That has caused the malinvestment and that is why the market is demanding the correction in the malinvestment in the excess of debt Which is not market driven All right, welcome back to anti-war radio on chaos 95-9 in Austin, Texas our guest today is Jacob Hornberger He's the founder and the president of the future of freedom foundation, which you can find at FFF Dot org welcome back to the show Jacob.
Hey, it's nice to be back Scott.
How have you been doing over there at FFF?
Doing fine Battling the ever-growing tyranny and oppression coming out of Washington.
Oh, you mean it's never ending I thought there was an end coming soon to it.
No Unfortunately, they have not yet surrendered.
All right.
Well now I just played some audio for the good people of Ron Paul Versus Ben Bernanke in the House of Representatives yesterday, and I fear that perhaps they were speaking Greek to some people It just sort of goes over their head.
They don't understand necessarily necessarily the importance So what is it that Ron Paul so animated about when he's?
Yelling at Ben Bernanke about m3 and this and that and the other thing there Well, he's talking about the slow but sure destruction of our money And of course to finance the out-of-control federal spending This is what libertarians have been saying ever since 2001 that government spending was going through the roof and when you when the Bush started proposing invading Iraq and engaging in that Military adventure we said look Where are you going to get the money to do this and everybody just said all that's not important the money will be there It's like magic the federal government can produce it and so forth Well notice what's happening now with prices Oil is quadruple since 2002 so has the gold is going through the roof all commodities are going through And this is a direct result of the Federal Reserve Having to accommodate this massive amount of government spending through the printing of money It seems like a way to put it it seems like dr Paul is trying to fight with Bernanke at least in one of those clips about even the definition of inflation he's saying you always want to talk about prices this and prices that but The inflation is actually the creation of the new money the rise in prices is the effect of the inflation not the definition of it Well, that's absolutely right.
There's only one way when the Fed is Printing the money effectively to pay the bills There's only one way for that to be reflected and that's through higher Prices in terms of the things that are being priced in in terms of those dollars you start flooding the market with dollars That's all that's going to do is raise the prices of everything because effectively the value of the money is dropping There's no other way for value to be reflected in terms of money than the rising prices of everything that money buys the nice scam in all this though is that the average person who who learned his economics in public schools and Government supported universities and so forth has no idea what's happening He thinks the bad guys are the people at the grocery stores raising their prices the speculators the profiteers the capitalists He has no idea that it's the Federal Reserve Bernanke Federal Reserve That's accomplishing accomplishing this magic act And so what Ron Paul is doing is simply trying to let people know hey, this is the price of government spending This is the price of your Pentagon's military adventures overseas your your dollar is crashing And and it very well could spiral out of control.
I mean we don't know what's going to happen What we do know is that investing in the dollar is becoming increasingly unattractive because of what what's going on with the dollar?
You know J. Edward Griffin calls this the hidden tax That's what it really is if George Bush wanted to wage world war and establish a global benevolent Hegemony or whatever and actually wanted to make the American people pay for it the idea would be dead in the water I mean if we had to actually see the bill or see that money taken directly out of our check But that the inflation the devaluing of the money over time is the exact same thing as taxing us Only we sort of don't see the effect so George Bush can literally pass tax cuts at the same time that he's waging a war And by delaying the effects the American people let him get away with it Of course because it appears free, and it's not just Bush I mean as you know Scott government officials have done this through it throughout the ages I mean the Kings would do this Clip the coins and and so that people wouldn't understand what was going on and it's always been about war hasn't it?
Most of the time, but I mean under the Roman Empire They had the welfare state that they were having to finance along with the warfare state Which is very similar to what's going on today?
You've got the massive welfare state expenditures Social Security Medicare Medicaid welfare subsidies grants foreign aid You've got that massive draw on the system, and then you've got the warfare state You know the troops and more than a hundred countries Empire all over the world invading occupying countries These are massive expenditures of money and you're right that Bush could have said we're going to tax people to pay for this But of course he couldn't do that because tax increases aren't very popular And so you do the magic act you you go out and you borrow the money which of course they've been doing with for example The Chinese Communists, I mean, that's why the Chinese Communists are now one of our biggest creditors because Bush borrowed the money from them He sucked the money out of the private sector which is why the the housing market lacks the capital now to Refinance home loans and then in order to pay off all this debt instead of taxing people to do it Which again is unpopular?
