Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Aaron montay. He is a regular writer at the Gray Zone. That’s the grayzone.com and he hosts the podcast there, Push Back. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Aaron?

Aaron Mate 0:54
Hey, Scott, how are you?

Scott Horton 0:55
I’m doing great. appreciate you joining us here today. So the first thing I want to ask you about is something that you’re essentially the editor of. You didn’t write it. It’s OPC W. whistleblowers. OPC w insiders slam compromised in new Syria chemical weapons probe. And this is not about Duma. This is at a place called I’m not sure I’ll let you pronounce it a different attack from March of 2017. So just before the con shake Kuhn fake attack, which I don’t know if we got any whistleblowers on that one yet, but these people wrote this scathing report for your website here. It’s quite remarkable. Tell us about it, please.

Aaron Mate 1:44
You know, I can’t say too much about it. It. What I can say is that it was written by a team of OPC insiders. I can’t really detail exactly what that means, but what I can say is that the the piece was written by people who represent the views of a small group of current and former OPC W. Officials. And the message from them is that there is dissension inside the ranks and there is deep skepticism about the OPC w being politicized. And we saw that most starkly with the Duma leaks, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But now these people are also coming out and saying that this same political ization, is being applied to this other investigation as well. And that was, as you say, this probe of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town wattana in March 2017. And what’s interesting about that report, it was done by this it’s the first report of this newly formed team at the OPC w called the investigation and identification team and it was established extensively to identify alleged perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. But what these op CW insiders write in their op ed is that basically it was set up with the sole aim of blaming any chemical weapons attack on the Syrian government so that the US and other Western powers, the ones who helped set up this new team and pushed it through, can blame Syria for chemical weapons attacks and pursue their proxy war and sanctions against Syria further, and so, this op ed just goes through the reasons to be skeptical about this latest report. It’s interesting, when you look at the media reports about this i t report, everybody took it as the OPC w saying that the that this investigation has found conclusively that the Assad government carried out this chemical weapons attack of both Farren and chlorine in this town in March 2017 When you actually read the report, all it says is that there are, quote, reasonable grounds to believe on quote, that a chemical attack occurred, which is far different from saying a chemical attack occurred and it was a standard government. All they’re saying is that it’s reasonable to believe that that it that it that the Syrian government was responsible. But as these op CW insiders point out, because that language is actually so tentative, and so ambiguous, that it also means that you can’t rule out that there are reasonable grounds to believe that it wasn’t the Syrian government that it wasn’t the Syrian government. And so even the way that this report has been ripped, has been taken by the media doesn’t even act accurately represent what the report says. And of course, these obviously, they’ll be used and give up plenty of other reasons to question even the case for even believing that there might be reasonable grounds to think that the Syrian government did it and people can read it. more of it at the gray zone com?

Scott Horton 5:02
Well, look, the deal is that if you had written this thing, it would have been great. But the fact that this was written by insiders and organization for the prevention of chemical weapons, and just the attitude behind it again, it’s absolutely scathing report the way that they criticize the official story here, such as it is, and they completely dismantle it with prejudice. You can tell. So, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what are their arguments in here?

Aaron Mate 5:33
Well, I mean, the the most, I mean, first of all, what they do is they they enter actually the political realm, which is something that, you know, in a normal OPC w report, you wouldn’t do this case, they looked at the political question of motive. So what motive with the Syrian government after having been told that this red line by the US What motive would they have to drop chemical weapons into basically an empty field, which is, which is what allegedly happened here? If we’re supposed to believe the official narrative, that this that this was a Syrian chemical weapons attack in this town, then the what we have to believe is that the Syrian government dropped Sharon and chlorine into basically an empty space. And so why would they do that? They’re after they’ve been told of this red line and not in the many instances before. When, you know, you have instances like when when the Syrian militants were closing in on Latakia and threatening to carry out, you know, mass murder. There was no chemical weapons use then and all these other cases where, you know, even the Syrian government has lost areas, no chemical weapons use is there. So why all the sudden would they decide to use it now on this empty field, especially now that they’re working with Russia and This will also basically require Russia’s cooperation essentially, because they’re sharing military bases with Russia now, too, because now we’re talking about 2017. Well, after Russia has entered the war, so even from a point of view of motive, it doesn’t make sense. And then they get into some of the other technical stuff, which I, I will leave to them to, to summarize, because it’s complicated, and it requires a careful reading to understand and they get into, you know, the composition of bonds and, and things that technically, I’m not very well versed in, so I won’t, I won’t try. But they basically just make the case for why the idea that this was a Syrian Government attack is so implausible.

Scott Horton 7:39
Well, and a couple of points are general enough that I think that they can be paraphrased, where they’re just saying the chain of custody of the so called evidence here is completely suspect. And the people who wrote the report sat in Turkey, and received it at the hands of these NGOs who are all tied to the opposition. There’s no objective source for any of the information about This attack in the first place. So that was the chain of custody at any criminal trial in America, we get thrown right out.

Aaron Mate 8:07
So that’s the obvious one. That’s that. That’s a very good point. And Thanks for pointing it out. Yes, they they point out that the obviously there’ll be you it investigation says that they maintained chain of custody, quote, after the receipt of the items, unquote. So basically, after you get, you know, these these samples, and by the way, you don’t even get them right after the alleged incident, you get them over the course of a year, slowly coming in and into Turkey. And you’re saying that you only confirm the chain of custody, you can only vouch for the chain of custody after you’ve gotten custody, which is basically is totally meaningless. And yes, as you say, by those standards, this case, there is no court that would ever accept this stuff as evidence.

Scott Horton 8:56
Yeah. You know, and they talk about there too, he talks about, you know, these small little bits of shrapnel, little pieces of metal that they brought. And they said, Well, how come you didn’t bring the rest of it? Or we just have these little pieces instead of the actual container. And they had a plausible explanation for the container to that the Syrians when they gave up all their chemical weapons, after the big fake attack of 2013, that they kept some of the containers to fill them with conventional explosives. So if you had pieces of those, that would make sense since they were dropping regular, you know, conventional explosive bombs in the same form at By that time, since they’d gotten rid of all their chemical weapons and had some leftover.

Aaron Mate 9:48
Yeah, yeah. Now, that claim requires relying on the Syrian government’s account and, you know, so that has to be noted, but look The this is where it gets the the other cases as well, you have so many doubts now I’ve been raised about ghouta. I mean, Ted postal has done some of the some of the definitive work on that showing that the rocket ranges that were alleged against the Syrian government were actually implausible. And then it’s far more likely that the rockets that that delivered the chemical weapons and that incident actually came from militant controlled territory. And then we have the just preponderance of evidence in the Duma case, which shows how the opa CW superiors intervened to suppress all the evidence that the inspectors collected on the ground excluded their findings and excluded the key inspectors who carried out the investigation from the process and basically doctored all their evidence so you have just a series of questionable in one case in case of doom I just just completely scandalous. investigations and now you know, the fact that you’re seeing people close to the OPC W. Now feeling compelled to publicly directly challenge when it comes out with and basically say it’s been compromised, it just speaks to. It’s a huge scandal that deserves a lot of scrutiny and certainly a lot more attention.

Scott Horton 11:53
Hey guys, just real quick, if you listen to the interviews only feed at the institute or at Scott Horton. org. I just want to make sure you know that I do a q&a show from time to time at Scott Horton. org slash show the old whole show feed. And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there. Hey, guys, here’s how to support this show. You can donate various amounts at Scott Horton. org slash donate. We’ve got some great kickbacks for you there. Shop amazon.com by way of my link at Scott Horton. org. Leave a good review for the show and iTunes and Stitcher. Tell a friend Oh yeah, and buy my books. fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan and the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019. And thanks Hey guys, check out listen and think audiobooks. They’re listening think.com and of course on audible.com and they feature my book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan, as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Reese, Eric, and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one exception, but essentially, they’re all libertarian audio books. And here’s how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks. just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. org slash donate well, and so yeah, now remind us a little bit about that, because never even mind the case of the Duma attack, the case of the politics of the doom attack and the whistle blowing and the different I guess it was right about a year ago this started but all the different leaks and all of the fighting back and forth from some named and some unnamed whistleblowers out of the OPCW in the case of the doom attack is really interesting in its own right. It’s sort of could be its own story, even if it was about something less consequential.

Aaron Mate 14:29
So the Duma attack allegedly happens in April 2018. A few weeks later, the OPC w inspection team gets on the ground. They go to the sites, they take the cylinders, they tagged them, they do the measurements at the locations. They put out an interim report in July 2018. That’s pretty inconclusive, but doesn’t really say too much basically says we need to do some more investigation. Less than a year later, March 1 2019. They put out a final report and that’s when they say that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a chemical weapon that a chemical weapons attack took place, and that the chemical weapon was chlorine. And the influence of their finding, although they don’t directly say it is that the chlorine attack was carried out by the Syrian government, because that is the only party with aircraft. So and then is taken by, you know, by the media, by the US government as, as being validation for the US government airstrikes that Trump ordered shortly after the alleged attack. But then, in May of 2019, and engineering report, surfaces on the internet leaked to a group of British academics called the working group who by that point had been raising questions about some flawed or questionable language inside the final report. They were already pointing out some inconsistencies. And basically this engineering assessment is attributed to an A ob CW staff. Member named in Henderson. And it actually argues based on a detailed study of the Duma location where the cylinder where the cylinders were found. And based on the measurements that were taken there that actually, there’s a much higher likelihood that the cylinder is found there. Were not dropped from the sky, but we’re, quote manually placed. And in saying that, if you’re saying that it’s manually placed, you’re basically saying that the attack was staged. And so that sets off a huge controversy. The opposite view announces an investigation into the leak, but then we get more leaks from WikiLeaks. And now we learn a second OPC w expert, like Ian Anderson, who has written letters to the OPC w leadership right after that final report gets released in March 2019. Basically voicing his objection and saying that so much critical evidence not just in Henderson study, but A lot more, including toxicology and chemical samples from the scene showing that chlorine was found basically at trace levels. So basically at a meaningless level, and in fact, and that the chlorine that was found, can be found in basically everyday household chemicals like, you know, like bleach products and so on. So now we have to, obviously, they’ll be you, inspect rs, saying that all their evidence saying that their evidence was excluded, and we have no explanation for it. And then we get more and more leaks showing that these inspectors were minimize from the process that even though they were the ones on the ground in Syria, collecting the evidence and and actually one of them was tasked with writing the first draft of the report, because he was the he was the most senior investigator and most experienced, we see that they’ve been excluded from the process and that the opposite will be true. leadership has basically installed a very small team called the so called core team to basically take charge of writing the report. And it’s these people who are basically leaving out all the evidence that these inspectors found and, and putting in some disingenuous language and in terms of Ian Henderson’s report, we never get an explanation as to why his findings are excluded. We only learn that the OIC CW then consults three unnamed outside experts. We have no idea who they are, and we can’t even see their work except for a few fragments of it in the final report to judge for ourselves whether they’re accurate or not. Whereas we now have Ian Henderson’s you know, full detailed study where he makes the case for why the cylinders were likely manually placed so we have no way even to we have no explanation as to why Henderson’s report was excluded, and we have no way even to compare it to the reports that were relied on for the OPC W’s final conclusions.

Scott Horton 18:01
Yep. And the same question of motive remains. Why in the world would Assad do that? When the only thing that could accomplish to get him in trouble and nothing else?

Oh, yeah. I mean, Well, look, it’s, you know, with what, you know, contra mckuen happened right after Trump had been talking about and the Trump ministration. And we talking about, you know, regime change, no longer being a priority. For the US right after that. concha. Kuhn happens, and there have been all sorts of questions raised about that. And maybe one day we’ll we’ll hear more even from within the Opie CW ranks, I definitely would not rule that out. But the motive there never, ever made sense. And then you have fat and Trump, you know, responded to that allegation of Cancun with bombings, e bombs here one year later, a similar thing I thought is about to take back Duma on the outskirts of Damascus. He’s about to win and all of a sudden, we get This allegation, again, from militants on the ground in Duma, the group that controlled it at the time was j shell Islam, which is heavily backed by Saudi Arabia. They now accuse Assad of a new cup chemical weapons attack, and that again leads to Trump administration strike. So it just from a point of view, forgetting all the evidence, even of motive, why would Assad do the one thing that could trigger that he knows will trigger a US military response it you know, it makes no sense.

Yeah, well, which is funny because none of his motives make any sense as according to the Americans here, and they’re lying against him this whole time that well, all he wanted to do was get up in the morning and kill every last woman, man, woman and child in his country. But luckily, the plucky moderate rebels were there to resist him and try to stop him from doing that. And we don’t matter that none of that ever made any sense whatsoever. They had a narrative. They’re sticking with it, which is fine. But you know, what’s funny is this one that they’re debunking here in this piece is one that I didn’t even hear of which I guess, maybe goes to what you were saying about how, if it even happened at all, it was a bomb dropped out in the middle of an empty field somewhere. And there were no real consequences of it to report on. But I wonder, do you even think there was an attack at all at this point, or what was there?

Aaron Mate 20:31
No, I, I, I, I I have no reason to doubt that something happened. I mean, there was some militant activity around there and you know, this is a a crazy proxy war. So there’s bombings all over the place, it wouldn’t be hard to to take an attack that happens and pretend it was a chemical weapons attack if you’re the militants on the ground. It is interesting, though, that, you know, the reason why hasn’t gotten much attention is because there were no even casualties. Also, by the way, the hospital records, there are no available hospital records. And you know, that’s possibly because maybe there is a you know, it’s it’s a war and it’s hard to keep, you don’t have records for everything, or there just weren’t any actual casualties, which, you know, which seems to be the case. So look, it’s it’s very sketchy. And it’s funny. It’s interesting to me that they chose this one first, and not Duma. And I think the reason is, even though the AI, even though the IIT is mandated to investigate Duma, I don’t see how they can do that. Now. I don’t see how they can put their name anybody can put their name on a report that carries out the OPC W’s function now, which is basically to lend credibility to, you know, war mongering with Syria and to justify the US strikes that took place in response to the doom allegations, but how can they put anybody seriously put their name on that without Taking on the evidence that was excluded from the initial do my reports from the OPC w just anybody with any credibility? I just can’t do it. I think the best they could do is say that the evidence is inconclusive. But given now that all the evidence has come out the engineering report and the toxicology and the chemical samples, I mean, they’re gonna have to grapple with that, especially because Ian Henderson, before the ultra CW started trying to paint him falsely as this rogue actor who, you know, acted on his own without permission. He was even asked to submit his report to the IIT for their consideration. So they actually have to consider his report now. So for them to come out and weigh in on Duma means they’ll have to basically refute his engineering and he being an experienced engineering engineer at the open cw, I mean, he’s been with them since its inception in 1997. And him having taken the measurements at the scene, in Duma, and literally Got on his got down on all fours and crawled around and took the measurements. It’s gonna be very hard for them to take on his findings and dismiss them. So I think the fact that they did this one first, where there’s no countervailing evidence available and it’s it’s something people hadn’t even heard of, that strikes me as possibly being a deliberate choice. Yeah. Which I’d say also, it’s the dissension within the ranks is not just confirmed to being with these two whistleblowers we know about in Henderson and his colleague who was also a senior member of the opposite w team at the grey zone. We’ve published now, two separate notes from other whistleblowers at the OPC w people expressing serious discomfort with how the OPC W is being run, and both of them expressing just strong objections to how the Duma investigators were treated. So just just to show that this is an organization, and now with our with this piece we published about the IoT report. There is, there is major dissension inside the ranks, and I suspect we’re gonna hear more about it. As things unfold, great.

Scott Horton 24:56
Well, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the gray zone about that. And now listen, let me ask you a couple things about some Russia gate updates here. Yeah. First of all, we’ve known all along, since I’m not sure when I think 2017 or at least 18, that Mike Flynn, in fact, had colluded with a foreign government in the or to even in during the election campaign season and then during even the run up to the inauguration there in the transition period. And now, apparently, there’s even a little bit more information coming out about a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power Russia?

