All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
Hey, guys, on the line, I've got Dan Cohen, and he hosts a YouTube show called Behind the Headlines.
And if anybody was going to take that name after Justin died and his column stopped running, then I'm glad it was you.
Dan, welcome to the show.
How are you doing, son?
Oh, I'm good.
I'm good.
I didn't even, I didn't realize that that was borrowed, but I mean, to be fair, it wasn't my choice, but all respect.
You know what?
There were already things called that before Justin called his column that, and there will always be things called Behind the Headlines.
It was not that original take.
But I was glad to see, I think you're the first one to use that name after he died.
I was happy to see it, because in fact, I forgot what it was the first thing that, oh, was it the Uyghurs?
Or was it something before that, that I saw you just debunking the living hell out of something?
That could have been.
That could have been it.
Definitely.
I did a couple of pieces on that.
Yeah, for sure.
On that one thing.
All right.
Now, so here's the thing that people need to know about you is that, and you can go back to the archives and hear my interview, Dan, about this.
You made a documentary with Max Blumenthal about the 2014 war, as they call it, I guess, in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, and all of the aftermath of that.
It's called Killing Gaza.
It's only three bucks to watch it on the internet, and it's so good.
I really, really encourage people to go and take a look at that and see that entire thing from Dan's point of view.
You're the one who did, I think, the lion's share, the early, the camera work and the interviews early in the thing there.
It's obviously given you a hell of a perspective about Israel-Palestine, and I saw where on your Twitter there, you were talking about what's going on in Jerusalem and these people getting kicked out of their houses, and really I wanted to talk with you about Colombia, but then I thought, nah, you know what?
Let's start with all of this East Jerusalem stuff, because I know you've been following it closely, and it's so important.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We can talk about both those things.
Definitely.
Yeah.
So what's going on there?
There's been a couple of viral clips going around the internet lately.
Well in East Jerusalem, I mean, there's not any real distinction, physical distinction between East and West Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is the legally occupied area of Jerusalem, and West Jerusalem is the area that was ethnically cleansed in 1947, 1948, and then a bunch of Israeli settlers came in.
Then in 1967, Israel conquers, occupies the West Bank, Gaza, everything, and it's been settling, colonizing these neighborhoods ever since, not only building new settlements, but expelling Palestinians who've been living there for generations and generations from their homes.
And there's one neighborhood in particular right now called Sheikh Jarrah, which is, I mean, if you go to Jerusalem, you go around the old city, any of the cool pretty tourist sites, it's really close.
One of the popular hotels called the American Colony Hotel, which has a great bookstore, Palestine-related things, is right there.
So I mean, it's not like it's far away from where a lot of people go.
And so you have the Israeli government sponsoring these fanatical settlers, expelling people from their homes, where, as I said, they've lived for many, many years, entire families.
And this is not the first time this has happened in Sheikh Jarrah.
About almost a decade ago now, this was another hotbed of expulsions.
And there was a pretty decent protest movement, but it kind of died down for some years.
And now with these latest expulsions, it's picked back up.
So you have not only armed settlers going in and expelling people, but you have, of course, what they call border police, which are essentially just soldiers, Israeli soldiers going in and expelling them too.
And the people kind of at the head of this are the Kahanists, the most fanatical, extreme right-wing Zionists that there basically are, who explicitly say, we want a theocratic, fascist state completely free of non-Jews.
So all Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, anyone has to be ethnically cleansed.
And if they refuse to leave on their own, then we'll kill them.
In fact, I have a recording that I did of the head of one of these, you know, one of these top Kahanist rabbis explaining, I secretly recorded this along with my colleague David Sheen, a great Israeli journalist whose work you should check out.
And we recorded them explaining that they want to go around the Middle East, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, you know, even out of the Middle East and take all this area over and anyone who refuses to submit gets beheaded with a sword.
So, you know, obviously they're not really in position to do that.
But nonetheless, this is the genocidal ideology, the mindset behind these Kahanists.
And the Kahanists, thanks to Benjamin Netanyahu, essentially, have now entered the Knesset.
They are now more powerful than ever.
Not only had their ideology really taken over a lot of the mainstream Likud, the most powerful, the ruling party for decades.
But now as their own explicit party, really, you know, the mask is coming off.
Now they're in the parliament and they're feeling more empowered than ever.
And you know, of course, with the total impunity provided by the Biden administration, then, you know, they're just they're just going full throttle.
Oh, man.
So and by the way, because I was going to call you out there, oh, yeah, that sounds hyperbolic.
But then he said, no, I even got the video there.
I saw that on your Twitter feed earlier.
It's a link to the electronic intifada video.
Temple movement rabbi proselytizes for genocide firsthand recording there that you got and posted here.
I was going to play the clip, but it's almost seven minutes long.
He goes on here.
Yeah.
I mean, it's it's it's incredible.
I was, you know, I don't speak good Hebrew, so I was just sitting there kind of twiddling my thumbs in this in this meeting, you know, trying to like look normal.
But David is sitting there with me.
We managed to get inside this thing and he's just like in shock and he's like he's like trying to, you know, keep his his face from contorting too much.
And they just they just explain that it's genocide.
I mean, there's no different than like what you'd hear from like an ISIS leader.
And so, you know, this is this is the ideology.
This is the mindset of these of these fanatical settlers that are now have long been in power, but are really, you know, just more empowered than ever.
And and, you know, even the U.S. the U.S. government considered the Kahanists and their actual group called the Jewish Defense League and and its and its successor, Kahana, like Kahana lives as a terrorist group.
They're listed as a terrorist group.
So they reformed under a new banner.
And now they're, you know, in the government and the U.S. and the Biden administration isn't saying anything.
So basically, U.S., you know, listed terrorist group is now in the in the Israeli parliament and and is, you know, leading the charge to ethnically cleanse these Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah.
It's it's just beyond reprehensible.
It is.
It's insane to see.
And now, can you elaborate a little bit about what you mean about now that Biden is in the car?
Blanche is even broader than before.
It's even easier for them to go ahead and do this now.
Why?
Right.
Well, how could anybody be more Zionist apologists than Donald J. Trump?
I mean, you know, it's a good it's a it's a good question, but, you know, I obviously I'm no fan of Trump is as horrible as Trump was on Israel, Palestine, as, you know, totally pro-Israel as he was.
Israel killed more Palestinians under the Obama administration than it did under the Trump administration.
And Israel killed a lot of Palestinians under any given four years of Obama, too, I think you could say.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, that's what that's what my documentary shows, that that's what killing Gaza shows is Operation Protective Edge, as the Israelis call it, this just mass slaughter of 20.
