07/05/16 – Joe Lauria – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Joe Loria.
You and Joe, United Nations correspondent, most of the time anyway, has written for many important newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, and writes regularly at consortiumnews.com.
This one is at the Huffington Post.
It's called Is an Independent Europe Possible?
Welcome back to the show, Joe.
How are you, sir?
Thank you very much.
I'm on Jordan.
Ah, in Jordan.
I was going to ask, are you still in Kurdistan?
But there you go.
I just left two days ago.
I'm here in Jordan now.
Oh, OK.
Well, so at the end of our conversation, we'll get back and talk about Iraq, too.
I love hearing you talk about Iraq.
I'm making a note.
OK.
So, listen, you wrote this important thing, man.
You often do that.
It's kind of a thing of yours.
Is an independent Europe possible?
And you start out here with the statement of the German, is it foreign minister or defense minister, complaining about the USA here?
Foreign minister.
All right, go ahead.
What happened?
Yeah, well, the foreign minister made this extraordinary statement in the middle of June.
It was actually June 20th, to the Bildungsantag newspaper.
Just as NATO was conducting a 31,000-man military exercise on the Russian border in Poland, an exercise that saw German troops as part of NATO, retracing their steps that they took in 1941, when they invaded the Soviet Union.
First time German troops had ever gone on that same road in the same direction.
And he said something pretty extraordinary, because it calls into question years of messages we've got repeatedly from American and other Western officials, transmitted through a very cooperative media, that Russia is a stupendous threat to the West, and that everything has to be done to fortify NATO against them, and Russia has to be stopped.
Of course, we saw in Ukraine, the narrative that they have is that Russia has invaded Ukraine, when in fact, it was a U.S.-backed coup against the constitutionally elected government, and an election certified by the OECD, and the people in eastern Ukraine did not recognize the coup government, because they voted largely for Yanukovych, Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown.
And they rebelled, and Russia has helped them with arms, with money, with intelligence, and volunteer fighters.
But there's been no massive invasion of Ukraine.
But even if there were, it follows that it was a reaction to the coup d'etat.
It was not some willy-nilly, aggressive move.
The Hitler, as Hillary Clinton has called Putin, who just has the expansionist dreams and just decided to invade a country, and that he's after Poland, and he's after Lithuania, et cetera, et cetera.
So what did Steinmeier say?
He said, I'm going to look, I'm trying to get the exact quote here.
He said, it is not the aim of NATO to create a military, I'm sorry, that's General Pavel, I'm getting to that.
He said, whoever, this is Steinmeier, what we shouldn't do now is inflame the situation with Russia further through saber-rattling and warmongering.
One translation in German was war cries.
Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the Alliance's eastern border will bring security is mistaken.
He went on to say that we are well advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation.
He said it would be fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence with Russia.
Now, to compound that, the very next day, General Peter Pavel, he's the chairman of NATO's military committee, an active serving NATO general from the Czech Republic.
He dropped another bombshell.
He told a press conference in Brussels that Russia was not a threat to the West.
His exact words, it is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.
So, I'm asking, what happened to the Russian aggression and the Russian threat?
What is this all about?
Why was this said?
These two men, and this is a foreign minister of the most powerful nation in Europe, Germany, and the head of the NATO military committee, on the record, making these extraordinary statements saying Russia is not a threat, there is no intelligence assessment of any planned Russian aggression.
Why are they saying that?
Are they afraid that Washington is being run by reckless and delusional leaders who could drag Europe into a disastrous war with Russia?
We all know what that could imply.
Now, I point out in the article that this is very rare because it really makes a lie out of this repeated propaganda, we have to call it that, that Russia is this threat.
And I pointed out that in a background briefing that I attended at the UN and the UN mission a couple of years ago, with a senior European ambassador, he said that there was no Russian threat to Poland, to Eastern Europe.
It was all hype to give any reason for NATO to exist.
And I included that to show that in private, they're saying these things, even in a private meeting with reporters that we couldn't quote.
But now they're saying it on the record, because things have gotten out of hand.
