Today we're talking with Chris Floyd.
He's the author of Empire Burlesque, the great blog at chris-floyd.com, and the book, Empire Burlesque, High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.
And you're in what part of England today?
In Oxford.
In Oxford, England.
And I was really happy to see on your blog today that you're talking about Gordon Brown.
We cover the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program on the show every day here.
But we haven't really looked at the British angle, our closest ally, our most special relationship between the United States and Great Britain.
And I guess some of the word has been here and there that the British perhaps are helping to restrain our actions by being less than willing to go along with a war against Iran.
And I was just wondering, maybe you can fill us in and tell us about the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
Not so new anymore, but tell us about Prime Minister Brown, his position on that.
Yeah, well, yeah, I know there's a lot of, I guess you'd call it wishful thinking about when Brown took over from Blair, you know, Blair slinked off about, I don't know, sometime in May or June or something like that, sometime like that.
And then Brown came on.
I remember reading over in American Press a lot of stuff, oh, well, this is a new direction for, you know, Great Britain.
He's not going to be as tight with Bush and all this kind of stuff.
And he's not as personally tight with Bush.
But as you say, there was also a lot of talk, too, that Brown was going to restrain any move toward Iran.
But as I wrote on the blog today, and I know you saw that, Brown gave his first major foreign policy speech last night at some big glittering affair down there in London.
I think the Queen was there, and they were all in white tie and tails and I don't know, top hat and canes, I reckon.
So he gave his first major speech, and he took that opportunity to align Britain once more, just shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip and whatever body parts they're putting together with Bush in Washington.
And he also said that Britain wants to take the lead in forwarding Iran's nuclear program.
They want to take the lead in, you know, cracking down and bringing in more sanctions to prevent Iran from processing uranium, you know, enriching uranium.
And so he made a big show about that, that they want to be, you know, really tight with Washington on that.
So I don't really think that there's going to be much if, it'd be the same thing that happened before.
If they decide to jump, if Bush says, let's jump in Iran, then Brown's going to say, how high?
And he just, as you know, and as you know, but I know a lot of people don't know, perhaps when Blair went out and Brown took over and said, oh, this is a new man.
Well, of course, Brown has been Blair's right-hand man, although they hated each other, but, you know, they were the two top people for the whole way, you know.
And they ran the economy, ran around a whole lot of the domestic side while Blair fitted around.
But everything that Blair did, Brown had to sign on because they actually have more of a cabinet government over here.
You know, of course, in America, the cabinet doesn't really matter.
They do what the President says or they get out.
But over in Britain, they still have more of a semblance of a cabinet government.
And so when the Prime Minister makes the decision, the cabinet has to sort of specifically sign on to it and take responsibility.
That's the main thing.
They have to take responsibility for it.
And so everything that Blair did, you know, the war in Iraq, all this other kind of stuff, the helping with the renditioning and all this thing that they did, Brown had to sign off on all that, and otherwise he wouldn't be where he is.
So, yes, this is our first big statement from Brown, and it's not very promising in the anti-war sort of area.
And one other thing I was going to note about Brown, because people said, well, when Brown comes in, he's more of an old-fashioned labor guy.
That was another thing that you sometimes see in the American press, and even here when he first came in.
You know, he harks back to old labor.
And as you know, labor used to be actually a socialist party until right before Blair was elected when they dropped their clause about socialism out of their party principles.
So they thought, well, here's, you know, Blair is going to, Brown's going to be like an old line, but what Brown, one of the first things Brown did was he got a new economic advisor over here.
He brought Alan Greenspan over here to be one of his economic advisors.
Are you serious?
Yeah, I mean, you know, he signed on, because he signed a lot, I'm sure Greenspan's not here every day, but yeah, he made a big great show of having Greenspan over here to be one of his big economic advisors.
So that'll tell you where he's coming at on the shock-and-all capitalism front, because I've just been reading Naomi Klein's book.
That'll tell you where he lines up on that sort of score, and his speech yesterday will tell you where he lines up on Iran.
Well, now, you know, the headlines over here were, Brown, we are still allies with America.
And I thought, oh, well, was that in doubt?
Do the people of England not want to be allies with America anymore?
Well, they don't particularly want to be.
They don't want to be allies with Bush.
I mean, I've never really seen anything like it.
I mean, Bush is just, I mean, he's really hated over here.
Hated or rejected as a joke or whatever you want to take it, depending on how politically active somebody is.
Yeah, one kind of contempt or another, though.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's right.
That's the way to put it, yeah.
Yeah, one kind of contempt or another for Bush over here.
And so, no, I mean, there's a great feeling of, a great sort of falling off.
I mean, of course, it's the same thing here as there is all over the world.
Everybody loves American culture, there's no question about that.
You know, everybody loves American culture, they love the movies, they love the music, they love the blues, you know, they love all this kind of stuff.
Who doesn't?
And they like them individual Americans, too.
It's not some sort of visceral hatred, like, oh, you're American, get out of here.
But, you know, they really, really despise American politics, and they despise what America has come to represent.
And that's true right here, you know, where we have the so-called special relationship, which has always been a bit, you know, I think it's more of a species relationship, actually, the special relationship.
But it always struck me as a bit funny, you know, that we cozy up to these people we thought a war to break away from.
