10/07/14 – Eric Margolis – The Scott Horton Show

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You gotta love the totalitarian states of America.
The homeland that has consumed our country.
Guy fires a warning shot, gets 20 years.
You know, it's not like he was born with rights or anything.
Not that any government employees are bound to respect anyway.
All right, I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Oops.
Better try that again.
Thought I had it already.
There he is.
Hey.
Scott, is that you?
Hey, look, everybody.
I got Eric Margulies online.
Welcome back to the show, Eric.
Hello, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
Everybody, you know, Eric, he wrote the books War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
And he writes at ericmargulies.com.
Spell it like Margolis, ericmargulies.com.
And also, you can find what he writes at unz.com, unz, unz.com.
And at lourockwell.com.
Very happy to have you back.
And oh, no, what I do with that article of yours from LRC about what is going on in Hong Kong.
I meant to say this off the air.
I forgot.
So I'll tell you now.
What I'd like to do is I'd like to talk to you about the DPRK and Hong Kong for the first segment and then the Iraq-Syria war for the second, if that's possible.
So I guess just real quick, can you just give us a nutshell view of what's going on, your view of what's going on in North Korea right now?
Well, I don't know.
It's very unclear.
It appears something is happening, but we don't know what.
The beloved leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, baby Kim, as they call him, has been out of sight for a month.
This is very unusual because he loves to showboat and grandstand and go around.
So there are all kinds of rumors swirling around that there's been a coup, the military's unseated, his sister's taken over, he's ill.
We just don't know.
Today there was an exchange of shots, a gunfire between North and South Korean vessels.
No reports of high alert along the DMZ.
That's it.
We just don't know.
All right.
Well, so what could it possibly mean when you have a delegation go to meet with the South Koreans?
They held very short talks, I guess, toward the having of talks.
Within a month, they said, and not just some talks, but with the Reunification Council.
What exactly is the Reunification Council?
And interpret, please.
It's an organization in South Korea, and I think there's a mirror version in North Korea, that's supposed to talk about reunification and talk and talk and talk.
It's a talking shop, never produces anything.
The meeting, the North Korean delegation of high-ranking people, I think, was scheduled.
You have to understand in Korean relations, they blow hot and cold constantly.
One day, they're accusing each other of being baby killing, warmongering fascists.
And the next day, there are fraternal Korean brothers and glory to United Korea.
So you just don't know at this point.
But there's great personal animosity between the South Korean president, lady president, President Park, and between Kim Jong-un.
They keep hurling insults at each other.
It's all great fun, as long as it doesn't erupt in a war.
Right.
Now, so here's the thing.
I mean, I know people just sit around starving to death all the time up there in communist hell.
But the regime always seems pretty stable, from the grandfather to the son and to the grandson.
And I know there's a little bit of pull back and forth between the Communist Party and the military and aunts and uncles and brothers and cousins in the ruling family.
But it seems like the regime is typically pretty stable.
But here we have a very strange situation, a very mysterious situation, where the dictator goes missing, his sister comes out.
But then we have what I guess seemed, was it just overblown by TV because of coincidental timing, that this meeting of the council signified a major change?
Like, not just power had been seized, but maybe power had been seized by someone so that they could do this seemed to be the implication, no?
Well, I tend to think it was coincidental rather than planned.
But who knows?
North Korea is always a mystery wrapped up in an enigma.
And don't forget that a couple of months ago, Kim Jong-un had his unbeloved uncle hauled out of a meeting on the TV cameras taking out a shot.
So there are obviously strains within even the family ruling structure.
But you know, we have to be careful because almost all our news about North Korea comes from South Korea.
And it's the South Korean intelligence has a whole bureau fabricating bad news about North Korea and sending out nasty things.
And they put out all kinds of phony baloney reports.
So great question.
And now, so here's the thing, too, is at least it was certain under the Bush years, I can't imagine this has really changed.
American policy is to never allow reunification.
So I guess two questions.
Do you think that, you know, without America involved, that there really could be any kind of real push toward reunification here?
And then secondly, would America crush that if they even really tried it?
Well, I don't think there would be a real push because the future of the Kim family, ruling Kim family in North Korea would be diluted in any kind of reunification because there are a lot more southerners.
