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 William Van Wagenen. He is regular writer for the libertarian Institute. And he’s got another one on Syria here. The Salafist roots of the Syrian uprising. Welcome back to the show, William How you doing?

William Van Wagenen 0:55
Hey, I’m doing well appreciate appreciate you letting me on. How are you?

Scott Horton 0:59
I’m doing great. Pretty You’re joining us here today and listen to another masterpiece. And you sure don’t what I don’t know, eight or 10 of these for the institute so far, and they’re just great. Especially going back to the early history of the Syrian war there. So here you’re addressing the all important question, I guess, of the origin of the war. The common narrative is that peaceful protesters went outside to protest, and then the government shot them and that radicalize them and the protest movement turned into a war. Is that about right?

William Van Wagenen 1:36
Yeah, so that’s the, the standard narrative. And in that the thing that never gets mentioned, is, you know, what was going on in the Salafist community in Syria at the time, in that mainstream narrative, there were just the peaceful democratic secular protesters and there’s no mention made of the salt This community, what Salafist activists were up to what Muslim Brotherhood activists were up to. And so there’s a, if you just take a closer look, it turns out that Salafist community was really active. And they were, in my view, in the view of some of the scholars that I Syrian scholars that I cited in the paper, it was, it was Salafist activists that were driving the early protests to a large degree. And then also there were Salafist militants, who were, you know, attacking Syrian security forces and police, you know, from the beginning. So they were really launching an insurrection, armed insurrection from the beginning rather than say, there being again, the secular democratic protesters who were then violently suppressed by the government. And then as a response to that, then suddenly people decided to take up arms become militarized, and then suddenly As if out of thin air all became, you know, Salafis and jihadists and started creating all the armed groups that, you know, we see later on and that are acknowledged, but actually all that stuff was going on from from the very beginning.

Scott Horton 3:15
Alright, so now let’s rewind a little bit back, I used to interview Eric Margolis and people like him, real experts on the Middle East back during Iraq War Two. And we would talk about how the neocons crazy plan as David warms or put it in coping with crumbling states is to expedite the chaotic collapse of the Baathist states, Iraq and then in this case, he was referring to Syria so that we could, you know, better determine how things should be in the future after we’re done. Destroying what’s there now, and I distinctly remember talking with Eric Margolis about this and probably would have been oh five or oh six at the latest. Asking him. Well, But so who’s there to replace the Assad regime? If they did get rid of it? And I remember after asking Patrick Coburn and others this back then, and they all had the same answer, which is, there is no organized political force in Baathist controlled Syria, that could possibly replace them other than possibly the Muslim Brotherhood. They were the only people who really had an organization ready to go. And they’re perceived as being al Qaeda light, essentially. Sunni Islamised only in most places, not as violent as the Ballade Knights so then the argument It was like a joke. So you get the Muslim Brotherhood if you’re lucky, but you might end up getting al Qaeda in Iraq. And then of course, just a few years later, that’s exactly what happened. But so if you want go back and talk about the the rise in the power of The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. And then, you know, as my follow up question to that is, what was the role of literal al Qaeda in Iraq at that point? At the start of the war in say the spring of 2011, or At what point did Sark Howie’s group then calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq? before they started going by on those right in Syria, what point did they come across and really start making their presence known?

William Van Wagenen 5:29
Yeah, sure. So, again, that’s something to keep in mind that the Muslim Brotherhood had started an armed insurrection against the Syrian government starting essentially in 1979, that lasted until 1982. That started with this famous massacre at the Alma white army cadets in Aleppo in 1979. And that essentially ended with the battle in Hama in 1982. And ever since that time, you know, the Muslim Brotherhood has been repressed in Syria during that period 1979 82. Again, the Muslim Brotherhood started in armed insurrection. And it was important to know that, for example, one of their chief ideologues named Syed How was writing things at the time citing even Tamia the medieval Salafist scholar who advocated genocide against Allah White’s for being heretics Muslim Brotherhood leaders like cite how in you know 7982 were basically advocating killing Allah whites for their for religious reasons and committing genocide and things like that. So that’s kind of the background and so in 2011 came around you had a lot of these same same To the same movement that was kind of ready to try to restart that war from 79 to 82. They wanted to reignite or restart that war again in 2011. And there were a lot of characters, you know, from the 70s and the 80s that reemerged. One person, for example, is a noted jihadi named Abu Khalid is Suri who fought with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 80s or, and then ended up going to Afghanistan. You know, fighting with al Qaeda, basically, during the 80s there, everyone knows that story. And then when the uprising in 2011, was about to get underway, this same person, I will call it a story, who was very famous. He helped established the earliest armed group in Syria that thought once the uprising started, which is called 100. Shawn, and he received money from Al Qaeda from in Afghanistan and received a lot of support, it looks like from Saudi intelligence and from Salafist networks in Saudi Arabia. And so this is like March, April 2011, is when Sean was getting started. They were attacking Syrian security forces and police. They were getting foreign fighters coming from Saudi Arabia to help them getting weapons from Saudi Qatari intelligence, again with the approval of, of the US of the CIA. So as far as the question goes, but when did al Qaeda become involved in the Syrian war? The usual answer is that the franchise the Syrian franchise of al Qaeda, is job hunting mystery. Or the Minister of front, which was started when the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Baghdadi sent the leader of Misra Jelani to Syria supposedly in like August 2011. And then the Nusra Front didn’t actually announce their existence until January 2012, with some pretty big bombings in Damascus. So everybody kind of assumes that we’ll have the Mr. Front, the official al Qaeda franchise didn’t announce its presence in the war until January 2012, that al Qaeda must not have been part of the uprising or the war until that point. And Previous to that time, all the people fighting against the government must have been the secular democratic revolutionaries. And it wasn’t until you know almost a year in that al Qaeda really got involved in so that the insurgency went from secular and democratic and orientation with Allegedly with the Free Syrian Army. And only over time, did it transform into a jihadist insurgency when al Qaeda, you know, started taking officially announced its involvement in January 2012. But when you look at the the formation of Shazam, again, their own fighters and commanders have acknowledged that they were forming armed groups in March and April and May in 2011. And there are, of course, Syrian soldiers and security forces that were being killed during that period of time. And again, it was a longtime jihadi bahala de Sori, who helped start the group and who was receiving money and funding from Al Qaeda. So that essentially was like the original involvement of al Qaeda was really the armed group are a sham. But that just gets papered over looked over and people imagine that again, Al Qaeda didn’t get involved until January 2012. When job hunting really started making its activities open.

Scott Horton 11:05
Yeah, now I’m sorry, I have this one from November but I’m sure that there was another one from earlier in 2011 by Alistair crook, former EMI six officer turned journalist Greg guy friend of the show. And he was reporting in here that well, Prince Bandar is sending off to hotties to go and fight in the war. And from here, that’s pretty much all you need to know, is we already know from just a couple of years before this that any Saudis fighting in Iraq War Two, we’re fighting on the side of the Sunni based insurgency and probably as part of Zarqawi group against the US there and their Shia allies in that war. And so what more do you need to know at that point, then Never mind that there are some Islam is involved in this thing. But Prince Bandar of Saudi intelligence is helping run The thing and get the whole deal going again, it’s going to look just like the Sunni insurgency in Iraq only on the other side of the border here.

William Van Wagenen 12:07
Right. and former Bush administration official john Hannah, who was a national security adviser to dick cheney fire, remember? Correct. He wrote an article in foreign policy in April 2011. Where he alluded to that, that, you know, there was a chance that Prince Bandar was going to fire up the old Sunni jihadi network and point it in the general direction of Iran. And john Hannah, in the article, he basically argued that, you know, hey, we Bandar is going to do this, and we need to make sure that when this happens, it’s done in a way that aligns with US foreign policy, and that undermines the Syrian government specifically. So even then, you know, there was Is the indication that, again, Saudi intelligence was going to get involved or was already involved that Prince Bandar was at the head of it, and that there would be, you know, a Salafist insurgency. And again, that was already going on, but it just wasn’t acknowledged in, in the press. But john Hannigan in that article basically alluded to that and of course, years later, those admissions were made, you know, john mccain famously said, Thank God for Bandar. And at the time to, you know, the CIA, the Obama administration was asking cutter to cut trees intelligence to send weapons to al Qaeda affiliated fighters in Libya. I know, your listeners probably know this story, of course, about the Libyan Islamic fighting group. So that was all going on at the same time in the spring of of 2011. And, you know, it was going on in both Libya and Syria, but in both places, you know, the press tried to essentially obscure all of that and go with the narrative that there were secular, peaceful protesters. Clearly there were many people like that, that were protesting. But the Salafist were there from the beginning. They were, you know, chanting, chanting these sectarian and even genocidal slogans at times, like ello eyes to the grave Christians to Beirut. So the signs were all there. But again, the the narrative, as you know, just tried to obscure that and just make it seem like the Syrian government was just for no reason cracking down on peaceful protesters, even though actually they were responding to an arm solve this insurgency for for for that entire time, which again, doesn’t mean that the Syrian government did, you know, kill any protesters. Most governments do that. Sadly. I mean, we saw that in Iraq and the recent protests over the last six months, lots of protesters getting killed. So it’s not to say that Syrian Government never killed anybody. But definitely the the narrative that that was promoted was totally was just was was totally distorted.

Scott Horton 15:04
Hold on just one second Be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from amazon.com. Wow, 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 the 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. And 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 how 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. Greg 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 Well, and I’m glad you brought up john mccain. he famously crossed the border into Syria to go and meet with the northern storm brigade. And they were already known as being kidnappers of Lebanese Shia, who had Who were pilgrims on a religious trip? And you know, you could check the dates. It was almost certain it was in April of 2012 that he went over there when, in March of 2012. The northern storm brigade had talked to Time magazine on video and had bragged that Yeah, we fought in Iraq war to against the Americans What of it? And this was a month before McCain went and met with them. And then it was after that, that we found out that the northern storm brigade were the ones who had kidnapped Steven sotloff and then sold him to ISIS for $25,000 or was it $20,000 who then cut his head off as one of the reasons that got the war started was the murder of salt loft, by john mccain’s friends. Well, by john mccain’s friends, friends in the Islamic State.

William Van Wagenen 15:29
Yeah, it’s a it’s obviously pretty disturbing and infuriating, but that’s kind of a An indication of how it went where when the Salafist insurgency started again, all the early armed groups were Salafist, even those fighting under the, the moniker of the Free Syrian Army. Not that there weren’t any secular brigades, but they were just totally fringe and minor in influence. All the biggest Free Syrian Army groups were Salafist militias. JCL Islam led by is around the loose was, you know, one of the most notable examples of that, obviously, are Sean which didn’t fight under the Free Syrian Army moniker, but they were a Salafist group, and they were, you know, the first arm group to begin with, but the the the the Syrians that had fought in the past in Afghanistan and Iraq. You know, some of these guys were still around, and they basically provided support to the newly formed Salafist militias. Were getting a lot of money from the Gulf. And again, presumably from Italy. And agencies. Also the future movement in Lebanon was sending a lot of weapons to the political party led by Assad Hariri. So all these groups are popping up because all the money is just funneling in creating a lot of entrepreneurs, right? If there’s a ton of if there’s a ton of, you know, demand for armed groups, because the money is flowing in and lots of groups will be created. But again, it was these veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Syria, or sorry, in Iraq, etc. that were there to provide, you know, training logistics and things like that to the newly formed groups. And that was originally why the Mr. Front had its name. nostra means in Arabic could mean victory or it could mean support. But in the case of job hunting, it was meant as this like the support group for, you know, these Syrian armed groups on the ground and so that’s why there was so much easy collaboration and cooperation between job hunt industrial when it formally announced itself and all of the other armed groups because, again, before minister announced its involvement in January 2012. I mean, there were still a lot of these jihadi veterans that were, had already been there providing, you know, training and in support, bomb making capabilities, teaching bomb making skills and things like that to the newly formed armed groups. And that’s, um, you know, I’ve got another article that it’s not going to be too long before I get it done. I think that talks more about that and how, you know, the Free Syrian Army, for example, it’s always assumed that the fighters for the Free Syrian Army were army defectors, but there are lots of admissions by pro opposition figures. That suggests Actually, that’s totally false. I mean, that was just a myth that they were mostly defectors. In fact, if Syrian Syrian soldiers tried to defect to the opposition groups, A lot of times they would be investigated for allegedly having blood on their hands and they would probably be be killed in a lot of cases. Because again, the the Salafist armed groups, including the Free Syrian Army groups looked at them as you know, Baptist atheists as their enemies. So there really were hardly any defections. From the army. A lot of people deserted and left but they did desert. They didn’t join the Free Syrian Army, because these were Salafist groups that were, again getting help and support from these jihadi Veterans.

Now ISIS got the worst publicity because again, the beheadings and of course, they’re conquering of all of western Iraq in 2014. But when they split from nosara, it was really nostra staying loyal to al Qaeda, and Imanol Zawahiri while ISIS was breaking off, to go ahead and do their own thing against the wall hurries wishes and advice, going ahead and creating the caliphate now, which he warned won’t work. Because the Americans will just pop it off the face of the earth that was why they were picking on the far enemy in the first place anyway, but the aisle notes were front which is now high at two rear all Sean there’s still blood oath loyal to Iman al-zawahiri the butcher of New York City, correct?

Yeah. But maybe the only place out differ with you is that I, I don’t think this split happened as a result of loyalty to one group or another. If you want, we could talk about this a little, maybe a little

Scott Horton 22:31
it fighting over the oil in the east of the country there.

William Van Wagenen 22:34
Yeah. So Theo Padnos, it’d be an interesting guy for you to interview if you haven’t already, maybe you did and I missed it. But he was kidnapped who said he was? His name is Theo Padnos, okay. No, I don’t know. He was a journalist. He, I think he had a PhD in literature and he studied Arabic in Yemen. And then when the the Syria war started, I think sometime in 2012, he went to southern Turkey like a lot of people in wanting to become a journalist and he found some Free Syrian Army guys that would smuggle him into the country. You know, give him an interview and he could start writing and you know, pitching pieces to get published in western the western press. Turns out the Free Syrian Army guys were basically al Qaeda guys and they they they kidnapped him they handed him over to the Mr. Front, and then Theo Padnos was kidnapped for two straight years. And he traveled with a lot of top commanders as their captive. And he says that when there was the split between nostra and ISI between Jelani and Baghdadi, this was right as the Mr. Front was capturing the oil fields in eastern Syria, the Omari field the fields that the United States is occupying now with with Kurdish forces, but co Padnos makes clear that the reason that Jelani and Baghdadi had a falling out in Jelani didn’t want to, you know acknowledge being part of the Islamic State of Iraq and how the two organizations merge into ISIS. The reason Jelani wanted to keep those two separate was that nostra had just barely with the help of the Free Syrian Army taken over all these oil fields. And so that was just a massive amount of revenue that Jelani was going to get. And if he merged with officially with Baghdadi to become ISIS, basically he would lose all of that revenue and all that power and all that will go to Baghdadi so rather than there being some like fight over who should we be loyal to or an ideological differences or anything like this it was really just a fight over oil revenues in oil fields. Baghdadi lost initially but later ISIS was able to table the takeover those oil fields from Austria and and you know, helped establish the caliphate in in eastern Syria. But it was really just yeah, that struggle over oil but again, you know, ever since I emerged on the scene and they’re murdering these hostages and doing all these terrible things on video. There was in the media this idea, hey, you can demonize ISIS, but then nostra was, you know treated as moderate right and revolutionaries and blah, blah blah even though I mean they were the same, the same ideology, the same organization, maybe ISIS was a little bit crazier, but just because ISIS is 300% crazy doesn’t mean this for guys are moderate, you know, maybe means they’re 200% crazy.

Scott Horton 25:30
I’m sorry. We’re all out of time, and I got to run right now. But um, this is such a great piece. Everybody, please go and look at this at the libertarian Institute, libertarian institute.org, the Salafist roots of the Syrian uprising. We only touched on about 5% of the thing here. It’s really great. So please go and check it out. That’s William Van Wagenen and thank you again, sir.

William Van Wagenen 25:51
Hey you’re welcome.

Scott Horton 25:52
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 0:00
For Pacifica radio, April 26 2020. I’m Scott Horton. This is anti war radio.

Alright y’all Welcome to show it is anti war radio. I’m your host, Scott Horton. I’m the editorial director of anti war calm and author of the book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5000 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott horton.org. All right, you guys introducing Mitchell Plitnick. He is the president of rethinking foreign policy and he’s got a new piece at the Quincy Institute for Responsible statecraft. And it’s called Israel’s unity government protects Netanyahu from prosecution paves the way for annexation. Welcome back to the show, Mitchell. How you doing?

Mitchell Plitnick 1:03
I’m doing all right. How are you?

Scott Horton 1:04
I’m doing great. appreciate you joining us today here. So first of all, can you take us back here? This is the third election or the fourth election that they’ve had in a row. They’re trying to figure out who can form a majority in the Israeli Knesset, and they finally got it done by having the two major opponents compromise and join in a coalition government together. Is that it?

Mitchell Plitnick 1:26
Right. This is the third election in just over a year. And you know, in the end, what they came to was something they could have come to after the first election, if they, you know, had so chosen. It came about because some right wing parties, particularly the Israel as our home used to have a new party of Avigdor Lieberman decided they would not join a coalition with Netanyahu. So that sort of tipped a balance. The problem from the other side was that in order for the opposition led by Benny guns to form a government, they would have had to have the support of The joint list, which is mostly it’s a coalition of parties that are mostly parties of Palestinian citizens of Israel. And that was difficult because some of the people involved including guns himself, were not very comfortable with getting support from Arab parties.

Scott Horton 2:18
Yeah, and now, I mean, was it the case that if he had gone ahead with the joint list that other parts of his coalition would have dropped out? Or he actually could have been the Prime Minister, if only he had made a deal with them?

Mitchell Plitnick 2:29
Well, it would have been, it would have been difficult, it’s hard to say that other parts of the coalition would have necessarily dropped out. What we saw was that two members of his own party his own guns, his own blue and white party, bolted at the idea of even just getting support from the joint list. Now, this was about the joint list supporting guns from outside of the government. So it would have been a minority government, but would have had the support of the joint list to defend itself against no confidence votes had it actually I managed to get the government that would have been been approved by the President and the Knesset.

Scott Horton 3:06
So in other words, you’re saying definitely a difficult road, they would have had a majority in the Knesset to have the government but they would have not gotten any minister posts within swear say,

Mitchell Plitnick 3:15
exactly. I mean, they would not have officially been part of the government, but they just would have gotten something from that government when one would think in exchange for assurances that they would protect it against no confidence votes. But even at that, it would they would have only been, I mean, even with that the joint list included they would have only had about 62 out of the 120 seats in an optimal situation. So it was a government that could easily have been brought down and would have over almost any dispute because it would have depended on parts of even the blue and white coalition, such as the talent party is a right wing party led by Moshe alone. They were not They’re all comfortable with with the joint list, but they were willing to go along with it to get Netanyahu out same with Lieberman’s party. So it wouldn’t have taken long for something to happen to shatter that coalition. So it wasn’t a very realistic option. But it was certainly something that gums could have pursued if he wants to stick to his campaign promise of not joining government led by Netanyahu.

Scott Horton 4:22
And now, it’s interesting, right, that this is not the law in Israel. But this is the tradition that so far any would be prime minister would prefer to lose and let the other guy be prime minister rather than joining a coalition with these Arab parties.

Mitchell Plitnick 5:33
I mean, essentially, I mean, that that I don’t think that’s the way any of them would characterize it, of course. And I don’t think in fairness, I don’t think that is the way they think about it. But in practice, certainly that’s the way it works out. They, the the mainstream parties do not want to be in in a coalition with the parties. Now they will say that is because those error parties are not Zionist, which is which is true. And there’s a certain validity to that since virtually all of the Jewish parties are Zionist, except for the religious parties which have religious objections, Zionism, but not political ones, so on the political questions of the Jewish state, they usually go along with design as parties not just cynically, but but you know, honestly. But that the the reality is that that people are uncomfortable with the idea of the Jewish state, being in part run by some of its non Jewish citizens. And this is Look, I mean, it’s the inevitable result when you have in an ethnic cracy. That’s the kind of attitude you’re going to get. And the notion that you can somehow have equal rights under those circumstances is just, you know, it just doesn’t work out that way in any ethniccracy.

Scott Horton 5:56
Well, just put the shoe on the other foot for a second here and we have a history like this In the United States, but just think of how absolutely intolerable it would be for the Democratic or Republican Party Coalition’s to say, Oh, yeah, but no Jews no blacks.

Mitchell Plitnick 6:14
Of course, there was a time when they did say that. And, you know, I think that’s where you want to place, I think, a little bit of hope for the future because there was a time that Democrats, you know, would say, you know, we will not have blacks in our Congress, even though they were unable to necessarily Stop it. But they certainly isolated anyone who was, you know, African American from any sort of college and even today, you still have, you know, I would say racism in our government, but that, you know, in very practical ways, so there’s a way that we can hope that this changes in the future, and we can look at our own past and see that that in some ways it has changed, not to the point of equality, but certainly better than what you have where people can expect At least say we will not sit in the government with Arabs. So one has to hope. And I think you can also look even at this election and say, the jointless managed to get 15 seats. And they did better than expected because they were able to really rally a lot of the Palestinian citizens of Israel to vote for them. But also, because there was an unprecedented number of Jews in Israel who voted for them. So there are people who recognize that any progressive future for Israel depends on Arab Jewish cooperation and transcending the ethnography of Israel today.

Scott Horton 7:35
Yeah. And just for the record in the United States, they outlawed the all white primary in the 1960s, about 10 years before I wasborn.

Mitchell Plitnick 7:44
Yeah, but that’s not that long ago.

Scott Horton 7:46
Yeah, no, it’s really not. It’s that that if you check all the white hair and my beard, then you start to wonder, in the scheme of things, yeah, was quite quite a long time ago. All the kids that were hippies then are all the old right wing

Mitchell Plitnick 8:08
Exactly

All right, so now um, okay, so ganz had promised that there’s no way that he is going to join in a coalition government with Netanyahu, as you said, That’s why they had three elections. They could have made this deal back when. And I understand what you’re saying that if he had joined in the coalition with the Arab joint list that wow, that probably would have fallen apart before too long. Yeah. But still, we would have been rid of Netanyahu, and maybe actually keeping him out would have been a good enough incentive for the disparate parties to stay together in the coalition because at least they got rid of Netanyahu. Why was that so hard for him to decide that?

First, I mean, even if God had committed himself to to trying to form a government with the support of the giant list, it’s not at all certain he would have been able to succeed, as I said, just at the just with the idea floating about to have his own. Two members of his own party bolted and said we will not you know, we will not agree to support this kind of government. So that right away took away the good shot at the potential majority that they could have had. So it was it was definitely a bumpy road. And and one that if you had to bet probably would not have succeeded. Now, you know, that being said, guns didn’t really try all that hard. And I think there were a couple of reasons for that. I think one was that God is really not a politician. I don’t think that he when he came into this, he signed up for, you know, three rounds of elections in a year and a half of constant campaigning. I mean, he he’s a reluctant campaigner at best if you actually, you know, when you watch him speak publicly, it is not he’s not comfortable doing it. It’s not something he enjoys. It took him forever to come out with a platform even last year. So yeah, this is not a game that he enjoys playing anything like yeah, nothing ever does. This is nothing Yeah, whose life so I think Cuba exhausted. And then I think, you know, when the Coronavirus crisis hit, from his point of view, it gave him a way out. It gave him an excuse to say, look for the good of the country. We can’t go to more elections. And I’ve got to find some way to make an agreement with Netanyahu, just so that we can get through this crisis. How much of that was an excuse? And how much of that was sincere? I think, you know, it’s a mix. I think, as I said, I think he was exhausted. I think he was also frustrated by the fact that it really didn’t look like there was a very solid path forward to a new government. It was clear that Netanyahu was going to do anything that he could to, to hold on to power. And it just wasn’t it’s not a game that God says up to I mean, one of the reasons that Netanyahu has survived election after election is that he just hasn’t had a really strong opponent. God was the strongest one and he just couldn’t go 15 rounds with this guy.