But no, I mean, so what Brown's doing, again, see, Brown's doing here, he's showing that what's more important for the British, let's just speak plainly, the British ruling class, what's more important is to line up with the American ruling class than it is to do what his own people want to do, which is not be shoulder to shoulder with Bush and things like that.
Well, I wonder if there's anything specific that they're working on here, like a big arms deal with Saudi Arabia or something again?
Well, of course, they've got that going through.
I mean, that's the thing that I've written about a whole lot.
As you know, with Tony Blair Quash, this two-year investigation into sort of what they have over here is the serious fraud office, which we could actually use one in America, I guess.
But they worked for two years to find out, but oh, you know, I mean, I'm sure you've probably read about the massive corruption with these Saudi royals.
The billion-dollar slush fund for Prince Bandar, who's also known as Bandar Bush because he was so close to the Bush family, a billion dollars they just put in a slush fund for him to play around with, all this kind of stuff.
But Tony Blair Quash, that investigation, and now under Brown, of course, the sale of 72 fighters, I think it is, I can't remember the exact dollar term now, X billion dollars, 12 billion dollars or something like that, has just gone through.
And of course, the Saudi king was over here a couple weeks ago, and Brown was paying his obeisance to the Saudi king.
It's a really remarkable thing if you think that Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive, extremist, religious tyrannies in the whole world.
And the way that you can see these great figures of state over here falling over the kings who came is just, you know, I mean, they might as well be rolling up the red carpet for the guy in Korea if they're going to do that sort of thing.
And so Brown was there, again, in white tie and tails, doing his penguin invitation, and they were signed, that's basically the reigns of the king came, I think, was they could sign this big deal for more jet fighters for the Saudis, and more massive, massive kickbacks to the Saudi royals.
And what's the name of that company again, the British company doing the fighters?
Yeah, that's BAE, it's called.
Right, right, BAE Systems.
I think it used to be British Aerospace, but it's official name is BAE, and it's also, it is a British company, it's their top, it's sort of like their Lockheed Martin, you know, and of course Blair cut a lot of sweet deals for them over the years, but it's also one of the major defense companies in the United States also.
Well, and wasn't it the case that they were having some financial troubles, and that this whole thing basically just amounted to a giant welfare check to save them?
Well, I don't know, I'm not quite sure that it angled, I mean, I don't know what they are having, they're having a lot of trouble in the United States, because the United States is investigating some of this, just as part of somebody over there is investigating some of this kickback stuff that they've buried over here.
I don't know if that's just to light a fire under, you know, somebody thought they were able to get a better kickback for something else, but, well, yeah, BAE has been up and down, but in the last few years, you know, they've done like all the other weapons companies in the United States and Britain, they're flush with cash.
They're flush with cash now from all the war, because they're in charge of so much over here.
I'm sorry, because I'm not positive about the footnote, but I think it was Richard Cummings' article in Playboy magazine, Lockheed stock and two smoking barrels, I think that's where he talked about BAE's financial troubles and this giant welfare fund from the American taxpayer to this British airplane company to sell some jets to the Saudis.
Yeah, well, I'm sure, I mean, as I say, I'm just dealing with it from the last, you know, little bit, because if you go back to, well, the original deal from this started back under Margaret Thatcher, it's a 20-year, actually what we're talking about now is today, this latest sale is just a renewal or a rolling over of a 20-year deal that's been going on.
Oh, wow.
So, I'm sure it's been used all the years as a cash cow to pull BAE out of the, pull BAE out of the, out of the mud and everything, and I'm sure you were just reading Playboy for the article.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I read it online and I didn't want to get a virus.
Yeah, me neither.
Yeah, so, here's the funny thing about America and Britain as well, rattling the saber about Iran and their nuclear program, is that, well, as Dr. Gordon Prather explained on the show today, a nuclear expert at antiwar.com, he says, about referring to my government and the one you're living under over there, he said, they know they're lying.
There is no evidence that there is any sort of secret nuclear weapons program or even that the safeguarded and declared that everybody knows about nuclear program that they do have would be capable of making nuclear weapons any time within years and years and years from now.
Well, of course, absolutely, he's right.
I mean, this is, this is, again, the sort of frustrating thing about the whole thing is they are lying.
And as I was mentioning in my, in my piece today, you know, what we're seeing is the same thing we saw with Iraq is they're simply manufacturing a crisis where one doesn't exist and they're manufacturing a crisis over non-existent weapons, non-existent weapons and non-existent weapons programs, the exact same thing that happened before.
And as you say, they are lying about it.
And I hope I've made this point today when I'm talking about Brown.
My point would be that he has bought into that lie.
And he knows they're lying.
You know, he knows what's going on.
And so this, I think, tells y'all they need to know about Brown because he's, you know, he's bought into the lie.
Now he's pushing the lie.
And I'm sure that Gordon Prather also mentioned either today, I know he has other times, but that's, as you say, there's no evidence that Iran is doing anything illegal and everything they are doing they're allowed to do by treaty.
And as I mentioned today, and I'm sure he's mentioned before too, they've actually gone the extra mile, they've actually accepted more restrictions than they needed to do under the treaty already.
And so this whole crisis about what the UN's security council demanding of them and their being intransigent is the fact that they're balking at a few more extra restrictions that by treaty they shouldn't have to, they shouldn't have to obey in the first place.
