Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

TRANSCRIPT:

Find our guest on his website MikoPeled.com and on X/Twitter @MikoPeled

TRANSCRIPT:

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Please forgive the hat. I was supposed to go to the barbershop today and get a haircut and I didn't. So please forgive the hat, but you do not want to see this crazy head of hair. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth conversations that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is how long can the United States and the Biden administration continue to support genocide in occupied Palestine? My guest is a mid press news contributing writer, published author and human rights activist, born in Jerusalem. His latest books are The General Son Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and In Justice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation. Five Miko peed, my brother. Welcome to the show.

Good to be with you. Thank you.

Let's start with some of the current events and work back. The UN Security Council demanded and immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the US abstained from the vote, and Israel was incredibly, incredibly angry that the United States did not vote no on this. Talk about the significance of that.

Well, it's the tail wagging of the dog. That's really what this is. Somehow the Israel feels, and rightfully so, that anything that has to do with US policy regarding the Middle East, regarding Iran, regarding the Arab world, Israel needs to call the shots. And so if Israel wants America to veto America vetoes, if Israel doesn't want America to veto, it doesn't veto, and it's happened now. And it happened I think once or twice before where America abstained, where Israel wanted it to veto. So now Israel is and Israeli prime minister are having a tantrum. They're in the middle of a tantrum right now, anger tantrum. How dare the United States not obey the orders of how the dog dare not obey the tail? That's really what it's all about. That's what we're seeing.

So how do we now really reconcile? Because we're hearing now that the relationship, all these great tensions between Netanyahu and Biden and Netanyahu now is not allowing the defense ministers. I think that were supposed to come to Washington to have a meeting. They're not coming, but at the same time, Palestinians continue to die. Palestinians continue to starve, bombs continue to be dropped. So on the ground, there does not seem to be any significant shift in the reality. It's the rhetoric that has changed at this point.

Look, you're confusing what's important with what is not important. Palestinians dying, starving and all that is immaterial. They're not Europeans, they're not white, they're not Christians, most of 'em, it's really immaterial. What's important is that Israel is satisfied. What's important that the Israeli, the Israeli, different lobby groups, Zionist groups in America are happy. What's important is that the Biden administration, Congress, all the different school boards around the country, chiefs of police tow the line. That's what's important now, and there seems to be like that. There might be a little tiny bit of a shift in this wall of support that this is massive support that Israel has in the United States. It's a very small shift. Mind you, it's nothing major. So this is the important story, the fact that tens of thousands of innocent people are being murdered, and not only does America not try to stop it and nothing to stop it, not only are they selling weapons, they are negotiating.

(04:57)

So in terms of negotiation, there was a group of Israeli government representatives and Hamas representatives in Qatar, and when the United States failed to veto the ceasefire resolution, Israel threw a fit and the reporting is they withdrew from the negotiations but left a few people behind to continue negotiations. Some people have said to me that what this really represents is Hamas right now has the upper hand and that Israel is losing or realizes that it's damn near lost this war, and that they're trying to find some way to extract some safe face saving element from this. Your thoughts?

I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that I would categorize it quite like that. Israel is achieving everything. It wants to achieve. Tens of thousands of Palestinians dead is a good thing for Israel. This is an accomplishment. Over a million close, a million and a half starving homeless people, famine basically this entire log jam taking place around the Gaza Strip, the fighting going on, the Palestinian fighters and Gaza are still fighting. So it shows goods Israel opportunity to still utilize its army. There's no downside here for Israel. Israel has no motivation to end this. The more Palestinians die, the more Palestinians suffer, the happier Israelis seem to be the happier seems to be. And this is really the goal of this whole thing. The goal of this whole thing was not to achieve some kind of a military objective or political objective. It was to slaughter people and the slaughter is allowed to continue.

(08:24)

On the 7th of October, I think it was Hasan Nala from Hamas said we weren't ll, I'm sorry,

Hezbollah.

Hezbollah. I'm sorry, not Hamas. Hezbollah, thank you. He said in his speech, we weren't in it on October 6th, but we're in it on October 8th, and many have been waiting for Hezbollah to get more involved. Folks have been waiting, I believe, for Syria to get more involved. Do you see that on the horizon? People have been waiting for Iran to get more involved. Do you see that on the horizon or are the Palestinians to a great degree being left hung out to dry

The Palestinian? No, it's not a question of them being left hand out to drive, but I think it was very clear from the very beginning, this is not going to be a regional war. I think it was several weeks into this where there was this much anticipated speech by na. I happened to be in Jordan at the time, and the streets were empty, shops were closed. Everybody was glued to the radios and to the TVs to hear what he was going to say. And he made it absolutely clear this was a local issue. This was not a regional war, so nobody's going to intervene. I think it was obvious from the very beginning that militarily, nobody's going to intervene. That's not what this is about. And when you come to think of it, I think it's probably the responsible approach. We do know that the Yemeni forces are closing.

(10:38)

So there's a lot of discussion about Israel going into Rafa. If you could talk about that. I can't remember who it was, but I remember somebody telling me that because of the specific geography of that space and now the number of people that are in that space, that this will be worse than what we've seen up to this point, if that's even possible.

I don't know if that's possible. I mean, I don't know. Worse means the numbers are indicating over 30,000 people murdered, which means realistically probably closer to 50,000, and those are the ones that were fortunate to die immediately. Then you've got, God only knows how many tens of thousands that are dying of their wounds, dying of starvation, dying of disease, dying. And so under the rubble, suffocating to death, it's going to be more of the same. I mean, unless there is an absolute force that places pressure on Israel to stop, there's going to be more, there's going to be another raha. Now they focus on Shifa hospital, then they focus on this, then they focus on that. There's always something that everybody's focused on. The bottom line is the genocide of the Palestinian people is an ongoing process. Unless the perpetrators with genocide are forced to end it, they will not end. I mean, again, I've, I've never used these comparisons before, ever at all in speaking. But in this particular case, I think the appropriate comparison is to Hitler and the Nazis. Unless if the Nazis were not stopped by force, then there would be a lot more millions more dead in Europe. I mean, I don't think there's any question about that. And Israel is the same. Unless it is forced to stop the killing to end the genocide, there will be tens of thousands, more, hundreds of thousands, perhaps dead Palestinians.

I understand the reluctance to use that Nazi comparison. I know I understand the reluctance to use a Hitler comparison, but it seems to be fitting in this context, and this is a question that a lot of people wonder, but because of the threat of being accused of being antisemitic, people don't want to ask. And that is, how can a people that experienced what they experienced during the Holocaust now do exactly the same thing to another group of people?

Well, that's a question that is asked a lot, and the answer is it's not the same people. Very few survivors of the Holocaust ended up in what became Israel ended up going in Palestine. Many of those that did go there left because they couldn't stand this militaristic, racist state that was established there. And so it's not the same people. The Zionists had planned the genocide and ethnic cleansing and Palestine years before the Holocaust, and the perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing and the genocide are not survivors of anything. These are Zionist colonizers. And so it does a disservice to the survivors of the Holocaust. So had nothing to do with perpetrating these crimes. And it's historically untrue. These are not the same people just because these happen to be Jewish people and these happen to be Jewish people. It's not the same Jewish people. And as a matter of fact, there were many survivors of the Holocaust who stood up very firmly and opposed Zionism and opposed the crimes of the Zionists.

(15:45)

And elaborate, if you would please, on the point that Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing. That the Zionists, Joe Biden is an admitted self-admitted Zionist. Not all Jews are Zionists, not all Zionists are Jews. If you could, because that whole narrative and that mythology is starting to unravel and people are now coming to understand that this is a Zionist issue, this is not a Jewish issue. If you could unpack a little bit of that.

Sure. That

Narrative, please.

As people know, Jews are a religious minority that exists everywhere throughout countries of the world. They have for since time. I Memorial, the Zionists picked on an idea which originally was not a Jewish idea. It was a Christian evangelist idea, which is that the Jews are not just a religious minority. They are part of a nation, and they are descendants of the ancient Hebrews. And therefore, in order for there be a second coming of Christ or something, the Jews have to return to their ancestral homeland. The who later established a Zionist movement who were secular Jews who wanted nothing to do with Judaism. They were completely secular. They wanted to have nothing to do with religion or with Judaism. Always Jews who were religious picked up on that and said, well, maybe this is something we should build on. And they built on this idea, which, by the way, contravenes Jewish law because Jewish law prohibits Jews from sovereignty in the holy land.

(18:20)

(19:23)

What point, well, before I get there, let ask you this, people can understand your history born in Jerusalem. Your book, the General Son, your father is a historic Israeli general. Your grandfather signed the Israeli Constitution,

Declar Declaration of Independence. Yes.

Declaration of Independence,

Yeah. Yes. I come from a, we, and I had this conversation before. I didn't learn about Zionism in a college course or in a textbook. I learned Zionism at the dinner table with my mother's milk, if you will. My family were all deeply patriotic Zionists. They believed they were true believers. They were zealots, if you will. Every conversation around the dinner table, every conversation of family gatherings was about Zionism and how do we further the cause of Zionism and what can we do more for Zionism and how do we contribute to the state and the state, the state, the state, the Jewish state, the Zionist state was the most important thing in every conversation, in every conversation, whether it was a military conversation, whether it was political conversation, whether it was a cultural conversation, whether it's how do we get countries around the world to support us more and all of that sort of thing. This was everything. So that's where I come from. I heard these conversations every single day growing up. And of course, it was very difficult for me to make the transition and to realize what,

And it was also reinforced in school.

It was reinforced in school, it was reinforced in the media. It was reinforced in culture and literature. It was reinforced in popular culture in everything.

The dehumanization of Palestinians was taught in schools similar to apartheid in South Africa.

Yes, it was a lot more subtle actually, but it was very, very effective. So you thought you were learning about human right, humanity and liberal ideals and that sort of thing in terms of human rights and people's rights and so forth. And we learned to admire Nelson Mandela and MLK and so on. At the same time, we were perpetrators of these horrific crimes. But because the segregation is so effective, because Israelis, and again, we're talking about very small country, because Israelis live and exist in spheres that are completely, for lack of a better word, cleansed of the other. The segregation is so absolute, so complete. There's no connection. There's no sense that we're causing an injustice because everything, the only thing we know about the other is what we're hearing from our own environment.

It's so insular.

It's completely insular, very insular. And so you can see when you're on the beach in Tel Aviv, and Tel Aviv is known for its beaches, it's bars, it's restaurant, it's this happy Mediterranean city. And when they bomb Gaza, you see the smoke, you can hear the bombing. Now, there's never been a military in Gaza. Palestinians never had an army. Palestinians never had a tank. At best. They've had grew small groups of resistance fighters, many of them in flip flops and jeans carrying semi-automatic with a handful of bullets. That's it. So that's a Palestinian military, the scope of the Palestinian military. So how can you exist so close to a genocide? Not to mention the fact that my generation, our fathers and mothers participated in these horrific crimes upon which the state of Israel was established and we're proud of it. And you can see today on YouTube, you can see there's lots of footage of that older generation, the generation, my father who was still alive, or before they passed, they were interviewed and they talk about the murder, the rape, the pillaging, the burning of villages, the mass killings and so on. And their other thing is the way they describe it. We had no choice. What else could we do? I mean, if we didn't do it to them, we wouldn't be where we are, which is true, but they justify it. So again, that's where I come from. And the ingenuity of the system is that you can live so close to the other, yet not see the other and then kill the other with a sense of impunity, with a sense of righteousness. Even

Your father is attributed with developing or at least articulating the concept of the two state solution. Isn't that? Is that correct?

Yes, yes, yes. Immediately after the 1967 war where Israel took the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, he was one of the generals who orchestrated and then executed this war, which people consider so heroic that it's, some people call it a miracle, which of course none of that is true. And I talk about it in detail in my book and the general song, as soon as it was over, he stood up still in uniform. Literally the last day of the war, the first meeting of the Israeli high Commandants said, well, now we have a chance to make peace. Let's allow the Palestinians to have a state in these newly occupied territories, the Westpac, Gaza, give back the other territories that we occupied from the Syrians and the Egyptians, and then we can have peace. And he was taken aside by Rabin and others who are the other generals and said, what are you talking about? Why would we do that? We're strong. It's all ours now. And he said, well, because if we don't, we're going to end up with this catastrophe, something that's not going to work. Everything we accomplish is going to be lost.

So

Anyways, he did, and then he retired a year later. And the rest of his life, he dedicated, he died in 1995. The rest of his life, he dedicated to this idea of a Palestinian Israeli peace based on the two-state solution as the Israeli establishment made it absolutely clear that was never going to happen and did everything they possibly could to make sure that it would never happen by building for Jews only in the West Bank and so on and so forth. So that is true. He was probably one of the earliest people who talked about this concept of a two state solution.

And your father was a linguist after he left the, was it literature and language?

Arabic literature? Arabic literature was his topic. And so he taught Arabic literature in universities. In Israeli universities, yes, ISTs. He was Arabic literature forte. And he spoke and read, and he was completely literate in Arabic.

So how does a Israeli general that was as committed to the state of Israel as your father was the son of a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, and now you as their son slash grandson, move beyond the Zionism and the racism and the apartheid to the work that you do now, how's that? Talk about that transformation in your life, in your reality.

Well, when my father was asked about this, how could a man who was so such a hawk as a general, he was known as a hawk. He pushed for war, he pushed for conquest, suddenly turned around, and he said, well, there was no turnaround. The most important strategic objective for Israel at one point was war. And another point, it was peace. And so as far as he was concerned, he thought, well, we created this Jewish state. Granted, we want all of the land of Israel, but we can't have it because we want to live in peace, so we need to compromise. He was deeply interested in literature. He was deeply interested in Arabic literature. He wanted to know about the neighborhood in which he and others established a state. And so to him, it made perfect sense. Where I think he was misguided, naive, I'm not quite sure. Sure. What is that? He thought that racism and violence can stop at a certain point. And the problem with racism and violence, the problem with settler colonialism is that it has an insatiable appetite. And so there was no way Zionism was going to end at a particular border. The Zionism is a zero sum game. The entire cap tree belongs to us. Nobody else matters. There's no room for compromise. And he was a highly regarded general. He was a highly regarded person in general, and he's a

Historic figure in

Israel. And then he became a traitor. He was an outcast. And so because he suggested compromise. So moving forward, all these years later, I began engaging in this and became an activist and so on. And I remember the moment where I looked around me, I was in Palestine, and I realized that two state solution is a lie. There was always a lie. There was no chance whatsoever for it ever to be to materialize, because Zionism is a zero sum game. Because the reality that Israel created in Palestine does not allow for compromise. Unless Palestinians go down on their knees and completely surrender or die Israel. That's

Capitulation. That's not compromised.

Exactly. And that's exactly what Israel wanted. Capitulation. And it's interesting that you use that word because there's a great Palestinian writer by the name of Hassan Canani, and he was assassinated by the Israelis in 72 Lebanon in Beirut. He and his 16-year-old niece were killed in a car bomb that the Israelis placed put in his car. And there's an interview with him, which I strongly recommend. You can find it everywhere, but it's on YouTube where he's questioned, this is 1971 maybe, or something like that. And he is questioned by an Australian journalist, why are you opposed to making peace with Israelis? And he looks at him and says, you don't actually mean peace. You mean capitulation? And he uses that word, you mean capitulation? And the reporter kind of pushes and says, well, why not negotiate? He goes, well, he says That would be a very strange kind of negotiation.

(31:37)

That was one of my next questions. Go ahead, please,

Guys. A strip.

(32:23)

Chuck Schumer, Senator Chuck Schumer in the well of the Senate gave a very impassioned speech a couple of weeks ago where he called for Benjamin Netanyahu to step aside, and he many in the west praised Chuck Schumer for taking such a principled stand. He didn't call for a ceasefire. He didn't call for an end to the conflict. In fact, he said, when this eventually ends, and Netanyahu accused him of interfering in Israeli politics, was that Chuck Schumer really just either reading the handwriting on the wall that Netanyahu's got to go, and when you replace him, chances are you're going to get somebody that's even more extreme than he is like Smo. Is it Morich or Gantz, which

Gantz? Well, nobody can take his place. I mean, this is just talk. There's no one who can take Al's place. But there are several candidates and who knows what Israeli politic guy.

My point in the question is that for Netanyahu, for Schumer, I get it confused to call for new elections. Chances are because of the coalition that Netanyahu had to form, he had to move hard, right? Harder in order to formulate his government. It's only going to get worse. It's not going to get better.

Well, I think Chuck Schuler doesn't give a damn one way or the other, but there's a lot of pressure in the Democratic Party for the people who are represented, the Democratic Party in important positions to speak up. And so Chuck Schumer, I think he was feeling the pressure and he had to say something. So he said something that like you say, is completely irrelevant.

Well, in the words of that brilliant African-American philosopher, James Brown, he was talking loud and saying nothing

And being a career politician, and I think he was probably born in the Senate if not conceived. This is what he does. That's what he does for a living. I think he's been in the Senate, or maybe he was in the Congress before that. But I mean, he was a politician his whole life. That's what it's all about. It's talking and talking and talking and saying absolutely nothing of any significance. Now, Netanya created a situation where there's no opposition. So let's say Israelis went to, now, there's no reason for Israelis to go to the elections because it hasn't been four years since the previous elections. And the government is strong, and it has, as long as they have a majority in the House of Representatives, it's a parliamentary system. As long as they have a majority, they don't need to go for elections. And they have a very strong, he has a safe majority. That's why if anybody remembers last year, there were all these massive protests against Netanyahu, but this was from the people, the 45%, not the 55%. So he didn't care. They could protest as long as they want. He was safe. So because he's so safe, there's no reason for elections. And let's say there were elections, he's still the only guy who can form a coalition. He's the only one who can form a coalition. He's the best at it.

(37:36)

They're arguing over process, not ideology.

Yeah, exactly. And not even process. I mean, he's very happy to see what is happening in Gaza. This is all, like I said earlier, this is all for him, for Israeli politicians and even for the public. There's no downside.

There has been talk, we were talking about Israel going into Rafa. There's been talk also about Israel going back into Lebanon. Do you see that as a realistic option? Because I would think if they tried again, they'd meet the same fate.

Well, they're not going to put boots on the ground, that's for sure, because Hezbollah taught them a lesson. And we see in Gaza too, as soon as they started putting boots on the, I didn't think they would, but as soon as they did put boots on the ground in Gaza, they're heavy. Heavy casualties. Heavy casualties. And more than any time within the history of Israel, we see the number of high ranking officers among the casualties, much higher than we've ever seen before.

In fact, from what I understand, before the 7th of October, the average age of an Israeli, I think say from captain on up was like 46 years old, and now it's down to almost 30.

It could be. It could. There are many, many high ranking officers and commanders of units, commanders of brigade, commanders and so on that have been killed. So they're paying a heavy price. So they're not going to do, I don't believe they're going to make that same. Now, there was a reason to do this in Gaza. I think the Israeli government wants these casualties. It helps morale, it helps unify the country and so on. To do this again in Lebanon, that's a whole other story. Israelis are still, I think, traumatized from what happened in Lebanon in the past. So the only other option would be to bomb Lebanon from the air and again, create this catastrophe of refugees. And I think that's too much even for Israel to handle. So I don't think there's going to be an invasion or a war in Lebanon. Like I said earlier, I don't think that this is not going to lead to a regional war.

This may sound a bit soft morrick, but I think it is a worthwhile question to ask. So South Africa and some other countries bring a case against Israel to the World Court. The United States opposes the process. Also, once the decision was rendered, the United States opposed the decision. This most recent vote in the un, Linda Thomas Greenfield, somebody finally whispered in her ear and said, keep your hand down. Don't vote. Yes. What do you see as being the change in that dynamic? What brought about this most recent action by the United States?

There's a lot of pressure. Look, there's a lot of pressure today on the Biden administration. There's a lot. People are angry in the State Department. People are angry in the White House.

People in Michigan are really pissed.

People in Michigan are very, very pissed. I think Joe Biden is in a very, very dangerous position politically, which means the Democratic Party is in very dangerous, very precarious, I should say, position. And so again, that's why we suddenly see Chuck Schumer say something, and then we see this in the un. We see some changes, but this is nothing significant. This is just an attempt to kind of temper the, and kind of calm down the voices that are angry. I don't think it's going to do the job. I think the anger is real, the frustration is real. But these are changes in the margins.

And I know your time is short with me, and I greatly appreciate you squeezing me in. So what happens now, your thoughts on over the next few weeks, what happens over the next year?

It depends on us. If we act and we start to change the conversation in Washington, then this can end. If we don't, it won't. Look. Does the

Trump administration make a difference?

Not for the better. I don't think it's about an administration. It's about, it's about,

It's American foreign policy. It's

Not just American foreign policy. Look,

(42:52)

And our elections as APAC is spending a hundred million dollars to unseat. So-called liberal Democrats.

And on top of that, you've got that. So that's on top of that, right? So what do we expect Americans to know? So then somebody comes up and says, we have to boycott the only Jewish state. Well, you've got to be antisemitic to say that somebody says, we need to have a single democracy with equal rights from the river to the sea. People say, well, what about the Jewish state? Do you want to eliminate the Jewish state? There's no context to understand that it's apartheid. Even though Amnesty International provided an excellent report over two years ago that there was the crime, apartheid is being perpetrated. There's no talk about that. There's no understanding that there was a Palestine that was tolerant. There was a Palestine where Jews and others lived. Of course, Palestinians and low Jews live together. There's no context, so there's no understanding.

(44:53)

Miko. ett, again, I know you've got an awful lot to do. You are so gracious with your time. I greatly, greatly appreciate it and look forward to other conversations, and hopefully there'll be under better terms.

Thank you. It's always a pleasure, my friend.

Folks, what can I say? Thank you to Miko Ped for his time with me today. Thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast. I'm Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow. Please subscribe. Go to Patreon. You can go to patreon.com. Wilmer Leon, please contribute. This isn't cheap. Y'all leave a review and share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links to the show below in the description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wiler Leon. Peace. Have a good one,

Connecting the dots with Dr. Where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

TRANSCRIPT:

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which these events take place. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that are impacting the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before is what are the problems facing African-American aviators and other aviators of color in the commercial aviation space? To assist me with this discussion, let's turn to my guest. He's a man with well over 12,000 hours in the cockpit. In the commercial cockpit. He is Captain Clovis Jones, retired. Captain Jones, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

If you would please introduce yourself. You have such a broad, such a vast resume. I don't want to give short shrift to any of your accomplishments, so please take a moment and introduce yourself, sir.

Okay. Clovis Jones Jr. Born in Dawson, Georgia. I wanted to be a pilot since I was four years old. I actually turned down a scholarship to Morehouse College in premed to go to the Army High School to Flight School program. However, my recruiter put something different on my contract. One reason is that he didn't get credit for recruiting officers and secondly, and that part of the world as a black person, that was not something that people who looked like him wanted people like me who looked like me to do so. I wound up in the infantry for three years, got out and asked for my scholarship back and went to Morehouse for a semester and was called by the Army's Aviation Department to see if I was still interested in flight school and I said yes. So I reenlisted into the army and did go to flight school, completing flight school.

(02:35)

You are rated to fly both, as you just mentioned, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. How unique is that for an aviator, particularly an African-American aviator?

Well, I don't know how unique it is, but there are a few of us who are dual rated and even fewer who were black. During Vietnam era, there were only about 600 black army aviators. So there's a book 600 more or less. And so to be dual rated, that's rare

To be dual rated. That is rare. Before we go any further, I'd be remiss if I did not mention the passing of Captain David E. Harris, the first African-American pilot for a major US passenger carrier. He died March 8th at the age of 89, and he once said, there's no way I should be the first. It should have happened long before 1964. I know you were friends with Captain Harris. If you could speak about him and his accomplishments.