They just get Bernanke to start printing the money to pay that thing off And of course that means that the dollar starts crashing and and the dollar has been crashing Ever since 2002 you can look at the look at the chart and the graph now You know there is no other way to settle this than on out-of-control federal spending.
That's the root of the problem Well, you know I guess the Austrians always say that after inflation next comes price controls and when you bring up China it reminds me of I think It's a chapter in the creature from Jekyll Island by J. Edward Griffin where he talks about ancient China I don't know how how long ago 2,000 years ago or something where?they're just you know inflating the currency diluting the Precious metal and the coins clip in the corners off of them, etc and so the people start raising the prices for their goods because the markets being flooded with extra money and The government resorted to price controls and eventually enforced them with the death penalty Well, that's right.
Well the Diocletian in old Roman times.
I think it was did the same thing and Venezuela's Chavez is doing the same thing right now imposing price controls This is the way that government officials can make it look like it's not them Causing the problem that it's those greedy Profiteers out there in the free market that are just trying to to raise their prices and and before long we'll hear about an excess Profit tax for the oil companies because the oil prices are soaring in response to the debasement of the dollar So anything to distract attention away from what government officials are doing including price controls Nixon did it?
You know and when he imposed price controls across a range of items And then we had all the shortages, of course the long lines at the service stations and so forth It's an it's just a trick that goes back to antiquity blame the private sector so that people don't suspect Who's really behind all this?
You know, pardon me if this sounds like hyperbole or I don't know You tell me is it hyperbole if I go ahead and call central banking the greatest scam in the history of all mankind?
I I think it's not hyperbole at all.
I think you'd have some competition with Social Security But that's right up there.
Yeah, it's right up there.
I mean, that's the Ponzi scheme par excellence.
Yeah, but yeah, you're right It's an inflation tax This is really what happens it what we're doing what we're talking about here Right is is you and me meet at a Shoney's for brunch one Sunday and say here's what we're gonna do You and I we're gonna create a counterfeiting printing press machine in our basement but we're gonna hire some congressmen who are gonna give us the license to run a Counterfeiting machine now, we all know that if you and I counterfeit on you know, that's criminal behavior We're stealing the value out of the money of our neighbors But if we can get a license from a congressman to do it now It's you know, everybody else's fault for dealing with the consequences of our behavior.
Well, that was the whole idea behind a central bank I mean that was why the Federal Reserve was created They say it was for stability, but we all know now and Bernanke has effectively admitted this in a speech Celebrating a Milton Friedman's I think it was his birthday Where they've admitted that the Federal Reserve was responsible for the great stock market crash in 1929, which led to the Great Depression Well, why don't you elaborate on that for us, please?foundational myth of America You know Imperial post-world War two America post-depression America is that the excesses of capitalism?
Caused the Great Depression and government had to solve the problem simple as that Everyone knows that right?
I mean that that's one of the myths that they have to Promulgate so that people don't focus in on the culprit the US government and specifically the Federal Reserve, which is the central bank But it throughout my public schooling and I'm sure yours too and my government support University I went to I was taught the standard nonsense The Great Depression was the failure of America's free enterprise system and that government had to step in and save free enterprise and so forth Well the libertarians the so-called Austrian economists the Ludwig von Mises Friedrich Hayek who won the Nobel Prize The the Chicago School Milton Friedman that they began showing several decades ago that this was all nonsense It was just a cover for government Misconduct that it was the Federal Reserve through its mismanagement of the money supply that actually brought about the Great Depression Ben Bernanke who now fed heads up the Fed gave a speech you can google it online put Bernanke Milton Friedman Great Depression and He admitted in this speech commemorating the freedom of birthday that yes The Federal Reserve had in fact caused the great stock market crash through its financial mismanagement.
Well, that's great I hadn't heard that he admitted that that Bernanke had said that in a speech Absolutely online the whole speech now compare that to what you know, the the founding fathers of this country that did I mean, they knew that this is what government officials did with paper money.
They had the experience with the continental currency so they established a system that said only gold and silver is going to be money in this country and We're not going to have paper money And that's why they refused to let the states have the power to publish Print paper money and they said, you know No state shall make anything but gold and silver coin Real money because they knew that government officials would do this type of thing when they've got the printing presses and the power to publish printed money paper money notice the two differences in the two paradigms a strong monetary system where government doesn't have the power to just print the money and Then the one we have today where the dollars crashing through the floor.