And I point out also that this is the modus operandi of the United States, which is when they identify an opponent, they will accuse them and provoke them, and when that opponent stands up for themselves, as Putin's Russia has done, the U.S. accuses them of aggression, and then they attack in self-defense, when the whole thing was initiated by Putin.
And I have a very wonderful quote from Mark Twain here, who actually says exactly what I just said, and I've written that before I found this quote.
So he's saying that U.S. diplomats make up cheap lies about the country that's to be attacked, and the American people are told, don't worry about it, we have to protect you from this threat.
Everybody sleeps well knowing this, and after this grotesque self-deception is what he says.
So I found it's very difficult to argue with people who are convinced Russia is this threat, and why, because they've been told over and over again that they are, through mainstream media, and therefore that they attacked Georgia in 2008, when the European Union itself had a report which said that it was Georgia's fault, and that they invaded Ukraine, which there's no evidence that they did, even then it was after a coup d'etat backed by the U.S. anyway.
So, and now this nonsense about Russia having designs on Eastern Europe.
If you look historically, even Harry Truman in his memoirs, says that this anti-communist and anti-Russian hysteria in the 50s was the shame and tragedy of our times.
He said, wait until his memoirs to say that.
Even George Kennan, the greatest American diplomat in terms of understanding Russia probably in history, at the time, in 1447, in his famous ex-article in Foreign Affairs, said that Russia could be contained non-militarily, that their activities in Eastern Europe were defensive in nature, they really did constitute a threat to Europe.
So we've known that long, and he also, before he died in the 90s, said that NATO's expansion eastward towards Russian borders was a mistake.
So the piece that I wrote is trying to lay out the fact that Americans have to understand why this propaganda about Russian threat is being made, because they are targeting Russia.
I visited Russia in 1995, November, and it was the days of Boris Yeltsin and Jeffrey Sachs, the alliance between Wall Street and oligarchs, to loot the country and to, in the process, make destitute millions of Russians, many of whom I saw homeless, encamped in front of train stations, burning fires at night.
Motorists being stopped by policemen for bribes.
Two guys tried to rob me and I ran to a metro station to get away from them.
It was total chaos.
Now here is Putin, who has changed in 20 years, actually 20 years to the month I went back last November in 2015, and I saw a completely different country.
A prosperous, orderly, European city.
And this is what Putin has done.
He stood up to the US and kicked those guys out, and this is what Washington, as I say, the knaves and the buccaneers on Wall Street, want to see again in Russia.
They want to go back and plunder the country again, and Putin is standing in their way.
So how does the United States move in?
How do they get rid of Putin?
This is the ultimate aim, overthrow that government.
How do they restore a leader like Yeltsin, who will open the country up again for Western exploitation?
They have to get rid of Putin.
So they're building this narrative that Russia is the threat, and we have to protect ourselves by putting aggressive NATO forces on the border, by overthrowing Ukraine.
As we all know, Vyshinski said, if Russia loses Ukraine, they cease to be Eurasian power, in his famous book, The Grand Chessboard.
So this is all a strategy to get rid of Putin and get Russia back to the way it was so that West and Wall Street can steal again from this country.
And here is Steinmeier and Pavel, the general of NATO and the foreign minister of Germany, saying, it's nonsense.
It's not true.
I mean, it's extraordinary, and it wasn't published.
Of course it wasn't published in Western media, in the American corporate press.
The New York Times ignored Steinmeier's remarks.
Two days later, they ran a Reuters story, only a Reuters story, online, not in the print edition, which simply said the US military, and they quoted some Navy official, I don't know why the Navy, saying that it was ridiculous what Steinmeier was saying.
They were appalled.
So the Americans were very upset with what Steinmeier said.
But if you didn't see this little Reuters story online in the New York Times, which I only found by doing a search for the New York Times archives, you wouldn't know about this remark by Steinmeier.
And many Americans, well-educated and plugged-in Americans, did not know about this remark from Steinmeier, and they only knew about it when they read my article.
And why is that?
Because the media is complicit with this plan.
Because it's owned by big corporations who also could benefit from American expansion and going back to take back Russia, which they had under Yeltsin.
All right.