They've got all the money.
So obviously, there would be a loss of power.
Rather, better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, as the poem goes.
But for the South Koreans, they would like reunification.
But when I was in South Korea, the one thing I could hear them all, they were scared of was not invasion from North Korea, but unexpected reunification, which means that the North collapses.
And millions, 22, 25 million starving refugees come pouring south across the DMZ or take rafts and boats and head on the prevailing current to Japan.
Ooh, but all that cheap labor.
And in the South, I mean, it would seem like if they reunify, be the southern government is the one that survives, but they get the nukes.
So that's pretty good.
I mean, I know it would be hard economically for a little while to adjust, but it seems like the South would like to absorb the North if they could get away with it without a fight, no?
Well, it's the cost of doing it.
It would be titanic.
By the way, the South can make their own nukes within three months if they want to.
The U.S. under the current president, Park's father, Park Chung-hee, the U.S. has caught the South Koreans starting to make nuclear weapons on the sly and stop them.
But South Korea certainly has the capability.
But the problem is that the South Koreans saw the cost of German reunification.
Germans are still paying for the absorption of East Germany.
And it was a good idea.
But only the rich Germans in the Korean view could really afford it.
The South Korea is not a rich country.
And it would struggle forever to rebuild North Korea.
So their preference really is to maintain the status quo.
Hmm.
You think even if the communist government fell, they still might not necessarily want to reunify?
They might.
They would just encourage another communist or non-communist government to take over in the North.
And what is also significant, Scott, is that Japan does not want to see a unified Korea.
So it would probably jump in and start financing whatever group came to power in North Korea, because a united Korea would be a very important military and economic rival to Japan.
Remember that the Koreans hate the Japanese and vowed to get revenge on them for humiliating them in the last century.
Oh, man.
And the Russians don't want to see a united Korea particularly, nor do the Chinese, because they're afraid that Korea would become an advanced American base pointing at the heart of Manchuria.
Right.
Yeah, and the Americans too.
They have right now, the North is basically nobody.
I mean, they're sort of a nuisance, but not really any kind of threat.
And the South is stuck dependent on us as long as they have that enemy in the North.
So it makes for a pretty good status quo all around, I guess, for the government's interests, not for the people necessarily.
That's right.
Everyone loves the status quo, except for occasional outbursts from the North Korea who say we are going to...
The North Koreans have always claimed that South Korea is an American colony and that they are the authentic Koreans, and they are going to liberate South Korea from American domination.
Well, and they kind of have a point, right?
When America inherited the Japanese sock puppet regime and kept it after World War II.
That's correct.
But I haven't met many South Koreans who want to be absorbed by North Korea.
That's a different question, right?
Just the first part.
About 40 percent of Koreans are Christians of different varying types, evangelical, Catholics, etc.
Various, aside from after the Philippines, South Korea has Asia's largest Christian population, they think.
And they are violently anti-communist, and they have no desire to become North Korean citizens.
Yeah.
No, certainly not.
All right.
Yeah.
Who wants to just starve to death?
That sounds pretty miserable.
All right.
Now, let me ask you about what's going on in Hong Kong, and especially because it's in here somewhere, and I know it's a big, complicated mess, and a gigantic, complicated Chinese empire, and Hong Kong is its own giant, complicated city-state, and all of these things.
But somewhere buried in here is American intervention, too.
So that's the most important part to me.
But please, just make me smart about Hong Kong, Eric.
Well, when Hong Kong was absorbed by China, reabsorbed, reunited with China in 1997, the agreement was that there would be two systems in one state.
And China would grant Hong Kong almost complete business autonomy, and that it would share a role in the governing of Hong Kong.
The Hong Kongers were very happy with this situation, but China still maintained a lot of influence.
So we have to step back and remember that when Hong Kong was a British colony, it had no democracy.
It was ruled by a British-appointed governor.
And so, really, Hong Kong had more democracy under China than it had under Britain.
However, as tightening efforts by the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to really get a tighter grasp on affairs in China, Beijing has said that in 2017 and the next elections in Hong Kong, that it will select the candidates and not Hong Kong.