Well, Dave Harris, just a principal gentleman, he was just outstanding and always he was a mentor, he was a good friend based on his experiences, he basically told us what to look out for and that was a time where the airlines use sickle cell trait testing to keep us from being hired. Yes, either you have sickle cell and one blood test says it all, but they would continue to test you to see if you had the trait. And that was one way that they would not bring us on board. Another was testing, so Dave Harris with American Airlines, he challenged that. So with the psychological testing, which had no barrier on you becoming a pilot. So he challenged that as well as the repeated blood testing to see if somehow if we didn't have the sickle cell trait with the first blood test, they would keep testing you hoping that you would show the trait and they could deny you hiring. So that was one of the milestones, and he was one of the presidents of the organization of black airline pilots. But just a principal gentleman

Mentioning the psychological testing, one would think someone with your background, Vietnam aviator, that all of the trials and tribulations that you went through overseas that the fact that you survived, that should be enough psychological testing to warrant you to be a commercial. I mean, if you can fly there, you can probably deal with passengers going between Dallas and wherever it is you're going to go. But that sounds as though that was another exclusionary process, not an inclusionary process.

Yeah, that's correct. That is correct. And when Marlon Green won his Supreme Court decision, Supreme that broke the barriers of us being kept out of the industry. He was hired but not trained, so he didn't get a chance to fly. So it was a delay even in that process. So there are a lot of delaying tactics that were used and there are those that are still out there.

Talk a little bit about Marlon Green. He was an Air Force aviator hired by Continental in I think 1957, but they rescinded his offer and then it took about six years for it to go through the Supreme Court, and the ruling was in his favor and sent a very wide message to the US airline industry about hiring. And I think he started flying for Continental in 65. Is that right?

Roughly around that time. I'm not sure exactly on the exact year or date, but you look at his background, he was well qualified to be hired, but then when they found out he was black, they rescinded it. So that's when he engaged in the lawsuit that wound up making his way to the Supreme Court. But this industry was supposed to be all white. Curtis Collins, a congressman from Illinois. She knew some of us filed it, and we talked about the challenges, trials and tribulations. So a congressional study was initiated and the University of Pittsburgh did that study, and it showed that the airline commercial airline industry wants to be all white, not a janitor, not a baggage handler or anything.

Even down to that level,

Down to that level. The other piece is that the Airline Policy Association Alpha had a clause in its bylaws that if you were black, you could not be a member. So even if an airline did hire you, you were not allowed on the property. So it was no point in them hiring you.

That sounds like the American Bar Association sounds like the American Dental Association. There were so many professional organizations. I know for example, my grandfather was a dentist. He graduated from Howard in 1911 and was the first African-American licensed dentist in New Orleans, but he could not join the American Dental Association, so he had to go to their conventions and wait tables so that he could be in the room while the latest advances in dentistry were being discussed. So it sounds like the airline industry was right along the same lines as so many of the other professional organizations in this country in terms of their restrictive, restrictive covenants and whatnot.

Well, that was just a reflection of America, what it was all about. We were to serve others and we were not to advance and we would to have restrictions on what we could do, what professions to go into. Nevertheless, with that in place, there was no profession that we were not proficient in. And as a point of history from Pineville, Louisiana, there was a gentleman by the name of Charles Frederick Page who had a flying machine. It was a lighter than air, kind of like a balloon, but it had directional control as well as a propeller, so it could move and change directions rather than just go up like a hot air balloon and let the wind take it where it would. 1903, you had a patent. The patent was finally granted in 1906. Well, here was a black man who was born during enslavement, taught himself how to read and write, invented this flying machine, filed for a patent and eventually was granted a patent. So we've been in and around the industry for a long, long time.

Over the past three years or so, we've been hearing a lot about DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and according to McKinsey and Company in the workplace, these are three closely linked values held by many organizations that are working to be supportive of different groups of individuals, including race, which is an artificial construct, but they list it, so I'll say it, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and whatnot. With that being said, according to NBC, news Tech, billionaire and Tesla, CEO and SpaceX, founder Elon Musk has drawn a lot of recent criticism After he criticized efforts by United Airlines and Boeing to hire non-white pilots and factory workers, he claimed in a series of posts on X, that efforts to diversify workforces at these companies have made air travel less safe. Of course, he offered no evidence to support that claim because there is no evidence to support it, and he winds up getting into this exchange with people talking about it'll take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy. Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritize DEI hiring over your safety? And he then went on to say, this is actually happening. That post got 14 million views with just a few hours. I know you've got some ideas on the issue of DEI as well as some of Elon Musk's comments, and of course, we all know Elon Musk being a South African. He was obviously well-trained and well-versed. But your thoughts

Well, on the subject of DEI or as Elon Musk assembles, those D-I-E-V-I-E want to doc, first of all, when I hear the word diversity, basically it's a non-starter, and I don't like the term when it applies to black people, because black people have been in every industry. We have been from the White House to the outhouse, build a White House, build a capital, had engineers doing the building of the White House who were black, even though enslavement was the status of black folk in the country for the most part.

And to that point, design the city of Washington DC That's

Right, that's right.

Since you mentioned the capital in the White House design, the city of Washington DC after having designed the city of Paris.

Yes. Well, here you have us serving from the highest levels down to the lowest level and excelling. By the way, the first book on hospitality was written by a black man, and it is in the archives of the University of Massachusetts. Here's a successful man who basically set the standards for how you serve people in terms of accommodations as well as restaurant service. So we've been at the top of the games in every industry. We wouldn't have the space program that we have. We wouldn't have the internet that we have today. We wouldn't have self lubricating engines if it wasn't for black people wouldn't have turbocharges if it wasn't for black people.

(15:54)

Well, and to that point also, when you start looking at the categories and the qualifications or the demarcations within the categories, you start drilling down into, okay, you have 15 African-Americans. What positions do they hold? Is your CEO African-American is your CFO, African-American is your COO, African-American within your management structure and management chain within your elite classification of managers? Then all of a sudden we start to fight a different day.

Yes. One of the young fathers that I knew, he was asking me, I was flying for this company, he says, Clovis, why don't I have you as the chief pilot? I said, Hey, I don't have the complexion for the connection. So that ends that.

Did you fly President Mandela?

No, that was Captain Ray Doha.

Ray do. Oh, okay. Ray did that. Okay. Okay. Okay.

(18:13)

By no means things have changed. There are things that are different. There are some things that are better, but the underlying system has just changed. So we still have this system where the overarching piece is that we're encapsulated to only hold certain positions, and that of course depends upon the company and the culture of the company, but we don't have, for example, desegregation. You had that and then you have the opening of opportunities for the airline at for minorities and women were considered a minority. So there were more white women, higher than black pilots, and that's still the case today.

(20:05)

(21:03)

(21:59)

(22:50)

(23:42)

(24:51)

You're 21 years old, you're in the service, which is a hierarchical organization, and your instructor tells you that you need to leave the service and go play baseball.

Yes.

Where did you find the intestinal fortitude to manage that circumstance? By A, not punching him in the face, B, not saying anything derogatory to him and then punching him in the face. You see, I got to think about punching people in the favor, but no. So where did you get that ability to manage that circumstance to your favor, not your detriment?

Well, I learned firsthand about white racism and at four years old, and we had black insurance agents and white insurance agents come to the house to collect whenever that cycle was. And this one agent, he had a white car. My father had a black car, and so it happens that my father's car was parked in front of the house that day. He pulls up and he calls me over, and I was hesitant about going, but then I did go. He says, come over. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not going to do anything to you. He says, put your hand on my car. And I hesitantly raised my hand. So he put my hand on his car. He said, how does that feel? I said, it feels okay. He said, now, go touch your father's car. So I put my hand on my father's car, and because it was about 11 o'clock in the day, sunshiny day in the summer, it was hot.

(27:02)

(28:34)

Because

This guy, if he's going to lie and say that I did something that I know I didn't do because I was meticulous about everything, but you just have to understand who you're dealing with.

That was my second question on this issue, which was the subjective nature of your instructor's evaluations. So knowing that in circumstances like you're articulating, there's the checklist that he would go through, but then there were also the subjective factors that would enable him to fail you if he so chose to because he didn't like the fact that you tied your shoes because you're right-handed versus tying your shoes because you're left-handed or whatever it might be. Speak to that, please.

Well, that was the case. In fact, one of my dearest friends who's now made transition, Robert B. Clark Jr. He and I started in the same class. We didn't graduate in the same class because Bob was terminated from flight training because his instructor said that he could not fly. However, Bob knew how to fly helicopters before he came to flight school. He had the syllabus, he knew everything, and he appealed it all the way to the Department of Army. And the base commander was asked to get involved. So he asked Bob, can you fly this helicopter? He says, yes. Well, let's go out to the airfield and let's go fly to the stage field to where your flight group is flying. He did. I mean, he was off for three months, got in the helicopter, flew out there, landed, and they went and talked to the flight commander. And also that instructor, that instructor was fired on the spot. Of course, the flight commander was trying to protect him because it was civilian pilots training us, and they were with Southern Airways based out of Birmingham, Alabama. So again, that cultural piece,

Was that Birmingham or Bombingham? Well, both. What year are we talking about?

We're talking about 1967.

Okay, we're talking Bombingham. Yes.

Yes. 1967.

Okay.

So you have people who don't want to see you there in the first place. And there was this rule, there's only going to be one black graduate per class, just one. I don't care how many start, there's only going to be one. But after complaints by Bob, by me and others about what the situation was, in fact, that was a program. You had these data sheets that you would answer your questions on when the final exam for any of the courses we were taking, and they could program things based on the way we were using social security numbers. Then even if we knew that we scored a hundred based on going down after the test was over and looking at what you had marked versus what the answers were, black pilots could only get in the eighties if you got everything right, you were in the low to mid eighties, you never got higher than 86 on any exam because if you were just average going through your flight training and you were excellent with your academics, you could wind up being in the running for honor graduate for that particular class.

(32:10)

What you just discussed in terms of taking the exams and the particular scoring parameters that were set. One of the things that both of my parents would say to me repeatedly, but my mother was incredibly emphatic, you have to be three times as good, four times as smart, and worked seven times as hard because you're black in America. And with that, you'll only get half as far. Because when it came to education and grades, my folks didn't play, and that was their thing. You have no idea how hard you are going to have to work to be successful because you are black in America. And what you just articulated is the living example. And the other thing, when I went to law school, what I found out my first year was if I was in a class, actually it was my second year, I was in a contract negotiating class and kicked everybody's butt in the negotiating rounds that we would go through, only got a B. And what I found out was the a's were reserved for the third year, students who needed that A, there were only going to be a certain number of a's awarded, and they were reserved for the third year students who needed that grade to increase their GPA.

Yeah. The thing is, this system was not designed by us. It's not a fair system, but we have to learn how to navigate it. And unfortunately, some of what I call the under 40 crowd, young people who are 40 and under, maybe I could increase the year by another five years or so, they came up thinking that things are fair, and it's all about your qualifications and your abilities, but there is a whole nother system that governs whether you get an opportunity, whether you succeed or whether you fail. The thing is you need to be aware enough to navigate those challenges. And some of my young people,

Well, you just said, be aware enough. And what I have found is a number of my contemporaries, they don't want to have these discussions with their kids. They don't want to. When I taught at Howard, I would say to my students, you got to be three times as smart and workforce. Many of them, they never heard that before. Dr. Leon, what are you talking about? Well, that's life in America. Oh, no, no, no, not anymore. Oh, Dr. Leon, you don't understand.

Well, that's the brainwashing. That's the brainwashing that's taking place. Yeah, it's example. I used to wear a P 51 pen and I'd paint the cockpit black, and that was several of those black pilots who did that, and that was just honoring the Tuskegee ever because they were the first to people in mass to show that we could do this. But you had pioneers like Eugene, Jacque Bullock, who was a World War I fighter pilot, had to go to Germany, not Germany, to France, France, France. But he caught a ride to France on a German boat, learned to speak German in route, and he wound up during World War II of being in the French Underground because he had a nightclub in Paris. And the German officers wanted to come and enjoy the entertainment and the music and the atmosphere. So he got a lot of intelligence that he passed on to the French Underground, and he and Charles de Gall were good friends, and he was given

Awards, the Legion of Merit.

Say again,

The French Legion of Merit.

Well, I'd have to do the research, but Charles Gall came to the US and he wound up coming back to us, and he was an elevator man for the NBC where the NBC studios were in New York, and he was interviewed, but his background is phenomenal, and I happen to know his grandson and other members of his family, a cousin,

(37:49)

(38:57)

You had as a Morehouse man, you had a relationship with Dr. King.

Yes, yes, I did.

If you could elaborate on that a little bit, please.

Yes. During the Albany movement, I would go down and listen to Dr. King's speech almost every night that I could. So I would catch a ride with teachers who lived in Albany, but worked in Dawson, walked to the church, and because we were young, they would put us young people right on the front row below the pulpit. And my minister of my church and Dr. King were Morehouse classmates. They graduated at the same time. So he said, well, when you see Martin again, you tell him I said, hello. I did. So that started a relationship with Dr. King and I, and after my tour in Vietnam, my foxo buddy invited me to Chicago to work on a political campaign, which I did, and that was this organization called the New Breed Committee. And they had a bunch of black organizations that were meeting with Dr. King on this one particular night when they were planning to march through downtown Chicago.

(41:17)

You do your tour in Vietnam, you go to Chicago, Dr. King asks you to lead a protest in Chicago. How did you reconcile what you fought for in Vietnam versus what you were subjected to when you got back home?

Well, during those days, it was tough with Vietnam veterans coming back didn't call us baby killers and spat on us. It was no reconciliation. Thing is is that Vietnam was dangerous. Being black in America was dangerous. So it was no different than walking through downtown Chicago for a purpose for black people in America than going to Vietnam, supposedly fighting for democracy when all they wanted to do was have their own independence. Because Ho Chi Minh came to America and he was trying to speak to the President of the United States, and that never did happen for whatever the reasons are. I mean, there are a number of stories as to why it never happened. And Ho Chi Minh lived in Harlem. He worked in a restaurant, but he lived in Harlem, so he understood the plight to black people in the country. That was one patrol we on. You have North Vietnamese out in the middle of nowhere, and they see that the unit is mostly black, wave at each other and keep going. Why are we going to fight each other out here? For what? So it was dangerous. It was dangerous in Vietnam. It was dangerous here in America because then as well as now you get in the wrong situation, in the wrong part of town, you can wind up dead.

You can wind up dead in the right part of town.

Well, look, you can wind up dead in your own house with no consequences. Nobody held accountable, nobody indicted. And Dr. King's last book, where Did We Go From Here,

Chaos or Community?

He said that shooting was the new lynching, and that is what we're living through right now.

I asked you that Vietnam question because I had an uncle, senior Master Sergeant George W. Porter, who was a Tuskegee Airman, an original and flew World War II and Vietnam, and I'm originally from Sacramento, California, and Uncle George lived around the corner. And so the Sacramento Kings honored him at a basketball game, and he could barely walk. By this time, he was about 89, maybe 90, he could barely walk. But when they played the national anthem, he stood up so fast and so erect. And so when it was all over, I said, oh, help me understand something. He said, what's that son? I said, how is it that with all that you went through? And he used to tell me all these stories about all the stuff that he was subjected to. I said, how is it after all that you went through, you still have the reverence that you have for this flag? And he looked at me like I had three heads, and he said, boy, that's my flag. I fought for that flag. I risked my life for that flag just because they want to claim it doesn't make it theirs. Do you understand me? Yeah, unc, I got it. And so that's why I asked you that question.

Well, just on the question of flags, black people live under a lot of different flags, but almost anywhere you go in the world, we're treat it the same. So just to me, a flag is just a marker. It is not something to be reverenced. Yeah. America treated me poorly in some instances, but America gave me opportunities as well. So just need to understand. This is where, to me, the principle that's going to liberate us all is where is the fairness? Where's the fairness in this whole process? Because you have communities that have been deliberately destroyed by local, federal, and state governments because black people were successful. Jacksonville, Florida, for an example, highway five, right through the black community, destroyed it. Other places,

Oakland, Detroit, Cleveland, urban Renewal, and the interstate highway system has decimated African-American communities.

Yes. And you have off ramps to get into the community, but you don't have on-ramps for people to leave the community to get back on the freeways.

The freeway in New Orleans that goes past, I don't remember the name of it, but it goes past the Superdome. Yeah. That's another example of how that has decimated the communities.

Yes, yes. And that's by design. And people talk about the government. Well, the thing is the government, you have to demand treatment from government, from anyone who have laws. And of course, you have to understand laws are things that are written on paper, but the real law is whatever that judge says, and you can appeal it if you want to, but you might fight for who knows how long and how many different appeals to different courts. But the laws, whatever that judge says, look at Plessy versus Ferguson. Separate, but equal is the law of the land. Then you have the 54 Brown versus Board of Education, no, separate. It is not equal. Okay. Same document, different judges. So when that happened, in my mind it's like, wait a minute. That's something not right about this whole picture because why you have the same document. Where is the fairness in all of that? What is really right? And now you have school desegregation, but you have most of the teachers a female, and they are not black. And you have this whole school system of charter schools being created by white women who didn't want their children to go to school with black children. So you still have people say, oh, we have overcome. Oh, it is better now. Yes, it's different, but in a lot of ways it's the same.

So what do you see as being the, if we look at the, again, I gave the data a little earlier, about 3% of commercial pilots are African-American. The system that they're flying under down does not seem to be that much different from the system that you flew under when you were in the commercial space.

Well, that's true. You have airlines having their own programs, which we tried to get them to do decades ago. They didn't do it until they have the critical pilot shortage. But it was oap that had the first US based flight training program from no Time to getting you into the commercial space. That was a venture between oap, the organization of Black Airline Palestine and Western University. With the support of Kellogg and the transportation department. You had foreign pilots being trained from no time to becoming first officers for British Airways, Emirates and United Arab Emirates, and Air Lingus and Ireland. I'm saying, well, wait a minute. Why don't we create a program where black people who want to become pilots, who have degrees go through the interview process, go through the testing process, and if they qualify and this meets the criteria for what the airlines want, then let's train them and let's move them into commercial airline space. Well, that program lasted until money was diverted from training black pilots to buying airplanes. And now the airlines are replicating what was done by BAP and University Western Michigan University.

Is there a sense of comradery today amongst black pilots that there was when you were coming through the system, or do many of them feel a sense of accomplishment and a sense of success and participation in the system to where that sense of comradery isn't deemed necessary? Hopefully that made sense.

Well, kind of both are true at the same time. Two opposites can be true at the same time. The younger group, if they kind of know each other, then there's that comradery, Hey, we're going to support each other. We're going to party together. Hey, we're going to have each other's backs when during the ups and the downs and all of that. But among those of us who came along early, we would talk about whoever was being put upon by the system or by that airline or by something we knew about it, and we would support, because if something was happening at one airline to a black pilot, we look for it to happen at our airlines. So how did we outmaneuver that? How did we navigate those systems? How did we learn from those challenges so that we wouldn't even be confronted with those issues?

(53:12)

(54:05)

(55:09)

I'm chuckling, I'm debating. I'm going to go ahead and bring this up. Just to your point. When the Willis situation developed in Atlanta, I did a show criticizing her for the horrific mistake that she made resulting in the process that she had to go through, and the weapon I took mostly from black women because all I was saying was that behavior is indefensible, especially at that level. She's playing at the level of the game where she's going after the former face of the empire.

Yes.

And I made the comment, you have now brought this on yourself. You couldn't keep your panties on, and homeboy can't keep his fly up, man, they came at me, but I hate black women. I have a colonized mind. Oh, who am I to? Oh, because one of the points I made was the community should not be tolerating this type of behavior. We don't want to go and tell our daughters or go and tell our sons that they're supposed to engage like this in the workplace. Oh, man. It was brutal. It was

Brutal. And you can attest to this. There's a course that you have in ethics in law school. So hey, where's that? I like the philosophy of Maynard Jackson, first black man of Atlanta. He says, his philosophy was if you are close enough to see the line that you're not supposed to cross, you're too close. And young people need to understand that, hey, you can take risks, but don't take risks on things that are going to come back and hurt you. We used to be told there's always somebody watching you and they were talking about God, the creators. There's always somebody watching you. Well, now there's always somebody watching you because you have these devices that your cameras can be turned on, microphones turned on track wherever you are.

And what was one of the things that they got her on? Cell phone records?

Yes.

Yes. Cell phone records. Yes. Well, you said that you only visited him so many. Oh, but his phone seemed to wind up in your driveway 55 times. Now, when I worked in corporate America, at one point, I taught sales ethics to the sales team, and my line to them was the appearance of impropriety in many instances could be worse than the impropriety itself. So just ask yourself, how does it look? And if it looks bad, it's going to be bad.

Simple enough.

Hey, simple enough. You and I did a show last week, and as a result of that show, you got a phone call from a young man who was very, very encouraged by what you had to say, a lot of which we have covered in this conversation. And he said to you that you, through your story, let him know he had a lot of work to do in his community. Could you elaborate on that, please?

Yes. Well, it's a group of us who are in narrative and learning about our history, understanding the principles, Africana studies that no matter where in the world you are, you're an African and your black person, and there's a whole system that's designed not to have you rise above a certain level. How do we recapture? When do we start our history? We started in 1619. We've cut ourselves out of millennia of culture, religion, spirituality, science, inscribed on the pyramid walls. Our people have depicted surgical instruments that are used to this day. So the Greeks did not invent medicine. Hippocratic was not the one who basically founded medicine, not the father of medicine. It was African folk folks that look like you and I. So with that, where's our mindset and what are we waiting on? So it encouraged him to do the work in the community.

(01:01:35)

(01:02:38)

Captain Clovis Jones, Jr. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for your work. Thank you for joining me today.

You're more than welcome. It is my pleasure. And thank you for having me.

Well, I'm going to have you back, folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wier Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a good one. Peace. Some lessons. I'm out

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Make sure to follow this week's guest Mark Sleboda on X at @MarkSleboda1

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to see the broader historical context in which events take place. During each episode of this program, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and why does the United States keep throwing good taxpayer dollars after bad. To discuss this, we are joined by my guest Mark Sloboda. He's a Moscow based international relations and security analyst. Mark, as always, welcome back

Dr. Leon. Thanks for having me. It's always an honor and a pleasure to be on connecting the dots.

So it's been reported that an attack on a convoy of Ukrainian military equipment in the esque people's Republic was carried out with the use of short range ballistic missiles. And it also seems as though with all of this hand wringing in the US Congress about funding for Ukraine, all the US and NATO is doing, or seems to be doing, is sending more targets for Russia to destroy your thoughts, mark.

Yeah, there's some rather dramatic developments really under-reported in the Western press that have very large implications going forward for the conflict in Ukraine. The current situation on the ground, I think the Western mainstream media has finally their propaganda narrative bubble has finally burst. Look, in a span of how short a period of time we have gone from Ukraine is winning to

(02:34)

(04:10)

(05:22)

(06:35)

(07:57)

(09:24)

(10:32)

(11:50)

(13:06)

(14:22)

President Biden told us during his State of the Union address that Ukraine can stop Putin, Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons that it needs to defend itself. That's all he says. In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. My question is, who's operating these US supplied Patriot air defense systems and are there US special forces trainers that are on the ground training these forces?

Okay, so first to the last point, Joe Biden is lying genocide. Joe is flat up lying and we know it because the Western mainstream media has told us already in the summer of 2022 in the New York Times and the Washington Post talking about unusually large numbers of US intelligence and US and European commandos on the ground in Ukraine. Then later we heard there were hundreds of uniformed US troops on the ground, again from the western mainstream media that were doing tracking of Western supplied weapons. Now, if that's really what they were doing, then they weren't doing a very good job because it was only weeks after that we heard that the West couldn't track these weapons at all. So I mean either they were completely incompetent or they are doing something else on the ground

On top of them. Wait a minute, are these also, aren't these the same stories that a lot of these weapons are showing up in other battles in other countries?