So now, well, I guess this goes right to the heart of Victoria's F the EU and even Rumsfeld's complaints about old Europe and how, hey, new Europe is in the East and all we've got to do is keep Germany nice and surrounded with new and more compliant, more dependent NATO allies and to keep America in Europe and to keep, well, whatever the Germans' opinion is, pro or con, out of the way.
Yes, it dovetails into the Brexit vote and the calls for the new referenda to get out of the EU.
Cameron, David Cameron, was to tell voters before the referendum that it will be harder if we leave the EU to combat Russian aggression.
There it is again, Russian aggression, Russian threat.
They didn't buy that story.
I'm not saying that's why they voted to leave the EU, but that didn't work.
And we have in Germany, a lot of public opinion polls show that the public does not want even the US necessarily to stay in Germany 70 years after the war, 25 years after the Cold War.
Why is the US troops still based in Germany?
I asked Germans when I went to Berlin in November when I came out from Russia, when I flew from St. Petersburg, and they all said, well, Russia, who's the threat?
Russia.
But there's no evidence for this.
So there are a lot of Germans who don't see Russia as the threat and maybe see the US as threatening to engulf Germany and all of Europe into a devastating war and I think Steinmeier was playing to that.
He's a Social Democratic voter mostly and Greens who have this view, but he said it.
And of course, it's interesting to note that Angela Merkel did not discipline him, but she did say three days later at a press conference that she wanted more German spending for NATO to counter Russian threats.
So Merkel is completely pro-American.
I don't understand how she's been elected to put together three coalition governments, but despite the opinion polls that say that they don't agree with this Russian threat, there's what you have.
The European people are getting restless with a European Union that's completely run by neoliberal technocrats.
The idea of unity of Europe was a good thing when it was first hatched to some extent, but it has been taken over by this neoliberal elite and they don't give a damn about average workers and average people around Europe.
This is what the rebellion is about and they don't want necessarily Europe to be driven into a war with Russia.
Yeah.
It's funny that they call it neoliberalism.
It should just be called what it is.
Conservatism.
Welfare for the rich and screw everybody else, man.
That's the American system since the days of Henry Clay.
I don't know what's so liberal about it.
But anyway, there's so much to talk about here, Joe, that you've mentioned now that I need to go back over.
But one of the things I've got to ask you is about General Breedlove and his email hack.
Yes.
We talked with Ze'e Jelani on the show about this.
Now this is the former US Air Force General who was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the entire coup and aftermath of the coup in Ukraine and apparently he was going to great lengths to try to at least solicit advice from the likes of Colin Powell and Wesley Clark and other very powerful people to try to figure out how to end-run Barack Obama and figure out a way to escalate the war in Ukraine including even trying to work some kind of arms deal to get the Pakistanis to ship shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles over there.
Yeah.
Breed hate, strange love, Breedlove.
This guy is a perfect example of what's wrong here.
He's a complete ideologue.
I don't know what drives him, whether he's deluded or whether he just wants power to again have the West control Russia but a good thing he's not in charge of NATO anymore but it doesn't really matter too much.
But this is really something, this guy writing these emails and going to Colin Powell and trying to convince the White House and you know what, if Hillary Clinton is elected, I don't think that whoever is in charge of NATO will have to convince her because she is so aggressive towards Russia Isn't that exactly, that's exactly what I thought when I was reading that, was man can you imagine if it had been Hillary instead of Obama sitting there in the chair she would have been saying, oh, Mr.
General Breedlove, pay attention to me don't you approve of what I want you to do?
Yeah, go ahead.
Because that's her entire thing, is just sucking up to everybody around her like that.
Obama has been a disaster in many of his foreign policies but he did put a brake on a few things like intervention, direct intervention after that chemical weapons attack in Syria.