Not Russia, but Israel and that was made known to us. pretty clearly when Michael Flynn was indicted it’s just the problem is the media ignored the Israel part of Michael Flynn’s indictment were basically he confirmed that at Israel’s request, the Trump the Trump transition team tried to intervene to undermine a UN Security Council vote that condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories. The vote was taken in December 2016, just one month after Trump’s victory. And the Trump transition, including Michael Flynn, tried very hard to get another country to to veto that, that vote to vote against it because the Obama administration for pretty much the first time was not going to veto a UN resolution criticizing Israel. He wasn’t going to vote for But it was going to abstain, which meant that unless somebody else intervened, it would pass it would be approved. And so the Israeli government asked the Trump transition to intervene, and they tried and Michael Flynn helped carry that out when he called the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. And one of the things that they discussed was, you know, Flynn trying to convince him to vote against this, but the Russian government declined. So we’ve known about this for a long time, it’s all gotten completely ignored, because we’re not supposed to air about possible Israeli collusion. We’re only supposed to care about this non existent Russian collusion, which occupied everybody for three years until the fantasy collapsed. And now to back

Kislyak didn’t hear about it, he would have known that it was his job to give Flynn his marching orders not to decline a request

Aaron Mate 26:50
for Exactly, exactly. And, and then there is more documents that have come out recently with Roger stone where we’re in his case he was in contact with some some prominent Israeli figures. I don’t think we know exactly who yet. But it’s and Roger stone is relaying some offers of assistance from, from some prominent Israelis to help to help out the Trump campaign. Although you know, Roger stone is a pretty big blowhard saw. It’s hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I mean, for example, he was claiming for a long time that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks. And that was, of course a complete fabrication too. So but you know, look, there certainly that the, the fact that the Trump administration tried to undermine the the fact that the Trump transition tried to undermine the outgoing administration’s policy, at the request of the Israeli government and donors like Sheldon Adelson shows that certainly there was a close tie between the Trump circle and Israel and it’s just funny that unfortunately, because you know, blanket support for these really government is bipartisan. Even though we’ve known about this forever, it’s just you know, it doesn’t register. We don’t see it covered on msnbc. There’s, you know, the there’s like there’s liberal groups called the Moscow project, but there’s no you know, which is formed to investigate Trump Russia context, but there’s no Tel Aviv project, which is formed to investigate or scrutinize Trump Israeli contact. And that’s just because, you know, the policy of blind support for Israel is pretty much bipartisan. And whereas this Russia thing was a completely partisan and baseless scam, two that consumed our attention for three years and now we’re just the only information we’re learning now is just getting more of a window into to the extent of the scam and in the Michael Flynn case. We’ve had new documents this week, you know, that strongly point to what has been pretty apparent all along is that he was set up by the FBI who interviewed him? Because they wanted to get him fired? And that’s an interesting question as to why they did I suspect, it might even have something to do with Syria, because, you know, I, as you’ve covered extensively on your show, it was Flynn’s agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency that came out with that report, very early on in the story in the Syria proxy, where basically saying that, you know, the people who were the strongest fighting forces inside Syria, who we were supporting, or talking about supporting were the Salafi militias were al Qaeda and ISIS. And so, you know, there is antagonism towards Michael Flynn, inside the national security state. And I’ve always wondered whether the fact that he was calling out what the US was doing in Syria, I’ve always wondered whether that was a factor.

Scott Horton 29:51
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t that he was such a hawk on Iran, which he is because they’re all hawks on Iran didn’t seem to bother him that much. So it’s not like he was going to be able to, you know, single handedly undo the Iran deal or something like that. And that ended up happening anyway under his replacement john bolton,

Aaron Mate 30:17
so. Yeah, ah, yep.

Scott Horton 30:18
So yeah, I think you’re right. It probably was about Syria. And now one more thing here about the collusion is the new report about Christopher Steele. And his meeting with Clinton campaign officials and whether this amounted to collusion. Obviously, Christopher Steele was a Brit, not an American. I don’t know if that counts or not. But then I want to ask you, too, about this whole Oh, no, the Russian collusion was really for Hillary and they were trying to sabotage Trump’s spin that’s going on around here lately, which seemed to have been attached to these new revelations here about the clinton lawyers meeting with Steel.

Aaron Mate 31:01
Oh, so you’re saying that that the allegation is that in fact that, that the Russian dissident that there was a Russian disinformation campaign trying to under

Scott Horton 31:13
Trump rather than Clinton? Yah.

Aaron Mate 31:15
Yeah. I mean, you know, whether this is whether this is Russian disinformation? I don’t know. I mean I, I suspect that I mean, the odds of the Russian government trying to get involved one way or the other. You know, I, I don’t see what motive they would have. They would have had to try to hurt Trump. I mean, Trump was trying to Trump is calling for better ties with Russia. So I don’t see the Russian government having an interest in trying to undermine him. And at that point, it was everybody believed that Hillary was gonna win anyway. So I don’t give that allegation, much weight. I mean, what I do know is that the fact that Steel was meeting with Clinton and DNC people to show the extent to which the Clinton campaign the DNC had a role in basically every facet of the Russia gate scam. They had a major role in the collusion aspect and that it was Christopher Steele, who first generated these allegations. And Christopher Steele says that one, you know, some of the things he included in his report actually came from the clinton DNC people he met with. So he says that this one DNC attorney last name assessment, gave him the idea which he included in his dossier, that there was some secret communication between the Trump campaign and this Russian bank, alpha bank. And then this led to all these crazy theories that that was the way the Trump administration and Russia conspired by speaking over the servers. There was like a major article in The New Yorker and in slate, and of course endlessly on MSNBC and CNN. And it turns out that you know that this idea comes from a Clinton campaign lawyer and steel just puts that in his dossier is somehow being a serious allegation or a serious theory. And so it just underscores that, and basically much every aspect of the Russia scam, you have a major DNC Clinton camp role in the collusion piece of this, you have the steel dossier, and all that stuff and how that was the bait that was used in the FBI investigation to get surveillance warrant on Carter page at minimum, as we already know, and then you have even in the Russian hacking education, who does that come from? CrowdStrike. Who are they they’re, they’re a DNC contractor. Even the you know, all the all the fear mongering about Russian social media trolls, that comes from according to The Washington Post, veterans from of the Obama and Clinton camps, who after the election came up with this theory that Russian so Media trolls had use sophisticated propaganda to sway voters in key states. And that’s what helped elect Trump and they shared those findings with the Senate or they shared their theories with the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair mark warner then flew out to Facebook. And, and and shared that idea with Facebook and not long after that, Facebook after initially concluding that these Russian social media pages were just basically juvenile clickbait commercial operations. Then they came out with these findings, basically lending credence to the theories of the Obama and Clinton operative so all the key aspects of the Russia scam collusion, the hacking, social media, you have a major part is enroll and it’s you know, if we had a minimally serious media all this would have been laughed at a long time ago but yet look what happened. It consumed our US media in politics for over three years.

Scott Horton 35:02
Yeah. It’s really kind of amazing. And yet also typical, shocking, but not surprising, as they say. Yeah, for sure. And especially I love the one about the alpha bank where it turned out that it was just a spam bot for the Trump hotels or whatever it

Aaron Mate 35:19
as. Yeah, it was mining. It was it was it was sending out marketing emails. Yeah. And using the same server, it’s, you know, but yet, if you go back, I mean, you could, on every aspect of this thing. There’s hours and hours of cable news footage of, you know, serious people supposedly taking all his with, you know, sober very, very serious concern as if all this means something when really it’s just it’s, it’s all fantasy. It’s all complete fantasy.

Scott Horton 35:50
Yeah. Well, and now they’re doing the same thing to China as well. They just had this story last week or Trump is in hock to China 10s of millions of dollars. Oops. And then they retracted it because that wasn’t true.

Yeah, they they said that Trump owes the Bank of China 10s of millions. And then they came out a week later and say, oops, we made a mistake. We forgot to call the Bank of China. And when we did, they told us that he wants out us this, but that the that alone was passed on to someone else. So it’s not even us anymore. That that that holds alone. You know, it’s so yes, the the sloppy reporting definitely continues.

Yeah. And I think that even sold it. The Chinese bank had sold the debt off back in 2012. So four years before he even an.

Aaron Mate 36:43
Yeah, yah. difficult. Yeah. All right.

Scott Horton 36:44
Well, listen, I appreciate all your great journalism and you do a great job and I love your show and all your articles and really appreciate your time on the show again here.

Aaron Mate 36:55
Scott, thank you. Thanks for having me b

Scott Horton 36:57
ck. Aren’t you guys that is Aaron Mata. He is actually The gray zone project that is the gray zone.com and first of all you got to read this thing by the OPC w whistleblowers. It’s something else here. Exclusive OPC w insider slam compromised new Syria chemical weapons probe and then also check out Aaron’s show he’s got a brand new interview of Noam Chomsky up there on pushback. And all of that is available for you at the gray zone calm. The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall welcome and Scott Horton shell. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war calm, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show. Aren’t you guys on the line? I’ve got Pete Jonas. And he is managing editor at the libertarian Institute and author of this brand new one. How members of gun culture view the amount Aubrey killing. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Pete?

Pete Quinones 0:56
Thanks for having me back, Scott.

Scott Horton 0:58
Hey man, real quick. Got a documentary coming out soon. Is that right?

Pete Quinones 1:03
Yeah, I do. It’s it’ll be released to the public on YouTube on the 31st. And then soon after, after we get some things squared away, get it up on Amazon and then down the line after it does well on Amazon then Netflix kind of thing so it doesn’t get banned. Yeah. Somebody doesn’t step in and say yeah, that’s, that’s too subversive for for public consumption or something like that.

Scott Horton 1:27
Yeah. Well, I hope you edited my piece as much as you possibly could in there, too. There, everybody there, eardrums

Pete Quinones 1:37
we edited exactly what you what you thought would be. We just put in there what you thought were the most important points. Okay. I think I think it will. I think it’ll work especially with some of the overlay that we have that your our buddy, Danny Sjursen, sir, supplied us. It’s going to be it’s going to be wonderful. It’s good. A good section and that is going to be anti war. And that was really important to us.

Scott Horton 2:01
Yeah. So I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I did kind of page through. And and notice what good company I’m in there. So thanks for having me in that thing. That’s really cool. Couldn’t have done it. Lots of bearings there.

Pete Quinones 2:13
Yeah, there’s no way we were gonna do that and not have you in it. So, huh.

Scott Horton 2:19
Wish I could have come up with something instructive for you, but instead you just got what you got. Anyway, hey, let’s talk about the Oh, wait, when is this thing coming out?

Pete Quinones 2:29
It’ll be on YouTube on the 31st of this month.

Scott Horton 2:33
YouTube on the 31st of May. Great. And that’s called the monopoly on violence, huh?

Pete Quinones 2:40
Yep. feature length. The about an hour and a half and all of our friends are going to be in it. Great.

Scott Horton 2:48
That’s great. Good for you, dude. Thanks, man.

Pete Quinones 2:51
Yeah, man. All right. So two years in the making. Yeah,

Scott Horton 2:55
well, better be good then. Or as I put it, when I was writing my book, People better like this thing. So, yeah. labor theory of value there, man. You know, it’s hard to not believe in it when you’re the one doing the hard work, but yeah. All right. Now, let’s, let’s talk about this important subject. Tell me some things about, first of all, the Ahmad armory killing. And then secondly towards your headline here about the reaction of gun culture to what they’ve seen in the video here.

Pete Quinones 3:32
Well, let me just do a quick timeline of what happened with the shooting and mod armory. 25 year old man shot to death on February 23. in Brunswick, Georgia, Brunswick is like if anybody knows Jekyll Island. It’s right outside of Jekyll Island. So it’s over on the coast. Land of the central banks there. Yeah. And he was shot after being followed by Gregory McMichael six Four years old and Travis McMichael. 34 years old his son. They were in a pickup truck. Arbor his family says he was out jogging while the mcmichaels have said they thought he was a burglar. And this is according to the police report. Gregory McMichael armed himself with a 357 Magnum and his son grabbed the shotgun. And this is this will be the just them doing that right there will be the Kruk was the crux of my article. So Well, let me just go on a little bit here. So I grabbed the shot gun after Gregory McMichael saw our brewery hauling ass down the street. The police report said according to the report, a third man later identified as a neighbor, William Bryan tried to block our breed during the pursuit now a lot of people are saying William Brian is actually a homeowner of a property that’s under construction that are burry. Allegedly went in and was looking around. And but that’s it’s come to light that that’s not true. He was not he is not the homeowner. I’m going to get to that in a second. So Greg McMichael told police that he thought armory was a burglar who had recently been targeting the neighborhood. The mcmichaels told police that they caught up with armory. He attacked Travis McMichael, who fired his weapon and self defense. And the Brunswick news citing documents that were in public record reported that there had been just one confirmed burglary in the neighborhood from January 1 to February 23. It was the theft of a handgun from an unlock truck parked outside Travis Travis mcmichaels house on the first of the year. Go forward a couple days the first prosecutor recused herself. The Brunswick area district attorney Jackie Johnson recused herself from the case noting that Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn county police officer had been an investigator in her office for more than 30 years before he retired in May of 2019. Go now we’re going to jump forward to that was February 27. We’re going to jump forward to April 2. Brunswick news publishes details of the police investigation. They published an online article with details from the Glen police report. Gregory Michael said that after the pursuit Arbor he began to violently attack Travis McMichael and that the two started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later, there was a second shot. Gregory McMichael said our brief fell face down on the pavement with his hand under his body. He told police he then searched armory for a gun. The report said the report ends without stating whether armory had a gun. arbors family says he was unarmed and nobody to this day is claiming that he was armed. Next day April 3, a second prosecutor refuses after finding no reason to charge the mcmichaels George Barnhill one of the prosecutors who first handled the case defended the actions of the mcmichaels and Brian who recorded a video of the shooting. In a letter recusing himself address to a Glynn police, Captain Barnhill said the three had solid firsthand probable cause to pursue arbitrary quote unquote burglary suspect and stop him. And the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that reported this, it appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement alive arrived he rose Barnhill who said he watched the video said Travis Michael. Travis McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect themselves under state law because our brewery had initiated the fight and grabbed the shotgun. Going to jump forward about 10 days. A third prosecutor takes over the case. The case was transferred to Thomas Durden not Tyler Durden. But Thomas Durden, the agent district attorney for Georgia’s Atlanta Atlantic Judicial Circuit honor about April 13. According to a letter Durden released May 5, he announced his intention to present the case to the next available Glynn county grand jury for consideration of criminal charges against those involved in the death of Mr. armory.

That was April 13, jump all the way forward to may 5. So that’s 10 days ago, as of recording, this video of shooting emerges online. Apparently, this is just a side note. The person who took the video thought by releasing the video it was actually going to help the mcmichaels case that didn’t turn out to be what happened. So the video was released into public domain or it to the public, and the Arby’s Family Lawyer got ahold of it and that’s how they were releasing. They’re releasing it because as soon as it was released to the police, then it became open. So it appears to show the fatal shooting and an altercation in the mall. Before in the video posted by Aubrey family Attorney Lee Merritt Aubrey has seen jogging down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. armory runs around the vehicle and a shot is fired. The video then shows our brand another man appearing to tussle as two more shots are fired. NBC News they’re saying NBC News who’s reporting on all this doesn’t know what happened before the events in the video. The same day. The outside prosecutor Durden said he wanted to send the case to the grand jury to decide whether to bring charges. Lawyers for the armory family said authorities did not need to wait for a grand jury to make arrests. And the lawyer said there are a number of agencies that can go out and make these arrests today. That is our demand. The man who murdered our breach should be prosecuted. The lawyer called underdone to issue an arrest warrant and to indict Gregory and Travis McMichael. GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigations announced that it would be taking over the case at Durbin’s request so the DA there said this is a hospital Fado, give it to GBI. So it goes public. May 7, Gregory and Travis Michael are arrested, GBI announced that mcmichaels had been arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault. And I will tell you, I’ll explain the aggravated assault charge where I think it’s coming from and it’s the only way it makes sense in in this. When we start talking about the article that I wrote in the points I made in there. The big Michaels could not be reached for comment. It was unclear whether they had obtained attorneys. So March 8, a neighbor who recorded video is also being investigated a day after the mcmichaels were arrested the head of the GBI said William Roddy, Brian, the neighborhood recorded the video was also being investigated. We’re going to go wherever the evidence takes us. GBI Vic Reynolds says a news conference let’s say hypothetically if we believe tomorrow or in a week or three There’s probable cause for an arrest, then we’ll do it. If we don’t believe there is and we won’t. Brian’s not been charged asked about the possibility that the mcmichaels could be prosecuted for a hate crime. Reynolds noted that Georgia is one of the few states without a hate crime law. Sort of good. May 9, video appears to show our burry entering a construction site just before he was killed. And just to mention some people have said it’s not him some people have said it’s him. This is everybody’s fighting over this I mean, it’s it’s ridiculous at this point. video from the day of armories death obtained by Atlanta Journal Constitution shows a purchase person matching our brief description, walking up to a house under construction, entering and then leaving shortly after attorneys for our breeze parents said the video is consistent with the evidence already known to us. The lawyer said the person in the video remain on the property for under three minutes before continuing to jog down the road. Mud did not take anything from the construction site. The family’s lawyer said he did not cause any damage to the property. He remained for a brief period of time and was not instructed by anyone to leave, but rather left on his own accord to continue his job. moods actions at this empty home under construction were in no way a felony under Georgia law. GBI confirmed that it was reviewing the video but added it had it had seen it before arresting and charging the McMichael so GBI arrested them even after seeing this and this quote unquote, new evidence, right.