Oh, I said cast lead.
I always get those confused.
Which one?
Well, there's so many.
There's so many slaughters of Gaza that it's it's easy to to get them mixed up, you know, but it's so I don't blame you.
But so cast lead was twenty twelve and twenty fourteen was protected.
Is that right?
That's even crazy.
It was cast lead was twenty nine and then Pillar of Cloud was twenty twelve and then Pillar of Cloud.
Protective Edge.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like trying to, you know, remember the Internet name of everybody you meet in real life.
Just.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, just, you know, it's it's what is what did Tony Blinken say that he I mean, he is he's he's just totally pro Israel and he's I can't remember his exact quote, but it was like he pledged his loyalty to to AIPAC, essentially, to Israel at an AIPAC conference.
And, you know, Biden has said that you don't even have to be Jewish to be a Zionist.
I mean, these guys will let Israel get away with everything.
It's just it's it's all you know, it's not even surprising, of course, but it's still shocking and just, you know, beyond the pale.
Yeah.
In fact, that's a really funny clip, I think, where somebody challenges him about whether he's Zionist enough and he goes, hey, man, I'm as Zionist as Zionism can be.
Let me tell you about Zionism.
There's no such thing as daylight.
You hear me?
No daylight.
Zionism, Zionism, Zionism.
I'm the most Zionist senator of all.
He says it as many times as he can in his answer.
He's just going off because he wants it.
The point to be so clear that you guys lead, I'll follow.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Now, one of the things about this viral clip going around is that this guy's from Brooklyn.
So there's this kind of mythology.
After all, I wasn't born until the 70s.
Right.
There's this whole mythology that like, well, you know, the aftermath of the worst thing that ever happened, World War Two.
And maybe there were a few Palestinians there, but we don't like to talk about that too much.
But these people really needed a safe place to go and all this and that.
Well, but so wait a minute.
But that includes people from New York City have the divine right to displace Palestinians, not in what we call Israel, but what we call the Palestinians West Bank or in this case East Jerusalem.
I don't know why they always separate out.
It looks like Jerusalem's on the West Bank to me.
But anyway, as you said, they already, you know, completely annexed all of Western Jerusalem way back in in 47, 48.
Now, here they are kicking Palestinian, Muslims and Christians out of the east side of town.
And this lady is saying, because, you know, it's the age of viral video, right?
Everybody has a 4K camera in their pocket.
And so instead of being this kind of mysterious, shrouded, brown, barbarian, heathen kind of mysterious thing, it's just some lady with a phone saying to this guy, what are you doing?
It's my house.
And he just says in a New York accent, well, you know, if I didn't take it, somebody else was going to.
So screw you, lady.
But he sits there and they talk back and forth about it.
And in the video, of course, it's shot from her point of view.
And it's impressive how she is at least, you know, in fact, since she's the defender here, you know, she is, you know, seemingly like easier to identify with than the person that she's accusing.
Right.
Like he's clearly trespassing and admits it.
And he's just saying, tough luck for you.
But what's the excuse for that?
When the guy isn't a refugee from World War Two, he's a refugee from, you know, de Blasio.
Right, right.
No, it's I mean, that's an incredible clip.
You know, you get these like rare moments of honesty from these people because they'll usually say, well, you know, God gave me this land.
It's in the Bible.
And that's kind of, you know, you can't really win that argument because it's like, well, you know, well, if it's just my God versus your God, then it's just power of will.
Whoever has more force behind them.
But the guy just says it straight up.
He's like, look, if I don't if I don't steal it, then someone else will.
It's like it's and he's got this thick Brooklyn accent.
And it's like it's like as if he was like at a pizza parlor and he like stole somebody's slice of pizza.
And they were like, hey, and he's like, it's like, you know, someone else would take it, whatever.
And he's just you know, he just doesn't care.
It's just so nonchalant.
I mean, it's you know, these are the actually, you know, one of the really interesting aspects of the the Kahane movement, the most, you know, extreme right wing of Israel is Americans are very disproportionately represented.
Kahane himself, you know, was from Brooklyn.
So so, you know, many, many of the most extreme right wing Israeli settlers and not all of them, but many of them are American or have American roots.
Maybe, you know, their parents moved there, you know, a generation ago.
So, you know, and it has something, I think, to do with maybe, you know, it's like as an American, you know, if you're just like some like white American person and you don't have like some kind of identity to latch on to, then you go to Israel and you're like, oh, I'm I'm you know, I can be like Jewish here, but, you know, in like this cool way.
And and, you know, it's like something you can just latch on to and be part of instead of like being just like a, you know, a boring, like lost person in our kind of, you know, hyper individualistic society in the US.
And so that's part of, you know, why so many Americans get into that.
And I mean, I've seen it firsthand with even, you know, members of my own extended family.
So not getting to the like totally extreme, but in terms of really latching on to Zionism when they had like no Jewish identity or upbringing to speak of and they were just kind of like lost people.
So that's you know, there's there's so much of that.
There's such a huge American presence in the ultra right wing of Zionism.
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So now, politically speaking, there's really kind of a crack up on among liberal Zionists.
Right.
And so essentially the story was, don't worry, there's going to be a two state solution someday.
And so you can rest assured that what looks like apartheid now is still just a temporary solution until we get everything worked out.
But then really, that's been revealed, especially in the last few years, the way Netanyahu has just said outright that they're going to annex.
In fact, they backed off a bit, but not enough.
They made it clear from the river to the sea, there will be one monopoly security force there.
It's all Israel.
It's it was the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were all annexed back in 1967.
It's just now they're basically admitting it, not all the way, but pretty darn much.
And so then that means the whole argument about why this is somehow tolerable because of how temporary it is in the United States is over.
And so now you have real conflict about what's going to happen there.
So I wonder what's your take on that.
And especially in terms of the news that Netanyahu has failed to put together a government and that the president of Israel has designated this guy Lapid to be the next one to try to see if he can put together a majority in the Knesset there, their parliament there.
Right.
What you think that that might have to do with.
You know, liberal Jewish support especially, but overall liberal support for Zionism in the U.S.
Well, you know, one of the most interesting things that it took me years to pick up after, you know, living there and actually really like studying the Israeli right wing and kind of even embedding among them a little bit, you know, like those kinds of recordings that I got, I had to kind of like blend in a little bit.
It's not that I didn't steal any homes or like kicking anyone out of their house or anything, but, um, but, um, basically some kid at a fence did not, did not do any of that.
Um, but, um, you know, I, like I would talk to those kinds of soldiers.