This has led to major student revolts that have really shaken the colony.
They have not spread to the mainland further on, but they offered the biggest challenge to the Chinese Communist Party leadership since the Tiananmen Square uprising.
So the Communist Party is sort of like Goldman Sachs.
They pick the candidates that we pick from, kind of thing.
That's right.
But they have higher ethics than Goldman Sachs.
Oh, I see.
All right.
And now, so what about all these kids in the streets?
Is this just another color-coded revolution?
I think it's a combination, Scott.
I think it's youthful exuberance.
Students are always up, right?
Panty raids, rioting, this type of thing.
You know, we can't downplay that.
But it's a new, younger generation that is not yet imbued with business and making money.
And it's still inspired by democracy.
It hears what the West is saying.
It has much more open communications, better, freer newspapers, better internet access.
So it wants more freedom.
Like all young people, they're tired of being told what to do by their parents, whether at home or the Communist Party.
So that's one element.
And that is the primary element.
Secondly, Hong Kong is a declining economic power in the Chinese context.
It used to be the only gateway into China.
All of China's export trade went out through Hong Kong.
Anything would go in.
So Hong Kong boomed.
In fact, Hong Kong was built by refugees from Shanghai, the great trading center of China.
Today, Shanghai is rapidly emerging as the premier economic powerhouse in China.
It is.
And a lot of Chinese export business is going out through Shanghai.
This means that Hong Kong has less influence and it has less future jobs.
And the young people there, like in the States, are worried about their future.
Yeah.
And so what does the NED have to do with it then?
Anything?
Well, we don't know how far, but the National Endowment for Democracy and all these other American false flag, quote, democracy, unquote, organizations are implanted in Hong Kong, as they are in many countries around the world.
They have become the leading edge of U.S. efforts to stir up opposition to local governments, particularly through social media.
It did it in Iran.
It's done it in Georgia, in Ukraine, and we're seeing it now going on in the Middle East.
It's a very effective soft power technique.
They are in Hong Kong.
It's hard to say just how much they've played a role in stirring up the anti-Beijing riots.
According to the Chinese authorities in Beijing, they are primarily behind the unrest in China, in Hong Kong.
Well, yeah, see, I don't know about that.
I'm with you on the primary cause is, you know, why should anybody like the government of China, whether the Americans agree with them or not?
You know, and well, from what I read, which wasn't much, but what I read about the NED in China was they'd given hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe right where it really counted.
But then again, that does sort of sound like a drop in the bucket when you're talking about a massive movement like this in a city like that, right?
I think so.
But these U.S. undercover regime change operations have become very sophisticated and we can't underestimate their effectiveness.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, just because the NED says we gave this many hundred thousand dollars doesn't mean they didn't give that many millions, you know?
Well, that's right.
Because the CIA...
I don't mean to presume them innocent or anything, because I surely don't.
That's right.
And don't forget Freedom House.
That's another operation.
It's a major false flag U.S. government...
George Soros there, right?
...regime change operation and dominated by the neocons too.
All right.
Now, so I want to talk with you about a little bit of the history of the recent war in Syria leading up to the gigantic declaration of the caliphate and the fall of Mosul and everything in June.
And that is because, and I'm just going from memory here, I really should have done the work before the show, Eric, but I'm just going from memory and it seems like there were just a few, but they were pretty important sources that came out in the summer and maybe the early autumn of 2011 saying that the Americans and the Western powers are working with the Saudis on a regime change plan for Syria.
Act two of the war against Qaddafi, basically.
And from very early on, maybe before the, you know, veterans of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, you know, really even ran straight from Iraq to Syria to begin the creation of the Al-Nusra Front.
Prince Bandar, according to the Guardian, was already organizing guys to go and fight there.
Then you wrote an article, which I'm sorry I don't have in front of me, but I know it ran at lourockwell.com because I can picture it.
And what you said in there was that French special forces and intelligence guys are working on this project too.
And then there's one more major one that I can't for the life of me remember.
But then in December, Giroldi wrote at antiwar.com and in the American conservative that Obama had signed a new finding ordering support for the rebellion.
Now, the amount and degrees and all that, I'll let you elaborate on all that too.