Yes. Yes. With the idea that a tithe essentially of Western weapons is being sold through corruption in the Ukrainian military and the distribution networks off because of the prevalent corruption in the country to pad their own pockets. And then I don't think there's anything question about that. The Western mainstream media has long reported about that. In fact, early on, CBS noted that some 70% of the weapons supplied by the west were not reading the front lines. This was early on in the conflict. So on top of those commandos, we now the Russian government has long complained that these high-tech systems supplied by the west from the US in particular the high Mars and multiple launch rocket systems in the Patriot air defense systems, as well as some French air defense systems, Polish crab artillery systems, British storm shadows, cruise missiles, that these are all being operated by western military specialists who are being sent there under the guise of mercenaries or humanitarian and aid workers and the like, because it is impossible to train the Kiev regime forces in such a short period of time to operate these advanced western systems.

(19:09)

(20:58)

Be curious from Kansas that are wandering the fields and the step of Germany and Russia and Ukraine.

Yeah, they're not wearing boots. They're wearing ballet slippers or figure skates or something, I guess. So that's a lie. Second of all, the Kim regime can defeat. Well, Ukraine can beat Putin, right? The childish way that western leaders and media try to demonize any opponent down to just one leader and so forth. But if that was true, if Western military aid in Ukrainian regime hands was enough to beat Russia, then what happened over their failed summer counter offensive that was armed trained, financed intelligence planned and war gamed out by nato, primarily US by the Pentagon, that's who did it. They failed. They failed badly. They were mauled. They never even got past the first of Russia's five echelon defensive lines and suffered horrible casualties in the process. No one denies that. So there is no indication that however additional tens of billions of dollars of aid are sent that the West will ever again able to build an offensive force like they did for Ukraine in the summer offensive because they simply don't have the weapons in inventory to replace everything like that.

(22:50)

To

Build one

That's a year and a half

One Caesar. But we heard that they have shortened that time to 15 months. Oh

Wow. That makes me feel a whole lot better. You just mentioned the leaked recordings from the German Air Force, and is it a coincidence that after these conversations were leaked where the Germans were talking about taking out bridges in Russia with cruise missiles that Victoria Newland resigns because there are some who say that her name was mentioned in on these tapes and that the German Air Force officers were really talking about conversations either they had with her or ideas that she was presenting about these attacks inside Russia?

Yeah, there's a possibility there, and if that is the situation, then it appears that she was probably forced out by the Biden administration. But are I think there are other considerations in play. Victoria Newland, the Queen NeoCon of the us, she's married to Robert Kagan who is the arch NeoCon of the United States. Robert Kagan, his books, check them out if you're unfamiliar with his sinister work. I would say she has long dominated through several presidencies US policy towards Ukraine. She was instrumental in the actual Westpac, my Don pooch, if not the key architect of it. She was caught on recordings with then US Ambassador Jeffrey Piat, talking about how they needed to midwife this thing, bring then Obama's Vice President Joe Biden into midwife it picking the new Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arsen Ya from the leaders, the figurehead leaders of the Maidan, and then famously saying F, the when the idea that the Europeans might want someone else for Ukraine's next prime minister was presented. So I mean she's been instrumental and she briefly left office during the Trump administration and then came right back. She has been serving as under Secretary for political affairs, which despite the rather kafkaesque bureaucratic name is actually the third highest official within the US Department of War. I'm sorry, not the US Department of War, US Department of State. My bad.

I can understand the confusion.

I said the difference. Yeah, she a third highest official and she was actually operating as the second highest official just below the Secretary of State for about a half of year when Wendy Sherman, the previous Deputy Secretary of State stepped down. So she was doing the number two and number three job and it was widely expected that she would be permanently assigned to that position, a permanently elevated to Deputy Secretary of State. But we found out that just a month ago she was passed over for this position by Kirk Campbell. The Biden approved someone else, and Kirk Campbell is an Asia specialist. He's a specialist on China, which to my mind tells me that the Biden administration is tiring of this conflict in Ukraine and they're already looking past it despite the bad situation. Their proxy regime is in to China, which may indicate a planned change of policy or at least prioritization or at the very least an unwillingness to escalate further, I say may.

So does that mean then that the Biden administration is now following along the previous Obama administration's tilt towards Asia?

Yeah, that's entirely possible. I believe that's what the Biden administration always wanted to do. They wanted the Middle East to remain quiet and it was not a priority for them. That didn't go out down so well. Just a week before the October 7th, seventh launching of the all Axel flood operation by Hamas on Israel, Jake Sullivan was in an essay talking about how nice and quiet the Middle East was, which allowed the US to concentrate on other areas. Well, that didn't go so well then since then. But they wanted the Middle East to be quiet. They expected to finish off Russia quickly. They expected their sanctions to destroy the Russian economy, Putin to be overthrown, and because of the economic commiseration of the country

They wrong

And that they would now, their biggest concern would be dividing up Russia into smaller pieces and how to go about that. That appears to have been their plan. Okay, so not so good on the plan thing, but then they hoped they thought that would be finished quickly and then to pivot hard to China. I think that was always their plan to finish Russia off quickly, ignore the Middle East and pivot hard to China. And none of that, of course has gone according to plan. So with A and B having failed, they're trying to go to C anyway in very likely the months at this point that they have remaining to them. And I think that the passing over of Victoria Newland for that is a sign that the Biden administration is already lost interest, possibly due to inability to achieve their desired goals and is shifting to the next goals that they can't probably accomplish even more so I would say if they think that they're going to defeat China in some type of conflict off of their own coast in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea. But anyway, I expect that Victoria Newland was extremely unhappy about being passed over. She was probably, she can see the bureaucratic writing on the wall that the prioritization is changing away from her reason for existence, which is fighting Russia. And I think that that probably at least as much if not more so played a role in her deciding to quit or being forced out. We don't know the real truth of that yet, although I imagine that she won't be able to keep her mouth shut forever on that score

Or her husband. So political reports that France finds Baltic allies in its spat with Germany over Ukraine troop deployment, that France is building up an alliance of countries to open potentially that are open to potentially sending Western troops to Ukraine. That Mark sounds to me like there's a lot of tension within nato. And going again back to President Biden State of the Union, he told us America is a founding member of nato, the Military Alliance of Democratic Nations, and that to prevent war, we've made NATO even stronger, which is the point that I was trying to get to about this element of his speech that we've made NATO even stronger, and now he also assigns or attributes Finland joining NATO as evidence of NATO's strength. It doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like it's all good in

Yeah, I mean definitely. I mean, Hungary and Slovakia of course are the most egregious examples of this because they are completely against the proxy war now being fought on Russia in Ukraine completely. They won't have anything to do with it. But yeah, there are definitely, I think tensions and cracks emerging and a bit of a panicked blame game going on right now with different European countries all trying to blame each other saying You haven't done enough. And with Macron coming out now in the aftermath of the taking of a DKA coming out and openly talking about putting NATO troops on the ground, I think this is not something that is a secret, something that has not been discussed for, and something that contingency plans are not already in place to do in the future. They just aren't in a political situation to have it said out loud. Now, I think that's the real problem that Germany and other countries have. It's causing them, no one is ready to do it now, and the fact that it has been brought up now, they see as politically detrimental to them in their own countries

As in the farmers' protests in Germany,

Yeah, in Poland, yes, Poland. I mean there are protests across Europe, but also, yes, the fragile coalition government in Germany, the rise of the A FD, the alternative for Germany, the alternative for Deutsche Man, yeah, party in Germany. These are all blowback from the European involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, and they just did not need this. Now, I think Macron has pointed out two things. One is that levels of escalation in this conflict, red lines that we will not cross in terms of escalation have been passed again and again and again. I remember back in February and March of 2022 when Joe Biden saying that US tanks and jets us would never supply tanks and jets to Ukraine because that would mean World War iii, right? But US tanks are now burning in the urban agglomerations of the Donez region, and US F sixteens are supposedly on their way within the next couple of months to the Kiev regime.

(35:55)

(37:04)

(38:05)

Very as non-combatants

Like trainers. First you have trainers and advisors, then you have non-combatants. We know the way this goes, so obviously there is already, and check the Czech president has also suggested he is a former NATO official himself, a very big hawk on Russia, and he has also hedged his words and seemed to suggest that Czech might be able to consider it. So these are countries who are already coming out and we're just past aca, which is really only about 12 kilometers away from Donis city, right? I mean, there's a lot more to come and the panic and desperation will increase, and I think Macron will definitely find more countries down the road when it becomes completely impossible to deny as it will become in the future, the writing on the wall that the regime cannot hold militarily. The New York Times has already talked about the possibility, and I think it's a very strong possibility of later this year cascading collapses along the Kiev regime's, defensive lines, not me, but the New York Times has raised that as is talking to anonymous western military intelligence analysts about the probable course of the Ukrainian battlefield over the next half a year.

We mentioned Sweden joining NATO and Finland has joined nato, and we know about the very strong and robust social programs that those countries have because they, up until this point, have had a position of neutrality in conflict, which means they haven't had to send the public resources over to a defense budget. Now that that seems to be changing, are we looking at Finland and Sweden as having to shift those resources? We now see more NeoCon policy as well as what we'll call austerity measures. Can we expect austerity measures to creep their way into social policy in Finland and in Sweden?

Yeah, inevitably, I think we've already seen it to a certain degree. They've already, of course, suffered heavy economic consequences from their own sanctions on Russia, probably more significant than have been experienced by the Russian economy. Finland in particular did a very good cross border business. I was on the Finnish Russian border just a year ago at kind of a wilderness vacation place on the border there, well, actually a couple of years ago before the conflict, but very nice, and it was normal to cross the border from Russia and Finland to go to the store, for instance. Someone had this better, someone had that better, and there was a great deal of cross border business that has immensely suffered as a result already hurting the finish economy. The Swedes have suffered the same thing, perhaps to a lesser degree without sharing an open border, but experienced it as well, and now, I mean they've exhausted a great deal.

(42:58)

(44:36)

I read a story recently that elite units of Ukrainian armed forces are discussing overthrowing zelensky. Is that a rumor? Any traction of that story there in Moscow and any insight into commanders and soldiers in elite units of the Ukrainian armed forces? They're dissatisfied with the reshuffling of the leadership and they're talking about ousting VMI Zelensky.

Yeah. When Zelensky got rid of zany, and let's be clear, this didn't happen because of his military failures on the battlefield. It was done for political reasons because he saw zany as a threat as possibly running for president himself for staging a military coup and the possibility there were plenty of signs that the US was actually for a time considering switching horses, which is why he forbade elections in Ukraine, citing the martial law emergency powers, and so that he didn't have to face zny in an election, which the polls say he would've lost because zany has more support in the country than he does now. He didn't only get rid of ny, he got rid of whole streams of top down to low level commanders who were seen as loyal to ny. There was a huge reshuffling or replacement of Ukrainian of the Kev regime's military leaders. As a result of this, there's a lot of embittered military people because of this. We don't need to look in secret telegram chat rooms to hear this discussion because

Regime, which is where this story was originally attributable, yeah, the

Story is sourced from here, but there have already been open public statements by Kiev regime, military commanders on the battlefield saying to the Ukrainian journalists, this is wrong. There was a list signed by hundreds of Ukrainian military commanders serving on the battlefield, a petition asking Zelensky to get rid of Ky, whom he chose to replace Zelensky, whom is known as the

Butcher, the butcher

By his own forces, not because of the opponents that he kills, but because of his careless attitude towards the lives of his own people. So they made an

That's not a good moniker. As a commander, you don't want your own forces seeing you in the light of butchering them.

Yeah, I mean, my military experience tells me that that would not be the type of military commander that I wanted. Certainly, and I seriously doubt that they do as well. Plus Sirki is actually ethnic Russian. He was born in Russia in the Soviet Union. His family still lives in Russia, and they're actually quite Russian patriotic, so it's a rather bizarre situation, and in many ways there's a lot of

Parallels. It makes for a tough Christmas dinner.

I don't think it makes for a Christmas dinner at all. I'm pretty sure, and there are definitely parallels with the US Civil War to be drawn there and with so many other families across Russia and Ukraine. But yeah, they've made demands of Zelensky public demands that they replace, that they bring back zany and get rid of ky, and of course that was ignored and large numbers of those commanders were replaced. But if they're discussing it openly and he's already taking this vengeful action against them, there's no great surprise that they are talking about it in what they believe to be secret chat rooms about taking it into their own hands. It's rather interesting, of course, that the Russian intelligence chose to make this public because if they have penetrated this chat room, you can be totally sure that the key regime's military intelligence, let's say Ka bov loyal to Zelinsky, has penetrated this as well, and by going public with it, Russia might be forcing Zelinsky hand to take action against these coup plotting, even if it's in the very nascent, we hate this guy, why can't we get rid of him? Stage of, shall we say, trash talk. It might be forcing Zelinsky hand to take action now, probably because Russia sees Zelensky and KY in charge of the key regime, political and military as far better for them than ny, whom was not a brilliant military commander, but perhaps not an entirely incompetent one either.

Switching gears, the cradle is reporting US proxies fear, Afghan style withdrawal from Syria. The Syrian democratic force is the SDF. They're fearing that their US patrons will abandon them in favor of closer ties with Turk, what's happening here with the US military, their Kurdish proxies occupying northeast Syria and fearing a Afghan like pullout. Is that a serious cause for concern?

I mean, that has been a serious cause for concern since 2016, right? The Kurds have been thrown different Kurds, but Kurds have been thrown under the bus by the US government after having been turned into proxies again and again by the United States in Iraq multiple times in Syria, previously against Turkey. Turkey

Going all the way back to HW Bush,

Yes,

Throwing the Kurds under the bus. Yes,

It's primary routine, which really amazes me that Kurds keep willing to be US proxies when they see the long history, not just of the US abandoning proxies like say in Afghanistan, but the US specifically abandoning Kurdish proxies before and abandoning these same Kurdish proxies. When Turkey advanced into northern Syria, they still, of course controlled northern Syria while the US illegally military occupies East Syria. They with just withdrew their forces and said, we're not going to defend you. Sorry. You should probably pull back or the Turks will wipe you up. I mean, that has already happened. The Turks regard the SDF as the YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK, which is opposed to the Turkish government and fighting for the cause of a Kurdish ethnic nation state that would have to be carved out of parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and perhaps Iran. They are the biggest ethnic people in the world that do not have a nation state.

(52:55)

(54:40)

Is there a possibility in terms of signaling here that we look at, of course, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah is now talking about escalating in terms of coming through Lebanon. If this thing were to grow even more full, great even more bringing Iran in, you've got Ansar Allah in the game, does Syria get in the game as well? And so could the United States move out of Syria, be in preparation for a larger conflagration of that nature?

Yeah, I don't see that. First of all, I think the US and Iran are still doing everything possible to avoid direct conflict with each other, hence the stand down by Katai Hezbollah saying they wouldn't attack US military bases any further. And it is actually Israel who is talking about escalating against Hezbollah in Lebanon. I think the US and Iran are both doing everything they can to maintain their state's dignity and still dance around each other, avoiding direct conflict in the Middle East. That said, Israel is doing everything possible to incite conflict between the US and Iran, which makes that a non guarantee. But the Syrian government is in a very weak position economically. The US is still illegally occupying the entirety of the east of the country, including the country's oil and wheat resources. The country is, the government is unstable, it's economic, very hard times, and Turkey is still occupying the entirety of the north of the country, and they still have a hundred thousand jihadi under arms occupying those territories in northern Syria. And of course the US military occupation forces alongside the Kurdish YPG in East Syria. The Syrian government is in no geopolitical or military shape to contribute to a fight. I do not see this blowing up because no one wants to go to war with the US over Gaza. No one except for our sala.

Final question for you. The United States relative to Syria developing stronger ties with Toa, how can the US make Reproachment in this manner when Erdowan is so erratic and undependable?

Yeah, I don't think they can. Does

That make sense?

Yeah. I think Erdowan has become a perennial thorn in their side that they constantly need to keep appeased to prevent him from, shall we say, flipping into the bricks Eurasian camp, and Erdogan routinely plays the US and Russia off of each other to what he sees as his country's advantage. The US support of the Kurds in East Syria, of course, has infuriated him, as has the US withdrawal of the F 35 program from Turkey when Erdogan bought the S 400 Air defense system

From Russia,

Yes, from Russia, he also regards the US as at least being, if not complicit, then at least having knowledge of the coup attempt against him several years ago. Very bad relations there. The US cannot rely on Turkey and Turkey. Well, it sees itself as being betrayed by the United States. I don't see any ability to improve relations between the two until there is regime change perhaps in the United States, but more than likely it will require Erdogan passing on one way or another for a substantial change in Turkish US relations.

I know I said that was my last question, but this is my last question. Since you mentioned the coup in Turk a few years ago, Golan is still, I believe, somewhere in Pennsylvania at a property in Pennsylvania. Are you surprised that he has not been turned over to Turk as a way of appeasing erdowan, and do you think that Golan can be fairly confident that he's not going to be turned over as a fig leaf for better relations?

Yeah, I think the US constantly sees him as a bit of leverage. The US likes to keep shadow governments in place for just about every country in the world. Somewhere in the United States, leaders forces

The Shah's Sun is still roaming around Northern

Virginia. The Shah's son, Joe Biden just declared Yulia Navalny and then Yolanda, whoever she is, to be the new leader of the Russian opposition. You've got Juan Gau still out there. This is actually absolutely normal. There are entire communities outside Langley that are just exist of us backed shadow governments ready, waiting to be installed in foreign countries. But I have to say that I don't actually think the Golan movement had anything to do with the coup against Erdogan that occurred several years ago. This was almost entirely, once again, a military attempt to restore a kaist state in Turkey against Erdogan's Islamism. It was just sprung early by the Turkish government under what it believed to be controlled conditions, and then rather than admitting a secular Islamist divide in the country, they simply blamed it on a convenience scapegoat, which was the ING gong. I don't think that he actually had anything to do with that QI think that's just a rather vocal if unconvincing bit of Turkish propaganda that everyone has just played along with. So as not to anger Erdogan. In fact, the Russian president when asked about it a couple of years ago, when asked about their responsibility for the coup, his comments were pretty much to the point of if Erdogan says that's what happened, who am I to say otherwise?

Mark Sloboda, man, thank you so much. I always appreciate you carving out the time for me and for the show that you do. Mark Shada, really appreciate you joining me today.

Thanks for having me.

And folks, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please, please follow and subscribe, leave a review, share the show. We're growing tremendously, but we can only grow as you allow us to follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we do not chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace. We're out

Hey folks! Thanks for joining us again for Connecting the Dots! This week we have a special feature. I recently appeared on the show Geopolitical Trends with David Oualaalou and we wanted to share this conversation with you. We're sure you will love it. Next week we will be back with a normal installment of Connecting the Dots with me, Dr Wilmer Leon.

It is becoming more evident that the era of western global dominance is coming to an end. For the last few decades, the collective West succeeded in dividing the world into their “vassals” and those they call a “rogue country” or “authoritarian regime,”. Yet, reality on the ground demonstrates the Western collapse as inevitable. Join me live 2/23/24 @ 1900 (CST) for this fascinating conversation with Dr. Wilmer Leon as he deciphers for us what this collapse entails.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. And I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which they occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events in the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live.

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

And welcome to geopolitical trends. Where to root matters. Let me bring in my guest, Dr. Wilmer. Leon. Good evening.

Good evening, David. How are you?

Good, sir. How are you? First of all, I want to say thank you for carving out time for me. You are a busy man during the week with all your talks around the country, and I am very grateful to you. I want you to know this on behalf of the entire community.

Well, I'm incredibly humbled that you would invite me to this program, so it's my honor and pleasure. Thank you. Well,

It's always my pleasure. Also, the reason guys just FYI. Here's one of the reasons why the moment I found out that Dr. Leon was available to this, I get so excited. Why? It's because I want you to know there are voices of reason inside the United States. There are voices of logic inside the United States, and I want you to hear it directly from someone whom I trust, first of all. And second, not only given his background as a political scientist, someone who understand the ins and outs of how foreign policy is structured and how the world operates. But I'm going to just give you a brief description about Dr. Weer Leon. Dr. Weer. Leon III is a political scientist for 11 years. He was a lecturer in the political science department at Howard University and has also taught at Morgan State University. He is also the host producer of Inside the Issues. It is also a nationally broadcast radio talk show on Cyrus SM Channel 1 26 for those who live in the United States, as well as he's also the co-host of the critical Hours with none other than Garland Nixon, by the way. So Dr. Leon is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Trace News wire and a regular contributor to over 200 newspapers and websites across the country. Dr. Leon can also be seen as a regular contributor and on international television news programs such as Press TV and RT tv. His latest book is Politics, another Perspective. Welcome, Dr. Leon.

Thank you. Thank you. I greatly appreciate that.

Alright, all you guys are in for a ride as far as understanding what's going on. Let's start with this weer, if I may. Sure. I would like you to give my audience here and the whole community your perspective about the state of affairs in the United States. I know

The state of affairs in the United States at this point in time in the context of domestic politics is in a state of turmoil. And not only is it in a state of turmoil, but I think it is in an incredible state of decline. I say turmoil because if you look within the Republican Party, for example, they are in the midst of an incredible internal fight, internal struggle. For the last two days, I've been listening to as much as I could and as much as I can tolerate listening to the CPAC conference and what you seem to have going on right now at the CPAC Conference, the Conservative Political Action Committee is the Trump Wing of the party challenging what we'll call the established order of the Republican Party. And what I mean by that is Donald Trump and his acolytes are attacking people like Lindsey Graham and more importantly, what's his name from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell, Mitch McConnell, and that ilk.

(04:59)

(06:41)

Okay? And by the way, we're going to be addressing Ukraine as we move along with this. So it is just for my viewers who just joining me here, I'm having a conversation with Dr. Wilmer Leon. We're going to be addressing a host of foreign policy issues. I just want at least the audience to hear from someone domestically that they are voices of reason, as I mentioned earlier, someone who understand the ins and outs of how the American politics operates and to give us the perspective about the foreign policy that is emanating from that. So let's me just move into, first of all, I want to say thank you to CJ for your super sticker. Truly appreciate it. cj, thank you so much. And I will address your comment later on. So I want to know your input weer as far as American foreign policy that we have been noticing, at least as one who worked in Washington back then and even back then, I started to notice that there is no cohesiveness in our foreign policy. Why is that? Why are we losing sight of what's need to be done, what the right thing to do?

Well, because I think the right thing to do, the definition of the right thing to do has shifted from a moral human base to an economic elite base and from the United States perspective, as the United States has been involved in the de-industrialization of the country in order to provide for pursue greater markets, to pursue lower labor rates, all for the interest of the elite in this country, that same mindset has also been very dominant in international politics. And I say that clearly understanding that economics, political economy, that economics has been driving the policy for an inordinate amount of time. I understand that. But even with that, there was at least an articulation of concern for human rights. There was an articulation of concern for the ecology, and now unfortunately, so much of that seems to now have taken a backseat and sheer greed is now dominating the policy. As an example, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, the intentional de-industrialization of Germany, I almost said Republicans, the Democrats supporting genocide in Gaza, all of these, there was a time in the world when other countries would turn to the United States for leadership as it related to the social order. Now, the United States has abdicated that history. It has abdicated that mindset, and it's now just straight greed. Let's take as much as we can for as long as we can.