Like I remember talking to a, this guy who like operated a bulldozer where they were just like demolished people's homes and, and like, you know, I was kind of casually talking to him trying to get him open up.
And he was like, he just thought it was the coolest job, just driving a bulldozer into someone's home.
And he had like a Bobcat, uh, like, like necklace on, you know, he was really proud, but, um, but you know, one of the, one of the things that I, that I, that I picked up on and it took me a long time to realize is that US support for Israel over the decades has actually made Israel more extreme because the whole idea of religious Zionism of like the right wing is that, um, the state is holy and it's expanding and it's making this, this like, you know, biblical prophecy of a messianic era come true.
And so then when the peace process was implemented, you know, the so-called peace process, essentially land for exchange, Israel pulls out of like Egypt, you know, and then eventually, um, um, the Oslo Accords and the Gaza withdrawal, each one of those had a really, really radicalizing effect on the Israeli public, shifting it to the right, especially this and, and basically growing the settler movement.
Um, and so, you know, this whole idea of like liberal Zionism in the U S just, you know, this like hand wringing, um, and you know, we just have to support the peace process and then we'll get somewhere and blah, blah, blah.
This has actually been the biggest ideological, you know, you have this hard right wing ideology from the settler movement, not only the settler movement, but especially in the settler movement.
And then you have, um, the, the radicalization of that, um, of that ideology of, you know, really going to its logical conclusion, um, of like, you know, for example, destroying the Dome of the Rock and building a temple and all that stuff that, and, and, and basically empowering the ultra right wing of Zionism as we're seeing now, that is a result of liberal Zionist Zionism of the peace process.
It's bringing Zionism to its logical, uh, conclusion.
Um, and so, you know, I mean, it's also, it provides this kind of facade, liberal Zionism provides, provides, which doesn't even really exist in Israel, I should say.
It's a pretty much American phenomenon, liberal Zionism of people, you know, armchair Zionists who are like, oh, I support Israel and all this stuff, but like, I don't actually want to live there.
You know, I just want like an extra state just in case, you know, a place to go like vacation and go have my, my kid have his bar mitzvah at the Wailing Wall in occupied East Jerusalem.
Um, and so this, you know, one of the, one of the, I think good things actually about the Trump era is he did a lot to really demolish that illusion.
Um, you know, not that he knew he was doing it, he was just trying to be as pro Israel as possible.
And so that's what Netanyahu who did with announcing that annexation, um, now Netanyahu basically traded the annexation for normalization with, um, you know, some of the Gulf monarchies with the UAE, um, and you know, to, to a lesser degree with Saudi Arabia.
And so now he's backed off of it for now.
Um, but you know, so liberal Zionism can say like, oh look, you know, so now the peace process is actually advanced.
Like now Israel's normalizing with more Arab countries and Israel can be a normal country.
Um, but now with Netanyahu, basically because Israel is such a dysfunctional society in so many ways, the politics are so insanely dysfunctional.
Now they have to, um, you know, Netanyahu is essentially failed to make a government.
And so the president, um, Rivlin has given the mandate to Yair Lapid who is, you know, basically like he's a right, he's definitely, you know, as all Zionists are.
He's like a right wing guy, more like secular in his lifestyle.
Um, but it's definitely a hardcore militarist will definitely, um, you know, kill just as many Palestinians as, as Netanyahu would.
Um, and I, you know, I think liberals are going to be happy to see that, um, Lapid, you know, if he's able to, to come up with a government to get a coalition, they'll be happy to see him because, you know, a lot of liberals right now are like, oh, Netanyahu is bad.
Netanyahu is the bad guy.
He's the bad one because of his corruption and all this stuff.
And he's, you know, he doesn't really represent Israel when actually Netanyahu is like the perfect, he's the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history.
He is the epitome of an Israeli prime minister, brutal, corrupt, you know, just, just rotten to the core.
Um, and so I don't know if, you know, if Lapid is going to be able to do it or even if they'll, um, you know, have to have elections again.
What is this?
The fourth round of elections they've had in like two years, it's a totally dysfunctional system.
Um, you know, but, but I, I don't know, uh, where it's going to go from here.
It's just like permanent, permanent dysfunction.
Well, I had a friend who said that, you know, he thought best case scenario was Netanyahu survives and then it's extraordinarily just the weakest version of Netanyahu that we could have.
Whereas if this guy Lapid especially wins, cause Bennett is such a right winger, but since Lapid is known as a clique to the left, maybe half of one, these are very small cliques, but he's known as a clique to the left of Netanyahu.
And so then especially liberal Democrats get to pretend to breathe a sigh of relief that somehow now someone is reasonable in there that we can deal with and it's going to be fine even though nothing had changed in any substantive way.
Exactly.
Though I will say about Netanyahu, you know, because Netanyahu spent a lot of his formative years in the U S he speaks perfect English.
You know, he, he like knows how to appeal to American sensibilities.
Um, and he, you know, he's, he's really trained in that Lapid.
If you ever listened to Lapid talk, he sounds like an Israeli where he talks like this and he just sounds like a lumbering oaf and you know, he's not well spoken.
So I mean, and you know, the reason that, you know, he would be seen as a clique to the left as you put it to Netanyahu is because Netanyahu in order to survive, you know, to, to advance this far politically, Netanyahu has had to move to the right, um, and you know, make common cause with the most fanatical settler elements.
Um, but you know, it's not like there's a, there's no doubt, not a shred that, um, you know, Lapid wouldn't do the exact same.
I mean, the settlers basically run the country.
Um, you know, all Netanyahu's advisors all around him are all settlers.
The biggest parties are all taken over by settlers, um, the institutions, you know, and that's, and that's been a longterm plan enacted really since the eighties in the wake of the withdrawal, the Camp David Peace Accords, they decided, Oh wait, if the state is not going to do what we want exactly, we have to take it over.
We just have to take over the state.
So then that's what they've done and including upper, you know, all the way around Netanyahu.
Yeah.
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Okay, and so here's an addendum on our interview.
We recorded the other one on Friday and now we're catching up on Monday.
It's Friday the 7th and now we're catching up on Monday the 10th here.
So Dan, first of all, before we get to Columbia, if you could please just give us an update on what has been going on in Jerusalem over the weekend here.
Well, since we talked on Friday, the Israeli government is continuing to push the settler takeovers in Sheikh Jarrah, this neighborhood that's basically under siege.
And so this has basically informed Palestinians to rally around not only the neighborhood, but the holy site, the Al-Aqsa compound, which is the most important and sensitive site in the country.
