are best friends.
And all of a sudden he became president.
They hated him.
And Aaron Mate makes the case that it's because he puts a bad face on empire and that it's harder to sell these wars with a guy like him.
In fact, they asked Donald Trump, why were you leaving troops in Syria?
And he said, for the oil.
He just said it.
And that's called it.
Go ahead.
I said, you're not allowed to do that.
That's the thing.
He's uncouth.
He hasn't been through all the training schools in the State Department that you're meant to go through to put a nice white grin on the empire.
And that's why he's dangerous for them, because that truth is they need to protect it more than anything, because the empire can only operate because of the myths that we're talking about.
If people understood how the system really works, they'd revolt the next day.
If the media covered it, they'd have to close the whole thing down within a week, which is why they let the free press operate as it does.
Because as soon as how the media operates is, and this beautiful way of propagandizing the public, they do do the odd good scandal, good scandalous story and celebrate themselves.
But it's all frost stories.
It's all stuff on the top of the system.
If you start going into the system and really revealing how it works, nuts and bolts, you end up where Julian Assange was, which is in Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison.
And that's kind of why they allow the free press to operate, because there's a famous quote from a politician here called Tony Benn who said, if voting changed anything, then make it illegal.
And it's the same with the free press.
If the New York Times actually did journalism, which threatened the system, they shut it down tomorrow.
They're allowed to operate because they give the facade of democracy and freedom, but they don't ever tamper with the system itself.
I often say that the American people are the most propagandized people in the world and they don't know it.
Like, so in China, they know they're getting propagandized.
In the old Soviet Union, they knew it was propaganda, but that's the big difference here in the United States.
People actually think they're getting the news when they turn on their TV or pick up the newspaper.
That's the most effective form of propaganda, right?
100%.
And also the two-party system operates in the same way.
It's a beautiful system because the oligarchy controls both parties.
And yet people go out and vote and think they're voting against they can vote for one thing or the other when in fact they're voting for the same thing.
So it gives the illusion of democracy.
But actually you're just solidifying and enforcing an oligarchy.
And that's why the two-party system is so precious to the establishment in the U.S. And also here in Britain, you sit with the Labour Party now.
We just changed governments and we're basically just doing the same thing.
There's a permanent policy from Whitehall, which is where all the government departments was, which is impervious to a changing government.
It doesn't matter.
And also, that's why they really, really don't want proportional representation here, because the breakup of the two-party system, of course, it could benefit the right as well as the left, is a real problem for permanent government.
So the whole system, I mean, it's all an illusion, isn't it?
Democracy is an illusion.
We saw what happened.
You mentioned the quote that Julian Assange made about the book.
He's like the perfect example.
He stress-tested democracy and he stress-tested the free press and it failed.
He had five years of his life taken out and put in Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison, which is called Britain's Guantanamo.
Before that, he was seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy.
What had he done?
He published truthful information which showed how the US Empire worked on a scale that had never been done before.
He should have been celebrated by anyone who believes in democracy, by anyone who wants to understand how the powers that be operate and what they do in our name.
But it was the opposite.
He was hammered by the media itself because he exposed not just the US Empire, exposed them because that's what they're meant to do.
And they can get away with it if they don't have a Julian Assange showing them up.
But as soon as he did, they turned on him and became the biggest vehicles for the information war, which was fought against him by the CIA and other dark interests.
So yeah, I mean, I actually think the whole system is breaking apart as well, because Donald Trump, again, is a sign that it's breaking apart.
Because as you say, he's not going to tamper with the system, but he's not what they want.
He's not the face that they want.
They want some generic liberal Harvard graduate who's going to say the right things and make people think that America is a force for good.
And then they can carry on doing all the nefarious stuff they do in the background.
It's exactly the same here.
We had it with Jeremy Corbyn.
Jeremy Corbyn was something different on the left and he was genuinely something different.
He really would have tampered with the system.
And he was destroyed by the establishment and the media and the military and the intelligence services.
And what was really interesting about Jeremy Corbyn was that he again showed up what the two-party system is about because the main people that persecuted him and destroyed his chances of becoming prime minister were the Labour Party itself because the Labour Party itself is set up to absorb and neutralize the left.
And when actually a real left had a chance of becoming prime minister on a Labour ticket, they destroyed him.
And he would have been prime minister if it wasn't for that.
So it's interesting.
But as I say, the fact that Jeremy Corbyn got to where he did here, the fact that Donald Trump's rising against the deep state in the United States is a sign.
I mean, I don't, Donald Trump's policies are awful, but it's definitely not.
He's definitely not Washington's favorite, is he?
So it's definitely not going the way they want.
And we're probably going to see a real breakdown in a lot of in a lot of our political system.
And I also think that a lot of the people that operate in the shadows to guide our political systems are going to have to come out of the shadows because they can't stay there anymore.
And they did it with Jeremy Corbyn.
You had intelligence officials from MI5 and MI6 briefing against him in the media, stuff they really don't want to have to do.
But they had to do it because the situation got so critical.