I don't know.
I don't really know.
But I was just wondering if you could remind us or whatever you remember about what you knew and when and to what extent America was working with, was even perhaps behind organizing the effort for Saudi and Qatar and Turkey and Jordan to all work to support the rebellion in Syria, even though I guess I would concede the Americans are trying to support this FSA while the Saudis are supporting Al-Sham and the Qataris are supporting Al-Nusra and God knows, I don't know exactly what.
But you were on to this from the very, very beginning.
So tell me the truth of it, please.
Well, Scott, the truth is that under the Bush administration, under pressure from the neocons in the administration, there was a plan developed with the Israelis to invade Syria and overthrow its government and also invade Lebanon and crush Hezbollah.
It didn't happen because a few wise voices, probably in the Pentagon, said, wait a minute, if you overthrow the government of Syria, who are you going to replace it by?
The major organization is the Muslim Brotherhood underground and they'll be less of a good ally than the Syrian government.
What was crazy was Syria was a de facto American ally.
It wasn't doing anything bad against, you know, to hinder United States imperial policies in the Middle East.
But the plan was still dropped.
It was then resuscitated four years ago, I think.
I'm going by memory, too.
Maybe three and a half years ago, when it was the U.S. that and probably includes the Israelis, started the uprising in Syria along the near the Lebanese and Jordanian borders.
And they took advantage of popular discontent with the Assad regime.
But they actually sparked a rebellion there, as they had done in Libya, and armed it and then brought in advisers and French intelligence agents were there.
And that was the beginning of the open revolt against the Assad regime, which now continues three, four years later.
We've been pouring arms and we've been pouring secret special forces into the area.
Yes, our heroic and democratic Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, a place like that, have been helping their pet groups.
It's a replay of the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s.
Everybody's born in a different group.
And the result is chaos.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so, I mean, I remember that Bush accidentally fought a war for the Ayatollahs, Khamenei and Sistani and then thought better of it too late.
And so they did this redirection you're talking about.
Well, let's reassign with Saudi policy.
We'll back Fatah al-Islam in, this is the Hirsch article in 2007, Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Jandala, although it turned out that was Mossad posing as CIA, recruiting Jandala in eastern Iran.
But so, yeah, all of that.
But now, so when it comes to 2011 and the start of the war here, I mean, it's obvious they're like, oops, we gave all southern Iraq to Iran.
Well, the consolation prize is let's try to take Assad down a peg.
But now I was just talking with Mitchell Prothero from McClatchy Newspapers, who's been reporting from Syria and Iraq all this time.
And he was saying to me that, yeah, you know, they may have been talking about supporting the rebels, but most of it was complaining that they're not supporting the rebels enough and, you know, quote unquote, enough anyway.
But and for the good reason that the Americans got cold feet with this right away and that Obama has really not helped to arm all these groups and the CIA has really not helped to coordinate Saudi and Jordan and Turkey.
They actually don't give a damn what Obama wants.
They do whatever they want.
And Obama basically has decided as far back ago as I don't know exactly when, more than a year ago, maybe more than two years ago, according to Mitchell Prothero, that no, in fact, he does not want to do this, but it's he'll be damned if he could get the Saudis and the Qataris, et cetera, to stop.
What do you think of that?
Well, I think the U.S. government is having less and less influence over its Arab vassal states.
Yes, they do conduct their own policy on the ground regionally, but they keep an eye on Washington and they wouldn't do anything violently opposing U.S. demands.
But the the important thing is the U.S. has been pouring arms and money.
It was fueling the civil war in Syria.
We've created three million refugees.
We're the biggest refugee creator on Earth.
And add five million Palestinians and it's it's a disaster.
We have been tearing up Syria as the Saudis and the other Arabs have been waging their own little petty rivalries in Syria, trying to one up each other.
But overall, the major problem the U.S. has run into is that these these bogus political organizations have been trying to create to to to front for the so-called revolution, like the Free Syrian Army, have been useless.
They all they do is bicker and argue with each other.
A bunch of little Napoleons sitting in Istanbul have no influence whatsoever in Syria.
They and the Americans keep getting scared because they think that that even more radical groups are going to emerge.