Well, I look at it like yesterday, the vote at the United Nations Security Council. I mean to me as American, and I am sure, maybe I can't speak for you well here, but I was ashamed, I'll say it because it pained me to see how my country is behaving on the global stage by being the only country that vetoed humanitarian assistance, which to me was like, what the heck? What's going on? You can't do that just because the world has lost credibility in our ability to do the right thing. So to me, it's kind of like it's too late for that. So we can't,

Lemme just quickly add to that because as part of that, you now have African-Americans becoming the face of the articulation of those policies. Linda Thomas Greenfield at the UN as an African-American woman backing genocide. You've got Kamala Harris as an African-American woman and the vice president of the United States going down to Racom, trying to convince Jamaica and some of the other Racom countries to be the face of the United States invasion or re invasion of Haiti, Lloyd Austin going to Kenya to create and foster this joint military security arrangement, convincing Kenya to be the forces on the ground going into Haiti. So the African-American faces that are being used as the cover of American imperialism is also incredibly disturbing.

Well, that is the problem. That's why I put the title when the collapse of the Western liberal order, because this is almost not just at the United States. You look at the so-called democracies, all of them are behaving. I mean, we've seen what's going on in Europe. I have some viewers in some members of the community here from Europe, and they are sharing information with me as to they don't understand why their governments are behaving the way they are behaving. That defies logic what happened to the moral standing that at least the west was known for. We say one thing and do the opposite. That's to me problematic for us. Most of us Americans, they just don't understand the ins and outs of how Washington operates. And I found it very, very, very troubling. So I want to move the conversation to two main topics. One of them has to do with China. The one has to do with Russia. So let's start with China, shall we? Okay. I'd like to get your input weer as to how do you see American foreign policy towards China? What I mean by this is that on the paper we are recognizing one China policy, two systems, but in action we are doing the opposite. So why are we fermenting tensions into Taiwan straight to get to China? What for

A couple of things. One is I believe since the end of World War ii, the United States has always felt that it needs a boogeyman in order to continue the perpetuation of the military industrial complex in order to continue directing limited American resources away from social spending to militarism so that the Raytheons of the world, the Lockheed Martins of the world, the Boeings of the world, can continue to generate incredible profit. Those that represent those interests have had to convince the American people that America is always under threat. So that's I think, an important factor in the equation. Another factor in the equation is the development and the very strong growth of the Chinese economy. And China was once just the manufacturing depot for the United States, and now China has taken the lead in terms of research and development in a number of areas. The Belt and Road initiative has enabled China to expand its reach and its influence all over the globe.

(16:59)

But is it the problem, if I understand it correctly, is it the problem that because we cannot compete with China is that while we are fermenting those kind of tensions is because we are realizing technologically China is moving ahead? I mean, I've been keeping my eyes on the chip industry. I'm aware that China is in the process of developing or sort of perfecting the four nano tech for the chips. I mean, is it the problem because we cannot compete with that.

I've had this conversation with a number of guests on my shows, and I don't like to use the term that we cannot compete. I think it is a clearer, we chose, we didn't see the need to compete because of these warped concepts such as manifest destiny and American internationalism and American exceptionalism. America has always seen itself as the best and the brightest, and everybody else is just everybody else. Well, China made a conscious decision, I want to say it was probably coming out of the eighties, that they were no longer going to be viewed as the sick man of Asia, which is how they used to not only be referred, but in many instances that's how they saw themselves. And so they decided that that was no longer going to be their reality. And so they changed their self perception in changing their self perception. They decided that they were going to play a different role in international dynamics. And so with a government that plans their economy, they were able to chart for themselves courses of progress because they're not a strictly capitalist country. All of the profit that was made from the things that they did, they didn't just put those profits in the hands of investors, they reinvested those profits into the development of their country. They focused on abject poverty in China, bringing over how many millions of people. Actually

It was about 800,

About 800 million.

That's what I read, yes,

About 800 million. They have been able to bring about 800 million people out of abject poverty over, I want to say it's about the last 15 or 20 years. Whereas homelessness in the United States is on the rise. So China has made a conscious decision to change self perception, to change its world dynamics. The United States has been focused on, capitalism, has been focused on the rights of the individual, not really paying attention, not really being concerned about the value of the whole. And so that is why now you see the wealth disparity in the United States being what it is, it's on the rise, and that is contributing greatly to the demise of the United States.

And that's probably why Washington is in sort of living in denial, does not one accept the reality that the geopolitical landscape has shifted.

In fact, let me give you one very real simple example that everybody here that has a cell phone will understand about probably 15 years ago, China reached out to the United States as China was developing 5G technology, and they reached out to the United States and they said, we would like for this to be a collective collaborative effort. Will you work with us going to their win-win strategy? That's not just a worn trope, that is a stated, established policy of the Chinese government. And so they reached out to the United States and they asked the United States, will you work with us on this 5G technology? And the United States said, no, we're going to do it ourselves. China said, fine. And what did they do? They created 5G. As we move towards the internet of things and the interconnectivity between say your cell phone and your car and your cell phone and your refrigerator and all these other things, China moved that technology. China is now, I want to say into six G, and the United States is crying foul, trying to prevent China from introducing 5G technology around the world because the United States realizes not only from a consumer perspective, but from a military perspective, being able to communicate at that level puts the United States at an incredible disadvantage. So that's just one example of how the United States is digging its own grave.

Well, you are spot on weer, because I was aware of two cases, one of them in Europe, the other one is in India. The one in Europe is that some governments, including the UK and Germany were behind closed doors, were forced not to even allow 5G in their network. India went ahead and said to China, no, we don't want 5G because we pressured India to do so.

And just a final point there is that the United States has gone around the world and has persuaded a number of companies, countries to pull out their Huawei to pull out their huawe routers and replace their Huawei routers with I think Motorola and some other US-based routers to the disadvantage of those countries. And Britain, for one, lost billions of dollars replacing their Huawei technology.

Well, the next thing that I'm seeing coming Wilmer is the electric vehicles that China dominates the markets both in the US and the eu, but the US most likely is going to put that ban. You know how it is? They're going to say, no, no, no, no, you cannot. It's because the cost. I read the characteristics of BYD electric vehicle in comparison to that of Tesla. And when it came out to the cost $75,000 for Tesla versus $28,000, which one are you going to pick? I mean, for us, every citizen can afford $75,000 electric car. It ain't going to work.

Not only the cost, but the quality of the product is also better. And one of the reasons why the United States that Joe Biden is now changing the US position on EV also has to do with the labor issue. And the unions in this country are afraid of losing jobs if the United States increases the production of electric vehicles. That was all a big part of the fallout with the negotiation with the UAWA few months ago. So instead of the United States investing in the infrastructure to make electric vehicles not only profitable, but to make convenient if the United States invests in the, if the United States looks towards the future, understands the future, and stops trying to control the future, and were to invest in infrastructure, making electric vehicles not only profitable but convenient, that could change the whole dynamic and put the United States on a totally different trajectory. But the United States, we can look at things as simple as seat belts and vehicles. The United States fought tooth and nail to put seat belts in. There are a number of things when it comes to the auto industry that the United States auto industry had to be brought into the future kicking and screaming because they wanted to stay stuck in the past.

Interesting. Before we move into another one, I want to go back to China again, and the reason being because I had a chance to read up the summary of the Pentagon strategic, what did they call it? Strategic policy for Asia. Of course, it's all geared towards China. I had a chance to look at also the one in Canada. What I found very interesting, weer, just to share this with you all, is that Canada, Germany, and Japan, in addition to the us but the US was separate. Those three countries all share a common terminology as far as their strategic Asia policy. They all aimed at China. And the reason I want to bring this back because I want to get your input for the viewers to also know something about it. Are we looking at a military confrontation between the US and China? Because apparently we're not willing to accept the reality that an ascending power, it's going to replace a sitting power. And this way it comes with the trap theory. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Are we looking at a conflict here? Military?

I sure hope and pray that we don't because that is a conflict that the United States cannot win, and it could result in the end of the world as we know it. I think what the United States is trying to do is it'ss trying to flex its muscle. It's trying to bluff China into acquiescence, and that's just not going to happen. Hence, the United States has just announced that it's sending five of its 11 aircraft carrier groups into the Pacific, and the United States hasn't won a conflict since World War ii.

That's

True. Folks need for as much as the United States spends on its military, not only domestically, but power projection with its however many hundred of bases around the world and all that other kind of stuff that we have. You

Want the exact number? Walmart, please.

756, 756 basis. We haven't won a conflict other than Grenada and Panama, the military giant called Panama. We haven't won a military conflict since World War ii. That's correct. And so the United States believes that by sending carrier groups into the South China Sea, that somehow China is going to quake in its boots and acquiesce and fall in line with the dictates and the demands of the United States. And I remember when the United States sent, I think it was the Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier group into the Mediterranean Sea President, this was just a month ago or a month and a half ago. President Putin said, president Biden, why did you send that aircraft carrier into the Mediterranean Sea? Don't you realize you're not scaring anybody? These people don't scare. And by the way, we can sink it with our kenza hypersonic missiles from here. So what are you doing? And I think that same thing applies to China because they have the hypersonic missile technology that has been tested and proven. I don't know that Iran has, if they've tested it, I don't know that the results of those tests have been made public. But I have read, I'm sure you have, that Iran has developed hypersonic missile technology. The United States is outgunned and doesn't even realize it.

(31:58)

Yep, it's true. It is true. It is true. And this is where I see, I mean for me now, I'm observing what's going on in Asia. I will be going to Asia soon in a few months, and I intend to see things with my own eyes. One of the things that I am concerned about seeing how these tensions is being rat up, for example, you look at what Naro has announced about opening an office in Tokyo, and the first question that comes to mind is, what the heck what for you? Look at what the Philippines signed the military agreement with the US right after it is what I found very troubling. Right after Marco Jr's trip to almost, I felt like he was given a lip service to presidency, went back to Manila, signed an agreement with the US to allowing five bases. Actually, the truth were about nine bases, only five were declared and four were not. And I believe as a former military, those four is going to be hosting some advanced weapons that even Filipinos wouldn't even know. Then you look at Australia, it's being synced into that trap. Then you look at New Zealand going into that direction, and of course, Japan and South Korea. So all this gives me an idea or a science right on the wall that we really want to have a conflict with China one way or another.

We think we do, but that's a fight that it is a bad idea logistically. How are we going to travel 3000 miles around the world and think that we're going to be able to support a conflict of that nature, even with the basis that we do have in the region? Those things have to be supported. The logistics of this would be a nightmare. Not to mention just the, in fact, I want to say that the Department of Defense has run simulated war games over the last eight or nine months, 25 times in the United States. Lost every time. Wow. I want to say that again. Simulated war games that our own Pentagon has run the numbers. They've entered all the data into the computers, and we lose every single time. And I mean, I'm not making that up, folks. You can look that up for yourselves. That's a fact.

No, it is. It is. I was aware of one even back then when we ran about 18 of them, 17 out of the 18th, we lost. That was back then. So that just gives you an idea. And I think the whole thing about vis-a-vis just will finish up with this China and move to another topic is that the idea that you look at where China is investing its money in infrastructure. I mean, I drive around the country, I fly from state to state and so forth, and I'm looking at an infrastructure that is very crumbling in front of my eyes and asking myself, why is the government not taking care of this? I'm not talking about handout here. I'm talking about everybody benefits from it. We paying the taxes. Well, we ought to see the improvements on bridges and airports and high-speed trains, and we have none of that.

You mentioned high-speed trains. I was talking to, I think it was the Jammu Baraka who, he was in China a couple of months ago, and he said to me that he was on a bullet train and the train was traveling 350 miles an hour, and he had a glass of water that he had sat on the floor and the glass of the cup wasn't even shaking. And folks, 350 miles an hour, the train is traveling. We have nothing thing, but we're the exceptional entity. We're the superpower. No, only in our own minds

Sad. It is sad. I want just to make it clear, I know there are those detractors that they saying we criticize our country law, whatever this is, because we love our country. That's why we have to say what we have to say. We cannot, and I speak for myself, I cannot sugarcoat things because I am seeing where my country is headed. So to those who's saying why you hate America, you do this. You talk negative about America, it's nonsense. I just want to put that out for the record.

I got an email yesterday from a listener to my Sirius XM show who said, why is it that you only have negative things to say about Joe Biden? And what you're doing is you're creating the environment for African-Americans to think it's okay to vote for Donald Trump. And my point is, to your point, I'm just telling you truth. It's all. And what you do with that information is your business. But I can't sit here and tell you I am a political scientist. I am not a political operative. So my training, my job, my obligation is to look at the data. What does the data say and tell you the truth, what you do with it or don't do with it. That's your business.

Well, that is, it is, folks, this is what I said. I want you to be here to listen to what Dr. Leon has to say because there is a voice of reason from within the us. There are people like Dr. Leon that speaks the truth.

There are a couple of us walking around.

Yeah. Well, just because a lot of people think that all Americans, they don't think straight or No, no, no. They are with voices out there.

In fact, to that, again, I'll go back to the point I made in the first part of the discussion about the polling. When you look at the data, 70% of Americans want an end to the Ukraine conflict. 80% of Americans want an end to the Gaza conflict. It's the leader. So-called leadership in this country that is not listening to the folks, the elected representatives are not representing the interests and the dictates of their constituents because there's an elite class in this country that are paying for the policies that they're receiving.

Wow. Instead of having the politicians working for the benefit and welfare of their constituents for presenting Elsa. Folks, before I forget, make sure to prepare a question or two for Dr. Leon towards the end. He is willing to take few questions. So we will do this at the end. So let's turn our attention to another major conflict, which is the Ukraine, Russia. And I would like to have your input as to first of all, why the conflict was created to begin with. Why? Because it was created, right?

It was the United States started this fight.

Why?

Because when you go back and you read BR New Brezinski and let, oh, here you go. The grand chess board.

Oh, yeah. From Brzezinski. Yes,

The Grand Chess board. And oh, this one doesn't happen between two ages. He was, Abe and Brozinsky as a phobe was very instrumental in helping to create the American foreign policy mindset. And so when you look at the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Margaret, not Margaret, the woman

From which country?

From this country before Hillary Clinton. I just draw the short woman think.

Madeline Al Madeline. Yeah.

Madeline Albright is a disciple of Brzezinski. Hillary Clinton is a disciple of Madeline Albright. So that's the ideological tree that a lot of these folks come from. It is said that Brzezinski is the one that discovered Barack Obama when Barack Obama was at Columbia University. So Barack Obama comes from that brozinsky mindset. So Russia has been a perceived enemy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And once Vladimir Putin took control of the Russian economy, and meaning that the United States was no longer going to be able to control the Russian economy and extract the profit from it, that American business elites were anticipating and financiers were anticipating, then Russia became an even bigger threat. And so there's been this whole Russia phobia mentality within the United States, and that now makes its way into Tony Blinken and that whole crew. I mean, we can go back to the Cold War. So Russia is a convenient enemy coming out of the Cold War and all. So there's been this distant memory that has now been brought back to the forefront that Russia is an enemy, ignoring the fact Russia wanted to join nato.

That's correct.

Russia wanted to engage and work cooperatively with the West, but Russia was not going to be a puppet. Russia was not going to to allow the United States to use it as it has used so many of its other allies. And that was something that the, and then to the military industrial complex, Russia becomes a very convenient enemy. And that's of course 30,000 foot answer to your question.

You're right. One more, I mean, the most troubling to me was after the end of the Cold War, Naro expanded threefold. He moved from 50 million to 31.

What did Secretary of State, the guy from Texas, I drew a blank on his name.

Oh, the Secretary of State was the James Baker.

James Baker promised Gorbachev.

That's true.

Baker promised Gorbachev, if Gorbachev allowed for the reunification of East and West Germany, NATO would not move any further eastward. And not only did Baker sign onto that, France did, Germany did, and I think one other European country signed onto that as well. And when people want to know why is there this conflict now? Well, the United States violating that commitment that James Baker made goes a very long way. And to those listening who will say, well, that was never a treaty, that nothing was ever signed, therefore it is irrelevant and isn't tangible isn't real. I think it's the international law case of Greenland v Norway. That was back in the thirties where the international court said Any commitment made by a representative of a country is a binding commitment. And so James Baker promising Gorbachev, nato, that was as good as a, it was a verbal contract. It was a verbal agreement and has standing in international court.

Well, of course, the bad part is that the optics of it internationally when we won back on our word as far as what we're doing. So this is why, I mean, a lot of us Americans do not understand as to what is at the heart of this conflict and who created it to begin with

The United States

Thinking what we just have nothing to do. We're going to go look for conflicts around the world. Well, we've been in conflicts for years. The Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, you name it. And what do you and I as Americans, what have we gained from that? What was our interest? Death, exactly.

No debt, death and the decline in the American standard of living. My son will be 22 years old on Sunday. He has never known a day of peace in his entire life. Wow.

Wow. That's very sad. And that's just one example. A lot of people that age will be, which is, but that becomes also on us weer as citizens. If we're not informed, how do we expect to influence change?

Well, it's very difficult to influence change when journalism in the United States has become co-opted by the military industrial complex. So the New York Times is known as the paper of record. The invasion of Iraq was sold to the United States, to the citizens of the United States to a great degree through the New York Times. The CIA was filtering those lies and that disinformation and that misinformation to the American people through the New York Times, through the Washington Post, through M-S-N-B-C and other network outlets. So it becomes difficult for the American people to formulate any kind of rational, reasonable understanding of the geopolitical landscape when all they're being fed is narrative. When you turn on M-S-N-B-C and you look at who many of their paid contributors are,

(49:02)

I'm sorry. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. So yeah, it is, I couldn't agree more. And this is again, what concerns me the most about the narrative that I am really following closely emanating from Washington vis-a-vis China. That is my, concerns me the most because I can just see where this is going to go. Now.

The spy balloon.

The spy balloon, that's correct. The

Spy balloon.

What's next? Now, the AV is going to be spying if it's on the American roads. So now let me go back to the Russia aspect.

Oh, don't forget the Chinese cranes. Now China's going to use the cranes at the American ports to disrupt our economy. That's the latest China story.

It's pathetic. It is pathetic. So now for the Ukraine Russia conflict, by the way, I found out that President Biden is in Ukraine. He went to visit for Ukraine.

Really? He's there now.

I found out. And he met with the wife of Navalny,

(51:22)

Because the eu, for the most part, is the lapdog of the United States and the leaders of the eu. And an example of that, if you go back to when Olaf Schultz came to the United States and he was standing in a press conference with Joe Biden, and a reporter asked Joe Biden about Nord Stream, when are you going to turn up Nord stream? And Biden said, that's not going to happen. The reporter said, with Olaf Schultz standing right next to him. The reporter said, well, Mr. President, how can you stand there and say that that's not going to happen when that's not our pipeline? And he just looked at the reporter and said, trust me, that's not going to happen. Wow. And then about a week after that, boom, Nord Stream blows up. So the United States, it's analogous to a mafia operation. These are gangsters. These are just gangsters.

(53:11)

Indeed? Indeed. Because I have family lives in Europe. So I kind of talk to them once in a while and they kind of baffled by the policies in both. I have the family lives in Germany and France. I talk with them kind of like, we don't get it. We don't get it.

One of the objectives of the Ukrainian conflict was the de-industrialization of Germany,

Germany.

And now some of these German companies are moving to the United States, for example. Who would've thought that? Michelin, the French tire company, Michelin, that has, I think two factories in Germany, they've closed those tire factories. And I think they're looking to move those factories to the United States. And I think Porsche is looking to move the assembly of more Porsches to the United States.

Wow. Wow. That's traveling for Europe. When I was in Poland last time, a few months ago, I had some conversation with some Polish people there, and they did made it clear to me that they don't understand what the policies of their governments. Well, of course I had to dig into some stuff only to find out who the US ambassador to Poland. You know who it is, right?

The ambassador to Poland? No,

Of the United States to Poland. Poland is the son of Brezinski.

Oh, I did that. Okay.

It's his son. His son.

Mika's brother.

Brother, yes. He is the US ambassador too. And that I put the two and two together and figured, now it makes sense to me as to why Poland is embarking on the people do not want any issues with Russia, but the government is pushing the policy because US Ambassador following the footsteps of his father. You're right. You are right. That's exactly. Now they got a little better. Well, maybe it's too late for all this. So now the idea of how it's going to end, how in your opinion, this conflict?

Well, I wish I were able to empirically answer your question. Now you're asking me my opinion, and the only thing that I can see is that the United States is in this until the last Ukrainian dies. Because Russia is not going to stop. Russia has no reason to stop. The United States is doing everything it can do to continue to see to it that this conflict continues. And the folks that I've talked to about this that understand Russian strategy and Russian capabilities will say Russia hasn't even started that. Looking at the size of Russia's military and their ability to bring up forces, and this is the very kind of war that Russia has been preparing for 20 years an artillery battle. This is what they have been planning for and stockpiling and stockpiling and stockpiling. And that's why NATO is running out of ammunition. Russia just keeps sending shells.

(58:31)

Till the last Ukrainian,

Till the last Ukrainian dies.

And before I forget, it used to be it was a secret memo that was released back in 2011. At that time, I was still in Washington. And the plan has already been in motion per se, because a lot of people do not know that this started from 2007 all the way through to 2014. Of course, when the co happened, then it keeps going to what it is.

Was part of that the yet means yet Memo from, was that Burns?

That is correct.

Okay. From

Williams. And it was another one that was, because that was in a reflection of the book that was written by none other than Michael McFall. You know who Michael McFall? What was the book about? A short version of it? The seventh Key Points of Taking down a regime. So this is Michael mc ambassador himself, which one day I remember he put something on Twitter and I kind of answered him straightforward, never heard back from him because I faced him with facts regarding this because I was aware of the issue on

What's going on. And there's another book by Blinken Ally versus Ally, which talks about the conflict over pipelines. And so in fact, you can see here it is Ally versus Ally. Interesting. Tony Blinken wrote that years ago. It might've been, yeah, wrote that years ago.

Yeah. Very interesting. And speaking of the pipeline, I dunno if you were aware that Sweden officially closed the investigation on pipeline.

Yes.

Well, how can we close an investigation without knowing who the corporate is? It doesn't make sense.

That doesn't make sense. And that also goes to a comment that President Putin made in his interview where he said that the whole pipeline was not destroyed. There's one pipe that is still functional. He says, why don't you turn that up? He says, you can get Russian gas to Germany through Poland. Why won't you turn that up? You can get Russian gas to Germany through Ukraine. Why won't you turn that up? So it's not that these problems can't be solved. And you mentioning that Brzezinski's son is the ambassador to Poland. Now I understand part of that question, but all of that factors into, it's not that the problems can't be solved, they can be solved simply, but the United States does not want those solutions.

Yeah, well I look at it like what the Chinese proposed, the 12 talking points regarding the piece, and we rejected it right out immediately. We kind of like, no, we don't want the Chinese to get involved into this. But I read that proposal. Well, it makes perfect, makes perfect sense to me. But again, it's because the US is not going to allow that one. So alright, let me see. Any question from you guys? Oh, by the way, I'm seeing someone here I didn't see for a long time. Usually good to see you as always. Let me see guys, if you have a question for Dr. Leon, it'll be happy to answer this one here for you. And I am hoping you guys, there was some super stickers earlier. I couldn't read it. I am so sorry, guys. Let me see if there is a question here. Well, here is first one. I want to say thank you to Nick. Nick h thank you very much for your supers sticker. Truly, truly appreciate it. It was another one with a question. I believe if this thing in the chat box weer gets overwhelmed with when you have almost 800 people, it gets overwhelmed. But I

Understand.

Yeah, the guys usually put cues. So I know it's a question for you, and I'm scrolling down quickly here to see if that pops up. And I hope you guys enjoy Dr. Leon. We're going to have him back here. Don't worry. He'll be back here. Well, thank you.