And it's the symbol of Palestinian nationalism, not only an important holy site.
And so this is where there's these huge demonstrations and it's basically to repel these settler groups that come in and agitate and they want to destroy the Al-Aqsa compound, basically take a bulldozer or a bomb to it and build what they claim is a third temple.
And so the Israeli police, basically the Israeli military has come in and just beat the living hell out of these protesters and journalists using just extreme force.
If you just look on Twitter, there's just all kinds of shocking videos.
And since that happened, just today, Monday, I guess it's Monday afternoon in Palestine, the armed resistance in Gaza has decided to launch rockets, basically to defend Jerusalem.
And it's been pretty effective.
The videos of these fanatical settlers, you know, that are chanting death to Arabs and Mohammed is dead, they are now, they fleed from the streets, you know, so, so they are suddenly getting a, you know, a little taste of their own medicine and just a little drop.
And you know, those rockets didn't injure anyone, you know, realistically, they're more symbolic than anything.
They so rarely have any kind of casualties.
Just to clarify there, these rockets, they can't hit East Jerusalem with them.
You're talking about protesters were in Tel Aviv or something else, or what am I missing?
No, no, they can actually, they can make it to Jerusalem.
They have advanced technology.
They can make it to Jerusalem.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I did not realize that.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know, from an engineering perspective is pretty impressive considering, you know, they're under siege and have nothing.
Yeah.
It's not like they imported those missiles from Iran.
Right.
Exactly.
And I mean, you know, one thing to keep in mind, I think it was one or two years ago, the Israeli military was considering canceling the sirens that they, that they, you know, ring out around Gaza and, you know, the Israeli settlements around Gaza because the alarms were causing more damage, more, you know, more bodily harm than the rockets themselves, because people would get like scared or they would run and trip and fall.
So it just goes to show how, you know, symbolic these rockets actually are, that the sirens are actually more dangerous than the rockets themselves.
Yeah.
Although, at least as you're saying, they've got a further range on them so that essentially they can make a statement in places further than before.
But exactly.
And Israelis are killed by these things from time to time.
I think there was a boy in an apartment that was killed back a few years ago.
But right.
Emphasis on time to time.
I mean, these things really are homemade rockets, not missiles.
Right.
Exactly.
It's extremely rare.
I mean, if you consider, you know, if you compare one of the rockets that like Al-Qassam, the armed wing of Hamas, and, you know, flies out of Gaza compared to like, you know, one Israeli missile, it's like a thousand rockets you need, you know, for one missile.
So there's just it's just, you know, no comparison.
So in response to this now, the Israeli government has now just launched some attack on Gaza and just killed apparently 11 people, including at least three or four children.
You know, so this is just so typical of Israel.
It's just, you know, there's some some kind of there's some it basically lights a fire in Jerusalem.
It's usually in Jerusalem.
And then, you know, attacks the holy sites, Al-Aqsa, and then the armed resistance in Gaza, which is basically the only armed resistance that's left in all of Palestine, responds.
And then Israel comes in with overwhelming, you know, military superiority and kills a bunch of civilians and children.
And you know, and then the West is going to say, oh, we you know, we want calm on both sides.
Meanwhile, it's Israel that's totally at fault.
And, you know, Israel has all of the power here.
Yeah.
So I'm curious whether the Netanyahu government is saying anything about this, like, look, we want that land.
Screw these people or they not even trying to justify it or what?
The Israeli foreign ministry put out some statement on Twitter calling it a like a private real estate disagreement, you know, just trying to say, oh, this is nothing.
The Palestinians are overreacting.
It's private.
You know, it's private business.
And and Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are inciting everyone.
You know, meanwhile, it's just straight up ethnic cleansing.
And so, in other words, they're just the way that they're handling it is to just outright lie and mischaracterize the entire situation.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I'm sorry.
Go ahead with what you were saying about the ethnic cleansing there, because that's what we call this anywhere else in the world, especially if it's governments we disfavor who are abetting it.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, there's no other term for this.
It's ethnic cleansing, people being removed, physically removed, expelled from their homes for the crime of being the wrong ethnicity because they're not Jewish.
And you know, this is the story of Israel, the story of Zionism from the very beginning.
And it just hasn't really changed.
It just goes on and on.
And you know, the so-called international community gives Israel total impunity, gives Israel all the weapons and, you know, an aid in the world.
And so Palestinians are just isolated and and have, you know, really nowhere to turn.
And so all that's left for them is armed resistance.
And then, you know, then the international community is going to condemn them for that, too.
So, you know, they know that their destiny is really in their own hands.
You know, Dan, I read a thing.
I used to be so good with the footnotes.
I'm sorry, but I'm almost certain it was a former head of Shin Bet.
It could have been Mossad, but I think it was a former head of Shin Bet, which is their kind of MI5, you know, FBI counterintelligence division sort of equivalent, their internal policing thing.
And that they had busted a group of Jewish extremists who had already planted explosives all throughout the Al-Aqsa Mosque and were ready to detonate it.
And I'm trying to remember, because I think it was even, you know, someone who rose to become a politician.
You know about this?
Yeah, there was several attempts to bomb the Al-Aqsa compound, particularly in the 80s.
And, you know, this is one of the things, actually, when when we talked the other day, I was talking about how the peace accords that Israel, the peace process has actually radicalized the Israeli society.
All of these attempts were in response to the withdrawal from the Sinai, from Egypt.
So the Camp David Accords, basically, in order to prevent that from happening, a bunch of Israeli settlers decided, well, a group of them decided, we are going to bomb the Al-Aqsa compound.
And the most famous one, the most famous attempt was led by a settler named Yehuda Etzion.
And basically, they took a long time and got Israeli military personnel involved.
There was an explosives expert.
There was an Air Force pilot.
They planned it out, like, immaculately.
And basically, they obtained all of the bombs, all this stuff.
And then they decided to not do it at the last minute, because they thought it was, they just thought it was a little too over the pale.
And then what they decided to do is continue to doing, like, terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians.
And so they went to basically put a bunch of bombs on buses of Palestinian civilians.
And they got caught doing that.
And then their plans for bombing Al-Aqsa that they had basically tabled were revealed.
But there were other attacks that were successful.
And so, you know, that's not the only one.
And there were several of them.
And, you know, those movements that in the 80s were, you know, still marginal, totally extreme but marginal.
Those are mainstream today.
Those are like in, those are in the Knesset.
That's what Itamar Ben-Gvir, the new Kahanist MK, that's what Bezalel Smotrich, all of these new like super extreme, extreme right wing settlers that are in the Knesset, that are like, they're in Sheikh Jarrah, they're in this Palestinian neighborhood.