Even the whole thing in Ukraine can be pinned on him, it's his administration but at least he didn't go as far as let's really have a war Exactly, but he went too far in my view but he didn't go far enough for those people which is good because he put a brake whereas when he's out of the scene now and he said famously in that Atlantic interview that he was pissed off at the foreign policy establishment in Washington because of the pressure they put on him and they won't have to put any pressure on Hillary Clinton This is why I'm so worried about a Clinton presidency and I think people around the world are as well and I'm outside the US here and I can tell you that they focus on Trump and they don't always get what Clinton is but some people do understand that Clinton is a disaster, a really serious disaster waiting to happen in her aggressive foreign policy and Ukraine is one that could be stirred up again by her and probably will be Alright now, so let's talk about how crazy it is to even talk about regime change in Russia because, you know, I already know you're right and everything but you still sound crazy to me when you say it because of the information that everybody has accessible right there in their brain Hey, Russia, they might not be a superpower but they're a nuclear weapons superpower at least as far as that goes and that means they're as independent from us as they want to be and how could anyone with power in America really contemplate some kind of, well, you know, like what we saw in Ukraine, some kind of coup or some kind of regime change in Russia to overthrow Putin I mean maybe they got lucky when some dice rolled and they ended up with Yeltsin who was weak enough to be pliable to the West but strong enough to keep his competitors out and down for so many years inside Russia but how do they really imagine that they could get away with that again?
I mean, isn't there at some point they have to just shrug and recognize that, you know, until Putin grows older or something, Russia's going to be independent from us for at least another little while and, Joe, wouldn't they be at least slightly afraid that whoever comes after Putin might be a lot worse than him instead of easier?
Well, there's what the Russians call the fifth column inside the Russian government, particularly in the economic sphere, there are liberals as they call them, there's that word again which has a thousand meanings but in Russia that means, a liberal means someone who, you know, trends towards the West and likes the U.S. and doesn't agree with Putin on a lot of his foreign policy issues and they're amongst those people the U.S. has contacts and they tried with NGOs as we've seen NGOs have been a great tool of the U.S. when fomenting unrest to try to overthrow governments and that's why Putin's kicked out a lot of American NGOs because he's not stupid he knows what they're trying to do.
Anybody would have a brain in the Pentagon or in the White House or in the State Department would know you don't want to start a war by invading Russia although they're doing the damn bit to try to provoke one but they would want to overthrow him and put in one of these liberals, so-called pro-Western liberals so that they can open up the country again to Western exploitation and go back to the Elson days so it's a long term project but if you listen to people like Victoria Nuland yes, who said screw the EU because they weren't so excited about the overthrow of Yanukovych in Ukraine, but she said the hell with it that just shows you that quote which I didn't even bother using in this article, just shows you how much power the U.S. has over Europe and I started the article by saying there was a crack in the wall of this disciplined obedience of Europe towards the United States with these remarks by Steinmeier and the Czech General because until at this very moment now the European Union has been a U.S. project from the very beginning we know now that Alan Dulles was involved and the CIA had a role in creating the precursors of what became the European Union and so they answered to the United States and an interesting point somebody raised after my piece came out that in Germany the industrialists are against sanctions, European sanctions against Russia over Ukraine because they do trade with Russia they're losing lots of money and I had nothing to do with that but the finance part of the German economy wants this because they want Wall Street they are part of the whole Wall Street gang that wants back in, they're not making that kind of money that they did before under Yeltsin so that's the interesting tension inside German society right there Do they have a party divide, the financiers versus the industrialists there in Germany or they're all stuck with the conservatives or whatever it is I think within the conservative party you've got people from the financial sector and industrialists who support her but they don't support her sanctions because they're being hurt by that I'm sorry, go ahead I do know there are certain members of the left party social democrats who are against the sanctions against Germany but there aren't enough in the Bundestag to overturn this at the moment, there are even some people on the far left of Germany who want Americans out of bases, ended in Germany because the US launches many of its wars in the Middle East from bases in Germany, it's another reason why they want them out but right now she does have a stranglehold and she's able to keep this pro-American policy that Steinmeier completely undermined, he's from another party because they have a coalition Hey, I'll check out the audio book of Lou Rockwell's Fascism versus Capitalism narrated by me, Scott Horton at audible.com, it's a great collection of his essays and speeches on the important tradition of liberty, from medieval history to the Ron Paul revolution, Rockwell blasts our status enemies, profiles our greatest libertarian heroes, and prescribes the path forward in the battle against Leviathan, Fascism versus Capitalism by Lou Rockwell for audio book find it at audible, Amazon, iTunes or just click in the right margin of my website at scotthorton.org yeah, well and you know I mean to American ears and people who aren't very familiar with all these issues it should be shocking just on the face of it, that the German foreign minister and a German member of as you put it, I'm sorry the chair of the NATO military committee here's a guy who has a vested interest in finding things for NATO to do, and he's saying this is crazy we have to stop it, we need to take that seriously, that's not nothing and I wanted to go back to what you reported before as you say here and of course, you know, again a long time Wall Street Journal reporter, and you know plenty of credentials as a long time journalist stationed especially at the United Nations, and you report here that two years ago, a senior European ambassador at his country's UN mission in New York, you mentioned this earlier that he admitted to you, basically or at least said to the room in this background briefing, that all of this stuff about Russia's aggressive threat to Eastern Europe was quote, all hype, that's what he told you, and it was to give NATO a reason to exist, can you please tell us more about that, in any way?