So why do you think Jeremy Corbyn just didn't start his own party?
We said the same thing about Bernie Sanders here in the United States when it was obvious that he was the more popular candidate and they had to rig a primary to Get rid of him.
And he could have beat Donald Trump.
And a lot of people who would have voted for him ended up voting for Donald Trump because they wanted to vote for an outsider.
My theory was that the FBI got to him and they threatened him with exactly what they're doing to Donald Trump now, prosecuting him, impeaching all the kind of lawfare that they use against Donald Trump.
They've threatened to use against Bernie Sanders, and he knows it.
And so he just, he's, you know, a bigger coward than Donald Trump.
So he just tucked his tail and folded back into the establishment pro-war anti-worker party.
And so answer that.
That's my first question.
Why didn't Jeremy Corbyn just start a new party?
Yeah, firstly, I should say there's a massive difference between Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders because I know they're often bracketed together, but Jeremy Corbyn is a genuine anti-imperialist.
He's been like a veteran of the anti-imperial movement here in Britain for decades and decades.
Whereas Bernie signed up to the U.S. Imperial Project, effectively.
Yeah, he's been on board with the war machine for his entire career.
Yeah, exactly.
He has.
And Corbyn isn't.
And Corbyn was kind of, there's hundreds, maybe over 500 parliamentarians in the UK.
I think that he was the biggest nightmare for the establishment here and in the United States, Jeremy Corbyn.
So I don't know how that happened.
And actually, funnily enough, Mike Pompeo, when he was Secretary of State in 2019, six months before the UK election, came to London and was recorded saying privately, we will do our level best.
This is the United States government to stop Jeremy Corbyn getting elected.
So clear interference in our political system, but we didn't get any real media outrage over that.
Whereas all these confected scandals about Russian influence were everywhere.
But anyway, to answer your question about Corbyn, it's a good question.
I actually, I think he maybe should have, but he's also a labor man.
You know, he's been in the party since I think he was 15.
And he has got some, he believes in the parliamentary system.
I don't share that belief, but he does.
So I think that he's got a he's got a history and a perspective, which means that it wasn't ever going to happen.
And there is a new left party here called the Workers' Party.
And there's also the Greens who got four or five seats in the election.
And the Greens are pretty good on most stuff.
They're not as good as the Greens in the United States, actually.
Jill Stein is much more radical.
Unfortunately, she's compromised.
But go ahead.
Is she tell me?
Yes, it's not.
I don't want to punch down on them, but they're completely infiltrated by the intelligence community.
And that was very clear in the last election.
And so go, but I mean, now they're pretending they can't even get on the ballot in New York.
They couldn't get on the ballot.
Are you kidding me?
The LaRouche party got on the ballot in New York.
Anyway, so they're a complete, they're a joke at best, and they're completely compromised and infiltrated at worst.
But I mean, she picked this guy, Peter Dow, to run the Green Party presidential candidates.
Peter Dow came directly from the Clinton Foundation.
Directly.
I mean, he was their hitman in 2016 against Bernie Sanders.
And so it was obvious that they were compromised.
I mean, in 2020, their presidential candidate was out Russia gating.
So that's, I mean, he was repeating CIA talking point.
So it's just obvious that they're there and they've never grown their party on purpose.
So that's, I've been told by people inside there that you have this system to make sure the party doesn't grow.
And so it's obvious that they're an op now, right?
So they're there to make people feel like they're doing something, but they're not.
And just like I tell people, when you have people like Bernie Sanders or AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Jamal Bowman inside the Democratic Party get elected as progressives who are going to fight, that's actually worse because what it does is it gives people the false hope that there is somebody inside government actually fighting for you and they're not.
That one of the parties is actually going to be on your side and they're not.
And so what it really takes is for people to give up on the system and start some kind of a real revolution.
Now, I'm not smart enough to know how that happens, but I think we had a kind of a template for it with the COVID and the truckers in Canada.
I don't know if you're familiar with that story, but they shut it down.
They shut down capitalism.
And that's why they called them Nazis and white supremacists and misogynists and said they were violent.
All that stuff was completely made up because they were right and they were against authoritarianism, which is exactly what that COVID policy was.
And so if we could get something like that, if the truckers could come together with the farmers, farmers are doing all kinds of protests in Europe.
So farmers, truckers, and workers of all stripes could organize along class lines, which is why all these policies of today, like all the LGBTQ issues, meaning around the trans issues, those are there meant to divide us and keep us fighting over things that aren't important, like bathroom spaces and things like that.
Not that they aren't important, but they're certainly divisive and they keep us blaming each other.
They report every story in a way that makes us blame our neighbor instead of blaming the oligarchs that actually run everything, right?
And they're using climate change to do the exact same thing.
They're using the guise of fighting climate change to keep us fighting each other and divided and to implement authoritarian policies.
Meanwhile, they're never going to ban private jet travel, which is why you know all their solutions are garbage.
But anyway, I forget what my question was.
Do you remember what it was?
I don't think you had one.
Okay.
I don't think I did either.
I think Bartz did it, whatever it was.
