01/05/15 – Boyd Cathey – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here for MyHeroesThink.com.
They sell beautiful 7-inch busts of Libertarian heroes, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, and Harry Brown.
These finely crafted statues from MyHeroesThink.com make excellent decorations for your desktop at work, bookends for your shelves, or gifts for that special individualist in your life.
They're also all available in colors now, too.
Of course, gold, silver, or bronze.
Coming soon.
Hayek, Hazlitt, Carlin.
Use promo code Scott Horton and save $5 at MyHeroesThink.com.
You're the only one making this into a girlfriend-boyfriend relationship.
Ukraine is basically choosing its future between two completely different courses of action, and we're trying to blur that choice so the old boyfriend doesn't get too upset when it makes the right choice towards us.
Of course, it isn't really true.
They were the ones who gave the all-or-nothing ultimatum.
You can either have a deal with Russia or with the EU, so that part of it is a lie.
But anyway, a very important clip for you guys to hear, and you can find it online.
It's quite easy.
The guy's name is Gideon Rose, and even if you forget the name because it's kind of an obscure name, he's the editor of Foreign Affairs, so you could go look that up.
And then all you got to do is search his name with Colbert, and you'll see.
And there he is.
You can hear it, and you can see it with your own eyes.
There he is bragging about how the Americans were behind the coup and running away with Ukraine.
So all that as a great setup to introduce our first guest on the show today.
This will be a short segment.
It's Boy D. Cathy, and he actually was formerly an assistant to the conservative author and philosopher Russell Kirk, which is quite interesting.
He was the registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, has published in French, Spanish, and English on history as well as music and opera.
He's active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations.
Interesting bio there.
Here he is at UNZ.com, that's U-N-Z, UNZ.com, where Phil Giraldi and Eric Margulies and all them, right?
And it's called Examining the Hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia, a Conservative Analysis.
Welcome to the show.
Boyd, how are you doing?
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on this program today.
Very happy to have you here, and I'm very sorry that this will be a real short segment before we have to go out to this first break.
But I thought at least we can introduce the form of the essay here.
You summarize five major allegations about Vladimir Putin specifically.
The article isn't all about Russia and all about anything Russia ever did.
Article's about Putin himself and the caricature that has been made of him in the American media.
And, Boyd, you poked some holes in it, but, man, dang, well we just don't have time to start where I wanted, where I had planned to start this interview, which was his role in the attempted coup d'etat, putting down the attempted coup d'etat in the summer of 1991 on the eve of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
But the music's going to start playing here in just a moment, and we've got to go out to this break.
When we get back, that's where we're going to pick up this subject with Boyd D. Cathy.
I should have just called you during the break.
I'm sorry.
We'll pick up this subject on the other side of this break with Boyd D. Cathy.
It's at UNZ.com, examining the hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia.
And you'll have plenty of time on the other side.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here.
Are you a libertarian and or a peacenik?
Live in North America?
If you want, you can hire me to come and give a speech to your group.
I'm good on the terror war and intervention, civil liberty stuff, blaming Woodrow Wilson for everything bad in the world, Iran, central banking, political realignment, and, well, you know, everything.
I can teach markets to liberals and peace to the right.
Just watch me.
Check out ScottHorton.org slash speeches for some examples, and email me, Scott at ScottHorton.org for more information.
See you there.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
Sorry about the awkwardness of this segment, but I just had a bad phone number.
These things happen.
Live radio.
It's Boyd D. Cathy, a very interesting article here at the UNZ Review, UNZ.com, examining the hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia.
So just, Boyd, to try to get right to the point.
This guy Putin, he looks scary.
I can tell by looking at him that he's smart, and that scares me.
And the empire says that I should be very afraid of him, TV agrees.
And so as far as I know, he's trying to recreate the Soviet Union because he is an unreconstructed KGB communist thug.
And what else could he possibly want out of life other than to become Joe Stalin and reconquer Eastern Europe and recreate the Soviet empire?