Well, they learn their lesson I think we all learned as kids when we learn about Davy Crockett and the wild frontier and everything We learned about the continental dollar and how they printed way too much of them and I guess this is the history They don't really teach unless you look into is that the founders really learned their lesson and at the Constitutional Convention Hamilton proposed that in article 1 section 8 Congress be granted the power to emit bills of credit and there were enough members of the Convention who were going to walk out and let the Constitution die rather than let that be in it that they struck it out That's right and and bills of credit were commonly understood to be paper money and so yeah, the government the federal government was not given the power to make paper money legal tender and Then they expressly restricted states for making anything but gold and silver coin legal tender Yeah, and the idea was this is the way you protect people from what government officials have always done and that's why you had corporate bonds Well government bonds to with gold clauses a hundred year bonds Imagine a hundred-year bond and people were willing to invest in these hundred-year bonds without worrying about inflation Wiping them out even though where they were at a nominal rate of interest why because they were tied to the gold That was the legal tender at the time.
And of course Roosevelt came in nullified all those gold clauses and all those contracts and Then confiscated everybody's gold made it illegal to own gold for several decades Why government officials don't like gold because gold's a way of letting people know This is what government's doing to your money and that we see that today gold soaring through the roof But really what it's saying is it's not that gold soaring through the roof.
It's your dollar is plummeting through the floor, right?
You know, it seems so simple and yet it's so elusive to so many another part of this that's so important I think is the transfer of wealth.
It's not just to the state it's to the private interests who are politically connected and Dr. Paul talks about the people who get the money first It's worth you know what it was worth that day when they cashed their government contract check But that by the time we get it, it's been debased so that ultimately what's happening is poor and working people and You know old widows living off of their savings and so forth their wealth is being transferred to people who are already rich Absolutely.
I mean it is a wealth transfer machine is just it's just like the wealth the welfare state But yeah in this case for billionaires Yeah It's a transfer from the poor to the rich and the privilege because you're right the people that get the money first all this printed money The prices haven't started rising yet at the grocery store and so forth when they get the money first and then as they spend the money then the prices start rising and so by the time the Average housewife gets the money The prices have already soared at the grocery store and and everybody's feeling that Scott I mean, I don't think at least every middle-class person It's difficult to make ends meet compared to seven or eight years ago the grocery store of the prices are soaring their restaurants vacations gasoline all of this is the price that is being paid for the warfare state especially the Occupation of Iraq the invasion the Empire but also for the welfare state I mean, we may be well be seeing all the chickens coming home to roost here Yeah And you know you talked earlier about the average guy blaming the grocery store owner for raising the prices and that kind of thing But you know who the Federal Reserve always blames and I haven't seen Bernanke say this although I'm certain he probably has but I saw Alan Greenspan his predecessor the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board In testimony.
Oh, I don't know years ago, but anyway, it doesn't matter His point was that wages were rising now, of course when?
Prices are going up because the value of the money is going down.
It's the average guy who's working for an hourly wage He's the last one to finally get a cost of living increase.
Oh here pal Here's 50 cents a you know every two years or something Real wages are always the last thing to catch up with inflation and then when they finally get the slightest bit of a raise We're talking about the hourly workers in America when they finally get a raise then Alan Greenspan goes and tells Congress Oh if this pressure on wages keeps Keeps going and wages keep going up That's going to cause inflation and then we'll have to raise the interest rates to clamp down on it or you have to wage war Against the working people or something, right?
Because those are the distractions they they wave their little flags and say look at OPEC.
Look at the oil prices Look at the wage going up.
Look at look what's happening at the grocery store Well, a little guy earlier a reflection of the debasement of the dollar, but they don't want people to look at that They want people to look at all these distractions All right.
Now, let me refer here if I can do a very clumsy segue into an article that you wrote earlier about patriotism and I guess my interpretation of what you're saying in your severe criticism of our Federal government's monetary policy is that you hate America and Americans and you want the terrorists to kill us all and converse to Islam, right?
Well, the notion is that if you criticize the federal government which in the minds of many Americans Especially neocons some conservatives the federal government's like a god I mean, you know You can take the Lord's name in vain and and they'll just won't bat an eyelash at that But if you criticize the troops, for example, the the means by which they're they're Roman God the federal government Punishes sinners and Muslims and dissidents and critics and so forth They go ape over this because their concept of patriotism is love of government and in their mind The government and the country are one of the same thing So if you criticize their their God the federal government you hate America That's that's their suggestion and that's how they define patriotism here.