Well I was shocked when he said it, and he didn't follow up on it but why did he say this?
And the funny thing about the guy is that when he would go into the security council this was at the time of the Ukrainian crisis we were just beginning, and there were several very very contentious meetings inside public security council meetings where the Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin and the Ukrainian ambassador were really going at each other and Churkin and Samantha Power were really going at each other, and in these public meetings this same ambassador who said that in private, would viciously attack Russia so what I was trying to point out here is that this is what they privately understand that this is hype but when publicly they come out and say Russia is a threat, it's aggression, we've got to stand up to them and we have to be prepared even to attack if necessary if they get out of hand, whereas here's Steinmeier, the foreign minister of Germany and the NATO military committee head coming out and saying this, and I question why, why did they say this now and I can only think that it's because they think that the US is getting out of hand and reckless There's no other explanation for it they're sticking their neck way out politically speaking this might be the very end of their careers, for both of them and the American people don't know about it because the subservient corporate media did not report this it was news in Germany it was certainly news in Russia, but it was not news in the United States Hey Joe, let me ask you this man I guess it sounds crazy but it would be I think less crazy than the actual situation, I don't know but do you think that maybe ever the Americans kind of whisper in a little side room to their Russian counterparts that you know we're just playing right, brinksmanship is good for some of our you know political cronies bottom lines but we don't really mean you no harm so just play along something like that I wish that were true but I don't believe that I mean look, I don't know there are all kinds of people working in diplomacy in the US with contacts with Russia and maybe in a private conversation there are people who understand what Steinmeier does and Steinmeier does and may say all those kinds of things I don't think Kerry would say that to them, I don't know but no, I don't think so That's just my imagination, that's just me being hopeful about the way I wish it was at least It's not just about the military It's a put on right, brinksmanship, it's a money making thing if you're a particular kind of crony that's all It's a money making thing in the short term only for the military industry it doesn't help Wall Street because Russia's been blocked off for a great deal and now sanctions prevent a lot of economic activity but they want to get back to Russia and this has been a long standing you know, look at the history there have been three invasions of Russia by the West first by Napoleon in 1812 then by the Americans, British and French in 1918 during the Russian Civil War and out of fact well known and then of course Nazis in 1941 and never has the reverse been true except for a short incursion of East Prussia at the outbreak of World War I after Prussia declared war on Russia then the Russians attacked so there's never been a reversal in other words Russia has never attacked the West so what is this all based on?