Scott Horton 10:57
Yeah, well, which makes sense. If there’s a fanatic in Israel, it’s Benjamin Netanyahu fanatic for his own power anyway. Now, but now, so what kind of compromises were made here? You know, Netanyahu had floated a couple of weeks ago, and I think was pretty clearly lying at the time that Oh, yeah, dance agreed to join in a coalition government with me. And I promise I’ll turn over the Prime Minister shipped to him in about two years or something like that. And Dan said, Well, that’s a lie. If that’s true, how come you’re announcing it in the papers instead of sending your guys to discuss it with my guys and this and that, but then I think from what I’ve read here, they’ve made no such deal. Netanyahu does not have to step down at any point in the near future at all.

Mitchell Plitnick 11:42
No, no deal is Netanyahu will be the Prime Minister for 18 months, at which time he will switch roles with guns and become the deputy prime minister. That was an important aspect of the deal for Netanyahu because they have also made an agreement that the Deputy Prime Minister I can continue to serve, even if he’s under indictment. So members of the Knesset cannot serve if they’re indicted. They have to leave the the Knesset, the but the actual way that works is that it’s not that they have to leave, it’s that the Prime Minister has to fire them. So this was a loophole that allowed them to Yahoo despite being indicted to stay in because he’s the Prime Minister. So he doesn’t have to his you know, he would have to fire himself, which he doesn’t do and therefore, he stays in. So they’ve now added that that the Deputy Prime Minister has the same field. Essentially, they’ve changed the law so that so that the Deputy Prime Minister can also stay in government despite being indicted. That’s part of this agreement. So Netanyahu wouldn’t attend yo gets is that if he sticks to this agreement, in 18 months, he would step down and become Deputy Prime Minister still serving despite being under indictment. While he fights his legal battles, which he can, of course, prolong for years and years, that that’s what he fought for. Now, so according to the deal, yeah, he would have to step down. Nobody, literally, I have yet to find a single person who says, Yeah, sure, I believe that Netanyahu is going to step down in 18 months. Right, right, left or center, nobody believes it. Because people don’t know better. And of course, Netanyahu now has 18 months to destroy this agreement. And in 18 months, you know, one has to one has to be pretty sure that that he’s going to find a way to do just that. That’s plenty of time for him. So somewhere in there, I expect he will bring down this government he will call for new elections or do something else to to just change the nature of the deal. So that he doesn’t have to step down in 18 months, but you know it right now on paper, that is what he has to do.

And now, so have they already been And they do have the right to form this government now. And I wonder about all the different parties that made up the blue and white coalition that ganz had promised and never support Netanyahu or any of them dropping out now?

Well, yeah, the government has not been officially voted in yet. They’re still in the process of hammering out all the last details of the agreement. And those those details are still coming out. So that that is still to come, probably in within the next week. But almost immediately when God said he was going to, you know, negotiate a unity government with with Netanyahu, his blue and white coalition split. So the blue and white coalition had been him it him basically four leaders, himself, and two other former Chiefs of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and most you’re alone and you’re Latina. Yeah, you’re lucky to have the Tea Party, let ya alone and the peat split off immediately they they abandoned the coalition and said we are not going to sit in this government. We’ve promised we’ve been opposing Netanyahu. And that’s what we’re going to do. You know, as many people have pointed out for both lepe and yeah, alone, it’s personal. They really really hate Netanyahu and Netanyahu has stabbed them both in the back in the past when, when each one of them has been part gotta learn used to be. Netanyahu is defense minister. He used to be his partner used to be in the coalition with Netanyahu and Antonio stabbed them both in the back, they hate him, they want him out. So for them, it’s personal. Whereas for guns, it’s a it’s a political issue. So I think that’s part of where that split comes from. But what one of the things that that does is that with half of the former blue and white coalition in the opposition, sitting with a victor Lieberman just started detainer party right now also sitting in the opposition is the Left wing merits party obviously the joint list. And also the the far right wing yamina party would all be in the opposition. So what does that add up to? It adds up to a completely incoherent opposition that, you know, would agree on on absolutely nothing except that they hate Netanyahu. So that that will mean a divided divided opposition that Netanyahu will be facing, and he has the relatively centrist guns at his side. So the way it the way it’s shattered, blue and white also means a chatter in any serious opposition to Netanyahu. His dominance for the at least for right now.

Scott Horton 16:46
Yeah, you got a hand to him. He’s good at math.

Mitchell Plitnick 16:48
He’s very good at politics. I mean, he’s he this is this is the game he plays. He plays it very, very well. Dance frankly, never stood a chance.

Scott Horton 17:41
Hey, man, you guys are gonna love No devil. No ops no ID by Hussein badhak Chani 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 Johnny 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 group 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 design comm slash Scott and say 500 bucks. Well now, so where the rubber meets the road here, the real question is what this means for the Palestinians. And on one hand, they have a continuation of this extremely capable, Prime Minister, especially you has so much influence in the United States and that kind of thing. And yet, is also really a lightning rod in a lot of ways, too, especially in the United States, I guess, right among liberal Zionist. But then, at the same time, this guy GaNS, if it had been him is probably not as capable at politics on the international level of that kind of thing. And yet, at the same time, is not the kind of lightning rod that Netanyahu is. And so maybe he would have, you know, relieve some pressure on the Israeli government and would have been allowed to carry out Netanyahu was Same policy with less pressure against it.

Mitchell Plitnick 19:07
Well, guns, I mean, right now the primary the primary concern for the Palestinians, given that Trump has basically taken everything away from them, the the thing that is most immediately worrisome is that Israel will annex large chunks of the West Bank, and and would probably, at this point do so in accordance with Trump’s deal of the century plan, which would put, you know, almost, you know, all of the significant areas of the West Bank under Israeli control and would leave Palestinian towns and cities as islands in an ocean of Israel, essentially on the West Bank. That is something that this agreement really paves the way for him. God does not oppose the annexation. All he wants to do is slow it down so that it doesn’t you know, create a massive backlash against ninja and I think it his view also on Your mind hopes for better cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. That’s God. So God and Gods basically was on the same page as Trump, or at least the Trump administration. In doing that. That’s why part of their agreement is that this emergency government that he and Netanyahu has now formed, can’t really do anything for the first six months with the one exception of annexation. They can annex large chunks of the West Bank and dances stances that they need to do this in coordination with the United States. And as he put it, the international community and the Palestinians, which is nonsense, because the international community will object to any annexation. And obviously, the Palestinians are not going to work with Israel on how to annex the West Bank to Israel. So what it really means is that they that that they will cooperate with the Trump administration to do it. And I think that that suits Netanyahu find the reason he had a problem. That was because of his right flank. But with with this agreement, Netanyahu had the freedom to freeze out the Amina party that I mentioned before, which is the far right party, representing not only settlers, but but it’s that sort of the settlers sort of point of view on these issues. And with them outside the coalition, the the pressure on Netanyahu is lessened. And he can much more easily make the case of Hey, look, you know, the Trump administration is gonna let us do this. We just have to do it, you know, a little bit more carefully than we otherwise might have. And I think that’ll sell to a lot of his right wing supporters. And for Trump, he, you know, his whole reelection strategy is the same as his election strategy was four years ago, which is feed the base, and the way you feed the base on this issue is by annexation. So Trump wants to now know Trump also has a relationship with Saudi Arabia, so this is a concern that he so he wants to make sure that they that Israel can annex according to the Trump plan without basically upsetting Saudi Arabia. And there’s now a timetable. starting July 1, the Israeli government can agree to annexation. Trump will want to do it somewhere between July 1 and election day. So we know that’s going to happen. We know Israel will want to do that because Joe Biden opposes annexation and should Trump lose that that whole plan is then off the table. So all of this is happening. You might have noticed in my description, all this is happening completely outside of the Palestinians control outside of their influence at all. Basically, Trump laid down His plan and said, if you if the Palestinians want to go along with this and want to talk with us about it, that’s fine. But that’s what they’re gonna need to do. They’re going to need to come to us and say, you know, we want To discuss this and figure out how to basically how to implement your wonderful deal of the century, Palestinians are obviously not going to do that. And so Mike Pompeo just just this week, made it very clear that annexation is Israel’s decision. That is what he said right now. So US policy is now that Israel can annex whatever it wants. in coordinating, he said, we’ll discuss it with them. And, you know, he’s clearly sent the message, you know, you do this in coordination with us. But Palestinians essentially have nothing to say about it. That’s US policy now.

Scott Horton 23:36
And just to make it clear, for people who aren’t all the way caught up on this, by annexation, this doesn’t mean all of the West Bank but it means what some huge percentage of the settlements that are already there as well as the entire Jordan River Valley and what what are the Palestinian have left?

Mitchell Plitnick 23:54
Essentially what the Trump plan envisions is that Israel will Next, pretty much all of the West Bank except for Palestinian towns and villages, and then they will Yeah, there will be small strips of land that would be used for roads to connect those towns and villages. And Israel will also compensate with some areas near the Gaza Strip. And essentially, what it does is creates is complete Israeli control over the West Bank without actually having to admit the Palestinians living there as citizens. So they have some sort of some sort of technical autonomy within their own towns, but no, you know, but the but the region as a whole is completely controlled by Israel. So, you know,

Scott Horton 24:46
it’s really the inverse of what I just said, rather than annexing the settlements and the roads between them. It’s annexing everything and just leaving the Palestinian towns as though they are the settlements with the roads between them.

Exactly. And and Actually, that’s a good way of putting it because that’s the way many, you know that that’s the reality that many people now perceive they perceive the Palestinians as settling in Israel. So Israel has managed through this project over these decades to completely reverse reality. And and give the impression that somehow Palestinians are interloping on Israeli land, which is, of course, the reverse of, of the truth. And the, the process by which they’re doing this is a is at the same time a political one, but also a practical one. So in reality, Israel already controls all of that those areas. And it’s simply a question of the acknowledgement of that and and taking the idea of any pressure to make changes off the table. And that’s what the US is pushing for. And, you know, Europe is doing very, very little other than collecting its tongue. The United Nations is pretty much powerless with given the US veto at the secret Anyhow, so, and the Palestinians right now are looking for help from wherever they can get it. And frankly, in the United States, we’re a little busy with the Coronavirus. So it’s very unlikely that we’re going to see any serious pressure for to stop this this momentum anytime soon.

Well, and when you mentioned that Biden is for the two state solution, I mean, so as the Center for American Progress doesn’t mean anything.

Mitchell Plitnick 26:26
Right. It means I mean, it means that he was opposed to this step. He’s opposed to formally annexing the West Bank. And that isn’t nothing. It is important if the if Israel does annex all of its settlements and Area C and, you know, the Jordan Valley that all of these areas if Israel does do that, yeah, there will be all sorts of protests and yelling, screaming, but 10 years from now, that’s going to be the new normal. It will be it will be something that everyone simply accepts as the way it is just as we now Except that Israel has settlements that, you know, the major settlement blocks will be part of Israel. Everyone just accepts that even though there’s no real basis for that. And certainly Palestinians haven’t agreed to that. So it is important that this be that this be averted, it’s not impossible that it can be if it can be delayed until Biden gets in because Biden will object to it. It’s not, you know, Biden, I don’t think anyone confused Biden was a great friend of the Palestinians. But at the same time, the difference between him and Trump is still enormous. And taking this step would make a difference.

Scott Horton 27:36
Yeah, I mean, I wonder about that. It seems like the kind of steps that he wouldn’t have taken if he’d been sworn in three and a half years ago. And yet, his support for a Palestinian state is always just not in the real sense, but just in the BS sense that Yeah, we’re gonna kick this can down the road and let more and more facts be created on the ground. You can go ahead and annex at the end of my eight years instead of the beginning.

Mitchell Plitnick 27:57
I think there’s a bit of that. I do. Think that he is pretty much in line with groups like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Groups like that, you know, who certainly see this as as pushing a quote unquote, two state solution that really favors Israel that, you know, includes a demilitarized Palestinian state that’s completely dependent on Israel. So, you know, that’s true. At the same time, I think more progressive forces have a way of at least trying to steer that conversation. If that’s where it is, we leave if if we move to annexation, there’s almost nothing for you know, that that groups like j street groups like the US campaign for Palestinian rights groups like Jewish voice for peace, the American friends Services Committee, these groups that that really try and, you know, defend actual Palestinian rights and try to come up with a truly just solution to this that that works for everyone. there if annexation moves forward. The road to any kind of progress in that vein, I think is very, very, might be closed off completely and certainly becomes very, very narrow.

Scott Horton 29:10
Well, so what about the kind of strange counterfactual here that actually Netanyahu is committing suicide for the Jewish state. And because he’s so good at politics, he’s so stupid about the reality of the situation. He’s trying to create, not just a de facto, but a jury apartheid state there in a way that maybe the planet Earth has let them get away with so far, while pretending that someday there’s going to be a Palestinian state, where now they’re virtually announcing that half the population of Israel will never be represented, they’ll never have any civil rights to participate in the government. And they’ll never have any, you know, actual civil liberties protections the way Israeli citizens do in their courts or from the shin bed or the IDF and essentially just half the population or A substantial part of the population of Israel is not free and will not be free because they’re not Jewish. Simple as that, and that from the river to the sea, and that that is untenable, even though, you know, that kind of half solution of Oh, yeah, yeah, we’re going to give you a Palestinian state someday, which will never come they were getting away with that. And maybe they won’t be able to get away with this. What do you think?

Mitchell Plitnick 31:09
Well, I mean, that’s possible, it remains to be seen. I certainly that’s the argument, that, that this precludes the idea, and it clearly precludes the precludes any notion of a Jewish and democratic state. Some would argue that those two things can’t go together anyway. But whether they can or not, certainly the course that Israel’s on now precludes any real meaning of democracy in any serious sense. Now, is it tenable? I mean, you know, who knows, Israel has Things me probably one of the things about this particular moment is we’ve seen that things are terrible that we constantly said, we’re not. You know, the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem was supposed to set off a massive conflagration crash in the Middle East. It didn’t. Something I warned people about saying at the time, it said, You keep saying this is what’s going to happen. If it doesn’t happen, and it’s very likely that it won’t. What people are going to realize is that a lot of these arguments are just not very valid, and they can go ahead without fear very many consequences. So far, no one has stopped Israel from these things. Israel defeat this sort of argument that you just made, and the fear of it is what has stopped Israel itself. But the more that Netanyahu pushes the envelope, the more people realize that you know, life goes on, no matter what Israel does, no matter how much they deny Palestinians their rights, no matter how deeply entrenched, they they make the occupation. So until something actually turns them back. I I’m not, you know, I’m not certainly going to bet on the idea that that these that blatant apartheid in this way, you know, taking the mask off is something that the world isn’t prepared to tolerate. so far. Nothing, you know, nothing has been too far.

Scott Horton 32:50
Yeah. All right. So let me ask you this, and it’s all hypothetical future oriented stuff, but and, you know, my Palestinian friends that I interview on the show, they hate this idea. Ali Abu Nima and Ramsay baru, they’re both one state guys, but they want a brand new state. And my idea is that all the Palestinians, and there’s so much, you know, non violent protests, civil disobedience type protests that goes on not that they get any media coverage most of the time anyway, but there’s so much kind of peaceful protesting on the part of the Palestinians anyway, that my idea is that all demand Israeli citizenship, they ought to go ahead and admit that Israel annex The West Bank and the Gaza Strip back in 1967. And they just been pretending that they haven’t this whole time. That’s exactly what they did. And one state for one people call it Israel. And if you want to rename it is really Stein later or whatever, after the big fight in the Knesset fine, but just they should demand citizenship, like the one fifth of the population of Israel or less now, I guess, of the Muslims and Christian Arab citizens of Israel, or Palestinian citizens of Israel, as they’re called and and join with them, then, you know, it’ll be the end of the pretense of some sort of independent state or some sort of limited autonomy under the PA or any of this kind of thing. And then that way, all of the kind of, you know, the wall has been pulled over everybody’s eyes will be completely cleared out of the way and it’ll be a much simpler argument to take on as the Israelis have to figure out a way to deny citizenship to them. Millions of people who live under their control in a way that right now, the argument is just too diffused, I guess between one state that looks like this or two states that look like that, and things like that. But so what do you think would be the reaction insight is or like, wouldn’t that put their back up against the wall where they really have no choice now? They’re going to annex the land, they’ve got to annex the people to?

Mitchell Plitnick 35:24
I think there are certainly people who are very afraid of that. I mean, that’s at this point. But that’s where most of the support for the two state solution comes from. Is that very argument? I, I also, I mean, I’m aware of number of Palestinian friends of mine and believing activists who think that’s exactly where things are going and that that’s where things should go that this is not an issue of one state or two states or any of that it’s an issue of rights, and that Palestinians demanding their rights is the is the way to go is and that Israel has really left. Left power Indians no option. I tend to agree with that. I think that, that that’s exactly the argument that should be made that this is a question of rights. That and that you can bring Palestinians into existing structures in Israel. I mean, I do think that creates a completely different country. You know, as I characterize Israel before, as an ethnic cracy, it wouldn’t be that anymore would actually be a democracy. And that would be a country that looks completely different from what Israel is now, although it would still have a lot of its Jewish sort of spirit. Hebrew language and and, you know, obviously would have the greatest, you know, the highest percentage of Jewish population in the world. But that is exactly the direction that it’s going in, and it would remove I think, you know, I’ve said for, you know, decades now, that the entire argument about one state or two state is irrelevant. It is we’re, we’re, we’re nowhere near there. And the question of structures is something that we can decide when We decide that everybody’s rights are first going to be knowledge respected and and given legal protection. We don’t have that until we have that there’s no resolve in this conflict. And I, I believe that 20 years ago, I believe it now. So yeah, I agree with that concept. I think a lot of Palestinians are agree with that concept. I think more and more of the Israeli left is recognizing that that’s the only possible feature. That that doesn’t include, you know, literally denying millions of people their rights. So, yeah, I think that and i and i do think it’s more than just a theoretical question. I think it is a question of how do we discuss the issues now, I know that for me personally, as somebody who is neither Israeli or Palestinian, but as as an American Jew, who’s somebody who’s very, you know, obviously concerned and and involved with this issue. That’s the way I try to pray me there’s a question of rights and I don’t really care how rights are recognized as long as as long as everyone’s rights are fully recognized equally. That should be the framework. It’s a framework that I think Americans can understand an awful lot better than the question of what is to state. What is the two state solution mean? And how does that square with historically justices and etc, it just gets so complicated? Whereas equal rights is a very simple is a very simple concept and one that that Americans believe in very strongly,

Scott Horton 37:28
you know, all right, you guys. Well, that is Michel plitt Nick, and he is the president of rethinking foreign policy. That’s it rethinking foreign policy.org and here he’s got this great piece at the Quincy Institute for Responsible statecraft, otherwise known as the low blog. Israel’s unity government protects Netanyahu from prosecution paves the way for annexation. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Mitchell Plitnick 37:53
Glad to be here anytime.

Scott Horton 37:57
All right, That’s it for anti war radio for this Morning. I’m your host, Scott Horton, author of the book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan and editorial director of anti war 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, 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 on the line. I’ve got the great Grant F. Smith. He is the founder and director of the Institute for Research, Middle Eastern policy, that’s IR map, IR MEP, ir mip.org. And he wrote a bunch of great books, including big Israel and the latest, the Israel lobby. enters state government, Rise of the Virginia Israel advisory board. Welcome back to the show, Grant. How you doing?

Grant F. Smith 1:08
Hey, I’m doing well. Scott, thanks for having me on. Again.

Scott Horton 1:10
Very happy to have you here. Let’s talk about this new piece@antiwar.com. IRS must describe its search for Israeli settlement policies. Yeah. So it turns out that people can donate to Israeli racial colonies on the West Bank, and write it off on their taxes, just like when they donate to the Israeli Defense Forces, is that correct?

Grant F. Smith 1:38
That is correct, creates a huge tax gap. And as I argue there’s really no demonstrated social welfare benefit to it. That’s why you’re supposed to be able to get tax exemptions is there supposed to be some offsetting activity that relieves the US government of a burden, but there’s no evidence of that. And again, It’s worse than in the case of the settlements where you’ve just got active displacement, which seems to fit the exact letter of the neutrality act of 1794 that US citizens aren’t allowed to kind of declare a slow motion war against any group overseas. That’s Congress’s job to declare those slow motion laws against people overseas. So it’s, it’s an interesting question.

Scott Horton 2:28
Yeah. And now, so if I wanted to donate to say the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to help with their occupation of Tibet, could I write that off on my taxes?

Grant F. Smith 2:39
Well, it kind of depends on whether you were part of a well organized and franchise group of people who were somewhat in line with one or other party. If that were the case. You can probably do that, but I don’t think that Would it be possible in the case of Tibet, I don’t think anyone right now would particularly care about that if you were doing it for Taiwan, you’d probably get away with it. If you’re doing it for Gambia trying to ship them some arms, maybe now you’d be prosecuted. And in fact, Eric Holder prosecuted a case like that in 2015, against a couple of Americans. So the the rule here just like in a lot of other laws that are never enforced against the people doing the most damage, such as the foreign agents Registration Act, the rule is that if you’re small, disenfranchised, and not doing something at all in line with one or the other established parties, he probably could get into trouble. So I would say that’s a definite No, no. What you just propose Scott?

Scott Horton 3:51
Hmm. Okay. Well, it’s not that I was trying to but just hypothetically speaking, and I was wondering about the quote unquote, rule of law. And what it’s supposed to say about things like that.

Grant F. Smith 4:04
Right? Well, the whole the whole exercise here, though, with this Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that we filed against the IRS last year, was to flush out some policy from them, because it’s been obvious to me for 20 years that they have a policy and the policy is not to have a policy so that it can continue. So if you kind of corner an IRS commissioner, like I did with Douglas Shulman, a number of years back, if he talks to the tax payer advocate, Nina Olson and corner her she’ll also just bluster and edge around the issue. So, you know, what’s, what’s become obvious is that this is another place in The United States where there are huge stakes involved, and that government agencies, which are supposed to be following rule of law, are instead being ambiguous and avoiding any sort of action that they would surely pursue. In other cases, so the lawsuit was all about getting the IRS to release its internal policies on what amount to multiple billions of dollars that flow overseas and charitable tax exempt contributions every year, some of which are going to settlements A number of years ago, USA Today or USA Today implied that it was $50 billion had been invested in settlements, likely from the US

Scott Horton 5:48
over one time.