They're getting away They're doing this to a senator who's running for president now.
I gotta tell you I'm no fan of Barack Obama In fact, I have such trouble Listening to his patronizing tone that I barely know anything about the guy except that he wants to bomb Pakistan You know, I got no love for him at all but the fact that they're gonna or they think and they probably will be successful in smearing this guy as being Anti-american he's a senator in the u.s.
Imperial Senate running for the presidency He's a hate America guy.
How could that possibly be?
Well, it's got to be one of the silliest arguments I've ever seen come out of the neocon community I mean Bill Kristol who's now, you know, he's the neocon par excellence He's one of the great supporters of the Iraq war and all this Empire stuff.
He's now a regular columnist for the New York Times He writes this silly attack on Obama saying that because he's not wearing a flag lapel pin We should all question his patriotism Now I can't imagine a sillier more stupid argument than that I guess you can consider a flag the symbol of our country or the government or both or whatever But to make such a suggestion, I would think crystal would be so embarrassed at this point, but apparently not I mean, yeah, you're right.
Here.
He is questioning the patriotism of a u.s.
Senator who believes in bombing foreign countries, which is what crystal believes in and Over a silly little thing about oh, he's not wearing a flag lapel pin.
Oh Jacob.
Hang on, man I have a clip that I have to play for you.
You're gonna love this Bill Kristol on Fox News He used to take him down that the way to take him down is not to have a debate on his tactics That's the huge mistake you shame on you.
You're running a campaign inconsistent with your message.
You're a little misleading and some leaflet You're distributing some fire on health care.
That's ludicrous at this point.
He's riding a wave of euphoria She needs to puncture it the way you puncture you for you is Reality or to be a little more blunt fear and I recommend to Senator Clinton the politics of fear Which I can do as a member of the back.
No, she needs to but it's fair enough She needs to say not who this campaign tactics a little out of line.
She needs to say let's wait a second here Is this man ready to run against the Republicans for the United States at a time of war?
Yeah, Oh Bill Kristol boy.
He's got it out for Barack Obama.
It sounds like Well, if there's a reason to like that guy, I think I might have just found it Well, I mean, it's the you can hear the tactics I mean, this is how they've they've gotten where they've gotten for the last seven or eight years I mean Isn't it ironic that we're living under the most powerful government in history and we've got the most frightened men of Anybody in the entire world and women But I mean the men are especially are scared to death American man.
They they just they're you you mentioned the magic word Terrorism and crystal knows it you mentioned terrorism and Americans men's knees start quaking and quivering and they hold the terrorists are coming To give me the terrorists are coming to give me take away my freedoms take away my freedoms And this is what crystal saying we got a scare American men even more.
We've got to raise the alert levels We've got the campaign coming up.
I mean, this is it's so shameful.
It's almost Embarrassing.
Well, you know yesterday Lou Rockwell on the show quoted Garrett Garrett out of ex-america I think it was rise of Empire the the third section where he talks about the American complex of fear and Vaunting that all empires have this we're the best We're the greatest and Bill Kristol, of course is the perfect example the the living embodiment of this principle Basically, you know national greatness conservatism and benevolent global hegemony and America is Superman America is morality our Marine Corps will go and bring, you know Justice and light and modernity to the world and so forth while at the same time.
Oh my god.
Oh my god What are we going to do?
What are we going to do?
Well, yeah, I mean, you know you and I and Other libertarians are against this Empire that's causing so much damage to people the world Terrorist blowback to the United States, but you know, I'd have more respect for these people if they said look I Believe in Empire and I want to maintain the US government's unlimited omnipotent role overseas But I'm willing to take my chance that I know this makes people angry when we're killing their families and we're torturing their people And but I'm willing to take the chance that they're going to come back and kill me Just don't take away my freedom.
I want if I'm gonna die.
I want to die a free man.
That's not what's happening It's like well, I favor this Empire and I favor all this but oh, please now protect me from those big bad terrorists You're gonna come do bad things for me.
Take away my freedom.
Take away my free.
This is just shameful It is I mean and these are the same people who take off the baseball hat and get all teary-eyed and sing Every time about the home of the brave at the baseball game, right?
Right because it's a vicarious bravery You see as long as they're sending troops overseas to fight this these silly meaningless Destructive deadly wars they feel braver and it's not a coincidence that many of these guys did their very best to avoid service in Vietnam, I mean, I think there's a psychological component to this.