Thank you,

Thank you. So he'll be back here. And I'm very grateful that you were able to, yeah. Here is one here. One word. Dr. Leon, our Congress members, they want you run for Congress.

No, they don't.

Corrupt. Brian, you are right. Thank you so much, Stefan. Truly appreciate it. I appreciate it. Let me just see one more here. If there is question, and I'm just scrolling down quickly here to see, yeah, interesting where things are headed. I mean, it is saddens me to see what our country is becoming.

I agree with you, a thousand percent.

Really sad. And

Also,

Oh, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I want to say thank you here to Stefan Hayes again. You put Chinese balloons delivered clean T-shirts and dog food like treats and Biden blaber about Ukraine, and people helped genocide in Palestine. Thank you very much for sharing this, Julie. Appreciate you. Super sticker. Yeah, go ahead. One more.

No, just that a lot of the power projection and the violence, the war that the United States is engaging in on foreign soil also contributes greatly to the mindset of a lot of people in this country. And the violence that we see here, we can't really separate the two. And so in a lot of our urban centers, and we see a lot of these atrocious acts being engaged in by American citizens, some of that, what contributes to a lot of that is America is a violent country. It has always been a violent country. It was born out of conquest, it was born out of the United States, imposing its will on indigenous people, murdering those people and taking their land. And that's who America is. That's what our history tells us. And so you cannot separate the violence that we see at home on the domestic front with the violence that the United States is engaged in internationally.

Indeed, indeed. There is a question from Army with harmony, and thank you so much for your super sticker. The question is how might the US respond to hi group? That is, we don't use the term here because you know how it is weller cutting submerged internet cable, in your opinion, if the us,

I'm not familiar with the cutting of submerged internet cables, but what I'll say to you is that it was reported as far back as last month that the Saudis and Anah were about to engage in a peace plan. And the United States stepped in and told the Saudis, under no circumstance are we going to allow that to happen. And then it was just, I want to say about 10 days ago that the Saudis came out and said again, we've reached a peace agreement with Ansara, Allah. And the United States said, no, we're going to designate Ansara Allah as a terrorist organization. And so if you engage in that peace agreement, you will be sanctioned. And one of the big issues between the South had to do with the payment of Yemeni civil servants. They wanted to be paid and they wanted back pay. And they were negotiating that point. And the United States said, once we designate them as a terrorist organization, you'll not be able to engage in financial transactions with them.

Interesting.

So I'm not sure about the internet cable cut that. I'm not aware of that. But what I've just described is kind of the bigger picture on how the United States is why when peace is on the horizon, does the United States turn to darkness? Well, I mean that's rhetorical.

Yeah. Yeah. Here is my last question here before we let Dr. Leon go from po. So thank you so much for being here. Question, not that it'll happen, but if war breaks out with China, with the United States, also fight with North Korea because North Korea will come to the China's aid.

Unfortunately, I think the answer to that question is yes, and that will result in the end of South Korea and could possibly result in the end of Japan because the military support agreements, I believe are such that it's not just North Korea. South Korea would be the United States point of access there and Japan would be brought in as well. And I think Kim Jong-un is ready for that conflict.

Yeah, that guy doesn't bluff. That's too much. That's too my ledge. He doesn't bluff. Well, Dr. Leon, I can't thank you enough for really carving out this time for me here. I truly appreciate it. Alright guys, I hope you all enjoyed this. And again, I wanted to bring someone from here, the United States, so you can hear it with your own sort of ears per se. It's because someone with the rationale thinking, logical reasoning, and there are voices of reason here in the United States. Not all are bad, but we all know if the government sometimes does things not on our name, whatever the government is doing in my name, I don't even agree with this government. I don't even recognize whatever. So that just, and this is the reason why I wanted to extended the invitation and I was very, very, or I am grateful that Dr. Leon agreed to come on on our show. We'll bring him over again. As always, guys, I hope you all enjoy this and I look forward to seeing you next time. As always, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. See you next time guys. Bye-Bye

Folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes that come out every week. Also, please, please, please, baby. Please, baby, baby. Please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links to the show. There'll be, they are listed below. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wiler Leon. Have a great one. Peace. We're out

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

TRANSCRIPT:

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. And I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which they occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events in the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is the ongoing struggle for freedom and self-determination in occupied historic Palestine. And my guest is the award-winning journalist, broadcaster and political analyst who's based in Beirut, Lebanon, Laith Maru, as always, my brother. Welcome back.

Thank you for having me. I was a pleasure to be with you.

So let's start with the occurrence on Sunday, February 25th, where a 25-year-old active duty member of the United States Air Force, Aaron Bushnell, emulated himself outside the Israeli embassy in the US capitol of Washington dc This was a one airman revolt against the US backed genocide currently being perpetuated by Israel in the Gaza Strip. He has died from his injuries. Your thoughts Laith on the resonance. What's the resonance of this action in the region?

Well, first off, I would like to send my condolences to the family of Aaron and to all American soldiers that are thinking about the consequences of the orders that they're receiving from the depraved leadership in the United States. Aaron right now has become a symbol in the region here he's called the Martyr by the people in the streets. If you look at the social media discussions that have arisen since his emulation and sacrifice for peace in Palestine, you could see so much art being produced right now with the visual of him on fire. And what does this mean for people of consciousness?

(03:02)

Lathe, I appreciate you connecting the dots with the burning monk from 1963 because that's what exactly what I thought about when I saw the video. And for those that don't know, back in June 11th, I think it was 1963, there was a Vietnamese monk named thick Kwang Duk who a Buddhist monk who protested against the persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam by the government of President dm. And some of the dots that I connected were that Vietnam was a failed French colony as occupied is a failed colony. And in both cases, connecting the dots here, the United States stepped in to try to save the genocidal colonies. And then this also made me think about France Fanon and his book Dying Colonialism, where he talks about the impact that this oppression has on the colonized and that once they finally come to grips with their oppression and how they must resist their oppression, they can't be stopped. And so errands, Aaron Bushnell's martyrdom from all the way across in the United States to me, shows not only the residents within Palestine, but what's happening around the world.

Yes, definitely. Look, colonizers that are in Palestine right now are being emboldened by the support of the Western regimes. We see them filming themself committing war crimes and distributing it on social media because they believe that nobody will ever hold them responsible. And so to look at the demonstrations that are happening in the west and how it's been going on for five months now, almost these demonstrations and that they have either been ignored by western media and or have been repressed by the authorities in the West, we see, for instance, last week students, underage students coming out from high schools in New York and getting beaten up and arrested. We see the same happening in Italy where underage high school students walked out to end the war in Palestine. And again, they got beaten and arrested by the police in Italy. And so the population itself in the west who have awakened, who who've seen the same images that we all saw on this planet are reaching now a moment of realization that their own elite governments will refuse to represent them, refuse to listen to them.

(08:35)

(10:10)

To that point, what message gets sent when an African-American woman like US ambassador to the un, Linda Thomas Greenfield cast the vote against the peace settlement in the UN or US vice president, African-American woman, Kamala Harris, goes to Kom trying to pitch the US invasion of Haiti. Or you have members of the Congressional Black Caucus that are engaged that are coming to Israel on behalf of apac people like Congressman Gregory Meeks and some of the others. What signals are being sent? How is that being perceived in Lebanon? How is that being perceived in the region?

You mentioned, what's his name?

Gregory Meeks?

No, the wretched of the Earth.

Oh.

And he obviously spoke to us about black faces with white masks. And this is what people see with the American ambassador of the United Nations. I mean, people are calling her Aunt Jamima, so she's selling the white flower on behalf of the elite. And so

I wrote a piece where I called it minstrel diplomacy. It's black faces on white supremacy.

Exactly. And this is what the west has been trying to do for the last 20 years with the bringing of Obama into power to give a black face to American imperialism and colonialism and destruction of seven countries under Obama. Of course, that never benefited anybody who's black or African in origin, nothing that came out of Obama helped the African-American communities. We watch this and I think the propaganda machine is collapsing of the West because there's nobody now that can be tricked the same way that people were tricked in 2008 to elect Obama. In fact, we see the Palestinian Arab Muslim communities in Michigan, for instance, saying that they will vote against Biden no matter what they want to punish him. So even trying to scare these oppressed communities in the US to vote Biden so Trump doesn't get elected, well, they don't care anymore. They all know these communities that it doesn't matter whether it's Democrat or Republican that's going to be in charge in the White House.

(14:49)

And that's a great, great, great point. There's another story that's in the Washington Post, Hamas leader hiding in Gaza, but killing him, risks hostages. Israeli officials say that they're closing in on yay the accused architect of the October 7th resistance, and they're questioning whether his death will help in the war. They say that that's up for debate and that he's hiding in this labyrinth of tunnels surrounded by Israeli hostages. And there's all this debate and discussion going on. How is this, what's the story there coming out of Lebanon as it relates to S, and hopefully I pronounced it correctly?

Yeah, I mean, look, the Israeli propaganda has been flip-flopping for the last month about the whereabout of noir. For a while, they were telling us that he escaped through tunnels to Egypt, and he's hiding in Egypt while his people are being slaughtered by Israel. Now we're being told, no, no, no, he's actually underground. And he's not only using Palestinians as shields, he's also using Israeli POWs as his human shields. So the propaganda of Israel can't decide what it wants. It throws everything possible, every lie possible to catch the audience. We keep on hearing that Israel is that once the representative of Western civilization and that the attack on Israel is an attack on the West, and at the same time we're being told that Israelis are somehow indigenous to Palestine. So they can't make up their mind, and they will throw every possible propaganda point out there, and hopefully one of them will stick with some of the audience, and that's what they continue to do. So go ahead.

Well, what about the subtle or not so subtle message that comes from stories like this one man versus the movement that in this Washington Post article, it says that the actions by the IDF cannot stop until he's captured as though capturing one man is going to have a dramatic impact on an entire movement. And from what I can discern, this whole one man versus the movement thing that left the station 75 years ago, Laith Maru.

Oh yes. And the Israelis have periodically assassinated leaders of Palestinian resistance. Even just a few months ago here, the representative of Hamas in Beirut was assassinated through missiles in Al Southern suburb of Beirut. And Hamas still goes on similarly with Islamic shihad, similarly before them feta and the PLFP. I mean, look, the quest for liberation and the idea of liberation, you can't assassinate that, number one. And as we see Palestinians over the 75 years have built their structures of their organizations and the knowledge sharing and in ways that it doesn't matter if you assassinate one person, there's another 10 people behind them that have the same skills, have and have the same positionality, and they continue on. Of course, this is not to underestimate the human factor. I speak differently than somebody else. People like me differently than they like somebody else. And yes, sometimes assassinations of of resistance can have a deterrence, but not in the situation of Palestine.

(20:05)

Hassan Nara, the head of Hezbollah, he said in a speech, I want to say it was last week, that this issue now has become bigger than just the Palestinians, that this is now a regional issue. And I interpreted that as kind of a clarion call, all adults in the pool. Now everybody's got to be in. Some people, I believe misinterpreted that as his kind of dismissing the Palestinian discussion, but I interpreted that as his saying. No, no, no. That's still at the heart of this struggle. But he's calling on everybody again, all adults in the pool. Your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, look at what's happening in Yemen on a daily basis. The bombings by the us, the UK on Yemen, on the capitol, on the had port, and the daily attacks by the Yemeni armed forces on American, British, and Israeli shipping boats and on the American and British Navy. So we've reached now the United States itself is admitting that they are now embroiled in the largest and most sophisticated naval battles since World War ii. This is not anymore just to confine to Palestine and the repercussions of this war. And as it rolls out even further, before it even opens up fully as a regional battle, we are already seeing historical things that have been set for 600 years. For instance, the naval supremacy of Europe and the United States and control of all waterways that has been now demolished by Yemen before we even got into a full war. It's done in 600 years of history thrown into the garbage, and now we're entering a new era in naval history and control and battle mechanisms and what have you. Similarly, as we now roll into a full war between Lebanon and Israel, we are going to see an end of air supremacy of the West, and we'll discuss that more as we go on with this hour.

You mentioned just a couple of minutes ago about the end of the colony, and there are those who will argue, and I think this is a very valid point, that one of the reasons why the United States is backing the Zionist colony to the degree that it is, is because the West truly understands that the end of Zionist colonialism and occupied Palestine will bring about the end of colonialism itself, whether it's in Niger, in Congo, we pick a colony that this is the linchpin that as goes Israel, so goes the rest of colonization. Is that hyperbole or as we look at what transpired in Vietnam, as Dr. King said, the moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

Yeah. Look, to make it easier for some of our viewers to understand what's the historical moment that we are living. At the end of the Soviet Union, collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States went into a stage of expansion, rapid expansion of its imperial borders, and try to swallow every state that escaped the colonial era after World War ii. And so Somalia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, blah, blah, blah, tens of states, Granada, all of those that got swallowed in by American imperialism. And this stage of expansion reached its furthest point with the capture of Ukraine and the war in Syria. So the fact that the United States lost the war in Syria, that was the furthest point of expansion of American imperial borders, taking one third of Syria and being defeated there. The war in Ukraine was the beginning of the stage of shrinking of the imperial borders, the Russia liberating east and South Ukraine, that meant the United States borders, imperial borders retracted.

(27:01)

There's another story. This came through Almadi English, Hezbollah Downs, Israeli Aires four 50 drone over South Lebanon. The Islamic resistance announced that its fighters successfully shot down a large air maze, Israeli drone, violating Lebanese airspace over the town of I TFA in South Lebanon using a surface to air missile. Again, hopefully I got that pronunciation somewhat close to reality. And they said that the downing of the drone could be seen with the naked eye. What is the significance of Hezbollah being able to down a drone, an Israeli drone of this type?

This is the most advanced Israeli drone. It is the jewel on their crown of drone production. It costs them, I don't know, almost $2 million to produce one of them. And the Lebanese resistance shooting it down over the central part of Lebanon showed that the first off, they have the air defenses that can track this supposed stealth drone. And by the way, the Israelis had to shoot two missiles from what they call David's Lynch, or what do you call it? The swing sling Sling. David Sling, okay. It's such a blasphemous thing to name a weapon of war used in genocide in the name of our prophet David. So they used their most advanced air defenses to try to shoot down the anti-air missile from Hezbollah. They shot it from inside Palestine, probably stationed around 70 kilometers inside the occupied Palestine, so it doesn't get targeted by Hezbollah missile and shot it over Lebanon to try to stop these Lebanese air defense missiles that were trying to shoot the drone and they missed them.

(30:59)

In fact, elaborate on that a little bit because it was,

Sorry about that.

It was a couple of weeks ago that Iran sent a missile into Pakistan. And the distance that missile traveled, as I understand it, was around 800 or 900 miles, and it struck its target. There are those who said then that that was as much of a message to the United States and to the west, that they could strike Tel Aviv because the distance between the two was about the same. And so now you've got the shooting down of this Israeli drone. You have Ansara Allah in Yemen that they're using, relatively speaking, very cheap missiles, something like $2,000 of missile to impact the global maritime trade through the Red Sea. The whole dynamic in the region has changed since the last Israeli Lebanese war. And if Israel couldn't beat Lebanon, then I don't know how they think they can do anything. Now, am I right to connect those dots?

Oh, yes. Oh yes. And look, even Yemen, up until now, we were told by the commander of the American Navy in the region Central command in interviews to American media that not only is this the largest naval battle since World War II that the US is involved in, but this is also now the first time in history that a ballistic missiles are used to hit moving naval targets. So this is a huge advancement for Yemen, and it shows how greatly trained these Yemeni soldiers are. And they're using ballistic missiles. They're using cruise missiles. They're using drones and naval drones and submarine drones to hit American Navy ships, British navy ships and nobody can stop them. In fact, the Yemenis themselves shot down an MQ nine drone just last week, which is the most advanced American drone. It costs tens of millions of dollars. And then they also captured the most advanced American submarine drone, captured it as a whole Yemenis, and they brought it up to the beach, and they're going to hand it over to Iran and Russia who are going to reverse engineer it. And so Yemen in itself, we should not underestimate their capabilities. And I tell you, if this war breaks out in full, I think up until now, the Yemeni forces have been restraining themselves on purpose, not sinking fully American destroyers or aircraft carriers. But if we have a full war with Lebanon here, I bet you that Yemen will definitely be sinking American Navy ships.

Help me with the history here. I think I've got a fairly rough understanding when we hear the name an Allah, I believe that that roughly translates into helpers of God and that the history is that as the prophet may peace be upon him, was going from Mecca to Medina. He went through Yemen and was assisted in his travels, was defended and supported in his travels by those who from that assistance called themselves the helpers of God. And so to me, going back to Fanan, this goes to the mindset of the individuals that you're engaging in. And so if folks have this mindset, this belief that they are truly helpers of God, you're dealing with an enemy unlike the American forces, who in many instances are in it for a job. This is one reason why these folks have been as the fierce fighters that they've been for the centuries that they've been. Again, is that hyperbole or am I connecting some dots here?

No, you're connecting a lot of important dots. Anah means people in solidarity kind of so those who are in solidarity with God and the Yemeni people have a long history that much of you in the West don't know, but they are the original Arabs. The marriage between the Tite tribes and the Canaanite tribes is what gave us what we know as the Arabic people. It is one of the oldest civilization on this planet, queen Sheba and what have you. These are very faithful people that are very tough and humble at the same time, they were the first outside CCA to become Muslim and support the prophet Muhammad and stand in solidarity with him. And of course, they were known as some of the best seafarers in the world. They would travel from Yemen all the way to the Philippines and Indonesia and all the way down to Madagascar and Mozambique, and through their trade and good behavior and spread Islam and spread Islam without any fights.

(39:38)

The Washington Post has reported that as ceasefire talks continue in Qatar, that the Palestinian Authority President has accepted cabinet resignations, president mah mud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority. He has accepted the resignation of his prime Minister and of his cabinet, and they put this in the context of new, what they call political arrangements that are necessary to achieve Palestinian consensus. And I interpret this as really being a total misrepresentation of reality because as I understand it, particularly relative to this conflict, MABAS has almost no impact, has no control. The Palestinians don't trust him. And so he really seems to be operating as an emissary for the West as opposed to really being able to have any impact on the outcome of this conflict.

Yeah, I mean, they're trying to create a Palestinian leadership before the war is even over. And of course, it's not going to go anywhere. The Palestinian groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLFP, all others other than feta have been constantly calling for a unity government for a representation at the Palestinian Liberation Organization for a disillusion of the Palestinian authority. And UD Abba as a good house slave is refusing all of these. And in fact, we heard them over the last few attacking the resistance in Gaza saying that they're kind of to blame for the deaths, repeating the racist words of his masters in Tel Aviv and dc. So he's irrelevant. And his government, whether they resign or not, I mean, what are they doing really? There's nothing that his government is doing except collaborating with the colonizer with a Zionist. And right now we can see that, for instance, Russia is trying to bring together the Palestinian factions. They've been invited to Moscow, the Fatma and Islamic Jihad. We'll see what happens there. That's a more logical path to creating a national government for the Palestinians than what the West is trying to do, which is irrelevant really.

So it sounds as though in terms of what's being promoted through the Western media as in the Washington Post, that by going through the path of Mahmood Abbas, the United States to a great degree, is really negotiating with itself. And that because they don't have in the, they make it appear through their descriptions that they have the major players in the room. And I think I read today that a ceasefire is on the horizon.

You put your finger on the right button there. You see, they've been saying that there's going to be a ceasefire yesterday. Biden is like, oh, we're going to have a ceasefire over the weekend. And Hamas is like, what are you talking about? We haven't got received anything. Who are you talking with? And this is what it is. There's a circle that's without using that awful word that you do it of Jordanian, Egyptian, Turkish Qari, American and Israelis, and they're all, so they're wishful thinking, but there's so much under so pressure that they're coming out. They're pressure

From who, pressure from whom they're under so much who's under the pressure and under pressure from who

They're under pressure from their own populace. They're under who's they? The west elite, the western elite, and the elite in Jordan, Egypt, qar and what have you. They're all under a lot of pressure. So they have to keep on pretending that there is on the one hand a ceasefire possibility and on the other that they can achieve it. Of course, the Palestinians are not going to surrender in Gaza, and the Israelis and the Americans are going to have to either end this war with a defeat and or actually continue to a larger war that's going to have a bigger genocide happening.

There are reports that Danish pension funds are divesting from Israeli banks and companies that financial institutions across Denmark, they're facing new increased pressure from the Danish public to withdraw their investments. This is coming from the new Arab to withdraw their investments from Israel as demonstrations continue for the fourth month running in protest against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. What I see here now manifesting itself in Denmark, I connecting the dots to what transpired in South Africa with the Western move to divest pension funds and other interests from those doing business in South Africa. Are you seeing similarities here? And as we talk about the BDS movement, it seems now to be gaining a lot more traction. Speak to that, please.

Yeah, this is one amongst many, obviously it's a huge success to have this withdrawal of all investments. We saw Spain stopped the sale and transfer of weapons to Israel. We saw Japanese arms companies cutting their contracts with arms manufacturers, and this will continue, hopefully, but look at the difference. We have to always, yes, we have to look for similarities with previous struggles, but we have to also recognize the differences during the war for the liberation of South Africa, Namibia and Angola from apartheid control and colonialism. We had Cuba come down with fighters to aid Angola and Namibia in their struggle. But we didn't see Americans come to the aid of South Africa militarily, openly, yes, they were supplying them with weapons, but they were not bringing their navy to fire at Cuban fighters. But what we see today is the United States, the United Kingdom, and pretty soon now we will be seeing European ships. 27 European countries said they were going to send their navies to support the US and the UK in their fight against Yemen. We will see now all of Europe fighting Yemen on behalf of Israel. So this is, I think the limitation of the comparison, the limitation of the comparisons. It seems that the West will fight all the way to maintain the Zionist colony. While they didn't do that, in the case of South Africa,

There's another story. And this one they say was not widely reported if reported at all, Israeli operations in Gaza are in total chaos thanks to private privatization of logistics. They talk about in Tel Aviv that they begin a large scale invasion of Gaza on the 27th of October. And that this was basically a total failure that the Israelis really had no clue. They were in total confusion, they were in total chaos. And that this wasn't that widely reported. One of their retired generals, IDF, major general, its brick, said that there is a total mess that's not being talked about in the media. He was a veteran of the 1973 Yan Kippur War and the 1982 Lebanon War. He said, behind our excellent soldiers, there is total chaos, equipment, logistics, food, everything that needs to be moved forward is not working properly because the Army has entrusted everything to private companies. Because we had been led to believe before all of this started on the 6th of October that the IDF was the superior force, and that a lot of folks figured, oh, that once Hamas went in on the sixth, that oh, couple days this is going to be over. And now what we're finding is now they're struggling for survival.

Yeah, they're struggling very, very hard. And remember, on October 7th, Hamas managed to take over 11 basis Israeli basis on the borders of Gaza and the main Shaak and Mossad base deeper in away from the border with Gaza and the main headquarters of the Israeli police special forces like the swat. And so they kept,

Didn't you tell me that Israel lost 12 generals?

Yes,

On the 6th of October.

So they lost 12 generals on the 7th of October and all their underlings basically also. And so these are the elite units that Israel had and the frontline units with Gaza destroyed completely. And since then, of course, everybody that they replaced these generals with has been practically slaughtered on the battlefield of Gaza, the ages of commanders in the Israeli military that are being declared as dead in the beginning of this war, the average age for a lieutenant colonel or major general were in their late thirties, early forties. Now the ages are in the early twenties, so this is around the 20 year drop in the age of officers in the core that the Israeli military has. So this means that they, they don't have the experience anymore. They don't have the knowledge of the battlefield. And now you add to it that you have mercenaries and private companies doing these supplies for Israel, and you clearly have chaos and add to it that you have American, British, French General sitting in the command center, everybody with their own views of things, it's a total mess. And it's showing that the Israeli military doesn't have options. They can't imagine options except genocide, which they are good at targeting civilians.