One of the very interesting points that I came across when I began to do research, and I began to study Russia in particular with the incursion in Georgia in 2008, began to collect information, a lot of, most of which has never been aired on any of the American networks and in most American journals dealing with the topic.
But Professor Alan Lynch did a very fine study, a very, what I would call, middle of the road.
He's very critical, but he's also very fair on Putin, called Vladimir Putin and Russian statecraft.
And I ran across the information in particular about the counter coup, the attempted counter coup that the KGB attempted to stage against the liberalization of Russia in August of 1991.
By that time...
So this was now, just for people who are too young or fuzzy memories, this is after the fall of the wall and mostly the liberation of Eastern Europe, but it was still the USSR and the red flag still flew above the Kremlin until Christmas.
Yeah.
They haven't completely broken up yet.
Putin had put his faith with the reformers by that time.
In other words, he saw the handwriting on the wall and he became vice mayor of Leningrad under Anatoly Sobchak.
Anatoly Sobchak was a very pro-Western Democrat leader reformist in the Soviet Union at the time.
So Putin had pledged to support Sobchak.
Seeing the potential for a counter coup, he helped organize the Leningrad militia, protective militia, to protect the new democracy in Russia at that time.
In August of 1991, the KGB attempted...
And by the way, Putin had resigned from the KGB by then.
But in August of 1991, they attempted a counter coup.
It was partially successful in Moscow.
If it had succeeded in Leningrad, the Soviet Union would have been restored to its full tyranny.
Putin was responsible for guarding Sobchak.
Sobchak was flying in by plane.
He landed.
Putin organized the militia.
They went and met him at the plane and kept the KGB counter-coup guys, the coup guys, from taking over Leningrad.
The question that I raise after verifying this information, it is in Lynch's book, by the way.
He details it in great detail, is if Putin had been a KGB plant, why not at this very appropriate moment, why did he go with the Democrats?
Why did he go with somebody who favored the complete dissolution of the Soviet system?
It doesn't add up.
And you mentioned in the article, too, that there have been studies done of his close associates and all the people around him, and people have gone through to really pick through and see whether it's the case that these guys that surround him now are all just a bunch of KGB oligarchs.
Even if he got rid of some oligarchs, he just replaced them with his buddies, they say.
Yeah.
The very interesting point is, if we reflect back to the early 90s when Boris Yeltsin was President, Yeltsin was called, I suppose you could use the term affectionately, he was called America's poodle, in that he did the bidding of the United States, and he allowed basically under the name of capitalism, the plundering of Russian industry, Gazprom, etc., through these big oligarchs who basically controlled a huge percentage of Russian industry and commerce.
When Putin was elected, he was, by the way, Yeltsin's choice.
When he came in, he decided this was not the way to run a government or a country.
Economically, Russia was a basket case, and he basically disassembled the authority of these big industrialists and decentralized industry at that particular point, which allowed thousands of Russians to become property owners and to invest, which affected the Russian economy.
The Russian economy still is dependent upon gas, to a large degree, and natural industry � natural oil � natural gas.
But by doing that, he antagonized a lot of the more international financiers on Wall Street and in Brussels and other places.
The accusation, then, is that he is a thug, partly is based also on some of the political opponents that he made during this period of time.
He's been in office now two terms.
A lot of his opponents � much more liberal opponents � don't like the idea that he's been successful and that he's very popular, and they have accused him.
I gave one point, I think, in the article, where he was charged with padding his own nest.
He sued in court and won in a French court.
And not only that, Lynch points out that there was a famous fire.
His home in St. Petersburg caught fire, I think it was in 1996.
Everything was destroyed � his dacha.
He had $5,000 in savings.
That was his total amount.
Now, if he had been the kind of thuggish oligarch that many people charge, and had been mayor of St. Petersburg, and Yeltsin's right-hand man, don't you think he would have made a lot more money and stashed it away?
And just $5,000?
I mean, the guy is rather austere.
I don't think money means that much for him.
I think the Russian nation, the Russian equality with the United States, parity, partnership � these were his goals.
After all, Russia is the largest nation in the world.