They're getting vicarious courage This is why they say we we can't back down.
We have to be tough Well, what they're really saying is they the troops when the troops are tough, they feel tough It's a vicarious type of toughness And I think the psychological roots of it may be because they know that they were doing everything they could to avoid service in Vietnam Yeah, there seems to be some of that.
In fact, what was it?
Oh Jacob help me out with my footnote here.
If you know what I was just reading about Bill Clinton the other day about the war in Serbia and friends of his quoted I guess namelessly, but Apparently speaking sort of for him that he felt he had missed out on taking a heroic moral righteous violent stand in Vietnam and That Serbia bombing Serbia to guarantee the independence of Kosovo was his chance to you know Live up to what he wished he had done when he was a younger man Hey, that would not surprise me at all I mean that goes back to this psychological component that I don't feel good about myself for what I did And so let me make it up by showing you how brave I am about sending American boys and women In the battle to die for nothing and that's what people in Iraq are dying for they're dying for nothing I like how in your article you say ask one of these war mongers Who were the Patriots in Germany the the German soldiers who fought valiantly for their country in World War two or the White Rose the Dissidents who tried to destroy the Nazi regime and tried to you know, make peace before total destruction of their country Well, right.
I mean, that's a fascinating story for any of your listeners that have not ever Read anything about the White Rose.
It's really worth googling the the White Rose organization Hans and Sophie Scholl Scholl they were German college students that that formed this organization To oppose their own government in the middle of World War two.
They refused to support the troops There's a great movie about it, too.
I saw not long ago.
There's a fantastic movie Sophie Scholl the final days and there's also a movie from several years back I think in the 70s called the White Rose and they're both worth checking out.
They're fantastic movies But yeah It's this concept of patriotism the average German said you got to support your government in time of war Isn't what crystal says that this is what a patriot does he supports his government time of war?he doesn't ask any questions as to whether his government's in the right or in the wrong and So Hans and Sophie Scholl come along and say oh, no No No the job of a citizen is to Question whether your government's in the right or in the wrong and if it's in the wrong to make a stand against it Now who are the the real Patriots in my book Hans and Sophie Scholl were the Patriots in Germany?
But I think the average neocon and many conservatives would say oh, no those no good college hippie dissidents Criticizing their government in time of war the real the real patriot in Germany was the German citizen who supported his government well, you know it might be funny to do a survey about that and but disguise the names and You know make it Sophie Johnson or something like that and make them Americans and see how many people you can get to call them traitors before you reveal That actually they were against the Nazis Well, I don't think there's any question about it I mean if you if you put Hans and Sophie Scholl as Americans in the same context I think the average conservative neoconservative many Americans would simply say it is your duty to Support your government in time of war no questions asked that that's your duty and that anybody that That opposes his government in times of war is a bad person.
He's a traitor I mean you see glimpses of that even today when there really isn't a war going on That's an occupation in Iraq and this war on terrorism.
It's like the war on drugs or the war on poverty It's just a metaphor for you know engaging in these in these Domestic policies like the drug war and so forth, but there's people saying oh You are you're a traitor you you're opposing your government these wars Well, it's ridiculous the real patriot is the guy that stands up for his country and opposes the wrongdoing of his government Yeah, that was a whole idea in 1776 Yeah, especially when you know all the stuff that they're saying to us about our supposed enemy It's all such a bunch of lies, too You know like the baseball game thing everybody crying at the home of the brave You notice not a single baseball game has been attacked now anybody could walk into a baseball game with hand grenades and ak-47s And be an al-qaeda terrorist and and make the TV news and it would be just like September 11th again or whatever that hasn't happened At a single mall at a single baseball game anywhere in America I mean, it's it's pretty clear that the September 11th attack that they had to hijack American planes in order to carry out the attack Was their last gasp that was their Hail Mary pass that wasn't the cutting edge of the massive?
You know Islamic caliphate on the march across the planet Earth Well, yeah, but they need to make it look like there's a constant threat I mean, this is what the Romans did whenever the Roman citizen started to You know get rustled up a little bit and start to Criticize what the government's doing the debasement of the currency the out-of-control federal spending by the the Roman Caesars and so forth All they would do is go out and start another foreign war against some Germanic tribe and say look We're the only things protecting you from the terrorists from the barbarians Yeah I mean they have to create the threat Through their policies in order to then have people gravitate to them and say oh, please protect me from what's going on here It's an it's an ancient trick.
