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March 24, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:31
Pepe Escobar : LIVE - EXCLUSIVE : First Interview From Yemen!
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, March 24th, 2025.
Pepe Escobar will be with us in just a moment, live from Yemen.
You will be disappointed at what you're going to see, but maybe not surprised.
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Judge sent you.
Pepe Escobar, my dear friend, where are you?
Well, I am in Sanaa, capital of Yemen.
And I even got a little bit of Sanaa for you here.
This is part of the old city.
And what are you doing there, my friend?
It's an outstanding story.
In fact, personally, it's been one year that I've been trying to set up.
On trip to Yemen.
And we are a small group, in fact.
Part of a conference on Palestine, which started on Saturday morning.
It's going to end tomorrow, Tuesday.
Today, we had discussions with scholars, Yemeni scholars, who are drawing a sort of roadmap of what could happen next in terms of...
The whole Palestine tragedy and how can Yemen help?
And of course, in the middle of all that is for a pilgrim like me, I always dreamed of coming to Yemen.
And obviously this morning I went out walking by myself in the streets of Sanaa and then I was politely arrested by the security because I could not do this by myself, right?
And they freaked out completely.
The feeling of everyday life in the city.
And this city has outstanding aspects that you think you are in the pre-Middle Ages or the late 19th century, early 20th century.
But there is a feeling of normalcy.
This is a country at war, of course.
Today, this afternoon, late afternoon, we went to the site that was bombed by the Americans yesterday night.
We didn't hear the bombing, but we listened to the sirens.
And immediately afterwards, we knew that somewhere was hit.
And it was.
It was like two and a half kilometers from the hotel where we were staying, which is very close to the old city.
We're going to play the video.
We've taken the sound off because we can't hear your voice over all these.
Of course.
You can describe to us what we're seeing.
Chris, if you'd play that video.
Okay, thank you.
So where are you?
I am at the site of a residential building.
There were only civilians inside.
There was hit by American bombs yesterday night around nine o'clock.
And today, of course, we lobbied the security services to take us there.
And we explained to them that the world needs to see these images.
And if it's not for us, the small group of independents who are here, this will never...
Be on American mainstream media or Western mainstream media.
And I talked to the owner of this building.
It was a two-story building.
They were trying to refurbish it somewhat.
There were only civilians inside.
So far, the numbers that we have, four to five people died, and around 11, 12 were injured, and in the street outside.
So there's no military value whatsoever.
And you can see by yourselves, these are some of the hills behind Sana.
This is a residential area.
It's, I would say, a lower middle class proletariat residential area.
What does the United States gain?
By bombing a residential area of the capital of Yemen.
No, it's even worse because it points to a dysfunctionality and a level of absurdity.
That is absolutely extraordinary and compounded with the so-called leak that we had a few hours ago.
Everybody here in Sanaa, diplomats, the security services, the guys who are guarding our perimeter, everybody read it, where the narrative is that a leaked group chat showing how the Yemen war was planned.
And we have quotes like Vice President Vance saying, let's make sure our message is tight or the strongest reason to do this is to send a message, quote.
So this is completely absurd.
Can you imagine that these people were discussing launching a war on Signal, which is an encrypted...
Listen to what my former Fox colleague, who is now the Secretary of Defense, said, quote, Exactly.
Nobody knows who the Houthis are, close quote.
So we must advance the idea that, quote, Biden failed and Iran funded.
Do you believe that?
They're bombing people that the Secretary of Defense says nobody knows who the hell they are and they're going to blame it on Joe Biden and on Iran.
Judge, obviously he doesn't know who the Houthis are.
Or Ansarallah is, or what Yemen is, or anything about the history of Yemen, which is a people of warriors.
Today, for instance, we were visiting the house of Imam Yahya, which is a 3,000-year-old, then rebuilt, of course.
It's called the Stone House.
And, of course, he is the heir of 3,000 years of history.
And we're revisiting that.
This is an extremely sophisticated people who fought invaders, who fought until recently the Saudi-backed-by-America-UAE coalition, which was bombing parts of Yemen all the time, including the capital, Sana'a. Two days ago, we saw one of the bombings in 2017, where they bombed a civilian gathering and killed over 1,000 civilians and over 2,000 injured.
And we see the tap one, tap two, you know, with our own eyes.
It's completely absurd.
And there's something that when you analyze the so-called leaked signal communication, by the way, signal is encrypted.
So this was not leaked at all.
This was somebody inside the group that decided to reveal, which makes it even...
Even more absurd.
The Wall Street Journal intimates it was either Mike Waltz or Pete Hegseth, but somebody inside the group says that this reporter for The Atlantic was inadvertently or accidentally invited to join the group.