You know, they're in front of the cameras.
That's them.
That's the same people.
It's just the newer generation.
And they have the total support of all basically the like settler religious Zionist youth.
As you mentioned, this is an extremely important holy site to all Muslims.
It's known as the place where the Prophet Muhammad rose up to heaven.
So after Mecca and Medina, this is third place is the site of the ancient Jewish temple and or ancient Hebrew temples from antiquity and all of that.
And has been the site of this Muslim mosque since for what, 1300 years?
Yeah, about that.
Maybe even more, maybe 1400.
I can't remember exactly.
Maybe 1600.
I can't remember exactly.
I'd have to look.
But anyway, if they do destroy this thing, then that'll be a world war, right?
That'll be every Muslim country in the world will have to get in on doing something about that somehow.
You know, I mean, the thing is, I think like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, I don't think they'd actually do anything because they're total collaborator regimes.
They would I mean, if they actually bombed Al Aqsa, of course, you'd have a major, major uprising among Palestinians, among among like, you know, average people, definitely there would be just mass unrest.
But I don't think the governments themselves that, you know, all the like Western allied governments would do anything.
But I interviewed a top Waqf official, Waqf is like the Jordanian Palestinian body that administers the Al Aqsa compound.
And when I asked him what would happen, you know, if Israel destroyed Dome of the Rock or the Al Aqsa compound, he was like, it would just it would be the end of Israel.
Israel would be finished.
That's it.
So, I mean, they are playing with extreme fire and they know it.
And I mean, it's it just doesn't get any more fanatical than than the settlers and what they're trying to do.
So, you know, it's it's it's very serious.
All right.
Now, listen, I'm sorry, because the reason I had you on was to talk about Colombia.
I'm one of the few Western reporters paying attention to this, at least that I can see on Twitter.
And I admit I have not been doing a lot of digging.
In fact, I've even been overlooking Antiwar.com's coverage of it because I've been so busy and spread so thin.
But I saw that you were tweeting and putting out videos showing what was going on there, people being killed in a tax protest down there in Colombia, which is a government that the Americans have had as a client for many decades in a row now, uninterrupted, I believe.
Correct?
Mm hmm.
So just tell us what's going on there.
Yeah, well, I've had kind of like we're trying to have like one eye on Jerusalem and one eye on Colombia.
And it's it's kind of giving me a headache.
But but no, Colombia is I mean, it's you know, there's similarities.
Look, Hugo Chavez called Colombia the Israel of South America, you know, years ago.
And there's and there's good reason that the two are very, very similar in a lot of ways.
Colombia, there's a national strike going on right now.
And it basically came in response to this tax reform proposal by the, you know, ultra right wing president, total ally of the U.S., Iván Duque.
And basically, this tax reform would increase the price of, you know, fuel, of coffee, of food, of the most basic supplies of transportation fare by like some 20 percent.
Colombia is the most unequal country in in Latin America.
It's 43 percent of people are in poverty, 15 percent are extreme poverty.
There's hunger.
I mean, it's just a nightmare situation.
And of course, they're coming out of 50 years of civil war, which, you know, is largely a result of the U.S.
It's a result of U.S. imperialism, Western imperialism.
So in response to this national strike that the labor unions, students, all kinds of activists have organized, which has been really impressive, the government, the military, the police have just cracked down.
So far, they've killed, the official numbers are 39 people.
But I spoke to a journalist in the city of Pereira where the protests have been really strong.
She told me that the hospital told her, we're not allowed to tell you the actual number of deaths.
We've been ordered from the national government to not reveal the actual number of deaths.
So the only way that journalists can know how many people have actually died is to go to the morgues and to go to the emergency rooms.
So no one actually knows how many people have died.
In addition to police and military, there's also paramilitaries that the government has armed that are just an extension of the state.
They're an extension of the military.
And so part of the national strike is you have basically protesters and strikers blocking roadways, so business can't go on as normal.
And they're unarmed.
They're not violent.
And so you have basically wealthy people paying paramilitaries to go and shoot up these strikers.
And so in the age of cell phone footage, there is a shocking amount of video coming out where you see the police directly facilitating this, helping these paramilitaries come in, shoot up a bunch of unarmed protesters, and then help them escape.
So I mean, it's just incredible to see the amount of violence, and especially when you contrast it with Venezuela and how the U.S. condemns every time Maduro burps or farts in Venezuela.
And then here, you just have a total bloodbath from the military, paramilitaries.
And the U.S. is basically totally silent.
Yeah.
Just like in Egypt, when Sisi massacred a thousand people after he overthrew the elected government in 2013, John Kerry's like, well, that's the restoration of democracy.
Anyway, we're watching Jeopardy.
That's it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Tony Blinken is like, you know, we just, we want everybody to just take it easy.
Everyone be calm.
Yeah.
I saw his statement today on Palestine was, you know, we're concerned.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Very concerned.
Yeah.
Very concerned.
And all of this, this strike is not only about the, um, the tax reform that Duque is pushing, but also, you know, there was this peace accord in 2016 that was supposed to work.
Right.
Yeah.
I was about to ask you, how's that going?
Exactly.
So the, so, um, I'm actually working on a documentary about that that I'm hoping to have out in a few weeks.
Um, I was in Columbia back in December filming this thing and it's just taking me forever to get this documentary out.
But, um, so, and that's, that's kind of one of the subjects in my documentary is, is the peace accord.
And then this entrapment plot that the U S ran against it to basically destroy the peace accord and, and put Columbia back in civil war.
Um, and so that's one of the major things is you have this peace accord, the FARC disarms, lays down all their weapons, all these thousands and thousands of fighters agree to integrate into society.
They fulfilled their end of the bargain and the government does not.
And so what's happening is paramilitaries, um, extensions of the state are assassinating the ex combatants since the peace accord in 2016 there have been, uh, I think it's now 248 ex combatants assassinated.
And at the same time, they're also killing social leaders.
So, you know, any like union leaders, environmental, uh, you know, uh, rights activists, human rights defenders, these kinds of people, there have been, um, about 1150 of them killed since the peace accord.
So they're just basically wiping out, um, you know, anyone who kind of organizes against the oligarchy, which is basically, you know, Duque and Uribe, the former president who is really the master of, of the country.
Um, they are, not only are they narcos on, they've been paid by drug traffickers, by major drug trafficking cartels and the United States government knows this and supports them, but also they're just part of big business.