Then the next day, may 10th. So we’re talking five days from from where when we’re recording. Georgia Attorney General asked for federal investigation. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the Justice Department investigate the handling of the killing so they’re, they’re investigating the DA is how know how they weren’t how these guys weren’t arrested right away. That’s basically what they’re looking at. Attorneys for RV parents have plotted it. And so the next May 11, arbitrary killing switch to a fourth prosecutor. The state’s top prosecutor appointed another district attorney to take over the case joy at homes of the Cobb County Judicial Circuit became the fourth prosecutor to oversee it. Cobb County is about 10 minutes from me. So we’re talking about three hours away. So they I mean, they went through, they went, you know, a couple hundred miles away, or more than a couple hundred miles away to find someone to prosecute this. And they say, she’s a respected attorney with experience both as a lawyer and a judge and the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office has the resources, personnel and experience to lead this prosecution, yada

Scott Horton 13:40
yada, yada, yada. seems will have the same conflict of interest as the rest of them, but go ahead.

Pete Quinones 13:45
So three days ago, GBI receives requests from the State Attorney General to investigate handling of case Georgia’s attorney general has asked state law of law officers to investigate allegations of misconduct by local practices. theatres in the death of armory, the GBI announced Tuesday, GBI said Attorney General Chris Carr requested for the investigation of how the district attorney’s office in Brunswick and waycross handled the February 23 fatal shooting. Then we had this incident just a couple days ago, this was May 11. So this is how we find out that the home the under construction home that Arbor is allegedly seen in isn’t owned by Mr. Brian, one of the people in the pickup truck which is something that people who’ve been defending the mcmichaels on, on social media have been saying. So Mr. English, the actual homeowner released this statement he said Mr. English wants to correct the mistaken impression that he had shared this video or any other information with the mcmichaels. Prior to them Michaels decision to chase Mr. Barbary people were saying that he had They had seen video of him in the house and I’m going, how do they see video of him in the house? Was it being live streamed into their home or something? And I was at you would ask these questions and people be like, well, I don’t know. This is what I know. So the homeowners had not even seen the February 23 video before Travis McMichael shot Mr. Barbary so they didn’t even see the video from that day. When homeowner Larry English saw the photos of Mr. Barbary that were later broadcasts as a first impression was it Mr. rb was not the man captured on video inside the house on February 23. And he had actually said that to a neighbor at the time, and this guy was the homeowner was two hours away. So just little, little more information there. And then today, it comes out that McMichael, who used to be a cop used to be an investigator who was charged in armory, his death lost power to make arrests after skipping use of force training last year. So he lost, he lost his ability to make arrest and he also lost his ability to carry a service firearm. So that’s, that’s where we’re at right now. And anybody who’s seen people have been making videos about this. I’ve seen cops make ex cops make videos about this all over the world. I mean, it this is one of the most convoluted he said, she said, I think I know what I’m talking about. That person thinks he knows what he’s talking about. I decided to take my article in a totally different direction of something that I actually know I’m talking about trying to use this case to help explain to people why what they did is culture in Georgia, where I’ve lived for 15 years is culturally unacceptable to gun owners. So

Scott Horton 16:50
well, so I mean, that’s the point, right, is that gun owners would be, according to, I don’t know, liberal Twitter, they would be out The front of the mob, justifying these guys and accusing the black guy must have been stealing something or something, right?

Pete Quinones 17:09
That is the that that is the stereotype of, you know, even a Puerto Rican, half Puerto Rican New Yorker like myself, when I moved to the south, and I live in Georgia for 15 years. And I adopt the culture of gun ownership and, you know, being a gun fanatic. I get called the same thing. So,

Scott Horton 17:30
yeah. But then, so what is their point? Then they’re rallying behind the boys in the pickup truck or not?

Pete Quinones 17:37
Well, I’ve been going. First thing I did was I wanted to see what my friends were saying. So there’s a forum here in Georgia, huge gun forum. A couple years ago, there was 40,000 members. It’s got to be more now. And I knew that if I was going to I looked at it. I judged what they did. I had my perspective. And I wanted to see if people who are trained in firearms like myself had the same perspective in Georgia that I did. And, you know, I’m a libertarian, I’m an anarchist, and I don’t, I think all these laws are ridiculous, but I also live in the real world. And these people that I’m looking at here, for the most part, conservatives, I mean, we’re talking Trump supporting conservatives, but very pro gun, very anti red flag law. To give just to give an example, this forum that I was on at the time of the Trayvon Martin, shooting by george Zimmerman, they to a man took george Zimmerman side, mostly it was overwhelmingly George, on the side of george Zimmerman. And so yeah, these aren’t, these aren’t liberal hysteric the the who happens to light guns. I mean, these are guys who are come from the right side and a lot the far right side of the aisle. But they also have a subculture that has some unwritten rules and it looks like the as far as I’ve seen, they consider the mcmichaels to have broken those rules and thereby forfeited their freedom.

Scott Horton 19:20
Okay, so I’m not talking about that. I mean, I think even you know, any reasonable person even if they’re not going owners if they’re not a liberal hysteric just a normal person understands that. Gun Owners usually are extra responsible, because they recognize the power of that machine that they have there to do very dirty work in very short time with very little effort. I mean, that’s kind of the whole point. And so usually give somebody a gun you watch them grow up by two years right in front of your eyes, you know, but So, go ahead and I mean, Talk a little bit about that, that gun culture and the culture of responsibility that comes with owning guns here.

Pete Quinones 20:06
But just to give a really good example because it It wasn’t funny when it happened. But it turned out to be funny because it just became a meme on the web on on this forum was a guy came on there five or six years ago, and he started bragging about how he was walking in downtown Atlanta, a homeless person came up and asked for change. And he pulled his gun and just waved at the guy and the guy ran away from him. I assume he came on the website. Now I don’t know if the guy’s telling the truth or not. He could just be you know, one of those people who just make stuff up. But I he came on the website on the forum thinking that he was like a hero and he was going to be hailed as a hero. That was the exact opposite of what happened. People explained to him, you don’t pull that thing out unless you have justified, reasonable, you have an idea that your life is in danger. In other words, you don’t pull that out. unless you absolutely feel like you have to pull the trigger. Like your life is in such danger or somebody else’s life is in such danger that you have to pull the trigger. And as I explained in the article, that doesn’t mean that you pull it. And you see that the person, you know, is responding in a way where they’re going to, they’re going to go into flight, and you decide not to pull the trigger, that’s fine. But the fact that you pull it, you better have every excuse in the world for pulling that trigger. And that is just an unwritten rule that is lived by in gun culture. And I put this article out, I’ve had a couple people come after me, and it’s never about gun, the gun culture and what we think it’s always about, well, it was a black guy and you And I mean, that’s pretty. And I’ve been trying to keep race out of this. See, I read

Scott Horton 22:05
people to the right of your gun forum group a day, this is great. But at the over at the gun forum, this is their point of view same as the story about the bum being scared off. They, it sounds like you’re your take is everyone over there agrees that these guys had no business acting the way that they acted here.

Pete Quinones 22:29
Now, you’re not going to get everyone to agree on, on on any forum because you’re always gonna have some people that have to be contrarian on everything. And you’re gonna have some jerks and racist. I mean, it’s just, it just happens. But I mean, overwhelmingly, I mean, just some of the comments.

Scott Horton 22:45
The consensus in other words, oh, yeah, the only question here.

Pete Quinones 22:49
Yeah, the former copy says, if there’s no more to the story than the two should be prosecuted and jailed for life, the guy was clearly not trying to confront them. He runs miles and miles every day and live nearby. However, one thing gives me pause is that even the New York Times is hedging. Somewhat they stated that the man was seen running from inside a home under partial construction and the homeowner called 911. Well that’s not true the homeowner was two hours away but that’s what was being reported at the time. All this information is being reported and he writes but even that wouldn’t constitute the use of deadly force in this case. Another one said the kid wasn’t carrying anything those two confronted and went looking for a fight definitely not justified in my meaningless opinion real sad. Based on that video the shooters ought to stand not stand in the sunshine anytime soon, but we know what should happen and what does happen aren’t always related. Maybe he was this one guy says maybe was taking the lead I don’t know but this did this debug p i want to be and his kid sounds like some straight up cowboys to me citizens arrest and arm pursuit lol. I wouldn’t have stopped for them either. And then another one I saw You’re a justification for your use of force in that situation regardless of the joggers previous actions. This looks like some straight up redneck justice profile and Bs. One has to wonder if they just shot him in the back if he tried to keep running another one, I’ll give a damn what their circumstance was based on the video those scumbags murdered that young man. Then the last guy says, and you know he a little bit of pontificating here, but he gets to the point. I prefer to let relevant and current facts determine the circumstances rather than shaking up old articles to try and sling mud to make my predilections justified. The fact he was a high school athlete or attended college or what his specific career aspirations was irrelevant to the fact he was unarmed, shot dead by two redneck wannabe Cowboys, who thought they had an in on the cover up with one of their former bosses to da their plants. Now they get to win stupid prizes won’t bring him back, but he died pretty quickly. They get to sleep with one eye open for a long, long time. I’m sure they’ll be well received in a South Georgia prison.

Scott Horton 25:00
Yeah. See, that’s the part that remains to be seen with this guy’s at least pale blue privilege if you know he wasn’t on the clock as a cop at the time and yet, that’s the other huge part of this story is the delay in the arrest here and I don’t know this wasn’t on your Fact Sheet there. But I had seen a story where the cops who showed up at the scene were ready to arrest them both. If they called the DEA and the DEA told them not to. They were ready to put them in handcuffs right there on the spot before she intervened to stop it actively.

Pete Quinones 25:35
So you want to you want to know one of the main reasons why and I’ll come back and I’m going to go back to something that I said in my notes they were arrested for. Let me get this again. One of them. One of it was the second thing was aggravated assault. So I think it’s a murder and aggravated assault. Why is aggravated assault in there? Well, like it or not, there’s a law in Georgia. That is If you pull a gun on somebody who’s not threatening you, that’s considered aggravated assault and you’re looking at 20 years. So like that guy who flashed his gun at a bum, you know, it’s some homeless person. If a cop would have seen him do that, that would have been, he was looking at 20 years in prison. They don’t take that lightly. Even now, there’s actually a bill in the House in Georgia trying to change that. But that’s neither here nor there. And whether that’s a fair law or not, oh, well, but what I’ve seen is I’ve seen people try to argue that jumping out of the truck with a shotgun, while that’s just open, carry and open carry is legal. Well, technically, yes. Okay. In Georgia, you can throw a rifle over your your shoulder and walk down the street. You can carry a shotgun in your hand and walk down the street but Not when you’ve blocked off the street from somebody, you have another person jumped up in the bed of the pickup truck screaming at them. Yeah, you know, clearly the gun in his head. I mean,

Scott Horton 27:10
they’re displaying deadly force in order to try to make him stop. Yeah. That’s not open carry.

Pete Quinones 27:19
But I’m so but I mean, I see people trying to use that argument I’m like, that’s just not how this works, you know, and it’s like I actually had one person say, I literally would say if I said to you who said this, you know exactly who it was. They said, So, you think it’s okay for somebody who’s running down the street to try and grab a gun at trying to grab a gun of somebody who’s open carrying no gun. I’m like, wait, man, what are you leaving? What are you leaving out here?

Scott Horton 27:48
This is such a stupid era, isn’t it? It really is. It’s time of stupidity.

Pete Quinones 27:56
And a lot of people will say some of that stupid most of that stupidity is on The left look at the way they treat Trump. Look at this, look at that. This is just equal stupidity. Yeah, it’s so everything Oh, we gotta, we gotta stay with my team so that we can fight the other team and be at war the whole time. And I’m just like, you know, when you do that, and you’re while you guys are fighting over there, you know, sometimes that war has collateral damage on the rest of us and we tend those of us who want individual freedom, tend to lose it because you people are being idiots over here.

Scott Horton 28:28
And you know, it is important what you say to about where the vast majority of the right they’re not looking at this and you know of gun owners, particularly very Tea Party, Republican voter type guys, that they’re not looking at this as a racial issue. They’re looking at it as an issue of one man killing another. And and, and blue privilege. And yeah, and so the point is that Yeah, there there are right wingers who do care a lot about the racial stuff, but not anywhere near the majority. It should be instructive to people who come from the left to recognize that despite all the smears that most right wingers are not racialist in any way really at all. And certainly not to the degree that they’re going to side with a murderer over an unarmed victim, just because of what skin color team they’re on. I mean, that’s crazy. So yes, people will pick and choose their facts to justify certain things. But mostly, that’s still marginal, as stupid as this era is, at least in this case, it seems like reason has the center, you know,

Pete Quinones 29:35
and you also have to take into consideration when you look at this, this whole situation and when I say situation, I’m talking about guys running down the street. I don’t care if he’s running from some if he’s just out for a jog, or if he’s running from something. You have a pickup truck that cuts off the road with our people get out and they’re armed brandishing weapons and you have somebody in the back of them. cutting them off so that they’re trapped. When was how often do you see this happen? This doesn’t happen. When was the last time you saw the shop in the 50s?

Scott Horton 30:10
Yeah. And how was he supposed to react to this?

Pete Quinones 30:14
I know I would have reacted if I would have had a gun I would have shot everyone. And I would have been justified in doing it. They pulled guns out. They got out you block off the street from me and get out with it with a shotgun in your hand. I’m putting I’m starting to shoot right there. It’s insane for anybody for anybody and to bring up Oh, he may have just been burglarizing a house that’s completely beside the point. Once you get to the once you get down to the the situation in the street. Obviously he didn’t have anything in his hands. He’s running in shorts and a T shirt. If he was concealing a gun. He was doing a really good job of it. didn’t pull it out. In there’s no there’s no justification there. Now they’re bloopers The blue privilege of the dad may keep them at a jail. But I mean, the rightest of right wingers in Georgia in the gun culture, like Yeah, what they did was completely wrong. If we would have done it with no blue privilege, we would have been arrested that day and probably already played it out and gone to jail. Right. That’s what they’re saying. And I know that that’s what what happened to me. Yeah, if I if I did something that’s stupid. I it’s amazing to me how people are looking at this video and interpreting it just based on their own worldview.

Scott Horton 31:35
Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of that but um, you know, it, you know, I appreciate that. As you’re sitting here, it’s not a question of, you know, libertarian non aggression principle. It’s a question of gun owners non aggression principle. And when people especially, you know, people walk around armed you know, concealed or or, you know, open carrying or whatever it is, or they think a lot about, you know, and very carefully usually about, you know, when they might have to use that firearm, and when they absolutely may not, and and at what Line Is It crossed, where now it’s official, anyone, any reasonable juror would agree that you had no choice but to do it. And so in other words, they’re thinking of it very carefully, like a man with a hammer in his hand about just how to hit this nail right, rather than, you know, maybe coming at it from a more generalized point of view. They’re looking at it from as you just said, if they were the ones who had done it, not a former detective, but just Mr. ac repairman or whoever out there, that they know for sure that they are not allowed to do that, that that is absolutely crossing the line and that they will go to prison and so universal justice, it should apply the fact that this guy used To wear some shiny costume jewelry shouldn’t impress anyone at all.

Pete Quinones 33:05
But I think I would also add that even if what they did, and brandishing was legal, I think most gun owners would condemn it.