I mean, you know, I'm not, like a lot of people, I'm not here beating the drum for Iran, you know, this wonderful regime or something like that, but that has nothing to do with anything.
It has nothing to do with what they're being accused of or anything like that.
And of course, I did mention this today too, everything that Bush and now Brown are doing only strengthens the hardliners in Iran, only makes it, you know, only makes the regime more oppressive and strengthens the hardliners.
I don't know if you saw in the piece I did today, I was quoting from a Guardian article about how Bush deliberately and knowingly sabotaged Putin's trip over there.
He knew Putin went to Tehran last month, and he had a deal that he was going to try to work out, and he told Bush beforehand about this deal.
He said, it's the same deal they had before.
He said, you know, we'll offer to Iran that we'll enrich uranium for them on our soil, and they'll have their nuclear power plants, but we'll enrich the uranium, that way there's no possible way in the world they can make a bomb.
And Putin told that to Bush before he left Bush, yeah, you look into that, if they'll go for that, then we'll sit down and talk to them and, you know, blah, blah, blah, and we'll enter into talks with them if they'll agree to spin their uranium enrichment.
So Putin took that deal to Khomeini, because he met the top dog, he wasn't dealing around with the Iranian president, you know, who doesn't have the power to do any of these things that he talks about, he doesn't have the power over the nuclear program.
He met with the supreme leader there, Putin did.
He put that offer to him, and Khomeini said that, he said, you consider it, you know, I'll think about it, we'll take it under advisement, we'll think about it.
And they were competing with it, and they were negotiating with it.
And then during that period, that's right after that, that's when Bush came out with his outlawing bits of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, you know, Revolutionary Guard, which is, you know, part of the Iranian government, he declared them a terrorist organization.
And so what happened then was, what happened, of course, was that all the hardliners came in and said, look, you can't negotiate with, you can't negotiate, you can't do anything, you know, we're right, you know, all you people trying to talk with Americans, you know, you can't do it.
And so what happened was it strengthened the hardliners, and the sort of moderate nuclear negotiator that the Iranians had, he was kicked out, and they brought in one of the Iranian presence, you know, top men.
So everything they're doing is strengthening the hardliners, and as I mentioned in my piece today, they're doing that on purpose, you know, everything they're doing is trying, they're trying to systematically close off every option except war.
You know, it's like some sort of perverse reversal of what you think foreign policy is, you know, it's about to try to find every measure short of war before you have to go to war.
But what the Bush people are doing is they're trying to wipe out every measure that could lead to peace, so they leave only one option to resolve this crisis that they themselves have manufactured and that they themselves are keeping going through lies and defeat.
It's a really amazing sort of thing, and I just don't see, you know, I know a lot of people saying, oh, well, it looks like they're not going to attack now, oh, I don't think they'll attack now.
But I don't see the reason of going through all this rigmarole unless they're going to attack.
I don't see what's the point of going through all this, they're just going to run out the clock with Iran, they could do a whole lot easier stuff than this kind of thing.
But they're not interested, they're not interested in any way negotiating, they're not interested in getting rid of the Iranian nuclear program, they don't care.
I mean, you know, the Americans helped start the Iranian nuclear program 30 years ago when the Shah was there, they don't care.
What they are interested in is getting rid of the Iranian regime and getting control of Iran, that's all they're interested in.
And so, I mean, that's where all this stuff is pointing toward.
But as you know, and I'm sure you say it every day, we've seen all this before, and it's just like a really bad dream, it's just happening again.
Well, but let me ask you here, because when you say it's all pointing toward, you know, an attempt at regime change in Iran, I'd have to say it's only kind of pointed generally in that direction.
I mean, you hear talk of limited air strikes, and then of course the obvious answer to that is, well, how limited is the Iranian response going to be if we start bombing them?
And I wonder, do you think that the plan is to deliberately escalate into a full-scale regional war and go ahead and start a draft and attempt to occupy Persia?
Are we talking about another coup d'etat they're going to try to engineer?
Because that doesn't seem very likely.
Well, yeah, I don't know.
I mean, of course, I don't know one way or the other, because I have no arm train to the quarter of the power there.
But, yeah, I think that comes down to the question.
The question is, are they, they want to, you know, they want to provoke some sort of conflict.
I mean, that's obvious.
And the question is, are they, you know, are they stupid enough to believe that if they do that, that the regime is just going to crumble and the people are going to welcome them again with the flowers and candy?
Maybe they do think that.
I don't know.
I don't know what they think will happen.
I mean, I mean, there's part of me, I think, that they think that it doesn't matter what happens.
What does it matter?
You know, they go in, either the regime crumbles, the regime doesn't crumble, you've got a bigger, wider war on your hands.
You know, what do they care?
We're talking about, again, you know, to revert back to Naomi Klein's book, we're talking about the disaster capitalism complex, aren't we?
And I've written about this, actually, not nearly as well as she or Ann and Deb, but for years I've been talking about how the Iraq war has always been a win-win situation for the Bush people.
You know, the Bush factions is that if the war succeeds, great, they've conquered Iraq.
You know, they've got a whole new playground, they can suck all the oil out of there like a milkshake through the straw.
Now, but if they don't conquer it, there's a lot of trouble like they did in the last few years.
Well, great, you know, they just make billions and billions of dollars.
