Podcasts about Scooter Libby

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   FULL TRANSCRIPT Announcer (00:06): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:15): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which these events occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze these events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issues before us are, what are the three steps leading to war, and what's the real story behind the so-called Uyghur genocide or oppression in China? My guest today is a peace activist, a writer, a teacher, a political analyst, KJ Noh. KJ, welcome to the show. Speaker 3 (01:22): Thank you. Pleasure to be with you. Wilmer Leon (01:24): So in talking with you yesterday, you had expressed this concept that there are three steps leading to war. You talked about an information war, you talked about shaping of the environment and provocation. As we look at what's transpiring between the United States and Russia, as we look at what's transpiring more specifically between the United States and China over Taiwan, walk us through these steps and how these steps apply to where we are today. Speaker 3 (02:03): Yes, this is exactly what is going on. So the first thing to understand is that before the US goes to war, there is an information campaign, which we can understand as both manufacturing consent and stirring up people's emotions to demonize and to other the opponent. And so we see that very, very clearly in China. That's been ongoing for many years now. But if you look at all the polls, everybody is convinced that China is a threat. So the first step is information warfare, which is the pre kinetic sube dimension of war. The second dimension is shaping the environment. The US never likes to go to war without shaping the environment first. So in order to do that, it wants to weaken the adversary and it wants to bring as much force to bear as possible against its opponents. So we see that right now with the United States. (03:08) It's created a vast set of alliances against China, Aus Jaas, JAAS, the Quad, NATO plus, and then you can see that there is the first island chain, which it has completely militarized, and it is prepositioning supplies, materials, troops, all along it, including troops, right on Gman Island of Taiwan, which is less than three miles from the mainland. So you see the constant shaping of the environment. Also, you will see preparations for war in terms of massive military exercises. You see this in Korea, which spent 200 days out of the past year in constant military exercises. You see the military exercises all over the Pacific, which are essentially nonstop. And then the last step is the provocation. That is you want to provoke the other side to fire the first shot. You want to wrong foot them so that then you can build on all the demonization and the ally building that you've created and then use that as a ally to start the war. (04:25) And we see these provocations happening more and more frequently. We see the provocations by the Philippines against the Chinese overtaking their boats, trying to cut them off and seeing if they'll get rammed. You see the provocations on the Korean peninsula where there's this constant in your face provocation against North Korea, threatening to decapitate, sending the message to Korean troops to shoot first and report later, shoot, first report later. And you see the provocation, as I just mentioned, in Jinman Island where you have US special forces troops parked permanently three miles away from the Chinese mainland. Imagine if the PLA stationed Chinese troops on Key West or Galveston Island or the Farone Island just right up against the nose of right up against the US coast. Would that be considered provocative? I would think so. And so essentially we see all these three steps happening, the information warfare, the hatemongering, the shaping of the environment, the very, very deliberate shaping of the environment for war, and then the constant provocation. So this is why I think that we have to be very, very careful that it will just take one small misstep in this minefield for something to go off, and that will create a chain reaction that will affect the entire Pacific. Wilmer Leon (06:06): So we saw in the seventies, we saw Nixon go to China. Henry Kissinger helped to orchestrate that entire process and a development of a reproach mon with China. And one of the objectives of that was to be sure that China stayed on our side of the equation as the United States was still involved in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. When we got to, I think it was the Obama administration, that's where this whole idea of the pivot towards China started to manifest itself. What, first of all, do I have my history? And then secondly, if so, what is it that or who was in the American foreign policy elite that decided that this pivot needed to take place? Speaker 3 (07:09): Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I have to go back to a little bit of the history. You absolutely are about Nixon. Nixon tried to peel China off away from the Soviet Union as part of their Cold War strategy, and then they engaged with China, and then they dumped Taiwan, which previous to that had been considered the legitimate China, but they were always hedging, so they always kind of had their foot partially on Taiwan because they didn't want to give it up completely. Wilmer Leon (07:43): They who Speaker 3 (07:44): The US establishment didn't want to give it up completely as a US outpost. And so they always kept a little foot in there. And so this is what they call strategic ambiguity. But the official line was the one China policy. The Shanghai communicates essentially there's only one China. The PRC is the legitimate government of China. Taiwan Island is a part of China, and any issues between Taiwan province and China are to be resolved amongst themselves. The US is going to withdraw troops, it's going to withdraw arms, and it's not going to be involved. That was the agreement, and that was the foundation of the relationship between the US and China. All of that is now completely dissolved. It's gone. There is no defacto one China policy anymore. But who started this war? That is the $64,000 question. In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, the NeoCon Mino, Greece, he wrote a document called the Defense Planning Guidance Document, and essentially it was declaration that the United States would be the uni polo global hegemon, regardless, and at any measure, uni polo global hegemon simply means that it would be the boss of the world and it would take any measure, it would go to war, et cetera, as necessary. (09:12) This document, the defense planning guidance document, became the project for a new American century. The project for a new American century was unquote disavowed, but it's simply mutated, and then it was picked up again by a group of people at Center for a New American Security. And those two words, new American, they are not a coincidence. The CNA or Center for New American Security is a kind of a reestablishment of the neocons who started pen A. And so you see this entire chain of ideology continuing from Wolfowitz and the people around him, the neocons around him, the Cheney, Wilmer Leon (09:57): Dick Cheney, Speaker 3 (09:59): Yes, Wilmer Leon (10:00): Richard Pearl, Speaker 3 (10:01): Richard Pearl, all of these neocons, they simply bequeathed their legacy onto a younger group of neocons, the neocons who are associated with the Center for New American Security. Wilmer Leon (10:13): In fact, let me jump in. I'm sorry. Just really quickly on the pen side with Wolfowitz and Pearl, I think Scooter Libby, when George HW Bush was in the White House, that crew came to him and wanted to promote all of this rhetoric. He referred to them as the crazies and said, and this is from Ray McGovern who was in the White House at the time with the CIA said, get these crazies out of here and keep them away from me. And I think it was George HW that by pushing them out, that moved them to Form P NAC and all of that. Speaker 3 (11:02): Absolutely. And remember, these crazies also wanted to go to war against China in the early two thousands. So it was actually, and Wilmer Leon (11:12): They also wanted Bill Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They sent, and folks, you can go and look on the, you can Google this and you can pull up the letter and see all the signatories to the letter. They sent a letter to Bill Clinton when he was president, asking him to invade Iraq. And he said, no, Speaker 3 (11:35): Exactly. And then nine 11 happened, and the Pen Act document actually said, we need something like a Pearl Harbor in order to be able to trigger our plans. And so then conveniently, nine 11 happened, and then Iraq was invaded. But anyway, these crazies never went away. They went into various think tanks, but one of the key think tanks is CNAs, which is an outcome. It's a kind of an annex of CSIS itself, one of the deep state think tanks. And starting 2008, they drew up a plan for War against China specifically. There's an organization called CSBA, which is, it's a kind of a think tank. It's a procurement and strategy think tank associated with the Pentagon. And it was once again, related to another deep state think tank inside the Pentagon that does long-term strategic planning. And they came up with something called Air Sea Battle, which is the doctrine of war against China. (12:48) So since then with Air Sea Battle, air Sea Battle is actually, it's derived from Air land battle, which was the doctrine of war against the Soviet Union, which is why it has a similar resonance to it. And that itself was derived from the Israeli doctrine of war from the Yom Kippur war where they did massive aggressive strikes deep inside their opponents infrastructure. And that became Airland battle. Airland battle was never used against the Soviet Union, but it was used in Iraq, in Kosovo, et cetera. Colloquially, it's known as shock and awe. And they created a shock and awe version for China called Air Sea Battle. And that was developed in earnest starting around 2009. And then remember 2012, the US declared the pivot to Asia. So this is the Obama administration. They essentially declared in so many terms that we are going to make sure that China does not develop any further. (14:06) We're going to encircle China, we're going to station troops in Australia. It was declared in Adelaide. We're going to encircle the entire, essentially it was a plan to encircle China all along the first island chain from the corals to Japan, to Okinawa to Taiwan Island along the Philippine Archipelago, and then all the way to Indonesia. This very, very deliberate plan to encircle and to escalate to war against China. 2008 and 2009 was really the turning point, because it was the time of the change. It was the global financial crash, and the people who engaged with China, they engaged with China under the conceit that China would essentially be absorbed into the US capitalist system. That is, it would become a tenant farmer on the US capitalist plantation. Wilmer Leon (15:11): That's what they tried to do with the Soviet Union. Speaker 3 (15:13): Exactly, exactly. Wilmer Leon (15:15): Under Gorbachev, Speaker 3 (15:16): Exactly right. Yes. So we would become a tenant under the global US capitalist plantation, or it would collapse. That was what they believed. And then in 2008, the Western Catalyst financial system collapsed on itself, and it turned out that China was not going to collapse. It was actually incredibly strong, incredibly resilient, and they actually had to go hat in hand to China to beg for support, in order to prop up the system and then to do a controlled demolition on the backs of the working class here. And so when that became clear that China was not going to collapse and it was not going to be subordinated, then the DCAS came out and explicit doctrine of war started to be prepared. This is what I referred to as Air Sea baffle. So that doctrine of war was created inside various think tanks, CSBA, and then supported by css, CNAs, et cetera. (16:18) And then when the Obama administration transition, those plans were simply kept alive with CNAS, and some of it was incorporated into Trump's strategy, but Trump had neo mercantile tendencies, so he was not as aggressive as they would like him to be. And then when Biden came back, the pivot to Asia was rebranded as the Indo-Pacific Strategy, and it's gone full tilt since then. So we see this constant escalation, as I said, the information warfare, the shaping, the environment, the exercises, the alliances, the prepositioning, and then we see the constant provocation. So we are well on the way to war. Henry Kissinger said that we were in the foothills of a cold war. No, we are high up in high altitude and very, very close to kinetic war. Wilmer Leon (17:14): I think I said when I made the reference to Russia that that's what they try to do with Gorbachev, but I think it was Yeltsin to Gorbachev is where all of that financial intrigue was taking place. And I think it was Gorbachev who realized the danger on the horizon and shifted the game plan on the United States, which is why one of the reasons why Gorbachev Gorbachev had to go leading us into where we are now with President Putin. But that's another, I hope I have again, that history, right? Yes, (17:50) Absolutely. So with all that you've just laid out, and before we get into some of the specifics about the info war, as all of this is going on, what we also have is the de-industrialization of the United States and the offshoring or outsourcing of American manufacturing to China. So how do you, on the one hand, offshore or outsource your manufacturing, particularly as a capitalist economy, going to China in search of cheaper labor to make more profit, but then at the same time, you're planning to go to war with the people that are manufacturing a whole lot of the stuff that your country consumes? Is that a good question? Speaker 3 (18:53): Yeah, no, it's absolutely valid. I mean, it's a very, very good point. That's the core contradiction. The US has outsourced Wilmer Leon (19:00): Needs, and by the way, the country that you go to buy your bonds so that your economy can stay afloat. Speaker 3 (19:07): Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. So not only has China financed the United States and supported or propped up the US dollar as the global reserve currency, but also the US exported its industrial base to China because it thought that it could simply exploit the hell out of the Chinese worker at the cost of the US worker, Wilmer Leon (19:33): The sick man of Asia mentality, and we can just play these Chinese people for fools. Speaker 3 (19:38): Exactly. Exactly. So exploit the hell out of them, make a killing, and then eventually China would be completely absorbed into the US capitalist system, or it would collapse, right? It was either collapse or be absorbed. This is what Bill Clinton believed. So that was the plan, except that China developed on its own terms, and it showed that not only is it possible to develop that it doesn't have to become subjugated to the west, to the western institutions, that's when the daggers came out. But now there is the contradiction that on the one hand, the US wants to go to war against China. On the other hand, it's significantly, it's so deeply enmeshed with Chinese industry and the Chinese economy that it is not easy. And so it's trying this very delicate operation of what they refer to as de-risking, but it's really decoupling, and they're trying to separate themselves from China as you would try to separate conjoined twins. (20:43) Except the problem is that China has the beating heart, the beating heart of the industry. So if you separate that out, then you're going to give yourself a lot of problems. And so they have not thought this through, but these are people who are not known for their clear thinking. As I said, they're neocons, they're neo neocons, they're crazies. They are drunk with power. They do not want to give up their power and their dominance over the planet, certainly not to China, and they would rather end the planet than see the end of their hegemony, of their dominance. And that's the really dangerous moment that we're in. I've referred to it as a drunk who as the bar is closing and your credit cards are being rejected, you've struck out with everybody. You're just spoiling for a fight, a fight. You're not going to go home without a fight. And that's currently what it looks like right now. Wilmer Leon (21:44): So the first element of the three that you mentioned is the info war. So we're being told that President Xi is an authoritarian. We're being told that China has stolen American manufacturing secrets and has exploited American manufacturing processes. We're being told that China is trying to take over Africa. There are a number of stories that get repeated ATD nauseum, very little if any evidence to support them. But this is the info drumbeat that you keep hearing on M-S-N-B-C and CNN and Fox News. So let's start with the G is a authoritarian, and he's the dictator of China. China is a communist country, and therefore everything is evil that comes from China. Speaker 3 (22:48): Yeah, I mean, this is warmed over Cold War rhetoric. It's essentially a red scare plus yellow peril, right? I mean, we've heard this stuff before. I mean, if you go to China, you realize that there's nothing authoritarian about it. Actually. You feel much freer and much more at liberty to do what you want and to be who you are than you do here. It's not at all an authoritarian state. It's simply the US plasters, the label authoritarian against any country that it doesn't like and where it's usually planning to go to war against. So that is a very, very clear signal. I mean, just from a kind of statistical polling standpoint, the Chinese government is the most popular government on the planet. It ranks in the 90th percentile, and this is Wilmer Leon (23:42): High 90, I think 96 was the last number I saw, Speaker 3 (23:47): Something like that. Yes, certainly in above 90 percentile. And this is from Harvard University, correct? With longitudinal studies. So clearly they have the trust and the full faith of its people. Wilmer Leon (24:01): Repeat that, because most people, when they hear, I know this, when I say that to listeners or if I'm in conversation and I say, well, when you poll the Chinese people, they back their government at around 96%. And of course, the response I get is, well, of course they would, because that's Chinese polling, and that's Xi telling them what to think. And if they don't do what Xi tells them to do, then they wind up missing. Speaker 3 (24:30): No, no, no, that's sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's good. It's what people think, but first it is not Chinese polling. It is US polling, it's Harvard University doing this over a longitudinal study, I think over 10. It's over a decade, maybe 15 years long. And so it's us polling, not Chinese polling. The second thing is that over 150 million Chinese travel abroad every year, they travel all over the world. They go as tourists, they go as students, et cetera, and then almost every single one of them goes back home. You would not get that in an authoritarian state. You think that if you live in a prison or a concentration cab that you go free and then you come back of your own volition? No, that's not possible. It's absurd. So as I said, the Chinese travel all over the world, and then they simply come back because that's where they want to be. (25:34) So this notion that Chinese are authoritarian, that it's an authoritarian state, nobody's allowed to do anything that's completely fault. It does contrast, for example, with the east block where it was very, very difficult to travel abroad, and once when people did travel abroad, they did defect. That much is true. That is certainly not the case with China. As I said, 150 million people travel abroad and then go back home. So that is a lie from top to bottom. I mean, of course you have a few people who defect. I think the defection rate from China is about the same number of people who defect from the United States. So if you want to, oh, really? Wilmer Leon (26:16): Yes. Speaker 3 (26:16): Okay, Wilmer Leon (26:17): I didn't know that. Speaker 3 (26:17): Yes. So it's about the same. So it's a kind of a net zero. So anything that says otherwise is usually an exaggeration or a misconstrue of the actual numbers Wilmer Leon (26:30): To this idea of authoritarian, and I was just thinking about this as you were talking. I think one of the great misnomers is the conflation of a planned economy versus an authoritarian government. I don't think I'm off base to say that China is very, very focused on planning its economy, and that makes it very nimble. That makes it, in my opinion, easier for the government to shift as world economic dynamics shift. Also, because it doesn't have predatory capitalism in China, corporations in China and the Chinese government that owns corporations, they reinvest their money into their economy as opposed to into stock buyback programs and high executive compensation packages. Hence, we wind up with a lot of technological advancements coming out of China, which to a great degree is what is scaring the hell out of the United States government. Yeah, Speaker 3 (27:49): You're absolutely right. Yeah. So the Chinese system is planned, but it's planned in a very rational way. Most of the leaders are unlike the United States, most of the leaders in the US are lawyers or failed business people in China. Most of the leadership are scientists and engineers, and they go through an incredibly complex vetting process where they have to show their capacity and show their ability over and over again before they even reach to the level of becoming a city or a province governor. And then from there, it just gets harder and harder. So you really make sure that the top people are leading. And then there's a system where there's a constant process of feedback and consultation with the people. So the government makes sure that it's doing what the people wants. And so it's planned Wilmer Leon (28:42): In political science. That's the Easton model, I think James Easton model of the feedback loop, how effective governments are supposed to function. They implement policy, they get feedback from the populace on how that policy is being implemented. They then translate that into better policy. That's the eastern model of called the policy feedback loop. Speaker 3 (29:18): Yes, exactly. There's this policy feedback loop, and once again, as I said, the Chinese leadership are scientists, so they do this thing called a trial spot. What is when they have a policy, they try it out in one city or one area, and if it works, then they scale it up and they try it again in a larger province on a larger scale. And if it works, they scale it up even further, et cetera. So it's a very kind of scientific method that they use called trial spots where they're essentially using the scientific method and a vast system of feedback and consultation in order to see if something works or not. That's why they're, for example, creating sustainable cities, sustainable energy generation, mass transit, et cetera, all sorts of public goods. But the problem with this is that the Western concede is that if it's not liberal capitalists, that is if you don't let the capitalists do whatever they want to, this is an infringement on freedom, and that's the framing that they use. (30:23) If you don't let the predatory capitalists do anything and everything, they want to, you have infringed upon their freedom. And so that's where this authoritarian trope comes from. The thing to notice once again is as you do this extensive planning, what you get to do is you build out the foundations, and those foundations are in public health and in public housing and infrastructure and transportation and education. Once you build out all of those foundations, then you can build up real human capacity, and then you build up a real powerful economy. And so for example, if you look at the 20 largest corporations on the planet, the majority of them are Chinese. But the other thing about those large corporations is the majority of them are state owned corporations. That is to say they're owned by the people. For example, the largest banks in the world are Chinese banks. (31:25) How much do the leaders of these banks make? Well, they make probably they wouldn't make enough to rent an apartment in San Francisco, maybe two times, three times max, what their average income of their average worker is, as opposed to Jamie Diamond, who makes 18,000 times what his lowest workers make. And so it's a very, very different system where you bring up the highest most qualified people. At the same time, you do not reward them for greed. You do not reward them for, with exorbitant pay, essentially, you give them a decent salary, not an exorbitant salary, but a salary, which is good enough for a decent level of standard of living in China. You may give them an apartment and you may give them, there may be a canteen where they can get discount meals, but that's about it. But it's understood that you are going to really work to improve your country, serve the people, serve your countrymen, and then make a better society. (32:39) And you see this real kind of whole society effort to improve the country, which is why over the last 30, 40 years, wages have flatlined in the United States, but wages in China have gone up anywhere five to 10 to 15 times for your average worker, for your average blue collar worker. I mean, they see their lives improving, and also you see the bottom being lifted up where they essentially ended poverty. You go to China, you will not see any slums. I mean, it's kind of astonishing. You go to almost any city in the world, you will see homeless. Or if you don't see homeless, you will see slums in China, you will see neither. And in the past few decades, they brought 850 million people out of poverty. 