It's happened with ISIS and the Israelis are stirring the pot from behind the scenes.
They're delighted to see Syria being destroyed because they know that one day they are going to be the beneficiaries of this war.
Yeah, well, maybe in some ways, I guess.
I don't know.
It seems seems like it's all very dangerous.
But now.
So you think they were underestimating like they're claiming ignorance now that, you know, they're saying, well, geez, we just underestimated the Iraqi army's will to fight this kind of thing, because I've got articles and interviews with Patrick Coburn, for one.
I'm sure you and I talked about this at the time a year and a half ago.
A year and a half ago now, spring 2013, Iraqi soldiers abandoning their posts up in Sunni stand and heading back towards Shia stand because they've got no backup.
They're miles from home.
It's not really their territory.
It's a foreign country now that they're attempting to occupy and they're failing at it and they're giving up.
And that's not and that's, you know, even still, that's nine months before Fallujah hoisted the black flag, which was still six months before the fall of Mosul.
But Patrick Coburn was writing about, hey, looks like the rise of the caliphate to me.
And hell, from the moment that they renamed it.
Well, there was a faction fight there.
It was complicated.
But the first step was that Baghdadi renamed Al-Nusra the Islamic because it was one organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
So what does that mean right there?
If you already know that the Iraqi army doesn't really have control of Sunni stand in western and northwestern Iraq, and you already know that eastern Syria is in the hands of Nusra and or ISIS, this group, and they're calling calling themselves a state, at least, you know, it's not that they really were a state yet at that point, but it was clear that there was no one there to oppose them from creating a state.
And I wrote in the Future Freedom Foundation thing in April of 2013 that, look, it's the rise of that ridiculous Islamo-fascist caliphate of bin Laden and George Bush's fantasies is actually coming to life in real life.
And that was a more than a year before the fall of Mosul.
And yet Obama and Clapper and all these guys go on TV and say, yeah, man, this whole thing really took us by surprise.
Well, they're idiots and they should all be fired.
They don't deserve to work in a McDonald's, not to mention Washington.
I'm horrified by the ineptitude of government, the intelligence agencies.
It is really shameful for even our president to say that they were surprised.
Clapper, the man who lied to Congress about the National Security Agency, is now guiding our Mideast policy.
It's very scary.
And the problem is that nobody in Washington is really in charge of this Mideast policy.
There are many cooks with spoons in this broth.
You know, there's the Pentagon, there's the oil industry, there are the idiots in Congress there are, there's the Israel lobby, there are the Saudis buying whoever they want.
So it's a big mess.
And it's going to continue being a big mess because, look, people in Washington just don't understand what's going on there.
I remember before the 2003 invasion when I was talking to some very senior administration people and they said, well, Eric, what do you think is going to happen in Iraq?
Is it going to be considered about the Shiites?
Is it going to be considered about the Zaidis or the Yazidis?
What about the Kurds?
I remember one of these guys said to me, one of the very senior national security thingies, said, don't confuse us with all these details.
Just give us the bottom line.
The bottom line is don't invade Iraq.
That's what it is.
They don't understand.
So really, I mean, I guess just to ask the question is to answer it.
The National Security Council, they don't read Coburn.
I mean, you would think that even if they don't like him, that they would read him because he's Patrick Coburn.
He knows what he's talking about.
Sit down and read if you want to know what the hell's going on around here.
You can't not read Patrick Coburn.
What are we doing here?
Our government is run by people who don't read Patrick Coburn.
Jesus, God help us.
Or listen to Scott Horton.
We don't.
People want just to read what confirms their views.
Like, if you want the completely mistaken view about the Middle East, you read the Wall Street Journal and watch Fox News and you'll get that in spades.
Right, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Don't disturb my prejudices.
It's taken me a long time to develop them.
That's the prevailing attitude.
And don't confuse me with all these questions.
All right, well, I'll let you go.
I already kept you over.
But thanks very much, Eric.
Good talks again.
Always a pleasure, Scott.
That's the great Eric Margulies, everybody.
He is at ericmargulies.com, at lourockwell.com, and unz.com.
The books are American Raj, Liberation or Domination, and also War at the Top of the World.
And we'll be right back.
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