Scott Horton 33:15
Okay, that’s a good point, too. Yeah,

Pete Quinones 33:16
I don’t think they’re I don’t think they’re looking at the law and let and allowing the law to dictate what their morals are, as far as you know, carrying something that can end multiple lives in a matter of seconds. Right? It has to do with the fact that and a lot of it also has to do with optics. It’s like you don’t want to be every gun owner that I know who’s serious about their weapons, looks at that video and goes, you know, if it would have just been if he would, if it would have been them getting out holding guns in their hands and armory would have just ran by and just kept running. And you know, nothing would have happened. gun owners would still look at what they’re doing and go in your You’re spoiling for us.

Scott Horton 34:01
Right? You deserve another law against us.

Pete Quinones 34:05
Yeah. I mean, it like I said, I haven’t seen anyone commenting on this in, in a way of criticizing saying that it was a good shoot. That is in gun culture. As a matter of fact, ever since I put this article out, and ever since I did a podcast earlier this week, everyone who’s contacted me who said positive things about what I had to say, are in gun culture and southerners. They’re like, yeah, we know you’re not a southerner and everything but now you’re one of us, because you know, you have you have the same sensibilities.

Scott Horton 34:40
We’d like how you say to all the detractors are just completely irrational racists and don’t really have a point other than Whose side are you on?

Pete Quinones 34:49
So, I mean, I don’t I don’t know if they’re all racists or not. I mean, I would assume that that that does play into something.

Scott Horton 34:56
I thought you said that that was what they all immediately go to was Oh, you Yeah,

Pete Quinones 35:00
well, yeah. Well, a lot of it is, you know, it’s kind of hard to look at that video. And, and like I said, I’m not. I didn’t mention race once in the article, because that’s not really important to me. But it is really hard to look at that article and Naco what yours is?

Scott Horton 35:18
Yeah. Or the video? You mean? Yeah.

Pete Quinones 35:20
I mean, the video. Yeah, the video. Here is this. It was just when I first saw it, I was just like, wait a minute, he got out with a shotgun in his head. And he’s white dude. And there’s a black dude running down the street, and they’ve closed off the street from them. And they’ve closed off street behind him. And I knew there was going to be people defending this. And I was like, Why no, no gun owners gonna defend this. No serious gun owners gonna defend this because it’s just like, Well, what do you guys do in? Yeah, and most? A lot of those gun owners are law and order guys. So what would they do? they’d call the cops. They would call the cops and you know, and then people were saying, I heard people saying Oh, Well, you know, because he worked in the DHS office and Barbara had been arrested a couple times. He he knew him, he recognized them. I’m like, Well, if you recognize them, then he probably knows his name. can find out his address with a phone call. Right? So why not just give the cops? Why don’t just give the cops that. Oh, so now you’re on the cop side. You want the cops? I thought you were an anarchist. Yeah, I am. But I also live in a world where I know if I go do that,

Scott Horton 36:26
and they’re not anarchists, their former cop and his son. So what does that What does libertarianism have to do with the decisions that they made? It’s ridiculous. It’s just dancing. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. It adds just people are crazy. Hey, man, you guys are gonna love No dev no Ops, no it by Hussein badhak Gianni, it’s a fun and interesting read all about how to run your high tech company. Like a good libertarian should forget all the junk. Read no Dev, no ops. No It by Hussein bodek Chani find it in the margin at Scott horton.org. Hey y’all, here’s the thing, donate $100 to the Scott Horton show, and you can get a QR code commodity disc as my gift to you. It’s a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back you take a picture of with your phone, and it gives you the instant spot price. And lets you know what that silver that ounces silver is worth on the market and Federal Reserve Notes in real time. It’s the future of currency in the past to commodity discs.com or just go to Scott Horton. org slash donate. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for expand designs.com Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing building and maintaining my sites and they’ll do great work for you need a new website, go to expand designs comm slash Scott and say 500 bucks. Let’s switch to a different crazy one. So this one’s in Kentucky. So this happened what like two months ago, the cops killed this lady briona Taylor, and it does matter that she’s a black woman. It is part of the story. And then this was just buried it finally came out I’m sure all the usual grifters, you know, help to promote it. Thank goodness in this case, but you know, and I know that you haven’t done as much work looking into this one as the previous case here. This is actual cops, not x and wannabe cops. Like down there. But this one in Kentucky is also really bad. Can you explain what you know about what happened here?

Pete Quinones 38:44
Apparently Briana Taylor, from what I understand she’s an EMT. Did you see that? Yeah, she’s an EMT. She was home at night. was studying to be a nurse they say? Yeah, studying to be a nurse home sleeping with her boyfriend. And from what I understand around 1230 in the morning, the police go and get a no knock warrant. I mean, isn’t that’s how all these stories start, you know, in the middle of the night, no knock warrant, you know, Duncan Lemp. And,

Scott Horton 39:16
sorry, I gotta say, when I was a kid in elementary school, the state of Texas mandate that they teach us anti communism. And when they did teach us anti communism, the way that they explained it to us was that in the Soviet Union, the cops come to your house and take you away in the middle of the night. They kick in your door, everybody else is asleep or is, you know, in no position to help resist and, you know, it’s and in fact, it’s the dreaded knock, they don’t even you know, Americans use a battering ram. The NKVD at least knocked on the door let you get your bathrobe before they disappeared. Yeah. But this was when I was a boy, which was not that long ago. If you asked me that night. 1980s and when I was in elementary school, you know, in the Ronald Reagan years, this was the definition of totalitarianism the enemy that America stands against. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Pete Quinones 40:13
Yeah, um, well, from what I understand they weren’t the wrong house to the person they were actually looking for was already in custody. And this is the Louisville police department and I wrote an article. I wrote an article about the Louisville Police Department four or five months ago from their sex abuse scandals of their their youth programs. Me Louisville Police Department has a long history of just problems. And so yeah, they get a no knock warrant. They go there because they owe somebody we believe, delivers drugs was seen coming out of that apartment. And a box went in with a box and came in came out and empty handed. Well they do the no knock raid. The boyfriend wakes up he has a gun. He starts shooting. So they just light the place up. As many as 20 rounds are shot. She shot in her sleep eight times and dies. The boyfriend has been arrested for attempted murder of a police officer.

Scott Horton 41:21
You know how many times he was shot?

Pete Quinones 41:23
I don’t think he was he. I don’t think he was Yeah,

Scott Horton 41:26
I don’t think so either. I from what I had read so what the hell kind of wild shootout is that? Speaking of your unwritten firearms rules? Aren’t you supposed to know what you’re killing they miss the guy who actually took a shot at them and instead they shot an innocent person eight times unarmed woman

Pete Quinones 41:47
and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. He ended up shooting a sergeant john Mattingly in the leg during the incident. So oscillation Yeah, but um Yeah, this is this is just one of those another one of those no knock warrant. Like you said Soviet style black bag kind of kind of attitude when you’re going Duncan left the whole Duncan lump thing in Maryland. Yeah 430 4:30am Yeah, why would they do this? Why don’t you just wait until the person leaves the house overtime rest? Arrest them. Yeah. So you get paid. Yeah. And Bogart says that

Scott Horton 42:27
Yeah. And the fun of dressing up like a paramilitary you know, Delta Force operative or whatever.

Pete Quinones 42:34
So, they, they were blindly firing. I mean, she got hit eight times, talking about total disregard for for human life and me shoot through the walls and hit other people. nothing illegal was found there. They had a drug warrant.

Scott Horton 42:52
Yeah, on that last point. I mean, they said that they’re the stray bullets went into multiple different apartment buildings or, you know, apartments in that building.

Pete Quinones 43:02
So, yeah, so the family’s suing, and there was another one of those cases where it’s like, No, you know, well, you’re gonna get put on the police we’re gonna get put on a miss administrate of leave until we can investigate. And we’re gonna we’ll investigate this and find out what they don’t investigate themselves find out they did nothing wrong.

Scott Horton 43:21
Yeah, well and you know they’re gonna make the mistake too is just talking about this with Mike Maharrey earlier today about you’re gonna call for a civil rights investigation and that’s going to kind of remove it from the local jurisdiction where they might have a prayer of accountability if they push hard enough. Instead they’re going to turn it over to the Justice Department. But that’s such a narrow mandate unless they were screaming the N word as they were pulling the trigger and essentially using their police power position as cover and operating under the color of law just so that they could do a kkk lynching or something like that unless they have A case like that it’s not a federal civil rights case. And it’s just, you know, the federal civil rights jurisdiction is not if there’s a bad shoot, it’s if you can ascribe these other racial ulterior motives to the police abuse that takes place. And so, in other words, DOJ investigations are were bad shoots go to die, you know, even if, in most cases, the local DEA is going to do what our friends down in Georgia did there for him. But still, at least you could have a chance with enough public pressure of getting an indictment on the local level, but the feds almost never they just essentially kill a case by touching it.

Pete Quinones 44:42
And we’ve talked about that before, too, that the only way quote unquote public servants ever get in trouble is if enough political pressure is put in and then they just sacrifice somebody.

Scott Horton 44:54
Yeah, I mean, think about the if this is one of your family members, and you find Down, not only were they at the wrong apartment, where the guy that they were after did not live, but that, in fact, the guy the search warrant was attached to an arrest warrant, and they had already arrested him somewhere else before this warrant was ever even issue. So, again, back to the question of how easy it would have been for them to just knock on the door and do this in the daylight without dressing up and playing Navy SEAL at all. You know, the guy the bad guy, supposedly, in other words, the drug businessman, allegedly was already in custody. And of course, they found out after they were done, removing her corpse that there were no drugs in the house whatsoever. And I don’t know if it was the wrong address or this guy used to live there five years ago or what their problem was, but the two victims here the deceased and the charged had nothing to do apparently with the guy that they were looking for. Is that right?

Pete Quinones 46:06
Yeah, they were standing up citizens as far as anyone can, you know, quote unquote, stand up citizen as far as anyone can tell. I mean, they’re, I mean, when I said this a long time ago, I said, police have to stop the no knock warrants because you get a home invasion. All somebody has to do is scream police. You know, some you have some crew of bad guys coming into your house, they scream police. I mean, I sleep with a gun next to the bed. If I hear police, it may make me hesitate in picking it up. But it could also be bad guys. So they knocked down a door in the middle of the night and he’s armed you know, in the guns by the side of the bed and he picks it up and start shooting. How can you blame him? How

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys. Time to welcome Ramzy Baroud back to the show here. Palestine. chronicle.com is the website and of course he’s the author of my father was a freedom fighter. And the latest is these chains will be broken. A Palestinian Oh sorry, Palestinians stories of struggle and defiance in Israeli prisons, and we republish almost everything he writes at anti war calm as well. Welcome back to the show. Ramsey How you doing?

Ramzy Baroud 1:13
I’m doing great. Thank you for having me, Scott.

Scott Horton 1:15
Very happy to have you here. interesting piece. 100 years of shame. annexation of Palestine began in San Remo. Well, where’s San Remo?

Ramzy Baroud 1:29
Well, San Remo is this beautiful dreamy town at the northern Italy, the Italian Riviera. And it has, you know it, despite the fact that it’s a very beautiful place. It is associated with one of the most sinister agreements ever signed regarding, you know, kind of post World War when arrangements that took place between the victorious countries and the idea behind it is to divide the spoils of the Ottoman Empire to various countries and Iraq and Syria were divided between the British and the French respectively. When Palestine was given to the Zionists, you know, no questions asked. And now what is the difference between San Remo and the Balfour Declaration? I mean, those who are history buffs who you know know that in 1917 Britain has already given Palestine or promised to the Zionists if they are to help Britain during World War One, and they did. So why is sanremo a big deal? Well, because Balfour was a mere promise by a country that did not even occupy Palestine at the time. San Remo was the so called international community will their version of the international community at the time Their agreement in their confirmation that the Balfour declaration is valid. And therefore, Palestine goes to designers. And that was almost exactly 100 years ago. At the time Palestinians were promised as they argued in the article ever so polite, the requesting, you know, from the this new Israeli state designed the state to be kind to its Arab inhabitants, exactly like the Balfour Declaration had requested that the inhabitants of Palestine should not, you know, should still enjoy certain civil rights and, and so forth. And, of course, nobody actually followed up on that. I mean, that’s, you know, just it wasn’t really a political commitment of any kind. It was just a gesture, but the actual actual political diktat was for policy To be transferred gradually to the Zionist movement, a discussion about Palestine only happened later, when the British began realizing that they kind of made a promise that it was very difficult for them to sustain our governments at the time with all of the, you know, deficiencies and problems resisted that not so many people in the international community, especially in the south, you know, looked favorably on some faraway Empire to grant a piece of land that doesn’t belong to a to another nation. So they began thinking about, well, maybe we can find some sort of an arrangement that would kind of make everybody happy. So Israel, you know, which wasn’t yet Israel was granted about 55% of Palestine, the arable land, the fertile land, the costs Cities and all of this. And the Arabs were to be given about 45% mostly the desert towns NACA in the in the south. That goes a coastal area and and what is now the West Bank and a little bit more naturally, Palestinians protested they mean, if someone comes and takes over the United States and and gives it to some other country, and then they say, Well, I’m going to give a portion of that country to the local inhabitants, you’re going to still find it ridiculous. Even if 1% of your country is annexed and giving to someone else, you will find this outrageous. The sad thing is that mainstream historians who kind of saw history from an Israeli point of view, blame the the Palestinians or the Arabs at the time by saying, well, we missed this historic opportunity. They should have accepted it See there would have been a Palestinian state by now. And of course, this is just not accurate, historically. It’s not accurate at all in the sense that, number one, no one would have accepted that arrangement under any circumstance at the time. Palestinians did not realize honestly that the international community is so was so weak willed and that the Arabs would betrayed them and turn their backs on them to this extent, and nobody could read what the future is gonna hold the actual power of the Zionist movement. And but the other important aspect in all of this is the fact that

the this promised Jewish State really had no intention of ever honoring that Palestinian state. demarcation anyway. And the proof to that is well, aside from the fact that the kind of the leader said it out loud, you know, Ben Gurion and Bagan and these others, but more importantly is that when the war of 1948 happened when the British indeed their mandate, so called mandate over Palestine, designers forces that wing to kind of take over the large spaces that were assigned to them by Western powers. They took a lot more than that. Right? So they will delve deeply into this suppose it Palestinian state, and they took over. Now, another important thing is that there were all sorts of mechanisms that were there to ensure that that Jewish state is going to be ready for its new status. So there was an administrative system there was a government in waiting, the British were really helping designers achieve everything they needed to achieve training their military, their armies and so forth. So that they could actually within you know, a moment’s notice they, they they create a state Well, what did the Palestinians have nothing, no preparedness, no army, no administrative systems. So it was just Really, as we say, just ink on paper, it was never really meant to be utilized in any way. And you know what? I’m gonna be a little bit you know, generous and add a fourth point here and say let’s say that our ancestral leadership made this terrible mistake and say no, we don’t want 45% of Palestine and they should have accepted it. Let’s just go with that. I agree with you. We had 72 years, 72 years, the anniversary of the neck pay is gonna be, or the destruction of Palestine in 1948 is coming in a week. We had 72 years for that historical mistake to be corrected, and Palestinians have been begging for their independent state. And there are all sorts of international resolutions that are backing the request. How come there hasn’t been enough will in the international community to make that happen? After The passing of all of these years.

Scott Horton 9:03
Well, it’s worth mentioning too, as Sheldon Richmond wrote about in his book coming to Palestine about how designers in 48 made a secret deal with the King of Jordan, so that he would take the West Bank so that the Palestinians wouldn’t even have a chance to build a state of their own. That was the first major setback there.

Ramzy Baroud 9:24
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this this point, you know, if there was really ever any intentions of giving the message, why were you conspiring with Jordan and and, and creating the kind of scenario that would allow the state to never ever actualize? Yeah.

Scott Horton 9:44
Well, in the heart of it, you know, Gaza, for whatever reason is, I mean, just because of, I guess, the size of the land, and it’s, you know, separated apart from Jerusalem and all of that. It’s the West Bank that gets, you know, the primary attention as the possible place where a Palestinian state would exist in, you know, in, in conjunction with Gaza at some point or something. But the idea was that East Jerusalem would be the capital of it. And I know that you’ve argued that it’s way too late for that if there ever was a possibility that that possibility expired A long time ago. But now we have the so called deal of the century from Donald Trump and Jared Kushner. And we have the renewed Netanyahu government, in alliance with his primary opponent Benny dance and they’re agreed that it’s time to go ahead and start to even start, go ahead and annex another major proportion of the West Bank, the entire Jordan River Valley, and essentially all the land where there’s not already a Palestinian town. All of Area C, I think is to be transferred over to their sovereignty and so I guess you know, fill in the finer points of that, as you understand them, please. And then, you know, I tell us where does that leave us here?