In the couple of minutes that we have left, I want to give you the mic and allow you to speak to the West, speak to the world. This is an international program. What are the two major, two or three major things that you feel are not being communicated in the West that people really need to hear in order to have a better grasp of the reality in the region, to have a better grasp of the reality on the ground? Laith Maroth, the floor is yours.

First thing I would say to our western audience is that they should be doing more to not only to help us in Palestine, liberation of it, but to get themselves ready for it's coming. For them, they already lost the right to speech, the right to media representation. The right to assembly is almost disappearing. And now, as we saw in the United Kingdom last week during the vote on the ceasefire brought by the socialist, this the Scottish Nationalist Party, they've also lost their right to representation, democratic representation at their parliaments. And if this war continues, as I am predicting, I'm telling you, it's going to be in the next few days, going to a much wider regional war with American and British soldiers coming back in coffins, people should be ready to even lose their possibility to have any representation. The democratic representation in the US and the uk, and people may think this is a little of an exaggeration, but let's just imagine it for a second that the United States goes into full war with Iran and all the access of resistance here.

(55:37)

If I'm not even going to think to put words in your mouth, but let me see if I can convey this a slightly different way. You're not predicting what's going to happen. You are looking at the current reality and discussing the possibilities of what could happen. And I remember talking with you, you and I talk all the time. I remember talking with you, I want to say last June, last July, last August. And you were saying to me, then something big is about to happen. And I kept saying to you, what are you talking about? You said, well, I don't know, but the sense on the ground is something big is about to happen. And you started saying that more even in September, you said something big is about to happen. And then October 7th happened and I said, that damn lathe boy. So it's a matter of being in tune to what's going on around you.

(57:49)

You're not wrong, and I just want to be clear that I'm not a fortune teller, but because I live here and have been meeting with people, seeing the things that are happening, and because I lived 27 years in Canada and the United States and married to an American, my children are American and Canadian and have worked on these subjects and have seen the repression that came on myself for this work, I can tell you what is, we're not going to see the same things that happened 20 years ago. The expulsion of students, for instance, from universities, we're going to see them being shot as we saw chemical weapons being thrown at students at Columbia University. We are getting very close as we saw right now with the Vietnam emulation coming back right now, we could be seeing very any moment now American students being shot by the National Guard because they're demonstrating for the liberation of Palestine.

(59:56)

My dear brother, Laith Maru, I want to thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for joining the show.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

Folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes that come out every week. Also, please, please, please, baby, please, baby, baby. Please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links to the show. They are listed below. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wimer Leon. Have a great one. Peace. We're out

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand and to truly appreciate the broader historical context in which most of these events occur. During each episode of this program, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the questions are why are American neocons hell bent on starting a conflict with Russia? What's going on in Ukraine? Who was Alexi Naval? And is NATO really still relevant? For insight into all of this let's turn to my guest. He's a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

(01:31)

(02:39)

(03:48)

(04:52)

(05:40)

(06:30)

(07:33)

(08:38)

(09:44)

(10:42)

(11:55)

(12:50)

(13:51)

(15:21)

(16:09)

(17:01)

(17:53)

(18:46)

(20:14)

(21:12)

(22:30)

(23:33)

(25:25)

(26:28)

(27:24)

(28:10)

(29:05)

(30:01)

(31:04)

(31:52)

(32:45)

(33:48)

(34:45)

(35:42)

(36:49)

(37:44)

(38:39)

(39:38)

(40:37)

(41:32)

(42:20)

(43:32)

(44:31)

(45:14)

(46:07)

(47:03)

(48:11)

(49:19)

(50:13)

(50:58)

(51:58)

(52:40)

(54:00)

(55:05)

(55:55)

(56:42)

(57:45)

(58:44)

(59:49)

(01:00:44)

(01:01:32)

(01:02:26)

(01:03:05)

(01:04:04)

(01:04:56)

(01:05:51)

(01:07:07)

(01:08:10)

(01:09:05)

(01:10:05)

(01:11:15)

(01:12:03)

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

TRANSCRIPT:

Announcer (00:06):

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Wilmer Leon (00:13):

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. So here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this show, my guest and I will have probing, provocative and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historical context in which these events occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is anti imperialism in the US today. What is it and what is it not? And for insight into this, my guest for the discussion is the chair of the coordinating committee for the Black Alliance for Peace, an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and the Green Party candidate for vice president of the United States in 2016. Ajamu Baraka, as always my brother. Welcome.

Ajamu Baraka (01:21):

Good to be here, Dr. Leon. Thank you.

Wilmer Leon (01:24):

So today's topic is based on a piece in Oroco Tribune entitled Anti Imperialism in the US Today, what it Is and Is not. It's written by Stanfield Smith and he opens his piece by quoting the late Cuban president, Fidel Castro, saying there is an enemy that can be called universal, an enemy whose attitude and whose actions threaten the whole world, bully the whole world. That universal enemy is Yankee imperialism. Ajamu your thoughts on Castro's assessment, especially in the context of the recent president Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers urging the Republican controlled House of Representatives to take up this $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, for Israel and Taiwan and other allies, especially understanding if the United States wasn't using Ukraine as a proxy, you wouldn't need that money. The United States is funding the genocide in Gaza and is also trying to use Taiwan as the tip of the spear against China. Ajamu Baraka.

Ajamu Baraka (02:45):

Well thank you so much for that question because it's a very important question and a very important conversation that we have to have. Fidel's position is in alignment with my position, the position I've been advocating or arguing for the last few years that one of the issues among left forces in the US primarily and also in Western Europe is that they seem not to understand the difference between a primary and the secondary contradiction. That is that they don't seem to recognize that for many of us in the colonized world, in the global south, in the northern states, but in those parts of the northern states where we are exploited and nationally oppressed, that for us the primary enemy, if you'll emanates primarily from the US and is Western European allies, we see the US and Western European allies as Fidel sees them as in fact representing an existential threat to the rest of collective humanity.

(04:02)

Wilmer Leon (05:28):

You mentioned the United States and its Western European allies and what is even ironic now is many of those Western European allies are finding themselves being victimized by US imperialism. We're looking at over the last seven months to a year a dramatic decline in productivity in Germany as a result of the United States blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. Now Europe is having to pay exorbitant amounts of money for natural gas. We find that impacting Britain, we find that impacting France. We find that all over Europe and and now for example, for those who may have listened to the interview with Russian president Putin and he's supposed to be the villain and Donald Trump mentions moving away from NATO and folks in the United States were screaming, how can Donald Trump talk about NATO like that in the United States attacked a NATO ally in act of war in blowing up Nord stream. So again, you mentioned the US and its allies and now American imperialism is even attacking its Western European allies.

Ajamu Baraka (06:57):

Exactly. I mean it's really amazing. I mean look, one of the objectives of the proxy war in Ukraine was in fact to ensure that there would be policies that would disarticulate the Russian economy from western Europe, specifically from the German economy. And the objective there was to weaken the German economy and also by extension various Western economies in order to make the further exploitation and in fact the intensification of the exploitation of the European market more favorable to US capital and the Europeans and the European ruling class fell right into that trap and to make sure that that plan was successful. As you indicated in your question, the US ensured that there would be no backsliding by blowing up Nord Stream two. They knew that once the German workers, once many European workers and even parts of the middle class woke up to the fact that they had got suckered into supporting this aggressive war in Ukraine and that they were being negatively impacted, that there'd be political pressure on these various states to reverse course and to reengage with the Russians. Whether us said, oh no, you're not going backwards. In fact we're going to make sure that by blowing up this pipeline and making sure that you remain now dependent on the importation of liquified natural gas coming from where from the us as Anthony said, the secretary of state of this is a marvelous opportunity. And so that was part of the objective of this war. It was a war to enhance the positionality of US capital in Europe.

Wilmer Leon (09:08):

In fact, going back to, I made reference to Vladimir Putin's interview with Tucker Carlson and Putin raised the question, he says, well, you blew up part of Nord stream because folks don't know there's Nord stream one and Nord stream two. He said, you blew up part of Nord stream, one of the pipes still works. Why don't you turn it up? He said, Europe can get natural gas from Russia through Ukraine. There are pipelines running through Ukraine that could carry natural gas to Europe. He says, turn it up. He says, there are pipelines that run from Russia through Poland. You can get natural gas through Poland. He says, why don't you turn those up? It all goes back to Western hegemony and imperialism.

Ajamu Baraka (09:58):

It goes back to the issue of the European ruling class that understanding that they have interest that are really counter those of the US and that irrational policy of allowing themselves to be suckered into this proxy war and not looking out for their own national interests is resulting in real political issues within their countries. Not only the issue of natural gas. You and I talked about on another one of your programs, this issue with using the Ukrainian war, the US capitol that's gone in and basically bought up some of the best land in Ukraine and are now exporting from Ukraine various agricultural products. They are using the war as a battery realm to avoid or to circumvent the requirements of the importation of agricultural products across Europe and imposing the products from Ukraine into various European markets as an act of solidarity. Well, the problem with that of course is it's undermining the positions of European farmers across Western Europe.

(11:24)

Wilmer Leon (12:34):

And in fact to that point talking about agriculture, there are farmers in Germany that have been protesting for weeks. They're dumping manure in the roads, they're doing a lot of activism, real on the ground, practical activism to show their resistance to the policies that you're mentioning. And also they're incredibly angry because a lot of the subsidies that the government was providing to them in order to offset the price differentials that they were experiencing as a result of flooding the market with Ukrainian products, those subsidies have been cut if not totally eliminated as the German government, as the French government, as other EU countries are sending more money to Ukraine, so many of them, many of these Western Europeans are experiencing a lot of the same issues there that many in the United States are suffering here. As our infrastructure is in decline as our schools are underfunded, as healthcare costs are going up and people are, as homelessness is on the rise, we can find 95 billion to send to Ukraine and to send to Israel and to send to Taiwan. All three of those fights are fights that would not be ongoing if the United States hadn't started them. But we can't seem to find the way to take care of Americans here in the United States.

Ajamu Baraka (14:05):

We can't find the way Dr. Leon because we can't have an honors and open and free national conversation because the same interests that are advancing themselves in Western Europe of the same interests that control the means of communication in the us. And so therefore a conversation with the people of the US around what really makes sense in terms of policy. Does it make sense to have 886 billion devoted toward defense? So-called defense or should we use some of those resources to in fact address issues of homelessness, invest in education, create the conditions where everybody can have access to healthcare pay for free education up to through the university level. US population is paying a price for supporting the policies that only are benefiting a small minority of the population, in fact about 1% of the population. So that kind of understanding that kind of discussion, it's not taking place, it's only taking place in spaces like this in alternative media spaces and as a consequence it makes it very difficult for us to turn the corner with advancing policies that make more sense, that address the real interest of the American people

Wilmer Leon (15:49):

And in this piece, anti imperialism in the US today, what it is and is not Stansfield Smith, he draws the distinction between progressives and anti-imperialist. He says that imperialism uses human rights and democracy issues in countries that it is targeting for regime change as a rationale for foreign interference and that many progressives swallow and even join in these disinformation campaigns to support these moves where in contrast, anti-imperialist, they focus on uncovering and bringing to light US disinformation and interference in national sovereignty. So can you elaborate a little bit on this issue? He talks about progressives versus anti-imperialist you use in many instances, use the term the left if you could because we hear these references, we hear these terms baned about all the time and many people mistakenly think that they're all the same, but in fact they're not.

Ajamu Baraka (17:01):

Well, they really aren't and I'm glad you raised that question. I think the way Stanfield is using that term and many others, when you talk about progressives, you're really talking about liberals and maybe social Democrats. That is those individuals who have politics and very similar to say for example Bernie Sanders who's a social democrat, who have a soft socialistic orientations Bernie Sanders, Cornell West, as opposed to elements of the left that are not only anti imperialists but of course politics that suggest that this global system of colonial capitalism has to be transcended and be replaced with a new kind of political economy, one that's organized around socialistic lines. And so that to me constitutes the left, the real left if you will. But even within that camp, if you'll, there's still some issues in terms of how one gets to socialism and that's where you have some of the confusion because even among the left, they will sometimes find themselves inadvertently often providing political cover to the US because they are in opposition to a particular nation's experiment, be it Nicaragua, Cuba or Venezuela, Peru or Bolivia, that if the politics aren't developing in ways in which these western leftists believe they should be developing, if they don't correspond to some kind of imagined model, then they will, they begin to criticize those experiments at the same time, did those experiments find themselves in the crossheads of US subversion?

(19:08)

(19:25)

Wilmer Leon (20:39):

To that. It is really amazing when you look at how long the been exposed to the genocide, how long that struggle has been ongoing and how quickly things turn post October 6th. One of the ways that I have described it is I tell people that Israel has bombed the world into reality that now that this horror, now that this genocide is playing itself out on your telephone screens, not to mention your computers and your home screens, the atrocities, the reality of these atrocities have just decimated the myths

Ajamu Baraka (21:39):

Exactly, and they're never going to be able to return back to the ideological status quo. They have exposed themselves, we are seen behind the curtain and we understand now the reality of the naked power that they are exercising to try to maintain their global control. We now see the nature of the settler colonial project in Israel, and by extension we are getting a better understanding of the settler colonial project in the territory called the United States of America. At the core of these projects is the reality of naked violence to establish those regimes and to maintain them. So that understanding of the nature of colonialism coupled with a deeper understanding of the nature of capitalism disconnected is radicalizing millions of people across the globe and millions of people within the US So the politics going forward are going to be fundamentally different, but it's going to be different but even more dangerous.

(22:53)

Wilmer Leon (24:06):

And another place where I believe that we're going to see this manifest itself is in the Middle East itself. Hassan Nala, the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon recently gave a speech where he said, and I'll paraphrase, he said, basically for as horrific as all of this is, he said, this is really going beyond the Palestinians and that this is an issue for the entire region. And there have been a number of interpretations of that statement. What that says to me is he is not only speaking to the Palestinians that he and speaking to Anah in Yemen and others, he's letting the United States know he's letting the west know that you all are about to start a global conflict that he's saying everybody in the pool and because they see themselves as facing a common oppressor, they see themselves facing a common enemy and he's saying, you all are about to ignite a fuse, the likes of which you will not be able to exterminate or put out, and it's going to be all adults in the pool, and the result isn't going to be very positive,

Ajamu Baraka (25:34):

Dr. Leon, and what's going to really like that is if there is in fact a ground assault in Rafa, the Egyptians have already said that that can very easily result in the cancellation of Camp David, the Saudis have said that there's going to be dire circumstances. This is going to see what has happened is that these policies have forced these monarchs and all of these Arab and Muslim right-wing elements to have to respond to the pressure that they're feeling from their own populations. So horrific what is happening in Gaza, they can no longer collaborate under the table with the us. They are being now forced to take more forthright positions in opposition to what is happening in Palestine that you couple, what is happening on the Israeli Lebanon border was Hezbollah. You look at what is happening with the Hutu that have basically shut down shipping as it relates to ships going into and supporting Israel, and you see that these unwise policies are creating a situation that can very easily span out of control and even elements within the US believe that this has gone too far.

(27:16)

Wilmer Leon (28:47):

And talk about how this hypocrisy of the United States has been exposed, is being exposed and the international reaction, what I mean by that is as we sit and look at the genocide that is taking place in Gaza and the United States is paying for it, the United States is arming it. And on one hand you hear Tony Blinken saying, I'm traversing the region, I'm talking to the leaders. I'm asking them to be very careful. Basically what he's saying is he's asking for a kinder, gentler genocide and Joe Biden is saying that we are concerned about the Palestinians and while in fact he's not telling Netanyahu, I'll just pull the plug on your money and we'll put a stop to this thing in about two or three days, days. What's your take your sense as you travel the world and speak to those around the world, how is that hypocrisy resonating around the world?

Ajamu Baraka (29:54):

The result of this is that the US has lost prestige, will never regained, that the world understands that the US and Europe is basically finished and that nations are deciding that they're going to put their eggs is a different basket, and that basket is called bricks. This emerging group of nations that now control something like 36% of global GDP as opposed to the G seven that's controlling about 30%, the shift has already taken place materially. Now the shift is taking place ideologically and politically. So it is a shift in momentum is a recognition that for all intents and purposes, the decline of the west is irreversible, but it's also a recognition of the danger that all of this poses for all of us because it becomes quite clear when you see the support that all of the western nations have given to the Israeli fascists that the west is prepared to blow up the world before they voluntarily surrender power.

Wilmer Leon (31:19):

Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. Elaborate on that because a lot of people will hear you say, blow up the world. Oh, that's hyperbole. Oh, he's just being over the top. Oh, that Aja mu Baraka. He's so dramatic. But no, that's real talk.

Ajamu Baraka (31:36):

Yeah, it really is because they're still flirty with the possibility of nuclear confrontation in Ukraine. There's still the possibility of some kind of wild and reckless attack by the Israelis on Iran and even the use of a nuclear weapon. There is the situation we haven't touched on yet, that is the unwise policies of the part of the US in providing support to and propping up and encouragement to the government on the island of Taiwan, the provocative moves being made in the South China Sea, the whole pivot toward Asia. There is always the possibility of these situations escalating to a nuclear confrontation. And it seems like that there are elements within the foreign policy community that believe that they in fact can not only escalate, but they can engage in a first strike and win. There are people openly talking like Dr. Strange love and talking about the possibility of winning a nuclear confrontation.

(32:55)

(34:36)

Wilmer Leon (34:54):

You just mentioned the mistake being made, and that is not theoretical. I want to say it was 1983, a Russian, I don't even know what his title is, but he's in a silo in a Russian silo. His name is Stanislav Petrov, and he is a missile technician, I'll call him, sitting in a Russian silo looking at his screen and he sees a blip on his screen. And the protocol is when you see this blip, you push a button and when you push that button, silos open, missiles come up, we're ready to launch. But he thinks that there's something wrong with the blip on his screen. And thank God he did because by his taking just a couple of minutes to be rational and to think, what he found out was it wasn't an incoming missile. It was a mistake in a software program that miscalculated or misinterpreted something that was transpiring.

(36:05)

Ajamu Baraka (37:59):

Yeah, no, they have demonstrated with supersonic weapons that they have

Wilmer Leon (38:04):

Hypersonic

Ajamu Baraka (38:05):

Hypersonic weapons. They have a technological advantage of us and not been able to catch up with yet. It's very dangerous

Wilmer Leon (38:14):

Minute. Wait a minute. To that point, when President Biden, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want people to understand this isn't theoretical high hyperbole. When Joe Biden sent the USS Gerald Ford into the Mediterranean Sea as a show of force to Hezbollah and to the Houthis, Vladimir Putin said, Joe, why are you doing this? You're not scaring anybody, you're not scar. He said, these people don't scare, and oh, by the way, we can sink your aircraft carrier from the Black Sea with our armed missiles, the Ken Jaw missiles, he said, and they're hypersonic. You won't even know they're coming until your aircraft carrier is sinking. That's real talk.

Ajamu Baraka (39:19):

And what's also kind of funny but tragic at the same time is that while they are engaged in provocative activity in the Endo Pacific region outside of Taiwan and in the Taiwan straits, the Pentagon has war games, a confrontation between the US and China, and I think we talked about it before, and they were lost every time,

Wilmer Leon (39:48):

25 out of 25.

Ajamu Baraka (39:50):

So it's like, what are these people doing? What are you doing? The whole concept that was coming out of the project for a new American century in which they argued that the US had the capacity to fight two theater wars simultaneously that should have been put to rest when they lost both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, basically global solve nations. But now they are actually a few months ago you thought they were really going insane because they are fighting in Ukraine and they are fighting in Ukraine. Make a mistake about that is the Ukrainians are dying, but this is a Western and US ward, while at the same time they were needling the Chinese. So it's like what? You all are going to fight the Russians and the Chinese at the same time? It wasn't making and they

Wilmer Leon (40:48):

Are allies.

Ajamu Baraka (40:51):

Yeah, well, part of the conflict,

Wilmer Leon (40:54):

You got to throw North Korea in there too.

Ajamu Baraka (40:56):

Well, part of the conflict water of the element that we didn't talk about, when you talk about what's happening in Ukraine in terms of the secondary objectives of this proxy war, it was to weaken the Russians to the point where they would not be a very effective ally to the Chinese. The target was not just Russia, it was Germany as we talked about, and the Chinese. So they were creating a situation where they were going to win regardless of what happened in their own imagination.

Wilmer Leon (41:27):

There are some neocons that thought you could go at China directly. There were some neocons that believed that you could go at Russia directly, and then there were others who believed the way you get to China, you've got to go through Russia.

Ajamu Baraka (41:42):

Yes, exactly. All

Wilmer Leon (41:44):

Are wrong. All are wrong.

Ajamu Baraka (41:47):

They were proven wrong. I mean the Russian economy was supposed to be destroyed, be destroyed as a consequence of this conflict. And as Putin indicated in that interview that the Russian economy is stronger than there's ever been. Every time they have imposed series of sanctions against the Russians. Even Putin said this a couple of years ago, it allowed him to impose economic reforms that he couldn't have done without the sanctions. He made the oligarchy disengage from the European economy and reinvest and the Russian economy. So they have become more economically independent as a consequence of these sanctions. So it's always been counterproductive and you have some realists in the US foreign policy community that predicted that. But the realists have had to take a second, have had to stand back and allow these neocons who have been driving policy in both parties for the last 20 years basically or more. And the result is the US is weaker than it's ever been since the end of the second imperialist war that we call World War ii.

Wilmer Leon (43:14):

Another example, and I think a more practical example, and what I mean by practical is it doesn't involve the oligarchs. It involves the everyday Russian person. One of the things when President Biden told us that as a result of this Ukraine conflict that he was going to turn the ruble into rubble, and by imposing sanctions on the Russian economy, one of the things that they were projecting was or predicting was that the Russian citizens would run to the Russian banks and take their money out of the banks and put their money other places. And what Putin did was he raised the interest rates. One of the things that he did was he raised the interest rates that the banks would pay on deposits. So the Russian citizens found, oh, I'll make more money if I leave my money in the bank. And what a lot of people don't know about him, dude has a PhD in economics. Not only is he an attorney, he has a PhD in economics. So he has a little bit of understanding. He has a better understanding of econ than Joe Biden.

Ajamu Baraka (44:41):

I mean Joe Biden's a moron. I mean most of the US leadership are morons. One thing we can say about Barack Obama, though he was not in that same category. He was just a slickster. And same thing with Bill Clinton. But the quality of the leadership in the US state has been a mean, been dangerously. Frighteningly are incompetent. And that's the thing that scares me the most, that we are going to trip up into a situation that the US is not going to be able to reverse and all of us will suffer as a consequence. Look, when you hear no matter what your opinion may be a Putin or a President Xi when they speak and even the way they comport themselves, these are adults, these are statesmen. If you'll, and you compare that to these idiots in the US started with genocide jokes and these idiots who are making policy both in the Democrat and Republican parties, there's no gravitas, there's no worldly sophistication. They're just like country bumpkins. They are so incredibly unsophisticated and adolescent. That's the term that I use to describe US culture. It's an adolescent dangerous culture. And because it has so much power, that's what makes it so incredibly dangerous to all of us that people need. If you haven't seen this check out that interview, you can have your views about Putin and the cartoon characters that's been drawn up for you by your bosses, but you cannot conclude that this is not a states person with a sophisticated understanding of the world.