Calibert makes billions, Lockheed Martin makes billions, Bush gets to have more and more power at the war present, you know?
I mean, it's a...
The price of oil quadruples.
Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, it's like some, you know, perpetuating machines, perpetual motion machines.
So if they were to attack Iran, you say, you know, what happened is we in the reality-based community, we lay out all the possible options, right?
Well, it could be a limited response by Iran, they could launch terrorism all over the world, or they could come back with a, you know, massive strike.
And if the Shia in Iraq wipe out our troops, they could do this, they could do that.
You know, we look at the options, we say, well, you know, how could you do, you know, which would be the worst, or who would, you know, who would take this step, you know, because it would lead to that.
But what they see is that, well, if we do this, we get X amount of money, if we do this, we'll get more money, this happens, we'll get X amount of money, this happens, we get X amount of money.
Everything, you know, they'll just make, you know, the...
I mean, they've already shown in Iraq, they don't care how many American troops die, they don't care how much they exacerbate the risk of terrorism to Americans, because we all know that terrorism has been on the rise year after year, and we all know all these studies, even the Pentagon's own studies show that the war in Iraq has exacerbated and radicalized extremist Muslims all over the world.
So they don't care about that, they've proven already they don't care about American lives, they don't care about terrorism, they do care about, again, on just barter terms, you know, they're a disaster capitalism machine, they keep it rolling.
And so, again, you could lay out five, six, ten options about, you know, what would happen worst case scenario than Iran, but for them, the worst case scenario is always, they make more money, they get more power, I mean, what, you know, I mean, what do they care?
In the end, what do they care?
So, you know, you and I would sit around and we can discuss these strategies and what they would lead to, but I think they're coming at it from a different paradigm, actually.
Wow, well, I guess the question is really, I mean, even if they're only that self-interested, they have to see that there's a chance or a possibility that they're going to kill the golden goose, that they're going to take the empire too far and blow it up and then they won't have it anymore.
Well, absolutely, I mean, of course, but, I mean, that's true too.
Of course, if you look at history, what empire has ever had the wisdom to stop before it stretched too far, you know, before it killed the golden goose, before it ran into somebody else that took it down, you know?
None I ever heard of.
No, I know what I mean.
I mean, you know, you read about, even, you know, I've been talking about Rome where you talk about the great commercial empire before you, Spain and Holland and all these places, you know, they just, they always, they always go on to kill the golden goose at some point.
Because, you know, you never can tell where that point's going to be.
And so, and yeah, of course you're right.
I mean, it could happen.
But you know what?
In another way, though, this small elite, even if they kill, you know, the golden goose, I mean, they'll have a golden parachute.
You know, they won't go down.
They won't go down with it.
You know, they'll always be living in little enclaves and little islands and little pads unless some sort of, you know, gigantic worldwide conflagration sweeps everything away.
But, but yeah, no, of course, I mean, that's, that's the, you know, that's the sort of thing we're living under.
Well, gosh, when finally are they going to go too far?
And of course, when they go too far, all that means is that, you know, we're all going to get it in the net because that'll be a huge disaster.
So it's not, I don't know, it's not a very fun time these days.
Well, you know, I don't know if people on this show are getting sick of it yet or not, but I guess I have to mention that the American people now have a golden opportunity on a silver platter right in front of them to turn the empire around to say, wait a minute, we're gonna, we're gonna stop and get this right before we get to the no U-turns marker and, and restore our republic.
It's right in front of our face.
They're calling it the Ron Paul revolution.
And, and I don't know whether it'll get strong enough in time to actually make him the president.
But there's a lot of people it seems like who are willing to put their culture war aside and, and willing to put other various issues aside to unite around, hey, let's, let's keep it simple here.
We need to make sure to keep our constitution and our Bill of Rights.
And if we have to end our empire to do that, let's do that.
Well, I mean, of course, that'd be great if it happens.
I just don't, I mean, I mean, I personally don't see it happening because I'm not in America.
So I don't, you know, I don't have the sort of, you know, I don't have a finger on the pulse over there and see how much this is, you know, it just, it's hard for me seeing that if the Ron Paul thing took off, you know, even more than it has so far.
I mean, I mean, I don't know, I don't mean to be completely cynical or all stuff like that, but you know, I did write a piece about this a few months ago about what's about Ron Paul specifically, but about it, you know, all the people that were, they said anyone who seriously challenges, you know, the power structure in that way over the last 30, 40 years, what happens to them?
I mean, anyone who makes mount the serious national challenge, that sort of thing, you know, what happens to them, you know, Martin Luther King, when he started talking about not just civil rights, oh, yes, that's great.
Well, you know, we'll let the blacks drink at our drinking grounds, but he started talking about economic justice, and he started talking about Vietnam, and he started saying that, you know, well, our country is killing more people in the world than anybody, you know, what happens to people like that?
You know, they get taken down, they get, I mean, you know, things happen to them when you do, maybe nowadays, they don't have to pop them off.
They're sort of, I don't know, manufactured some video on YouTube of him having sex with a 12-year-old or something.
I mean, you know, these things kind of happen.
I just don't see them allowing that sort of thing to take off, but I mean, I could be wrong, and of course, I hope that I'm wrong.
I hope that we have some sort of, you know, uprising in that sense to restore the Constitution.