850 million people were brought out of poverty. This is the world's greatest economic accomplishment in the history of the world. (33:43) And essentially, they show that poverty is a policy choice. You don't have to have poor people. The Bible says the poor will always be with us. No, it's not true. It's an ideological choice, and you can end poverty in a country, and for all of these reasons, by showing that a planned economy where there's reasonable and systematic feedback can have deliver better results. This is why this example is why the western liberal elite class feels the need to destroy China because it cannot have that example, cannot have an example, which puts the lie to the massive exploitation and mystification and deceit that this system is built on. The suffering that we undergo on a daily basis is not necessary. Wilmer Leon (34:45): I want to go back to the point. China has brought 800 million people out of abject poverty over about what? The last 10 to 15 years Speaker 3 (35:03): Over the last, I would say over the past 40 years. Okay, 40 years ago, China was poorer per capita than Haiti. Wilmer Leon (35:14): That's poor. Speaker 3 (35:15): And now there's no comparison, right? Wilmer Leon (35:17): The United States has on the upper end, in terms of what the government numbers are, not 800 million unhoused, 800,000, Speaker 3 (35:32): Yeah. Somewhere in that range. Wilmer Leon (35:34): And so me being from Sacramento, California, you go to north side of Sacramento near the American River near the Sacramento River, people living under bridges, you go to Oakland, people living under overpasses, you go to San Francisco, people living under overpasses, people can't even afford the middle class in San Francisco, can't even afford to rent an apartment that people that work in San Francisco can't afford to live in San Francisco. Okay, pick a city, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia. Pick one. You see people standing in the medians of intersections with signs and cups begging for money. 800,000 people homeless in the United States. We can't fix it, but China brings 800 million people out of poverty. Folks do the math. Speaker 3 (36:37): Yeah, I mean, it's pretty astounding. I mean, the 800,000 homeless is probably an under count because it's hard to count. Wilmer Leon (36:44): Sure. That's why I said it's a government number. Speaker 3 (36:47): Yes, it's a government number. But even without looking at the homeless, think about the fact that 60% of the people in the United States do not have $500 to their name. That means if they get a flat tire, if they need to change their tires, fix their car, or get a parking ticket, they are in real trouble, right? I mean, there's just no margins. And so the vast majority of working people in the United States are struggling, and they see no light at the end of the tunnel at the same time that they expect their children to have even worse conditions. No longer housing is no longer, nobody can think of housing anymore. Now its cars are no longer affordable. Right? When I taught in community college, I was told that 80% of the students were housing insecure. When I taught, most of the students would come to class and they couldn't focus because they were hungry. (37:52) I mean, you have adjunct professors living out of cars. So this is the level of ridiculous, absurd maldistribution of wealth that you can do everything right, work your rear off, and still end up with nothing, just barely be treading water if even that. And on the other hand, you have a country like China where if you work, you will see your life constantly improving from year to year. On average, your worker has been seeing their wages increase 8% every year for the past 20, 30, 40 years. I mean, that's astounding. Wilma, have you had an 8% increase in your salary for the past 30 years? Wilmer Leon (38:45): Can't say that I have. Speaker 3 (38:48): You must be doing something wrong then. Wilmer Leon (38:50): I can't say that I have. Let's move to element number two, shaping the environment. What are the techniques and what are some of the tangible elements that we can point to in terms of shaping the environment? Speaker 3 (39:05): Okay, the first thing about shaping the environment is creating alliances. So the US is creating multiple alliances. That's alliance between the United States, Korea, and Japan. I refer to it as jackass or jackass. You see the alliance between Australia, the United States, uk, to prepare for war, nuclear war against China, Aus. You see the Japan, Philippines, US Alliance, and the South China Sea jaas, which is once again unthinkable as it is with Korea, that the colonial dominator, Japan would be creating a military alliance with the colonized. But all of this is mediated and midwife by the United States. And then you see NATO coming into Asia. So already when the US does military exercise in the Pacific, you see the LFA flying over. You see NATO exercises. You see that Korea is linking up to the NATO intelligence system, B-I-C-E-S, bcs. And that Taiwan is getting the link 16 tactical data link, which allows the US to create a common tactical and operational picture of the Warfield in order to create what they refer to as a transnational kill chain. (40:29) That is, you're using all of these countries for combined joint all domain command and control. It's simply one large military machine, all of these different countries together. So that's one part of shaping the environment. Another part of shaping the environment is pre-positioning troops, pre-positioning material, and also doing these constant military exercises and escalating to industrial war footing, which is what they are talking about. They're saying the US has to shift immediately to an industrial war footing. Certainly South Korea and Japan are already expected to do this. The plans to use shipyards in Korea for to repair us battle damage, and then the constant escalation into what I refer to as the third offset. The third offset is that China has the capacity to respond. If the US and the US has over 300, probably close to 400 bases right around China, China has the capacity to fire missiles and keep the United States at bay. (41:50) It has the Don Feng missiles that are very, very precise. And the US offset to that has been to disperse its troops all around the first island chain, prepare for island hopping, prepare for Ace agile deployment, and essentially to attack China through diffused, distributed, dispersed warfare. All of this is preparation. And then the other way, which is traditionally the environment is shaped, is through information warfare and economic warfare, trade warfare, tech warfare. The idea is that you are going to try and try to create as much disruption inside China itself, create as much descent inside China itself, and also try and degrade its economy before you go into war. Ideally, you want to level sanctions on it before you go in, but in the case of Russia, for example, they will level sanctions after the war starts. But the idea is to degrade the economy and the will to fight, and the capacity to fight as much as possible so that you enter into the battle with an unfair advantage, an overmatch. (43:12) The analogy that I sometimes think of is that when a matador goes into the ring to fight a bull, what they've done is they've drug the bull, they've starved it, they've beaten it, they've dehydrated it, et cetera. And then you go to war, and then you have this theatrical presentation of how you've dominated the bull. In the bull fight, usually the US tries to do this kind of degrading before it enters into war. So for example, it sanctioned Iraq for a decade before it blew it up into smithereens, et cetera. So you see all of these things happening in terms of the hybrid war, the preparations, the alliances, the exercises, the prepositioning and the military preparation. Wilmer Leon (43:58): In fact, the sanctions regime that you've just talked about as it relates to Iraq is exactly what the United States has been trying to do with Russia, has been trying to do with Iran has tried to do with China. And what the reality that the United States now finds itself dealing with is that sanctions regime has forced those sanctioned countries to establish relationships amongst themselves and relationships amongst themselves. So they've entered into trade agreements. They've entered into the bricks, for example, the Chinese development Bank. There are a number of elements now where China and Russia have developed trade agreements, have developed defense cooperation agreements. So really what the United States has done through this sanctions regime is really shot itself in the foot because what it thought it could do with economic pressure and other types of sanctions has actually created a much bigger problem than the United States ever could have imagined. Speaker 3 (45:15): Well, I mean, the US has sanctioned what something close to one third of the countries on the planet or something approaching that. I mean, the idea is that it's simple. A sanction is like a siege. It's like you're building a wall around a country. The problem is if you build a wall around a country, you're also building a wall around yourself, and eventually you're walling yourself in, which is what the United States is doing here. And so with the financial sanctions, with the trade sanctions and economic sanctions, essentially it's strengthening China, Russia, Iran, and the countries of the global south, and it's weakening itself. And so that is the contradiction there. But they don't understand that, and they think that they're still capable of destroying, for example, Russia. I mean, they still believe that they almost brought Russia to its knees, and it's just a matter of applying a little bit more pressure. They're not reading the situation directly. But yes, this is what they want to do, and they consider this to be part of shaping the environment. Wilmer Leon (46:24): And one quick example of that is the whole chip sanction where the United States figured that it could cripple the Chinese economy from a technology side by prohibiting China's access to high processing chips. What did China do? They figured it out. They make their own and better than the ones that they were getting from Taiwan. And an example of that is the Huawei made 60 telephone. A lot of people in the West think that the iPhone is the greatest phone on the planet. No folks, it's a phone that we can't get in the United States. It's the Huawei mate, 60 plus, which not only is a cell phone, but is a satellite phone as well. Speaker 3 (47:15): Yes, it's an extraordinary piece of technology, incredible engineering, and it just goes to show that when the US tries to sanction China or even a single Chinese company by putting it in a choke hold, and its CFO, China just responds with even greater strength and better technology. So it's not happening. It's not happening to an individual corporation, and it's not going to happen to China in general, which is why the US wants to pull the trigger on war. I think there's a part of the NeoCon elite that are so desperate, they see that kinetic war is the only thing that it's the only Trump card that they have left. Wilmer Leon (48:00): And I've been saying for a while to Jake Sullivan and to the Secretary of State, to the President, be careful what you pray for because you might get it even with the hypersonic missile technology. I want to say that, what was it last year or about a year and a half ago, the United States War gamed against China 25 times and lost 25 times. Speaker 3 (48:38): Yes, each time it lost and it lost faster, and then eventually they had to deposit all kinds of hypotheticals that didn't exist in order to give themselves some kind of pretext of winning. Clearly, if they do the math and if they do the simulations, it's not going to work out for them. But the really dangerous thing here, and I'll be very, very honest here, the dangers is that because the US no longer has overmatch and none of these offsets work, it's going to go back to the final first offset, which is mass a bigger bomb, which is to say that they're going to go nuclear on this war and going nuclear against another nuclear power is a very, very bad idea. The US is doctrine of counterforce, which essentially argues that in order for us to prevail, we have to strike first with nuclear weapons. (49:30) That's the idea. It's not counter value. Counterforce. We strike with nuclear weapons first. We knock out as many nuclear targets as possible, and that way we come out ahead and we can shoot down anything that's left. This is the US nuclear position, the nuclear posture. And this is very, very dangerous because it's clearly an act of madness. But as I said before, the ruling, ruling elite, the imperial elite believes that they signal that they would rather see the end of the world than the less than the end of their power, than the end of their domination. Because for them, the end of their domination is the end of their world, not the end of their world, but the end of their world, and they're very happy to bring down the rest of the world with them. Wilmer Leon (50:21): Provocation is the third. We've talked about the info war. We've talked about shaping the environment. And now the third element is the provocation. And we are seeing this play itself out damn near daily, right before our very eyes. And thank God that President Rai in Iran, that President Xi, that Kim Jong-un in North Korea and President Putin, thank God that these are sensible, sensible people that are not reactionary and engage in knee jerk responses to provocation. Because if they weren't as thoughtful as they are, we'd be in a much, much different world circumstance than we are right now. Speaker 3 (51:12): I agree with you. I mean, I think it's the sober sanity of US opponents, which is keeping the world from exploding into war. Just as during the Cold War, it was Russian officers who understood US culture and for example, understood that when there were signals of a nuclear attack being launched, they also understood that the World Series was happening at the same time, and they thought it was unlikely the US would launch a nuclear attack during the World Series. But this is predicated on the idea that you have cultured intelligent, calm people who are able to make clear distinctions. And we see that in RACI and President Xi and President Putin, who are very, very measured in their responses. And they're not seeking war. They're seeking diplomacy and peace. And you can see that there is a constant attempt to provoke them and to demonize them and to trigger war, but they understand that time is on their side, and these are the mad thrashings of a dying empire, and their approach is not to engage. (52:34) The problem is that the provocations become even more extreme, more and more extreme as they become more and more desperate. And there's another piece of the information war that I didn't touch on, but I think it's worthwhile touching on, is one of the key tropes of information warfare is that the other country is a threat to the people of your country. Not simply a threat, but an existential threat, A WMD type of threat, a genocidal threat. We saw that WMD type of language when it was alleged that Covid was a Chinese bio weapon, which somehow was being paid for by the United States. So that doesn't make any sense that research was being funded by the United States. So how is the US funding that research for China to attack us? Nobody seems to be able to explain that piece, but so they're WMD type allegations, and then the China is genocidal in intent, and this is most commonly demonstrated by the allegations of a genocide happening in Xinjiang. Now, just to go over the facts, there Wilmer Leon (53:51): Is, wait, wait a minute. Before we get to that, I want to touch on one thing you mentioned not firing the missile. And I want to say that that was a Russian technician, Vasili arch, about what, 65 years ago, who was looking at his radar screen, saw what most would've perceived to be an incoming nuclear missile from the United States on his screen. And the protocol was you got to push the button. And he, to your point, said, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense right now. This might be a mistake, and thank God he was right. It was a mistake. I wanted to make that point because you kind of glossed over that point. But it's very important for people to understand how perilous the circumstances are that we're in today. Speaker 3 (54:55): Absolutely. I mean, there were so many close shaves during the Cold War, and they're even more now, and the world owes a debt of gratitude to vestly ov. I think he's one of the unsung heroes of world history, but we can't rely on the fact that there will always be a vasili arch of a patient measured, well-informed, educated person on the other side who exercises prudent caution. There's no guarantee of that. And everything that we are doing on our side is simply escalating the danger that that will not happen and that this could end in a nuclear conflagration. Wilmer Leon (55:41): Final point on that, then we'll go to the Uyghur issue. And that is, that's one of the points that President Putin was making about NATO and why his perception was a uk, a Ukraine in NATO means NATO missiles in Ukraine, which means his response time to a message of incoming would be cut more than in half. And he was saying, we can't do that. You can't put these missiles on my border and cut my response time from 16 or 17 minutes down to seven minutes. That means if my system say incoming, I got a button to push. I don't have a phone to pick up. I don't have questions to ask. I got a fire on receipt. Speaker 3 (56:37): Absolutely, yes. Launch on warning, Wilmer Leon (56:39): Launch on warning. Speaker 3 (56:41): Yes. And that's exactly the danger. And this is why this was so important that by bringing NATO right up into Ukraine, the Soviet Union, well, Russia lost all of its strategic debt that it had no cushion with which to make a rational decision. And that is a very, very dangerous thing to do against a nuclear superpower that you have designated as an official enemy. So yes, it's absolutely correct, and this is both the danger and what we are seeing replicated in against China. Once again, the US used to have nuclear weapons in Taiwan Island. Right now, they're probably preparing more nuclear weapons, certainly the tomahawks that are being prepared for Japan or nuclear capable, they can carry nuclear warheads. And if you take US troops and place them right three miles from China's mainland, I mean, you've essentially said that you either have to preempt the attack or you are going to be annihilated. So that is the danger here. Wilmer Leon (57:58): The other great myth, one of the other great myths is the genocide of the Uyghurs and the oppression of the Uyghurs who are a group of Chinese Muslims in a region of China. And also if they're not being genocided, then they're being put into reeducation and concentration camps. Where did this myth come from? Speaker 3 (58:28): It was started by a guy called Adrian Zant, working for the victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which is extreme far right organization, fascists, Nazis, anti-communist, who essentially have it on their banner head to destroy communism. Adrian ZZ himself believes that it is God's mission, his mission from God to destroy Chinese communism. And he essentially pulled those figures and those facts out of, pardon my French, his rear end. And so initially, so Wilmer Leon (59:07): Actually French kg would be ass, he pulled those data, excuse my French, out of his ass. Speaker 3 (59:14): I think the French word is true or football. Wilmer Leon (59:20): But Speaker 3 (59:21): Yes, the BBC asked him to do the research. He said, I can't do it. And then they offered him more money, and then suddenly all of a sudden he was pulling numbers out of his rear end. Apparently there were perhaps a few dozen people that were interviewed. A small percentage of them said that certain things happened to us, and then they extrapolated that, and all of a sudden we have 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, 7 million uighurs either in concentration camps or being genocided. Okay, Wilmer Leon (01:00:00): So how does that jive with the population of Xinjiang, which I think is the western part of China, which is where these folks are supposed to be. Speaker 3 (01:00:09): There are about 12 million Uyghurs. And so if you had even a million that had been disappeared or in concentration camps, you wouldn't have a functioning society. You would have almost every adult male in prison. And that's certainly not the case. 200, 250 million people visited Xinjiang last year, and it was fine. The people in Xinjiang were doing fine. It's a vibrant, multicultural society that is thriving and happy, and anybody can go there. You and I could go there. Anybody listening to this podcast could go there tomorrow. You don't even have to. A visa. China allows Americans to go to China without a visa now for a short period of time, and you could go immediately to Xinjiang and see for yourself. But essentially the fact is there is no Chinese