Yeah You also point out in your article to that the Bill of Rights itself Which really ought to be called the Bill of Restrictions?
Declaratory and restrictive clauses as it says in the preamble to the Bill of Rights That in the language of the Bill of Rights it clearly Recognizes that the people in the country are quite distinct from the government in the Ninth Amendment of course in the Tenth Amendment and in the Second Amendment Where you know the purpose of guns is so that the people can guarantee that they are free even from their own states if necessary It says right there that that's the reason the that the right of individuals to keep and bear arms shall be protected that the national government shall be forbidden from violating that right and That reminded me of a clip.
I saw of Murray Sabrin who is Libertarian running as a Republican for Senate for US Senate in New Jersey and they played a clip of him and his opponent at a meeting and and She was asked about gun control her position on gun control and she went had to go back through her notes shit There were so many Pro gun control position she had she had to go back through her notes to remember them all and then when asked about the collective Versus individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment She didn't even know she had never even heard of that argument before and then they asked Murray Sabrin Well, what's your position on the right to bear arms?
And he said my father was a Jewish partisan in Poland who killed Nazis and stayed alive because he had a rifle That's my position on the Second Amendment.
Oh Well, yeah, you see those people who conflate the government and the country who in their minds it's one in the same thing They always have a tough time with the Bill of Rights because they've convinced themselves that it's just a list of rights That that the government gives people that these are your rights The government is given to you.
If you look at the Bill of Rights, it's your right.
It should not been called a Bill of Rights It's really a Bill of Prohibitions it's saying you and the federal government cannot do these things because we're going to protect the country from you people and So there is your acknowledgement The country is different from the federal government and the purpose of those first ten amendments is to protect the country from the federal government Yeah, and you have to wonder you know with did Murray Sabrin's father Oh his allegiance to Hitler or was he not doing the right thing and grabbing his rifle and staying alive in World War two?
I mean, come on Well, and that's the whole purpose of the Second Amendment people think oh, well, it's to hunt Deer or something or they they use this National Guard concept that is for the National Guard This is such nonsense The reason that Second Amendment is there is because people understood that a disarmed Citizenry a disarmed country has to become a very obedient Citizenry with respect to their own government Because the Second Amendment is your ultimate doomsday insurance policy against tyranny Government officials know if they impose tyranny they might have some violent resistance without guns that possibility It becomes nonexistent.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Now, let's get a little bit more specific on foreign policy here I don't know if you saw the headline this morning it's on anti-war comm that Abdul Aziz Akeem and his son the guys who run what's now called the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq used to be this The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq basically the ayatollahs in Iran's men in Iraq Have announced again that they want autonomy for the South They've successfully kicked all the Sunnis out of Baghdad or almost all the Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad under American apparently willing cooperation and They're now basically the Iranians are going to take the south of the country America does everything in in policy management to marginalize nationalists and to help the secessionists in that country and Of course, this is the reason now that we have to stay Jacob is to prevent the Iranians from taking the south when we're handing It to them.
It's in the it's in the paper this morning Our guy Abdul Aziz Akeem is the guy saying I'm taking the south and I'm running with it and giving it to the ayatollahs in Iran Well, none of this should surprise any of us that have been saying this from the very beginning that when Bush went into Iraq Despite all the nonsense about democracy spreading WMDs and all that stuff.
The real reason was just a regime change He wanted to get rid of Saddam because Saddam wasn't his man anymore He was going to install his man the same thing They did in Iran in 1953 the same thing that didn't Guatemala in 54 the same thing They've been trying to do in in Cuba for decades They asked a man who isn't beholden to them and put in their guy and that was Chalabi or The other guy a yow a yowie, right?
Well that didn't work out because the ayatollah Sistani Outsmarted Bush and said no, we're going to have a national election well, because he knew that the Shiites far outnumbered the Sunnis so they install a Shiite regime this election doesn't Bush was celebrating all this but it was a regime that Immediately aligned itself with Iran and that's what a lot of people don't realize yet That the very regime that Bush has installed has aligned itself with Iran They're all friends their buddies a lot of more there during the Saddam era They were as constant in Iran And so why would it surprise me by that these pro-iran Shiites would take over large sections of the country?