It is the strategy to allow an attack on Russia to undermine Russia by continuously blaming them as being aggressive and a threat when it's not there and a guy like Steinmeier who's not just some you know, analyst in a think tank he's a foreign minister in Germany had enough of it and he said it during this NATO maneuver on the record and then he was followed up by this Czech general which again shows, I don't think there's any doubt now, although I've talked to a German friend today who I had read the article and a very smart guy he's actually a best selling novelist around the world and he doesn't agree with me because it's been drummed into him that Russia's a threat I don't know what to do anymore I'm kind of blue in the face now and I thought this was such a godsend from these guys to say this but I had to write this piece to lay it out for me the definitive piece to show that Russia is not a threat and why the US says that it's not just saying it only for economic reasons but this long term strategy of gaining control again of Russian economy essentially Well, you know I saw on Twitter, it's funny the postman be rolling over in his grave I saw on Twitter a short quote of some profound thinker whose name I can't even remember with his specific definition of propaganda and it was along the lines of being such an overwhelming and effective narrative that anything outside of it sounds strikes a terrible dissonance and sounds like it's the thing that is crazy and outside the line and that's what makes for real effective propaganda as soon as you and Joe start saying, hey guys, you know there's some nuance here I think you might want to understand it's like needles scratch off the record but Joe, we all know Putin, Hitler, scary, weapons of mass destruction, killing his own people crazy, can't negotiate with them whatever it is, babies in incubators we're already upset, we're already on board and so something's wrong with you pal, that's what we're dealing with here.
Exactly the situation and I can tell you in dealings with editors of corporate newspapers and I've worked for a few, that screeching sound you just described is what I heard they didn't want to hear it, it didn't fit into what they believe, what they understand what they felt and I was just dismissed as irrelevant or a kook and you're right, here's again, evidence and it doesn't have any effect because first of all in this case because of the people who said it, it couldn't be printed in the US media except this rebuttal from the US, they didn't write the original story, they wrote the Times did a rebuttal and it was only a Reuters story, it wasn't even a Times staff written story and it was only online so they do that to sort of cover their ass basically, oh yeah we covered that story no you didn't cover that story this should have been on the front page these two statements and it would start a national discussion about our relations with Russia and what are Russia's true intentions, what's really going on here, the one that we're having here on your radio station but it should be across the country if we have a democracy in America where we actually discuss these issues but of course we know we don't and these things are not discussed and especially when, you know just on the very face of it, you have things like Chuck Hagel, the former Republican Senator and former Secretary of Defense, admittedly under a Democrat but still, and he is now part of the Committee for East-West Accord and let's have dialogue and understanding and figure out how to get along with the Russians, so does that mean that he's some kind of communist sympathizer or something or does that mean that hey, maybe he actually has a cool head on this and thinks that it's important that cooler heads prevail and how come the rest of the adults in this country can't take that kind of attitude on board here, we're talking about the most important issue on the planet, America's relationship with Russia, period, there's nothing that compares to that When you factor nuclear weapons in?
Exactly, I mean if Britain and France go to nuclear war, that's not going to kill all of mankind, but if America and Russia do, billions of people will die, billions And my question to you is why is Chuck Hagel no longer the Defense Secretary of the United States?
Because he didn't want to get rid of Assad Or he couldn't figure out whether his orders were to get rid of Assad or not, it was probably more likely And maybe he wasn't bellicose enough against Russia So who was Obama put in there?
This absolute neocon fanatic Ashton Carter, who's actually one of the worst scariest guys to lead the Pentagon in a long time, even in some ways scarier than Rumsfeld, I mean it's just extraordinary So yeah, Hagel is going to be See this is where the system, the elite could say, look, we have a free speech in this country Chuck Hagel has this committee Does anybody write about it?
Do they mention it?
Nope.
Yeah, no one's ever heard of it As long as you're not heard, you have free speech in the United States If you start getting heard and they don't like the message they're a waste of silence And I know my editors would not take stories that I gave them that would question the prevailing narrative that would do that propaganda that's so successful as you described very well Some counter information comes in it's immediately dismissed as insane and that they are so deluded they can't see that what they believe borders on insanity Certainly it's delusional and it's not true half the time or they take facts and twist them So we are it's an impenetrable wall I would rather have published this story in Foreign Policy magazine or God forbid Foreign Affairs or in a major media which I've worked for but I know this would not get in because I have had too many experiences where I tried to get stories that question the official US line and this was what the media used to do and supposed to do or at least in our dreams did which is to question authority challenge people in government Is this why you're out of the Wall Street Journal now, Joe?