Ramzy Baroud 11:10
Well, Scott, I mean, we understand that colonialism is essentially theft. I mean, we have all of these fancy terminologies, we used colonialism, the colonization, annexation, so forth and so on. It’s it’s, you know, someone taking someone else’s land and ethnically cleansing their people and, you know, murdering them if they resist imprisoning, torturing in the process. It’s really all about that piece of land. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s about the olive grove, the mountain that needs to be completely erased, and a road needs to be built, you know, access to natural resources, access to water. In the case of the West Bank, it’s really largely about the water because 30 of Israel’s water comes from the west. By Aqua fire, and so forth. So it’s really all about taking land away from Palestinians. Now, throughout the years, Israel has come up with all of these. And again, this is really not unique to Israel as a colonial power. It is something that old colonial powers have in common, which is constantly coming up with ideas of how do we take this land away from the people, but cleaning it in such a way that would allow us to do it, maybe in a polite fashion, or in a way that in our minds, at least, it’s defensible. So when they took over the West Bank in 1967, they said they were taking over the West Bank for strategic reasons. They were building settlements for strategic reasons. Then, eventually, when the Likud right wing party came to power in the late 70s. It became for religious and spiritual reasons, so they start taking over parts of Qalqilya To Kareem in the north, Janine, you know, so forth and so on Jericho, because of its proximity to Jordan, Israel has to be defensible. We need defense built, we need no go zones. We need no fire zones. We need military closed zones. And so and of course, areas were taken for natural expansion of the settlements, hey, our, our, our settlers, this illegal armed people who moved from Israel to the West Bank, I mean, they they breed, they have children, they have families, they have, you know, these families grow and therefore their needs, for housing, their need for agriculture, their need for water that grows as well. So they began expanding and so forth and so on. Now, this is the latest and in my opinion, one of the final strokes. That design is colonialist our project is trying to enact and that is annexation. So is no difference whatsoever, really in my mind between any of these pretenses, but annexation has this kind of slightly different quality, which is okay, I could add ons, I officially occupied. But now I need to translate this into something that I keep for good. So that’s, you know, essentially what annexation is it means it’s now part of my territory legally per my own law. Right. Um, annexation is something they have been talking about for many years. This precedes Netanyahu and Benny ganz and all of this. It just they never had the the right political environment that would allow them to do so US administration with with all of their prejudices and blind moral unconditional support for to Israel all these years. always kind of found the issue of annexation of the West Bank troubling. Yes, the annex two Wouldn’t when Israel annexed Jerusalem. They supported the Congress supported that the administration supported that, but they said we’re not gonna agree to it yet, until an overall peace agreement is reached between the Palestinians and the Israelis. So that kind of, you know, Jerusalem had this precarious status as far as they are concerned. But the West Bank, in particular, the various us administration’s kind of warned against what they call unilateral steps taken by any party, including Israel. So Israel continued to cement its occupation to build settlements using American money, mind you, but it has not yet officially annexed any part of the West Bank. Now, the fact that the US administration is telling Israel pompeyo said it out loud. He said, this is your business really more or less, you know, you want to annex you and it’s the timing is your timing and the schedule is yours. And the There is more or less consensus within Israel, that it’s time for annexation. Arabs are so busy with the terrible wars in Libya and and Syria and Yemen. The Saudis are giving the nod anyway, the Emiratis don’t really care. And these are the people with the money in the region. They are the people who are making things happen. In fact, they are normalizing with Israel during this time. And the person authority is then they have no money. They have no money, and they don’t have any political power really, aside from symbolic speeches and gestures that the United Nations. So what will happen? And here’s the question that the Israeli government has been asking itself, we have been wanting to do this for decades, and we will never ever have a better opportunity to annex than this Why shouldn’t we? So not only the right wing in Israel is believing in that but also the center and parts of the left saying, you know, it’s time it’s now or never So, when they talk about annexation, they are talking about over a third of the overall size of the West Bank and the entirety of the Jordan Valley. Some people are saying this could actually be the very final move of designers colonials project, I think, I think not. I think they will not be happy even to see Palestinians with this tiny, tiny pockets of population, they need to find a way to restrict their movements to create more or no go zones and so forth and so on. I think the ultimate aim of Zionism is the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine and this is actively happening anyway.

Scott Horton 17:39
Yeah now so I don’t know if you saw this thing by Daniel pipes noted right wing neoconservative Hawk who said that this is the wrong thing, because I guess, you know, wherever however he prioritizes it, you know, possessing Judah and Sue Marissa as they Call it is not so important to him what is important to him is keeping a Jewish superduper majority inside so called Israel proper 8020 or exactly whatever the percent is now and as he puts it sorry but this is inviting the enemy into the country by essentially expanding the border around them without expelling them and right so it’s a suicidal move from that point of view

Ramzy Baroud 18:31
right and I you know, Daniel pipes and I had our you know, thing in the past were his crazy organizations that attacked me and my work and then I surprise Yeah, as you know, he’s a notorious Zionist, but I found that article particularly interesting, Scott in the sense that I did not know that the nature of conflict within design is movement you know, regarding annexation and things to Palestine is actually that evolved in the sense that, yes, we want the land, but we don’t want the people that has always been the arrangement from 1948, even before 1940. I mean, not like Zion is colonialism started in 1948, too. So there’s been a lot of ethnic cleansing, a lot of conflicts and skirmishes that happened before that that particular date. Until today, there’s always been this issue that we annex, even if it’s a tiny little piece of land and a former family and somewhere in the northern West Spang You know, they’re not going to take his land and keep the guy in there, they take the land and they kick the family out. That’s how it works. And now you’re talking about annexation, and and and keeping the people and, and the reason that that part branch of Zionism is thinking this way is back to my point, because there is this golden opportunity to animals that might not be repeated, but annexation in you know, historically in In Israel Palestine happened or occupation or colonialism happened in a much more incremental way, if I want to take over something I need to make a plan 1015 2030 years in advance in order for me to kick the people out gradually, but, but Trump is not gonna be here forever, isn’t gonna be here for 30 years, how do I guarantee once Trump is, is gone, you know, at the end of the year or five years from now, that opportunity is still gonna be there. So I’m willing to make an exception. You know, I’m speaking as an attendee right now, I am willing to make an exception. I am going to annex and worry about ethnic cleansing later. Other signal No, you need to worry about ethnic cleansing now, and then annex data. And I think once that annexation happens, and I think it’s gonna happen, and I was, I made that argument even before the Israelis settled their own differences, that it will happen because from from the, you know, exploitative nature of Zionism, you just don’t miss this kind of opportunity. And there’s no resistance Unfortunately, on the part of the Palestinian leadership that is actually measurable and tangible in any way. So they will. But once that is settled, there is going to be the question, now we annexed, the ratio of the population changed, what they called the demographic bomb is now much bigger than it was before. So what do we do? Do these do these people become become voters? You know, I mean, they are already dealing with the issue that the joint list the unified our parties within Israel are now the third largest political force in the country. can they afford adding hundreds of thousands to that? You know, so what do you do with this situation? And I think once annexation happens, the conversation is going to start switching to population, what they call population transfer, you know, essentially ethnic cleansing.

Scott Horton 21:52
Yeah, so then the question is, did they build a railway and transfer the people of the West Bank to the Goddess strip or do they push them all to drown in the Jordan River or March them into the Sinai desert and claim that they belong to Egypt now, or what do you think?

Ramzy Baroud 22:11
Well, they I mean, they’ve done all of these things before, you know, more or less. I mean, there’s always been this consent process. And I

Scott Horton 22:17
guess there’s nobody to stop them from doing this. Right?

Ramzy Baroud 22:20
Right. This is what Elan Pepe referred to as incremental genocide. Israeli historian, excellent book, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. So this ethnic, that this incremental genocide has been happening for many, many years. So so will that be an option? Now? I think the are the main danger, in my opinion is for the for Israel to find that Palestinian who, you know, they could impose as the leader after Mahmoud Abbas dies, Mahmoud Abbas is in his mid 80s at this point. So, so the question is, can we find that Palestinian leader who is willing to To accept an Israel imposed arrangement, and kind of allow for so called population transfer to happen as part of a supposedly deal. I’m not really worried that the Palestinian people themselves are going to change their own perception of their own struggle. Because for them, it really doesn’t matter. In fact, in Palestine, the don’t even cook, they don’t even differentiate. We don’t have terminologies. I mean, yes, academically we do between colonialism, annexation, occupation, and so forth and so on. But in the everyday language that people use in the street is just Zionism, being Zionism and stealing their land. So as long as Palestinians continue to perceive that process, the same there is resistance is not going to change. But the real danger will normalization between Israel and Arab countries happen, continue to happen afoot and using and bribing certain Palestinians to be part of Have that arrangement? Could that change the formula for Israel? And and I think this is this is the, this is the issue to look for, in within the Palestinian context of the story.

Scott Horton 24:13
Yeah, I mean, they’d be crazy to try to do a big mass Paul Graham all at once, but I guess they could try to just piecemeal it out and say, well, we’re gonna consolidate the people from this town have to now move all to Hebron and then we’ll get to removing the people from Hebron later on that kind of thing.

Ramzy Baroud 24:31
Right and, and just that also reminds me of another thing, there is an there’s another method that they usually create in order for this to happen, or, because once you have a war, it becomes a lot easier to exact fundamental changes in this sort of thing. You know, demographic changes, ethnic cleansing, and nobody is actually paying attention to the ethnic cleansing. Everybody is talking about the war. So for example, in northern Syria, when Aleppo was being contested by the parties. Yeah, we spoke about the refugees, but it was almost like a side note, hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing all at once, it was a side note, everybody was actually talking about the word itself. So Israel is very good at creating this kind of, of conflicts and, and dictating the discourse. We know their relationship with American and other Western mainstream media, dictating the discourse and blaming it on Palestinian terrorists who are doing this and that, and then then when people are being pushed out, you know, it’s gonna be understood and written in in media and history, that, you know, these people were basically pushed out because of, you know, a war that was ignited by Palestinian terrorists. And so that’s another option. They are always very good at manufacturing, these fake conflicts out of nothing in order for them to achieve political ends. Yep.

Scott Horton 25:56
And, you know, as long as the American media especially is willing To go along with the framing that whatever the Israelis are doing is always on the defensive, then that’s the market that really matters.

Ramzy Baroud 26:08
Absolutely.

Scott Horton 26:09
Hey man, you guys are gonna love No dev no ops no ID by Hussein bodek Gianni it’s a fun and interesting read all about how to run your high tech company. Like a good libertarian should forget all the junk. Read no dev no Ops, no it by Hussein bodek Chani find it in the margin at Scott horton.org. Hey y’all, here’s the thing. Donate $100 to the Scott Horton show. And you can get a QR code commodity disc. As my gift to you. It’s a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back you take a picture of with your phone, and it gives you the instant spot price. And lets you know what that silver that ounces silver is worth on the market and Federal Reserve Notes in real time. It’s the future of currency. In the past to commodity discs.com, or just go to Scott Horton. org slash donate. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for expand design comm Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing, building and maintaining my sites. And they’ll do great work for you need a new website, go to expand designs comm slash Scott and say 500 bucks. So obviously worst case scenario seems to be, you know, the way things work around here a lot of the time, but then again, you know, the reason that people like pipes are so worried, right, is that I guess the, the idea is that before they can expel the Palestinians, they’ll have to give them rights first, that somehow if they really officially annexed all this territory, and officially you know, took the pretension of a someday two state solution off the table. once and for all. That Palestinians really could just demand equal rights and maybe the pressure would be on the Israelis to then let it be one state with equal rights instead of, you know, chauvinist Jewish state at the expense of the Palestinians there. So is there opportunity in this crisis, as Rahm Emanuel and Condoleezza Rice might say?

Ramzy Baroud 28:26
Well, so yeah, I mean, as a one state or someone who’s been advocating, you know, coexistence in one state, similar to the post apartheid South Africa model. Yes, of course, there is an opportunities point that we have been pushing for many years, that ultimately no matter what you’re doing Israel, you keep slicing up people and territories and areas and playing politics and doing all of this. At the end of the day. You are Israelis were Palestinians and we are still living in this area between the Jordan River And and the see, you know, no matter what kind of strange laws you keep manufacturing, to prolong the divisions, at the end of the day, we are still there and our numbers are growing and nothing you have done to dissuade us or to ethnically cleanse the land. It hasn’t changed. I mean to really think about it from, you know, just a recent political example the fact that our parties are the third largest force in the country, despite of everything that they have done despite the racist nation state law that defines Israel by its Jewishness and denies Palestinian rights and Arab culture and language and everything you still have the third largest political force in Israel Arab, it’s actually much larger than the Labour Party that essentially created Israel. It comes to show you that all of this nonsense is not gonna work. You can’t do it. It can’t be done. That you are gonna kick, you know, six, 7 million people out and take over their land, they keep coming back, they keep growing the heap. So this is not gonna happen. So of course, they’re not going to annex the West Bank in the Jordan Valley with this idea that, hey, maybe we should give them equal rights and, and give them a, you know, kind of make them part of the state, they will come up with all sorts of sinister ideas, you know, to make the demographics work for them. Right, but they will always fail, they will always fail because they have really failed when they had much greater opportunities to ethnic in 1948 alone, the ethnic cleansing 800,000 people and they still failed. You know, they can’t just go and dump a million Palestinians to do them. I mean, that’s not gonna happen at this point that the Jews, the Palestinians will not leave in the Jordanians will not take them. You know, they were hoping that Palestinians in Gaza would leave to Sinai and and and that did not happen. In fact, at one point, Palestinians were suffering so much under the siege and they were out of food and supplies. And then they managed to actually breach the wall between Gaza and, and and Egypt. And hundreds of thousands of people rush to Sinai. And people like me were watching is like, Oh my goodness, the Zionist plot has finally work to the push Gazans into Sinai. This happened few years ago. And guess what happened, they went and they shopped. They bought food and medicine. And every single person was counted for except of about 200 students who managed to get to Egypt and two other places to go to get to the university. So this generation has learned so much from the mistakes of the previous generations. Neither the Arabs will accept having that kind of new refugee crisis nor the Palestinians will even allow this to happen. So it’s really the goal is now in the Israeli record. They are going to continue to play you know, games with numbers and math. But eventually they will fail. They will fail because they have already done so for over 70

Scott Horton 32:05
years. All right, you guys that’s Ramsey brood. He said original.antiwar.com slash Ramsey dash brood, and of course at Palestine Chronicle calm his latest book is edited by him. It’s these chains will be broken Palestinian stories of struggle and defiance in Israeli prisons. Thank you very much again Ramsey.

Ramzy Baroud 32:29
Thank you for having me, Scott and keep up the good work man.

Scott Horton 32:32
The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, guys on the line, I’ve got the great Patrick Cockburn from the independent independent co.uk and the author of a bunch of great books including the age of jihad. Welcome back to the show, sir. How are you doing?

Patrick Cockburn 0:53
Great. Good to be back.

Scott Horton 0:55
Good. Good to talk to you. As always, Patrick. Very important article. hear about Iraq. Iraq will be hit harder by the oil price drop than by Coronavirus or ISIS. And so yeah, it sure is because of the lockdown worldwide here. The demand for oil has just fallen completely through the floor and for a country like Iraq, they’re just about entirely dependent on oil revenue to make everything go there, aren’t they?

Patrick Cockburn 1:28
Yeah, I mean, it’s, there’s really nothing else you go to the market, in Baghdad or anywhere else in the country. You know, you find that absolutely everything comes from elsewhere. You know, you want to buy an onion, you want to buy a watermelon, these comes from Iran or turkey or anything more sophisticated, you know, it’s sort of clothing, Turkey, you know, or from China or somewhere like that. There’s almost nothing produced locally. So we’ve got about 90% dependent on oil revenues. But I think what’s interesting also that this is in Iraq, this is, you know, it’s it’s dependent, but actually all the oil producers all the same, you know, Saudi Arabia, although they, they say that try to develop or have been trying to develop other economic activities, that completely dependent on oil. So if we’re looking at a long term collapse in the oil price, we’ve had collapses before, but nothing as radical as this unlikely to be as long as this, you know, this, we were I think we’re seeing I started change that in the 1970s we have the rise of the oil superpowers, you know, Saudi Arabia and the others, and that’s going to go into reverse.