So you know, international, so oil companies that are operating mining companies, you know, based in the U S and Canada, um, uh, you know, taking gold and, and all, all kinds of, you know, wealth, huge amounts of wealth out of Columbia.
They're all paying the, the, uh, government.
They're all, you know, it's all kind of one big, ugly, ugly system.
Um, and so, and so these are the people who are assassinating these, these organizations, not only drug traffickers, but also big business is assassinating the social leaders and the ex combatants.
Um, and so that's like, you know, just one aspect then.
So you have, you know, the, the systematic unfulfillment and the extermination of, um, the social leaders and ex combatants.
You have the, um, the Biden administration is pressuring the, uh, Colombian government to resume spraying glyphosate on crops in rural areas where they grow coca.
Um, there's more, there's more cocaine coming out of Columbia than ever.
So you know, the U S for so long blamed the FARC saying, Oh, these guys are growing, you know, growing coca.
And they're the ones, you know, they're, they're narco gorillas is this term they invented.
And now the FARC doesn't exist.
And there's more cocaine than ever coming from Columbia.
And it's obvious that it's the same drug cartels that have existed that have run the state.
Um, and so the U S is including the Biden administration, this started under Trump, but it's continuing under Biden.
They're pressuring Columbia to resume spraying this horrible, uh, chemical.
Oh yeah.
This is Biden's specialty, right?
Plan Columbia is his baby for 25 years now.
Right?
Exactly.
Yes.
It was part of plan Columbia.
This, this huge military aid package.
It's like a real pet project of his, just like he's talking about, yeah, here's what we need to do with Iraq.
We got to split it into three and all these things like he knows best what's to be done.
He's had a real kind of pet project with Columbia.
Here's how we're going to fix Columbia.
We're going to give them more helicopters.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So yeah, I mean that's one of the really shocking things.
These Blackhawk helicopters that were given to, um, Columbia free of charge from the U.S. as part of plan Columbia, this giant military aid package that, you know, they said was going to stop the drug trafficking, but was actually about, you know, defeating the counterinsurgency against the drug Lords, uh, the narco state.
Those helicopters are now being used against protesters against the strikers.
There's, there's shocking videos of these helicopters shooting at people, um, shooting at strikers and it's like, wait, this is from the U.S.
All of this stuff is from the U.S.
Hey, I'll tell you a story here real quick.
I got to put in a fun anecdote.
You'll like it.
Ron Paul, I'm 99% sure this was in a speech he gave at the future freedom foundation conference in 2008.
Pretty sure that's what my brain says anyway, but I know I got the story right.
And the story was when it's time for plan Columbia day up on Capitol Hill, there's only one interest group there and it's not mothers against cocaine abuse.
It's the helicopter companies, right?
They're the only ones who show up on Capitol Hill with all their lobbyists and lawyers and dollars and say, listen, it's really important that we continue saving Columbia down there.
And then that's it.
And there's no one pushing back.
There's no one saying, hell no, please leave them alone for God's sake.
They have enough Blackhawks already.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
It's just, yeah, exactly.
That's all it is.
And there's nobody even else involved except the helicopter lobbyists.
That was.
And he saw a year after year after year.
Exactly.
It's, I mean, the whole, the whole idea of stopping the, like the Colombian Coke trade from Columbia instead of like, you know, um, dealing with the demand here in the U.S. like having some kind of program to treat people who are on it instead of locking them up in prison.
Instead, we're just going to criminalize it here, lock people up for decades and decades and you know, uh, try to, and just spray horrible chemicals all over poor farmers who don't have any choice but to grow that to survive.
I mean, that's one of the crazy things I went to the, you know, the areas where they grow coca deep, deep, deep in the jungle in Columbia.
And it's all just poor people.
They're not drug traffickers.
They're just, they're basically slaves who have no way to survive but to grow coca.
Um, and then the, the drug cartels come in, basically take it and jack up the price and, you know, sell it to transport it to the U.S. um, and, and Europe and, and, you know, make enormous profits and none of that profit even goes back to Columbia.
So, um, and then of course, and you know, that, that money all goes into, it gets laundered into the international banking system.
So it's just giant mafia, um, stuff and, and that's, you know, and that's just a major reason for, that's another one of the major reasons for this strike.
So I mean, the trigger was, you know, this tax reform that it's just like, it's the kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.
But, um, I mean, it's really shocking to see what's happening in Columbia right now.
And by the way, Dan, you know, for people who are not familiar, when you say right-wing paramilitaries, that's what they've always been called in Columbia.
And that's what, hell, probably even Joe Biden calls them that.
That's what the official American mainstream media has always referred to them as.
They're not really soldiers.
They're kind of contractor mercenaries.
No question of whose side they're on, you know?
And in fact, we didn't really discuss this at all, but we could have set up in the backstory here that for many years, this group, the FARC, this leftist rebel group controlled an area of Columbia, like the size of Switzerland or something, at least, you know, not as mountainous, but not if Switzerland was all spread out, but you know what I mean?
On the map, this huge area.
And then they came in from the cold and said, essentially, we're sick of fighting and had this peace deal.
And you're saying, I guess, I'm not sure whether you're saying it was always a trap or just in effect it was, because then it was sort of like when Mao encouraged people to criticize the government and he just killed them all.
That was sort of the same thing here.
Come in from the cold.
Tell us where you live and give us your thumbprint and then we'll see in a year from now with a knife.
Right.
Right.
It's a I mean, you know, it's a question.
It's a real question.
Effectively, it was a trap because it sounds like, you know, I mean, for one thing, you know, Plan Colombia was all about weakening the FARC.
That's what it was about is destroying, defeating the FARC.
So what they did starting in 2002, the CIA started providing the Colombian Air Force with these advanced weapons and and targeting technology in order to wipe out the leadership.
So all this.
So it took them a long time.
But in 2008, all of a sudden they started killing a bunch of the leadership of the FARC.
So it was basically they weakened them over several years and waged extremely intense warfare against the FARC and then basically decided, OK, now that we've weakened you, we're going to initiate negotiations.
So then you'll surrender.
And then once they basically, you know, agreed to, you know, integrate and lay down their arms, then the not long after, then the ultra right government of Duque comes in, who's an opponent of the peace accord explicitly the whole time.
And now they're just getting slaughtered.
And so there are some breakaway groups, you know, that are that have taken up arms again.
But you know, it's not nearly the strength and it's going to take a long time for them to to be able to, like, build back up if they're able to at all.
But you know, so.
So it sounds like that ship has sailed, man.
They're going to have to figure out a way some other way.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
It's they're definitely growing.
And the government sees them as a real threat.