Grant F. Smith 5:49
Well, that was over decades. But the question is, well, okay, Mr. IRS commissioner, please tell us Exactly. So I can be sure that if I want to, you know, fund settlers and erielle, or I want to fund settlers who are pushing people out and burning olive groves over here, I just want you to assure me that that is tax exempt social welfare activity, and I want you to put it in writing. And they won’t do it. They allow it to continue. They’ve been sued at least once recently by Susan Apple Hauer on that very issue. And the appeals court where it was appealed, just didn’t get into that particular subject. They acknowledge there was harm going on. But they just wouldn’t say that the litigants had any rights to even be in court trying to obtain some relief from this massive tidal wave of cash. It’s causing so much damage to people who really do have sort of native indigenous ties to the land? So the purpose of the lawsuit was to try to get a judge to force the IRS to come clean on the issue. And the whole reason for writing an article is that the judge this week actually stood up on his, you know, his bench from wherever he’s working and told the IRS look, we’re not just going to fast track this feuless suit toward dismissal. I think all of the documents that have been filed so far and people can read those court documents, going to ir mep.org. And looking at foil lawsuits have indicated that they’ve been extremely disingenuous at the IRS about trying to respond to Treasury and State Department Request for Information about why they’re still allowing tax exempt status to remain in some of these organizations that are blatantly engaged in warlike activities. And the IRS won’t ever clearly respond even to other government agencies. And so, you know, it’s it’s just a, it’s such a, it’s become such a mess at this point that it’s clear that there is an operating policy. And I raised the question with the judge directly. I said, Look, we spent years litigating for clarity on why the arms Export Control Act isn’t enforced. Which bars any foreign aid to foreign nuclear powers that aren’t a members of the NPT, it looks like there must be another gag order. in place, such as there is in the nuclear weapons slash foreign aid issue at the IRS. So we want to see that gag order, there’s obviously something there that has meant immunized this five to $6 billion per year, from any sort of scrutiny and any sort of action on tax exempt status. And I think the judge agrees, if you look at the body of evidence there is there has to be a policy. So he did not allow the Department of Justice in this case to make claims of, Oh, we’ve got a pandemic. You know, our lawyers are being taken away from working on all sorts of pandemic related legal work. And we got to get them off this frivolous lawsuit, and he said, Now, why don’t you since you’re claiming that there isn’t the policy or nothing released, so Why don’t you clearly outline exactly where you looked. And so now that’s what they’ll be doing between now and June, they’re going to be trying to tell a judge where they looked, and why they couldn’t find anything after so many years of litigation, so many years of news articles, you know, even j Street, which is, I would say not so great on a lot of issues, as at least pointed out, that this is a serious issue. We included that in the lawsuit exhibits. You know, why isn’t a clear directive or a clear set of policies being issued, which, you know, obviously have been in place for years and years.

Scott Horton 10:47
Hold on just one second, be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from Amazon calm. 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 the 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. And 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 slash books. You need stickers for your band your business will Rick and the guys over at the bumper sticker calm. We’ve got you covered great work great prices, sticky things with things printed on them. Whenever you need the bumper sticker calm, we’ll get it done right for you. The bumper sticker.com. Well now so is there what exactly is the law say? I mean, other than the neutrality act when it comes to, you know, IRS legislation, or is there anything or it would only be rules and regulations written by the IRS themselves?

Grant F. Smith 12:44
Well, you know, the IRS has done some terrible things. You know, what the law says is that any organization that has gotten IRS tax exempt status should be again, relieving US government burden and be engaged in some social welfare benefit. But what the IRS has done instead is allow a whole giant ecosystem of Americans for Israel organizations to sprout up in this country, which raise and just funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to counterpart organizations in Israel, whether it’s for the defense forces, like you say, or for the Weizmann Institute, to develop nuclear weapons technology. And the IRS has delegated all oversight responsibility to the mainly New York offices of these organizations. And there is no oversight. And so that’s something I detailed in the book, big Israel, the entire evolution of tax policy to even allow for organizations to be doing this sort of foreign counterpart, fundraising, and then the fact that they just happened to me gauged and self regulation were less one of the one of the charities sort of outs itself, there’s never going to be any oversight. They don’t really have any idea where the money’s going. And it’s only gotten worse. In the 2008 revamp of tax reporting for charities, which is public, you have to actually publish your IRS Form 990. They allowed an argument to be made that actually we don’t want to give any of the names of the foreign counterparts or exact destinations anymore because it could present a security risk. So this is a black hole at this point into which billions of dollars flow and then Americans basically have to make up because of the huge tax cap that it creates. So not only is it creating a huge tax gap, in that all these deductions are taken on the money donated but then it comes back and bites us. I mean, as you’ve repeated heatedly gone over on your show. When the 911 hijackers were plotting against the US one of the major points of contention with US policy was this horrible ongoing treatment and ethnic cleansing going on. So we’re basically allowing a constellation of Israel affinity organizations to keep that fire stoked. And there seem to be all sorts of laws on the book, including the ancient neutrality Act, which would forbid that sort of activity from going on, but the IRS Treasury all asleep at the switch won’t respond. You know, take a front to being challenged on this stuff,

Scott Horton 15:42
huh? Well, now, so the judge has ruled, I guess, you know, in a in a hearing here that in your favor and in your maps favor and saying the IRS now has to go back and come up with any pertinent regulations and cough them up to you into the court. Is that right?

Grant F. Smith 16:02
Yeah, there’s this thing called avant index in which you know, for, for this foi a game, what agencies typically do is they narrowly define what constitutes responsiveness to your request. They conduct extremely circumscribed searches for that information, and then they come back and they say, Yep, we couldn’t find anything. So, you know, what we’re going to see in June because this judge demanded it because I think he saw the hypocrisy of this, oh, we can’t find any policy when there clearly isn’t policy. He just said no, why don’t you send a detailed description of where you looked and anything you passed over? And so that’s called avant index. We’ve used it before with requests against the State Department against the Department of Energy, and it’s an effective tool. I mean, FOIA in general has been so gutted by precedents which are overly different The federal agency claims of secrecy and little, you know, damage harm national security. If we say anything about that topic, that it’s just become very difficult to get anything these days at the FBI, you can get mainly pro forma responses saying, you know, we’re not, if there were information like that the so called glow my response, we wouldn’t be able to even discuss whether it exists or not that sort of response has been growing. And there’s no evidence the IRS has even looked for any information. So what the judge has said is, before we rush for the exits here, on the basis of Justice Department boilerplate, you got to prove you actually looked for something. And the lawsuit itself is full of evidence that all sorts of information exists. All sorts of views are held, all sorts of internal pressure has been generated to come up with a policy that if they come back again, And they just say, Actually, there really isn’t anything here. I think it’s gonna perhaps not fly with this particular judge. Now, another thing I did mention in the article is we’ve had a terrible judge on some of our other cases, which were effectively captured by that judge, who in one single year dismissed three different cases. And in one instance, didn’t even justify why so that we couldn’t effectively appeal. So it’s as though you know, someone with a rubber stamp has, you know, been working away hard inside the DC circuit, but this guy this contrary, this seems to be cut from a different bolt of cloth.

Scott Horton 18:49
Yeah, well, that’s good. At least. That doesn’t usually happen. But occasionally you get a judge who recognizes that. Hey, I got a lifetime appointment here. really long with anybody, Jesse trying to do got a great judge out there in Utah? There’s a couple like that. But

Grant F. Smith 19:08
yeah, I think usually I think, you know, you’re supposed to believe that. Well, I mean, nobody does anymore, but that all judges are sort of, you know, starry decisis following precedent, you know, just look at the truth. And that’s, of course, it’s not true. Anyone who’s gone to jury duty and been admonished that they’re participating in any sort of fair and transparent system. I mean, these days has to frankly laugh, given what’s been going on for so many decades. But, yeah, so a judge, you know, this doesn’t mean we won the case. It’s right. I guess the thing that makes it unique is that we haven’t lost quickly and that a judge is actually being responsive and taking interest in the topic at hand. So we’ll see

Scott Horton 20:00
what happens after the IRS comes back and says, well, geez, we tried judge and couldn’t find nothing. So don’t make us look again.

Grant F. Smith 20:07
And maybe a leaker will put some stuff out becoming aware of this and say, Yeah, no, actually, we do all sorts of terrible things here, some of them. And, you know, the last thing the IRS should be doing is telling the State Department or the Treasury Department, employees who phoned them from Jerusalem saying, you know, we have all these settlements sprouting up and all these warlike activities happening. So what is it about these organizations that merits they’re having IRS tax exempt status? Shouldn’t you be revoking that? And the IRS said well call our call our hotline? What this is an agency that agency referral, you know, it’s just, and Douglas Shulman again, his response, his specious response, his evasive response to being called out on national Public Radio saying, what are you going to do about settlement financing? What’s your policy? It got to the extent that other callers were phoning into the show saying you didn’t answer the question, what’s You know? And Susan page of USA Today who’s still around was also on Schulman saying, what is the policy? You’re here to explain policy and all he would do is shuffle around saying, how the IRS reaches deep into organizations and looks at what they’re actually doing and blah, blah, blah. None of it’s true. It’s, uh, you know, it’s I think it’s one of the biggest frauds right now at the IRS. Yeah.

Scott Horton 21:37
Well, I wouldn’t doubt if they, if they do a deep dive on your map and the libertarian Institute. Same thing is,

Grant F. Smith 21:46
yeah, no, they should. Yeah, definitely expend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars looking looking at that. I think. I think that would be so stupid. It could almost happen. Yeah.

Scott Horton 21:58
All right. Well, So, how long do they have before they have to respond to this?

Grant F. Smith 22:04
Yeah, they’ve got till June. And, again, they’re gonna have to be detailed in their response to the court, they’re gonna have to say, look, you know, and if they have major omissions, like if they didn’t look in the office of the commissioner, where this sort of policy would have been set, then they didn’t really respond to the FOIA. And we’ve had this time after time where, you know, no, Freedom of Information Act response even really starts until you’ve sued somebody and then typically they can delay for up to a year, while all sorts of perfunctory motions are filed, but now, I think, an effort that began for us in 2005, under this particular case, in spring of last year, as far as this particular foil, it’s gonna start, that’s my My impression, because I frankly don’t think they looked for anything. That would be standard operating procedure agency does not bother looking until a judge says Why don’t you start looking? Yeah, no.

Scott Horton 23:13
All right. So before I let you go here, can you give us any updates on the aftermath of the publication of your last book in the Israel lobby enters state government? I mean, talk about scandalous this whole thing with vibe here, what’s been the reaction so far?

Grant F. Smith 24:22
Well, any Virginian who picks up a copy is stunned. I mean, really, because I think the thing that knocks them over is really the fact that Virginia companies are being targeted, essentially, that be replaced by Israeli companies, whether from the fish farming industry or defense contractors and food processors, so they don’t like it. But, you know, as far as the legislature, the book was carried up to the legislature and delivered to a lot of a lot of legislators on lobbying day by a local organization. And they’ve all made arguments. But what’s happening? You know, the inside view is that, well, this is Israel we’re talking about so we can’t really make any headway waves. It doesn’t really matter how much corruption you’ve documented through Freedom of Information acts under the state sunshine laws. We can’t really go after these guys. So there’s a there are a couple of initiatives to get more traction against via web. And I don’t think via has gotten any good press since it came out. But the problem is the Richmond times dispatch at some of the hardcore investigative journalists, they’re just not picking up and running with it. They want to talk about Second Amendment activity, they want to talk about COVID-19 response. This is not a winner for them. So I think it’s growing and the informations out there, and people are starting to trade it and pass it around more. And there’s a lot of interest in holding the organization accountable. So I think it’s had a good impact, but a lot more remains to be done.

Scott Horton 25:28
Yeah, well, best of luck with that. I mean, again, for anybody in Virginia, especially but for all Americans, you really should take a look at this book and it is amazing. You check out my last interview with grant all about her two interviews ago, maybe the Israel lobby interstate government, and it is hair raising and mind blowing. It’s really something else to see the level of, what do you call it? chutzpah that the Israeli government brings into well into service of their interests. Inside the United States, there are short term interests at the expense of their long term ones if he asked me, but I guess I don’t know yet.

Grant F. Smith 26:07
Yeah. Well, the big the big story right now is energetics and Israeli company that has built wind turbines on the occupied Golan Heights. It’s taken Palestinian land to build solar arrays in the West Bank. It’s been listed, as you know, violating all sorts of human rights by various organizations. And it’s trying to build 11 utility scale wind farms across the state right now. And it’s just, you know, they’re trying to pull those Full speed ahead without answering any questions about their illicit activities overseas. And again, it raises another question so Okay, so you raise money with here, Chesapeake, or your Greenville your other solar farms and send it back to Tel Aviv so they can expand again. In this expedition against a friendly nation, whether it’s Syria or the Palestinians, where’s the neutrality act on that? So I think they’re gonna face some big problems as they continue to try to roll out across the states and take some of that solar business away from us and Virginia companies that would rather have those opportunities. So we’ll see, people are starting to get noticed.

Scott Horton 27:23
Yeah, well, and they should take notice. And especially here’s where the rubber meets the road, right. If you’re a solar power company, you might not have an ideology at all, but just notice that you’re being robbed, and forced to pay at gunpoint being forced by your government to pay for your competition.

Grant F. Smith 27:43
Exactly. And in this case, that a city council will prefer this connected foreign entity, which claims to be Virginia and only because it’s set up a bunch of front companies, prefer them accelerate their conditional use permits exempting them from rural zoning laws and Giving them construction permits, they will fast track those guys. Even as your application sits at the bottom of a cardboard box. Is that the way you want it to work in your state? That’s a question that’s being raised in that industry.

Scott Horton 28:12
Yeah, absolutely. And again, everybody, you got to read this book, The Israel lobby enters state government and the rest of them to that guy’s got like 10 books, I don’t know. 810 books about the Israel lobby, and their legal and illegal influence operations in this country.

Grant F. Smith 28:28
Trying to keep ahead of your publication count. I don’t know they’re comin

Scott Horton 28:32
up fast. Well, you know what my next book is going to be like 10 books in one. So we’ll be neck and neck at that point

Grant F. Smith 28:38
I think. I don’t know if I’m gonna let you count in that way. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. All right,

Scott Horton 28:46
an. Well, listen, I don’t know what we do without you, Grant. It’s such great work. such important work as always, so thank you.

Grant F. Smith 28:52
All right. Thanks for having me on

Scott Horton 28:53
All right, you guys the great grant f Smith. He’s at IR map, IR MEP, the Institute for Research Middle Eastern policy ear map.org. And here’s this latest piece at antiwar.com IRS must describe its search for Israeli settlement policies. And again the book is the Israel lobby enters state government Rise of the Virginia Israel advisory board. 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, you guys on the line. I’ve got the great Jim Bovard, author of public policy hooligan and attention deficit democracy in a bunch of great books like that. And he is writing at the American Conservative magazine. Duncan lambs parents threatened with jail for protesting his killing the third In a series over there, welcome back to the show. How you doing, Jim?

Jim Bovard 1:03
Hey Scott, thanks for having me back.

Scott Horton 1:05
Really happy to have you on the show here. And people should know that. The first one here at TAC is called didn’t Maryland police shoot and kill a sleeping man, followed by the mystery deepens over the pre dawn police killing of Duncan limp and then now the latest hear about his parents being threatened with jail for protesting the killing. But if you could for people not familiar, can we go back to the night of was it March 12th. And the raid on this guy’s house?

Jim Bovard 1:38
Yeah, it was. It was the morning of March 12 at 4:30am and Duncan lab was living in with his family in a very affluent part of montgomery county in Potomac quiet neighborhood. the montgomery county police said they had got an anonymous tip two months earlier that he had a a firearm and he was, according to that place he’s prohibited from having firearms due to a juvenile conviction. The family’s lawyers say that’s not true. But the cops went and built a case up, I guess over the next two months. My impression is that there was an informant who was key to the case. And the cops went to a judge on March 11, got a no knock search warrant and then basically went and attack the house the next morning it started out, according to the family by the police shooting into limps bedroom window, and he was apparently fatally wounded in bed and then the police through flashbangs and then stormed into the house. They basically drag folks around they handcuffed the family members and his pregnant girlfriend who was in bed with him, and so they were all handcuffed and being harangue by the cops while he was bleeding to death.

Scott Horton 3:02
man. So I know it’s too early to say for sure. But does it look like they just went there with the intent to murder him or one of these cops is just, you know, goofing around with his finger on the trigger and premature ejaculate it all over the place here. What happened?

Jim Bovard 3:18
Well, you know, that’s a good question because there are some folks who, who think that the that the place intended to kill him all along. And if you start out the start out of search, by firing into the bedroom window, as the family says it started, that does seem more like an execution in a search. But, you know, I don’t know what what the intent was, but montgomery county did turn a search warrant into a death warrant. And, you know, there are some folks who said, Well, I was this just as a single SWAT, you know, team member who was jumpy or shouldn’t be hard, whatever. If that was true, then why is the county basically covering it up Lately, and the the county’s put out three different versions of why why limp was killed and the third one really was almost comically in bad grammar as far as twisting and turning sentences and you can read it three times and you don’t and it doesn’t mention that oh by the way, we shot this dude and he died It was more like well he was there and there was a rifle in the bedroom and then there was a shotgun shell and the door is like you know, okay so when did you kill him? You know this is this is someone to remain I mean they the cops made a big deal out of a plate putting online photos of five guns that they seize at limbs house, but they haven’t put out any photos of his bullet written corpse which I think might people might be interested in.

Scott Horton 4:46
Yeah, well, and you would think that if there was a gun near the outstretched right hand of his bullet written corpse they just showed us that

Jim Bovard 4:54
yeah, I mean, the the cops have said there was a rifle. They’ve kind of implied you You know, again, it’s very strange wording how they did it, and they’re a third version of the fatal raid. But you would think that they, you know, you would think that that lamp was on the property line waiting to start shooting at them as soon as they pulled up in the driveway at 4:30am. So, but no, I mean, apparently how this went down as a cops fired in the window. There were four different windows on Duncan lamps, bedroom, and the cops may have known which one to shoot through, I don’t know, or I don’t know what kind of, you know, lighting they had, what kind of night vision material they might have had night vision equipment. So, but the cops have said almost nothing for over a month. And their story doesn’t pass the smell test. And they’re, you know, montgomery county police say well, they’re so overwhelmed with the pandemic of They can’t really respond to requests on this. You know, however, three days ago, the county police posted a video online there were 30 police cars who did a parade by a local hospital to show that they were supporting the healthcare workers. Okay, if y’all got time for a parade, you got time to answer some questions about how you killed a County resident, and apparently completely unjustified raid at 4:30am. I mean, okay, if the cops want to search this guy’s house, knock on the door at 9am say, Hey, here’s our warrant, you know, open up. This is this is how it’s done in civilized societies. This is how it was established in England, I think in 1603 or 1604. But the sheriff had to knock and announce and declare his intent and so a warrant. So we’re going back 400 years, but here we are in Maryland and 400 years we’ve gone the wrong direction.

Scott Horton 6:58
Yeah, man. Hey guys, Scott Horton here from my Swanson scrape book, The War state. It’s about the rise of the military industrial complex and the power elite after World War Two, during the administration’s of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and jack kennedy. It’s a very enlightening take on this definitive era on America’s road to world Empire. The war state by Mike Swanson, find it in the right hand margin at Scott horton.org. Hey, yo, Mike Swanson is a successful Wall Street trader with an Austrian School understanding of the markets and therefore he has great advice to share with you check out Mike’s work and sign up for his list at Wall Street window.com and that’s what you’ll get a window into all of Mike’s trades. He’ll explain what he’s buying and selling and expecting and why. I know you’ll learn and earn a lot. Wall Street window comm that’s Wall Street window.com. So now when it comes to this tip, informant? Well, I guess they claim they had gotten an anonymous tip, but you’re saying it sounds to you like they had an informant that turned the guy into them. We’re gonna get that from,

Jim Bovard 8:11
um, several different insights on that. Part of one of which is the there is a pattern in these kinds of cases. These, you know, the duck lamp was tied to a number of groups, I guess Boogaloo groups. He was helping them set up websites. He was helping folks. You know, he was he was outspoken online on this. And, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, you know, I’ve been a big supporter of gun rights for my entire adult life. But there are a lot of there have been a lot of cases in the past where people in some of these groups, we’re actually you know, basically double agents working for the government. There. A number of libertarians who have been taken down on this stuff. There was a group back in 1996. I believe that in Arizona that got basically leveled by a government foreman who encouraged him to do things that were not legal. And this is this is the same pattern you have with the anti war groups going back to the Vietnam War, the 1960s. yet you’ve seen this a lot with Muslims. After 911. A lot of government informants will go into a mosque and basically encourage people to well, you know, you know, let’s do this, or let’s make a pipe bomb, or let’s do that. So, you know, it’s, I don’t have specifics, and it’s possible, I’m wrong on this. But it’s striking to me that the SWAT team was so frightened of Duncan lab, that they felt they had to go and shooting. And this, you know, if something like half something like this happened in Baltimore, people will say, well, it was a Thursday. You know, this is very unused. And montgomery county, it’s and this is also a very unusual for the montgomery county police, which does not have a record of doing these kind of SWAT killings in affluent neighborhoods. Hmm.

Scott Horton 10:14
Well, and you know if they’re so concerned about that this guy was a member of some patriot groups are this and that kind of thing. It goes to show their ignorance, you know, I mean, the reality is these guys the Boogaloo or whatever, that’s not going to happen until they really try to go around confiscating guns, you know, and mass door to door with the National Guard, or the Army or some kind of thing where that day never comes. But these guys aren’t going to go out in a this guy lamp, for example, wasn’t going to go out in a hail of bullets in glory just because they came to his house with a warrant where he was assured that he would see a black robe judge and be arraigned and and go through the regular process. You don’t I mean, the

Jim Bovard 10:59
Yeah, but yeah.

Scott Horton 11:00
I can see them convincing themselves looking at his Facebook page if he was part of some, you know, had a Boogaloo meme up there something that Oh, no, it’s Randy Weaver we have to go, you know, which they built up Randy waiver that same way this guy’s Special Forces, so he’s gonna go all Rambo on us but it was all in their own imagination. Same thing kind of deal, right?

Jim Bovard 11:22
Yeah. And as far as I know, Duncan limp had no history of violence. He was not making threats. I mean, there are some of these Boogaloo type some of these folks, you know, some of the things that they say online is like, Whoa, you know, I’m, um, as someone who has dealt with a lot of federal agencies over the years and been very critical, they’ve had been criticized by them. It’s like, there’s, there’s a certain standard standard that you need to use if you’re speaking in public or online. And a lot of folks don’t seem to be aware of that. So

Scott Horton 11:56
you’re saying there’s no indication that this guy was threatening to kill anybody. No Civil War, maybe just show up for one laughter and start?

Jim Bovard 12:04
No, no but the, from what I’ve heard, from what I’ve seen, he was helping gun rights groups set up secure platforms on the internet. Dr. Lappe was very savvy software guy and he was a he was doing pro bono work for some of the gun rights and hardline groups that may have put him more in the crosshairs as far as concern, but that still wouldn’t explain why the SWAT team felt like they had to go in at 4:30am in the morning and perhaps start out by shooting and then throwing in flashbangs. There’s a search warrant that the the police had sealed for 30 days it should have been opened, I guess a week or so 10 days ago, but the courts are closed down here because of the pandemic. However, the the you know they have time for please raise But not bad. But the lawyers. The the lent family has two excellent lawyers, Randy Sandler and Jonathan Felder. They are pushing to get that those warrants and the affidavits publicly released or at least released to the family and the lawyers. And in maybe in the affidavits that we’ll be able to see what the police were told, or at least we’ll see what the police told the judge. I would think that the judge, the judge who signed off on a no knock warrant, at 4:30am in the morning for someone who did not have a history of violence, you know, people need to answer some questions on this.