genocide happening in Xinjiang because there's not a single shred of credible evidence. Let me emphasize that. Not a single shred of credible evidence. This is the only genocide in history that one has no deaths. Nobody can point to a body, no refugees. Wilmer Leon (01:01:24): Well, that's, they've been disappeared. They've been taken up by the mothership, and I guess they're floating around in the nuclear. I mean the, what do you call this? The nebula Speaker 3 (01:01:38): In the fifth? Wilmer Leon (01:01:39): Yeah, they're in the nebula somewhere, Speaker 3 (01:01:41): Right? Right in the fifth space, time war somewhere. But look, there are five Muslim majority countries. China has borders with 14 countries, and Xinjiang itself has borders with five Muslim majority countries, very porous borders. If there were any credible oppression, you would see massive refugees going to all these countries right next to it. But it's not. Instead, what you see is preferential treatment of the Uyghurs. For example, they were exempt from the one child policy. They had two, three, sometimes more children. They received preferential treatment in school, admissions and employment. The population has increased sixfold since the start of the PRC, and the life expectancy has increased 150%, and you can look high and low and you will see no hate speech and no tolerance of hate speech against Muslims, and no messages or rhetoric targeting the group whatsoever. In fact, the organization of Islamic Corporation, which represents the rights of 2 billion Muslims in 56 countries, commended China for its exemplary treatment of Muslim minorities. (01:03:00) So this is completely and totally fraudulent. There are 24,000 mosques in the region. People live their own lives, they speak their own language. And then here's the contrast, or here's the test case, because when you want to make a proposition, you also want to make a test group against that. Okay? In Gaza, there is a real genocide happening, either sheer unspeakable, barity and atrocity, the daily massacre of men, women, children, infants, starved to death, unimaginable privation and starvation and suffering, and compare that. And nobody can get into Gaza, right? Nobody can get into Gaza. Anybody can get into Xinjiang any day of the day or night. So really this fraud about Xinjiang being some kind of genocide, this is as much a signal of the dying empire as the real genocide in Palestine, it's foundationally mating, and it's a foundationally violent lie, but it's the other side of the same coin that is you are enabling and covering up a real genocide while you were fraudulently concocting a non-existent one. But the thing we have to understand is the invention of a false genocide cannot cover up a real one. Those of us on the right side of history, we know what to believe and we know how to act, and we know who's responsible, who's covering up what and why they're doing it. Wilmer Leon (01:04:53): And the United States is also trying to foment another genocide in Haiti. So there's a false one in Xinjiang. There's a real one in Gaza, and there's another one on the horizon in Haiti, and thank you United States because it's our tax dollars that are fanning the flames and funding all three kj. No, my brother. Thank you, man. I really, really, really appreciate the time that you gave this evening and for you coming on connecting the dots, because as always, kj, you connected the dots, man. Thank you for joining me today. Speaker 3 (01:05:39): Thank you. Always a pleasure and an honor to be with you. Wilmer Leon (01:05:43): And folks, I want to thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below. Go to Patreon. Please contribute. Please, please contribute because this is not an inexpensive venture to engage in. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge, talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one, peace and blessings to y'all. Announcer (01:06:40): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Find me and the show on social media by searching the handle @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube. Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd All our episodes can be found at CTDpodcast.com.   This week's episode features Ray McGovern. Former CIA analyst and foreign policy advocate in Washington, DC. He join us to give some history and context on the Israeli/Hamas war.   TRANSCRIPT:   Speaker 1 (00:42): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this broadcast, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. According to my guest self-proclaimed Zionist, Joe Biden, with no witts about him is assuring the destruction of Zionist apartheid Israel as corrupt US Intel leaders have unleashed the dogs of war. We cannot be bystanders, quote, indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. That's Rabbi Abraham Heschel for insight into this. Let's turn to my guest. He leads the speaking truth to power section of Tell the Word a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner city Washington. He served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties including chairing the National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President's daily brief. And he also ran the Russia desk for the CIA. And in January of 2003, he co-created veteran intelligence professionals for sanity. He is Ray McGovern. Ray, welcome and let's connect some dots. Ray McGovern (02:34): Thanks, Dr. Leon Dr. Wilmer Leon (02:36): Ray, you recently published a piece at raymcgovern.com entitled, can You give a brief synopsis of what's happening in Israel? And it's based upon a response to a question from, I believe your youngest daughter. She asked you to explain to her what's happening in occupied Palestine and it opens as follows. I was nine years old, 1948 when there was huge celebration in the Bronx at the founding of the state of Israel. No one told me that Arabs had lived on that land for centuries and were displaced by force. Tens of thousands of them crammed into postage stamped Gaza and now host to millions of Palestinians. Ray, I'll throw it to you. Why was it so important for you to write this piece? Ray McGovern (03:30): Wilmer? Frankly, I was really encouraged that one of my children, and we have five, was interested in knowing what I thought about this. (03:43) Prophets are without renown in their hometowns and sometimes in their own homes. So when Miriam asked me this question, I said, well, she wants a short, concise paragraph, so I'll try and I failed. I couldn't do it In one concise paragraph, I said, look, here's somebody who's genuinely interested. She has three young children. She's got a very busy life, but she knows that this is important. So let me explain some of the background to this. And so I started out first with the, so-called religious justification for what Israel did. Well in occupying lands already occupied by Palestinian people for centuries before I have been in the West Bank, I have been in Israel at one point, we went up a hill to a Jewish settlement. This is about eight years ago now. At the bottom of the hill, there was devastation. There was no running water, there was poverty of an extreme kind. (05:03) When we went up to the top of the hill, whoa, you look like a golf course for God sake, green lawns being watered, okay? And a rabbi from Cleveland telling us why he's entitled to be there as a settler. So one of my colleagues, we were on a little delegation, said, well, a rabbi, how do you explain the conditions right down at the bottom of this hill in Palestinian territory, and you're beautiful settlement up here. And he said, without hesitation. Well, God promised us this land. Now, I had heard that before and I know not enough about the what's so called the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, but I knew this. I knew that they depend on Deuteronomy 15 four for that. So I basically, rabbi, please cite the part of scripture that justifies your settling on this land. And he said, that's easy. He said, Yahweh said to the Jewish people, you shall have this land flowing with milk and honey. (06:22) And I said, continue, rabbi, continue. And he said, what do you mean continue? I said, well, you're only giving us half of the deal, right? He said, well, what do you mean? I said, read the rest of the verse. So there shall be no poor among you. He said, oh, you forgot to. So it was a deal. It was, well, you might call it a covenant. All right. You shall have this land so that there shall be no poor among you. And I thought that Miriam should know this, that when she hears people say, oh, wait a second, I promised this stuff. It was a deal. And the Israelis, of course, have broken that deal in a scurrilous way. So that's the way I started out. I went into some of the more recent history. But go back to the Hebrew scriptures. It's very clear what God's promise was. Assuming you think this is important. And of course the settlers think it's important. That's why they always cited Dr. Wilmer Leon (07:28): Ray two things. One, it would be one thing if the scripture said, I will give you this land of milk and honey so that you will not be poor. But that's not what it says. It says so that there will not be poor among you. And there's also a reason why those individuals are called settlers. And there's also a reason why that region is called the occupied territories. Ray McGovern (08:06): That's right, Wilmer. And it's an embarrassing history we Americans have because we were settlers on the land, peopled by Native Americans, and we kind of pushed them aside just as Israel has pushed the Palestinians aside. So it's not a happy history. But when you're a settler, well, that's a nice way of putting that. You're coming from outside and you've displaced people who have a right to live on those lands. So as I said in the beginning of this piece, I came from the Bronx. I lived there for my first 22 years before I went in and served as an army officer. Now, when I was nine years old, 19 eight, oh man, it was sort of like the 4th of July, 10 times over Israel had a home, right? And as I noted at the beginning, well, nobody told me. Well, he told me that it was not a land for people, a land without any people in it. (09:15) Well, there were people in it. And that's the basic part of all this. And if you go more recent in the history, I was serving as a CIA analyst in 1967 when the Israelis attacked Egypt and Syria decimated their Air Force and enlarged Israeli territory to include parts of Syria, to include the West Bank, to include the Sinai, to include Gaza, lots of places to include, right? Okay. Now we thought, or we were told that Egypt was about to attack Israel. Well, that was the legends put forward for many years after 1967. But finally, man, be a former Israeli prime minister, got up before an audience in Washington in 1982 and call it chutzpah, call it honesty. Call it a cleansing of his conscience. But this is what he said. It's not long. I want to read it so that I don't mess it up. All right, man. Bein former Israeli prime minister quote, in June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the side eye approaches do not prove that SSO is already really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him. (11:07) It was duly reported in the New York Times and people in New York and elsewhere where I was living. Oh, isn't that interesting? So the Israelis said, well, that's called aggression. That's calling creating Libens home. Okay? Not terribly dissimilar from what happened in the thirties at the hands of the Nazis in Germany. And so that's the truth behind all this. Now, how did the UN react then back in 67 when all this happened? There was the unanimous security council resolution, resolution two, four, two, that call for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Was it a close vote? It was unanimous. Okay. Did the Israelis do that? No, they didn't do that. Why didn't they do that? Because of chutzpah? Because the Israelis can always depend on the United States to defend them no matter what they do. And so they have occupied all those territories. They gave back the Sinai to Egypt when there was an agreement under Jimmy Carter, but the Sinai is not worth keeping. (12:17) Actually. Now the people in Gaza are bearing the brunch of this occupation, this oppression, and as I quoted Rabbi Heschel, one of my very favorite people who marched with Dr. King back in the late sixties, that we're not all guilty, but we are all responsible. How did I put it? How did he put it? Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself. That's what we have to measure up to this time. There's been evil in Gaza, and we have to make sure that we don't one sidedly accuse one side and give the other a free ride, so to speak. As has been the case since the US reacted to the UN resolution, it didn't do diddly, as we say in the Bronx to enforce it. Dr. Wilmer Leon (13:23): There's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of disinformation and outright lies that are being used in support of the Zionist US narrative of this illegal occupation of Palestine, as well as the genocide of Palestinians. I want to read a brief statement and then show a map before I come back to you. Here's a statement. This is from the foreign office, the 2nd of November, 1917, and it reads, dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of his Majesty's government. The following declaration of sympathy with Jewish scientist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the cabinet, his majesty's government view, with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. (14:36) I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation, yours, Arthur James Balfour. Now this is known as the Balfour Declaration. The British government decided in 1917 to endorse the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine, not Israel, Palestine. After discussions within the cabinet and the consulting with the Jewish leaders, the decision was made public. And we have this letter to that point. Here's a map from National Geographic from 1947 where you can see Lebanon, Syria, trans Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine. Israel is not on this map. Why? Because contrary to the dominant Western narrative, Israel did not exist. That's why we know now Israel is actually the occupied territories. Ray people will have a tendency to try to categorize this conversation as anti-Semitic, which is why if we can put the map back up one more time, I want to be sure that people see this map. This is history. This is not narrative. This is not rhetoric. This is history. Ray McGovern. Ray McGovern (16:14): Well, history can be very antisemitic. (16:22) I mean, it's hard to realize that most Americans are blissfully unaware of all this. The maps show the story. Now, the situation right now is different. How is it different? Well, the Soviets, I used to be a Soviet analyst analyst of Russians, foreign policy. The Soviets used to talk about a concept called the correlation of forces. Now, it's not rocket science, okay? It had to do with the balance of power in the world. Now, guess what folks? The balance of power in the world has shifted. People are now talking about a shift from a unipolar world, which is what the US was since World War ii, and particularly since the Soviet Union fell apart to a multipolar world where other countries are allowed to have a say in these things. Well, I look at it as a bipolar world, and I would refer more recently just to the yesterday's vote at the un, where the US was the only one to veto a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling for the Israelis, not to ethnically cleanse Gaza as they apparently still intend to do. (17:53) So what's my point? My point is that everyone, not even the British voted with us this time, okay? 12 to one was there was two abstentions. So what am I saying? I'm saying that the Arab countries, well, here's an example. The Arab ambassadors in Beijing asked the Chinese, please get us all together. We would need to talk about what's going to happen in Gaza. And the Chinese did. The head of Iran calls up arch rival the head of Saudi Arabia and says, we got to do something about this. And they have a cordial conversation. Okay? Next thing you know, he is talking to the head of Hamas. He's talking to the head of Hezbollah, okay? So there are things that are happening here where it's where the deck is being stacked heavily against the United States, and it's sat traps like the UK and France and Germany. They're not very long for this world, those governments, okay? So what we have here is a condition where 20 years ago, the US could work its will. Okay? No longer can it. Hamas is well-equipped. I don't think that killing civilians is a good idea, nor do I. When you look at it or when you look at it, you say, well, was this unprovoked? (19:31) Unprovoked seems to be the adjective of choice here. Just as PCIs decision to defend his compatriots in the DBAs was not unprovoked, neither was Hamas' reaction here without making any moral judgements, which is something that intelligence analysts are not called to do. Actually, we can say you can understand this given the recent history and the more distant history that we've referred to earlier. Dr. Wilmer Leon (20:07): I'm very glad that you put it that way because a lot of times people misconstrue, and I'll just put this on a personal level. I'm not a former, not an intelligence analyst, but I am a political scientist, not a political operative. And so people have a tendency to misconstrue my explanation of events with my agreeing with the events, my saying, I understand why President Putin and Russia went into Ukraine. I understand it because I understand the history. I understand why Hamas took the actions that it did. I don't condone the killing of civilians. I don't condone the killing of children, but I understand why Hamas did what they did. If you could quickly, Tony Blinken, you were just talking about the shift from the unipolar to the multipolar world. Talk a little bit about Tony Blinken and this whole concept of the rules based order, because Tony Blinken in the Biden administration, they love to talk about the rules based order, but when you try to find a definition of it, you can't because it only exists in the mind of Tony Blinken. They rarely talk about international law. They always want to talk about the rules based order. Ray McGovern (21:46): You put your finger on it, the rules based international order, well, it's a contrived expression. It's meant to substitute for international law and the United Nations. It was invented by Blinken and Sullivan and Nolan, and I mean poin and Laro, the foreign minister have made fun of it. Well, tell us about this. We try to Google it, but could you please give us, can you give us a piece of paper to describe what the rules based into law? And of course they can. And what it means is what we say goes, we make the rules, and that's it. Dr. Wilmer Leon (22:30): And you follow our orders. Ray McGovern (22:33): People are getting wise to that increasing number of people witness the vote at the UN yesterday, 12 to one, the one being the United States. The saving grace here, as I say it, is that the UN is still being respected by China, by Russia, and by some of the other countries that are insisting that we abide by UN regulations. First and foremost in this context, security council resolution 2, 4, 2 of November 22nd, 1967 ordering is to relinquish control of the occupied territories that they seized in 1967. So what's the hope here? Well, the hope was yesterday. The US talks about Russia being isolated. Look, (23:34) And maybe just maybe these Zionists, and I'll use that word advisedly. I mean, Joe Biden has bragged about being a real dy in the world. Zionist, so has Blinken and Sullivan, the rest of them. Okay? What does that mean? That means the people that occupied the Palestinian Territories occupied by Palestinians for as just as Native Americans in our example, four centuries before, it doesn't make sense. And it's not going to make any headway no matter how much we invoke this rule space, international order. Thanks for raising that, because it's very telling how we thought that we could just invent a new phrase and substitute it for international law. And the UN Dr. Wilmer Leon (24:29): President Biden, when he went to the region on this, so-called Peacekeeping tour, wherever the heck he was supposed to be doing, he talked about peace. And to your point earlier on, not on this trip, but earlier on he was very clear, I am a Zionist. And then Tony Blinken goes and he says, I am here not only as the Secretary of State of the United States, but I'm here as a Jew. What message do you think that sends to the Arabs in the region who he allegedly is supposed to be trying to find some common ground with and bring about some type of peaceful resolution to this conflict? Ray McGovern (25:18): Well, I think the word is chutzpah and naivete. If blinken doesn't know how that goes over with the Arab leaders that he is talking to, he is hopelessly blind. Wait Dr. Wilmer Leon (25:35): A minute, wait a minute, Ray, does he care? Because what that I remember very clearly probably two years ago when Blinken went to Anchorage, Alaska to meet with the Chinese delegation, and the Chinese delegation got up and said, we're not going to sit here and let you lecture us. We're China. We don't have to sit here and listen to you. And they got up and walked out of the room. That to me, sounds eerily reminiscent or what just transpired with Tony Blinken in the Middle East sounds eerily reminiscent to what he tried to do with the Chinese. Ray McGovern (26:17): Well, Wilmer, you probably have seen President Biden reading from his little notes, even in a very short a session with Netanyahu. So who writes the notes? Dr. Wilmer Leon (26:33): Tony Ray McGovern (26:33): Blink. Well, Blinken writes the notes. Dr. Wilmer Leon (26:36): Victoria Newland. Ray McGovern (26:37): Victoria Newland. Now, what does Victoria Newland have in common? What Jacob Sullivan have in common? They're all of Jewish extraction. Now, should that ordinarily matter? No. Does it matter? Now? It happens to matter. Now we're talking about a Jewish home land created at the expense of the Palestinian people. We're talking about Zionism, which is a political movement, not a religion. So the three top people at the State Department have traditionally been Zionists, not only Jews, but Zionists. Now, this is not lost on the Middle East leaders or China or Russia. And you could see their hold on Biden from the very first part of his administration. The first thing he did, we got up and he said, now China, China's going to be, has aspirations to be the most powerful country in the world, not only economically, but strategically. That's not going to happen on my watch. (27:51) Okay? Next thing he does is he lets himself be set up by Stephanopoulos George Stephanopoulos, who says, now, Mr. President, do you think Putin's a killer? And by, oh, he's a killer. Okay? And then they meet with the Chinese at Anchorage and read him the riot act about the rules. Basically, the Chinese say, we know all about this. We spent a century throwing off your predecessors, the British selling with the gun diplomas. That's all the folks. And as you say, they didn't put up with it. So you have at the very outset of his administration laying down the line, look, were all powerful, which is not the case anymore. We're Zionists, which happens to be the case anymore. Let me introduce one sort of comment that Biden made without reading from his little cards there, I think was on the plane coming home yesterday. He said, I made