Scott Horton 2:40
Yeah. Well, that really could lead to massive instability, as you said, not just in Iraq, but throughout the entire Gulf region, right.

Patrick Cockburn 2:50
Yeah, cuz these are states, you know, in some ways that different Iraq, Saudi Arabia, but they have some things in common that a big chunk of the population work or at least about paid by the government for about four and a half million people in Iraq. It’s the main source of employment. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, that’s what you want to do work for the government, but you may not do much work, but you get paid. If this is, you know, this cost a lot of money. So even in April in Iraq, I think they needed $5 billion to just meet salaries and pensions, that sort of stuff. And they got about, you know, $1.4 billion. Now, they got some reserves, but you run through those pretty fast if you’re, you know, if you’re just if the gap is that big between what you need and what you’re getting in terms of revenue.

Scott Horton 3:39
Yeah. Well, maybe they can just ask the Federal Reserve to create another trillion for them.

Patrick Cockburn 3:45
Well, you could do that. I mean, you could go out and borrow it, you know, and that’s what the oil producers will try to do. You know, they’ll sell assets overseas, but this will be true of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. You know, they’ll they’ll try to borrow you know, Then maybe you can do things like, you know, cut salaries, it’s a difficult and dangerous to cut jobs because that point you really start hitting people, but they could cut those talk at Baghdad, cutting salaries by 20 or 30%. That might happen. But you know, it’s a real, it’s a real bind. And particularly in Iraq, you know, we’ve had these very violent protests since last October. We’ve had about 700 dead and protesters killed and 15 20,000 wounded. Now that rather Abduh way at the beginning of the year with the the assassination of the Iranian General qasem soleimani by the West at Baghdad airport, and then we had of course, Coronavirus, curfews, but some of these protests are coming back. And a lot of these people are basically looking for jobs you know, and if they’re going to be noticed jobs for them, then that sort of protest is going to go on. So this is really stirring the pot in the Middle East, in general, but particularly in Iraq.

Scott Horton 5:10
And now when you talk about those protests from last fall, and that was in good times when the money was still coming in, right?

Patrick Cockburn 5:18
Yeah, it was, I mean, I was there the night they started, you know, it was complete surprise, though they’ve been demonstrations, actually for two or three years, but they weren’t, you know, they weren’t really getting off the ground and then the security forces and various paramilitaries opened up and killed first night killed 10 people then went on shooting people, but it was very much generated by this very violent reaction. I think it was probably pushed by Iran. Thinking that they were facing a velvet revolution against in Baghdad they weren’t and they sort of created the situation they wanted to avoid, but you know, There’s a restiveness you could see the same thing happening in Lebanon, potentially, you know, in a lot of other countries that one of the reasons these oil producers, you know, dictatorships, one of the reasons they’re stable, they’re quite a big chunk of the population has got a stake in the system and they find out not getting the money, then they don’t have that stake and they’ll react.

Scott Horton 6:22
Yeah, well, importantly, that protest movement was almost entirely among the Iraqi Shia, the super majority that if anybody’s represented by the Baghdad government, it would be them. I even read a thing where some Sudanese out in Fallujah, in the West, we’re saying, Hey, we’re sitting this one out, we don’t want the government to point the finger at us and blame us for being agitators or call us ISIS or anything. We’ll go ahead and let this movement go on. Kind of representing them but not directly in their name.

Patrick Cockburn 6:55
Exactly. It’s they, uh, you know, they had The the kind of supported it but they could see first of all if if the government if the government previous government was repressing it the sheer population that badly they thought what the hell will they do to us it’s gonna be a lot worse and it also won’t do us a lot of good because then the government will say, Oh, it’s all Islamic State it’s all diatribes it’s back in business support it very wisely they they sat that out you know, we’ve had things you know, the Iraq either tends to be leading the news agenda towards 24 seven You know, when Solomon he was shocked when, you know, when the US had 138,000 troops there, etc, or it completely disappears from the from the news agenda. A moment of course, practically everything’s disappeared from the news agenda and apart from Coronavirus, but there have been important changes there. We got a new government under Mustapha Academy. They’ve You know, this is sort of an attempt to have a new start in Iraq.

Scott Horton 8:12
We’ll talk a little bit more about that this guy, Mustafa all Academy. He’s not he’s the first prime minister to not be from the dollar party or the supreme Islamic Council, right?

Patrick Cockburn 8:25
I’m not sure. I don’t actually know if he was a member of Dawa. A wouldn’t be far off. He’s sort of, you know, one of the problems about rocky politics or commentary on rocky politics as people tend to sort of stereotype it of, at the moment, they’re saying based off our academy close to the US sort of secular liberal. Yeah, us I know, I know. I’m pretty well, it’s just a liberal minded guy, you know, but he’s very much a part of you know, the his sheer You know, long term opponent, militant opponent out of sight outside of saying, you know, nobody wants to stay in business in Iraqi politics can really be 100% identified with the US or indeed with Iran. You know that you need to cover all the bases, which he’ll do. You know, he’s just pretty smart guy. But you know, as everybody who’s ever tried to do it has discovered to their cost of rolling it wrong because it’s really difficult business. And this is a particularly so dark moment because there isn’t enough money.

Scott Horton 9:40
Yeah, he sure became prime minister had a bad time when everything is completely drying up like that, but I guess I had read that there were some in the American government who were looking at his appointment as a kind of victory for them. As you know, he was Less Iranian tide figure than some of the others or something like that. Is that just unwarranted optimism on their part?

Patrick Cockburn 10:07
Oh, you see, you know, he’s quite close to them. He was in London. I think he’s a British a rocky citizen. He lived in London for a long time. The but I think that probably the way the Iranians look at it is they want the shear block to remain in power. And that he is a share from that block. That’s the most important thing for them to remain in power in Baghdad. Then anybody who wants to do that has to have relations with the US and Iran, even if they keep quiet about it. So you see, the current President byram Sunday used to be the one of the Kurdish representatives in Washington speaks very good English was always associated, but the US But it was the Iranians who okayed him as President, somewhat to people’s surprise, because they weren’t, you know, they want to from his point of view, if you’re going to have that sort of position, then you got to have relations with Tehran and Washington. You may try and sort of keep it a little undercover, but you’ll have to do that. So that’s true of the Academy, the new prime minister as well. So it’s, you know, it’s a shear block he’s just reappointed and important. General call out Abdul Wahab Sadie he was one of the guys who recaptured proposal, but again, harmony is a shear general. The so you know, there isn’t going to be a great shift. I think what they’ll try to do is not have a right Continue to be the arena in which the US and Iran confront each other. The but I don’t think you’ll see them switching radically against Iran or vice versa. They also want to get us troops out. But although sort of fairly friendly basis.

Scott Horton 12:24
Well, yeah. Now So speaking of which, in terms of American tensions with Iran in Iraq, the latest was just a few weeks ago, there was another rocket attack or two on American bases, allegedly by Shiite militias. In the news here was that Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, was urging Trump to attack Iran over it. And he said no, based on the public relations aspect that he thought it would look too bad to do that when Iran was in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis. There, but looks like there’s still a danger of, of blows in Iraq escalating into war with Iran there. What do you think is the current level of attention?

Patrick Cockburn 13:13
Well, it’s thought, you know, that’s the problem with the Trump administration, you know, that Trump has and you know, Trump has not actually started a war and certainly not with Iran since he you know, in the years he’s been in the white house but the guys around him don’t necessarily think like that. Someone always feels at some point they may do something which could provoke them though they they they might not necessarily wanted but you know, who know you know, these guys are very crazy, you know, I mean, pay they don’t know anything much about Iraq or Iran. So be quite easy for them to go over the edge. You know, we almost saw them at the beginning of the week. Solomon, he was assassinated. And then we had this rather remarkable thing of Iran, you know, firing missiles at us basis and the US doing nothing about it, except deny anybody who was hurt, which turns out to be not true, you know, but is it struck me at the time that nobody seemed very astonished that you were you had the Iranians actually sort of sending missiles rather accurately into us basis and the US sort of, you know, what are the White House says, well, it doesn’t really matter, right. You know, they could escalate things. It’s so sort of quirky. The iraq case we’ll try to avoid that happening. Coronavirus, probably made it more make it more difficult to do.

Scott Horton 14:48
Apparently the general in charge of the Iraq War sent a memo back to DC saying we cannot do this would be picking a fight with our friends in the Iraqi army.

Patrick Cockburn 15:01
Yeah, it’s just quite easy to make a misstep, you know that, you know, the this general who’s been appointed head of the counterterrorism service whose dismissal camp just before the riot started last year and they’ve been connected with the with the is back. You know, the thing is I pro American general but it’s really not as simple as that the pattern of Iraqi policy politics is and has always been that you have lots of centers of power in Iraq. And it’s always a mistake to Trump any of them out of business because if you do, bad we’ll come back at you when they’ll unite with other centers of power. So I don’t think that Iraq or change its position very much. On the other hand, it needs the EU or the US has just renewed 120 day waiver to getting for era To get electricity and gas from, from Iran, which needs to keep the lights on. But while they’re always waiting for them to, you know, to sort of slightly to overstep the mark. And that could happen and Iraq itself, you know what it can do about the shortage of money we’ll probably borrow. It has some reserves, but these, you know, that it’s being squeezed. And it’s gonna, this is gonna be long term, you know, it’s devoted to the price of oil come back in recent days, but just in the longer term, you know, presumably, what’s going to see not see people use as much gasoline,

Scott Horton 16:41
hold on just one second, be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from amazon.com. Well, that makes sense. They bring it right to your house. So what you do though, is click through from the link in the right hand margin at Scott Horton. org, and I’ll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon’s into the sale won’t cost you a thing. Nice little way to help support this Show. Again, that’s right there in the margin at Scott Horton. org. Hey, I’ll check it out the libertarian Institute. That’s me and my friends have published three great books this year. First is no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Greg. He was the best one of us. Now he’s gone. But this great collection is a truly fitting legacy for his fight for freedom. I know you’ll love it. Then there’s coming to Palestine by the great Sheldon Richmond. It’s a collection of 40 important essays. He’s written over the years about the truth behind the Israel Palestine conflict. You’ll learn so much and highly valued this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation. And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show, interviews 2004 through 2019 interview transcripts of all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years on all the wars, money taxes, the police state and more. So how do you like that? Pretty good. Right. Find them all at libertarian Institute.org/books. You need stickers for your band your business. Will Rick and the guys over at the bumpersticker.com have got you covered great work, great prices, sticky things with things printed on them. Whatever you need the bumpersticker.com we’ll get it done right for you, the bumper sticker.com.

But now, so what’s the state of the Sunni based insurgency in the western part of the country? I mentioned US troops getting attacked by Shiite militias that their base is there, but they’re at those bases to fight with those Shiite militias against the Sunni militias. What’s left to the Islamic State? Right.

Patrick Cockburn 18:43
Yeah, and also support the position in Syria, across the border and in eastern Syria. Um, I think it’s a bit exaggerated, you know, it makes a good headline to say you know, ISIS back in business, too. Back in business, because people you know, at its height, ISIS dominated the news agenda, you know, for long periods. You know, they did deliberately through their atrocities but, you know, the Islamic states, like the the caliphate that they declared in 2014, when they captured Mosul and held most of western Iraq in eastern Syria, you know, that’s gone. You know, they have they, they have militants around their attacks in north and west of Baghdad. There’s a bit of a uptick in these recently, but these are generally pretty small compared to what we used to see. You know, it’ll be an attack or an ad post attack on a convoy you know, 4678 910 dead, but not least, there are multiple attacks we used to see a few years ago People say Haha, but it’s like 2014 they’ll come back in the same way. Not really, to my mind. ISIS, you know, they’re dependent on having the element of surprise. They depended on having a power vacuum in eastern Syria because the Syrian government did with drone, Syria was in in turmoil because of the civil Civil War. That was in Iraq, that beat a sort of civil big civil discontent by the Sony. So it doesn’t have power vacuum to fail. And also ISIS was defeated. You know, that one point, you know, these guys claimed that God was with them, and they were wanting bringing these wonderful about Napoleonic victories that isn’t happening anymore. So it’s significant, but it’s not happening. You know, it’s not sort of ISIS coming back in the way stead and it can be very difficult to to do that.

Scott Horton 20:56
Well, and so speaking of which, I mean, at this point, serious side when it just comes down to the fight against what’s left of the Islamic State insurgency there in Iraq. Could the Americans just leave and leave it to the Iraqi army and the Shiite militias to handle what’s left of the problem there?

Patrick Cockburn 21:18
It probably could have been the crucial thing has always been with the US presidency. presence is our PA. You know, this is a big area to control from the Iraqi point of view or the across the border where the Syrian Kurds are, and the strength is built to call in the US Air Force. But even if they couldn’t do that, I doubt it would change things against them, but it wouldn’t change things decisively. The so you know, so they’re still there. They have people Heidi eyes on the desert. They have air is, you know, deserted villages the, you know, there are a lot of refugees they can recruit from, I mean sone refugees, but they don’t have a, you know, one point that genuine popular support and a semi Sonic community. I don’t think they have that anymore. Party plus people know what happened last time and don’t want to suffer another defeat. So I don’t know. Sorry. It’s a long way around to answer your question, but the answer is Yeah. It wouldn’t decisively change things if the US totally withdrew, but it would be make their life easier for ISIS if they weren’t under attack, though, Todd. Yeah.

Scott Horton 22:39
And now, are the Kurdish Peshmerga still involved in that fight or not?

Patrick Cockburn 22:45
who say they are in Iraq, the Peshmerga never been in you know, they always sort of talk a big game but there’ll be that much involved. You know, the, somebody knew a lot about them referendum. always used to call them no you can call them Peshmerga call them the Peshmerga, you know, no, actually did that amount of fighting the PKK Well, no, don’t call themself PKK. But the civil YPD in eastern Syria, the Kurdish fighters, they’re there. They’re much more formidable army. They’re they do a lot of fighting and tough. But there’s a contrast between the Kurds in northern Syria and northern Iraq.

Scott Horton 23:27
And now, Well, speaking of which, on the Syrian side of the border there. The Americans are still occupying the oil fields, and who are they keeping out the Syrian government? Or are there any ISIS types? Do they still have to fight?

Patrick Cockburn 23:43
Well, I just would like to get back there. I mean, the Kurds have the oil, there’s a big sort of black market in oil there. Well, it’s very visible. I mean, I suddenly sometimes read stuff in the papers saying, you know, oil is being smuggled from those areas and they have the oil They’re, but they don’t have a refinery. So if you want to get it refined, a lot of it goes to a whomps refinery in it’s in government held territory. So, a lot of the cut of soil then goes to outside government held territory goes to the refinery there that then comes back. And both sides benefit. You know, you sometimes see see this referred to as smuggling black sheep stand on the main road. Just the on the afraid it doesn’t the other Euphrates there I would have done you know that there’s a continual stream of oil tankers coming backwards and forwards. There’s no attempt to conceal this. A lot of that stuff goes into Iraq to is refined in the Kurdish area. That always happened you know, there’s a sort of, there are enormous black economy in both coutries.

Scott Horton 24:57
Well, and also as long as we’re on serious Do what’s the status of the conflict in the Iliad province at this point?

Patrick Cockburn 25:06
Well, you know, it’s quieted down there you don’t have a government offensive like before, after sort of one more agreement between Turkey and Russia. The rebels natively have lost quite a lot of territory. You like a very badly hammered by Syrian Russian Air Forces. The but it’s sort of quieted down. I imagine that asset feels that he can sort of have a sort of salami tactics whatever things allow him to do so he can sort of chop off a bit more of it. The bit that remains is more and more under Turkish control. Although the higher Tyrion of sharm which is used to be called El nostra, which used to be says now it has no links to al Qaeda but who knows. But then more and more squeezed And I think less and less sort of interest in the West and keeping them going. Sad, you know, severe sanctions. But being a very firmly in power, some inviting at the top in Damascus, between within the top of the regime, but that probably reflects the fact that they don’t feel under pressure as they used to. Yeah, yeah. The, but nothing quite settled, you know, you never quite you know, the many mistakes of the US and the western in Syria was to think, you know, okay, we don’t quite want our side to lose and ISIS to win the lottery fundamental is to win. That’s bad news for us, but we don’t want it to win. So, you know, we’ll basically let this go on. You know, what came out of it? Well, that’s one of the reasons that ISIS developed, you know, is Allowing the war to go on there. That’s one of the reasons why, you know, you ended up with so many refugees not going home and going into Europe, you know, which had big political effects in Europe. So, it seems to me like making the same mistake as before thinking that you can have Syria sort of gripped by a sort of permanent crisis and war. And that doesn’t matter. The lesson in the past is that very nasty things come out oo that.