They're calling them the second marketalia, which is a reference to like where the FARC was born out of.
And but there are more and more people joining it.
There are like powerful leaders and they are recruiting.
So it's definitely pretty serious, but it's obviously not at the level that it was.
And you know, it's it's a majorly debated issue.
Like what's the way to do this?
There are plenty of people, you know, who are maybe ideologically similar left wing who do not want to go back into armed struggle.
And then there are some, you know, who do.
And then there are a lot of there are some FARC, you know, former FARC members, fighters who have joined basically, you know, straight up drug trafficking gangs that have no like ideological struggle.
They're just, you know, basically become narcos.
So there's that aspect to it, too.
But, you know, I mean, right now, the main thing is just this massive, massive strike.
And, you know, where it goes, if if I mean, it's every day there's some announcement from the Colombian government where they're just like, well, now we're sending out the military.
You have, you know, full militarization of all the cities, you know, different mayors calling on paramilitaries to come in and, you know, and private security is what they call them, to come in and secure the city with the help of the police and military.
And then, you know, the next day you have like, you know, some civilians and protesters getting assassinated in the street.
There are a lot of people who have been disappeared.
I don't know.
You know, I don't want to say how many I've seen.
I've seen a lot of numbers floating around.
But many people have been disappeared, you know, in the kind of classic Latin America dictatorship, you know, where they just kind of people are never heard from again or their body turns up in a river or something like that.
So I mean, it's, you know, Colombia is it's it's like all of the U.S.-backed governments in Latin America are basically like right wing dictatorships, like kind of like from, you know, the the Reagan era, that kind of thing, of just the most like horrific dictatorships.
But they're dressed up as democracies.
And so now that there's this uprising with this national strike, it's like Colombia is, you know, revealing itself.
But the facade of democracy is kind of peeling away.
And it's just coming out as a total narco dictatorship where the military and police and paramilitaries are just gunning people down in the streets on camera, totally documented.
And you know, the again, just like in Palestine, the international community is kind of, you know, it's wringing its hands a little bit.
But I mean, if you, you know, compare it to any of the, you know, if anything happened remotely like this in, you know, Venezuela or Nicaragua or any of the enemy countries of the U.S., the bad regimes, it would just be like, you know, it'd be R2P time.
It would be, you know, we got to go got to go save them and bring them to democracy.
What do you think is the most reasonable estimate of the killed so far in the protests?
So far I've seen 39.
But you know, I think it's a safe bet that it's significantly more than that.
I mean, yesterday they shot, I think there were 11 people.
There was a paramilitary attack on a protest in the city of Cali.
They injured, I think, 11, maybe 14 people, you know, these are kind of numbers I've seen floating around.
I'd have to confirm them.
But you know, so there were no deaths yesterday in that protest.
And then there were more shootings at night.
So I mean, it's it's hard to know exactly.
But I've seen 39 confirmed.
Yeah.
Well, and you're certainly right about how this would play out.
We saw the way they did when on the first attempted coup, or not the very first one, but of the recent ones in the Trump years, the attempted coups in Venezuela, where it was somehow, I don't know if it was a miracle or if it was, you know, maybe it was the devil at work or what it was, but every American TV station all combined and all of the cable news networks could only get one pool camera into all of Caracas.
And then that one pool camera could only somehow grab about 40 seconds of footage of an armored personnel carrier driving over a guy who was throwing Molotov cocktails at it in this protest of about like 200 of the richest, whitest people in the country and completely ignoring.
And then it was the same day on Twitter, of course, you know, where Twitter say what you will about it.
Same thing happened in 2014, too.
And same thing happening in Palestine now, where it's the loophole around the mainstream media in so many ways, if you're willing to really look.
And at that time, there was drone footage of must have been one hundred thousand or even two or more hundred thousand people all marching on the Capitol building in the revolution, all of them facing outward to protect Maduro and the government there no matter.
And you know what?
It'd been nice if somebody was asking them, well, what do you like about this guy?
But the obvious answer is independence.
You know, the opposition are the sock puppets of the American CIA and proudly proclaim it and call for foreign military invasion of their own country.
So no wonder people like the current guy if he's the one facing down the traitors.
Imagine if Hillary Clinton, after losing to Trump, not only just blamed Russia for stealing it for him, but then literally demanded that China attack America and change the regime and give her the chair instead.
And Guaido actually didn't even run for anything, but he was calling for America to invade his own country.
Now, gee, I wonder why there's two hundred thousand people marching.
And I wonder why CNN won't show us there's, you know, all these people marching on the Capitol to protect it.
You know.
Exactly.
I mean, it's it's incredible.
You know, for one thing, Colombia has been the launchpad for all of these attacks on Venezuela.
You know, the like Juan Guaido was he was in Colombia, you know, meeting with Pence and Duque, the Bay of Piglets that basically attempted invasion by U.S. mercenaries.
That was planned.
And they basically launched it from Colombia.
Then, I mean, there have been so many attacks from Colombia.
The drone attack on Maduro during that, you know, when he was giving a speech in front of a bunch of people, there was a failed drone attack.
Allegedly, that was from Colombia, which, you know, all of the all of the the hardcore right wing kind of Guaido, you know, people surrounding him are in they're based in Colombia.
None of them are in Venezuela.
They're all in Bogota, except for Leopoldo Lopez, who's in Madrid.
You know, so.
So, I mean, that's basically Colombia is the U.S.'s most important asset in the Western hemisphere for controlling the region, for controlling Latin America.
It's such a geostrategically important place, you know, has access to the Atlantic, to the Caribbean and Pacific.
And so, you know, and it's a huge country.
And so you can just control so much with it.
You know, during the Ecuadorian election recently, you know, we saw how the Colombian attorney general went to Ecuador to basically conjure up a bunch of lies that aroused the left wing candidate had ties to the to the Colombian left wing militias, the armed groups that still exist, the ELN being one of them, the National Liberation Army, and then, you know, other FARC groups.
And that was a total lie.
There was no evidence.
And so it's like clearly that's, you know, a plot by the U.S. to have Colombia go into Ecuador to try to prevent the left wing candidate from winning, who, you know, won the first round but not by a big enough victory and ended up losing in the second round.
And so now we have this, you know, right wing U.S. puppet in Ecuador, too.
So I mean, it's, you know, I think people really have to understand what a huge role Colombia plays in, you know, U.S. imperialism in Latin America.
And so that's one of the reasons it's totally fine.
It's just happy to overlook this bloodbath and just, you know, I mean, I can't imagine what they're telling Duque behind, you know, like, you know, on on the phone or whatever.