That's one point I guess I always sometimes need to make, I don't make it enough, but it's all these things that I talk about, you know, when I talk about Iran, and I talk about the death of the American Republic, and, you know, these are things that I'd be more than happy to be wrong about, you know?
I mean, it's not like I don't have some great pleasure for them, and, you know, and if we do go to war in Iran, I'm not going to be jumping up and down and say, look, I told you, I told you so.
I mean, it's horrible.
It's a horrible thing.
And it always reminds me of Bob Dylan's line about Lenny Bruce, you know, he said, he fought a war on a battlefield where every victory hurts.
You know, I mean, that's the kind of way it is.
I mean, who wants to win these sort of things?
Who wants to be right about these things?
And so, if I'm wrong about, you know, the way they were able to stop these sort of groundswell things, I hope I am wrong about it.
Well, you know, I tend to come from the same point of view, but, you know, I have to give James Madison a little bit of credit.
I mean, ultimately, it does come down, at least, well, I guess they changed the primary system, never mind James Madison and his credit, but it does come down, basically, to who shows up to vote.
It comes down to one man, one vote.
Well, it comes down to what the, yeah, it comes down, you know, in the final, and it does come down to the people.
It comes down to what the people will accept, what they'll swallow, and what they won't swallow, and what they'll do to stand against it, you know.
And that's another reason why, I mean, I don't, you know, the last few years don't exactly fill me with a confidence on that score either, but, you know, I don't know, we'll just have to see.
Of course, I'm very happy that something really, you know, gets rolling on that.
Anything, as you say, that rolls back the empire, this military empire of bases and dominance we've built over the last several decades, bipartisan empire, anything that rolls that back, anything that, you know, is aiming to restore constitutional law, you know, I'm all for it.
And, you know, Ron Paul actually says himself that, well, you know, the empire probably won't end because everybody listens to me, but it will come to an end, and it's simply because we're not going to be able to afford to take over the whole world.
It just doesn't work that way, and looking at Pakistan, looking at Georgia, looking at Somalia, I mean, just in this week, never mind the situation in Kurdistan and Turkey, it just seems like the American empire is absolutely falling apart at the seams today.
Well, it has a lot of problems, but, again, I think, I mean, I'm not making any deep analysis right now of that sort of thing, but it comes down to what the empire is in that sense.
If you think about it in terms of being a successful empire or it's going to bankrupt the country, you know, as Ron Paul says, yeah, it could bankrupt the country, but again, you know, again, from reading the Shock Doctrine, where he goes into all this history of, you know, how these free market fundamentalists took over country after country, they bankrupted their own countries, but the elites didn't care.
You see, they always...
Yeah, but don't call them free market, though, Chris.
Don't call them free market.
There's nothing free market about fascism.
No, you know, but I mean, free market fundamentalists, what they call them, no, of course there's not.
I mean, it's gangs for capitalism, but I'm saying what they call themselves.
You know, we believe in the free market.
The free market believes, you know, of course, what they really believe in is taking control of the state to enrich themselves and their cronies, I know.
But I'm saying that I don't...
I feel more and more that I don't think the Bush...
I'll call them the Bush faction, you know, as representative name of all this faction, this sort of thing.
I don't think they mind too much if the country gets bankrupted.
I mean, you know, the more they hollow out the government, the more they hollow out the economy, the more money for them, you know.
But I don't know, but yeah, it's true.
But you're absolutely true that if they do want to actually dominate the world and manage the world, then of course they're doing a really horrible job and it's all kind of playing up on the borders.
But again, as I said, you know, this is not a great situation either, so it's, you know, just danger at every turn.
Yeah, and it's really interesting your point about how danger at every turn is just fine.
Oh, if they, you know, spread Al-Qaeda like kicking over an ant pile, you know, and make everything worse along that front, oh, that's okay.
If there's another depression in America, well, that's all fine too.
They get to buy up everybody's stuff for pennies on the dollar.
Absolutely.
And no matter what happens, the people who control the state figure they're going to stay on top no matter what.
And really, they're better off when things are on fire and people are dying.
Well, absolutely.
I mean, again, that's the whole point of that book, of Naomi Klein's book.
And again, I'm trying to keep referring to it.
Well, it's okay.
I actually, I have it sitting here right here on the shelf, but I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet because I'm still reading Chris DiLisso's book, but she's next on my list, though.
I mean, you will know a whole lot of it, and a lot of your listeners will know a whole lot of the history, but it really puts it together very succinctly, and it shows the sort of economic warfare aspect of it.
But yeah, you're right.
I mean, it comes down to it that, again, over and over, it's a win-win situation, and we have to somehow address that.
We have to somehow make it not a win-win situation, and that's what I'm not quite sure how to do at the moment.
Yeah, I really don't know either, other than to have, you know, super majorities of the American people, you know, living and breathing and dying by the Tenth Amendment or something.
It's just not going to happen.
Well, I know, because what has to happen is that your institutions have to work.
I mean, these people have to be brought to justice to make it pay.
You have to say, well, if you take over a country like Bush's, you know, feed our country, and if you do this, you know, if you cause wars, and if you do all this like he does, then you have to show these leaders that they will pay for it.
You know, they'll go to jail, they'll be executed, whatever happens to them.
You know, I mean, whatever justice is determined, you know, but that's what...