Wilmer Leon (46:46):

If you look at a couple of examples of what you're talking about, particularly as it relates to the Chinese, I'm not even going to get into Secretary Lavrov because that dude is oh, just brilliant. But Wang Ye, the foreign secretary of China early in the Biden administration, Tony Blinken was supposed to meet with the Chinese delegation in Anchorage, Alaska. And so they all convene in Anchorage and Blinken starts lecturing the Chinese and they look at him and they say, whatcha doing? You have no idea who you are talking to. We didn't come here to be lectured by you. We're China, we hold your debt. You don't hold out out.

Ajamu Baraka (47:52):

What was so incredible about that was this was the clumsy attempt on the part of the Biden administration to assert their white maleness. They're going show it was whiteness. We going to show we running the show with these Chinese. I mean it was incredible. And like you said, the Chinese

Wilmer Leon (48:17):

Said the sick men of criticize,

Ajamu Baraka (48:19):

You're not competent enough to criticize us,

Wilmer Leon (48:21):

Right? Our culture is thousands of years old. And then you've got the whole spy balloon. What a lot of people don't understand is Tony Blinken said, I'm going to China to meet with President Xi. He was not invited. He said, I'm going to China. And G said, no, but he said, I'm coming to China. So usually diplomats are welcomed in Beijing. President Xi said, okay, well if you're coming, I can't remember the name of the city, but there's another city where they send lesser caliber diplomats and folks that they really don't want to deal with. He said, I'm going to send you here. I'm not going to meet you in Beijing and I'm not even come see you there. And Blinken got embarrassed and that's when the balloon comes in the jet stream, the weather balloon comes in the jet stream as weather balloons will do.

(49:30)

Ajamu Baraka (50:10):

Look, Dr. Leon, I was in China a couple of months ago.

Wilmer Leon (50:14):

There we

Ajamu Baraka (50:14):

Go.

Wilmer Leon (50:16):

Am I right?

Ajamu Baraka (50:18):

You are absolutely right. I'm going to tell you they can't can't be defeated. This what they are building there is absolutely incredible. I'm sitting on this bullet train going from Beijing to Shanghai, and I had a cup of water and I was doing something and I put it down and I realized, oh, the water's on the floor cause fly when you do Amtrak. You know how that on Amtrak,

(50:52)

Wilmer Leon (52:18):

Well, and a perfect example of that is 5G technology. The Chinese approach, the United States, I'll say now, 15 years ago about working with the Chinese on developing 5G, and the United States said, no, we don't need to work with you on that. And so China went ahead and developed 5G. And with that we're talking about the internet of things and the ability of your refrigerator to talk to your cell phone to talk to your car, all of that kind of stuff. And so now when you turn on your phone, it says 5G, but the United States does not. All we really have is faster 4G. It's not truly the 5G technology that Huawei and other Chinese companies have developed. And they're now, they're on their way to six and seven G. We just don't get it.

Ajamu Baraka (53:26):

And the funny thing about it too, the US thought that they were going to undermine the Chinese by undermining the ability to have access to advanced Chips, chips. But they are rapidly developing their own capacity for that. And see, people don't understand as part of the struggle with Taiwan, also the home of one of the largest semiconductor chip factory in the world.

Wilmer Leon (53:55):

Psc, is that what? It's

Ajamu Baraka (53:56):

Something like that, yeah. Right. And that reincorporation of Taiwan into China would be a nonviolent and relatively seamless if it wasn't for the agitation on the part of the us. This notion that Chinese want to invade Taiwan militarily is all complete and utter nonsense. There is a political process there. There was developing in favor of the Chinese until the last few years when the US really began to ramp up is meddling within the Taiwanese political system. So that's part of the issue that basically the technological advances that the US has, and they still have some, that gap is being progressively narrowed down.

Wilmer Leon (54:50):

And as we move on to our final segment, there have been studies and reports put out by various elements within the government that if China were to invade Taiwan, and that's not on anybody's drawing board, I always challenge folks that want to have this conversation with me, show me one time where President Xi Jinping has said that they're planning to invade China. You can't find it because they're not going to do it. But the United States says if that were to happen, the United States would blow up the TSC, I think it's TSC chip manufacturing facilities so that they would not fall into the hands of China. And now China has designed its own chips, it's on its way. Necessity is the mother of invention, and China is on its way. I want to tie something else into coming back to the northern hemisphere, and that is this immigrant conversation.

(56:01)

Ajamu Baraka (57:31):

No, they don't talk about that. And what's interesting too is that you remember at one point the Democrats pretended to be the party of progressive immigration policy, but who talks about that now? Now they are the party that has embraced the same kind of policies of Donald Trump border security expanding a wall. So there is consensus now among both wings of the ruling class represented by the Republicans and the Democrats on this issue of so-called border control. And they're never going to talk about the kinds of imperialist policies that are decimating the economies of Central America and parts of South America driving immigration. That's not part of their analytical framework. And so an understanding of these forces, again, has to come from sources like your show and other alternative sources that help people to understand the complexities of the world and sometimes how simple some things are. Like you destroy an economy and people have to find a way to survive, and they are a few hundred miles away from the most powerful and richest country on the planet. We need to go there. It's quite simple. So this is what has to be dealt with a better understanding on the part of people in the US to these issues and understand that you have more in common with understand. Understand that basically if we're able to put a break on these imperialist policies, these exploitative policies in Latin America, in South America and in the us, then we have the material basis for all of us to live a little better. So that's really where we need to be going. That's the level of understanding we have to arrive at.

Wilmer Leon (59:47):

And you talked about, I'll use these words, the misinformation and the disinformation in western media. I want to hit on one more thing, but before you go, if you can just give me two or three more minutes, and that's Haiti, and that could be three hours on its own, but this is from the Washington Post this week, rebel leader who ousted risid set sights on Haiti's current leader. The crisis here keep compounding armed. Gangs have forced more than 300,000 from their homes. The police are outgunned and overmatched. Half the people don't have enough to eat. This Caribbean nation of 11 million has no dramatic democratically elected officials. The National Assembly is empty, the presidency is vacant. That's left Arial Ri, the unelected and deeply reviled prime minister in charge appointed by president jovial Moise days before. Moise is still unsolved assassination in 2021 on re was due to leave office on Wednesday, but is so far successfully stymied a political transition. They're talking about GI Philippe coming back into Haiti. And this is written as though the United States has had absolutely no involvement in the decimation of Haiti. And so people read this from the Washington Post and they go, oh, these poor, ignorant, silly Haitians, they just can't seem to do anything for themselves. We must intervene and save them from theirselves. Doesn't talk about GI Philippe. And he was an American operative and how much time he spent in American prisons and how, by the way, does he get back into Haiti after none of that ajamu Baraka?

Ajamu Baraka (01:01:37):

You're absolutely right. And the situation in Haiti has become almost untenable. And that's how they wanted, he was reinserted into Haiti to intensify the chaos, to make the situation even more ripe for outside intervention. They don't trust him. He doesn't trust them. But there is a convergence of interest, short-term interest that is

Wilmer Leon (01:02:05):

Financial interest,

Ajamu Baraka (01:02:07):

Financial interest, political interest, right? Is it terrible situation in that country and one that we have to continue to monitor because the result of this situation is the possibility of more violence inside the country as the consequence of those issues.

Wilmer Leon (01:02:23):

And this is another example of the United States through what it created called the Global Fragilities Act. It is creating the fragility and then claiming we now have to use the US military to go in and resolve the chaos that we created in the first place.

Ajamu Baraka (01:02:41):

Exactly. That is the objective. That could be the end result if we don't stop it.

Wilmer Leon (01:02:50):

Brother Ajamu Baraka, I want to thank you so much for joining me today.

Ajamu Baraka (01:02:54):

My pleasure. Thank you so much Dr. Leon.

Wilmer Leon (01:02:57):

I want to thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Please stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace and blessings. I'm out

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

This week our guest is Vijay Prashad.

TRANSCRIPT

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I, we have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historical context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the impact on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The question is, is the West's hegemonic control over the rest of the world on the decline? If so, is it salvageable for insight into this and other issues? Let's turn to my guest. He's an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He's a writer and fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of Left Word Books and the director of Tri Continental, the Institute for Social Research. He's a senior non-resident fellow at Sean Yang Institute for Financial Studies at the Remnant University of China. He's written more than 20 books, including the darker nations and the Poor Nations, and he's the author of the article, hyper Imperialism. He's Vijay Prade. Vijay, welcome to the show.

It's great to be with you. Yeah, truly.

Thank you so much for giving me time in your peace. Hyper in imperialism. Well, in fact, let me start this way. Lemme start this way back in 2016 at the Democratic Convention, then Vice President Biden said, we do not scare easily. We never bow. We never bend. We never break when confronted with crisis. No, we endure, we overcome, and we always, always, always move forward. We are America second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it, Vijay. The undefeatable indispensable America are terms that are often used, well worn tropes, the realities that are existing all around us. Make these statements trite and meaningless to me. Your thoughts?

Well, it's interesting Wilmer, because Mr. Biden made those comments, as you said in 2016. In 2023, the United States forgot to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Munro Doctrine. Now, for those who don't know the Munro doctrine, it was enunciated by James Munro. The idea was pretty simple. Ro was saying for this new country, 1776 Revolution, 1923, Monroe Doctrine, I mean in the 18th century, a decade was a very long time. I understand that, not like now where you're sometimes just goes by so quickly. Time seems to have speed it up, but nonetheless, a young country in 1823, Mr. Monroe says at the time that, look, we just told the British Empire to go out of our shores. Not exactly because Britain still had Canada as a colony, but nonetheless Britain out of a part of North America. The United States hadn't yet ejected the French from all of North America, and there was also pockets of other Europeans involved in North America, let alone South America.

(04:13)

(05:23)

(06:44)

(07:57)

You just mentioned that the United States has extraordinary military supremacy, but the irony in that reality is the United States for all intents and purposes, hasn't won a conflict since World War ii, unless you want to throw Grenada into the conversation. United States had its hin parts whooped in Vietnam. The United States had its hin parts whooped in Afghanistan, 20 years in Afghanistan, what two and a half trillion dollars wasted, and we wound up turning the country back over to the same folks that we were fighting to take it from. We lost in Iraq, we lost in Libya. Now we've been outmaneuvered in Ukraine and of all people, Ansar Allah in the Red Sea is having traumatic impact on international trade. So yes, the United States has military superiority, but it seems as though the nature of warfare has gone almost asymmetrical and the United States hasn't been able to keep up.

Well, one of the issues is the difference

Is that assessment accurate?

Very accurate. I mean, look, let's just take one of your examples. Let's take the example of Afghanistan. You said over $2 trillion spent by the United States doing what? And that's a key thing. Doing what? I want to come back, Wilma to that distinction between blowing up the bridge and building the

Bridge and building the bridge.

You see, because the United States can win battles, it can win a military confrontation. You can win a battle. I mean, I was there and saw the destruction of Iraq after 2003. You can destroy power plants, take out bridges, just level the government buildings to all those things win. But war have never, never been won merely by battles. Now, there could be lots of examples in the ancient world when an army was in fact defeated and another army came in and occupied and conquered and oppressed people. But in a way that's still not a victory in the war because unless you are able to do something for the people you've occupied, unless you are able to create legitimacy for yourself as a new government, a new king, a new ruler or whatever it is, there's no way to win the war. War just merely by force.

(12:31)

(13:34)

(14:43)

(15:42)

(16:46)

(17:39)

(18:43)

(19:38)

And to Joe Biden's point and to your response about owning the finish line, if you claim to own the finish line, then that means that you control the finish line, and that also means that you can move the finish line. And that takes me to Tony Blinken term. Well, George HW Bush talked about the new world order, and then Tony Blinken comes in with not international law, but what's the term that Tony Blinken always loves to use about the controlling order? I can't remember the term that Tony Blinken loves to use, but it's where basically what he's saying is we have the rules, we set the laws. You all just follow what we say.

Yeah, this is his phrase, the rules based information,

Order based order. Exactly. Exactly

Why you forgot it, Wilma. This is a because

It has no definition.

No, it means nothing. And also it's one of the things that was there when Mr. Blinken was nominated for this job. You remember this very well. They praised him saying He's fluent in French. I thought, and I'm sorry to be so blunt, and I know that a lot of your listeners are serious people and they don't like this kind of talk, but I felt that Mr. Blinken, if he doesn't make sense in English, can't be making sense in French. So there's that rules based international order. What other kind of international order could there be? Tony? That's the question to ask him are they're all rules based. The question is who makes the rules and does everybody abide by the rules? Okay, we actually have rules that are based on

Do we even know what the rules are, Tony? Yes.

In fact, that's the interesting part, Wilma, because okay, the question to ask them is what's the basis for your rules? In fact, the most consensus treaty document we have in the modern world since 1945, the document with the greatest consensus is the United Nations charter. There is no other document which has almost all countries signed onto it, okay? It's the greatest consensus document that we have in human history till now. Maybe there'll be another one, but the UN charter is paramount, and in fact, I would say that most people around the world want to live in a rules-based order, which is grounded in the rules, which we've all accepted by treaty, which is the UN charter, not the rules being something invented by the United States government at its whim by let's say the group of seven countries by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, by the 14 Eyes Intelligence Network.

(23:22)

(24:29)

(25:27)

(26:49)

(27:49)

(28:57)

You mentioned about Ansara la in Yemen and the fact that United States can't scare them, that takes me back to President Putin's statement. When Joe Biden first sent the USS Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier group into the Mediterranean, and Putin said, why are you doing that? Who do you think you're going to scare? These people don't scare. And in fact, Al Hhi in Yemen said, we want to fight you. They are saying, and who would think that this small country called Yemen where most people couldn't find it on a map of Yemen is saying, we want to fight you. Please. That's an amazing, amazing reality, and you also mentioned about not following that we have this rules-based order and we don't even follow the rules. Well, Joe Biden has just signed an executive order where he now says the US may sanction Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians. Now that's an interesting contrast or conflict or just total confusion. When the United States is sending weapons, sending money, logistical support, targeting support to the IDF to attack Gaza, but now seemingly for political reasons, he wants to issue this executive order and oh, by the way, Joe Biden's administration approved the sale of the very weapons that the settlers are using to murder Palestinians, but now he wants to try to sanction them for using the weapons that he sent Vijay. It's insanity.

You put it very, very well. I mean you put the point very plainly, but let's again look at this executive order. I think they named four people in this, and one of them in fact has already made a public statement saying, listen, I don't have any bank accounts in the United States. I'm not affected by this not planning to travel. There don't have any assets there. This is just symbolic. One of the people named has already said that this is bogus, not a critic of this, but what Biden doesn't do here and doesn't have the guts to do is there are thousands of US citizens in these illegal settlements. This executive order doesn't touch a US citizen in an illegal settlement who goes and shoots a Palestinian. It doesn't touch that person. This is just directed at those who are Israeli citizens, but not US citizens. Many of the US citizens are also Israeli citizens. They have joint citizenship, but this is not, he is immunized US citizens in this. That's one point. Secondly, he doesn't really sanction anybody. I mean, you want to give a real sanction, sanction Israeli politicians who are inflaming the settlers. What about putting them on the list? I mean

Smoke trick for example.

Exactly. Why should they not? Why should universal jurisdiction not cover them? You look back at the international criminal court warrant against Mr. Potent and his minister of children, they were accused and maybe there is an accusation to be made there. They were accused of removing children from a war zone in Ukraine. They were accused of removing children from the war zone. Now, fourth Geneva Convention does say that population transfer is illegal, but let's have a discussion about that removing children from a war zone, is this appropriate? Should they have been removed to Russia? Did they go with the consent of their parents? There could have been a range of discussion and debate. I don't remember any debate. I just remember being told that this is a war crime and the ICC indicted him. Now, the Israelis have already killed over 11,000 children. They didn't remove children from a war zone in the way that the Russians did.

(35:13)

Lemme quickly say to that point. That's a great point and I've been saying for a while that in 2020, Joe Biden was talking about how horrific Donald Trump was and he was making a lot of promises about what he would do. He had no track record as a president. Now in 24 he has a track record as a president and he's now starting to make some of the very same promises in 24 that he made in 20, and folks are comparing his promises and his rhetoric to his record and they're saying You didn't do it then why are you going do it now?

In fact, worse than that, the people who are out there at these rallies saying genocide, Joe sees pie. Now these are people with a modicum of interest in what's happening outside the United States. They're not people who are going to focus on quite correct issues like for instance, a woman's right to choose. There is some difference between the candidates and so on. Not that the Democrats have done much to defend the woman's right to choose or on the question of immigration. I mean the Democrats haven't done much better than the Republicans in some cases, maybe even worse

Because it's more important to them as an issue, as a political wedge issue than it is for them as a solution.

Correct? Exactly. So what you have is you have people genocide, Joe Ana. These are people who are saying, I'm not a single issue voter. I'm not going to be wedged by you back into the fold. You can't wedge me and you can't wedge me because I'm looking at these other things. And there are lots of young people in that cohort and one of the areas where they're looking at is Cuba. This July norm Chansky and I are going to release a book called On Cuba, which is where the reason I know all this stuff about the MRO doctorate, and I mean I'm not a scholar of all this, but we had to study this to understand US foreign policy against Cuba. We did a deep study. It was a pleasure to work with. No on this book, it's not an interview book. We wrote this together.

(38:51)

(39:52)

(40:52)

(41:58)

(42:56)

(43:56)

Mean because Nancy Pelosi called upon the FBI to investigate those protestors saying that they were operatives of Russia and here was her rationale. Putin has a message saying that there's genocide in Gaza and these protestors are saying that there's genocide in Gaza. So because the protestors have the same message as Putin, ergo or Ipso facto, they must now be operatives of Russia when everybody on the planet should be opposed to genocide. Even Nancy Pelosi should be opposed to anybody in their right mind should be so even if Putin is the autocrat, is the dictator, is the madman, is whatever is the evil villain is a swamp monster and an evil villain. A broken clock is right twice a day. So the issue on Gaza, he's right on that issue.

Well, I'm actually personally invested in this particular part of the conversation because some months ago, the New York Times basically accused me of being an agent of the Chinese government. It was a ridiculous article. I mean, I was embarrassed to read it, not embarrassed for myself, embarrassed for the New York Times. I was like, man, you guys wrote some pretty shoddy articles with the name Judith Miller attached to them that basically made the case for the United States to go to war illegally against the Iraqi people. You got some pretty bad journalism under your hat, the gray lady all these years, but this particular article was really bad because it essentially took certain quite trivial facts like I run a research institute, I also work for a media house. I have people who donate to these things. I can't travel to the SA region on money. I borrow from my friends. I need donors for this because when I publish things, I can't get enough newspapers to pay me enough to actually travel to places. You got to forward fund a lot of these projects. I'm not embarrassed to say that I don't come from money. I'm not independently wealthy. I don't have that kind of trust fund that would enable me to live the kind of

George Soros won't back you, so

Yeah, he's not going to back me. I've got to find people, and by the way, the Chinese government gives me zero money. In fact, my post at the Chang Yang Institute of Financial Studies is non remu. I don't make any money at all. They don't pay me for anything. The reason I took that position is I was keen to interact with Chinese scholars. I wanted to have a place where I could sit down and listen to what Chinese scholars are thinking and saying, almost no place in the world that allows that unless you get involved somehow with a Chinese institution because they don't trust. You can't just show up in Beijing and say, Hey guys, I want to talk to you so I don't have any Chinese. They know that. By the way, the New York Times know that they knew the provenance of the funds.

(48:09)

(49:10)

(50:14)

(51:16)

(52:29)

You were mentioning the United States is better at blowing up bridges than building bridges, and the Washington Post has a very interesting article. China sets sites on Taiwan's three remaining tiny Pacific Islands, and here's an interesting element of this as China. This is from the Washington Post as China Vs. With the US for power and influence in the Pacific. It has tirelessly tried to pry allies away from Taiwan. By many means, chief among them money, it has offered much needed funds to struggling island nations like Nru and allegedly doled out envelopes of cash to officials and accusation. Beijing denies China has approached Pacific politicians as they travel overseas, inviting some to lunch and surveilling others what they're slaying out. I mean, that sounds like lobbying to me. And what they don't say in the peace is, well, China's not assassinating rulers in these islands. China isn't involved in their elections. China isn't overthrowing their governments. China isn't involved in China, is engaged in building relationships with countries, and they're doing it by determining what the country needs, seeing what China can provide and how there can be a win-win. And that's not rhetoric. That's, as you know, that's an actual policy strategy of the Chinese government win-win, and somehow the Washington Post makes it out to be nefarious, and there's something spooky going on here because China's actually building relationships with these people not coming in, building air bases, army barracks and shooting people.

Well, there's something in this Taiwan China story that the Washington Post also won't cover. There's something really interesting. Well, firstly, it is settled treaty position of the United States that Taiwan is basically a part of China that was established when the United States agreed to remove the Republic of China from its permanent seat at the UN Security Council and replace it with the People's Republic of China. This was right there in the 1970s, part of the Nixon Mao negotiations and so on. Okay, so why is the United States so desperate to hold on to Taiwan? Lemme give people a little glimpse into things that don't get talked about. Taiwan is the home to a company called TSMC. TSMC is one of the world's largest chip manufacturers. In fact, 90% of the advanced chips used in cell phones and other electronic gadgets made by TSMC. The United States worried about eight, nine years ago that if China was able to incorporate Taiwan, not necessarily by political incorporation, but even just economically, what was John Adam's statement?

(57:29)

They couldn't find the workforce that they needed to perform the tasks that needed to be performed. That's what they said.

That's what they said. And then they went back home. So TSMC still in Taiwan and actually also on the Chinese mainland produces a lot of these advanced chips. Now, United States tried to squeeze China's ability to buy these chips, but what they're really worried about is that TSMC will come to the realization that they cannot, absolutely cannot accept the US sanctions on China that prevent TSMC from selling chips to China, because China is one of the biggest markets for those advanced chips. There's also a Dutch company that produces very advanced electronic equipment for Chinese. They cannot afford to stop selling to China, and because of that, the United States will buy to anything to maintain Taiwan. But there's a real worry that they can't control it because in Taiwan, people are saying, sanctioning China is bad for us, bad for our economy. That's the natural cause of gravity. John Adam's statement didn't work for Cuba. It might work for Taiwan.

And as we get out, what did Joe Biden, or what did members of the administration say when Nancy Pelosi was getting ready to go over there and there was all this concern that China might shoot her plane out the sky and all this other kind of stuff. The Biden administration said, if conflict breaks out between China and Taiwan, the United States will blow up TSMC. The United

Imagine that

Threatened to blow up the TSMC factory on the mainland of Taiwan on the island of Taiwan. If conflict broke out, that to add additional validity to your statement, that's how and what that also did, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention that forced Huawei to develop. Just speaking on the cell phone side of things that motivated Huawei to expedite their chip development, their phone development, and they now have developed this, I can't remember the name of the phone, but their latest cell phone also now has satellite capability.

Imagine that.

(01:01:16)

And the solution to the conflicts are not military. One of the things that I have been saying about the conflict in Gaza is that Israel has bombed the world into reality, and people now see the horrors that have been ongoing for the last 75 years. It's playing itself out on their cell phones. It's playing itself out all through social media, and people are now finally looking at this, and they are, it's similar to, I believe it's similar to what Dr. King's strategy was with the children in the protests and the nonviolent protests. Do not respond to the brutality. Let the world see the brutality for what it really is and people will be aghast. And now the response in Gaza has bombed the world into reality and people all over the world, with the exception of Joe Biden and Tony Blinken and Samantha Power, who by the way wrote a book about genocide and now people on her staff are resigning their positions, asking her, well, wait a minute. I thought you wrote a book about your side. How can you back this play? The responses to the solutions to these problems are not through sanctions, and they're not through militarism and violence. They are through negotiation and accommodation, and the sooner the United States understands what Brix understands and what the Chinese cooperative and so what all of them understand, the better off we're going to be.