I mean, and what they're telling Arriba, it's just like, yeah, do whatever you want.
But, you know, we got your back, buddy.
Yeah.
If things get bad, then, you know, just just send the military and wipe them all out.
You know what?
I think it hurts people's feelings to hear this kind of thing, because, hey, I'm from here and stuff like that.
But yeah, the CIA, they're butchers.
They're bad guys and they represent special interests, not the interests of the American people at large in any real way.
And that's the way it's always been.
And everybody over the age of about 14 ought to be able to understand how this works.
Come on.
Now they're woke, Scott, the CIA is woke, man.
It was the Israelis who invented pinkwashing, I think, or at least that term was invented to describe when the Israelis slaughter a bunch of Gazans and then hold a big gay rights parade and say, see, we're the most progressive government in the region.
You don't have a real problem with us, which works on the right half of the left, right?
The liberals from Hillary Clinton to about halfway over go, wow, that's really persuasive.
Right.
And so, yeah, it works.
It works like a charm.
Yeah.
It's pretty remarkable how effective that's been in dividing the left.
But I mean, yeah, I don't know this thing I ever read by Matt Iglesias, which I don't read much Iglesias, but the smartest thing I ever read by him today was saying he was quoting this white lady who had written this woke manual for companies and and for students and all this stuff and how just what garbage it was.
And he said that.
And this is Iglesias talking.
So from him, it's kind of funny to hear him say it this way, but he said, you know, the more conspiratorial part of him thinks that this could be something produced by something like COINTELPRO that is deliberately made to destroy the left and get them to argue about this absolute inane garbage instead of who's bailing out which bank and whose throat is the CIA slitting, which he didn't phrase it that way.
But that's, of course, the real issue.
Right.
And so, yeah, I don't know why anyone would suspect otherwise, really.
Of course, it's COINTELPRO, whether it's the FBI behind it or not, it's the same damn thing, you know, in effect.
Right.
Right.
I mean, one other thing I just I just now published, they just published my video on Columbia explaining the whole thing and behind the headlines.
So everyone, you know, check out my my YouTube channel behind the headlines.
You can just like search behind the headlines, Dan Cohen.
Yeah.
And we'll make sure Sam will link to it in the show notes, too.
So anybody can find that it'll be at the Libertarian Institute and at Scott Horton .org and even at YouTube, I guess we'll have it all, too.
So awesome.
And so like one of the things that, you know, I found is that back in February, the Colombian government actually brought in a literal Chilean neo-Nazi to advise them on how to handle this, an uprising that he said was inevitable.
And he gave this like two hour presentation using this like total kind of gobbledygook, pseudo-intellectual, bogus framework that he calls dissipated molecular revolution.
And he claims that like there's some international conspiracy, like communist conspiracy, starting with the ETA, the Basque separatist movement in Spain that then became part of Chavismo, like Hugo Chavez and all the like left wing movements in Latin America, many of which are like just all these disparate groups.
So totally nonsensical.
And he also like talks about how it originates with a bunch of Jews in France.
So, you know, throw in some classic anti-Semitism.
And this is I mean, it's it sounds crazy when you listen to it.
And it's all it's all in Spanish.
It's not even I just put a tiny segment of it in my video so people can see.
But I mean, this crackpot Nazi is the guy who the police and military are looking to for some kind of intellectual framework for how to defeat this uprising, which means just, you know, go out and kill people, just go out and and and shoot them, you know, as if you need some like, you know, deep theory to know that to just go shoot people.
But I mean, this is you know, it's just incredible to see that this Nazi, they had an actual Nazi came come in.
There are photos of him with the Nazi flag behind him.
He denies the label he, you know, but it's obvious what he is.
And, you know, this is this is the guy that that the Colombian government, that the U.S. allied Colombian government is relying on.
So another, you know, U.S. allied Nazi state, basically, you know, fascistic state looking more.
I mean, Colombia is looking more and more like a fascistic dictatorship.
And I don't want to use hyperbole, but it's like when they're just murdering protesters in the street and then it turns out that an actual neo-Nazi is advising them.
You know, I don't know what else to say.
Then this is looking like a fascist, a fascist dictatorship.
Well, what do you say about the world's superpower?
Still democratic, inform at home in a way, kind of, but behind every like tyranny on the planet, right down to where it's not just calling names, but where you have like in Ukraine, where these guys are proudly flying swastikas and wolf's angles and all of these things, however you pronounce that.
Right.
These, you know, Nazi symbols and and proudly boast their allegiance to the ghost of Stepan Bandera and all of this stuff.
Yeah.
Wherever there's a fascist dictatorship anywhere in the world or a kingdom, you know, absolute monarchy anywhere in the world, you can find the USA and the red, white and blue right there supporting them.
Just about every time, I think.
Yeah, and I mean, you know, if you know any history from kind of post-World War II, where did Nazis go?
Well, not only did a bunch of them come into the United States and, you know, become part of NASA and...
I was going to say, aside from the CIA or what do you mean?
Yeah, yeah.
Aside from the CIA, you know, protecting them and bringing them into the U.S. to basically, you know, help defeat, try to help defeat the Soviet Union and create its, you know, space and missile program.
A bunch of them went to South America.
And so, you know, in several countries around South America, Chile being one of them where, you know, they're really strong.
There are real neo-Nazi parties in Chile.
You know, so there's still this whole issue, the coup in Bolivia.
A lot of the street muscle behind that was a neo-fascist party.
You know, so, I mean, it's not hyperbole, took all these guys neo-fascist because that's really what they are and their direct ideological descendants.
You know, they see, you know, the Nazi regime as their heroes.
And that's, you know, a lot of them come directly from that.
So, I mean, this guy who's advising the Colombian government, his name is Alexia Tapia, Alexia Lopez, Alexi Tapia Lopez, sorry.
He, you know, he's part of that.
And so there's, you know, this whole framework of Nazis that are kind of, you know, still existing in Latin America that a lot of people don't know about, but, you know, are powerful and, you know, basically tools of the U.S., of Western imperialism.
And, you know, this is another example of, you know, of that exact phenomenon.
Yeah.
All right, man.
Well, I'll let you go.
I really appreciate you coming back and helping us tack this end on this interview and keeping us up to date on this stuff.
Good stuff, Dan, as always.
Thank you so much for having me, Scott.
Appreciate it.
All right, you guys, that is Dan Cohen, Dan Cohen 3000 on Twitter.
Follow him there.
And of course, his show on YouTube is called Behind the Headlines.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
APS Radio dot com, Antiwar dot com, Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