But if our institutions are broken, which is what I keep talking about, and a lot of this, you know, death of a public thing, as we can see, you know, institutions are working, then who's going to hold them accountable?
You know, the Congress, the Democratic Congress is going to hold them accountable?
The Supreme Court is going to hold them accountable?
You know, these institutions are broken, and is the corporate media going to hold them accountable?
Well, you know, I've mentioned it over a while, they're treating Bush as if they were legitimate, respectable leaders of a country instead of a gang of thieves.
And why are the Democrats in Congress, you know, on strike, and say, look, we're not going to deal with this, these people are illegal, we're not going to treat with you, we're not going to deal with you, you know.
We're going to, we're going to, only laws we're going to deal with are impeaching you, and then we'll go back.
But they don't do that.
You know, the President is, we need to negotiate with the President, I mean...
So, if your institutions are broken, this is what it's so despairing about it.
It's not just that you have a group of tyrants and authoritarians who've taken over powers, that all the other institutions won't stand against them either.
And, of course, anyone who knows, you know, a little bit about Roman history, and I thought a lot of it was a little bit, you know, you've seen this sort of thing before, where the institutions no longer function against an authoritarian force, and there you go, then there's your Republicans.
You know, you can read down the history books one day.
Yeah, the problem is the anticipation of the day when all that warfare state is turned inward against us.
Oh, well, now there you go.
I mean, I think that's coming, too.
I think we're already seeing some of that, you see.
I mean, we're seeing the, you know, the black water on the streets of New Orleans is like a canary in the mine shaft, you see.
I mean, you know, this kind of thing is what's coming, is more and more of the services, more and more, you know, of law enforcement and authorities and stuff like that, are turned over to private companies, and also they're turned over to...
And, you know, in the States, you know, we have our own military command over in the United States now, which we've never had before, what we call the Northern Command, you know?
Right.
And, of course, you know, Bush has signed all these decrees, which he signed one last year, you know, that gave him the authority to take over the National Guard, and not only in the case of, you know, and to declare martial law, not only in the case of insurrection, which was the only way before, but, you know, natural emergency, or even, you know, riots and political uprising, they basically gave him the power to declare martial law anytime he feels like too many people are getting out of line.
Right.
I mean, this is what's been done, and so, yeah, you're right.
Oh, it's coming home, all right.
You know, it's coming home.
Yeah, it even said, I think, at the end, or other purpose.
Or other purpose.
Yeah, you're right.
Like, oh, that's a little vague.
Yeah, if the president wakes up in a bad mood this morning, he can declare martial law, you know?
Oh, yeah, well, another big symptom of the end of even the pretense of a rule of law restraining the power of our government in this country is the acquiescence of the Democrats in the Imperial Senate to Bush's next pick for attorney general.
And, of course, when the fate of the free world is hanging on Charles Schumer's shoulders, you shouldn't, you know, hope too deeply for that.
But, so, here we have this guy Mukasey.
He's been confirmed now, and this is a guy who, correct me if I'm wrong, has basically told the Senate that he wasn't quite sure whether or not statutes bind the president's authority in wartime.
Oh, he's already made, yeah, I know, he's already made a ruling for that fact when he was on the bench, and he told them that, and so, yeah, you have, he's a double amino.
And he's already on the record as saying that you can't really restrict the president's power in wartime, and of course we know this war will never end.
And he's also, and we know the thing about refused to condemn waterboarding, which has been condemned for hundreds of years for people as torture, and so, again, you mentioned the Imperial Senate, and it's really true.
You know, I tell this story often, you know, the Emperor Tiberius, when he first took power after Augustus died, he was the second emperor, and the Senate voted all these powers, you know, all these unlimited powers, and he said to them something along the lines of, you know, how can you vote this on one man like me, what if I go crazy, you know, what if I, you know, you can't give all this power to me, you know, you give up all this power, oh no, we won't have it, you have it, you have it, you have it either.
And his answer to that was, you know, his answer was, men fit to be slaves, and that's what we have in the Senate, you know, men and women, let's not leave out Diane Feinstein and all these people, they're wonderful.
And Nancy Pelosi, you know, we have people fit to be slaves, and that's what they are, that's what they are, what can you, what can you say?
And they're dragging us down with them.
Yeah, well, someone mentioned the other day that, how can it be that we have headlines where it says, you know, Democrats question attorney general on torture, you know, his position on torture, how could, how could that possibly happen, you know, we had to get the situation where there's headlines like that, like, oh, we're just a normal part of our politics, you have to ask the attorney general of the United States where he stands on torture, I mean, why not, you know, why don't you stand on the ritual cannibalism of business children or something like that, you know, well, you know, if you, you know, we got the thumb of, we got one of our thumb of children, and we, we spied them up and ate them in front of him, just to make him talk, you know, and Jack Bauer did it on television, but now we have to do it, too, you know, I mean, what, I don't know it's, I've, I've, I've responded and outraged so many times about these democratic cave-ins and these, whatever you want to call it, you know, this salivish behavior that, by the time you cased, you came around I didn't know, I'd hardly know what to say, what can you say about it, what else can you expect?