Well I did a few stories there that they weren't happy with it wasn't the actual reason it was just a staff move they just threw me out but I think they got really upset with a couple of stories I did one on Dag Hammarskjöld and whether he was killed and I implied in a Wall Street Journal story that the CIA may have killed him and I did that based on a report by the Independent Hammarskjöld Commission on which Justice Goldstone was a member I was reporting stuff that don't get in I don't make stuff up and they ran that story and Russ Baker, you might know Russ Baker I don't know if you interviewed him he happened to come by the UN one day and he had to come to the office to see me because he couldn't believe that the Wall Street Journal ran that story and then I got other stuff in there I started pushing an article about Wait, go back, I plead total ignorance I don't even know whose murder you're talking about there Dag Hammarskjöld Secretary General of the UN He died in 1961 in a plane crash in Africa Oh, the plane crash guy, yeah, okay, I'm with you and a new book out by Susan Williams called Who Killed Hammarskjöld a wonderful woman wrote a great book in which she found new information that showed many witnesses saw a second plane shooting in the air behind Hammarskjöld and shooting it down, many independent witnesses and these were all dismissed at the time by the Northern Rhodesian authorities that was part of Northern Rhodesia at the time where it happened and now all this new evidence came out and this independent commission was set up and they recommended to Ban Ki-moon and the General Assembly that they look into it again and they actually did they had a resolution and they called for an independent UN investigation, which was not ruled out that his plane was shot down and the CIA amongst it, MI6 and others had reason to get rid of Hammarskjöld he was a champion of African nationalism at that time South Africa, Apartheid South Africa wanted him out, the Rhodesians wanted him out the Brits and the CIA did not necessarily want Kennedy were at odds with him the Soviets hated him too because they didn't think he was strong enough, he was a very independent Secretary General, I've just written a book proposal for a book on all the Secretary Generals and how independent they were towards the US and in those days towards the Soviet Union and there's not been anyone more independent than Dag Hammarskjöld the least independent one is the current Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Dag Hammarskjöld angered the Americans and the Soviets because he took an independent line in defense of we the peoples, the first words of the UN Charter so anyway, I got that I got that story in the Wall Street Journal, but there were others that I pitched that did not get in one of them was about this Defense Intelligence Agency document that I know you're aware of, that you've spoken about that showed that the US, Russia the US, Turkey, the Gulf States helped create this self, this principality in Eastern Syria and that it could link up with Islamists in Iraq and create an Islamic State and that was in August 2012 so it shows the US complicit with developing the group in Syria to put pressure on Assad that eventually turned into Islamic State and the document says it could become Islamic State using those very words that's a huge major story that has not penetrated major media and I have an exact example trying to get that into the paper well in fact just last week or maybe two weeks ago Donald Trump tweeted out a Breitbart story that was based on the heading someone at the State Department may have seen it so therefore Hillary Clinton must have read it they claimed and so it was a ridiculous red herring which was easily dismissed and Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post did his little Pinocchio thing where he concluded that oh that story is such a nothing burger story, I don't even know what you're talking about we talked with Mike Morrell and he assured us that given what the DIA says the CIA assures us that they only back moderate terrorists and not extreme ones Mike Flynn, General Mike Flynn who was the head of the CIA told Al Jazeera that this was a willful decision in Washington to support these extremists in Syria so they were warned, the US was warned that this could turn into something really ugly and they said it could be called the Islamic State and now look where we are today even Erdogan in Turkey now has had to really turn against ISIS after this bombing at the airport, he sealed the border or their supplies have been cut off he's pissed off ISIS he was supporting them very strongly and now he's talking about cooperating with Russia to fight ISIS because Erdogan is painting himself in a corner and the guy is only about his own survival he has no beliefs, he has no ideology and he's in trouble now so he actually wants to team up with Russia there's even a story that he's putting out Assad in Damascus for a reprenchment between Ankara and Damascus at which he's been committed to overthrowing Assad for years now so strange things are happening in the Middle East where I am right now and you saw of course what happened in Baghdad the other day, it's just horrendous this monster, this Frankenstein that was created partly by the US and its allies they have to defeat it now and it's so ugly and so dangerous and I wanted to write a story saying well the US had a hand in creating it now that would undermine totally this war on terror