Scott Horton 13:39
Yeah. Well, I mean, they’re not going to the judge certainly isn’t going to answer it anyone. But now, is it the law in Maryland, that if and I guess I think you already said that his lawyers dispute this. But if it were the case that he had a felony, not necessarily a violent one, but a felony as a juvenile that he would be banned. from owning a gun as an adult, so how it works? Do you know,

Jim Bovard 14:02
um, what the, what the police have said, If I recall exactly was that he had a juvenile offense, which prohibited him from owning firearms until the age of 30. So, now, the cops have said this, the cops have been vague, which I mean, the cops have had very little credibility on this case at this point. But the family says in the family lawyer say that’s not the case. There are there are a number of he said she said things here that I think some of them are going to be resolved as more facts come out, but you know, there really needs to be an independent investigation. And I would love to see the to see the emails and the other stuff. Prior to the SWAT team raid, what was their intent, were they you know, were they intending to open up shooting and if so, you know what gets them the right to kill the guy before he had a chance to raise his arms and surrender. I mean, it says it’s the same thing. It’s the same, you know, controversy that happened with the killing of Vicki Weaver. She’s standing there in the cabin door FBI sniper 200 yards away, blows her head off. And then afterwards Oh, I guess we should have done asked him to surrender first. Yeah, that’s that would certainly make you look better. So

Scott Horton 15:27
when he said that the information they say a tip, whatever information was that came in was a couple of months before so do we know whether they had a doesn’t sound like they had case the place that they, for example, they either didn’t know that he was, you know, shared a bed at night with a pregnant woman. Or they did know that and didn’t care and went ahead and attack the house like that anyway. Seems like probably they didn’t even know. It’s not like the guy was holed up in He probably left the house, just like with any of these, like, why didn’t they just wait for him to go to 711 and arrest him then?

Jim Bovard 16:07
Oh, sure, sure. I mean, it’s there was a parallel there with a david koresh case. I mean, the you had the ATF going in there with more than 70 agents for their operation Showtime as they called it. And, you know, they they launched a unprovoked attack on the grass davidians home, and then later told the press that they’ve been ambushed. What they didn’t tell the press is a david koresh and undercover ATF agents had gone out target shooting eight or 10 days before the ATF raid. They had an easy chance to arrest david koresh they chose not to do it. Instead, they you know, they brought in the television crews and they had their big try it but it didn’t turn out so well. But safer here. I mean, you know, it was like Duncan lamp was, you know, locked in his basement and not willing to come out. I mean, cops could have Pull him over. I asked him, you know, and I think he probably would have complied. I mean, he might have been very unhappy. But, you know, they had no reason to kill the guy. And this is what the whole case is about. They went and killed the guy they never gave him never gave him a warning. Apparently, they opened fired. And, you know, this is not someone that the police should have killed.

Scott Horton 17:24
All right now, so talk to me a little bit about and I guess this goes to the idea that maybe they were trolling his social media pages and this and that, because apparently they were doing the same to his family and saw that his family was planning a protest and tried to warn them that they better not, is that right?

Jim Bovard 17:40
Yeah, it was not his family planning, planning their protests. It was some folks, some activists who were planning the protests at montgomery county police headquarters, and and the and the family had a second signal online that they would be, you know, going to the event. The and so the county lawyer, county prosecutor Haley Roberts sends a warning letter to the limb Family Lawyer saying open source information indicates that your clients intend to participate in this plan protest over the killing of their son. Open Source apparently means that the cops are cracking limp family members online. You know, they got lots of extra time on their hands. And the prosecutor warned the family that the governor Huggins stay at home Warner does not does not include planned protests and warn them that they went to the protests that they could face. You know, $5,000 fine and a year in jail for violating Hogan’s locked down order.

Scott Horton 18:47
And then, so they they had the protest and you went and took some shots. So what was it like?

Jim Bovard 18:52
Um, well, it was, you know, I was careful not to recommend that people go to this protest ahead of time. Partly because the the at least one of the organizers was encouraging people to bring firearms to the event. Bringing bringing guns to a protest in Maryland is not legal. So I was, you know, I didn’t want to be encouraging people to go to a place where they would end up getting locked up. And the you know, Mike hearts one of the organizers posted a note on the afternoon before the event saying it’s illegal to demonstrate with arms in the state of Maryland. So So I suggest if anybody is bringing arms, let’s loophole this thing up, and don’t demonstrate just stand or walk around with your arms. I wouldn’t carry these signs If I were you, but I definitely wouldn’t mind taking a stroll with my rifle, that’s for sure. And so you had folks show up. I you know, about 10% of the people who showed up in the demonstration got arrested for firearms violations. That was after after things were Breaking up. But these are folks that ended up in jail because of that.

Scott Horton 20:04
This is a protest about cops murdering a guy, quite lawlessly. And these guys think they found a loophole in the protest with a rifle law that just don’t hold a sign, and you’ll get away with it and it’ll be alright.

Jim Bovard 20:20
Yeah, um, my hunch is, is that my hunch is that organizer did not go to law school. Um, yeah, I mean, this, this was the kind of advice that was being given. And, you know, I know I’ve gotten to lots of demonstrations and I’ve come close getting arrested a number of times, not for carrying weapons, but for other things pushing my luck but I made to see see this level of, well, basically reckless. I mean, you’re, you know, you’re basically encouraging people to come and dance, you know, I mean, basically do a do a less pretend and, you know, hopefully And it worked out badly for, you know, back in January, they had over 20,000 people show up for the gun rights protests in Richmond, over 20,000. So practically almost 1000 times as many as showed up for their protests on Saturday and at the montgomery county police headquarters. You didn’t have anybody getting arrested in Richmond. And here at Montgomery, you get you know, practically 10% of the attendees get arrested. So, anyhow.

Scott Horton 21:31
Yeah. Well, but so, the good part of the rally talk about that, because I think he said the rest really came after the whole thing was burning up anyway

Jim Bovard 21:39
Right. I mean, it was it was great to have a chance to meet lamps, some of the lamps, kinfolk, his aunt and uncle were there. Kathy and Matthew lamp, both very solid folks. they’ve both been outspoken on the online about this case and the outrage. It was great to have a chance to meet you Mercedes lampa his mother, I mean, you she’s had a horrendous loss. You’ve got government agents killing your firstborn son. And it was good to be able to talk with them and get a, you know, get a better sense of the overall how things went down. But, you know, as far as it’s great. It’s great that people are outraged by this case. It’s great that people were protesting. I think a focus protests would have been, hopefully that’ll happen down the road. But you know, basically, there was a lot of shouting and profanity and there are some folks who think that the shouting the F word at police has magical power. It doesn’t. But it was unfortunate because you had all three of those members of the LEM family, all of them are telegenic. All of them are, you know, can explain the case very well. And, you know, they weren’t, you know, encouraged to make statements. There wasn’t a video from them explaining, from their perspective, what happened or raising questions instead that was, you know, guys, you know, waving flags and shouting and, you know, marching around and, you know, hopefully, hopefully, there’ll be other, there’ll be other protests down the road that are organized differently.

Scott Horton 23:21
So, yeah. Well, you know, I think, you know, back to the first part of that about how good it is that people do care about this. I mean, you know, we’d like to think that the cops kill anybody in this way that they’re not just going to be forgotten. And somebody’s going to try to stick up for the truth and for accountability for this kind of thing. So that’s good.

Jim Bovard 23:44
Absolutely.

Scott Horton 23:46
But yeah, you’re right. It seems like you know, this kind of thing. Well, first of all, it’s it’s good that they didn’t arrest the family or anybody just for the violating the social distancing thing like they had threatened right.

Jim Bovard 23:59
Right, right now, it was, you know, it was interesting. There was a lot of animosity against the police there. And I was there as a journalist, not as a participant in the protests. So I got there about 15 minutes early. And it’s funny shortly, shortly after I got there, they the cop cars basically block the entrance roads on both sides to the police headquarters. But I’d already gotten in so I just parked right next to their headquarters and was out walking around. There were several policemen, you know, kind of hanging out in front of the big old headquarters. I said, Hey, guys, is it okay if I park over there? Oh, did you parked by a fire hydrant? No, I didn’t do that. Whoa, whoa, I guess it’s okay. You know, I had my press pass. I had my Nikon camera. So, and, you know, I was, you know, I was just, you know, I wanted to see what happened but I spoke to a number of police and they were, you know, civil. So I would guess it there are some montgomery county police who are very unhappy with how this went down. As far as a SWAT raid, because this is not Baltimore. I mean, in Baltimore, the Baltimore Police are notorious for lying for robbing people and for killing them. That’s not that’s not been the reputation of the montgomery county police at this time.

Scott Horton 25:19
Well, you know, there’s something that they could do about it. I mean.

Jim Bovard 25:24
Oh, absolutely. And it’s and it’s, you know, people well, you have to wait till the investigation is done is like, No, I mean, if you look at the statements that the police department has made so far, and also if you look at Maryland law, Maryland law gives a huge amount of procedural advantages to any placement who kills a private citizen. And it you know, it’s almost like, like a cover up as baked in from the time that a cop pulls the trigger. Something called the law enforcement officers Bill of Rights and it’s like, Yeah, well, it’s basically means that the cops have a right to shoot people. So and then they Five or 10 days before before they have to make a statement, any statement, and often the cops get to see the evidence has come in. And oh, okay. So this is the evidence. So this is what happened then. So you know, I mean, it’s something that the the ACLU has protested vigorously this state, a number of civil rights groups and other black groups have protested this, because it more certainly in Baltimore, the victims of police shootings tend to be black. So and this is something that has gotten media attention. The Baltimore Sun has done some good criticisms of this, but it hasn’t been enough to change the law. And so the law is still basically gives the laws totally slanted against the constitutional rights of anybody who gets shot by police.

Scott Horton 26:48
Yeah, well, and so to the other cops resenting it, they should push to have their paramilitary you know, SWAT force disbanded. I mean, If this is their problem is a crisis of confidence.

Jim Bovard 27:05
Yeah, great. Scott. That’s a good idea. I’ll send them an email.

Scott Horton 27:10
Yeah, man. Those guys I mean seriously and that’s really what’s going on here right is you have these guys who are really nothing but Deputy Sheriffs dressed up like, they’re the Navy SEAL Team Six or the Delta Force or something. And they’re essentially play acting. And, you know, you equip them all with MP fives, and with all the, you know, paramilitary armor and fatigues and whatever the black parachute pants and all of this stuff. Well, they’re looking for a fight. It’s amazing fact when you talk about in your in your first article here the statistics of how many SWAT raids that these guys do a year. I think you said it was 8000 over four years. I mean, where do they find the time and where do they find the victims to launch 2000 SWAT raids in a year. You know, and maybe that was for the whole state of Virginia, but still, I mean, that’s or Maryland, I mean, that’s still completely bananas and and it’s amazing actually that they don’t kill a lot more people than they actually do.

Jim Bovard 28:13
Um, I agree and it was so embarrassing for the state of Maryland, Maryland stopped counting. That was their solution. They didn’t change the law to make SWAT teams less dangerous. Instead, they just changed the laws so that people did not find out how many SWAT raids occurred. And this is typical of how state politicians deal with law enforcement abuses. This is the broader problem here because it goes to the heart of the governed, governed power that can quickly become tyranny and in a case like in a case like a duck and lumps killing. You got an innocent man laying in bed, who gets shot, fatally shot by the police with no warning. It’s like if something like something like Like this happened to a government official that oh my god, it’d be terrorism and you know, we got to have all these flags at half mast and, you know, we got to have new laws protect the government officials but it happens our private citizen as like a yeah is the ACLU might do something on this case, they’ve basically done almost nothing on it. Local media has basically ignored it. I’ve been kind of surprised by that. But maybe that will change. I don’t know.

Scott Horton 29:29
Well, you know, it’s the right wing, especially that they’ve got to count on all these guys waving their thin blue line flags and all of this stuff. And it’s just like with the war, if he loses the Republican Party, conservative rank and file Tea Party voters out there, who do you got left to support this stuff. And so like you were saying, they kill black people in Baltimore all day long. And they get away with that but they start turning against the support your local police faction, then the You’re gonna find that they don’t have really any support at all, and the support your local police faction are actually more well armed than they are when it comes down to it.

Jim Bovard 30:08
Well, and yeah, it’s an interesting thing that the here in Maryland, I mean, Maryland’s one of the most anti gun states and montgomery county is probably the most anti gun county in the entire state. But there are folks who were kind of raising eyebrows about this because it’s like, okay, so there was a SWAT team, a SWAT raid, that apparently started out shooting pre dawn, based on an anonymous tip that someone own firearms, it’s like, you know, there’s a lot of people in this county who own firearms, so probably at least 50,000 or 100,000. So most of them are gonna be out marching the street. Most of them are not going to be waving flags, but there’s a lot of quiet firearms owners here. So if they haven’t been banned by the government yet, yeah. You know, the government might. Some of the local politics was probably I like to do that. But, and it’s this is interesting too, because this is a very liberal county and I, and I’m not aware that any of the county council members have said a damn thing about this case, they have not paid any attention to it. You know, they’re, you know, they’re busy doing other photo ops or, you know, they’re busy, you know, doing well. I try to be I’m trying to be polite, it’s a struggle. But now it’s this you know, it hasn’t registered on the local radar screen. Um, it’s like this guy, you know, his life didn’t matter.

Scott Horton 31:35
Well, and you know, what’s gonna happen here too, is and just look at because of the social distancing restrictions or whatever how quick people are to pick up the phone and rat on their neighbors for taking a walk or whatever it is that they’re allegedly not supposed to be doing. And this is the perfect thing. For those who want to get other people in trouble. tell the cops they have a gun they’re not allowed to have and get them rated And you know, like there’s this swatting where you call and you say, Oh, I just killed my wife and I’m about to kill myself send the SWAT team immediately. And then you know, like a prank call kind of thing. But what about just actually snitching on people and calling the cops going, Oh, this guy’s got a gun. This guy’s got a gun. People will do that. I mean, some percentage of people be perfectly happy to call 911 on each other over anything. And if having a gun is the kind of thing that really get you in trouble, then they’ll call over that so people have a real reason to be concerned about this. It just anonymous tip can get you swatted at 4am huh?

Jim Bovard 32:39
Yeah, well, it was according to the police. It was an anonymous tip. I don’t know. Right. I don’t know if that’s accurate. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But that was what apparently launched the investigation. And I think that they had I think that the affidavit will at least show that the police claimed have other sources of information before launching lots of pre dawn attack a violent attack on a peaceful household. So I mean, it’s it’s, it’s appalling the cops have not been compelled to answer more questions so far. I mean, there are you know, there was a case in New York, I think Newburgh, New York like that last month, there was a police shot a guy, and it was disputed what happened, there were riots and within 24 hours, the cop said, you know, made public part of the camp calm from the shooting, which showed that the guy pulled a gun on the cops. Down in Houston. You had that horrendous rate early last last year where the cops came in and killed two people in their 50s on bogus charges. You know, it was only two weeks later that the police chief came out and said look, we did wrong. I mean, this is a horrendous and horrendous abuse. You know, there were false charges that you know, the the entire Case melda to high heaven. So, here we are McGorry county six one on seven weeks. government hasn’t said crap on this.

Scott Horton 34:09
You know I’m pretty sure well I’m not sure where this statistic originally comes from but Radley belko has reported that there are 50,000 SWAT raids a year in this country. 1000 a week.

Jim Bovard 34:21
Yeah. And I think that’s from Peter Peter kraske, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University. He’s done some great work and and Radley belko has done great work on this issue for 20 years a lot of respect for him. Something which I want to mention too is a big thanks to all the people who have either shared or posted or tweeted on my earlier articles on the Duncan lamb killing that’s really helped the help make it visible. And this is a case people need to hear about because this this is what government has become. You know, government can carry off and carry out one of these raids before dawn, shoot and kill us. Someone and then not answer any questions. I mean, you know? Yep. And like you said, Thomas, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Scott Horton 35:07
Well, they’re claiming that Oh, yeah, you know, the germs got us down, we’ll have to get back to you and that kind of thing. So it takes journalists like yourself and your readers to keep the heat on and make sure that they can’t just slink away on this.

Jim Bovard 35:22
Yeah. The readers and also you. This is the second time you’ve had me on to talk about this case. I appreciate that. And everybody knows that Scott Horton Lester’s are among the most savvy people out there.

Scott Horton 35:36
Yeah, you hear that all you savvy folks. So get your act together, do something helped to make this thing more of an issue than it already is and prevent them from getting away with this? You know, something cannot be done. It’s a matter of public pressure. It’s just a matter of, are they going to be allowed to skate or are they not and that’s up to the people, not just me. Maryland but of the US to make sure you know it justice. There’s an example going around where this woman claims that she was sexually assaulted by Joe Biden back in 1993. And the memo went out apparently, that we’re going to not cover this. And TV news and the major papers refused to even say her name or do a thing with it for weeks and weeks and weeks. And then even when you read the New York Times, and The Washington Post stories on it, when they finally did cover it, you can see how badly they’re trying to play it down. And yet, it’s not going away. And the reason it’s not going away is because the activists who care decided that they’re not going to let it It’s as simple as that and they’re going to keep the heat up. And if it wasn’t for them, it would already be over. And yet it’s still over and it’s not going to be allowed to die because they’re going to keep fighting about it. So there’s just a great example of the difference that can be made with a good article like this and some You know, important retweets and conversations being started by people about this and spreading the word about it. And it is, you know, we both made mention, or you know, reference earlier in the talk here about Ruby Ridge and Waco, and there are a lot of similarities. But then again, yeah, 50,000 of these things a year. What’s really notable about Ruby Ridge and waco was, they were right wingers, or at least perceived to be right wingers and their case of police abuse was championed by right wingers who most of the time are on their knees, licking cops boots all day. And so I think that that’s really important that people get up off of their knees and stop licking those boots and start to realize that hey, these other people who are complaining about police abuse, maybe they have a point. You know, if you were were protesting about what’s happened to Duncan lampe Then what about the Black Lives Matter, guys? And what about the you know, what’s his name? The football player taking a knee during the anthem and all that maybe the cops have been getting away with murder. Maybe there’s a problem that affects all of us here. Instead of just you know, this side versus that side. Maybe it’s the state versus the civilians, of all colors and all political leanings, you know?

Jim Bovard 38:19
Yep. It’s interesting on this limp case, it’s great how gun rights activists around the country are mentioning his name and invoking his name. You know, there’s a lot of JPEGs names out there I am Duncan lampe. Dr. Lim cannot be forgotten stuff like that. One other thing that might be a problem in this case is a Maryland government’s, you know, once again, going back to the building cover up, Baltimore has had so many police killings and so many police abuses, and Baltimore was famous for paying out a lot of money. Basically hush money because people that was who would be beaten or you Even worse or have their relatives killed by the police would get a settlement from the government, but it would be conditioned on them not talking to the media about the case. And I don’t know what the protocol is in montgomery county, I hope you know, I’m I’m guessing the family will have some type of a wrongful death lawsuit, it certainly seems justified against the police in the county. But I hope that there isn’t a muzzle that drops in on this because this is part of the reason why the police brutality and killings got so out of control in Baltimore, is because the the government paid off so many people and you know, but they were kept silent. So people didn’t, people didn’t realize how how widespread the cop cop abuses had become. And I I don’t know if that’s par for all Maryland counties, but that’s a concern in this cace.

Scott Horton 39:55
Well, so I think we may have talked about this last time, but I’m gonna go ahead and bring it up again. Because I think it’s just so insightful. So this great lawyer Scott Greenfield people might know him from Twitter. And he wrote this article called Tamir Rice’s basically reasonable murder. And people might remember Tamir Rice was the 12 year old boy with a toy gun at the park, and somebody called the cops on him. And even told the 911 dispatcher, well, I’m pretty sure it’s just a toy anyway, but he went out and call the cops. And so the cops came and they killed the kid that the cop jumped out of the passenger side, and didn’t even wait two seconds before he just blew the kid away. And so Scott ring, Scott Greenfield wrote this article, explaining that you know, how the law is that you’re not allowed to shoot me unless you can prove that you absolutely had no other choice. You had to you know, it was immediate and proportional to defend your own life or to defend another innocent person, something very close to that and all 50 states. That’s a lot but for a car There is no law that says it’s a crime for them to shoot you. Once they’re a cop. All those laws are completely suspended in their case. Now, the only question is, was it reasonable as in the term reasonable search and seizure of life, liberty or property in the fourth amendment to the US Constitution? That’s it. And so then what’s reasonable, of course, is only to be decided by other cops professional opinions, which means that any cop in America, all he has to do is say, furtive waistband, and they get away with it. Because everybody in every cop, every professionally trained cop knows that if someone is furtive and moves their hand toward their waistband, that then that’s the same as you know, threatening to kill you are close enough for government work. Now it’s reasonable to take your life and that was what the experts said about Tamir Rice. He may have been a 12 year old boy with a toy gun and they may not have have even given him a chance to drop the gun before they killed him. But that’s just tough because they’re government employees, they can do what they want. And this is for all you conservatives out there. This is what they call judicial activism. The judges just made this up on the Supreme Court. There is no state legislature that ever passed a law that said that there’s qualified immunity. In this case, it was the judges that refined it down and down and down to where essentially, even just a local Sheriff’s Department deputy badge is a license to kill in the United States of America. And, you know, go read that article, it’ll blow your mind because it goes through case after case of how they refine this down to the point where it’s essentially impossible. The only time a cop gets in trouble for killing somebody is if he beats his own wife to death on a Saturday night off the clock, which they do from time to time. But otherwise, they can pretty much get away with just about any crime.

Jim Bovard 42:58
Well, it’s it’s it’s It’s true that the laws and the court decisions have been horrendously biased. The Supreme Court decisions on qualified immunity, going back to the early 1980s had been a travesty. And they’ve You know, it is pretty close to a license to not just kill but rob people and, you know, bombed their houses and stuff like that. There have been some cases where police have been held liable, the Houston cases an example of their raid, that was completely based on lies. But if you look at the rate of successful prosecution for police killings, I think it’s probably less than 2%. And that doesn’t mean that every time that a cop shoots someone is amazed at the cops, a killer murder. There, there are lots of cases where cops shoot someone who’s robbing a bank, or who’s doing a violent crime, you know, ongoing, so those are completely different cases. There was there was a case here in montgomery. county last year, actually close to where I used to live on Randolph road, there was a gun store. And there were four or five guys, I guess from DC or from Annapolis, who decided to break into the gun store late at night. And the gun store had no video and the police got alarmed. And the, you know, the people kept robbing the gun store, even though when they figured the cops were on their way. A cop gotten the scene, the and the folks who were fleeing in their car, the cop shot at them killed and killed one of the gun store robbers, and the others were later arrested. And I’ve not heard anybody make any criticism of the cop who did the shooting because, yeah, okay, someone got killed, but it sounds like a clean shot.

Scott Horton 44:46
Yeah, well, I mean, the law is supposed to be that they’ve got to have demonstrated an immediate threat to somebody else. Certainly that would be the case if you had shot them. So just because someone’s getting away with some guns doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Way to kill somebody else with them, you know.

Jim Bovard 45:03
Yeah. There were some other circumstances, but I don’t I don’t recall hearing any criticism by, you know, civil liberties groups or other groups.

Scott Horton 45:15
I mean, if they were pointing guns out the window or something, I don’t know. But anyway, I mean, the point is that it doesn’t matter either way, because a cop could get away with it either way, if they just been robbing a cupcake store, and he wasted them, then there probably would have been much criticism of that either.

Jim Bovard 45:32
Well, okay. I mean,

Scott Horton 45:35
it’s certainly not by the district attorney’s office in the grand jury.

Jim Bovard 45:38
Yeah. Well, you know, Scott, that’s probably the reason I’ve always avoided cupcake stores.

Scott Horton 45:43
I can’t believe that they even have those things. I mean, I guess it’s, you know, at the height of the bubble.