As you point out in the article, it's so important that after September 11th, he said, hey, anything you need � he was the first person to call George Bush � anything you need, pal.
I mean, Russia had just finished fighting a vicious terrorist war in Chechnya.
And Russian expertise files were there on many of these terrorists from the Caucasus region and other areas.
And Putin offered directly to George Bush, hey, we've got all this material.
We will be pleased to assist you in this.
And they were rebuffed.
They were basically told, stick your head in the ground.
I mean, go away.
Yeah, Eric Margolis says that he had to really face down right-wing and military opposition inside Russia to do it, too.
It was not just Putin's will is law.
It was a big deal.
At this point, Putin was hoping � I mean, his whole goal had always been, look, we're still a major power.
We would like some parity with the United States.
We don't want to be in control.
We want to have parity and partnership with the United States.
That's what we're looking for.
And at every turn � I mean, the case of NATO � I mean, the Budapest Agreement, which basically dissolved the old Soviet Union and allowed these 14, 15 republics to go their own way, basically said, look, we're going to allow all of this part of Soviet Russia, of Soviet Union, to leave.
Some of these areas, like Belarus and parts of Ukraine, had never been independent.
It had always been part of Russia.
But they allowed them to go.
But the quid pro quo here was, NATO was not to expand.
And so, what do we do?
We start expanding.
I mean, there was the Georgian situation, where Saakashvili basically attacks the Russian troops, the peacekeepers in South Ossetia.
Obviously, the Free Baltic States, that's a different case, because they had been independent.
But we have pushed this issue forward.
The Victoria Nuland famous phone call, after we had already made a solemn agreement that Yanukovych and Ukraine would stay in power until this past December, we go back on the agreement.
Nuland says, and the message was copied by the Estonians, Yats is the man.
So we organized a coup against what we pledged we weren't going to do.
And it's amazing.
We had $5 billion supporting NGOs in the Ukraine to overturn the legally accepted government of Yanukovych.
In other words, when it doesn't suit us, we overthrow the government.
And in Kosovo, for example, we support secession movement.
I mean, it's based on our feeling of international global interest.
It's basically the neocons that work to establish this global order.
And I wanted to ask you, too, you focus a lot on the culture war.
And it does seem important, and especially for a culture warrior.
But it seems to me like the American government is just as happy to be allies or enemies with any communist or fascist or any other kind of totalitarian government in the world at any given time.
They never really cared that the Soviet Union was communist, any more than they care that Putin is a right winger now.
What they care about is Russian independence, right?
It's the same thing they hate about Iran.
It's the same thing they hate about Cuba, is that these people would dare to tell America no.
And that's why they hate him so much is they can't figure out a way to get him to come to heel other than as Carl Gershman from the NED put it in the Washington Post, maybe they'll just have to do one of these color-coded coup d'etats in Russia and just get rid of him.
Because they just can't stand for Russia to stand apart.
You're quite right.
You hit upon it.
And the idea that there is a nation that stands apart economically, and again, not as much politically, but economically on an international level, and of course, you cannot ignore Russia.
I mean, if we're talking about Albania or Montenegro, it might be a little bit different.
It might be less of a concern if we're talking about a smaller country like that.
But we're talking about the largest, geographically speaking, country in the world with 10,000 nuclear warheads.
And a country that exerts, through the BRICS Association of Nations, a very powerful economic and to some degree social influence on large parts of the world.
And when Yeltsin was playing the game of subservience to American interests, you know, that was okay.
I mean, I remember hearing Charles Krauthammer and others praise Yeltsin because of this particular position that he took.
When Putin reasserted, meekly at first, very meekly at first, Russian nationalism, that Russia needed to re-find itself, which in large degree it has done through the rebirth of the Russian Orthodox Church.
26,000 new Orthodox churches have opened in Russia since 1991.
Even I think Franklin Graham commented that this was indeed a revival of tremendous proportions in religion.
I mean, we cannot, our leadership, I should say, the leadership here in the United States cannot abide a country that asserts its own nationality and its independence.