narrative wouldn't it you can't have the American people knowing this that document only was declassified because of a lawsuit against the CIA they didn't want that out think of how destructive to the narrative Trump could be if he wasn't such a dilettante and he actually wanted to take the time and hell he could invite General Flynn right into his office and say help me actually get this right please and he could just completely hammer Hillary Clinton but at least Donald Trump so he can't help but get it at least half wrong even when he's really going after on something that he's right about let me ask you this Scott he made a lot of noises that seemed anti-neocon and got a lot of people interested in that and hopeful even and then he put advisors around him many of which seem to be neoconservatives hey he's a realist man he wants to be the president what's he gonna do take on Israel you know no I'm not talking about Israel forget that he didn't make that remark about being neutral he said neocons and I heard Netanyahu sorry but the neocons are also after Russia too what we were talking about and he said he would work with Putin and that gave some hope and this takes us back to the whole theme of our interview here that gave hope to people that he wouldn't be as aggressive towards Russia as we know Hillary Clinton will be who's called Putin well I got a couple things about that I'd say first of all I think you know he sorta kinda thinks that but he doesn't really think much so you know I've seen him say like six months ago back before it was as much of a big deal that like hey you can't be enemies with everybody yeah they're the Russians we gotta get along with them right like hey alright you know that's singing my song right there I like that but you really think about it what he's really doing is just differentiating himself from everybody else everybody else says one thing he says the other thing he also contradicts himself all the time he called for shooting down Russian planes buzzing our ships over the Baltic Sea when you know what would our planes be doing if we had Russian aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Mexico give me a break it sounds like he says the first thing off the top of his head yeah you know he's completely unreliable on all of this stuff and you know he's and now that Hillary Clinton is freed from war what a surprise right FBI no charges on the email controversy she's got a cakewalk maybe to the White House I think our best hope would be that Trump could recognize that it's good politics to be against all this stuff but you know he doesn't I mean all this you know let's reinvade Iraq and let's torture people to death and kill their family members and all of this kind of stuff which is funny because I mean he must mean it because from a political point of view he's got to understand that he doesn't need to pretend to be that tough everybody already considers him you know overly macho if anything he doesn't need to talk about torture and innocent people and all this stuff so he must really be committed you know I don't know in fact that's the wrong reason because he is seen as so tough that he could do make an opening to Russia he could do the whole Nixon to China thing on Iran on Russia on whatever he wanted if he wanted right exactly if he does get elected we have to hope that I don't know man I'm not too into hoping anything right around now but listen thanks again for the great interview you do great work and I hope you're back in a major paper here soon Joe oh and listen we didn't get to talk about Iraq but we're already like 45 minutes into this thing so let's do it again soon alright appreciate it alright y'all that's Joe Loria he was at the Wall Street Journal here he is at the Huffington Post is an independent Europe possible and you can also find him often times at ConsortiumNews.com that's the Scott Horton show check out the website at ScottHorton.org sign up for the podcast feed there more than 4000 interviews in the archives if you're interested in that help support the show at ScottHorton.org slash donate donate 50, 100 or 200 bucks we got really great goodies and kickbacks and things like that for you there if you want to help support the show especially those of you who are so excited about how I'm trying to write a book with Tom Woods all about the terror war and so you know maybe under the theory of marginal utility you have more money lying 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Kennedy was assassinated more than 50 years ago questions still persist to this day why did the Secret Service threaten deadly force against the Dallas Medical Examiner why did a Navy official testify that the official autopsy photographs were not the ones she developed during the weekend of the assassination explore these questions and more in Jacob Hornberger's best-selling e-book The Kennedy Autopsy published by the Future of Freedom Foundation buy it today for only $2.99 on Amazon.com The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger hey you own a business?maybe we should consider advertising on the show see if we can make a little bit of money my email address is Scott at ScottHorton.org you hate government?
one of them libertarian types?maybe you just can't stand the president gun grabbers or war mongers?
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yes bumper stickers about central banking lots of them and well everything that matters LibertyStickers.com everyone else's stickers suck