Scott Horton 27:29
Yeah, yeah. Well, what I mean, it seems like for the Turks part, they didn’t too much mind all the nasty parts coming out of back in the jihadist, but at this point, when the war is essentially over, what motive Does everyone have to continue to keep the on those guys in play there?

Patrick Cockburn 27:51
Well, he sort of, it’s one of the cards they’ve got, you know that they control that bit of northern Syria. He’s always you know, across the border against the Syrian Kurds, which is what he’s really concerned about. Turkey wants to be a player there. But I agree, they don’t get that much out of it. You know, it’s uh, it’s, they’re involved in that particular mess. And maybe they’re advanced again, you know, they’re practicing ethnic cleansing and part of driving out the Kurds in different parts of northern Syria, or replacing them with refugees from Damascus and elsewhere. You know, it’s a messy, nasty situation. Again, it’s something that disappears off the world’s political radar for long periods, even more so this these days because of the COVID-19 and then suddenly you have a big explosion and people say are we’re about to go to war, you know, like you do when you live Turkish invasion last year. You know, lots of nasty things can come out of this. Yeah. I think it’s slightly more likely because the attention of the world is sort of diverted else where.

Scott Horton 29:13
Yeah. Well, there certainly be plenty of attention if it was Assad that was back in Al Qaeda and it lib province instead of Aaron Juan.

Patrick Cockburn 29:21
You betcha. Yeah. And then, you know, you just feel that sort of compel, you know, this sort of, at some point, look, crackpots will do something that will, you know, lead to a more general conflict.

Scott Horton 29:36
Yeah. I think that’s really right about the crackpot angle there. You know, when I mentioned that kind of memo back that the general in Iraq had written about the danger of fighting the Shiite militias there. It seemed like he was really taking the opportunity to teach them who were the shirts and who are the skins and, and which side were on over there and what it would be For us to pick a fight with the side we’ve been allied with all this time, and that he seemed to understand that pompeyo and probably Trump did not understand who’s on whose side over there and what it would mean for them to turn the war against the Shia. And so he had to kind of teach them the one on one on the situation.

Patrick Cockburn 30:20
Yeah, I think so. The, you know, the Iranians, usually in Iraq War, or the US or Iran or some other foreign powers gets overconfident never plays their hand. The Iranians last year over playing their hand soleimani appears to be the guy responsible for the very violent repression of the of the Shia protesters, which was, you know, catastrophic from the Iranian point of view, because Iraq has blamed Iran for all these, you know, on a project desktops are being dumbed down. That’s an apt away at the moment. The so it may be that, you know, things will get a bit quieter. But do you know this? Every so often, the White House decides to pump up the confrontation with Iran. And that could happen at any moment. Again, you know, and the Iranian if you push the Iranians, then the Iranians probably getting a little bit of confidence back, you know, they could attack elsewhere like they did last year, when they attack the Saudi oil industry. You know, it’s still the temperatures still very high there. And it could, could sort of detonate something at almost any moment.

Scott Horton 31:51
Yeah. Well, and there’s been all these riots breaking out in Lebanon over the financial crisis there and others Don’t know whether they have the same, you know, currency problems in Iraq and Syria. But as we’re talking about here, they’re going to all have one sort of financial crisis or another here, when the whole world is going through one and they are such oil centric economies or I don’t know about Syria. I know they rely somewhat on oil. But they’re all going to be hit pretty hard by this thing. They already are. Right?

Patrick Cockburn 32:28
Yeah, I mean, you know, these are one way to think about these oil states. They’re big likes or Tammany Hall, you know, they, uh, they, they provide you know, everybody knows about how corrupt they are at the top you know, lots of money stolen by the the guys at the very top but then below that, you know, you have millions of people who have well paid jobs in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai or somewhere Abu Dhabi, they don’t do it, they don’t do much. And that gives us sort of stability to these places. Even with all these protests in Iraq last year, you know, you you had people who a lot of people who’ve got decent jobs, they weren’t protesting, whereas they’re decent jobs they got paid. The problem by these oil producers is that if you can get a job with the government, you know, that’s fine. And you can do that. And if you belong to the Right Sector feel shear if you belong to the right political party, ministry, government ministries tend to be the sort of cash cause of different political movements. So you’ll find if you’re bogged in there, but if you aren’t, then you’re nowhere you’ve got a real before these protested outside the foreign ministry, I found guys there who has had that so they were in a camp and they’d been on a hunger strike of who failed to wants to get jobs. The Foreign Ministry, that was one mind. And, you know, if you don’t have the right connections, you don’t have to have that job. You know, you will be unemployed for decades during your life. And that’s one of the things that tests is this sort of desperate need for jobs which the government just can’t provide. And it’s going to be, I think the new government and Academy will be, you know, these are pretty smart guys, new finance ministers pretty good and so forth. But you know, at the end of the day, if the money isn’t there, it isn’t there, you know, so a problem. They’re facing a real problem.

Scott Horton 34:37
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for the time again on the show, Patrick, always great insight.

Patrick Cockburn 34:44
Good to talk to you. All the best.

Scott Horton 34:45
All right, you guys that is the great Patrick Cockburn from the independent that’s independent.co.uk and also is the author of the rise of Islamic State chaos and Caliphate the age of Jihad and many other great books as well. The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA APSradio.com antiwar.com scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org.

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. Okay, you guys on the line, I’ve got Aaron Mehta from defensenews.com Welcome to the show. How you doing, Aaron?

Aaron Mehta 0:48
I’m good Scott. Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 0:50
Happy to have you here. I love this subject. We’ve been covering this thing for years and years here. unresolved issues in the F 35. Will they ever be resolve says here five f 35 issues have been downgraded, but remain unsolved. A piece with let me mention your co authors here, Valerie in cinah. And David B larder and Valerie incentive had done this huge piece last year, I guess, about a year ago. All about that. 35 there for defense news that’s also worth looking at for sure. So I guess let’s go through it. First of all, what does it mean? That it these issues have been downgraded from what category two what here?

Aaron Mehta 1:38
Yeah, sure. So just a brief history. As you mentioned, my colleague Bao last year got a hold of some previously somewhat classified as fo Yo, which isn’t legally classified, but basically means we don’t want to have to tell people about these stuff. documents that basically laid out what are called category one deficiency For the F 35, that’s defined essentially, issues that could cause death, for the pilot can cause loss of damage to the airplane, basically means you can’t operate the thing in combat, or be able to perform. And it’s actually the missions it’s supposed to do. Basically, category one is bad. So that we found that there were 13 of these things time. And so this would have been covering through the end of 2018. So we did a big project on that, as I mentioned, and kind of ran through each of those individual issues. And finally in April managed to get follow up basically say, hey, you had these 13 issues, what’s going on? What we were told is five of those problems were basically closed out, they solved them, they’re not considered issues anymore. Three of those issues remain open and they’re still working on those, although at least one of them they’ve just kind of thrown their hands up and said, Hey, we’re gonna have to live with this. There are four new ones, which we as of right now, don’t know what those actually are, though. We’re certainly hoping to find out. And then there were five that had been switched to category two considered going from category one to category two deficiencies. Essentially what that means is, these are issues that we know we need to just kind of keep an eye on, but we don’t think they’re going to actually impact mission, we don’t feel there’s real a chance of loss of life or loss of plane. They’re just issues that we’re aware of. And we’re gonna keep an eye on and we think we’ve mostly fixed. Now, some experts have argued, good government experts say, look, it’s pretty easy for a program office, like the one that runs the F 35. To say, hey, this was a category one, we did something now it’s category two, we’re not worried about it. It’s kind of wishy washy how they classify these things. And that’s why we felt it was still important to highlight that, yes, these were brought from cat one to cat two, which is an improvement on paper, but they’re things worth keeping an eye on as

Scott Horton 3:54
well. So one thing that jumped out at me and I’m not exactly sure if I understood this right, but this severe kind of One problem where if they pull up 20 degrees, they lose control of the plane. And, and which that’s not even, you know, they shouldn’t even stall at 20. But now sudden they’ve lost their yaw and whatever other controls, and this is the kind of maneuver that they would definitely have to do if they were ever in a dogfight. It sounded like their explanation of how they solve that problem was they said, Well, we made a software improvement, that it was kind of weird language, but it read as though they were saying, you won’t have to pull up to 20 degrees anymore. We’ve made your lateral turning abilities greater. So you won’t have to pull up to 20 degrees, which will cause you to lose controls like this. Did I read that? Right? And did you have that part too?

Aaron Mehta 4:50
Yeah, you know, so this is this is why the category one versus category two thing gets kind of wishy washy, right is you know, do they actually solve the issue of being able to do that Not really, they basically created a workaround saying, Well, if we do this, then you won’t have to do the 20 degree change, as you mentioned. That’s great in theory, you know, pilots have said, Look, if you’re in a dogfight with these things anyway, like, that’s, you’re gonna have to do what you have to do, you’re not going to say, Oh, well, I know I can’t do the 20 degree, I got to go laterally instead and do this maneuver, instead. No pilot in that situation is thinking in that way. It’s just got to react got to do what you got to do. And so yeah, that’s one of those things where, yes, it is technically improved. They did kind of come up with a workaround solution. Did it actually solve the problem? I think your reading is right. It leaves a lot of questions about that. You know, that’s one of the things where the F 35 is kind of a weird plane in that you know, we always think of fighter jets as being designed for dogfighting Top Gun stuff, that type of thing. And proponents of the F 35 people who flat out say, you know, look if we ever get in a situation where we’re actually in a dogfight something has gone really, really wrong because the core concept of Dec 35 is that way before an enemy can see you and since you you’ve been able to see him since him and shoot him down. So people will say, hey, this, you know, when we did our original story about this particular issue, we talked to some people from the F 35. side and they said, Look, this isn’t really a huge issue because you’re never gonna be a dogfight, then you talk to Navy pilots to say, That’s great in theory, but I don’t want to ever be in a dogfight and find out that I can go 20 degrees up and down. So it’s it’s it’s kind of this weird issue where one side says it shouldn’t be an issue, but we’ll put in this fix and there’s head says, that’s really not that comforting.

Scott Horton 6:40
Yeah. Well, and you know, I wasn’t there anything but that sure sounds like after the fact excuse that Well, the thing can’t dog fight, so we’ll just say it never was supposed to Anyway, when well say

Aaron Mehta 6:55
on that front, it’s To be fair, the other five the idea, this goes back here. Because the F 35 was awarded, it’s actually crazy to think about. They awarded the contract for Lockheed Martin to make this plane a month after 911. It was middle of October 2001. That’s how old this thing is. They’re still going through some of the testing and developing it famously messed up in the first decade plus the program. Really, with the development, a lot of issues. One of the things that happened along there was that in 2009, Bob Gates, who has been Secretary of Defense has started a secretary fence under bush and then stayed on under Obama was looking at the budgets and basically said to the airforce Look, this f 22 plane, which is designed to be the dogfighting plane. looks great, but f 35 was our future fighter in production and F 22 and focus on F 35. That was not a popular decision in the Air Force at the time and remains controversial among pilots still to this day. But ultimately the plan had been when they first were developing the F 35 that fit To be the dogfighting plane f 35. We’re never getting near other enemy planes. Now the F 35 has to fill up both roles because there just aren’t enough f 20 twos. Again, that’s kind of the argument you’ll get from people to say, hey, this thing was never designed to be that way. If you’re a pilot now, you’re saying, hey, for at least the last decade, we’ve known this thing could end up in a dogfight. So what are we doing about it?

Scott Horton 8:20
Yeah, now? Well, so in all your coverage of this thing. I guess there’s a couple of points of view I’ve seen about this. There are some that say this thing is just the Edsel. It’s supposed to be a Lamborghini. And it’s just nothing but a piece of junk. And it’s never going to be anything but a piece of junk. And there are others who say, No, no, no, it has a trillion dollars worth of problems with it. Sure. But if you throw a trillion dollars at it, those problems will be resolved one by one, and eventually we’ll end up with a really great plane here. Where do you fall on that spectrum?

Aaron Mehta 8:52
I’m probably somewhere in the middle. I mean, look, the first you almost have to look at the F 35 program as two different programs the first decade was an incredible example of mismanagement and cost overruns. mismanagement both from the Pentagon and from the contractors primarily Lockheed Martin is the the main contractor but it has many subcontractors. You could argue the core design idea of the F 35 was flawed, which is that it was going to be one plane with three variants, one for the airforce one for the Navy one for the Marines. And you have this way of all the parts of common everything be simple and just be slightly different systems ended up not being that way the marine f 35 b which is the STOVL variant. So basically it can land kind of flat down. It’s something I believe it’s less than 30% common with the F 35. A, which is the main model used by the Air Force. So the core concept the F 35, kind of go with Doom with bringing that version in. All that said in 2012, kind of new leadership came in at the Pentagon writing this Office. This guy Chris ballgames in general for the Air Force took over the program. And the very first thing he did was to very publicly light up Lockheed Martin and say, we can’t trust these people. I don’t want to work with these people. They’re awful we’re gonna have to figure something out. And that scared a lot of people into actually making some fixes. Locky sacked its leadership brought in new leadership on this particular program. And there was some movement there for a couple of years now the relationship has kind of gotten back to normal. That was normal. But there’s been more tension in the last couple years and there were fears point being the first decade this program is basically last time. Yes, they were developing the plane. Yes, they were producing early crafts, but the number of planes was very small is produced. There were a ton of issues with them, some of which are still being impacted today. And it was way overpriced and way behind schedule. It’s improved since that kind of 2011 2012 timeframe. But yeah, there’s still a very legacy of a lot of issues. And the truth is some of these issues just aren’t going to get fixed because they’re too fundamentally baked into the design of plans.

Scott Horton 11:06
Yeah. Such as a single engine isn’t powerful enough to push a plane that heavy as fast as it needs to go to accomplish its missions. Right. What are you going to do other than start all over again and design double engine jet?

Aaron Mehta 11:21
Yeah, and he talked about, there’s been four years talks about trying to develop a second engine, a competitor engine. That just hasn’t happened. Now. The services are working on future engine concepts that they say could potentially flow back into the F 35. But those are seeing more as technology demonstrators are working really towards whatever the next fighter jet to me.

Scott Horton 11:44
So pure spray. I guess that’s how you say it. The guy that designed the F 16. He gave an interview to this Canadian broadcaster, it’d be a few years ago now. But he said listen, the reality is and this is just It’s true. It’s not the way they talk about it usually. But the F 35 is, in fact perfect for its mission, because its true mission is to separate the American people from their money. And that this is a jobs program for Lockheed, and especially for their executive vice presidents and their stockholders. And we’re the fool, and they’re parting us from our dollars. And that’s the reason why it’s not fast. It’s not stealth, it can’t climb, it can’t turn it can’t dog fight, it can’t carry more than two missiles at a time. It can’t do anything worth a damn if you eject the helmet will break your head right off your shoulders, and on and on down the list. Because it’s not really supposed to be used in a war. It’s supposed to be used just to continue on as this Make Work Project for this major company. And so say at the guy that designed the F 15 and the F 16.