Jim Bovard 45:48
Oh, my God. They seem again, you know, folks with for folks with more money than sense. It’s like, you spent $4 for a, you know, a cupcake, but I think it’s Two inches thick on the top is like, Hey, you know if the same price you could get two or three beers.

Scott Horton 46:06
Yeah, seriously and and how do you convince somebody to invest their money in something like that? That’s definitely it the bubble only kind of business there.

Jim Bovard 46:15
Yep. Certainly around here, it was a mania. Yeah, it’s unfortunate because we’re lots of good old fashioned bakeries, and they’re almost all gone. So instead, we’ve got these kind of, I guess, not unified. But you know, cupcake, places that I don’t know

Scott Horton 46:35
are yet to find and they won’t exist anymore. Now. They’re

Jim Bovard 46:38
That’s true. That’s true. The death rates could be real high for them.

Scott Horton 46:42
Yeah, for sure. Anyway, we’re off on a terrible tangent. probably a good time to stop. The great Jim bovard. Everybody reporting on the killing of Duncan limp by the Montgomery Montgomery County, Maryland SWAT team there last month. Thanks again, Jim.

Jim Bovard 46:58
Hey, Scott. Thanks so much for having me on.

Scott Horton 47:02
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 0:00
For Pacifica radio, April 19 2020. I’m Scott Horton. This is anti war radio.

All right, you guys, welcome to show. It is anti war radio. I’m your host, Scott Horton. I’m the editorial director of anti war calm and author of the book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan. If I my full interview archive, or the 5000 of them now going back to 2003 for you at scotthorton.org dot org. All right, you guys introducing William Arkin, this time writing for Newsweek, of course author of the book, American coup, and we spoke about a month ago about the military’s preparedness for the worst case scenario with outbreak of the Coronavirus here. And now he’s got a follow up article about it in Newsweek as Washington in DC faces Coronavirus, Spike secret military Task Force prepares to secure the Capitol. Welcome back to the show. Bill. How are you doing?

William Arkin 1:08
Hey, thanks for having me on. Again, Scott.

Scott Horton 1:10
Very happy to have you here and very interested in this piece. It seems like possibly the worst case scenario with the virus outbreak, at least for this spike has not come true. New York, of course, has been hit really hard and a lot of people have died. But I think we’re probably expecting things to be probably a bit worse than they are. And yet in this article, it doesn’t sound like that is reflected in the government’s plans here. They seem to be what it begins, you say that, you know, they’re worried about the plague crippling the capital, but I clicked on the Johns Hopkins map and it seems like the deaths are still in the low double digits over there. So I wonder about that. First of all,

William Arkin 1:56
well, I didn’t really write about what the conditions are necessarily. Rarely in Washington DC or the Capitol area, it was coincident with the fact that the mayor of DC and the governors of Virginia and Maryland in this week have also extended their states of emergency through the 15th of May. So, obviously, they see a persistence behind Coronavirus. And I’m now prognosticators as to what’s going to happen or what will happen to create the conditions under which our society will return to normal. But clearly the Washington DC area is different in two regards, one, that it is the confluence of three different jurisdictions and two that it is the seat of government. As a seat of government, I should also say where the White House is, at least in the form of the President and the Vice President doesn’t seem to be taking Coronavirus very seriously that is in terms of their own protection. As say, for instance, we saw after 911, where the President and the Vice President were virtually separated, and really severe continuity measures were put into effect. So right now we have this weird disconnect between the preparations of the military and civil government agencies responsible for continuity. That would be mostly FEMA, and what the White House is doing or not doing to make those preparations more relevant, more more capable. I wrote about the militaries contingency plans associated with Coronavirus Can continuity and mostly those plans manifest themselves in terms of the responsibility of the military to transport the Washington leadership out of Washington DC in the disaster now that is obviously a plan that is rooted in nuclear warfare or some kind of a W m d attack on the nation’s capital. The idea that the the leadership would have to be removed, whisked away from the city, but that but that also happens to be the plan that they’re implementing right now. And I write about how the helicopter force in the Washington DC area has been increased. In order to prepare for what is called the joint emergency evacuation plan. And for more secretive plans to evacuate the leaders of The executive branch, Congress and the judiciary, and then also how the air defense screen around Washington has been increased which is, is is like, I think the best example we can give you of sort of the disconnect between what are our actual threats, that is what Coronavirus actually means, versus what the military plans sort of prepare the military to do. So there they are. f 16th on alert and air defense units deployed to the Washington DC area to be ready to shoot down a hijacking plane when I would imagine that that’s the last thing that could possibly happen at this moment.

Scott Horton 5:49
And yeah, now to that what you mentioned about Trump not really being that engaged with all this it really sounds like it’s kind of all on autopilot but at the White House, they don’t really plan on following With any of this stuff?

William Arkin 6:02
Well, I think that that’s basically true that it’s that Donald Trump, the President of the United States, probably is disconnected from continuity and couldn’t care less, that he is gonna continue to be the performer on the stage. And that’s all that he’s focused on

Scott Horton 6:22
there in the F 16. Squad. They’re just they couldn’t care less that we’re at war with a tiny little germ and that their f6 teams are completely useless, and that they are useless and should have to get real job so they go on their stage and do their thing just like him. Well, the thing is just everybody going to work

William Arkin 6:42
does have some real consequences. And when the government puts the money and effort into the preparation of continuity plans and keeping those in a what are called a warm bass, so sort of warming them up, ready to implement Not only is it taking people away from Coronavirus work, but it also at the same time as is, is flirting with the idea that if there were a true disaster, that those who are responsible for continuity would in fact be the government. That is if the civil authorities themselves didn’t take continuity seriously. So we have this dangerous situation. I think it is dangerous, where you have this entire continuity of apparatus that’s working. And that apparatus is assuming that the leadership of the country that the constitutional government is going to follow through on the plans that have been written then on what they are preparing for, when in fact, the constitutional government is disconnected from those plans. So if there were an emergency, if there were disaster, I could imagine where the continuity operation would continue, where, let’s say second tier or third tier government officials would be evacuated. And that there would be even some friction between the constitutional rulers of our country and the continuity rulers of our country. So I want to see greater harmony between these two efforts. I want it to be more transparent. And I want it to be something that is well understood by the simple leaders and by the public, both so you can have greater confidence that continuity is meaningful and important, but also so that you preserve the very thing that you say you’re hoping to preserve, which is the rule of law and constitutional government.

Scott Horton 8:57
Hey guys, just real quick if you listen to the interview, Use 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 audio books. 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 in inside Syria by our friend Rhys, 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. So this thing really, I guess, it depends on who you’re reading about these kinds of things a lot of the time where sometimes, like, especially if you go back to the 1980s, and Rex 84, and garden plot and all that, and they’re talking about mass arrests. And, as a congressman jack Brooks put it, you know, at least in essence, suspending the entire constitution, and really having sort of a takeover of the government by this shadow government. And then other times, it’s just Donald Rumsfeld playing the president and they’re, they seem to just be screwing around practicing for nuclear war with Russia and all this kind of stuff like an Andrew Coburn’s book about Rumsfeld In the 1990s, where they were running these drills, and it seems like not serious in a way, but then the way you’re talking now It reminds me more of that earlier take on what Oliver North and them were up to in the 1980s, where this shadow government really is a threat to anything like whatever semblance of a constitutional government we still have in the presidency in the Congress and so forth.

William Arkin 11:27
Well, I think that a lot of the what’s written about continuity from the 1980s and before is really no longer relevant. That scheme of continuity is completely different today than it was during that time period. continuity is sort of been updated for the post nuclear era. And though it is still governed by and kind of influenced by the nuclear idea of a The obliteration of washington dc as a physical entity, the truth of the matter is that today, continuity is kind of a cottage industry that persists because it’s the responsible thing to do to have an ability to reconstitute the government, where it to be disabled, and also the constitutional thing to do, which is to ensure that there are lawful successors to the presidency. What we have instead is this hyper secret world, that that most people don’t understand that there’s a lot of rumor about that, that you and other people toss around Rex, alpha 84 and toss around Oliver North and Donald Rumsfeld, and they’re not really relevant today. what’s relevant today is that there is a constitutional apparatus that has been put in place and there is a continuity apparatus which has been put in place. And really the only question that any sane American should be asking is, are the two at odds with each other? Is there a scenario that could occur in which this so called shadow government, as you call it, what I’ll call the continuity system feels that it has either the need or the authority to take over. Now, that’s not going to be in the form of a lawful successor. We sort of saw that on 911. When in fact that the legal successors to the presidency, that is the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate, were really ignored. And that and that, if, in fact, the President and the Vice President had been killed, we probably would have been faced with a constitutional question. ISIS in which some military officer or some representative of the military, and that includes Donald Rumsfeld, which I should remind the listeners is the fifth in line to be the president, not the second after the vice president becomes the president. So Donald Rumsfeld is not really even wouldn’t have really been in the chain of command in the constitutional way. And so today, again, we have a situation where I could imagine that the White House might look at the rules that relate to continuity and say to themselves, well, we had better prepare to make sure that Nancy Pelosi is protected and survives under all circumstances. Because if The President and the Vice President are disabled, she is the next in line to become president. That’s the lawful system which exists in our nation. But I think instead what has happened is we have this sort of secret continuity apparatus, which sees itself as being in charge, which sees itself as being important. And that apparatus is disconnected from the reality of what is happening in Washington. So I write about the creation of joint task force National Capital Region, which is sort of the wartime manifestation of the military’s presence in Washington DC. And I write about the real decisions and real orders that have gone out to ready the continuity, movers and the continuity, protectors of the middle Terry, to ready them to implement continuity if necessary. And yet at the same time, I feel like that apparatus is completely disconnected from both political reality and of course, whatever would happen in Washington. So either it’s a complete and utter waste of time and money and people, or it’s an extremely dangerous apparatus that needs to be smoked out, because we need to understand whether, in fact, it has powers that we’re not aware of.

Scott Horton 16:40
Alright, so before we get into the current orders as they’re being implemented right now, can we go back to 2001 for a second there, where he talked about, you know, the way that the continuity government plans were used at that time, that if cheney and bush had both been killed in the attack that it would not have gone to Dennis has The Speaker of the House at that time that it would have gone to this separate chain of command. But then the way you worded it was a little confusing to me. And I’m gonna get the quote, not perfectly right. But it was, I think the way you said it was as it was implemented. But as it was implemented, Bush and Cheney had both lived, and cheney was certainly the top dog in the pile of any big decisions like that being made. And so little just clarity there, if you could, if, who would have been in charge of deciding whether to go ahead and hand the keys over to Dennis Hastert or whether to give them to whoever they had in the separate chain of command here?

William Arkin 17:41
Well, if we can put ourselves back on to that day, Scott. And let’s remember, there was like, an hour long period where the President was out of touch with, with society with the news media. dick cheney was in a bunker deep under the White House, if you could imagine for a moment that follow on attacks had occurred or different type of attacks had occurred. It was possible that on September 11 2001, that the President and the Vice President would have both been disabled, killed, separated, unable to communicate.

Scott Horton 18:24
Yeah, the fourth plane was said to be headed toward the White House. So

William Arkin 18:27
right. And so on that day, dinner had Dennis Hastert who was the then speaker of was actually evacuated from Washington. And in the afternoon, he was taken to out whether that that’s a fact, there was a little bit of a tussle as to whether or not he wanted to go and then there was a question of, well, once he was there, what was his ability to even assert that he was The lawful successor to the presidency. The next in line was Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. He was the president pro tem of the Senate. He refused to be evacuated, when in fact, I think he spent 911 at his townhouse on Capitol Hill watching television. So we we, we certainly faced the situation on 911. Where had there been this greater disaster actually contacting and giving those two successors to the presidency, the tools and the the means to be the lawful leaders of our country. We’re not in place. Now. We learned those lessons. And so therefore, in theory, we now have an apparatus that’s a post 911 apparatus, not a nuclear apparatus. One that has taken into consideration all of the lessons learned, if you will from from 911. And that apparatus today is very focused on making sure that it can evacuate leaders from Washington. That’s why the joint emergency evacuation plan and the Atlas plan are so important because those are practiced and ready to ensure that the successors to the presidency are evacuated from Washington if necessary. But I think a lot of people just don’t understand the system. And I think that there is a disharmony if you will, between the preparations that this apparatus goes through and, and and prepares for and and our acknowledgement that indeed, we would want to or would Hand over the country to to these people. So, so, again, I can’t imagine under the conditions, let’s say for instance where Congress were in session that Nancy Pelosi would somehow survive if if Donald Trump and Mike Pence were both disabled by Coronavirus. I mean, we’re talking then therefore about some, some extreme virus spread in the city. And, and so, really you have to ask the question, why do we even have this apparatus? what what what’s it even for? Because, because it’s not nimble enough to take into consideration what really needs to be done to protect the government and protect the government leadership. It’s kind of off in its own world and that’s why I like to write about It and to reveal as much about it as I can. Because it’s important that we understand this apparatus, and we understand that it sort of exists in its own world. Because I think that a big part of it existing in secret and in its own world, is that the actual plans and the actual procedures that would be implemented are unclear and perhaps even not what we would want. So to me, if you said to me today, well, Bill, you’re just speculating about continuity because they haven’t really done anything. I would say, okay, you’re right, Scott, that this, this is just a non issue. They don’t see an issue of continuity associated with Coronavirus and they haven’t implemented any of their plans or made any preparations. But the truth of the matter is that on March In March, in order was that when I went out to activate Joint Task Force National Capital Region, the continuity system was put in place in order to bring the base the continuity base up to this warm state, if you will. And the military units were put in place to evacuate the leadership if necessary, and those military units have been sequestered and protected and separated in order to ensure that they’re operating 24 seven, so they are implementing some kind of continuity scheme, and yet they’re not willing to talk about it. I when I talked to and reasoned with government officials to give official comment on what they’ve done. The answer I get is, well, we keep it secret because we don’t want the enemy to know it’s like not wanting the virus. To know, but also, they keep it secret because that’s the habit associated with these secret operations. And when I say to them, that greater transparency would give the public greater confidence that the government knew what it was doing, and that was doing something that was lawful. I just get back from people. Yeah. Okay, that makes some sense. But still, it’s gonna be super secret what we do in terms of continuity, and I don’t think that you can square those two, I think you either have to have transparency in which you admit that you’re fearful enough that you’re actually implementing continuity plans, or that you’re not fearful. And therefore, you’re not implementing continuity plans, because you don’t believe that we’re ever going to get to the point where we need to devolve the leadership of the country to other people.

Scott Horton 24:59
Yeah. All right. Well, so the last time we talked and in your last article, you explored kind of the nth degree of how far these powers could go, including martial law under the control of the Northern Command and that kind of thing. And now in this piece, it’s clear that it doesn’t look like we’re headed that far at all. But mostly you’re focused on this Atlas program and these things surrounding in DC. But so can you tell us, you know, more specifically what you learned other than what you were saying about the F 16, practicing intercepting cessnas and all this stuff?

William Arkin 25:30
Well, so we do have a continuity apparatus. It’s real. FEMA controls it at the civil level. And the Defense Department through Northern Command northcom controls it at the military level, the responsibility of the military is to transport and secure the successors under the continuity system. And so Joint Task Force National Capital Region, which has been Created is responsible for implementing the continuity plan and also for protecting the federal government’s workings and Washington DC. So not just the evacuation of leadership from the city but also if there were to be civil unrest in Washington DC. Now, you talk Scott as if Coronavirus is plateaued and finished and I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that. I think that life is going to return to normal anytime soon. So this ratcheting up of our preparations for continuity which means essentially, the evacuation of pockets of the government to alternate facilities outside of Washington DC and the preparation of a successor or alternate line of command than the president than the Vice President is going to continue. So no one is giving an order that saying okay, false alarm, guys Coronavirus is not so bad, you can stop doing what you’re doing in terms of preparing for continuity. In fact, it’s just the opposite. These units are becoming more and more separated and sequestered and protected in order to ensure that they’re able to carry out their wartime plans. So, to me, you have real plans, real units, real people, thousands of people who are now on alert, ready to implement continuity, when I think the public is completely and utterly in the dark and very confused as to why we would even need to have such emergency preparation

Scott Horton 28:00
Yeah, well, no, I didn’t say that the problem with the virus is solved. But at the same time, though they were talking about, you know, 10s and 10s and 10s of thousands more dead by this time, a month ago. And so it hasn’t gotten to the point where people are being triage out in the hallways in the parking lots and that that kind of crisis, obviously, lots of people are dying and are going to continue to die. But it doesn’t seem like there’s any threat to a single governorship or the rule of any state legislature, much less the White House and the Congress over the government. So it doesn’t seem

William Arkin 28:41
to disagree. You Scott, but then again, if you were interviewing the head of FEMA right now or the command or joint task force for National Capital Region, the question you would ask is, so why are you doing what you’re doing?

Scott Horton 28:54
Right, well, but as we started with, it’s just a government job. They’re gonna show up and do their best 16 practice, even if there’s not a virus in the air anywhere, just because, you know, that’s their deal until their orders change. But it’s a I think, Well, as you said, it’s either meaningful or it’s not. And if it’s not, you know, why are we doing it? I think it’s probably not that meaningful is my gut. Because the people who would they would be taking the power from, have no interest in giving it up? I mean, if we, we could have this conversation in a month and both Trump and Pence are in the ICU and things have changed. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But does it seem like we’re headed that way? You know, right now, so if they haven’t called Fars false alarm yet, I think they’re eventually going to, but I’m glad you’re concerned about it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to play it down. It’s certainly I think, a threat to constitutional order, such as it is. But I’m not sure how immediate of one really

William Arkin 29:56
Well, again, I wouldn’t have written the article. I wouldn’t be concerned if it weren’t the case that they hadn’t expended millions of dollars and allocated thousands of people in order to be ready to implement these plans. So, especially at a time when the military itself is struggling with Coronavirus cases in their own ranks at a time when the National Guard and the military is itself suffering from Coronavirus. I mean we now have I think, as of today 600 plus members of the National Guard who have contracted Coronavirus and, and I think it’s well over 6000. Now in terms of military do DEA personnel so at a time when Human Resources are precious, allocating hundreds or thousands of people to emergency continuity plans in Washington DC is if nothing else, a monumental waste of money and resources, right? I would much prefer to see those people doing something else. But I do think it infects us. It infects our government with a certain presumption that there will always be some shadow government you call it you know, some people call it the deep state that will be available, regardless of what the contingencies are. And, and that theory of continuity, the one that does go back to the Eisenhower era when continuity first began and does go back to The nuclear era, this idea that somehow we need to have an extra constitutional apparatus is really what is most corrosive to the rule of law in our country, either we don’t need to have an extra constitutional apparatus and shouldn’t have one. And so therefore, we should have a continuity system that’s completely transparent and open. Or we do need to have an extra constitutional apparatus. And if we do, then I would like it to be constituted under the laws of our nation and not something that’s the product of secret orders. Right. So either way, we have a disconnect in terms of continuity. It’s like one of the one last bastions of actually Extra constitutional law which exists in our nation. And it’s either required because they can actually concoct scenarios in which it will be needed, in which case then let Congress deliberate and set the rules, or it’s something that has a life of its own and should be disbanded. Because we don’t live in a society where the threat of nuclear war is such anymore, that we need to have an extra constitutional structure.

Scott Horton 33:35
Now when Let’s hope it stays that way, as far as the cold war with Russia and China, but yeah, nothing like the old days, that’s for sure. Let me ask you one more thing, just almost as a note that I’m just curious, when they talk about the interagency This is a phrase that you cite in the piece, and it’s something that was made famous during Vin mins testimony during the impeachment hearings that the interagency had decided this and had decided that and I guess I just interpreted that to mean, like the deputies committee of the National Security Council, sort of deciding that this is what we’re doing, unless they can agree in which case they kick it upstairs kind of thing. But is that really right? or What is it? What exactly does that term mean to you?

William Arkin 34:19
Well, when people in the military say, interagency, they mean all that isn’t the military. When the media says interagency I think they mean what you just said, some deputies committee or principals committee of those people have all of the national security departments and agencies meeting together and, and, and making policy. So it can mean two very different things. When the military talks about interagency, the interagency as it relates to continuity. What they mean is all of the aspects of continuity that is what’s called the National continuity system. Of course the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Command etc, has their own internal continuity system and generally, in order to make the distinction between national continuity and internal continuity, internal continuity is called continuity of operations coop and national continuity is called continuity of government cog. And so when you when I talked about continuity in this regard, I mean national continuity, we already know that Northern Command that’s the US base domestic command responsible for North America has sent an alternate staff to Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado and buttoned up and closed up And sequestered themselves away from Northern Command. That’s a continuity measure taken by northcom to ensure that there would be an alternate command structure word general O’Shaughnessy and others disabled. Similarly, Strategic Command has created an alternate command structure. And as far as I’m aware, the Pentagon has as well. So internal to each government agency, there’s sort of a responsibility to ensure continuity. And then at the national level, there’s a separate program, which exists to ensure succession to the presidency and the ability of a cabinet to deliberate the affairs of government.

Scott Horton 36:46
Okay, right on Well, I’ll let you go but thank you very much for your time bill. It’s been great.

William Arkin 36:51
Thank you for having me on again, Scott.

Scott Horton 36:53
Aren’t you guys that is William M. arkin from Newsweek newsweek.com exclusive, as watching in DC faces Coronavirus, Spike secret military Task Force prepares to secure the Capitol. Alright you guys and that has been anti war radio for this morning. Thanks very much again for listening. I’m your host, Scott Horton. I’m an anti war calm and the author of the book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan by my full interview archive more than 5000 of them now going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org. I’m here every Sunday morning from 830 to nine on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA. See you next week.

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall Welcome to the Scott Horton show. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war.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 dot org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show. All right, you guys introducing Jacob solem. He is senior editor over at reason magazine. Welcome back to the show. Jacob How are you doing?

Jacob Sullum 0:48
I’m doing all right. Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 0:50
It’s almost a stretch to say back to the show because it’s been so long but I really appreciate you joining us here today. And boy, we have a bunch of important stuff. To talk about but I think if it’s all right, I’d like to start with this article that you wrote. And Trump can encourage states to lift their COVID-19 lockdowns, but he can’t decree that outcome. And this is the story of how Donald Trump made 10 thurs out of the liberal media for a day earlier this week by declaring that he has some kind of total power. What is up with that?

Jacob Sullum 1:26
Well, Trump frequently asserts powers he does not actually Have I mentioned a few in that post things he said in the past, where he clearly does not have the power that he’s claiming. This is another example of that. I mean, historically, it’s clear that the primary responsibility for responding to epidemics through quarantines in particular but other measures as well rests with the states that is a power that was reserved to the States under the Constitution. The federal government has inserted some power in that area, but having to do with Interstate and international transmission of diseases. So the federal government, through the Secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority to impose quarantines that are aimed at curtailing the spread between states or between, you know, into the into this country from other countries. But what he’s talking about is the, the lockdowns and the stay at home orders that were ordered either by local governments or by state governments. And they are very much operating within the parameters of their own authority under the Constitution. And he does not, on his own have the authority to tell governors for example, you must now lift that order. He was asserting otherwise. More recently, he has backtracked from that. I think the way He’s still portraying it as that it’s by his own grace that he’s letting the states go their own way. But he does not really have the authority to dictate to them in this area, he can say, gee, I’d like you to reopen the economy. Maybe it’s about time to do that. You can certainly say things like that. He also arguably can use some of his powers in allocating epidemic relief funds or epidemic, you know, fund funds aimed at fighting the epidemic, to encourage states to open up sooner rather than later. Congress could definitely could pass a bill saying, if you want to have more of this particular kind of money from us, we want you to start opening up your economy. I don’t think Congress is going to do that. But I think they could certainly do that. I mean, based on Supreme Court precedents, dealing with the issue of spending power. The classic example was the federal government decided that every state should have a minimum alcohol purchase age of 21. It could not directly order them to do that. But what they did instead is they said, if you want to get highway funding, you need to make this change. And that went to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said, That’s okay. Congress could not establish a national drinking age, it does not have the authority to do that. But it can say, we’re not going to give you this money unless you do this. So they could do something similar. Congress could definitely do something similar if they were if Congress was so inclined. And possibly, I mean, they could definitely try to pass a law explicitly and directly addressing lockdowns and claim that under the interstate commerce clause, they have that power. You know, say saying when California shuts down its economy when New York shuts down its economy. That has an impact on interstate commerce. Therefore, under the Constitution, we have some say in that. But of course Congress hasn’t hasn’t done that. So it’s very hard to see how Trump on his own can claim that power when he doesn’t have it under the Constitution. He has not even extensively been given any authority over lockdowns through a new Act of Congress. So basically, he was just sort of, I don’t know, what’s the kind of wave but I guess he’s claiming claiming power he doesn’t have. He wants to look like he’s in control. He has a tendency to assert that because he’s president he can do whatever he wants, but that’s not true. Yeah.