I don't know.well you're right it's it's not even his uh... horrible answers it's the fact that these are even the questions i don't know what we're talking about it right you forget that that while even if any questions but uh...yeah everybody knows that the constitution itself bands torture of course it does of course it does and i know all the of the treaty that we've accepted after that you know they all become part of bedrock american law but there's no question that it's all been at no question that waterboarding itself it torture and his band i mean it's just not as a question that's what i think that but though but what what can we do the situation where all our institutions the congress the court and the media you know the establishment would it be expected that you know you can have a will ever now then watch the postal publishing overnight literal about uh... against tortured uh... then fred high it will be no one to credit with a little bit you know you would have a little board here the board fail we can have a little internet here we do this kind of but i think what can you do in the commanding height of the uh... the staff of the country they pick that the think that if they don't like it even if you get that the yale club they play all we have come up with that you know gosh but they don't do anything about it though though what do you dislike it or not you know whether they uh... you frown upon it you know in the in their boardroom to cover it doesn't matter if accepted you know it's accepted and and the people who are pushing the torture and he's kitty and these apartment they're treated with respect to their treaty with honor they treated it if they're legitimate holders of uh... of it would have been a representative of the people and it's just not true and so i mean what what what do you call it with a surrender and you know it's just a render of the uh... the commanding i think that they have uh...of a society and where and what is that with the death of republic you can call that a republican yeah it really is amazing the uh...as on your blog you uh... referred to michael massing's article about americans willful ignorance and it really is amazing to think that in a country with this much infrastructure this this many different uh... private entrenched interests in different places all around and all the different reasons and all the different powers i mean never even mind uh... you know the conflict between the state and federal governments and and uh... the different individual offices and that kind of thing it just seems like the natural checks and balances of the society itself of the of the very private interest around the country would somehow keep a temper on this is it just the fear is it just because they get on t-v and say this terrace is going to bomb you or is it what is it that that makes americans willing to watch the death of their republican in silence well you know i don't think that the question that uh... i mean there's all sorts of things that that plan to the other fears part of it but uh...but you know i mean part of the who are they doing it the uh... i think that uh... you know a lot of people would say that the americans from the republic long long ago you know they may just allow people to tell them what to do they just don't care if they uh... you know that they have a little bit flat the pie but uh...i don't know but i think one thing with pushing them have proven and what we've been proven over the last few years is that uh...all these periods we saw in the twentieth century no the nazis in the soviet uh...you know they were overkill you know they have to go after people that hard you know if you just sort of uh...as you say if you scare them a little bit and uh... overall in a little bit uh...and if you would do you know disappear if you people have been in you then you can get your way you don't have to actually control everything people you know if you call it about three still have three feet that's fine you'll make the movies that make up a bit okay if you know because it doesn't get to where the real power is what they can you tell me if i make a movie robert makes a movie to make five million dollars uh... lucky mark makes twenty five billion dollars and they pour half that back into the uh... political system and what they can and they don't care if you know that they couldn't but uh...but uh...but also about the i don't know i mean there's that there's a sort of uh... some sort of broken wheel in american people and i don't know exactly where all that comes from it just doesn't all come from september eleventh of course there's also a case too though is that i mentioned this a few times is the state is so powerful now you know it's powerful by several orders of more powerful by several orders of magnitude than it was even a few decades ago i mean if you just you know if you stand up against those squashes they can squash it like a bug and it is very hard for individual people stand up for the perfect you know it becomes easy to tell well i guess maybe they're right you know i mean uh... they got a lot of work that they don't want to a protest but i i don't want to get my name on a a no-fly list you know maybe i don't want to have a my name in some sort of uh...total information awareness package and they don't want to be under suspicion that uh...homeland security but i think that they've got a lot of what i will you know maybe i'd rather take him up and they just become it is still powerful you know what what what can't they do you know what can they do to you but i think that people don't think that that they're just sort of willing to give up that power so i don't i don't know what to have what account for that i'm sure there are things that uh...well that's definitely the slippery slope when you start to realize you're losing your liberty and that makes you too scared to want to even fight for it well it's just a matter of time before you know everybody snitching on each other to the secret police to try to uh... you know preemptive marking and preemptive uh... ratting out of neighbors that kind of thing well i mean course part of comes from you know a little part of it comes from uh...this thirty forty year campaign we have the third thirty seventies a very concentrated campaign by the uh...uh... right wing interest so they were basically corporate interest you know that there were corporate interest you know um...it was drawn up on the nixon uh... administration up about it by by the government but by uh... but by the history of commerce too and sort of reverse you know a lot of that they've been going over to the decades before then and to be able to build up this whole sort of cat counterculture if you will really over he's right wing if you know the head of foundation all these things they just come continually for thirty now for thirty or forty years i just push push push all this you know uh...all the state needs more power we need more power for the communist melody without a power to fight the islamist you know i mean it's just uh...you know part of it is an outgrowth of the sort of deliberate well-funded uh...i don't know what you want to call it uh...conspiracy or a counter-revolution or whatever you want to call it well you know i think uh... maybe part of the reason that they get away with it is is people's failure to understand uh... what you did so well in the capsule in just a minute ago this uh...the iron triangle i guess is one way to put the revolving door where uh... basically have all these people in and out of government and in and out of corporations that sell weapons to the government and like you said they don't care though they're willing to spend you know unlimited