a note of it. He says, I can understand why people in the Middle East region would not believe the Israelis, or that maybe the bombing of that hospital was not intentional. (29:17) Well, I can understand why the people of that region would not believe the Israeli. The question is why you believe him, Joe Biden, and whether now Jacob Sullivan, I have to tell you, people object to my saying Jacob Sullivan, but that's his first name. Okay? Just like remember Scooter Libby who worked for Janie. His first was Israel Libby. So why does he go by Scooter? Why does Jacob go by Jake? I don't know, but I can make a little guess here. Okay. Jacob Sullivan is Zionist as the Newlands and the Blinken of this world, and of course the president who styles himself as the supreme Zionist. What does that mean? Well, it means that it's over the US and Israel. It's just going to take a couple of months. Now for people to realize that, and the fear I have Wilmer, the fear I have is that there's too much at stake personally for President Biden and for Blinken and Nod and Sullivan and Nolan and Hunter Biden, there's too much at personal stake for them to go away quietly and acknowledge the new correlation of forces. (30:37) If they lose the wars, if they lose the election, they could end up in jail. The evidence is there, and court documents in sworn testimony, bribery, impeachment proceedings may go forward. So I'm always saying, I don't give a rat's patooty about what happens in impeachment considerations. What I care about is how they are likely to react to save their own patootie. And that introduces an element of instability and personal stake that worries me greatly. And it doesn't matter what worries McGovern greatly, I'm sure it worries Russian and Chinese leaders greatly too, and has them on tenterhooks as to what will happen over the next year. Dr. Wilmer Leon (31:29): When you look at the surveys right now, when you look at the polling data, the race for 2024 between President Biden and former President Trump, by most polls, is a dead heat, one or two points. It's within the margin of error. History tells us that countries tend not to shift leadership or change leadership in the midst of conflict slash war. You mentioned if they lose the election, I'm sorry, you mentioned if they lose the war, if they lose the election, does Joe Biden need this conflict in his mind in order to save his administration? Ray McGovern (32:19): I don't think Joe Biden is Compass Menis. I think that Blinken and Sullivan, Nolan, they are extremely Compass mentors. They have a lot to fear. Let's say that Trump wins election, as I said before, the evidence is out there, not only of bribery and those kinds of things, and Hunter Biden's laptop and the inclusion of corrupt former intelligence officials and all that kind of stuff. But Blinken was personally involved in arranging for Biden to win via a subterfuge. What do I mean? Well, when Hunter Biden's laptop was revealed and the scarless repeat stuff on, and his dealings with calling his father's brand name into, well, how did they decide to handle that was three weeks before the election. Oh, what happened? Well, by testimony to Congress, by a former acting director of the CIA, his name is Mikey Morell. He said, I got a call from Tony Blinken, and he said, the best way to handle the Hunter Biden laptop is could you get former intelligence directors to say that it has all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation operation? (33:56) And Mikey Mell said, sure, I can do that. Three days later, Mikey Morell has rounded up 50 count 'em, 50 former intelligence directors and very high officials, speaks pretty poorly of them, doesn't it? 50 plus Mikey Morrell, and he says 51 former intelligence directors, including four or five former directors of the CIA, as if that enhances their credibility. Say, this has all the earmarks, Russian intelligence, disinformation operation. Now, was that consequential? Well, all I know is that two days later, Joe Biden had his last debate with Trump, and Trump raised this. Biden said, oh, don't you know that this is in all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation? Now, why do I go into that detail? I mean, that should not have happened. Okay? I don't know whether that won the election for Biden or not, but you don't do these things. They have to be illegal, in my view. (35:09) So Blinken himself is on 10 hooks. He could be prosecuted, he could be put in jail, and Jacob Sullivan, just the word about him, he invented Russiagate, the non-existent Russian hacking of the DNC computer for Hillary Clinton's emails and all that stuff that showed that she had stolen the nomination for Bernie Sanders. That was Sullivan. He was a big campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. So that's all out there. Now, I don't know if Trump came in, and I will not comment on what I think of Trump. If he came in, he's not loath to hold these people accountable, and on this case, he's got the law behind him. So again, there's great incentive on the part of all these people preparing their notes for Joe Biden to keep the war going in Ukraine and not lose before the election, and to help the Israelis to the degree the US can still not lose in Gaza. The last one is not possible anymore. Neither is the first one. So what am I afraid of? I'm afraid that they will react according to this personal stick they have, and it's to happen before when you have this kind of personal stake and you have advisors like these guys who are saying, Joe, look, if we lose this, look what happens then. You don't have to write notes to Joe. He understands this. He's a politician, and that's what worries me. Sorry to carry on at that point. Dr. Wilmer Leon (36:52): I Ray McGovern (36:52): Think this is an important aspect. It's not really covered elsewhere. Dr. Wilmer Leon (36:58): You are former intelligence official, and you understand the subtleties of diplomacy. And one of the things that I find very interesting is when you listen to President Putin, when you listen to President Xi, when you listen to Raisi in Iran, they speak in very subtle undertones. So when Donald Trump assassinated, general Ray McGovern (37:29): Soleimani, Dr. Wilmer Leon (37:31): Soleimani, Iran said, we're going to retaliate, and a lot of people expected the retaliation to be coming shortly thereafter. It did not come well, as Tony Blinken was traversing the Middle East recently, the Iranian foreign minister was doing the same thing with his allies and released a statement saying, Israel, the time is up. Did that convey to you a not so subtle message that people need to be paying attention to? Ray McGovern (38:17): Well, it does, and that's really one outstanding aspect of what happened over the last week. The notion that the president of Iran would call up the leader of Saudi Arabia to coordinate on what they're going to do. I mean, that's a tectonic shift in the relationship between those two countries. And raci, the president of Iran has been traveling all around, and he's got, he talks to this area and he talks to the Egyptians, and actually the Egyptians and the Jordanians wouldn't even receive Joe Biden when he wanted to see them. So what we need to do is recognize, Dr. Wilmer Leon (39:13): And Mohammad bin Salman made Tony Blinken wait an entire day, actually overnight, because I guess he had gone fishing in somewhere in Saudi Arabia, and he was on a fishing trip in Saudi Arabia and couldn't be bothered. So he thinked Tony, again, from a diplomatic perspective, that's one of those not so subtle messages that says, I really don't feel I'd being bothered with you. Ray McGovern (39:43): And Saudi Arabia is very, very, very important, not only because of the oil, but because of the raro schmo that was going on with China and with others. So maybe the Saudi foreign minister was supervising some beheadings in the public square. You get pretty busy in Saudi Arabia when head start rolling, and I understand he did give Blinken access to a men's room there as he waited. So there's some niceties that were observed, but he gave away overnight. You don't do that with, at least you didn't use to do that with the Secretary of State of the United States of America, least of all. Would the Saudi Arabia's have done that? So that's just one little symptom of the tectonic shift in relations where us is no longer the unipolar power, but rather a bipolar with them with the United States. And I am an American citizen. I really mourn the fact that because they're own ineptitude and chutzpah that would put ourselves in this situation. And I dare say that the Israelis do what everyone thinks they're going to do. Now, it's going to be all hell to pay because the Iranians has Pua, Hamas, the Egyptians, the Hezbollah, the others, even the Saudis for are not going to sit around and tolerate the of 2 million people in Gaza. Dr. Wilmer Leon (41:39): Yemen isn't going to be too happy with this either. Ray McGovern (41:44): Yemen as well. Yeah. Dr. Wilmer Leon (41:46): So people watching this, people listening to this, they may be saying, wow, Wilmer, you and Ray are spending an awful lot of time talking about foreign policy, talking about the Middle East. We have homelessness in the United States. We have abject poverty. We have all these declines in the standard of living in the United States. Why spend so much time talking about this instead of talking about that? Ray McGovern (42:19): Well, because they're connected. As you well know, every billion you send to Ukraine, every billion you send to Israel is at the expense of these people. The poor people in our country that need all that kind of help, there shall be no poor among you. Well, that's a universal. That's a universal, in my view. It doesn't have to be a Hebrew scripture. I mean, the Christian, the Christian, and I say Judeo-Christian attitude toward justice Wiler. We have this American concept of justice where you have this blind lady of all people holding these scales and the images impartiality image, no favoritism to one or the other. Now, lemme tell you something, and your listeners, the Judeo-Christian, the biblical concept of justice is unbalanced and biased to the core in favor of the poor. The hated poor as the Old Testament called the very word in pre Aramaic for justice, denotes not connotes, denotes showing mercy to the poor. (43:46) Now, that used to be kind of observed, FDR, my father's favorite president, he cried when FDR died. He knew in his heart what he needed to do, poor people. He brought us out of that depression. There used to be a Democratic party that cared mostly about the poor. When I asked my father, I said, dad, what's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? He said, all Democrats care about people. Okay, care about poor people. Well, that ain't the case anymore. They're all joined at the hip. And what do they care about? Stuffing their own pockets. What was really a revelation to me was when Pope Francis came to Congress 2015, I think it was, and there was a joint section, and he stands up there, and to his credit, Pope Francis says, and I quote, the main problem today is the blood soaked arms trade. Okay? The main problem today is the blood soaked arms trade. (45:04) Now what do those congressmen, what do the senators do? Oh, they go, they, oh, yeah, right? And he stood up, and then they looked in their pocket ship envelope from Raytheon was still there, and it went from Lockheed over here. I mean, it was giving hypocrisy a bad name, okay? These guys know what the message was, but they're so soaked in this money and this power that it's going to take a lot of us, a lot of us who care about the poor, and a lot of us who can show opportunity costs is what the economists use. (45:45) For every 150 million you spend on creating an F 35, what could be done in your school district to pay the teachers a decent way? What could be do? What could be done in Iowa or Nebraska or any of these places which are being downtrodden? Okay? People need to make this very specific. This money is going to these high people that are making 20, $30 million a year as salaries, as CEOs or Raytheon and Lockheed general dynamics. That ain't sustainable. We need to get up and find out where these people live. Shame them into relenting a little bit and saying, look, maybe 10 million is enough for your salary, and maybe we'll give the balance to the poor. So round this thing up, I happen to be out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and this reinforces my, what's the word, my imperative to honor the concept of justice, which is not balanced in favor of everybody because it's, it's not a level playing field. It's a unbalanced, it's biased and prejudice to the core in favor of the poor. Now, that's what I come out of as a faith perspective. I'll just add one other thing. I had a Jesuit teacher who was a real good friend of mine. I said, well, how would you describe your theology? I said, that's very simple. I can put it in one sentence. I said, what's that? He says, well, it all depends on what kind of God you believe in and how God feels when little people are pushed around. (47:47) And, okay, I'll say that again, and how God feels when little people are pushed around. Now, you don't have to believe in God. You can just believe in justice. I had agnostics and atheists tell me, look, Ray, you don't have to go into the Bible here. Human beings know that we're supposed to be fair, and that's true. Human beings used to know that we need to get back on the track here and do everything we can to make sure they realize that. Now, the more so since things are getting very, very perilous for us, not only in Ukraine, but in Western Asia as it's called now, Dr. Wilmer Leon (48:29): In mentioning Ukraine, you also have a piece at your website, Ray mcgovern.com entitled, fact Checking Putin on Ukraine. President Putin gave an interview right before he went to China for the Belt and Road Initiative Conference, and you say, media consumers should be permitted to learn what Putin said, particularly about Ukraine and Russia's problems dealing with various US administrations over the years. Readers who rely on the paper of record, however, will be shielded from his remarks, and thus, any temptation to ask if they might be true. And you went through a lot of what Russian President Putin had to say. You did your own fact checking. And what were some of the conclusions that you came to regarding President Putin's the veracity of his comments? Ray McGovern (49:35): Well, I checked them all, and there were two that I needed to consult others on because I wasn't a hundred percent sure. One had to do with when Soviet Russian forces went up there near Kiev and were abruptly withdrawn very early in the war in Ukraine, I always wondered about that. Putin claims that that was part of a deal, not a covenant, but at least a deal. Now, what was the deal? The deal was reached with Ukrainian officials in Glarus and in Turkey. There was a deal to stop the war, to have a ceasefire, to commit Ukraine, not to join NATO, and to bring Russian troops down from where they were threatening Kiev. That's what Putin claims. Now, I checked around because my memory is just one person, but I found out, yeah, that's probably why the Russian troops went down from that area. It's not because they couldn't have taken Kiev, although they didn't really have all that many troops there. (50:54) But the Russians, from the very outset of their special military operation, appeal to the Ukrainians, look, we'd like to have a deal here. All we want is some respect for our own security. We don't want NATO coming in as a bulwark against us. Now, what happened? Well, the Ukrainians talked and they reached an agreement in Ankara on the 31st of March, 2022, and it said these things that I just spelled out what happened? Well, the US in the person of Boris Johnson from the uk, he visited Kiev right away and said, no, no, no deal. You may be willing to deal with Russia, but we're not. We want to continue this thing. The object here is to give the Russians a bloody nose, a strategic defeat. Okay? And so what does Zelensky do? Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry. I won't do that anymore. Okay. That's how that thing went down. (51:58) Now, I remember reading this in S, the official organ in Ukraine. I mean, that's pretty good. But when I had confirmation about this from some of the people that know the military situation a little better than I did, I said, yeah, well, that was correct too. Now, Wilmer, without belaboring this, I have to tell you that after fact checking all this and trying to offer this as an alternative view by somebody who had fact checked it, I couldn't get it published. I couldn't get it published on a very, well, what we shall say, a very anti-war website. Dr. Wilmer Leon (52:46): But Ray Ray, that's got to be impossible because Joe Biden has told us that we stand for democracy, that Putin is a dictator and that he's an autocrat, and we stand for the freedom of press in America. Ray, how could you not get something like that published? Ray McGovern (53:07): Well, I guess my point Wilmer here is that I've long since stopped trying to get something in The Times or the Washington Post. I used to be able to do that 10 years ago, like twice a year. But the alternative media, for God sake, the progressive media is now saying, oh, that sounds a little bit too. So here, I check these things. I double check with the people who know about things they're not quite sure about. I put it out there and say, well, that sounds a little bit too, we can't run that. So that's the alternative media. That's the binder where nobody wants to feel like they could be susceptible to criticism of being pro Putin, that my friend, is how bad it has become. Dr. Wilmer Leon (54:02): I was at dinner with some friends, and one of them asked kind of a generic question about this media and whose interests are being served, and this can't be some invisible cabal that is behind the scenes, being sure that a particular narrative is only being articulated. And I said, no, it doesn't really have to be a cabal, because when you look at Jeff Bezos, for example, and he owns the Washington Post, and he owns Amazon, and look at where Jeff Bezos has received most of his money from Amazon Data Systems, which is a defense contractor. I said, look at, what's his name, knowns Tesla, and he controls X, and where does he get most of his money from? SpaceX and starlink defense contractors. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a cabal as much as it is the confluence of interests that understand which side their bread is buttered on. Is that fair to say? Ray McGovern (55:29): Well, Wilmer, I have an expression or an acronym called the Mickey Mat, the military industrial Congressional Intelligence Media, academia think tank complex. It's in some dictionaries now. Okay, why do I say media? Because the media is controlled by the rest of the Mickey Mat. That's the situation we're in now. Now you mentioned Jeff Bezos, and you correctly pointed out he gets lots of money from the federal government, CIA, and others. Okay, but the people he picks, well, there was a fellow named Fred Hyatt who ran the editorial section of the Washington Post, like the op-ed section. Okay? And before the war in Iraq, about 90% of the op-eds were, oh, yeah, they're weapons of mass, weapons of, okay, so what happens after the war when there are no weapons of mass destruction? He goes up to the Columbia School of Journalism, and when a naive student says, Mr. Hyatt, you kept saying that there were weapons of mass destruction as flat fact, and it turned out not to be any. How do you explain that? And Hyatt famously said, well, if there weren't weapons of mass destruction, we probably should not have said that. There were, (56:58) My patron, Robert Perry of recent memory turned to me at that, and he said, Ray, that used to be sort of like a cardinal principle or journalism. If something's not true, you're not supposed to say it's okay. What happened to Fred Hyatt? He stayed in place for 20 more years running the op-ed section. So what's my point? No one, no one is held accountable for these things. That's up to us. We have to find ways to hold people accountable, and what that involves, I leave to people, but we have to start getting off to our rear ends. We have to put our bodies into it as I have in the past. They're not going to kill you. They'll beat you up, all put you in prison, but it's worth it because so much is at stake right now, and I've never seen, never seen a more tentative, a more dangerous time to include the prospect of the use of many nuclear weapons, which eventually would do us all in. Dr. Wilmer Leon (58:01): We have just about a minute and a half or so left, and I want to read, this is from M-S-N-B-C, and this is from the April 6th, 2022. In a break with the past US is using Intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid. What that means, boys and girls, is M-S-N-B-C is admitting that they are lying to the American people under the pretext of the noble line. They're lying to you. Boy, Ray McGovern American people, first of all, Ray, thank you so much for your time today, and where can folks find your work? Ray McGovern (58:51): Well, I'm sure that Plato and his noble liar kind of turning around in the grave right now. Dr. Wilmer Leon (59:01): Where can people find your work? Ray McGovern (59:03): Oh, where? Okay. Well, I am Twittering. That's @RayMcGovern. Okay. My website is raymcgovern.com. I'm also on Facebook and on Instagram, so I hope that you'll tune in. My son who runs my website always says, Ray, always say, always add. If you don't get it, you won't get it. You don't get it. But I'm too humble to say that. Dr. Wilmer Leon (59:31): Ray McGovern, thanks for joining me. Big shout out to my producer, melody McKinley. Thank you all so much for joining the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Folks, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Stay tuned for the new podcasts every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'll see you all next time, and until then, please treat each day like it's your last, because one day you'll be right. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Peace and Blessings. I'm out.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the former FBI director James Comey, who is making his debut as a thriller writer with an engrossing police procedural, Central Park West. Jim tells me how he mined his own early career as a prosecutor in the southern district of New York to produce this world of hard-bitten investigators and murderous mafiosi (and how he was able to bring it up to date because it's a world his daughter now inhabits). And, as the investigator at the centre of the Scooter Libby and Hillary Clinton email cases – among many others involving classified intelligence – he gives me his take on what Donald Trump's indictment means and where it's likely to lead.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the former FBI director James Comey, who is making his debut as a thriller writer with an engrossing police procedural, Central Park West. Jim tells me how he mined his own early career as a prosecutor in the southern district of New York to produce this world of hard-bitten investigators and murderous mafiosi (and how he was able to bring it up to date because it's a world his daughter now inhabits). And, as the investigator at the centre of the Scooter Libby and Hillary Clinton email cases – among many others involving classified intelligence – he gives me his take on what Donald Trump's indictment means and where it's likely to lead.