If it is not subservient to the elements that exist on Wall Street, then something has to be done.
We have to...
Alan Bloom, I remember, in his book, Closing of the American Mind, said, we're going to impose our views on the rest of the world, whether they like it or not.
And this is the antithesis of traditional conservatism.
That's what I was trying to suggest in the article, that if you go back and read traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet, you know, conservatives favor the proliferation of traditions, plural, in different countries.
We applaud different traditions and different histories.
We don't want to impose a uniformity on the rest of the world.
This is the antithesis, that particular view is the antithesis of what the neoconservatives now attempt to do in the United States around the rest of the world.
And that's why Russia has become a pariah and an enemy, and all of these particular charges, most of which are false and groundless, are being made.
Right.
Well, you know, you hit it on the head there when you mentioned the H-bombs.
They've got thousands of them, we've got thousands of them, which means that if you accept the premise that human life is important at all, then this is the single most important thing in the world, the most significant issue on the planet is the relationship between America's government and Russia's government.
And to think that 25 years after the end of the Cold War, that we're headed right back into it, where Henry Kissinger is saying, oh, this would be such a tragedy if we really get back into a real Cold War with Russia here.
You've got Henry Kissinger and the late George Keenan both condemning American posture on this issue, because we have gone back on the major agreements we've made.
We have pushed NATO to the very borders.
I give the example, when I talk about this, suppose the United States had lost the Cold War, and suppose Texas, California, and Alaska, and Hawaii had all basically been released from the United States.
And the Soviet Union then had gotten into Texas and established a coup that established, say, Mexican authority over Texas.
Suppose this happened, and suppose the Anglos living up in East Texas, well, the first thing they did was suppress the speaking of English in that area.
Can you imagine the United States being � can you imagine the United States' view of this?
What kind of response the rest of the United States would have had in this particular situation?
I mean, you've got a similar situation in Ukraine, where Crimea, prior to 1954, when Khrushchev in a drunken fit gave it to Ukraine, had never been a part of Ukraine.
The oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk, again, 1920s, early 1920s, were given to Ukraine.
They had never been a part of Ukraine.
They were Russian-speaking areas.
I mean, we've got a situation, a terrible situation here, and we've aggravated it through our own policy decisions, our support of NGOs and revolution, the color revolutions, etc.
And this is � you know, as George Keenan pointed out, this is an absolutely insane foreign policy.
We should be negotiating in good faith, treating the Russians as partners.
The idea of neutrality for states like Ukraine and Belarus and some of the Caucasian and Asian states is what was intended, and that's what we should be arguing for.
People as diverse as Professor Stephen Cohen, who's not a right-winger, certainly, at New York University, and John Mearsheim at the University of Chicago, who wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, suggest the same thing.
We are not doing that.
We are becoming hostile.
We are initiating a new, very warm Cold War, and that's not something we should be doing.
Yeah.
Well, the good news is there that it's up to us to knock it off.
We don't have to rely on the other side.
You know, we can � it's basically safe to assume that they'll play it cool if we can start getting our government to back off a little bit, which that's the hard part.
But anyway, I'm sorry we're so way out of time and over time here, and I have to let you go.
Sorry for the difficulty in getting the interview together here today, but maybe we'll talk again soon.
Thank you very much for having me.
That's Boyd Caffey, everybody.
The article is at unz.com, examining the hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia, a conservative analysis.
A very important article for your brother-in-law.
We'll be right back.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for wallstreetwindow.com.
Mike Swanson knows his stuff.
He made a killing running his own hedge fund and always gets out of the stock market before the government generated bubbles pop, which is, by the way, what he's doing right now, selling all his stocks and betting on gold and commodities.
Sign up at wallstreetwindow.com and get real-time updates from Mike on all his market moves.
It's hard to know how to protect your savings and earn a good return in an economy like this.
Mike Swanson can help.
Follow along on paper and see for yourself.wallstreetwindow.com.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State.
In The War State, Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War II.
If this nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone, we are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com in Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at scotthorton.org or thewarstate.com.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And if this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.