Aaron Mehta 13:00
Yeah, I mean, I know Pierre certainly covered him my time covering the airforce. He’s a legend in the field. He’s also I think it’s fair to say on the more cynical side of these things. Look, the F 35. Do I think, again, especially in that first decade, where there are a lot of people who figured, hey, there’s a war on terror going on, the budgets are just going up, up up, and nobody notices if this thing takes longer than it should and cost more than it should? Because it’ll be okay. Absolutely. There’s, the reality is you can’t really say that. That said, I do think again, kind of in the second decade of his life, there are people who are trying to make this thing work and we’ve seen it be used in operations. The Israelis have been using it for I believe, almost 18 months now in combat operations and everything we’ve heard from them is they’re really happy with how it’s operating. You’ve seen a number of partners around the world, buying it number of who would like to buy it, but we aren’t selling to this point in the Middle East. It’s an expensive plane the fact that partner made Continue to say, Hey, this is the plan that we want to buy, I think does show that there is at least things they’re seeing and belief that this is a good product that said again, is it ever going to be what they promised? Which is the cure all claim for all missions? No, is never going to be a great dogfighting plane? I don’t think so. What is probably always going to be best at is something that stands off from, you know, an enemy has long distance sensors and radars and some black technology that’s never really been made public and some stealth capabilities and can launch weapons and fill that mission. That’s a useful mission for the military. Is it the mission that the main really the way it’s designed to be the only fire that we would have for three decades is supposed to fill? I think that leaves a lot of gaps and you’re starting to see the Air Force in particular, saying Okay, we got to figure out how to fill some of these gaps left over by the F 35. In terms of the industrial participation, zero question very early. On the strategy for this plane from Lockheed Martin was, hey, let’s get pieces made into every state. Let’s make sure that every place has some sort of industrial participation so that it’s basically politically impossible to kill this thing. If you go to F 35 comm which is Lucky’s main site, they have a map and it says there’s 42 jobs in this state 52 jobs in the state and 3000 jobs and this one impacted by the F 35. Some of those numbers are iffy, but it’s a good argument that they can make to members Congress saying I believe it’s every state minus two has some part of the F 35. That’s not even getting into the international participation, which is a big part of the industrial plan, where countries all over the globe make parts of this and have workshare to also encourage them to keep buying it. So yeah, 100% Industrial strategy was built in from the beginning to basically make this thing impervious to being killed.

Scott Horton 15:54
Yeah. And which is all funny because it’s just a simple case of the scene versus the unseen. When this money’s going into this jet, it’s not really going anywhere else. Whereas if the money was being invested in producing actual goods and services for the free economy, that would actually be, you know, productive for the gross domestic product and all this, this thing is more like a black hole, you just keep shoving money in to no effect at all, other than the people who are directly getting it. But, you know, that’s 150 year old lesson in economics that nobody’s learned since then, I guess.

Aaron Mehta 16:31
Yeah, you could, you could say that for probably every product that the Defense Department spends money on, and they certainly spend their money on a lot.

Scott Horton 16:39
Yep. Hey, I’ll check it out. The libertarian Institute. That’s me and my friends have published three great books this year. First is no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Greg. He was the best one of us. Now he’s gone. But this great collection is a truly fitting legacy for his fight for freedom. I know you’ll love it. Then there’s coming to palace. By the great Sheldon Richmond. It’s a collection of 40 important essays he’s written over the years about the truth behind the Israel Palestine conflict. You’ll learn so much and highly valued this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation. And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show, interviews 2004 through 2019, interview transcripts of all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years, on all the wars, money taxes, the police state and more. So how do you like that? Pretty good, right? Find them all at libertarian institute.org slash books. Hey, you guys may know I’m involved in some libertarian party politics this year, but you can’t hear or read about that at the libertarian Institute due to 501 c three rules and such. So make sure to sign up for the interviews feed at Scott Horton. org and keep an eye on my blog at Scott Horton. org slash stress Hey y’all Scott here if you want to real education in history and economics you should check out Tom Woods is Liberty classroom. Tom and a really great group of professors and experts have put together an entire education of everything they didn’t teach you in school but should have follow through from the link in the margin at Scott Horton org for Tom Woods his Liberty classroom and now so when you talk about Okay, so it’s not going to be a dog fighter and okay maybe it can’t go supersonic without catching on fire and all this but but it could be useful as a standoff weapon. What exactly does that mean? That means long range air to air missiles for taking out enemy bombers or that means delivering nuclear tipped cruise missiles to targets or what exactly you’re talking about there.

Aaron Mehta 18:49
Yeah, so kind of all of the above so try to not get too technical with this, which can happen even cover this stuff for years now. Basically, The core of the F 35 is you know, we think of it as a stealth fighter, right? That’s a simple concept to understand you can’t see it, it gets in it can shoot your guys, what really, people who have dealt with the F 35 program in depth say consistently is the thing that really is cool about this plane is actually the suite of sensors and like radars and Joint Information Sharing on the planes, so one plane can be miles away from the other. And actually, they can create a like a digital map of everything that they’re seeing between the two of them to get more information. So people say it’s actually one of the best kind of Intel gathering systems that we have. So then you compare that with long range weapons. So in the case theory is an enemy plane is coming out. You see it long before they see you if you’re an F 35. And then you can trigger your weapon you’ve got a long range missile, which can hit them take them out accurately, before they’re even aware that you’re in the area. The other argument is against stealth capabilities, it should be able to penetrate into an enemy’s airspace, although there’s now a lot of questions about, particularly with China has several advanced air defense systems and there are some people who are arguing Look, the F 35 capability isn’t actually gonna be able to survive these systems. Because we designed the stealth capability for a 2005 2006 situation, that’s just not where China’s at anymore. In those cases, again, the argument is, well, you put long range weapons on it, and you you have it kind of hanging around and firing. There’s been talk about using it for missile defense capabilities, the Pentagon is something that they’re looking at is the idea of, you could put a bunch of three fives in the year North Korea, and if they try to launch a missile, you could actually kinetically strike it. While it’s just the very early stages. You also see a lot of people talking about, again, the sensors and information gathering, maybe there’s a way that they should be filling more of that role. If it sounds like there’s a lot of Have people looking for ways to use the f 35? It may be ways that wouldn’t obviously be the one that you first think about. That’s absolutely the case. People are saying, look, we got to figure out what to do with these things, and how to use them in a kind of current world operation. A lot of this just goes back to the fact this thing was first planned out in 2001, which means that the requirements for it from the Pentagon go back to 1998 1999. The world was a different place, the US was the only true great power, even chosen one. We spent the next decade bombing people with no real air defenses. The China’s situation in the meantime, China and Russia both invested heavily in their air defenses, particularly China took a major leap, Russia as the 400, which you’ve probably heard a lot about, which is also capable, and us kind of wasn’t paying attention to what those countries were doing as it developed the F 35. Because again, it was very focused on kind of just the situation in the Middle East where this wasn’t a major issue. And now everyone’s trying To figure out, okay, it’s 2020 The world is what it is, we have to figure out the best ways to use these things.

Scott Horton 22:06
Yeah. All right. So that really brings up the question about, you know, America’s relationship with Russia and China in the military, his attitude about all that, but I wanted to ask you one question first about the stealth coating on here and there’s this report, you know, if you fly it fast, the stealth coating peels off, but I’m not sure if it was Mandy Smith Berger, who it was I talked to about this years ago, said that, you know, the same goes for the F 117. And the B two as well as the F 22. And the F 35. They’re not stealthy at all. All you have to do is point a world war two era long wave radar at them, as opposed to the more modern kind, and they jump right out. They’re not stealthy in any sense. And believe you me, the Russians have long wave radars and That was, I think, suspected, as one of the reasons that they were able the Serbs were able to shoot down that one. That f1 17 in the Kosovo War of 1999. And so I wonder if in your reporting that’s come up very much.

Aaron Mehta 23:16
Yeah. I mean, I’ve certainly talked with Mandy a lot of times about this. I think we probably disagree a little bit on it. I don’t think it’s that simple. Certainly, yeah, the F 117 was shot down in Serbia. And that was kind of a big wake up call. The F 117. Also was built in the early 1980s. And that was a very different stealth coding than what the v2 has, which is different from the F 22, which is different from the F 35. I haven’t ever really come across something that says it’s simple as you push a strong radar at it and it’s going to totally Ping. Now, part of the issue is the way stealth is you know, and we tend to think of Okay, it’s stealth code and the whole plane itself can’t see it. A lot of what stealth actually is, is in the design of the plane, and that’s why you see you know, the B two is kind of this weird design And the F 117. If you go back and look at it has a lot of weird angles to it. The same is true for the F 22. In the F 35. If you actually get up close to an F 35, there’s weird bumps and kind of strange angles picked on the bottom. And that’s to create a stealth profile. The issue is, you know, you mentioned the ability to carry weapons earlier in this conversation. For an F 35, to kind of be loaded up, you got to put weapons on the wings. And if you do that, then the stealth design the shape, which is supposed to have radar flow off of it. Even with stealth coating that’s working perfectly, you’re gonna see stuff because hey, you’ve got missiles, and that messes up the thing, and that’s going to ping on the radar. So that’s an issue because while it can carry some weapons internally, to really go into a full on situation that you’d want for, again, kind of standoff capability to be able to launch a bunch of weapons. You got to put things on the wings, and that’s going to mess up the stealth capabilities and make you Ping. So that’s one of the trade offs that again, when I say people are trying to figure out how to use this Things It’s okay. In what mission? Are we willing to accept that lack of stealth to carry more weapons? In which missions? Do we feel? We need to do everything we can to get as much stuff as possible.

Scott Horton 25:10
Yeah. All right now. So let me ask you here in last few minutes about our militaries attitude toward Russia and China, you know, I wanted to talk with you about this article that I thought was brand new, and it turns out was two years old. But anyway, I’ve read you on this subject and a lot of other people writing about the subject of the new Cold wars with Russia and China and you know, wargames, various war games, Red team and blue team. And this kind of thing. There was a report not long ago that says, Oh, well, we fight Russia, in Eastern Europe and China, in East Asia at the same time, we’ll lose and all this kind of stuff. But one thing that I’ve noticed in years of this is that the existence the possession of thousands of hydrogen, Bombs by America and Russia and at least hundreds by China, of course goes without saying everybody knows it. And yet it goes completely unsaid because it goes without saying maybe. And so you seem to have all kinds of proposals and plans and war games and game theories and who knows what, that revolve around America going to war with Russia and Eastern Europe, or going having, you know, some kind of naval confrontation with China over Taiwan or something else. And this fantasy that somehow we could have these wars one or both at the same time, and that nuclear weapons just wouldn’t even be at play. Don’t even worry about that at all. Now, they’ll have a little war game where they say, Well, what if we used a Tactical Nuke and then they used a big one, and this and that, but that’s kind of separate. It seems like you get these, you know, real in depth kind of plans and conversations centered around these battles that don’t even include the idea Have nukes even being brought up at all? So could we win a conventional war with Russia and Eastern Europe when that’s not one of the options, a war with Russia and Eastern Europe means we lose our entire civilization. everybody already knows that. But somehow we pretend that that’s not so. And maybe we could have a real great set piece battle over there. So what’s the deal?

Aaron Mehta 27:23
Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s a couple of things. I think first, you got to start with kind of what the Pentagon is. And what the Pentagon is, is a five sided building that produces papers. And every one of those papers has, you know, a lot of people who spent a lot of time thinking about these things and coming up with policies and strategies and what ifs. And there is a large binder for invading going to war with five times different ways with every country in this world. And we have, I’m sure, somewhere in the building, there is a intensely in depth strategy for invading Canada. It’s just one What the Pentagon does they have whole teams whose jobs just to Okay, who are we figuring out? If we have to go war with this country? How do we do it? So that’s part of it. Obviously, Russia and China stand out because they have the other great powers, right? Part of with Russia, particularly the idea of, oh, we’ll have 10 cores and Eastern Europe is, you know, there’s a saying that people in DC use a lot in this world, which is people are policy. And in this case, you got to remember the people who are now writing the Pentagon came up and were trained in military academies in the late 1980s. So while they actually fought in wars in the Middle East, and that’s where they cut their teeth, they grew up reading and studying and thinking about, well, we’re going to have the great tank wars in Poland and here’s the great Cold War stuff. And there’s a little bit particularly in the army of Hey, that would be kind of cool to get back to that. No, now we get to actually, you know, think about this stuff and maybe have our little wargames with this stuff. So that’s part of it too, that I think is driving the interest once Russia popular Back in 2014, invaded Ukraine in terms of the nuclear stuff, it’s actually interesting. Under the Trump administration, there was a big report called the Nuclear Posture Review, which came out in early 2018. And essentially, what that was, was a relook at nuclear weapons for America, what we have what we need, what our strategy is for deployment. The idea was always Mutual Assured Destruction, right? The idea, as you mentioned, if Russia would never use nuclear weapons, because, you know, we would use our nuclear weapons and we’d all die. Russia, in particular, has invested a lot in the last 10 years and kind of, for lack of better terms, a regular, quote, unquote, tactical nuclear weapons. People who study this stuff will pretty much agree there’s no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. It’s just a lower year nuke. But they’ve invested a lot of kind of these smaller nuclear weapons. And there’s a belief among certainly the more hawkish members of the military community, that Russia has a stance that okay if we ever had to face off against The US will use a couple of these small nukes in Europe, and the US will freak out and say, well, we don’t have we can’t use our big nukes and wipe them out because they didn’t use their big nukes. And that’s an escalation. We don’t want to cross. So they’ll get away with it. And we’ll just have to back off because they have the smaller nuclear weapons. That there is controversial in a lot of circles that say, but it’s a theory that’s driven a lot of work that went into this Nuclear Posture Review. Coming out of that the Trump ministration decided to invest in new nuclear capabilities. One of those is a lower yield kind of smaller than the weapon that we use in Hiroshima submarine launch nuclear missile, which is already now active, they were able to very quickly turn that project around. There’s a second future lower year weapon that they’re just starting to research on. But again, this is this new policy from the Trump administration that was very different from both the Obama Bush administration’s saying if our enemies are going to have All tactical nuclear weapons that they could potentially use trying to stay under the threshold of mutually assured destruction. We need to have those weapons convinced them, they can’t use those weapons. And on and on the spiral goes and a lot of money gets spent for weapons that I think we can all agree we hope never see deployed.

Scott Horton 31:17
Yeah, I mean, this is really the problem for the Pentagon, right is that Earth is only so big, and there are only so many powers in the world. And the cold war with the Soviet communists is over 30 years now. And they’re not any kind of world power in any sense, really, unless you just want to pretend really hard to believe. I mean, even as you just said that they invaded Ukraine when they never invaded Ukraine. They sent special operations forces across the border to help the people of eastern Ukraine defend themselves from invasion by their own government. But they never invaded the country as as Sergei Lavrov said in the wiki He leaks. Hey, if we wanted to we could be in Kiev in two weeks, you know that they never pushed that they have no designs on the Baltic states or whether it’s the Americans who are chomping at the bit for some kind of fight there.

Aaron Mehta 32:14
I’m going to respectfully disagree with that point, Scott, but we probably don’t have time to get into that one fully.

Scott Horton 32:20
Okay, well, alright. It’s kind of a funny place to leave it. Did they send the infantry across? Did they absorb any territory?

Aaron Mehta 32:30
I mean, there’s been incredible Well, yes. First off, they absorb Crimea. And, well, it’s whether you can argue that should have been or not, it was a part of Ukraine and no longer is now part of Russia. I mean, that’s we can’t argue that point.

Scott Horton 32:42
Well, it’s hardly an invasion. But that’s not what you were referring to Anyway, you were talking about the Donbass. Right.

Aaron Mehta 32:48
Yeah. And there’s conflicts there still. And I mean, we’ve seen plenty of open source information out there saying that we can track Russian units that are you know, taking their patches off and then crossing the border

Scott Horton 33:00
sure is still, it’s still a matter of defense for the Russian speakers of the East after the American coup of February 2014. And the declaration of the War on Terrorism by the government there. It’s not like the Russians just decided to invade eastern Ukraine. So it’s, you know, again, yeah, they had their personnel there. But to say that’s the dawn of a new era of Russian aggressiveness is kind of silly, don’t you think?

Aaron Mehta 33:30
Again, I think rafted respectfully disagree on what happened there.

Scott Horton 33:35
Okay. Well, you do know about the coup d’etat of February 22. And how the democratically elected government was overthrown by American backed right wing thugs, etc. Right.

Aaron Mehta 33:47
Again, I think there’s different viewpoints on what happened there. Okay.

Scott Horton 33:53
Well, anyway, great talk. I really appreciate your time on the show.

Aaron Mehta 33:56
Yeah, I appreciate you having me.

Scott Horton 33:58
All right, you guys that is Aaron Mehta. Writing for defense news. That’s defensenews.com. This one is called Five f 35 issues have been downgraded, but they remain unsolved. The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA APSradio.com antiwar.com dot com scotthorton.org and libertarian institute.org