He didn't even realize what was going on until he determined who he was listening to.
Judge, this is bullshit.
This is total bullshit.
He was part of the conversation, obviously.
And maybe they did it.
There was an express idea of let's leak this to a guy who is not part of our gang.
As you know, the Atlantic is not part of Trump 2.0.
And this editor is an absolute idiot.
It wasn't perfect.
But coming back conceptually to what happened.
This group didn't think that the Houthis were a real threat.
And it's not a matter of the Houthis being a threat.
The Houthis are extremely capable militarily.
If Hegseth doesn't know this, I'm sorry, but he's a joke.
They didn't think that the Americans would understand these strikes.
And in fact, nobody in the U.S. understands why.
The Pentagon is striking against civilian targets in Yemen.
And they did it anyway to send a message.
And I'm quoting one of them.
In fact, it's Vance.
The strongest reason to do, quote, it's to send a message.
So you go on Signal and you start a war to send a message.
What is this?
This is undefinable.
What is the attitude of the Houthis about Americans?
We were having...
In fact, it's still going on, Judge, in a room like, you know, not far from where I'm talking to you now, with a former prime minister who's now...
He's even more powerful than the prime minister.
He's the head of their political council.
And he was explaining in detail...
The spiritual, religious, and moral necessity for Ansarallah, the Houthis, and this government, the government of Sanaa, to help the Palestinian plight and to help their brothers.
They define the Palestinians as brothers.
And that explains, of course, the...
The attacks on Israeli ships or ships delivering whatever that is to Israel or ships who are helping Israel one way or another.
And they say, look, and now that we restarted because the ceasefire was broken by Israel, if they stop with the ethnic cleansing project and the starvation of Palestine, we also stop it.
The day before.
Very, very important.
Yesterday, I was talking to another guy very, very high up in the political council here.
I asked him point blank, do you have privileged channels of communication with China and Russia?
He gave me a response that was fascinating because it was lost in translation, of course, but the bits and pieces that I could pick up.
He was saying basically in metaphors that of course we do, but we'll never advertise this to anybody.
And the Russians and the Chinese know exactly what the US and Israel are up to in Palestine and against the axis of resistance.
And of course, there are very close relations between Russia and China with certain vectors of the axis of resistance.
And they understand that this is a much bigger war.
They understand the full forever wars, ethos, when you think about US-Israel against the Do they have an understanding of why the Trump administration is trying to kill them?
No. No, because they cannot explain it.
Because there is no rational explanation.
And this so-called leak today only confirms to them that the whole thing is absolutely irrational.
Just like that, to send a message.
They're not a threat.
But anyway, let's do it because we can.
A typical imperial attitude, right?
But you are messing with...
A nation of warriors.
This is very, very serious.
Yesterday, something absolutely extraordinary happened.
We were stunned.
We were in a divania room right behind me, in fact, waiting for the daily speech of the leader of Ansarala, Abdul Malik al-Huti.
And guess who enters our room?
Out of the blue.
The military spokesman of Ansarala.
Yahya Sari, which is a face all over the world recognized as the face of Ansarala and the face of the Hutus.
It was an immense risk for him to come here and visit a group of foreigners in a hotel.
Is that him there with you?
No, that's another guy, Judge.
This was the guy that I was referring before.
This is the guy from the political council where I asked the Russia-China question.
Yahya Sari is the guy that we see every day all over the world.
One of my friends here, Professor Ma from Huanzu, he told me that Yahya Sari is immensely popular in China because the Chinese support the Yemenis.
And there are instances of the relationship between China and Yemen coming back from Mao times.
They took us, for instance, to a Nobelist.
Written in Chinese and in Arabic, paying homage to the Chinese workers who died here in Sanaa in construction works in Maoist times.
So this goes back a long time.
And part of our conversation a few minutes ago, he was telling us of the relationship that the Yemenis had with Nasser's army, for instance.
And the fact that a lot of top students...
From Yemen, they studied in Soviet and Chinese universities.
So this explains why these people, they can build a hypersonic missile.
And if our friend Hegseth doesn't know any of this, oh my God, the U.S. is in really, really bad shape.
I think the U.S. is in really bad shape.
I mean, you'll see the transcript of this.
Or not this, these conversations.
And it's almost high school-like.
It's high school, exactly.
It's high school.
And I would say that this high school concerning how unprepared they are to understand Yemen mirrors the high school of certain elements they are negotiating with Ukraine and Russia as we speak.
Where are you there?
It looks like there's about two dozen microphones in front of you.
No, because this was the first day of the conference.