Including the Basra where the British don't want having to do with that city anymore They vacated it and it's now just filled with gangs that are killing people and torturing people I mean arguably what's going on even worse than that that it was under Saddam But I don't understand why why people get you know I did people think that the federal government's like a god that it can just it can destroy a nation and put it right back Together again kill a million people in the process.
I think we're learning that the federal government doesn't do anything Well, except kill people.
I mean does that very well destroys companies very countries very well, but not much more than that Certainly nothing constructive Yeah.
Well, we also have the Turkish army now in northern Kurdistan and So far, they're only targeting the PKK But there's at least one headline this morning where the Peshmergas have been given authority by the Kurdistan government to protect civilians if Turkish troops threaten them and Since the PKK guys are all hiding in caves up high in those mountains right there on that border region And are basically impossible to get to Seems like there's going to be no other target to bomb for the Turks than a bunch of Kurdish civilians So I guess we need to just cross our fingers and hope that This incursion by Turkey is very short-lived and does not spread to a war against all of Kurdistan Well, you know, it's an interesting point because Turkey's saying they got a right to intervene Just like US officials said they had a right to intervene in Iraq now US officials can't say very much because Turkey is their ally and especially in NATO So they're kind of stuck in the middle here Their ally has struck the country that they occupied and intervened in so now you got two Interventions and then of course Iran intervening in Iraq and you've got this bizarro mess That the US invasion and occupation have produced and I think what Bush is trying to do is just keep his cap on this whole Cauldron boiling cauldron until he gets out of office so that when it finally just blows up totally he can say gosh Everything was fine when I was there.
I mean, I don't understand why it's such a mess now It must be because of the Democrats or McCain or whatever Yeah Let me get into this one if only because I think I had a dream about this last night about wanting to Throttle Barack Obama for being so ignorant and incompetent that he cannot win an argument with John McCain about Iraq John McCain says look you want to wave the white flag and surrender to al-qaeda and Barack Obama has no comeback for that I mean, here's your comeback.
Mr Obama and for the Obama staffers listening to this who can brief him on it later or whatever out there Al-qaeda was never more than the smallest percentage of the Sunni insurgency That now is bought off and works for us and works against al-qaeda They're even more marginal than they ever were they have no power in Iraq They have no hope of ever having any power in Iraq They are foreigners there and no al-qaeda is not going to make a base out of Iraq and attack America from there It's just crazy all Barack Obama could come up with was well al-qaeda wasn't there before we invaded which hardly answers the accusation at all and Here he's gonna lose to John McCain and then we're all gonna die.
Well, okay.
Sorry.
That was going off a bit there at the end Well, you know David Ignatius has a great piece in the Washington Post today about this this guy who's written this new book about the the jihadist Terrorists and so forth and he points out.
I mean, it's a very praising article about this book I forget the name of it now, but we're this kind of very scholarly Work says look that the first two groups of terrorists Osama in the 80s And then the what he was doing in the 90s there for all practical purposes.
They've been decimated and That you know, maybe a hundred of them in Pakistan or something, but he says they present no no threat at all to Western civilization He said the third group is really the most dangerous group And those are the terrorist wannabes the jihadist wannabes all over the world that are angry and upset Over what's happening in Iraq?
And he says most of them are not even religious real religious fanatics, right?
They're just Muslims that are upset over the continuous killing and the killing of 1 million people there and so forth well, there's a brand new poll out that says that to that support for Suicide bombing tactics and terrorist tactics against Western targets is in no way correlated with religious devotion Among Muslims, right?
Well, it just makes sense I mean, you know Americans got upset when 9-11 happened and all those Americans got killed Foreigners are no different I mean you when you had the sanctions in Iraq that were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children People all over the Middle East were getting mad about that whether they were religious or not And this is what Americans have such a difficult time understanding They can't understand why foreigners get mad when when the federal government does bad things to them.
They just can't figure it out I know why here it is right here We have heard that a half a million children have died I mean that's more children than died when in Hiroshima and And You know is the price worth it.
I Think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think the price is worth it So there you go.
That's Madeline Albright the former Secretary of State Referring to the deaths of all the children never mind Bush's invasion.
This is just from the blockade in the 1990s Right and that that took place on 60 minutes and the the average American was indifferent to it Yawn, but that statement reverberated all over the Middle East Because what she was saying is an Iraqi child ain't worth anything That we're trying to get rid of Saddam And we're willing to sacrifice any number of Iraqi children to achieve that end and even in a direct comparison to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you know exactly I mean it was absolutely now she later quote apologized for it Long after 9-eleven But why would it surprise me when that people would get angry especially since there was nothing those children could do to escape the plight?