Journalists Marcy Wheeler and Joe Conason share their thoughts on the documents seized by the FBI at Mar A Lago and how Trump could potentially face charges under the Espionage Act, the same charge Reality was brought under.  GUEST BIOS  Joe Conason is editor-at-large of Type Investigations. He is also founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo, a daily newsletter and news site. For 18 years he wrote a weekly political column for The New York Observer, where he formerly served as executive editor, and for 12 years he wrote a weekly column for Salon. He previously served as investigative editor of The American Prospect and editor-at-large for Conde Nast's Details. Before that, he worked for The Village Voice as a columnist, staff writer and national correspondent. He is the author of several books, including Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (St. Martin's Press) and, with Gene Lyons, The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (St. Martin's Press), both of which were New York Times bestsellers. His most recent book is Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton. His articles and essays have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian (London) and The New Yorker, as well as scores of other periodicals. He appears frequently as a commentator on television and radio, including several years as a regular guest on Air America's Al Franken Show. A winner of the New York Press Club's Byline Award, he has covered every American presidential election since 1980. Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Motherboard, the New Republic, and Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Marcy serves on the Advisory Committee for the House Fourth Amendment Caucus, is a senior fellow at GWU's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, and was declared an Internet Human Rights hero by AccessNow. Marcy has been blogging full time since 2007. She's known for her live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, her discovery of the number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, and for reverse-engineering government surveillance years before it otherwise gets disclosed. Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. Marcy, her spouse, and June Bug the Terrorist FosterEx Dog recently moved to Ireland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the twenty-ninth installment of “The Watchdog” podcast, Lowkey speaks to Todd E. Pierce about the global reach of the U.S. empire and its totalitarian ambitions to control the entire planet. Todd is a retired U.S. Army officer and defense attorney whose experiences serving at the front line of empire moved him to become a defender of its victims. Towards the end of his military service, he volunteered to become a defense attorney for three prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Previously a neoconservative cold warrior, Pierce joined the military at an early age and served in the first Gulf War. Yet after being exposed to the realities of neoconservative doctrine, his faith in the project began to waver. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the U.S. victory in Iraq, American war planners were giddy with excitement and dreamed of a world where they had “full spectrum dominance.” It was at this point that top neoconservatives like Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby began to outline their plans for total world domination. As Pierce told Lowkey, their position was essentially:The world now is subject to our control and we would not tolerate any country having the ability...to cause us to hesitate in our decision making, even for legitimate grievances. It's totalitarian. It is a totalitarian doctrine that we tried to impose on the world. And it is still our doctrine."Inside the U.S. as well, they saw little need for the façade of democracy and developed their “unitary executive theory,” a notion Pierce described as “the idea that the U.S. president can do anything he or she wishes to do. It is no less than that: it's a dictatorship.”Unlike many in the country, Pierce became more radical as he got older and increasingly came to oppose the empire he served for years. Today, Pierce is a searing critic of U.S. human rights discourse, claiming that Washington's actions around the world have “made a mockery” of the phrase. From protecting torturers to defending human rights-abusing allies like Saudi Arabia, the U.S. has fundamentally undermined its own position. As he has argued, “Everything that we have done since 9/11 is wrong.”Todd E. Pierce served with the 349th Psychological Operations Company and the 205th Infantry Brigade as a senior NCO. In 2008, he was assigned to the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel. An American lawyer, military historian, former army computer technician, and former Judge Advocate General Defense Attorney, he volunteered to defend Guantanamo Bay inmates, describing the legal theory underpinning the detention camp as an attack on the Constitution.Support the show

Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code ”EXPLICIT20” at MANSCAPED.com! #ad #manscapedpod In the 46th episode, I sit down with Elizabeth Loftus, a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. She holds positions in the Departments of Psychological Science, and Criminology, Law & Society. And she is a Professor of Law. She also has a faculty appointment in the Department of Cognitive Sciences and is a Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, and was the Founding Director of the Center for Psychology and Law. Loftus has been an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of cases, including the McMartin PreSchool Molestation case, the Hillside Strangler, the Abscam cases, the trial of Oliver North, the trial of the officers accused in the Rodney King beating, the Menendez brothers, the Bosnian War trials in the Hague, the Oklahoma Bombing case, and litigation involving Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, and the Duke University Lacrosse players. She was interviewed on Showtime‘s ”Buried”, which documents the trial of George Franklin that based on his daughter‘s recovered memory, was charged with murder. This was the first murder prosecution in the U.S. based almost entirely on recovered memory, Elizabeth Loftus testified in court for this case.

Follow us on IG @crimeandwinepod @shaysbeautydiary @shnail_latrece --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crimenwine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crimenwine/support

Kristin Wood was at CIA HQ on the morning of 9/11. Phil Mudd was at the National Security Council. Kristin was a PDB briefer for the VP's National Security Advisor. Phil was Director for Gulf Affairs. They would go on to work counterterrorism together. Kristen has a Wheaton Terrier. Phil has a farm. For the rest, it's best if you hear Kristin and Phil.  “… knowing that every day, you had to deliver relevant information to the nation's leaders, it is a feeling of enormous responsibility that all of the 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of intelligence officers who have done amazing work, you want to represent it faithfully.”   I just I didn't want to be alone. I didn't know what was going on. So I stayed at a friend's house, maybe a mile or two from my house just watching through the downing of the Towers. And at that point, I said, I'm going home. My only other memories are realizing I couldn't go to the White House. 

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 201, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Measuring Up 1: There are 3 teaspoons in this unit of measure. tablespoon. 2: 37 degrees Celsius equals 98.6 degrees on this scale. Fahrenheit. 3: Equal to 1,000 grams, this metric standard is abbreviated KG. kilogram. 4: Of 6 miles, 16 miles or 60 miles, the one closest to the length in miles of a 10-kilometer run. 6 miles. 5: This unit can be 1/60 of a degree or 1/60 of an hour. minute. Round 2. Category: Turn Me Lewis 1: He died on Oct. 11, 1809 of a gunshot wound in Tennessee; murder or suicide has never been proven either way. Meriwether Lewis. 2: The father of John L. Lewis, first president of the CIO, had this job back in Wales. a coalminer. 3: The No. 2 man for the No. 2 man, he was Dick Cheney's chief of staff until he was indicted. Scooter Libby. 4: He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sinclair Lewis. 5: It's not nonsense (or is it?) to say this author was ordained a deacon in 1861. Lewis Carroll. Round 3. Category: Lesser-Known Ancient Romans 1: This little-known Roman was exactly half as wide as his Greek friend Diameter. Radius. 2: This ancient Roman had trouble understanding others because of the ringing in his ears. Tinnitus. 3: Everything this Roman did was counterfeit or fake. Bogus. 4: He was difficult to understand because his jaw muscles were always locking up. Tetanus. 5: This Roman was always interrupting his projects for an extended break, especially over the summer. Hiatus. Round 4. Category: Facial Hair 1: This symbol of America has a type of beard named for him. Uncle Sam. 2: Women have a special pencil for them. Eyebrows. 3: Wearing this kind of beard would turn a nanny into a billy. Goatee. 4: A soupstrainer moustache is also known by this aquatic mammal's name. Walrus. 5: This long moustache with ends that droop past the chin is named for a Sax Rohmer villain. Fu Manchu. Round 5. Category: When Was That, Pierre? 1: Une annee horrible was this year of Napoleon's death, 6 years after Waterloo. 1821. 2: Tres tragique was this year when France was first occupied in World War II. 1940. 3: C'est tout! The armistice ending "La Grande Guerre" was signed in the Compiegne Forest in this year. 1918 (World War I). 4: Alors! In this year France lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu and saw revolution begin in Algeria. 1954. 5: Vive la Revolution Francaise! which began in this year. 1789. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!

How does a man by the name of Scooter find his way into politics rather than the obvious first option of becoming a DJ in a Carlow nightclub? Marion McKeone takes us deep into the inception scandal of Libby. How he and Bush administration officials would do just about anything to build their case for a war in Iraq and the innocent victims they ruined as a result. Jarlath asks about the chances of Derek Chauvin’s appeal and whether Liz Chaney has been advised to flee a sinking ship. There’s also news on this Sunday’s guest and lots more. “Scooter in the house!”   If you have a question for Marion please send it through to irishmanabroadpodcast@gmail.com and Jarlath will do his best to include it in the next episode.   Supplementary research provided by John Meagher.   To hear this episode in full each week and to gain access to the entire back-catalogue of over 400 Irishman Abroad episodes that are not available on iTunes for just the price of a pint every month visit www.patreon.com/irishmanabroad.   Our charity partner is jigsawonline.ie. In these tricky times, Jigsaw provides a range of resources, advice and care for your people to help them strengthen their mental health and the skills needed to navigate life. Please visit their website and consider making a donation.   For updates on future episodes and live shows follow @jarlath on Twitter, visit www.jigser.com or email the show directly on irishmanabroadpodcast@gmail.com.   Disclaimer: All materials contained within this podcast are copyright protected. Third party reuse and/or quotation in whole or in part is prohibited unless direct credit and/or hyperlink to the Irishman Abroad podcast is clearly and accurately provided.

In this episode Lewis recounts a famous case that shows the arrogance and greed that can control those at the top. Once again Lewis leaves us with a moral well worth remembering.PRESS RELEASELewis Ress has just released his second book "Miami Memoirs: Including the Maharani's Ring" in paperback. It is now available at: https://amzn.to/3pM7ZSeYou can also find Lewis first book, Strange Cases and Wild Tales at: http://bit.ly/StrangeCasesWildTalesCredits: Intro/outro music: https://www.free-stock-music.com/jazz-street.html

Debbie Reynolds, “The Data Diva,” talks to Mike Bryant, Partner, Knox Capital Holdings, Venture Capitalist. We discuss the rise of legal technology and data-centered services, the launch of new businesses through digital transformation, investing in technology and services companies, the need for due diligence in cybersecurity and data privacy in business acquisitions, the considerations of looking at data privacy due to a global customer base, advice to young companies who are seeking investors around privacy, technology and cybersecurity, the social and business implications in technologies around data like biometrics, the need to better protect businesses from cyberattacks, biometrics and the development of technologies and talent in Africa, the current state of data privacy regulation in the U.S., antitrust issues and predictions about the regulation of big technology companies in 2021, the rise of cryptocurrencies in the future, the “Data Diva” having a drink with Mike in Washington DC, and an “inside the beltway” story about Scooter Libby.

Debbie Reynolds, “The Data Diva,” talks to Mike Bryant, Partner, Knox Capital Holdings, Venture Capitalist.  We discuss the rise of legal technology and data-centered services, the launch of new businesses through digital transformation, investing in technology and services companies, the need for due diligence in cybersecurity and data privacy in business acquisitions, the considerations of looking at data privacy due to a global customer base, advice to young companies who are seeking investors around privacy, technology and cybersecurity, the social and business implications in technologies around data like biometrics, the need to better protect businesses from cyberattacks, biometrics and the development of technologies and talent in Africa, the current state of data privacy regulation in the U.S., antitrust issues and predictions about the regulation of big technology companies in 2021, the rise of cryptocurrencies in the future, the “Data Diva” having a drink with Mike in Washington DC, and an “inside the beltway” story about Scooter Libby.

God's Word warns us about folks who promise big things but never deliver. They are like wind and clouds, but no rain-----We have heard a great deal of big talk the last 3 weeks about voter fraud, stolen votes, flipped votes, and hacked voting machines.----People claim they saw stacks of ballots being re-scanned, and sued because they were denied -meaningful- observations of the vote counting.----But as an election context expert, this preacher knows such claims are highly suspect. Re-scanning ballots is a normal process that happens all the time, but lay persons who see it are likely to make false claims of fraud.-----Meaningful- observations have never been provided for during ballot counting. If multiple people get to look over the shoulder as 600,000 paper ballots are counted, it will take weeks and months to finish-----There is plenty of -big talk,- but little to no actual proof, nor any real chance there will ever be any.----We have been promised -the real truth- for decades now about Whitewater, Vince Foster's death, Scooter Libby's lies, torture and murder, fraud on the FISA court, Hunter Biden's laptop, etc.----All along, our politicians have promised full investigations, exposure, and punishment.----But it never happens.----Meanwhile, people repeatedly fall for the Big Talkers' promises, because we will believe what we want to believe.----The Bible calls this the -itching ears- syndrome- we will believe lies because we want to.----But when Jesus made all those precious promises, nobody believed Him- It seems like -Itching ears- only works in favor of falsehood and lies.----Believers need to believe God's promises, and stop believing the Big Talkers of this world.