But so what do you, so what do you think has that?
Mike, I guess my question is, what do you think needs to happen?
Well, to be honest with you, the book's hopeful because I don't know about the U.S. internally.
I think most of the U.S. problems are internal, but externally, the empire is crumbling.
And there have been loads of successes in fighting back against the imperial control.
A good example is Latin America, right?
If you look at Colombia is an amazing example, right?
Colombia has been what's they called it the Israel of Latin America for its whole history, really.
It's like Being the outpost of the United States.
And they elected Gustavo Petro, who is a left-wing, he was a former guerrilla to the presidency.
And he's done lots of progressive policies.
And the U.S. hasn't been able to destroy him.
You had Amlo Obrador in Mexico, who just left office and his anointed successor won a landslide.
And the U.S. don't like either of those leaders.
You have other people in Latin America, you had the Bolivians who reversed a CIA coup into 2019 and restored democracy and restored the party that was turfed out originally.
So these are all things.
I think the Bolivia example is the first time I know of where a CIA coup has been reversed the year after and democracy restored.
So the American empire is crumbling.
And part of that is to do with China because the way that the empire, after the fall of the Cold War, US power, capitalism was rampant.
There was no check on this power.
There was no check, and there was no other poll for independent forces to organize around.
So if you look at Venezuela, for example, well, you had the Zapatistas in 1994, but the 90s were a pretty bleak time for progressive forces around the world or anti-imperial forces.
In 1999, Hugo Chavez got elected in Venezuela, and that developed into a whole host of governments in Latin America which came up, which were stepping on the toes of the U.S. Empire.
And part of the reason the U.S. didn't manage to destroy them all, they tried.
There was a coup in 2002, which was a U.S. coup, which was then by Bush, but was then reversed.
Part of the reason they couldn't dampen down on that democratic uprising in Latin America was because of the war on terror.
They were bogged down in the Middle East.
But also another reason was the rise of China, because now there's another poll for these governments to organize around.
If you're getting attacked by the US empire, you need some infrastructure to help you survive, whether that be, I don't know, diplomatic intelligence or military support, whatever it is.
I mean, look at the Cuban Revolution wouldn't have survived if the Soviet Union hadn't been around.
And now we have that.
China's huge, like its economy is going to take over the United States in not very long.
And people can, and it's got enough power now that it's a way of, it's a multipolar world.
And it gives independent forces a chance.
They can play in that gray area between both superpowers.
They can't just be taken out by the U.S. straight away now.
So I think that is hopeful.
In terms of what you've talked about internally in the US, and actually there's four sections in the book, and one section is all about poverty and inequality in the United States, because I do think that the takeoff of the US Empire and the neoliberalism of the 70s onwards has been accompanied by an attack on the poor at home as well.
Because when the Mandarins of Empire have to defend Empire, which is not very often because you're not allowed to mention it, but if they ever do, they say, well, this is why we're such a prosperous nation and it goes back to the people of the United States.
That's a lie.
All the wealth and resources which are sucked out of the rest of the world by the US government and the US military and U.S. corporations go to a tiny little elite in the United States.
And that's how it's always been.
Imperial, the empire doesn't benefit the poorest.
And in fact, the poorest have got much poorer since the 70s, even in real terms.
And educational standards have collapsed.
Privatization of everything.
Nothing works anymore.
Huge opioid crisis.
Like these are all products of a rampant imperial elite, which doesn't give a shit about their people.
They give a shit about ransacking the world for their own benefit.
Well, your message is definitely 100% sympathetic with the message of this show.
And so I look forward to reading the second edition, The Racket by Matt Kennard.
It's got a great endorsement from Chris Hedges, from Julian Assange, lots of other people.
It's been great talking with you.
You know what?
I'm going to bring you back on if you come back on after I finish reading the book.
I just read the beginning and it's amazing.
So anyway, Matt, I appreciate you coming on.
Everybody go out and get the book, The Racket, and we'll have you back out and we'll talk about it.
Take care.
I appreciate it.
Okay.
Thank you.
This is breaking news that comes up on my phone.
It says Biden, this is from AOL.
Biden tests positive for COVID-19 after saying he might leave the race if I had some medical condition that emerged.
So this is his way to quit the race.
That's why I bet this is.
If you had a medical condition emerge.
You think they're going to intubate him?
You mean like dementia and Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia?
You mean like that?
No, no, COVID.
COVID, which now presents as a cold.
I think this is his way out.
So Joe Biden, after saying if a medical condition emerged, that he would drop out of the race, now claims he has COVID.
I wonder if he's going to be intubated.
Wonder if they're going to give him Remdemisvir.
They should hurry up and give him some Remdemisvir.
Oh, I hope Fauci takes care of him.
It's not like Rem Demisvir is toxic and kills you.
So.
Okay, well, let's see what happens.
Maybe the Democratic Convention is going to be interesting after all.
We'll be on the inside.
We have, well, we have press passes.
We'll see how close they let us get.
We'll see what that means.
Yeah, I know.
We're going to see what that means.
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