And each of us, we had like three minutes for a short speech.
And they took this photo while I was finishing my speech.
And yes, everybody was there, Judge.
CCTV, you know, RT, press TV from Iran, etc.
Yes, this is one of the pictures of the old city, which is...
Look, I've been to all the souks in the Middle East over the last 40 years.
It's the most beautiful ancient...
Sitsi and souk in the whole Arab world.
It's something absolutely extraordinary.
And that's why this morning I wanted to go there by myself.
And I'll keep going in the morning or late at night by myself just to walk the streets, feel the atmosphere.
And you can talk to many of the merchants.
Many of them speak at least the basics of English.
It's fascinating.
These are a group of Yemeni boys in the hood dressed Yemeni style.
With their dagger in the right place, right?
Who are these fellas?
Basically, some of them are dancers, some of them are artists, and we're going to see a lot of them on Friday, this coming Friday, because there's going to be another one of those one million marches where they...
gather together to express their support for Palestine.
It looks like there's a thousand people behind you, Pepe.
Even more, George.
This was on the first day of the conference.
Where our small group was sitting here in front.
And these are militants, diplomats, intelligence officers, university students, you name it.
And this was the first day of the conference where they gave the floor essentially to our small group of foreign.
We are like maybe 11 or 12, including Professor Ma from China.
If you were to ask those people if they believe that Donald Trump is a man of peace, how would they react?
Obviously, considering the actions of the United States vis-a-vis Yemen so far, obviously not.
But they don't make comparisons.
It's a very different reasoning.
They are extremely gracious.
Polite, understanding.
They love to listen to points of view from other parts of the world.
For instance, we have a Bolivian friend here, very close to Evo Morales.
They are absolutely fascinated by everything that comes from Latin America.
We have Professor Amar, who's a Muslim, a Hui.
A Muslim from China who speaks fluent Arabic on top of it.
Obviously, he's treated like a superstar here.
So they know how to gather people from different parts of the world who understand not only how they are implicated in the Palestinian struggle, but their own struggle.
They were being bombed literally until yesterday by the Saudis and by the so-called coalition.
The so-called ceasefire, the Saudis had to sign the ceasefire because they were being destroyed by the Yemenis.
So in terms of their military power, it reflects directly.
Their spiritual strengths, their moral character, their moral clarity, which is something that we understand when we talk to them.
It's very, very impressive.
These people are models of rectitude.
And they want to be on the side of the good, on the side of the communal good, which is something that in the West, as we all know, which is the reign of post-modernist narratives, disappeared completely.
So when you come here, you are literally in another planet.
And it's very fulfilling for all of us.
We are learning so much.
And our agenda during the day is absolutely crazy.
We go all over the place.
And I'm lobbying in.
It's very, very hard to go to Hodeida.
But they tell me that it's extremely dangerous at the moment because Hodeida is being bombed by the Americans practically every day.
They are cowards.
They only bomb at night.
But even to go there during the day, we're still trying to convince the security people, look, let's go.
We stay one hour, two hours.
We talk to some people.
We see the port, and we come back during the day before sunset.
So I hope that's going to happen.
Share your view and mine and those of the people watching now that the United States is bombing them as a favor to the Israelis.
Yeah.
Essentially, yes.
The attitude of the new presidency in the United States is viewed here essentially as a favor to Israel.
And that redoubles their drive to defend Israel as best as they can.
For instance, can you imagine anybody on the planet who has the balls to declare a blockade of Ben Gurion Airport in Israel?
They do it.
And they launch their hypersonic missile on top of it.
And do they succeed?
Yes. The problem is, Judge, obviously, military information here, especially for us foreigners, is very, very difficult to obtain.
For instance, I asked specifically about their decision mechanism in terms of coordinating their political bureau with...
The top of the Yemeni armed forces.
They decide when they're going to strike, who they're going to strike, with what kind of missiles, weaponry, etc.
I didn't get a straight answer.
I'm going to keep trying during this week.
If you want to come back on with us later in the week, if you have breaking news, if you have a revelation, if you have a story you want to tell us, Just reached Chris and we'll put you on again, my dear friend.
Friday, Judge, after that famous one million march.
You got it.
We'll work it out.
Thank you very much for your time.
Please be safe and stay well, my dear friend.
The internet was not very good.
The internet is fine.
A little bit of a delay, but it's fine.
Thank you, Pepe.
God bless you.
Thank you, Judge.
Thank you so much.
Cheers. Wow.
Never know where your guests are coming from in this line of work.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8 in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman.
At 10 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
At 2 in the afternoon, Max Blumenthal.
At 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
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