Scott Horton 5:42
I think it’s just amazing that in your article here, you’re citing john you the guy that says that George Bush has the power to torture somebody’s child into forcing him to give up a ticking time bomb or something like this. And he comes out and says, I’m sorry, Trump, you’re way overstepping your bounds here.

Jacob Sullum 5:59
Now, john, you his credit, you know, he has a very expansive view of presidential power, especially when it comes to national security issues and foreign policy. He is famous for pushing those powers to their limit, and some including they would argue beyond. But to his credit, he has criticized both Obama and Trump previously, long before the epidemic for overstepping the proper realm of presidential authority. So he is saying, basically what I just said that that this is traditionally an area where states have primary authority, there is some authority as it pertains to interstate commerce for Congress. But that doesn’t mean the President has that authority. Right. The President has to be able to cite either a congressional act that that ostensibly gives him authority to the intervene in this area, or some independent source of authority under the Constitution and there Not when he was. Trump was asked specifically about that at a briefing the other day. That reporter said, Well, what constitutional provision gives you this authority to tell states when when they can close down businesses when they have to let them open? And he said, they’re plenty. He didn’t actually name any. And he said, I can give you a Legal Brief. And you can imagine all of the lawyers in the Justice Department scrambling to try to come up with some sort of rationale. And then later on, he came back to the subject and said something like, Well, the President has a lot of authority. He’s very powerful, and I get to call the shots. And it’s not true as a general matter, you have to be able to source to cite a specific source of authority. Yeah,

Scott Horton 7:46
well, you know, it’s funny here he is claiming the powers of a dictator and I found myself sort of defending him in a way. When I wrote up my old blog entry about it at the Institute was he’s clearly bluffing and has No idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t even really mean it in terms of, is there any reason to expect that tomorrow or the next day or sometime soon that he’s truly going to claim this authority over the governors and make this decision for them? No, he’s not. And then that’s exactly what happened a couple of days later, I guess it was yesterday, he was on a conference call with the governors and said, You guys are in charge, you do what you’re gonna do. But he’s just up there Bs and because he’s probably never read the Constitution in his life. He has no idea what it says, other than he can be the president. And then that job is defined by his imagination only pretty much.

Jacob Sullum 8:37
Yes. And I, you know, look, politically, it doesn’t make sense for him to own this. Let you know, there was a smart move politically, is to let the governor’s go their own way as well as legally, you know, legally required to do but politically. Imagine he did have that power. He tried to assert that power. And he said, everybody’s got to open up now. And it doesn’t go out. It doesn’t turn out so well. Right. This way, he’s not responsible for possible bad outcomes due to lifting the orders. And he’s also not responsible for the bad outweighs the ongoing bad outcomes from having these orders to begin with, you know, there’s a tremendous amount of economic dislocation and damage that’s being done every day by these orders. He doesn’t have to take responsibility for that either. So if I were him, and I was trying to avoid responsibility, I would not want to be asserting the power, because then well, if he really thinks he has the power, people can say, Well, why didn’t you open up the economy sooner? You said you had that power? And and we’re all out of work, and we’ve we’ve lost our businesses, and we’re struggling to pay our bills. That’s on you now, because you said you had the authority to open the economy. Why didn’t you do that? You

Scott Horton 9:48
know, and, you know, it’s funny in that press briefing, where he’s saying this stuff. And the reporters, the one reporter says, Well, that’s just not true. She just contradicts him and says, Who told you that that You have that power. Where did you hear that from? And he refused to answer that, because of course, the answer was he made it up himself. And then pence gets up there is like, yeah, you know. Yeah, there’s a thing. We’ll we’ll get back to you on some kind of, you know, also bluffing trying to cover for the President. And then one of the other reporters who I can only assume, as a liberal Democrat, start saying, but what about the 10th amendment? The 10th Amendment says that all powers are reserved to the states and that they and I saw on Twitter where everybody was laughing about that, Oh, no, you’re a NEO Confederate. How dare you bring up the 10th amendment in any context or LLC are the devil but all of a sudden when it comes to Trump declaring this authority that Bill of Rights does count after all, huh?

Jacob Sullum 10:45
Yeah, and look, to be fair, both progressives and conservatives are inconsistent when it comes to federalism. Conservatives are more usually identified with that position, but they don’t like federalism when it gets in the way of the federal government achieving their policy goals, right? So when they try to try to do things like ban assisted suicide, or prohibit, you know, certain kinds of abortion, and you might ask, well, where does Congress get the authority to do that? Right? And they end up making these arguments that are very similar to what the arguments that progressives make when they’re pushing their policies. Right. So you do see especially you know, when you have a Republican in the White House, and when you have republican control of Congress, you see progressives making noises about states rights when they win, because they think the states are going to pursue the policies they like, hmm. So I think people’s allegiance to federalism is highly situational. Yeah. And but we’ve seen this before we’ve seen progressives, when they when they have republicans in charge of the national government suddenly discovering the 10th amendment and the virtues of state autonomy.

Scott Horton 11:58
Yeah, well, of course. You know, I admit I tried to quit Twitter, but it keeps pulling me back. And this virus thing has got me trolling Twitter again. And I saw so many conservatives saying, Oh, you liberal hypocrites, and now you favor limits on executive power. But I didn’t see you saying that during Obama, which is True enough. But what are they saying? They’re not attacking Trump for claiming too much power. Now. They’re simply hiding behind the hypocrisy of the liberals, but rather demonstrating their own hypocrisy in the very same way that no, of course we wouldn’t want Trump to claim any more power than we would want Hillary Clinton to be able to claim or any other Democrat in his same position. But no, yes, you say, highly situational for both sides.

Jacob Sullum 12:40
I mean, I think you and I would like to think that we were consistent about this. And I think, you know, I certainly strive to be I certainly criticized both Democrats and Republicans when they were presidents for overstepping their bounds. And Obama, you know, did some really egregious things, especially when it comes to warmaking, where he committed himself To position before he was elected that you need a congressional authorization unless basically unless you’re invaded, or there’s some kind of imminent threat to national security where you don’t have time to get a declaration. Otherwise, you have to get congressional approval, which is right. But once he took office, he was involved in several wars that were undeclared. On his own say so. And Trump, same thing. Trump, before he was elected, made noises about, I don’t know so much congressional permission, but he wanted to get the US less involved militarily around the world. It hasn’t quite panned out that way. So you see that kind of inconsistency, you know, in both parties?

Scott Horton 13:40
Yeah, absolutely. Hey, man, you guys are gonna love No dev no Ops, no ID by Hussein, Barack Johnny. 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 Hussain bodek Chani find it in the margin. It’s 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 calm. 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. Alright, so now I want to get into this article that you wrote here about the false debate about reopening the economy. And, again, with the left and the right, as Boulevard says swinging and missing, like drunks in a bar here. We’re on the right you have. I’m not I don’t want to say exactly, you know, make this a paraphrase because I forget, I didn’t jot it down. But I’m pretty sure I saw some guys from the Heritage Foundation, where they’re saying, Well, you know, by our calculations, the human life is worth this many hundred thousand dollars. And so you got to exchange this for that and this kind of thing, which is just bananas and then the left side. You know, the liberals are saying that anyone on the right, or anyone who wants to loosen up the clamp down, you’re trying to sacrifice precious, priceless human lives, just for the sake tannic god of the almighty dollar and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Maybe the stock market will go up a 10th of a point. And how many people are you willing to kill for that and Well, again, only the libertarians in the middle seem to be saying, Well, actually, we’re talking about trading lies for lives here. That’s the question. It’s not a question of lives for dollars, or question of, you know, only millionaire republican business owners want to reopen the economy while everyone else would prefer to be locked down just like, you know, all the liberal blue checks on Twitter who, after all, don’t have real jobs, right? They’re either media people or they’re government employees, university employees and so forth. And they’re not really sacrificing anything, and probably don’t know anybody who’s been thrown out of work, even as 20 million people have been thrown out of work just in the last month. But you’ve got your eye on the ball here, in terms of, you know, what the costs are for humanity not just hearing around or not just here but around the world. I don’t know if you saw the thing. It’s a top headline on anti war calm today is that you is predicting that hundreds of thousands of children are going to die because of the economic consequences of the lockdowns from the virus. And that’s, you know, a lot of people in the last 1020 years have been brought up out of poverty, but they’re still right on the line and can be pushed right back into hunger and starvation here.

Jacob Sullum 17:21
Yes, I mean, I, the important thing to recognize that is that there are human costs on both sides of this equation. And when it comes to sweeping measures, like business closures and stay at home orders, very clearly, there are tremendous economic costs involved immediately. We see it right now. Right with all the people unemployed. Yeah, as you mentioned, even it’s even worse in less developed countries. I mean, in India, you had all these migrant workers and suddenly couldn’t work and had to go back but they weren’t allowed to go back because maybe they’re spreading the buck. I mean, they’re screwed. They don’t they they’re really and that’s a situation where you really start to talk about lies for lives because people don’t have the money to feed themselves. So their cost of both sides. I won’t defend. I’m not going to defend any particular dollar figure. But what I will say is that when governments impose regulations that are aimed at protecting health and safety, they routinely take into account not just how many lives do we think this might save, but how much will it cost? And they shut? You have to because resources are finite. There has been almost no consideration of that among politicians when they decide to impose these orders. Now, there’s tremendous uncertainty on both sides of this, right. There’s there’s uncertainty about the epidemic itself, how lethal The disease is, how many people have it, how many have recovered I mean, there’s just basic facts. We’re You have no idea. And when you talk, just pick one example, about a fatality rate that might be somewhere around the flu, probably somewhat larger, right? on up to 10 times as lethal as the flu. And you don’t know where in that range it is. That’s it’s impossible to make rational policy decisions when you know so little about the threat. And I think there is a tendency to feel like we really need to do something, and we need to do something serious. Because it could be really bad, but we don’t know. But the problem there is that you are not, you’re giving very little weight, if anyway, to the other side of it, which is that you know, you’re going to to cause a tremendous amount of suffering by imposing these policies. So I think it is legitimate, I guess I’m going to defend the heritage foundation to say that, that we need to think about how much this is costing. And if it turns out that The number of deaths is not it’s not it was never going to be in the millions. I mean, these projections were not realistic, the ones where they talked about, you know, 2 million people or so in the US dying was that was based on the assumption that nothing was done literally nothing. In other words, people don’t change their behavior at all. Not just that there aren’t any government policies, but that everything just stays as it is. So that was never going to be the case. There was there was also going to be always going to be social distancing various kinds of precautions, face masks and so on avoiding, you know, large groups of people and all that. The question is, what’s the difference between that those kinds of precautions which are largely voluntary, and closing down huge segments of the economy? What’s the payoff from that? Right? We don’t really know. And we may, we may never know. Because after the fact, they will say, Well, look, the deaths are far fewer than we feared. It shows the policies work. Well, we don’t know that because we never ran the experiment, right? We didn’t we didn’t have an alternate universe where we’d never impose these rules. And then we saw how many deaths there were in that case. So we don’t really know. But you’re trying to choose between a sweeping measure, and a less sweeping measure in an environment where, you know, almost nothing. And so it’s not just that you don’t know about the disease, you also don’t know about the long term economic consequences. So we do know, but the immediate ones immediate ones are, should be obvious by now. people out of work struggling to pay their bills in poorer countries possibly starving.

But the long term consequences, you know, is this going to be just a really, really bad recession? Is it going to be a depression? We don’t know. That depends on a whole series of future events that are that are very difficult to predict. So you have tremendous amount of uncertainty of both sides. But what I will say is that I don’t think there’s been sufficient weight given to the economic cost of these policies, because their politicians have a very strong incentive. To act, to act to do something, to be seen to be doing something. And in the face of the, you know, hospitals possibly being overwhelmed by these cases and the death toll going up and up, it is natural for them to want to do something, even if they don’t have adequate information to make these decisions. So my fear is that the economic costs will turn out to be much greater than people anticipated, then then, you know, the governors were thinking when they impose these orders, and that the benefit in terms of death prevented, there will be some benefit, I’m willing to concede that there’s got to be some benefit, right. But it will be much more modest than what they were imagining. Because if especially if they were driven by these worse, completely implausible worst case scenarios, which does seem to be the case with Trump, by the way, when he sort of turned around on this issue, he was swayed by these projections of, you know, 2 million destiny us right if we do nothing, which was totally unrealistic. So if they were if they were making decisions based on those implausible worst case scenarios, figuring whatever the cost of this, it has to be done, that may turn out to have been a huge mistake. All right, so we’re now we have a situation we’re in now is that the governor’s, local governments as well felt constrained to impose these sweeping restrictions to avoid a hospital crisis. And that the reason that they felt constrained to do that is because like I said, they had almost no information. And one of the main reasons I had no information is that we had virtually no testing early on that was a huge fiasco, engineered by the CDC and the FDA, that we didn’t even know how many cases there were early on. We didn’t know if there was community transmission. In fact, there was right so you had the first case identified January 20. In Washington State. By that time, there are already lots of other people who have this We didn’t know. And not only did the CDC not get a better handle on it, but they actively together with the FDA prevented universities, private companies from trying to get a handle on this. So in that sense, you can blame them for the fact that the economy has been has been wrecked, because the politicians felt like they had no other choice, right? Because they didn’t they didn’t have adequate information. Now, if you had been able to back in January, find out who actually was infected, you had wide testing, and you could do what what a bunch of other countries have done, which is identify who’s sick, who they’ve been in contact with trace those contacts, isolate the patients, quarantine the people who’ve been exposed to now or carriers. You could have had a much more targeted and tempered approach that would not have ruined the economy. But that’s kind of a foregone. You know, we were not able to do that because we did not have Mass test and we still don’t have mass testing. Look at the latest numbers of people tested in the US for the virus, it’s still only about 1%. And it’s not a representative sample. They’re overwhelmingly testing people who have severe symptoms, right? Because they still don’t have enough tests. And that’s how they decide to allocate them. Somebody needs hospitalization, they will get tested, right? But people, even people who clearly have symptoms, they recover at home, they may never be tested. Another complication, my own daughter had symptoms that were my oldest daughter that we’re very much consistent with COVID-19. She got tested came up negative, and she’s like, Oh, I had all these symptoms. I didn’t even get immunity out of it. But it turns out that may not even have been an accurate result. Because the error rate for negative tests, maybe maybe like 30% of the time, they tell you you don’t have it and you actually did have it for various reasons, right? Yeah. So you have that group of people. Then you have the people, so people recovering at home. You have people who with symptoms so mild, they don’t even think they have COVID-19. They think, Oh, I got the flu, I have a cold, then you’ve got an unknown number, but substantial number of people who have no symptoms. So they’re carriers. But they don’t realize it. So we don’t know the size of the epidemic in the sense of how many carriers are we having? When I said, we don’t know, we have no clue. We don’t, we don’t even we don’t know it is. The true number of infections is twice the reported number three times four times five times 10 times 20 times, right. And there’s

Scott Horton 26:42
all kinds of criticism saying that they’re over counting because there have perverse incentives to overestimate. While at the same time, they’re definitely under counting and a lot of ways my sister’s a nurse at a hospital here in Austin, where she says that, you know, they got there’s hundreds of people infected. They know these people have it, they all have the same symptoms at the same time. They’re all COVID patients, but only a small percentage of them are being tested the rest, right? They know that they have it, but and they’ll probably be counted as COVID deaths if they do die, but maybe their corpse will be tested later, maybe not if they ever get them.

Jacob Sullum 27:19
Yeah, look, there’s errors in on both parts of this, right. So there’s some errors in terms of debts. And that can go two ways. You may have people who die at home. And, and they have other underlying conditions, which is very common, and it’s not attributed to COVID-19. But in fact, COVID-19 was the thing they really did them in right so you missed those. But on the other hand, you have people who test positive for COVID-19 and who die but it would have died anyway. And because everybody’s worried about this particular disease is attributed to that disease even though that death would have happened regardless. So you have errors both ways to the death but but but but any errors pertaining to the number of deaths are going to pale in comparison to the errors in terms of the number of total infections, the number of cases, just simply because the typical course of this is either you have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. So those people are never going to come to anyone’s attention unless you have some kind of wide testing, wide testing for the virus. Why testing for the antibodies? A representative sample take a representative sample of the country how many people have the antibodies, meaning that they were exposed and have since recovered and are presumably immune, although we don’t know exactly how our immune or For how long? We haven’t done any of that yet. Now, the CDC is talking about that. I assume at some point, they will do that. And then we will have a better handle on the situation. But these decisions have already been made. So the economy has already been wrecked exactly how wreck we don’t know. We won’t know for sure, you know, for years possibly. But it’s talking about a loss that’s on the order somewhere between the great risks Another great depression. Right? Right.

Scott Horton 29:02
Well, we know how ugly the great recession was in terms of the number of I don’t know the exact numbers, but the bankruptcies, the divorces, the suicides, the, you know, it was absolute catastrophe for the bottom 95% of the economic ladder here, while the very top got to buy up everything for pennies on the dollar. And yeah, I mean, looking at that charts and david stockman ‘s article and give you a heart attack itself, you know,

Jacob Sullum 29:29
right. So there’s an estimate out there for what it’s worth, that that the Great Recession cost Americans This is just within America $22 trillion. Okay. So if you’re talking about a loss in that neighborhood, probably more right. In order to justify that kind of loss, you really have to be able to show that these policies are going to say, not just some lives but a huge number of lives. And honestly, it’s hard to imagine That is going to have a big enough impact to justify that loss.

Scott Horton 30:04
You know, what’s the difference here too is, you know, all those people who lost their job last time around is one thing, but this time they’re losing their job and their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. And I wonder, you know, what’s the reason magazine take on 20 million people getting kicked off their health insurance roll in one month? You know, what’s to happen to them?

Jacob Sullum 30:27
Well, look, I mean, everybody is gonna get some kind of a while you may have gotten a check already. I don’t know about your wife. I don’t know what your adjusted gross income is. But you may, you may have, you know, money that suddenly appeared in your bank account. But of course, that’s just money, you know, that we’re borrowing from ultimately our, you know, grandchildren and great grandchildren. You’re gonna have a deficit this year of $4 trillion. If we’re lucky, probably more than that.

Scott Horton 30:57
Just check my balance is the same and it ain’t very high.

Jacob Sullum 31:02
So, so But my point is, is, and I think, you know, I don’t dismiss that, I think the government does have a responsibility to try to make it up in some way to people who were forcibly deprived of their livelihoods. That’s not their fault that that happened. The politicians said this was necessary, we’re gonna have to do this. And so they do some kind of compensation, but the money can’t come out of thin air. So they’ve already spent trillions of dollars on various forms of relief, they’re probably going to spend trillions more. And that’s, you know, that’s not even taking into account the broader economic effects of this, which is many trillions of dollars 10s of trillions of dollars, we assume if it’s something like the Great Recession. So those are enormous costs, and and I feel like they have not been given sufficient weight.

Scott Horton 31:50
Yeah. All right. Now, listen, there’s so many great articles you’ve written here lately. We’re not going to be able to go back over all but I will encourage everybody to go check out your archive there at reason. There’s so much good stuff. But I was wondering if we could talk real quick about the guns in Los Angeles County. And the sheriff’s attempt there to assert that gun stores are not essential businesses, and everybody’s just going to have to wait if they want to buy a gun. Because, first of all, it’s a great example of the way that these guys think in the first place. But secondly, not to ruin the whole Moral of the story here. But it’s a great example of civil disobedience. This order just did not fly at all with the people of LA. And rather than go to war against them, the sheriff ended up having to back down, right.

Jacob Sullum 33:40
Well, what’s interesting about that is that this happened in a bunch of states, not just California. They Governor’s issued orders saying non essential businesses, non life sustaining businesses, they use different terminology in the different states. But essentially, the idea was if you are important enough, you can stay up And in some cases, they anticipated that gun stores would be included in those businesses that were deemed essential. In other places, they didn’t address it. And they weren’t on the list of essential businesses. And the case of of LA County. The governor, Governor of California didn’t address whether they would they didn’t put gun dealers specifically on the list. The sheriff in LA County said, I’m deciding they’re not a central and they must close. And the governor said, Okay. The governor said, I gotta let local sheriff’s decide whether gun dealers are essential. But then the crucial thing that happened was the Department of Homeland Security issued guidelines, saying By the way, we decided gun dealers are part of the critical infrastructure. Now, what that meant in California, for example, was that they had to be deemed essential because under Governor Newsom’s order, he said Workers in it that are part of the critical infrastructure are exempt from this order. So that men that they you have to let gun dealers stay open. And it was all absurd In any case, because if the real concern were transmission of viruses, there are solutions to that, right. And in fact, this is the solution that came up with in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was, you have to make an appointment to buy the gun. You have to observe, you know, social distancing rules. Well, they could have done that from the outset. And the case of Pennsylvania was interesting because there was a lawsuit in front of the state Supreme Court, where they said this is a second amendment violation. And the Supreme Court in general said, Matt, but like we’re not gonna intervene, but there were three I believe, is three justices who wrote a very vigorous dissent saying, look, this is not optional. You know, this is a constitutional right You can’t just say you You can’t exercise this right? for the duration of this emergency, which is going to last indefinitely, you have to accommodate people’s constitutional rights. And the governor, even though this wasn’t the official decision, this was just a, this was a comment by three dissenters. The governor responded to that by creating this, these rules where you can do this by appointment, as long as you stay six feet away, and you sanitize services or whatever. Well, they could have done that from the beginning. Right. So it’s just interesting to see how little value some politicians attach to certain constitutional rights. The ones they don’t really care for that, that you even have to go through that you have to file a lawsuit, you have to, you know, get the department of homeland, Homeland Security, to officially declare that these are essential businesses. Ideally, you wouldn’t have to do any of that because they would recognize the importance of the Second Amendment to begin with.

Scott Horton 35:54
Although in LA, I mean, wasn’t really the DHS order or it was just the fact that the gun store owners were fused clothes and their customers refuse to stay home.

Jacob Sullum 36:46
Well, it’s probably a combination of things but but the sheriff actually cited that new guidance, the new federal guidance in backing down. So maybe that was just cut cover for him. Maybe he recognized there was no way that he was going to enforce his his unilateral ban on gun sales. And he’s like, well, and he cited that memo as cover. It’s possible. But I think that that was influential because that made a difference in other states as well, because all of these governors are essentially following federal guidelines about what’s considered to be critical infrastructure. And that’s incorporated into their order. So they can’t very well ignore. Ignore it when when the federal government clarifies what critical critical infrastructure means.