In this episode of Intelligence Matters: Declassified host Michael Morell interviews Kristin Wood, career analyst and manager of analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Wood looks back at the time she spent as Scooter Libby's briefer and Vice President Cheney's backup briefer. Both roles she played during the time of the 9/11 attacks. Post 9/11 there was a push by top officials to connect Iraq with al-Qaeda's role in the attacks, a push that led to the "Murkey Water Papers" being published. A report she says now, in hindsight, she would not do. "It was written in the context of some of the administration using questionable intelligence reports to justify their views that Iraq was somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks."

In July 2003, Valerie Wilson was outed as a spy in The Washington Post. The man behind her unveiling? Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, a man named Scooter Libby, who informed reporters about the undercover CIA agent in an act of retaliation against her husband.

How much does it cost to buy a Washington Post columnist?  One fancy dinner at the State Department. The think tank behind Trump's anti-China campaign.  North Korea getting dangerous and nobody paying attention.  Why the Marine Corps' new war fighting concept threatens the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex.  What the India-China border dispute tells us about Chinese intentions.  Matt Duss's Tweet: https://twitter.com/mattduss/status/1265645358442520576Andreas Nick's Tweet: https://twitter.com/DrAndreasNick/status/1264858787585949701?s=19Matthew Fay and Michael Hunzeker on Marine Corps Innovation: https://warontherocks.com/2020/05/no-sure-victory-the-marines-new-force-design-plan-and-the-politics-of-implementation/Dan Sneider on The Hudson Institute: https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/352479?fbclid=IwAR2gTT3YfFSpiTCNH_jMmg35bSsG6OH1lt_JYWZeLNrn5WsasYeymF5oZbY

Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson make a surprising announcement. Scooter Libby faces a day of reckoning in court, and Patrick Fitzgerald’s case comes to an end.Support our show by supporting our sponsors!

Remember the Scooter Libby scandal? It's back (sort of)!

Episode 69 of the NonProphets podcast, Atief, Robert, and Scott talk to Marc Koehler. Marc is the Vice President of Good Judgment Inc., in charge of government relations and co-head of analytics as well as an accomplished superforecaster. He was simultaneously the top forecaster on the internal Intelligence Community Prediction Market, the Good Judgment Project superforecaster prediction market, and on Hypermind. Marc was formerly in the Foreign Service with postings to the Office of the Vice President, the White House Situation Room, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the State Department, and overseas in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Nepal, Hong Kong and Sweden. Marc talks with us about working with Vice President Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby (1:18); the Pentagon Joint Staff and the Office of Net Assessments (4:55); ACE tournament Good Judgment Project and ICPM forecasting—open-source vs. classified information (6:55); how superforecasters think (11:35); how to set up the best predictive intelligence capacity for the US Government (21:50); formulating the right questions (29:27); when the truth is not wanted—North Korean plutonium reactor project in Syria incident (36:42), forecasting Kim Jong-un (39:39); China (47:28); whether we are headed into a Thucydides trap with China? (49:07); the possibility of a new Taiwan Straits Crisis (54:55); and what’s next for Good Judgment (1:00:04). As always, you can reach us at nonprophetspod.wordpress.com or at nonprophetspod@gmail.com. (recorded 01/04/2019)

In this episode Matt Crawford speaks to Valerie Plame about her book Fair Game and her career in the CIA. Valerie Plame was outed as a covert agent by Scooter Libby who was convicted, had his sentence commuted by President Bush and then pardoned by President Trump. A truly thrilling book about real life intrigue that put U.S agents and assets at risk. All because Valerie Plame's husband Joe Wilson refuted the evidence for the U.S to go to war with Iraq. Even more prescient in the current political climate. A truly cautionary tale.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Scooter Libby. Dinesh D'Souza. So far, none of President Donald Trump’s pardons have had anything to do with his administration, but many believe he is flexing this particular muscle for an audience of one: Robert Mueller. Vox’s Andrew Prokop explains why the president is dropping hints about pardoning himself and how American democracy may soon be tested. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The black letter law and articles discussed in this episode: CIA “Enhanced Interrogation Technique” program Senate report on torture: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/senate-intelligence-committee-study-on-cia-detention-and-interrogation-program CIA fact sheet: https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/2014-press-releases-statements/cia-fact-sheet-ssci-study-on-detention-interrogation-program.html Human Rights Watch FAQ: https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/senate-report-cia-torture-frequently-asked-questions Destruction of tapes https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/washington/03web-intel.html Attorney Generals Act and OLC advice to agency heads https://www.justice.gov/olc/best-practices-olc-legal-advice-and-written-opinions “Torture Memos” from the Justice Department OLC https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.08.01.pdf https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/020801.pdf Memo to John Rizzo: http://cdm266901.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p266901coll4/id/1912 https://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/safefree/yoo_army_torture_memo.pdf 18 USC 2340, the definition of “torture” https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2340 Scooter Libby pardon https://www.justice.gov/pardon/page/file/1052911/download John Rizzo is senior counsel at Steptoe & Johnson https://www.steptoe.com/en/lawyers/john-rizzo.html His book is “Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA” https://www.amazon.com/Company-Man-Thirty-Controversy-Crisis/dp/1451673930

Can an employee of the executive branch of government subpoena the person who is ultimately his boss? This is a question we may soon face as news leaks out that Special Counsel Robert Mueller floated the idea of issuing a subpoena in an attempt to force President Donald Trump to testify in the Russian collusion investigation. It seems unlikely, considering the Constitution provides only one remedy --- impeachment --- for holding the president accountable, and nothing reported has come close to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. But what could be done short of that Supreme Court showdown? A deal could be cut to have the president answer an agreed-upon number of questions in writing, which would eliminate a lot of the perjury traps, a la Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby, and prevent the inquiry to straying into other, unrelated areas. Will this be the path they choose, or are we headed to a Constitutional crisis? Millennials, it turns out, are favoring Republicans in shocking numbers compared to the way the liberal media portrays them. Why? Because the economy under President Trump is significantly better than it was under Barack Obama. People tend to vote their wallets, and the ability to have a job under Trump, an ability that wasn't there under Obama, is not lost on young people. And that ability tends to make a lasting impression on people, who generally retain party loyalty to the party in charge when they experience good economic times after they enter the workforce. This is part of the reason Democrats want to lower the voting age to 16 and grant amnesty and eventual citizenship/voting rights to illegal aliens --- they're having difficulty attracting voters, so they want to create new voters. Cultural appropriation stupidity continues because liberal stupidity is as close to a perpetual motion machine human beings have created. A girl wears a dress to prom and the left loses their minds. Are we really ready to go down the road of only being able to use/like things created by people of your ethnicity and race? We talk about what that would mean, and it ain't pretty. Give the show a listen, subscribe, and comment below. The Daily Daily Caller Podcast is a daily look and mocking of the news from a conservative perspective. Hosted by Derek Hunter, it is available in audio form Monday-Thursday and will have a video option on Fridays. Derek Hunter is a columnist and contributing editor for The Daily Caller and author of “Outrage, INC: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood” from HarperCollins, available June 19. Send compliments and complaints to derek@dailycaller.com or follow him on Twitter at @derekahunter.

After the news broke of President Trump’s pardon of Scooter Libby, co-hosts Michael Isikoff and Dan Klaidman take a look back at the Scooter Libby trial with Peter Zeidenberg, one of the former prosecutors who brought the case against Libby. Zeidenberg talks about the decision to prosecute Libby in the first place, his reaction to Trump’s pardon, and what kind of message the president may be sending with this decision. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

HEADLINES   00:27 Intro- Mike Pompeo questioned by the Senate— Gina Haspel, or torture fetish lady, should have done the honors   01:08 Trump obsessed with Russia probe and FBI’s raid on his lawyer; hush money likely to be about more than just campaign finance violations   03:40 Attorney-client privilege and what that means involving Michael Cohen, Sean Hannity, and Donald Trump   06:57 Elliot Broidy likely used bribery payments to payoff ex-Playboy model, Karen McDougal through Michael Cohen   09:25 James Comey vs. Trump – who do you despise more?   11:08 Trump pardons ex-Bush admin aide Scooter Libby and how Trump uses his pardoning powers to cover up his criminal activities   14:56 Mitch McConnell shuts down bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller   16:35 According to the Pentagon and Trump, bombing Syria was a success, but the only real adults left in the White House believe otherwise; Trump constantly changing his position on imposing Russia sanctions   19:07 UN Ambassador Nikki Haley: “I don’t get confused”   19:54 Trump says he’ll be tough on Russia despite his inconstancy on major issues and more on Sean Hannity, Sarah “the huckster,” and cults   23:20 Swamp watch: Mick Mulvaney gutting the CFPB and overpaying his friends to work for him   25:11 Interior secretary Ryan Zinke wants to open up public land to private hands   26:02 Media watch: Hannity uses his show on Fox News to sell real estate; propaganda being perpetuated on Fox News and in the social media sphere   28:08 The Denver Post and “Republican-styled vulture capitalism”    29:00 Listener Question: What was the significance of lawyer/activist David Buckel setting himself on fire for and what was his motive beyond the surface?     *FORWARD NATION RADIO featuring David Leventhal  RAW   l   INFORMATIVE   l   ACCURATE Also available on our YouTube channel -Please SUBSCRIBE Visit forwardnationradio.com for the videocast, all shows, fun toons, stats, and more. If you love what you heard, Like Us and share on Facebook - Instagram - Twitter

The fired FBI Director hurls hate at the president. And Michael Knowles joins us to discuss the Scooter Libby pardon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy is Now Open! 8am-9am PT/ 11am-Noon ET for our especially special Daily Special, River City Hash Mondays!Starting off in the Bistro Cafe, the motivations behind the totally random Scooter Libby pardon are flashing red signs lighting the road to Russia. On the rest of the menu, a pair of New Hampshire Little League baseball coaches conspired to bean their league's lone girl player, so she would quit; Arizona State journalism students are trying to stop Sinclair Broadcasting from recruiting there, but the school won't budge; and, James Comey deserves blame for the FBI bombshell about Hillary's emails, but Jason Chaffetz leaked it first.After the break, we move to the Chef's Table where court testimony in Japan discloses that TEPCO stopped the construction of a massive sea wall protecting Fukushima before the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster; and, cable news ratings reveal a direct correlation between viewership and voter sentiment about the 2018 midterms.All that and more, on West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy with Chef de Cuisine Justice Putnam.Bon Appetit!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"I was never a spy. I was with the OSS organization. We had a number of women, but we were all office help." -- Julia Child~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Show Notes & Links: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/16/1757324/-West-Coast-Cookbook-amp-Speakeasy-Daily-Special-River-City-Hash-Mondays

The fired FBI Director hurls hate at the president. And Michael Knowles joins us to discuss the Scooter Libby pardon.

Ward talks about leaving tips for good service, Coach Hog's Locker Room, haircuts, golf, Scooter Libby and building and construction.

The boys go over every detail of the Comey interview, the effectiveness of the U.S. response to chemical attacks in Syria, Michael Cohen filling the role of "fixer" for Trump and possibly Sean Hannity, Scooter Libby getting a very bizarre pardon, and approval ratings in the era of opposition politics.

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from April 13, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join.  Hour 1: Cenk, Ana, Bill Press, Maz Jobrani. Trump pardons former Cheney advisor Scooter Libby. Trump responds to allegations in Comey memoir. Trump allies fear Michael Cohen recordings seized in FBI raid. Fox & Friends host asks if Syria bombing could bring in more ratings than Comey book. Republican voters turning against Mueller probe. McCabe report details firing. Hour 2: Cenk, Ana, Brett, Simone Boyce. Update on teacher walkouts in AZ and OK. Emails show that Facebook emailed Trump supporters Diamond and Silk over censorship claims. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big news Friday! President Trump goes to war with Comey. Scooter Libby finally gets justice. Inspector General report on Andrew McCabe is released. Buck interviews Jesse Kelly and Sean Davis. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comFollow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, Every liberal news outlet is bending over backwards to hype the James Comey interview in the same way they hyped up the fictional Michael Wolff book. Comey, like Wolff, is just another disgruntled former employee, and the politics of his book, which is full of innuendo and gossip couldn’t be more obvious. Comey has been sleazy his entire career, and is a leaker and a slimeball like President Trump said. Also, the media and democrats who were quick to come to Andrew McCabe’s defense after his removal are quiet today. The Inspector General’s report proved that McCabe lied under oath. Comey and McCabe were the two heads of the FBI, two flawed men in positions of power trying to take down Trump. The fact that people applaud leakers like Comey and McCabe is appalling. In addition to Trump, Scooter Libby was another innocent man wrongly charged and pursued by Comey and his gang. Trump pardoned Libby and erased all criminal charges against him for leaking. Later, Russia keeps denying having a role in the chemical attacks in Syria, yet they keep vetoing resolutions about it at the United Nations. Vladimir Putin is claiming that England used chemical weapons in Syria to set up Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, Every liberal news outlet is bending over backwards to hype the James Comey interview in the same way they hyped up the fictional Michael Wolff book. Comey, like Wolff, is just another disgruntled former employee, and the politics of his book, which is full of innuendo and gossip couldn’t be more obvious. Comey has been sleazy his entire career, and is a leaker and a slimeball like President Trump said. Also, the media and democrats who were quick to come to Andrew McCabe’s defense after his removal are quiet today. The Inspector General’s report proved that McCabe lied under oath. Comey and McCabe were the two heads of the FBI, two flawed men in positions of power trying to take down Trump. The fact that people applaud leakers like Comey and McCabe is appalling. In addition to Trump, Scooter Libby was another innocent man wrongly charged and pursued by Comey and his gang. Trump pardoned Libby and erased all criminal charges against him for leaking. Later, Russia keeps denying having a role in the chemical attacks in Syria, yet they keep vetoing resolutions about it at the United Nations. Vladimir Putin is claiming that England used chemical weapons in Syria to set up Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Curmudgeon's Corner Sam and Ivan try to do an all lightning round show, but fail spectacularly. Their first segment is... movies!! Both Sam and Ivan talk about their thoughts on some movies they have seen recently. Then they do a segment on the Cohen raid and all the implications that arise from that. Then a mini-segment on Syria... recorded before the US/UK/France airstrikes... then FINALLY they do an actual lightning round to finish things up, including brief discussions on Scooter Libby, Zuckerberg's testimony, international corruption, an update on tariffs, and much much more! Show Details: Recorded 2018-04-13 Length this week - 1:43:26 (0:01:05-0:26:11) Movies Ivan: Darkest Hour (2017) Ivan: Burn After Reading (2008) Sam: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Sam: Coco (2017) Sam: Black Panther (2018) Sam: The Luck of the Irish (2001) (0:27:32-0:52:17) Cohen Raid The raid itself Repercussions and reactions Clarifications on predictions Love child payoff Lordy there are tapes! Firings coming? (0:53:59-1:02:33) Syria Chemical Weapons What good will a strike do? Americans killing Russians (1:04:33-1:43:06) Lightning Round Ivan: Scooter Libby Sam: Changing approach to Russia? Ivan: Trump/Panama thing Sam: UK/Russian spy recovering Ivan: Zuckerberg testimony Sam: Corruption around the world Ivan: Paul Ryan decision Sam: Boehner and marijuana Ivan: CBO deficit estimates Sam: Did China blink on tariffs? The Curmudgeon's Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch. Our intro is "The Oh of Pleasure" (Amazon MP3 link) Our outro is "Celestial Soda Pop" (Amazon MP3 link) Both are from the album "Deep Breakfast" (iTunes link) Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