Of those sanctions and years for year after year and she was specific in her apology Which was I wish I hadn't phrased it like that right yeah Exactly or I wish I wish I'd never said it now, or I don't know how she phrased it Yeah, but but in any event that's what was going on in the 90s I mean, that's the type of thing that we're this boiling cauldron of anger and hatred And I think if Americans can ever start grasping an understanding of that Then they can start to see how US foreign policy has been the root of so much anger and hatred toward our country Yeah, well, you know the real problem.
Here is that when you look outside, or you know?
I'm not sure about your neighborhood, but I live in Austin, Texas, and it's beautiful here, and everybody's really friendly and Even with all the inflation you know we're getting by I guess You know and things seem to generally be okay for the average American on the average day You know assuming that they don't get tased to death by a cop or something and so you know all these problems are far away You know if right now the Egyptian government is torturing some guy to death on behalf of the American government That's not seen as part of our system.
That's something Far away and unrelated Even if it was you know literally a CIA plan that landed plane that landed at the airport and handed the guy off to be tortured to death Well, that's right, and I think that's what needs to be changed I mean we need to start thinking in terms of the bad things that our government is doing to people overseas Not only for our own best interest because of the terrorist blowback and the anger and the hatred But also because it's just the right thing to do Before we sign off because I mentioned my conference yes, please do I was about to ask you we've got this enormous conference I think it has the potential to be the best conference in the history of the libertarian movement Wow, we've got the most outstanding lineup of speakers It's going to be June 6 through 8 and at the higher Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia I mean people can go to our website at FFF org click on conference 2008 they will be Absolutely astounded at the speakers that we have at this conference I I've never been more excited about a conference in all my life, and in fact we're sending out an alert tomorrow We just posted the schedule for the conference Along with all of the articles just in the last two weeks that our authors have published in such Publications as USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times on and on and on down the line And it's on foreign policy and civil liberties Which are the two burning most important issues of our time right now where our Liberty is affected most give us some names Who's going to be speaking there?
We've got Andrew Bacevich Who's a former West Point graduate who's taken a leading role against the Empire and intervention of our federal government we got Steven?
Kinzer the the author of overthrow and all the Shah's men a fantastic Encapsulation of US foreign policy and Iran as well as a summary of the whole 20th century of intervention in the regime change We've got let me see Lou Rockwell we got Joanne Merritt who's president of the Mises Institute?
We've got Joanne Mariner who is one of our most popular speakers last year.
She's with she's an attorney for Human Rights Watch She's done fantastic stuff on Guantanamo Bay We've got Justin Raimondo for anti-war.com.
We've got Jonathan Turley.
Who's a law professor at?
George Washington University who gets published widely all across the United States, and he was a legal commentator for NBC and CBS We've got Karen Katowski Lawrence Vance Sheldon Richmond Bruce fine this conservative attorney who served in the Justice Department who's taken a leading role?
For civil liberties Joseph Margulies who was quite possibly our most popular speaker He was the attorney for in Russell versus Bush the the major Guantanamo case where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of?the Guantanamo Petitioners he's coming back, and he's written a great book on Guantanamo.
He's also now representing I think he was in Guantanamo just a few days ago.
He's representing one of the petitioners there that they waterboarded So I have never seen a lineup this fantastic before yeah, that sounds great Jacob really great all right folks That's Jacob Hornburger.
He's the founder the president of the future of Freedom Foundation And you can find all kind of great writers there Anthony Gregory James Bovard Sheldon Richmond Who am I leaving out?
And then we Anthony Gregory writes.
Yeah, I think you mentioned him and George leaf writes for us regularly And then we have a wide range of authors as well.
Well, and there's there's one that we're featuring on anti-war calm today by Gary D Barnett InfraGard an unhealthy government alliance which is very important article And I think I'm going to try to get him on the show next week if I can to discuss that yeah He's an up-and-coming new author in the libertarian movement, and he's doing fantastic work on financial Privacy and assault and financial privacy, and that's a very ominous article that we just published by him on InfraGard It's worth taking a look at but also take a look at his other stuff Google Gary D Barnett and he's done and go to our website and Google MMA.
He's been doing some great stuff on financial stuff all right Hey, thanks a lot for your time today, Jacob.
Thank you Scott