amounts of money wining and dining and lobbying congressman and so forth because all their money is free there they can charge nine hundred dollars for a toilet seat or ten billion dollars for an airplane well yeah it's our money yeah it's free to them that's exactly what this is another point that you make in the book too is that uh...you know what we what we've been seeing is this is massive especially under the bushes but we've been seeing it for decades a massive transfer of uh... public money just straight into these few corporations is powerful corporations which then plow the money back into the political system uh... on behalf of their their underlings and uh... you have this whole skewed playing field you know so that you know poll after poll shows that people don't don't if you ask me to be there they don't prove this possible prove that possible prove this policy all down the line for bush you know uh... especially when bush is running on that member the polls in two thousand four you know if people show though we don't believe this abc dvd abc dvd with that that bush hold they've been over alvaro public that they didn't even know he held those positions building at the polls they can't get immediate they can't get a perception they can't get a playing field because if they have all of my support back into that's why i would think that's what we have always said that the war the record that we win situation no matter what happened this money gets poured back into our political system in our society and help you get further and further and further toward uh... the third equality and injustice in behavior uh... in favor of the small the small clinton though that part of what happened there's something everybody uh... climb in the hand basket we're on our way to hell right now and i don't know how long it's gonna be before the the big break comes but it's coming eventually i guess uh... as doctor paul says it'll probably be uh... the destruction of our currency that really leads the way all this but that certainly you know that they're going to pay dot that uh... uh...particularly those these in any kind of you know uh... you know you can't be very starkly how weak the dollar is and uh...you know it's really a minute that we have to do that that's one thing that happened after this is the sliding and sliding and sliding it's going to be a good point one of these days when uh...you know when the chinese start up in the dark never ever start up in the dark because they just can't do it anymore i mean what the point of having one of the dollar it when it gets down to what i've been from the panel with the point of holding dollars anymore uh... well good question you know uh... lu rockwell last on his blog kind of rhetorically i guess uh... the the question remains uh... unanswered for certain but uh... the question is do they have war so that they can inflate or do they inflate so they can have wars and that's kind of uh... interesting little catch twenty-two there well you know you don't know it but uh...updated it's always a win-win situation with these guys which is one thing that we just have to somehow find a way to stop and i don't know how to do it until we do until they feel some sort of pain you know or what what what should they stop without they don't care about our pain you know that well i don't really have any good ideas for fixing neither but i do know and in fact i guess i was asked the question uh... in the comments on my blog uh... whether i feel and i guess the other guys that hang around the stress block where they feel like we're all just pissing in the wind and and i actually have thought about this for a long time i guess really in deciding to uh...try to work at this kind of stuff at all uh... that i don't really mind knowing that nothing about history is going to change because anything i said i did but at least uh... you know i can call the score on the way down and and for people who are interested in do you want to know the truth whether they can do anything about it either we still have a place to to go to find out what's going on and uh... you know chris dash floyd dot com your blog empire burlesque is uh... a great place to stay on top of things i really appreciate your analysis in print and as always on the show chris okay well thank them yet but i mean the point of this make a quick look at that and look that sure you're right i mean it would be anything to look hopeless or have over the lead i don't know any other choice but the key keep fighting and keep trying to keep trying that you try the other and uh...you know just for the keep it up in the ballgame somewhere because you never know what's going to happen and often it as you say it means that uh... if people are going to do in the end if they're registered to protest and it's and that stood up you know for what you feel is the truth uh... and what can you do if you want any sort of dignity of the human being and if you have in a belief whatsoever in the in the human project you know the helping you know or move things for the if not for you to create children of our hundred years now for two years now they can look back to that one person if this is the people did that i mean uh...if that's all we're left with that they were left with about the editor of the other than to quit and that that being completed that you know uh... them uh... i'm sorry one more ron paul reference in this interview uh... the first time i interviewed ron paul i asked him uh... the last question of the interview if there's only one ron paul in the whole congress and what's the point of all this kind of what hope do we really have and his answer was as well you know you know unless you have psychic powers in separate uh... you can't predict the future none of us can predict the future and our job is to just keep teaching people about liberty and and try to do the right thing and you never know what's going to happen i'll tell you what nineteen eighty five we didn't think the soviet union was going to cease to exist within four five years and yet the whole thing came crumbling down and uh... you know i'd say that in the time since then uh...there's been you know somebody was complaining on the antiwar dot com blog that yes so here's a half hour interview of dar jamel but you know we can hear that kind of stuff everywhere nowadays it's not like he's a voice in the wilderness anymore so you know i think there's been some progress made if that's what we're complaining about her well yeah i think it's probably the people who play together court or what do you know it is of course you know when but you think that when when when i started uh...i mean i think that i don't mean to be for the brand of the level of do you think that we've got a cross out of print who do you think that the person that they're at eleven and uh... you know i think happen over the over the last few years and put it out of the audience you think that you've got about years ago and get a record on you know and tell them that uh... trade out of the finale as you think that the time i think that the minority that though well in the end of the point is that the people who think that you think is a good reference to the philippines i mean what what the what what that look like to and a proper off in nineteen seventy five of the bridge net like but there's no way to overthrow the system and that will ever change that it's completely powerful is completely you know in trade but you just keep going to keep going if you didn't stop it if there were a lot of other people give up on democracy stuff if you're going to keep going because i think they have you don't know what happened and uh...i mean i don't know any other way to do it