Scott Horton 36:48
Now, last topic here real quick before I let you go would be the the rulings and the the different actions taken against the churches and I guess there have been plenty of news stories. Have some pastor saying, Oh, don’t worry, you know, Jesus’s magic and the virus can’t get us here. So everybody crammed in your pews. And just don’t worry about it. And then, you know, that’s completely irrational and, and irresponsible to do. But then some of these governors, especially I guess, in Kentucky, decided that they’re going to clamp down, not on completely, you know, irresponsible behavior like that, which I don’t know if they even have that authority at all anyway. But even you can’t go to church and sit in your car in the parking lot and listen to your pastor over a loudspeaker and this kind of thing. And as serving levels of control over you know, religious life that haven’t been seen since. I don’t know when. So where are we at with all of that is that still all kind of up in the air about how far I think they can go with that stuff.

Jacob Sullum 38:31
This church in Louisville, won a temporary restraining order. So their plan, which they ultimately went through with was to have a driving service. separated in the parking lot everybody stays in their cars. You have the pastor who’s the only one standing outside at a distance from the cars, and he leaves the service. And that did happen on Easter. But the church had to file a lawsuit. Because the the governor of Louisville said nobody’s going to church doesn’t matter how you doing it, not just you can’t be in person close together, you know, inside the church, but you can’t do drive drive in services either than a federal judge said, No, we still have, you know, a First Amendment and it still means something even in the face of a pandemic. They are following various precautions, it really should be adequate. This order that you’ve issued, specifically singles out church services. So it’s not a neutral law of general applicability, which is what the Supreme Court talks about when they say, you know, just because your religion you think your religion requires you to do something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can violate a law because if you have a job Federal law. I mean, the classic example would be well, there’s a law against murder. If your religion requires human sacrifice, you know, you’re out of luck. Yeah. You still have to follow that law, right? Or in this case, if you’ve got a general rule against in person gatherings where people are close together, it’s okay to say under this is under the Constitution, it’s okay to say that applies to churches still. But what happened in Louisville is that it wasn’t a general role. It was a rule that applied specifically to church services. And even though for example, you have drive throughs at liquor stores, you have a people can still go buy groceries, there aren’t any general rules about cars and parking lots and how far away they have to be or how many you can you know, how many you can have a parking lot of time, nothing like that. So it was not a general rule. It was a religion specific rule that did not have a rational basis. It certainly did not have a strong enough basis to pass muster under the Constitution. So that’s they want they basically won that case. I mean, they had their their Easter service, the case will still continue because it was just a tr o. But if you look the language the judges, it’s very clear there’s no way he’s going to uphold that sort of restriction. So you have to you have to balance. I mean, it’s the same thing with the Second Amendment. You can say we can’t have people crammed together, you know, inside a gun shop that because that we think that’s hazardous. But you can’t just say there are no gun sales at all, you have to do some kind of weighing of the constitutional right, against legitimate concerns about virus transmission, and come up with a solution. that’s reasonable.

Scott Horton 40:35
All right, one more thing. Sorry. I can’t help it. But is it a crime to wear a mask or a crime to not wear a mask and American 2020?

Jacob Sullum 41:11
Yeah, well, I noted early on that there are a bunch of states that have anti mask laws, which on their face would seem to make it a crime to wear a mask in public that obscures your face. Now, a lot of these laws Especially the ones in the south were responses to the KKK. They didn’t want to people people to go around with hoods and go around with mass, they would be up to no good. And then penalties vary but but in Virginia, it’s actually a felony. To wear a mask in public with the intent of concealing your identity. In New York, it’s it’s not treated as seriously. But you might recall the occupy wall street protests where a lot of people were a mass, one of the charges that was brought against them as they were mass while congregating together, that’s still illegal in New York State. It’s a form considered to be a form of loitering there. So yes, I don’t think I haven’t seen the actual case where somebody is arrested because they were masked is that they either were afraid of transmitting COVID-19 or afraid of catching it. I doubt Well, I don’t want to say for sure we’re not gonna see that but I doubt we will see it, but it on the face of it, it’s illegal. And generally speaking, there is not a medical exemption and In Virginia, there was a medical exemption, but it required you to have a letter from your doctor saying you have to wear a mask. And here’s why. And here’s how long you can wear a mask for. So if you didn’t have that affidavit from your doctor, you were committing a felony, or the governor could if he when he declares a public health emergency say it’s okay to wear a mask, but he didn’t say that. So people in Virginia, we’re still technically committing felonies, technically committing felonies, if the were mass, and

Scott Horton 42:29
although checks on Twitter were saying, Oh, look, they’re trying to re legalize Klan hoods. That was a guess in Georgia.

Jacob Sullum 42:37
Uh, yeah. I don’t know. Is that a joke? That people on Twitter? I didn’t see that.

Scott Horton 42:40
But yeah, no, I saw a couple like that. And it was because while the law was passed in order to prevent Klansmen from wearing hoods, and so that’s the law they have to repeal and so people just take it at face value as though we’re not talking about pandemic and medical masks here, which is obviously what they were going for with.

Jacob Sullum 42:58
Yeah, you can I mean, look, you can just say that There’s a medical even though the legislature can say there’s a medical exemption, or the governor as part of his public health emergency, declaring a public health emergency can say that you can wear a mask for this purpose. There are ways around that you don’t have to. I mean, if you’re worried about the class, you don’t have to legalize class, you can you could just create an exemption for this situation where you don’t you know, you don’t need an affidavit from your doctor, you don’t have to worry about that. So yes, and you’re right now it’s going to become at least in New York, New York State, it’s mandatory right to where I’m at. So I guess they must have created the exception to their law because if you have several people wearing masks together, they would seem to be congregating which is a kind of loitering and and you can be arrested for that.

Scott Horton 43:45
So I got a message from a friend this morning says master now mandatory in Dallas County.

Jacob Sullum 43:50
Really? Yeah, I’m actually in Collin County, so I’m not sure what they’ve said. But my wife has been creating mass Using HIPAA filters and cloth for for healthcare workers at also, in order to fund the project, she’s been selling them to some people who just want to, you know, want to be able to wear them in public.

Scott Horton 44:15
But yeah, this is amazing how quickly we went from the government saying don’t wear a mask a mask will get you sick. To now you have to wear one or else you’ll get sick.

Jacob Sullum 44:55
Yeah, I mean, I mean, the the CDC is completely full of it on this because initially they were saying they had very restrictive things about if you’re a healthcare worker, it’s okay or if you have somebody who’s you know, severely ill and your houses, okay? If they can’t wear one, you should wear one, whatever. But otherwise, there’s no benefit or why they didn’t have the Surgeon General said there’s no benefit. The CDC says CDC says something like there’s no need, right. And they were confusing two things. On the one hand, they were saying which was true, there’s a shortage of medical grade mass and you should, you know, they should be prioritized when they go to the people who are you know, Doctors and nurses are working on the front lines that made sense. But they confuse that issue with the issue of whether mat master have any value. And they implied the Surgeon General certainly implied that there was no value to members of the general public to wear them. And that was wrong in two counts. First of all, there is some value, if you’re worried about catching it, it’s not you know, a clock mask is not as good as the surgical mask, which in turn is not as good as you know, and then 95 mask, but there is some pride some level of protection, even if it’s only to prevent spittle, you know, from landing on you. But the other thing about it, which they knew long ago, months ago, is that people when they’re when they have no symptoms can still transmit the virus. So you’re not just protecting yourself, you’re protecting other people because you might be carrying it and not realize it. So that and they knew that early on, and they’ve acted as if it didn’t matter. And now all of a sudden they’re like, oh, it turns out that people can be asymptomatic and still transmit the virus. Well, we already knew that, you know, we knew that months ago, but they they’re suddenly acknowledging that and saying it’s you know, it’s Good idea. And in some cases, there’s gonna be mandatory to wear a mask in public.

Scott Horton 46:03
Yeah, yeah. And you know, there was this piece the other day about how in Hong Kong, they’re saying this is the key. And this is exactly how we prevented the thing from breaking out. And in fact, they said that the only places where they continue to have outbreaks in Hong Kong are in places where it’s this one Buddhist shrine where people are taking off their masks for whatever reason it is one Buddhist shrine, and then there’s a certain ceremony or ceremonial dinner that they have where they all eat out of one pot together or something like that. Nowhere else Have there been any outbreaks and they attribute it to the fact that everybody’s wearing a mask.

Jacob Sullum 47:49
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s risky to, you know, reach firm conclusions based on anecdotal evidence, but there are a number of countries where it was. It was, it was common for people to wear masks long before this epidemic. In China, at least in major cities, it was common, you know, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan. And it was, what was good about that is that there was no stigma attached to it. Whereas in the US, at least until recently, if you were a bass people like, Oh, you must be sick, I guess, yes, stay away from you, or either that or you’re a hypochondriac and you know, you’re crazy when whatever. So I think that does, you know, the US it needs to be D stigmatized, so that it’s not like, people don’t look askance at it, and it can’t hurt, you know, for sure it can’t hurt. And, and it may very well, especially if you’re a carrier, helped prevent you from passing it along to somebody else. Even if you stay six feet away, you know, there is is there estimates about how far these the virus can travel in you know, in saliva or glucose or whatever it comes out of you. through the air. And so even if you’re staying six feet, this gives an extra level of protection for other people in case you are a carrier. And then they also protect you. And it’s certainly a good idea if you’re if you’re elderly or if you have, you know, if you’re immunocompromised or have other serious underlying conditions, if you’re going to be going out in public, even with the social distancing roles is a good idea to wear one. And, and even if he have no none of those issues, just to try to protect other people, since you never really know, right? If you’re actually if you’re carrying the virus, it’s a good idea.

Scott Horton 48:36
Yep. All right. Well, listen, I’ve kept you way too long this morning. But thank you so much for coming on the show, Jacob. It’s been really great. And I love reading your stuff over there at reason.

Jacob Sullum 48:44
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Scott Horton 48:46
All right, you guys. That is Jacob Selim, senior editor over at reason magazine, go read the last 20 things he wrote. 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, you guys welcome back to the show. On the line, I’ve got the great Ramsey Baroud from PalestineChronicle.net and he also is the author of These Chains will be Broken well, editor I guess. These chains will be broken Palestinian stories struggle and defiance in Israeli prisons. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Ramsey?

Ramzy Baroud 1:05
I’m doing great. Thank you for having me, Scott.

Scott Horton 1:08
Great, man. happy to hear that and very happy to have you back on the show. And I meant to mention, of course that we run almost all your stuff at antiwar.com dot com as well. And we got a few of those to talk about on the show today. But first of all, I wanted to start with this story from the Palestine Chronicle. Israeli forces demolish emergency Coronavirus clinic for Palestinians. It sounds so absurd that it must be true, I guess, in northern Jordan Valley. Can you tell us about that?

Ramzy Baroud 1:47
Well, it is as absurd as it sounds, but it is really the typical type of behavior of the Israeli army in and it’s foolish also to think about And we’ll talk about this in a second. But yes, there is this trend of the Israelis are trying to send political messages to, to the Palestinians. So whenever the Palestinians are trying to, you know, contain the spread of Corona virus in certain areas Israel claims to be part of its, you know, future vision of the Israeli state. For example, yesterday in occupied East Jerusalem, they demolished a makeshift Coronavirus Clinic, they’ve done it in the Jordan Valley and so forth. So trying to send messages to Palestinians that you have no jurisdiction or any claim on these areas whatsoever. And and even if you are sitting and makeshift clinic, you are as if you are trying to tell us that we have some sort of a claim over Jerusalem or the Jordan Valley so they are making it very clear that they don’t want Palestinians to operate within these areas, whatsoever.

Scott Horton 2:59
Yeah. And for the skeptics there it was Israeli journalists who covered the story first right at bat, Selim.

Ramzy Baroud 3:08
Right? And you know, it’s it’s available and I mean, you see it in videos going viral all over, you know, the, I mean, Palestinians are good at anything. They’re really good at documenting these kinds of things. So it’s not just mere eyewitness accounts, we see videos of these things happening. But the other foolish thing that’s been also going on is that Israeli soldiers are also kind of an settlers or are in this sort of spitting rampage. As strange as this may sound, you know, where they are going to Palestinian, you know, shops, ATM machines, in particular have been the target of spitting or this spit on the numbers and the knobs and the whatever they find hoping that Palestinians you know, will contract the Coronavirus and it’s just ridiculous because there’s nothing Have the Coronavirus operates, it doesn’t understand the difference between you know, occupied and occupier and apartheid walls and checkpoints. It operates at a global level but it but it just comes to show you this kind of really mean and and and destructive mentality that that operates within the Israeli mindset whether within the settlers illegal settlers community in the West Bank or among Israeli soldiers in the West Bank as well.

Scott Horton 4:29
Yeah, you know, I’d read a story or two about the settlers spitting on Palestinians cars as they’re driving by spinning down from the hilltops and that kind of thing. And, you know, I guess we don’t know for sure if those settlers actually have the COVID or not right. But the point is, so imagine somebody was doing that to you. You don’t know whether they’ve got it or whether they don’t, but you have to presume that they do. And then what are you supposed to do? Of course, it’s not like the Palestinians have a full supply Lysol wipes for going to the ATM or wherever, they just have to turn around and go away. And they don’t get it in the face. Yeah,

Ramzy Baroud 5:08
exactly. And you know, and of course, there’s the the insult connotation, you know, which this is a whole different story. I mean, this has been going on and I documented these stories in a recent article I wrote about, about Israeli spitting. It’s been going on for many years, especially in Jerusalem, where Christians have been kind of the target of spitting and and much of this has been reported in Israeli media, mostly really Haaretz, Jerusalem, post your daughter, her note, have covered it. We’re Christians and women kind of find themselves as the main target of spitting by Israelis. And now it’s kind of really expanding, you know, with this whole Corona scare to include the entire West Bank as well.

Scott Horton 5:54
Well, and all you got to do is put the shoe on the other foot for just one second if it was the Palestinian question. And Muslims spitting on Jews, Israeli Jews, including even settlers, much less, you know, inside so called Israel proper. That would be terrorism with a capital T and probably sponsored by Iran.

Ramzy Baroud 6:15
Well, I mean, that’s the thing because this actually, that’s an audio you just raised Scott does exist. And in my research, I run into this long feature published in the New York Times about Orthodox Jews in in France in few occasions being the victims of spitting as well by others as an act of anti semitism. And the thing that really and of course, this is a boring and it’s terrible and it can’t, it can’t continue but but on the other hand, the New York Times not at all mentioned the, you know, the, this history of spitting that’s going on, in Palestine in Israel sillim and West Jerusalem. In particular, as if this happened completely in a vacuum, and it was designated as it deserved to be designated as acts of anti semitism, and yet it’s actually the Israeli media that have gave this issue so much coverage. And the our campaigns within Israel within the Jewish community in Israel trying to spit other, you know, stop other fellow Jews from spitting at Palestinians, with their Palestinian Christians, or Muslims, or women, including Jewish women who attempt to pray near the holy shrines in, in Jerusalem. So this isn’t a history, a story that has a lot of history, but to actually kind of think that this type of evil, evolving with the Coronavirus, giving them these new ideas and in new imagination to how do we actually spread the virus amongst Palestinians by spitting at them collectively, in Hebrew in Jerusalem in Bethlehem. and so forth. It’s absolutely ridiculous. But again, it’s just part of this trajectory that goes back many years.

Scott Horton 8:08
Well, but I mean, these Palestinians have invaded today and some area that it belongs to the Israelis from somewhere or something. And so these settlers are just defending themselves against Ramsey.

Ramzy Baroud 8:24
Well, I mean, that’s, that’s the thing. That’s the kind of narrative that the, you know, designers have been promoting for many years, despite the fact that we know where design is actually came from, and, you know, the, mostly from Eastern Europe and all of this and, you know, how kind of this history was animated entirely out of scratch and how Palestinians were completely dropped out of that history. So the history of my family, my parents, we go back thousands of years. I mean, there’s no proof that we were anywhere in the world, but this There, and yet somehow we are completely skimmed over, you know, and you have this kind of strangely selected so called history that negate our very existence and give those who came from Eastern Europe, you know, few decades ago or a few years ago, I mean many of the American Jews who come from Brooklyn and elsewhere and go to Israel and take on an OC or some sort of an automatic rifle and, and then they have immediate historical claim immediate, you know, you get out of the airplane and then suddenly there is historical roots that go back, whatever. And people like me cannot even go home. I haven’t seen my family for over 25 years now. And I don’t see any hope of ever actually seeing them because he can’t go he can’t leave and I cannot go back and this is the story of millions of Palestinians as well.

Scott Horton 9:54
You know, I did an interview last night where they asked me about Israel and it was a an honest Question from a good guy. It wasn’t, you know, bent to prejudicial against the Palestinians necessarily, but just the point being that it came from a position of essentially, you know, the average Americans confusion and ignorance and lack of understanding. And so it was, it was an honest question, but it was so broad. It was like, what is going on over there anyway? Because all they know is that it doesn’t really make sense. You know, they hear, for example, we’ve talked about this in the past that Palestine is the state next door that has invaded Israel and is using terrorism to extort land out of them and all this stuff. Oh, and also, it’s up to the Israelis to decide if one day the Palestinians will ever get their own state. And these two things, you know, sit side by side and obviously completely and totally contradict each other. And yet, no one ever really hashing it out, no one ever really explained. And as I was saying to those guys last night, If you just look at a map of Israel, it looks like somebody invaded from the east and took this giant chunk of Israel away from them, the West Bank, when in fact, that’s what’s left that hasn’t been completely conquered yet. And so, but they’ll never explain that really on TV. You know, it was on msnbc once five years ago where they explain this, but never since then. So the average just TV viewer would think that the whole story is, you know, minus tourists under siege by the forces of Mordor from the east, and there’s nothing there’s no backstory to it. There’s nothing that you need to understand better than that. And then even when it doesn’t make sense, you still don’t get clarity. But meanwhile,

Ramzy Baroud 11:44
and you know, and even if you go ahead, go ahead, clarity, Scott. Sorry, but even if you try to give them clarity, they wouldn’t accept it, for example. I mean, I have many stories. I continue my relationship with mainstream mainstream American media, but a recent One was was with the New York Times. Few months ago, they asked me to write an article explaining the context of the great march of return. You know, we’re 10s of thousands of Palestinians go to the fence separating beseech Gaza from Israel and protesting and demanding their right of return to their ancestral homes. So, I tried to do that. I thought I did a very good job at it.

Scott Horton 12:24
You’re good writer.

Ramzy Baroud 12:26
Oh, thank you, Scott. But also keeping in mind that I’m dealing with the New York Times and their editors and their audience of trying to kind of find some sort of really bad balance but an honest way of conveying the truth. And no, no, no, we don’t want history with you need to tell us about Hamas and Fatah, you know, the Palestinian rival factions. And I said, Okay, this is this is fine. I will discuss this, but it has to be placed within historical context. What happened in 1948? How did these kids became refugees? How did the families become refugees? What are they they would not accepted it carried on I had to rewrite the article over 10 times and it carried on for nearly two months and at the end they said nope Thank you We don’t want it you know, so and yet if you are an Israeli right wing politician or whatever making all sorts of bizarre claims, they get published in the New York Times no questions asked. If you are Ramsay baru trying to convey really basic well known information documented not only by Palestinian historians and world his students but by Israeli historians, the likes of Ilan Pepe the likes of of Avi schliemann. In the likes of maker pellets, so many of them are saying the exact same thing. You are barred You are not allowed. We want you Ramzi to tell us about the conflict amongst your own people forget about Israel. This is not to be touched or criticize in any way on the pages of the New York Times. So this is no wonder why people ask what seems to me basically Or, you know, supposedly stupid questions they are not they’re basing that, based on the knowledge that is available to them through mainstream media. Mainstream media is not telling them anything.

Scott Horton 14:11
That’s exactly it. And you know, it’s funny too, because in this case, who here explained to me the march of return? Well, I mean, God dang, it’s got returned right in name of the march returned to what from where, you know, as you’re saying, the population of the Gaza Strip is something like 80% of the population of the Gaza Strip are refugees. Well, refugees from where you’re not allowed to say where they’re refugees from where they’re trying to return to?

Ramzy Baroud 14:40
God forbid it’s you’re exceeding your mandate. You need to tell us why Palestinians are dysfunctional. Fine, I am I am. I am ready to tell them why we have factional rivalries. I never shy away from you know, I followed the the ideas of Edward side, the Palestinian great Palestinian historian. And, and Professor it Woodside who said, any criticism always has to start with the self to be a genuine criticism, right?

Scott Horton 15:09
Yeah And of course, all the time I’ve known you you have no problem criticizing Fatah or Hamas, you’ve never been loyal to either side either faction in that whatsoever.

Ramzy Baroud 15:18
Exactly. But you can’t just simply come and say, oh my society is dysfunctional, and Israel is the greatest democracy in the world. I mean, you you have to really put things in the proper context and and and yet, we have no space. I mean, you mentioned my book about the prisoners, thank you for that. But do you think that I will ever expect any mainstream newspaper anywhere in the United States or even Europe to actually run a review or a write up about it? We are as Palestinian intellectuals and forget about me I don’t want to use myself as an example. Think of all the great Edwards say but also think of Norma Salha and Guard Academy and and these great historians. novelists, they almost never ever get space in any their books, their writings, their ideas, their theories, we are invisible to mainstream media, they don’t acknowledge our existence on the intellectual map. So how can people ever understand things from our point of view? If you have this this quarantine on our ideas? Yeah. And our intellect.

Scott Horton 16:22
Yeah, exactly. Well, and you know, I mean, here’s the thing, too. And this is, believe me, just descriptive not normative here. But it is understandable. And I mean that in the literal sense, understandable. Not, I can sympathize with the point of view, but just it’s understandable that in 1948, a rabs are just a bunch of towel heads and sand and words and they just don’t matter. They’re just you know, like American Indians or black Africans or what they can be pushed out of the way and and not respected in the way that European Jews, even though they were Jews in the city. social rank of things back then. They’re wider than you guys. And so that counts for something. And it’s the last hurrah of white settler colonialism. We’re outlying invading other people’s countries and transferring your populations into those countries, except for this one last exception here for the survivors of the Holocaust. We’re going to move them down there, and we’re just going to pretend like these Palestinians don’t exist. I mean, I think I told you before about Eric Margolis, talked about how, at the time his mother was a great journalist in the Middle East, and there was a total cover up about the Nakba, it was denied that the Palestinians even existed at all. And when his mother reported that, yeah, there are millions of people who are now refugees on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip here, who are suffering from this thing that are, you know, hundreds and thousands of them who’ve been removed from their homes, almost 1,000,003 quarters of a million people that, you know, they threatened to kill her and threaten to kill him when he was a young boy at the time that this was amazing. This was a crazy conspiracy theory that these people even existed. But anyway, you can see The rationalization there that the Jews are wider the European Jews, and they just survived the Holocaust, the ones who did survive it. And so okay, but the point I’m trying to get to is, yeah, but now it’s 2020. And we’re at the absolute epitome of anti racist political correctness in the West here, and even to insane degrees beyond reason, the political correctness and a lot of ways and so it’s not understandable. Now, the way that people just pretend that they’re you’re not dealing with a system of Jim Crow, or South African style apartheid at the expense of the natural human rights of millions of innocent people who are essentially suffering in this situation simply because their parents, you know, gave birth to them while having the wrong religion and and for no other crime. And I knew, you know, they’re sitting here talking about Yeah, we’re gonna go ahead and start annexing what’s left to the West Bank, you can’t even have your measly 22% of what’s left, you’ll be lucky if you get 22% of 22%. And somehow, as you’re saying, you can’t get an essay in the New York Times, you can’t get you know, you know, leftists obviously leftist media Yes. But, you know, mainstream progressive and liberal media to pay attention to this. No dice whatsoever. And, and in the university setting, I know you could tell me about that. The the uphill battle that Palestinian voices have to climb to even be heard here at all. It would be like if we just refuse to pay any attention to the American Indians on the reservation or even keep attacking them and refuse to even hear their voices about what’s going on or something that, you know, continuing Jim Crow segregation in the south up to 2020. Even and refusing to go ahead and implement Brown versus Board of Education after all this time. It’s completely bananas. And yet it just can And frankly, it’s hard for me to understand. I mean, as you as you mentioned, in Israel, you have Israeli Jews trying to stop other Israeli Jews from spitting on Palestinians. In America, there are huge numbers of American Jews who absolutely resent Israel and, and detest and support a two state solution and all that kind of thing. And yet still, even their voices don’t really get heard by the mainstream at all. It’s really remarkable in its own way, you know, I’m kind of fascinated by the success of the propaganda and of the propaganda by omission, maybe more than anything else.