Big news Friday! President Trump goes to war with Comey. Scooter Libby finally gets justice. Inspector General report on Andrew McCabe is released. Buck interviews Jesse Kelly and Sean Davis. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

In today's premium episode, Cliff and I talk about the Comey book, and all of the accompanying scandals that fed into it this week, including the FBI raid on Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, reports that a Trump Tower doorman was paid hush money to squelch a rumor about Trump fathering a child out of wedlock, rumors of Rod Rosenstein's imminent firing, and the pardoning of Bush-era criminal Scooter Libby. But the big topic is the Comey book, which is already driving Trump crazy. The Trump governance crisis is at an all -time high. What happens next? That's the topic of today's pod. (And at the end we also talk about Paul Ryan's announcement that he's not running for re-election, and we discuss what it means for the 2018 elections.) This is a 12-minute snippet of the 72-minute-long podcast -- listen to the full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18102592 Please subscribe to the UnPresidented Podcast on iTunes (www.UnPresidentedPodcast.com) and leave us a review. Find out more about us, and support the show by subscribing to our premium episodes on Patreon: www.patreon.com/UnPresidentedPodcast

President Trump is once again showing himself to be a do-as-I-say, not as-I-do president. But the biggest issue is the message the pardon would send to people who are being questioned right now by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome the news that Scooter Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, may soon be pardoned by President Trump and have his convictions from the Valerie Plame fiasco scrubbed from the record.  Jim and Greg don't excuse Libby's conduct in the investigation but point out there never should have been an investigation since there was no underlying crime.  They also roll their eyes as excerpts from James Comey's new book slam Trump as being shorter than expected, wearing his ties too long and using tanning goggles, while Trump tweets that Comey is an "untruthful slimeball."  And they react to Comey's admission that he revealed the re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email probe because he was sure she would win the election anyway and might not have done so if he thought Trump could actually win.

Today, President Trump pardoned former Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby. Is this pardoning coming out of no where? Did President Trump have an ulterior motive? Is he trying to send a message to people involved in the Mueller investigation? And how often do charges prosecuted by special counsels end up sticking?

Edition #1068 Today we take a look back to 2007 in our second annual 10-years-hence retrospective spectacular! Be part of the show! Leave a message at 202-999-3991 Show Notes Ch. 1: Opening Theme: A Fond Farewell - From a Basement On the Hill Ch. 2: Act 1: First female Speaker of the House - Countdown - Aired on BotL 1-9-07 Ch. 3: Song 1: Color in Your Cheeks - The Mountain Goats Ch. 4: Act 2: First muslim in congress and first female Speaker - The Young Turks - Aired on BotL 1-9-07 Ch. 5: Song 2: Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder Ch. 6: Act 3: Bernie Sanders moves to the Senate - Ring of Fire - Aired on BotL 3-6-07 Ch. 7: Song 3: Common Sense - Justin Mcroberts Ch. 8: Act 4: Special comment on free speech - Countdown - Aired on BotL 1-19-07 Ch. 9: Song 4: The More Things Change - Bon Jovi Ch. 10: Act 5: Making the pitch - The Daily Show - Aired on BotL 1-22-07 Ch. 11: Song 5: Smiley Faces - Gnarls Barkley Ch. 12: Act 6: Radio audience wants to mark the muslims - The Young Turks - Aired on BotL 1-19-07 Ch. 13: Song 6: Nazi (Live) - Chumbawamba Ch. 14: Act 7: Bush's health care proposal - The Al Franken Show - Aired on BotL 2-10-07 Ch. 15: Song 7: We've Gotta Get Out of This Place - The Animals Ch. 16: Act 8: Michael Moore on Sicko, Nixon and the rise of HMOs - Democracy Now - Aired on BotL 8-17-07 Ch. 17: Song 8: Richard Nixon - Rod & The MSR Singers Ch. 18: Act 9: Fighting for health care for kids - Associated Press - Aired on BotL 10-22-07 Ch. 19: Song 9: N/A Ch. 20: Act 10: Minimum wage - Unknown source - Aired on BotL 2-23-07 Ch. 21: Song 10: Minimum Wage - They might be giants Ch. 22: Act 11: Republicans blocking a vote on the minimum wage - Ted Kennedy - Aired on BotL 2-23-07 Ch. 23: Song 11: Minimum Wage - They might be giants Ch. 24: Act 12: Overview of Scooter Libby case - Unknown - Aired on BotL 4-17-07 Ch. 25: Song 12: N/A Ch. 26: Act 13: Interview with Joe Wilson after Libby verdict - Countdown - Aired on BotL 4-17-07 Ch. 27: Song 13: Everybody's Gone To War - Nerina Pallot Ch. 28: Act 14: We need to torture Alberto Gonzales - Colbert Report - Aired on BotL 4-29-07 Ch. 29: Song 14: N/A Ch. 30: Act 15: Saying goodbye to Alberto Gonzales - The Young Turks - Aired on BotL 9-12-07 Ch. 31: Song 15: The Czar of Munster - Seamus Egan Ch. 32: Act 16: McKibben at Step it Up 07 Part 1 - CCAN - Aired on BotL 4-20-07 Ch. 33: Song 16: The Czar of Munster - Seamus Egan Ch. 34: Act 17: McKibben at Step it Up 07 Part 2 - CCAN - Aired on BotL 4-20-07 Ch. 35: Song 17: Living planet - Emma’s Revolution Ch. 36: Act 18: Jerry Falwell dies - Democracy Now - Aired on BotL 6-7-07 Ch. 37: Song 18: N/A Ch. 38: Act 19: Introduction to Obama - The world tonight - Aired on BotL 5-7-07 Ch. 39: Song 19: Dreamtime - Uberzone Ch. 40: Act 20: Hillary votes for war - The Young Turks - Aired on BotL 10-02-07 Voicemails Ch. 41: Call in from Chris the Carpenter and Parker - Cape Cod, MA Voicemail Music: Loud Pipes - Classics Ch. 42: Final comments on the time I quit the show and the community kept it going Closing Music: Here We Are - Everyone's in Everyone Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Thanks for listening! Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Check out the BotL iOS/Android App in the App Stores! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Review the show on iTunes and Stitcher!

This week we took a time-fireplace back to 2007 to have a look around and watch it's second highest-grossing movie (for #1, see episode 083) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with resident Harry Potter consultant and comedian Nile Séguin.  We go over a bummer year, delight over Scooter Libby's name and then watch a Wizard movie where death death death.  Death. (It was great)

The number of prominent people who lie under oath has reached epic proportions, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James B. Stewart. For wealthy, successful people like Barry Bonds, Scooter Libby, Martha Stewart and Bernard Madoff, the risks of perjury far outweigh the possible benefits, yet they lie anyway. Stewart visits Zócalo to discuss why they do it and what it means for the rest of us.

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller talks about Scooter Libby, weapons of mass destruction, and her former colleagues at the Times. Plus, the other leak On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

Special guest Patrick Baker, comedian and author of historical mad-libs (really), teaches us about zezbian Witchcraft and fails to prove Brent is a hipster. Everyone agrees lady’s soccer is more fun with gratuitous violence and Cioffi tells the greatest joke of all time, you’ll recognize it when you hear it. Scooter Libby’s bear porn book is uncovered and it is gross. Also, Twilight girls blow.

18:00 - Top Story /23:15 - Feedback /32:45 - Fathers Day /Sunday June 17th, 2007 - Happy Fathers Day! Daniel starts the show off with a run-down of some news that you might have missed this week including Alberto Gonzales, Scooter Libby, and the FBI. The top story of the week revolves around a Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker. Some listener feedback is read, and the show ends with an interview with a special guest.Download

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Daniel catches you up on some news that you might have missed during the week including Monica Goodling, Mary Cheney, and Scooter Libby (remember him?). The top story of the week is, of course, the Democratic Party vote for the "give Bush what he wants act" of 2007. A new segment is introduced where listener feedback is read. The show closes with an essay on Progressivism.Download

25:30 - Listener Feedback /35:40 - DistractionThis week Daniel goes in-depth on the Scooter Libby story, Michael Moore's Sicko, and Bill O'Reilly's fear of Lesbian gangs.In the listener feedback section we finally discover the winner of the "Drunk Republican" contest.The show ends with an essay called Distraction.Download

Mail Bag:Two from Earl.1) Supreme Court overturns man's murder conviction.2) Federal Reserve and the economy.The Rest of the Show:1) Geraldine Ferraro had no clue.2) Scooter Libby disbarred.3) Dick Morris says Wright's rantings won't sink Obama.4) Clinton facing narrower path to nomination.5) Sir Paul McCartney's soon to be ex.6) Arthur C. Clark dies.7) Lynndie England blames media for Abu Ghraid prison scandal.8) Speak english sign OK.9) Sent home for green hair.10) Scamming the scammers.

What can be said about Robert Novak that hasn't already been said? He's a veteran Washington reporter that's established himself as the preeminent conservative opinion maker of the last fifty years. He's a nationally syndicated columnist, has been a prominent cable news commentator, helped define modern political discourse-oh, and he's the guy that outed undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. He doesn't like to talk much about that, however. Even though he had no problem blabbing the classified identity of Plame in his column-passed along to him by Karl Rove as part of a coordinated effort to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy-Novak is ironically tight lipped when it comes to discussing the matter today. You can't really blame him, though, considering that he may have come very close to jail time during the resulting investigation into the Plame leak by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald sent journalist Judith Miller to jail for contempt and convicted Dick Cheney hatchet man Scooter Libby of obstruction of justice, so Novak's probably still a bit squeamish about the whole thing. Aside from that inconsequential chapter of his life in which he was the catalyst for one of America's most infamous political scandals, Novak's life is an open book-a book called "Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting In Washington," which you can conveniently buy following Novak's lecture at the Dole Center of Politics. He'll even sign it for you! Just don't mention Valerie Plame-and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't bring up Jon Stewart. Robert Novak was kind enough to join lawrence.com over the phone and not discuss a lot of things.

Listener Mail:Denny says President Bush let Scooter Libby, the one man who was convicted for the lies around the Iraq war, go free. And I just signed a petition urging Congress to force Vice President Cheney to respond to its subpoenas.Earl on the Duke university player trial. (Next weeks guest host.)The rest of the show:1) Bush spares Libby from 2 1/2 year prison term.2) John McCain.3) Immigrants and the businesses that hire them take a hit in Arizona.

Join the politics and culture podcast for our bloated, sophomoric summer blockbuster! We've got bigger explosions, dumber jokes, and more gratuitous sodomy than you can shake a Michael Bay at! Thrill at Aaron and Gavon as they tackle the toughest topics! Scooter Libby and Paris Hilton's impending rear-ending at the hands of the penal system! Conservative consternation at Bush's acquiescence to the brown hordes! '08 presidential pony racing! The Pentagon's super secret "gay bomb"! Exclamation marks! It's Punditocracy's over stuffed paean to over stimulation!

On Wall Street, private equity firms are buying up corporations and turning them around for huge profits. What does it mean for America's workers and for the economic gap between average families and the wealthiest Americans? Andrew Stern, the president of Service Employees International Union-the fastest growing union in the nation-weighs in. Also on the program, Bill Moyers interviews writer, activist, and philosopher Grace lee Boggs, who has taken part in some of the seminal civil rights struggles in U.S. history, about her belief that real change for democracy will come from the grassroots. "We're not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country," she says. "We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make...in order to force the government to do differently."

At the G8 Summit which opens tomorrow, George Bush faces a tough sell for his global warming proposal.  At home, the President's approval ratings are low, and even his conservative supporters are angry at him over his immigration bill. Also, Scooter Libby gets 30 years, and the fortieth anniversary of war that re-shaped the Middle East.  Sara Terry guest hosts.

Keith Gottschalk on Scooter Libby. Writer and artist Paddy Johnson takes us into the art world for a visit to the Canada Gallery. Do Make Say Think with A With Living. Chad Oberg on space and virtual space in Secondlife.  Reel Women have been on the killing floor, via Fast Food Nation that is. No surprise, they've got a review. Do Make Say Think with The Universe!

Listener InputPatrick on The Corporation and Al Gore.Denny on Posse Comitatus.The Show1) Bush moves ahead with his plan.2) Hillary the next JFK?3) Scooter Libby found guilty.4) CIA's torture of a German citizen.

The Liberators discuss everything from the "Scooter Libby" trial to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. ...and don't worry "Who's the Jackass?" is back as well.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has made his case--or has he? Scooter Libby's defense will begin next week after three weeks of prosecution testimony. What have we learned from the trial? What's next? Is the Libby case about how the White House went to war or much ado about a crime that never happened?  The Pentagon's Inspector General questions the propriety of a Defense Department intelligence report. On Reporter's Notebook, the diamond trade tries to clean up its act.  Lawarence O'Donnell guest hosts.