Ramzy Baroud 20:39
Exactly. And you know, Scott is excellent as say bye, bye, delete the word site since I mentioned his name twice in our chat, quote, permission to narrate. It was published in 1984. And it it was discussing more specifically how the Israeli war on Lebanon War dealt with in, in American mainstream media and how any voice that that that seemed to object to what Israel was doing and they’ve been on the illegal war, the the massacres and all of this in 1982, how it was completely these voices were muffled or marginalized or completely blockaded from presenting a counter point of view to what is really propaganda machine was spoofing worldwide. And and it’s just how sad it is that that essay could actually be read in, not in 1984, but rather 1948 or 2020 and still applies so that you have a so called conflict this speak of a conflict. Mainstream media doesn’t hesitate to call it a conflict fine. Yet somehow, one of these so called conflicting parties, which is our spare Estonians are not to be allowed to speak You can’t hear our voices we don’t exist and therefore, oh and not just that, but also any Israel Ed or any any Jewish person, anywhere in the world who seemed to side with the Palestinians or say wait a minute, they do have a point they do have rights. That person is immediately smeared as a self hating Jew. And now it’s beyond cultural and societal smearing. It went as far as few years ago, the Israeli Knesset, the parliament began producing laws not targeting Palestinians only, but targeting dissenting Jews within Israel, preventing them from accessing state money and state funds non non for profit organizations being shut down. And Israelis find themselves also prevented from challenging any governmental narrative. So this this goes beyond Jews and Arabs, Jews and Palestinians. This is something that this is this is a fun Between the Zionist narrative that hijacked the Jewish cause entirely and claimed to speak on behalf of all Jews and against anybody else who dares reject this narrative including Israelis and Jews themselves. Right And so, this is this is so important for us to emphasize that this is not this will define this is not a fight with this will define racial, religious and ethnic lines. It is really about the narrative itself. So, if you are pro Israel, christian fundamentalists in Washington DC, you are as Zionist as as, as Israel wants you to be and you could be very much a religious Israeli Jew who is against what Israel is doing and somehow you are not a member of the tribe and you are completely marginalized and neglected. And in fact punished at times.

Scott Horton 24:02
Yeah. And, you know, I mean, the polls I’ve seen say that the majority of the majority of American Jews support independence from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and a Palestinian state. I think it’s even a third of American Jews don’t identify with Israel in any real way or think about it whatsoever is one of the answers on the multiple choices. is Israel even an issue in your life at all? And they The answer is shrug. No, I’m an American. What do I care about Israel? And then if they do care about Israel at all, most Jews are liberals and, and progressives, and so they think, Well, yeah, there should be civil rights for minorities. That’s one of the things about being a liberal in America, right is supporting civil rights. So it’s a very loud and very determined minority, who, you know, are determined to frame things the way that they do and and have succeeded to such a great degree. It’s Again, it’s really remarkable. It’s as remarkable as it is, you know, tragic for the people of Palestine. And then so speaking of which, that includes you, as you said, You’re from there. You didn’t just you weren’t born of Palestinian parents in the West, you’re from Palestine. And then I was trying to remember actually, as I was reading this great article at anti war calm a Palestinian guide to surviving a quarantine on faith humor and Dutch candy, great piece here. And I was trying to remember if your family were refugees from another part of Palestine or whether they were from Gaza all along or what and how it was that they had ended up in the Gaza Strip and then but if you could just tell us you know, you can stick with the theme of the peace if you want but it just brings up so much about what life was like there in the Gaza Strip for you as a boy.

Ramzy Baroud 25:52
Right, And that was really the idea I wanted to convey. I’ve seen a lot of, you know, people are shocked by all of this. What’s happening and the quarantines and the lock downs and tragic death tools and all of this, and I just didn’t want to pile up. I didn’t want to approach this story from Oh, yeah, well, you know, we have suffered a lot more Look what is happening in Gaza and Yemen and, and Libya and so forth. I didn’t want to approach it from that point of view, I wanted kind of like an honest human touch, but also with a spin of a humor in it, as well because I think people relate more sometimes to this type of narrative. So it was like, Okay, well, you know, I can tell you a few tips from you know, my past on how to survive this type of situation. And you know, it’s relative. You know, a lot of these things may apply to you may not apply, but I will, you know, kind of use my own story growing up as a refugee in in the Gaza Strip. My family come from a village that was destroyed. By the Zionist militias in 1948, it’s called bid das das is a village that when I wrote my book, my father was a freedom fighter, I managed to trace it back to over 1000 years and, and beyond that I really couldn’t find any sources that would kind of confirm its existence. But I there was no reason to believe that it hasn’t been there for over 1000 years. And like nearly a million Palestinian, who were expelled in 1948 by the Zionists, my family ended up coming to the Gaza Strip, where we pitch the tent. And we started to live there as Palestinian refugees and identity that remains part of our identity until today. And the strange thing is that even though I’m a US citizen now, I still see myself as a Palestinian refugee because we don’t we don’t see the refugee experience in terms of You know, on the need for humanitarian aid, it becomes more like a political identity for us. As long as I’m a refugee as long as I’m still fighting for the rights of my people to go back home, that sort of thing. During the first Intifada, that’s the Palestinian popular uprising of 1987. Israel use all sorts of harsh collective punishment measures against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. I was living in the Gaza Strip with my family. I was a teenage boy. And we lived in a refugee camp. The treaty was one of the hardest hit areas, in terms of we were quite rebellious. We, we protested all the time. We demanded our rights all the time. We even threw rocks at the Israeli army that constantly invaded our camp. And as a result, I would say within the seven years of Intifada, I would say maybe I was home consulting. For anywhere between three to four years, not leaving the house period, and the other three, four years, I would say that we were not allowed to venture beyond our neighborhood. So it’s kind of like seven years of almost complete lockdown. So you know, you would think that you kind of learn few things from that experience that when the lockdown started here in Seattle, where I’m speaking to you right now, for me, it was like, Okay, I need to revert to an experience that helped us survive during these difficult times. And of course, the first thing that comes to mind was the Intifada, and how we managed to survive the seven years of complete quarantine, if you will. That’s the idea behind the article.

Scott Horton 29:46
Yeah, well, and sure sounds like pretty terrible childhood there. And you know, the way it starts here with the announcement in poor Arabic that Stay inside anybody who comes outside after dark will be shot. And he had the IDF. They mean it when they make a threat like that that’s a promise. And I guess you probably seen the results of them. following through on that promise, probably pretty often, huh?

Ramzy Baroud 30:20
Absolutely. I mean, I’ve lost dear friends of mine during that time. You know, just students, you know, pupils at school, my classmate, Allah was one of the one who was shot. He was my football buddy. We always played what we call soccer you call football here in the us together, it was this tiny little kid, he was so very smart and very well, very well behaved and polite and, and we were just coming home from school, you know, schools would open for a couple of days and they would shut them down for two months and so forth. And we were excited to Go back to school at least you know for that time and on the way back the Israeli army cornered us near the neighborhood and, and open fire killing Allah on the spot. So yeah, of course you have numerous such stories and I am being facetious when I compare, you know, that experience with the corona virus quarantine, of course, I mean, people here are not being shot dead in the streets and, and so forth. But it was just kind of an attempt at maybe even a desperate attempt at kind of getting people to relate to what we went through and what Bill was and Palestine are still going though until this moment.

Scott Horton 31:43
Yeah, no, and, and it was, I think he did a good job on it. I it should work. I mean, I’m already with you here, pal. But uh, you know, I think you know, people are feeling extremely constricted right now, especially people who have lost their jobs and the new numbers come In this week, say 20 million Americans have been thrown out of work in the last month. And all of us locked up in our houses like this and a lot of people are really going stir crazy. And so yeah, it should be a great opportunity for them. I mean, frankly, you know what upper middle class life live in Texas and could even begin to imagine what it’s like to be a Gazan, right? I mean, it’s just as we were talking about before, it’s never in the media. They don’t ever say here’s 60 minutes, here’s 20 minutes of it is what it’s like to be a godsend for you here. It’s just completely outside of Americans experience in any way. And so here’s a small taste of that, you know, locked in your pretty nice house with your loving family and and still the groceries are delivered and everything is you know, not falling completely apart yet. And yet, think of how bad it already is. How afraid people are of this disease of losing Their ability to continue to provide for their families and everything else. And then there’s just no question. This is just the smallest little taste of what it would be like to be a Palestinian under Israeli siege. And for years for decades on end, where, you know, as you said, You can’t even travel to go see your family and they can’t travel to see you. They’re locked in there, like a concentration camp. And, and for not committing a crime, other than wanting their property back.

Ramzy Baroud 33:28
And I think it’s it. That’s another missing part of our narrative. And I encourage other Palestinian writers and intellectuals and ordinary people to understand that, you know, we could sit and debate you know, the issue from a political point of view from a historical, you know, comparative historical point of view and so forth. But, you know, until people actually appreciate what, what you go through at a personal level, they will never truly understand and I think this is how The Israelis managed to really kind of coerce people into accepting their narrative. Hollywood played a huge role in kind of manufacturing, that history that that that allowed ordinary Americans to sympathize with Israel without really fully or in any way understanding what is well is actually is all about and what it’s doing to Palestinians. I really do think that if ordinary Americans truly understand in a in a tangible way, what is actually underway in Palestine, I think the vast majority of them will not allow their names and they will not allow their numbers and stats to be viewed as pro Israel in any way. So this is why it’s so important for us to connect with ordinary Americans in in a different way at a human level. And I think the story really starts there. When my book came out, my father was a freedom fighter, which did very well I could not Even it took me by surprise of how many just ordinary people who’s like Ramsey, I saw this title. You know, my father died in Australia last year. And I saw this book and I bought it. And I know nothing about Palestine, Israel until I read this book. It was just relating to, you know, to his father, or someone is relating to the love stories in the book or the the comedian at the refugee camp on how ordinary people survive and, and thrive under the most difficult of circumstances. And I think it’s so important that we could not at this level because politics can be polarizing, and it’s very, very difficult sometimes to change. Someone’s built in ideas, if you don’t truly tap into that aspect in their brain or their hearts that connect them to you as a human beings.

Scott Horton 35:53
Yeah, absolutely. Hold on just one second. Be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from amazon.com Well, that makes sense. They bring him 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 the 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 interview 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. You need stickers for your band your business will Rick and the guys over at the bumper sticker comm have got you covered great work, great prices, sticky things with things printed on them. Whatever you need the bumper sticker comm we’ll get it done right for you. The bumper sticker.com. You know, it’s been a little while since I’ve mentioned this, but there’s this documentary by Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen, where two nice Jewish boys who went to the Gaza Strip after the assault of our guests during the middle of the assault in 2014, and then stayed for the aftermath. And the whole movie is essentially just Dan Cohen, sticking his camera in the face of local Gazans and saying so what’s on your mind And they talk about how they think and how they feel and what happened to them. And nobody says a thing about Allah said I should hate Jews and some garbage like Americans would assume every bit of it. They sound like a bunch of Texans, right? This is my land, and you can’t have it, you see this dirt off fight you to the death for it and this kind of thing. That’s exactly what a citizen of any state in this land would say, to a foreign occupier who comes to invade and confiscate their property, take it from them, slaughter them in a giant canned hunt like they do in the various, you know, repeated assaults on the Gaza Strip since the siege was declared. And all of this, and just seriously, they sound like any man in the world in the same situation saying the exact same thing. You know, it’s the essential humanity of it is just completely plain to see that, you know, what are you so upset about? Well, they dropped a bomb on my apartment building. And they killed 15 people. And so yeah, I met pretty simple stuff. Yeah. So let me ask at the end here, about COVID. Now, I mean, this has been a huge fear, I’m sure of yours and everybody else’s who cares about this is what’s going to happen when there’s a real outbreak in the Gaza Strip. I mean, the West Bank too, but in Gaza, obviously, the situation is far more desperate for it, you know, many more people. So How bad is it so far? And what if anything is being done?

Ramzy Baroud 39:34
Well, of course, because it’s far more desperate because Gaza itself was struggling and we’ve been writing about it and anti war has been kindly publishing our work on the subject that Gaza has been really in a desperate situation in terms of the the medical facilities that are lacking everything, even a clean water is not accessible to most of these hospitals and and so forth. And now add to this the COVID-19. And I wrote an article about, I would say, 10 days before the breakout started in Gaza, saying, you know, you might you may think that Gaza because of this political quarantine the Israeli decision blockade, you may think it’s safer than the rest of Palestine and the rest of the world perhaps. But once COVID-19 arrives there, it’s going to be an absolute disaster because I know that they have absolutely no preparedness, no facilities to deal with it. They couldn’t even deal with with basic diseases, but they really can’t deal with it. Imagine with the Coronavirus, strikes Gaza, the thing that worries me even most is not the number of cases that have been declared is that they really have no way of knowing why people are dying or why people are getting sick who has COVID-19 and who doesn’t. Israel allegedly gave Palestinians to hundreds of persons As in Gaza, 200 testing kits, that’s it. This is a population of 2 million people. And they were given only 200 test kits. And, of course, they ran out like in immediately. And not only now they have no way of knowing or testing or let alone treating, you have hundreds of people who have been quarantined that they can’t release them without testing them negative for the virus. So you have people who are trapped until who finds a way to convince Israel perhaps or to work with the Egyptians or buy some sort of a miracle to actually allow more testing kits in Gaza and even a few testing kits make it to Gaza again, to hold Gaza over for another 24 hours. You’re dealing with a protracted problem. And and and in my articles, I argued that if we can’t liberate Palestine, at least the medical the health care system in Palestine has to be placed under the authority of someone else of the united nations of the world health organization of any other entity that does not see helping Palestinians in terms of treatment and health care. Part of a political bargain. Israel is using this to bargain with the Palestinians. The Israeli Justice Minister actually just said that about a week ago, we reported on that in the Pakistan Chronicle, saying to the effect of Listen, you have the bodies of two of our soldiers. For us, that’s a humanitarian issue to you want us to talk about COVID-19 for you, let’s talk about our issues as well. So it’s a complete tit for tat, complete swap, release the bodies of our soldiers, we release, testing kits and so forth. So this is I think, when the world recovers from COVID-19. I think guys that will just be just really going on its own trajectory. And we need to pay attention to it because we know that this disease if you don’t care about Palestinians, per se, or you don’t have sympathy for the people in Gaza, you have to think that this is a disease that travels. And it doesn’t just it will travel through United Nations workers through journalists through, you know, so many other people who could possibly, you know, acquire and transmit the disease later on. So this is a very, very pressing issue, and, sadly, is not getting the kind of coverage that it needs, if any coverage at all.

Scott Horton 43:36
Yeah, well, you know, I guess it could be an important turning point. You know, I don’t know I’m sure you saw where the Secretary General of the United Nations has proposed and then apparently, the actual veto holding members of the UN Security Council are close to agreement on a rescue Aleutian declaring a global ceasefire in the name of this crisis, which I don’t know if they’re really going to do that or not. I mean, the story I read said Trump is signaled he’d support it. They were just going to try to talk to Putin next, they already had China on board for it. And who knows what that would really mean, in practice, whether the Americans would, you know, I can’t see him pulling out of Iraq and Syria, all of a sudden, based on it or anything like that. But at least it goes to show that, you know, the idea is apparent to everyone here that, you know, this crisis is a great kind of a clarifier about what it is we’re doing what counts as a national security threat, and what are we doing about those different threats and this and that, it’s kind of time for a reassessment, where all this money’s being spent, where our priorities lie. And so maybe it’s an opportunity for people to, you know, expose himself to the reality of the occupation. of the Palestinians and to try to come up with a way to pressure the Israeli government to finally lift the siege, especially of the Gaza Strip here, and figure out a way to either, you know, force them from public opinion around the world to either grant the Palestinians independence on the west bank of the Gaza Strip, or once and for all, admit that it’s too late for that, and go ahead and give them citizenship and figure out a new way forward in a single state solution type of a situation. Because, I mean, jeez, it’s been, what, 14 years, 13 years since they 14 since they put the siege on over the election of Hamas back in 2006. where, you know, they’re, you know, probably what a huge percentage of the population of Gaza was born after that, right, like a third of them or something, or too young. And, of course, you know, half of them were minors then and didn’t have the right right to vote then. So assuming you’re collectively punishing them for electing Hamas and oh six, now you’re talking about their parents and grandparents who did that, who, you know, the the, such a huge percentage of the people couldn’t possibly under any theory, bear responsibility for that. And in in such a bad time of this disease and the threat of it. And as you said this the threat that if it’s that bad in Gaza, it’s going to continue to spread outside of there as well. That, you know, maybe there’s opportunity for real rethink here along with everything else.

Ramzy Baroud 46:37
Absolutely. I mean, this is this is what we are hoping for, at least you have these useless conflicts and in frankly in in Libya and Yemen that are not going anywhere and you use the magic word opportunity. I mean, sometimes, you know, you’re fighting a losing war, knowing it’s a losing war, knowing that you have no strategic objectives anymore, but you are working That if you pull out of this war, it might tarnish your reputation and your your regional input and so forth and so on. Maybe this is their opportunity saying this is not about strategic goals anymore. It’s about protecting the world, we need to pull out a VM, and we need to stop this nonsense in Libya, and so forth. I hope that some some countries do take advantage of this golden opportunity to save face and to stop these nonsensical wars that are killing 10s of thousands of people for really no objective anymore.

Scott Horton 47:31
All right, now listen, I’m sorry, I’ve already kept you so long. But can you just give us a real brief rundown here about this great piece that you wrote Zionist Biden in his own words?

Ramzy Baroud 47:42
Right. So So Joe Biden is kind of, I remember when I think Jimmy Fallon, in one of his comedy episodes many years ago refer to him as the drunken uncle. And then, you know, when he was the vice president of President Obama and and People laughed. And there was this thing that is quite amiable about Joe Biden is that he is non threatening, you know, he’s, he’s not the kind of people you would kind of associate with vile Zionist racist ideas and so forth and so on. So I began researching the piece when, when Bernie Sanders was still in the race, and I, you know, everybody is discussing Sanders views of Palestine, Israel and Trump’s views of Palestine, Israel, but Biden is kind of like, as if he is not relevant to that discussion at all. And I could have really tapped into something I didn’t realize what it was tapping into. One of the first pieces that I was I worked on was, by them giving a speech saying, you know, you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. I am a Zionist, and another one where he would give a speech in Jerusalem when he said, my name is Joe Biden, and I love Israel and I was like, okay, maybe this is just an opportunistic politician. Just trying to go on Vote money support and so forth. But then I kind of keep tracing his story all the way back to the early 1980s, where he has this very consistent pro Israel line, anti Palestinian line, all the way from them until today, over the course of 40 years, that has been a truly dedicated pro Israel and by his own admission, Zionist and I kind of really wanted the reader to know this is okay, you hate Trump, or you want to bring change to your own country, but you have to understand that you’re dealing with, you know, war mongering, you know, terrible politicians who cannot possibly be the answer to whatever problems you are dealing with at the moment. So it ended up I wrote two versions of this piece of this a long version where I borrowed heavily from his speeches, and there was a more recent version that was published in golf news that followed the Bernie Sanders exit from the Democratic primaries and and and the article is doing very, very well which I’m hoping that it kind of opened the eyes and minds of people to who actually Joe Biden is.

Scott Horton 50:15
Yeah, you know, I wonder this is probably a good question for Philip Weiss who really specializes in this angle. But I wonder how much of the media consensus against Sanders and for Biden was based on Biden Zionism and Sanders. You know, he’s been a Zionist, you know, in his life, of course, lived over there for a while. But under the influence of Matt Dulles and others, it seems like he’s gotten quite a bit better about this in the last few years. And I certainly know at least some anecdotes of American Jewish Zionist talks. Absolutely cursing Sanders name I don’t know how representative that is of the organized lobby, but it seems like quiet Media consensus. And on those Sanders fan everybody listening knows I’m a libertarian here, but I’m just saying it was pretty obvious that the orders just like in 2016 had come down from on high that the media narrative will be that you may not choose this Kook no matter what. And and it sure worked. But I wonder how much of that do you think is because of Israel lobby?

Ramzy Baroud 51:25
Well, there are two quick points I want to make. Number one is this is kind of really goes back to exactly what we were talking about earlier. The the Zionist view of friend and foe is not really based on who’s being who’s Jewish and who’s not. Because Netanyahu is absolutely enamored. He is absolutely in love with Joe Biden and he just hates Bernie Sanders despite the fact that Bernie Sanders is Jewish. And then Joe Biden is not you see? So so this is really comes to show you that what we’re talking about is true. The Jewish element here is an element of political expediency and convenience and about historical narratives. But not the everyday reality if you deviate as Sanders has numerous times and eloquently, so from any, you know, adherence to the Zionist narrative, then he is considered this crazy guy who cannot be trusted. But then there’s the other issue of electability, you know, we have been, you know, this, I hate this term, so very much, you know, the fact that, you know, is such and such electable, meaning does he conform to a mainstream media agenda of who is an electable and who’s not. And Israel is one of the main issues that makes or breaks your chances of being electable or not. And I think from the very beginning, Bernie Sanders electability was put in question because of the issue of Israel, that he is deviating so much from American foreign policy regarding Israel. To the point that in one of his speeches, Joe Biden, or rather one of his answers to a question, during a democratic debate, when Bernie Sanders took the side of the Palestinians and said, Israel is a racist state, this is a racist government referring to Netanyahu government. Joe Biden tried to correct him, he said, I really hope that he didn’t mean that I really hope that it was just a slip of the tongue. It means that you know, is this crazy old man who just saying all these ridiculous things, to the point that Biden didn’t even want to engage with him? So no, this is This is madness. It’s not even worth engaging with. So you can imagine who is the electable from a mainstream American media’s point of view?

Scott Horton 53:43
Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll leave it there. Thank you for staying on extra time with me here. I got endless questions, but we’ve got to call it quits at some point. But I really do appreciate you joining me again on the show Ramsey a lot.

Ramzy Baroud 53:55
I thank you very much, Scott. And keep up the good work, man.

Scott Horton 53:58
All right. Stay safe out there. Thank you, aren’t you guys, Ramsay Baroud. He is journalist, author and editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He’s author of five books, including my father was a freedom fighter and the latest. These chains will be broken Palestinian stories of struggle and defiance in Israeli prisons. And you can find what he writes at anti war calm. The Scott Horton show anti war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, antiwar.com Scotthorton.com and libertarianinstitute.org