I mean, I agree with you fundamentally got to hope and believe that these changes, this new confidence arising in the world is going to provide a path out of the madness. We are at a fork in the road. Let's not choose madness.

Let's not choose madness for no one wins in that debate. Vijay Prade, thank you so much for joining me today. Folks, I want to thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow, leave a review, share my show with those and love, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace. I'm out

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

TRANSCRIPT:

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historic context in which the events take place. This will enable you to better understand and analyze these events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue is the Guardian and other outlets have reported that the Biden campaign has decided to jumpstart its 2024 reelection by highlighting what they perceive to be a sharp contrast with former President Trump ailing in opinion polls. Biden has decided to jumpstart this campaign with events designed to symbolize the fight for democracy and racial justice against Trump. So the question is, what are Americans to do in a 2024 election when many of them don't have faith in the process and or the system? Well, for run insight into this, let's turn to my guest. He's a scholar and activist. He's an expert in WEB Du Bois, one of the most cited Du Bois scholars in the world. He's an organizer with the Philadelphia Saturday Free School. He's Dr. Anthony Montero. Tony, welcome to Connecting the Dots podcast.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here

With you. And let's do this as a first point here, just a little data. Joe Biden's job approval. This is according to real clear politics, 40% approve, 56% disapprove. That's a negative, almost 16 rating direction of the country. Is the country headed in the right direction? About 24% say right direction, 67% say wrong direction. It's about a negative 42% spread. Tony, your thoughts on where we are right now as we look towards November of 2024?

Well, I think we have to start with the polling numbers. Over the last, almost five months now from reputable polling companies, Biden has been losing to Trump and his favorable numbers have been in decline. In fact, in many respects, Biden's approval numbers are below 40%. The real clear politics numbers are an average.

Yeah, that's an aggregator. Yes,

That's right. But I think for the most part, for the most credible polls, we're continuing to see Biden in the mid thirties. This is unprecedented for a sitting president at this stage of a campaign,

Not only in the mid thirties, but heading south. He's, and no pun intended as it relates to the border, but as they would say on the corner, he's hustling backwards.

Oh, yeah. There's no question this is unprecedented. I don't think this has ever been seen in the modern history of polling presidents and their attempts at reelection. I think what the public is saying is that we don't trust Biden. His presidency has failed. Inflation is still hitting working people in the lower middle class, very hard. The jobs that they are counting as showing a vibrant economy are in many cases, gig jobs, jobs without benefits, jobs without security, and in many cases at the lower end of the minimum wage. So

In fact, hang on to that point because one of the things, the misnomers that people have about these employment or job numbers is that they equate job to one person working, one person, working one job. But in this gig economy, what that now means is in many instances you have one person working multiple jobs just to remain poor When you were growing up, when I was growing up, we heard these job numbers and they usually meant one person, one job. That's no longer the case. But they don't factor that into their analysis, particularly as they're explaining these numbers to the people. So when you hear, oh, unemployment down to 3.5%, there are also a lot of other factors that go into this that don't reflect a strong economy. What they reflect is a middle class, a working class in a poor group of people that are struggling to get by.

There's no question about it. And people are saying to pollsters what you, and I know that the majority of working people, the majority of the lower middle class, are not doing good at all. People cannot afford food. And that is where the rubber meets the road, where you go to the supermarket and try to buy eggs and milk and cereal and other things that you need. And there you discover that inflation is as bad as it's ever been while there's some relief at the gas pump. But when it comes to feeding your family, things are not good when it comes to paying rent or renting an apartment. Things are bad when it comes to getting a mortgage. You can almost forget that. So the Biden campaign, who in the spring and summer of last year said they're going to run on omics until they realized that that was a sure enough loser because Biden had produced an economy which was austerity for the majority and good times and big profits for the billionaire class reflecting the fact that inequality is greater now perhaps than at any time in the last 80 years. This is a serious situation for the people. And when people say that the country is moving in the wrong direction, forgive me when 70% of them say that what they are saying is things don't look good for them and things look even worse for their children and grandchildren, that is where we're at going into perhaps the most consequential election in the modern history of the United States.

In fact, to that point, there have been studies and reports out recently indicating that the American dream is dying. I want to say, and I might be slightly off on my numbers, but the point is valid, that polling those who were born in 1940, almost 90% of those born in 1940 are now doing better than their parents were able to do those born in 1980, only 50% of those polled were able to say that they're doing better than their parents did. That tells us that the American dream is dying. You mentioned last year Biden wanted to run on omics, and I have to now wonder if it's been determined that omics is no more than voodoo economics, a La George HW Bush referring to Reagan's plan. So we're talking voodoo economics 4.0.

Yeah, we're looking at something like that. But we're looking at the fact that the Biden administration and the Biden campaign have no way to achieve narrative hegemony. That is, they thought that given the fact that most of the corporate media or all of the corporate media would be a propaganda arm of the Biden administration and of his reelection campaign, and given that elites, for example, university professors, politicians, part of the religious community, certain labor leaders or most labor leaders would all be on their side, that they would be able to achieve narrative hegemony, by which I mean that what they were putting forward would dominant over what their opposition would try to put forward. So the narrative would be controlled by the Biden campaign. That has not happened, and the reason it has not happened is that the nation is in a profound crisis of legitimacy where no matter what Biden says, the results will be the same in terms of the majority of people. They don't trust Biden, they don't trust insiders. They don't trust elites. Be they university professors or presidents, be they politicians, be they church leaders, be they labor leaders, be they military leaders. People do not trust the institutions and those who lead them in this country, and therefore this point

(13:02)

I wanted to throw out one more data point on the food issue because we have been seeing stories on local media affiliates about the rise of retail theft in this country, and we've been seeing the flash mobs that run into the high-end stores and steal Gucci bags and all kind of stuff. But what's not being reported as much is theft of retail in grocery stores, people stealing food and the guardian in the UK has us to the international implications of this, Brits stealing food to sell on the black market. The UK's cost of living crisis is fueling a record surge in shoplifting as people increasingly turn to black to the black market for food, the items most commonly stolen are meat, cheese, and sweets, because those are the items that can be stolen in large quantities and can be sold on the black market. So I wanted to make that demonstrate that point to show that it's not only happening here in the United States, it's also happening to some of the US allies that are blindly following the United States down this perilous rabbit hole. And you mentioned as a fellow political scientist, we were taught people tend not to vote against things. They vote for things, but in this instance, the script is being flipped because things are so bad. That's why Biden can't run on his record. He's got to run on, I'm not Trump a negative message trying to convince people to vote against something. And so I just wanted to, oh, final point. I don't think Biden's going to be on the ticket.

Yeah, why do you say that? I think that's a possibility. But why do you say it?

I say that because the numbers are so bad. I don't understand how anybody in the Democrat party elite can look at these numbers and think they've got a winning ticket. That's one point. No,

That's fine.

When you're at 35% approval rating, that means that you got 65% of people that disapprove. That's a losing bet. And also with his cognitive decline, I don't see, look, they're not having any debates in the primaries. They're not having any debates. They're not allowing any Democrat challengers to challenge him. And they've also come out now and said they may not even participate in the general election debates because they know that he cannot stand on a stage unscripted for 45 minutes and engage in combat, in intellectual combat. He can't do it. I don't see him on the ticket.

Well, I would agree with you, and I think given what you just said, there's a big irony here. The Democrats are shutting down all the primary opponents for Joe Biden, even though those opponents, Marian Williams and the other guy are doing abysmally poorly. I mean there's no way they can win, but the Democrats don't even want to have a public debate with those people. So they're shutting down democracy in the name of democracy of

Democracy

And the claim that Trump is a threat to our democracy, when in fact what we see is that the Biden campaign is pursuing a campaign that is anti-democratic in the primaries and in the general election and supports. This is what is also interesting, supports the two states that have already kicked Biden off the ballot and the Trump

Kicked Trump off

The ballot, Trump off the ballot, forgive me, and the 17 others that have legal suits that have been filed to put him off the ballot. So here we have in the name of democracy, perhaps the most anti-democratic campaign in our history.

You mentioned people not trusting in the, well, I mentioned people not trusting in the system. You mentioned that as well, and I really want people to understand this conversation is not an antibi conversation. It's not an anti or pro-Trump conversation. We're social scientists and we're looking at the data, and Pew Research Center has a poll out from September of 23, public trust in government from 1958 to 2023, public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to mere record lows following a modest uptick up through 21. Currently fewer than two in 10 Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right. That's the data. That's not my opinion. That's not your opinion. That's the data. So I just wanted to throw out that data point. So the people listening to this saying, oh, these guys are going into this antibi conversation. No,

We're

Just giving you the numbers.

And to your point about Biden not being on the ticket by the time of the Democratic National Convention.

Now that is my opinion, but

Yeah, that's my opinion. But you have leading figures in the Democratic party calling for Biden to step aside. They're usually saying on the basis of age, but they're also saying more than that when they're not speaking publicly. A lot of this is coming from the Obama wing of the Democratic establishment. As you know, the Biden wing, which is also the Hillary Clinton wing is the most powerful side of this. However, the Obama people, especially Axelrod and probably some others have come

Out. David Ignatius,

David Ignatius. Well, definitely I would say, but I would say he's not with the Obama wing. Oh,

No, no, but no, I was just saying he wrote, he came out before Axelrod

Did. That's right. That's right. And so these figures are saying Biden can't win. Robert Kagan who writes mainly on foreign policy is saying that for the sake of national security, Biden should step aside and allow a more capable Democrat to challenge Trump. But the thing is, the question is will Biden do it and can he do it? What do they do? Who do they turn to if Biden is not the candidate? Kamala Harris, certainly not. No, I just don't. I mean maybe the governor of California, but besides winning California, which Democrats will win anyway, what does he bring to the conversation and to the contest for the presidency? I just don't think they have an alternative to Biden. They're going to have to go with him, come hell or high water. And that is the paradox, the dilemma of the Democratic Party at this moment.

(23:17)

You mentioned who do the Democrats turn to in a baseball analogy? I will say they got no arms in the bullpen. They're calling the bullpen and nobody's answering the phone. But I think the only options they have are Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. And I'm not saying that this is a winning ticket. What I'm saying is any port in a storm, and they don't have many options here. Gavin Newsom is young. Gavin Newsom is white. Gavin Newsom looks great in a suit, and he's the governor of California.

(25:49)

It's a desperate situation. And then you got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Cornell West, and who knows who else. If there's a no labels candidate like Joe Manchin or the former governor of Maryland and they're nipping at Biden's coattails, head up, Biden Trump, it gets close. But if you throw these independents in there, Trump goes ahead. It seems like the independents take more from Biden than they do from Trump. Trump. It's a very desperate situation for Biden and the elite of the ruling class, the ruling elite, they have no answers. It's just all over the place. The president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haes, went so far as to say the greatest threat to America's national security is not Russia or China. It's the rebellion of the people here at home who are against war, who are against war spending when there is not hardly enough being done for the people here and who are angry about open borders. I mean, it's a situation that I don't admire the people who have to live it and have to try to work through it. It's a lose lose situation, I think for the Democrats.

I want to mention one more name, and we mentioned Kamala Harris, and so there are those who are listening that they're saying, wait a minute, why are y'all saying they're going to throw her overboard? Well, as the sous chef of the word salad, I don't know that Kamala Harris brings anything of substance to the game. She had to leave the campaign early and she didn't even make it to the first debate. Well, she did make it to the first debate, but she didn't make it to any primaries. She couldn't get 1% of the vote. So again, folks, this ain't anti Kamala. I'm looking at the numbers and the African-American community didn't want her. Why is the nation going to want her again, sous chef for the word salad? I don't see it. But you were also talking about people, black males and others voting for Trump. How much of this do you think will be actually people crossing over party lines versus people just deciding to stay home as a friend of mine says they're going to stay home and rake leaves, they're not going to turn out to vote.

Well, we see it here in Philadelphia. We just went through a mayoral election, the Democratic primary, which is the major election that chooses the mayor because the city is so overwhelmingly democratic and the leading candidate, one of the two or three leading candidates was a black woman. And in spite of that, 75% of registered black voters did not turn out when it got to the general election where her victory was more or less guaranteed. Again, only about 25 or 26% of registered black voters turned out, and this is for black woman, which would've made her the first black woman mayor in Philadelphia. Most black voters didn't see it as a historic opportunity to do anything. But that is prologue for what will happen in this November, black Philadelphia whose turnout decides which way the state of Pennsylvania goes in presidential elections, I would suggest to you will not turn out inadequate numbers to deliver Pennsylvania, which is a major battleground state to Biden.

(31:52)

What do you think about the discussion that if in fact he loses or whoever they decide to put on the ticket does not prevail, they're going to blame black people for failing to turn out? We're seeing a number of articles. There was a New York Times article, black voters shift to Trump, why black, Latino and Asian voters are leaving the Democratic Party as black voters drift to Trump. Biden's allies say they have work to do. Some black men lose faith in Biden and Democrats In 2024, I remember the Hillary Clinton campaign, and when she lost, there were many and many African-Americans and African-American women of Democratic note that were coming out and saying we did not turn out. Therefore, we got stuck with Trump never taking into account that Hillary Clinton ran a horrific campaign in Philadelphia. She ran a horrific campaign. She didn't campaign in Michigan. She rolled out Barack Obama the last two or three days of the election, just as my older brother would say, just felony stupid kind of things, but then turned around and blamed us. Your thoughts,

My is so what I mean the blame game is going to be played however the election goes. And I think as a black man, most black men don't care anymore who blames us for whatever. We are the most politically alienated group in the electorate. We feel that we have nothing to lose by abandoning the Democratic party, which most black men feel, especially as you hit into the working class and the working poor, most black men feel that we have gotten nothing from the Democratic party. And let me tell you another thing, black men have a longer memory than people give us credit for. We haven't forgotten the crime Bill of 1994 and Joe Biden being the major spokesman for it publicly and in the Senate. So we haven't forgotten that. We haven't forgotten mass incarceration. We haven't forgotten the unequal treatment that black men experience in every sphere of social life in this country. There is deep resentment among black men. Polls can't fully detect and explain what black men feel, but it's a deep resentment and a sense of betrayal. So I think black men, no matter what elites say, don't care anymore.

So now the Biden administration has decided that they're going to, they're going to retool. They're going to talk about democracy and saving democracy when in fact, not having democratic primaries, not allowing candidates on the ballot to run against Joe Biden not having debates is anti-democratic. So they want to save democracy by being anti-democratic. Help me understand that. But people also don't, probably many never knew and don't remember that after the 2020 election, Joe Biden was basically forced to have a meeting with African-American leadership, those that were responsible for putting him over the top. It was probably about 10 days, maybe two weeks after his inauguration that they finally got him into the room. And the readout from the meeting was that he was so disrespectful to the members of leadership that Reverend Sharpton and so many others, mignon Moore and all of these black Democrats begged him for the meeting. He comes to the meeting and I think it was a teleconference that they had or a Zoom meeting, and folks had to pull his coat and say, Hey, man. Instead of the leadership hanging up on him saying, Hey, dude, you talking to the wrong people, they, of course, they went ahead and took the whipping, but just another data point. So now they want to come out and talk about saving democracy and racism under Donald Trump,

Why people are not going to buy it. The whole country is in a state of protest against the establishment. I don't think people understand this very well. A crisis of legitimacy means that the people do not accept the leaders of the society. And that means in universities, it means politicians, it means journalists. It means wherever a dominant elite figures run things, people reject them, soundly reject them. I always mention the Italian revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci who said from a prison cell where he was confined by Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy in the 1930s, Graham, she said, the old is dying and the new cannot yet be born. I think in this country we see that the old system of political rule of the organization of political power is dying. However, I do see that the new is being born and it's from the bottom up, not from the top down.

(40:03)

(41:32)

(43:47)

(44:57)

And you mentioned Black Elite coming out and telling African-Americans that they need to vote for the Democratic party, and let's unpack quickly what they're advocating that we vote for. They're advocating that we spend more money in Ukraine, that we waste more money in Ukraine, that we pay for the salaries of Ukrainian civil servants, that we pay for the retirement plans of Ukrainian civil servants that we pay for the healthcare for Ukrainians. We don't have those things here. That's when the Black Caucus votes in favor of this funding. This is what they're voting for. They're voting for us to send more weapons to commit genocide in Gaza. Your taxpayer dollars are paying for genocide. It's paying to try their damnedest to start a fight with China. We haven't won a fight since 1953.

Yeah, that's true.

Unless you want to throw in Grenada and Panama.

Yeah, I think we won that, right? Maybe you could throw Iraq in there. No,

That was an ass whooping too.

Oh, I didn't know that. I was going to say I wouldn't include Korea in there because that was a standoff.

That fight still hasn't ended.

Yeah, that's right.

So you mentioned Gramsci. I'll mention Fred Hampton as he said. That's why we come up with answers that don't answer explanations, that don't explain, and you come up with conclusions that don't conclude. When you have members of the caucus that want to convince black people that we need to pay Kenya to invade Haiti, these are the things that they are advocating that we do. And how do I know that? Because that's the stuff they voted for. Again, you just got to look at the data, Dr. Montero.

Well, of course, and I think, well, we've been talking about these matters for a long time. In a sense, the majority of black people have caught up to where we have been, and they don't trust the Black Congressional Caucus. They might sometimes trust their individual Congress person, but not the caucus, not the Congress

As a body,

As a body. That's what I'm saying. Right. And certainly the more they learn about their individual Congress person, the less they will trust them. And you are right. Black people have returned after the Obama years to our historic position of being anti-war and anti-military spending, and most in the Congressional Black Caucus are big military spenders. They are big spenders on aid to Ukraine and now to the genocide in Gaza. Well, some people say that the Jewish lobby or better the Israeli lobby in the United States controls the Congressional Black Caucus and many of the mayors, black mayors in the United States, for example, the one in New York and the one here in Philadelphia who are embarrassments given the historic peace attitude, anti-war attitude of black folk.

So really quickly to that point, help me with what I perceive to be hypocrisy here. We get our shorts all in a bunch when Russia is tampering with our election and our hair gets set on fire. China is tampering with our election, but somehow the Israeli lobby can spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying votes and influencing electoral outcomes at the state and local level. I see that as being somewhat hypocritical. Dr. Montero, what Say you?

I agree with you, Dr. It's profoundly hypocritical, but isn't that what American politics has descended into where money talks? The Congress for the most part, is bought and paid for, and it is really a grotesque thing for we black people to look at black elected officials who overwhelmingly are elected because of the black voter, and we have to be for real about it. We didn't actually, as a people have the vote until 1965, and now the people who have benefited from the struggle for voting rights and benefited from black people voting in hope, that by putting black people in high places, some things can change. We are now looking at, as you say, a hypocritical group of opportunist who dance to the piper that pays the most.

That's why I called it. I wrote a piece called The Dangers of Menstrual Diplomacy.

I saw that. Yes.

Because it's basically a black face on white folks foolishness.

That's right.

Really quickly shifting gears are what has happened with the resignation of Harvard's president, Charlene Gay, and I bring that up because she's one of a few that have lost their positions recently. Do you see this as an attack on free speech? Do you see this as an attack on intellectualism at the academic level?

Well, yes, but it did not start with the president of Harvard or the president of the University of Pennsylvania or of MIT or the faculty at Cornell University or wherever. The universities, especially the elite ones, had been captured by the billionaire class some time ago. If you were looking for freedom of speech, maybe the last place that you should have gone would've been to a university. The professoriate has literally been subdued, silenced. They know how to keep their mouth shut, and they know that if they speak out on issues, they shouldn't speak out on the Palestinian cause, that they will be fired and driven out of the university and driven into poverty. Now as to the first black president of Harvard University, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, and in it, she drew attention to the fact that what she was going through was much larger than her and much larger than Harvard University.

(54:40)

And I go back to the George W. Bush administration. When Dick Cheney was vice president, his wife Liz, was one of those crusaders against liberal thought in academia, and I can't remember whether it was the Heritage Foundation that she was part of, but she led a crusade across this country getting what they deemed to be progressive thinking academics removed from their institution. So this goes back quite a while.

Yeah, no, when you said his wife, I think that's his daughter,

Liz. His daughter is Lynn.

Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Well,

Either way. Either way. It's either Lynn or Liz.

Yeah, Lynn or Liz. Okay.

One of the

Two. I recall that very vividly. I know I had a situation at Temple University where what I stood for and the speech that I was trying to defend was not acceptable.

Lynn Cheney, you're right. It's Lynn Cheney.

Yeah. It was not acceptable to the head of the department, and so I was fired. So this is not new. I'm saying to those who are now saying, well, I'm a victim because it happened to me. Well, why were you silent when it was happening to other people?

It happened to me too.

Yeah, it happened to you too at a historically black college to show you that it does not end at the color line. And black people have learned well from white people how to silence, freedom of speech. But yeah, the American University has to be remade. It is a corrupt enterprise. It is a billionaire's playground. Universities are more interested in gentrification and building up their endowments than they are with educating students educat or discovering new truths. I think there was a recent article in one of the major newspapers, the New York Times, Washington Post or somewhere that said that at Yale University, everybody is given an A one. It's less work for the professors. They don't have to grade papers and so on, and everybody walks away happy. And so we find at universities this transactional relationship between professors and students. Students say, I'm going into debt to get a degree at a university, and the professor work for me, and you must give me what I want because I'm paying for an A or high grade.

(01:00:03)

(01:01:27)

And by defending that, you also are defending genocide.

Yes. Oh, no question.

You mentioned plagiarism. Well, Joe Biden has plagiarized. He became president, so that seems to be the order of the day. Professor, Dr. Anthony Montero, my brother, thank you so much for your time. I greatly, greatly appreciate you joining me today, Anthony Montero

And thank you and good luck with your podcast Will.

Amen. With interviews with brothers like you, this is nothing but success. I got to thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Woman Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'll see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a good one. Remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge talk without analysis is just chatter. We don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace. I'm out

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube

Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this podcast, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events in the broader historic context in which they occur. This will enable you to get a better understanding and be able to analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, we explore the genocide in Gaza, the development of conflict on the continent of Africa, and what does all this tell us about American foreign and domestic policy? And to help to connect these dots is my next guest. He holds the John Jay and Rebecca Moore's chair of history and African-American Studies at the University of Houston. He's one of the most prolific writers of our time. His latest books are entitled, I dare Say, A Gerald Horn Reader and Acknowledging Radical Histories. Dr. Gerald Horn, as always, welcome to the show and let's connect some dots.

Thank you for inviting me.

If you would please your two most recent books, I dare say, a Gerald Horn Reader and acknowledging radical histories. If you could tell us a little bit about these two most recent works that you've been able to put together.

So the former work, I dare say, is a collection of articles and essays and reviews that written in recent decades dealing with such disparate matters as the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, the urban revolts in Los Angeles in the 1960s and the 1990s, the relationship between black nationalism and the rise of Japan and the first few decades of the 20th century, A number of articles of that vein and character. Now acknowledging radical histories is a conversation or a series of conversations I had with a younger scholar from Colorado where we talk about a number of books that are published over the years, which as you know, includes, works on the black press, on the music we call jazz on the colonial and post-colonial history of North America, slavery, Haitian Revolution, et cetera.

To those varying titles that you've researched, you are one of the preeminent historians, again, one of the most phenomenal writers. What is it that motivates and drives your research? Because everyone, now, I don't have all of your books, but I counted them. I got about 17 of 'em. The topics are just incredibly broad. One thing we can never do with you is put you in a box or pigeonhole you. What drives your research?

What drives my research? Well, I would say that particularly concerning research, it's curiosity. Curiosity about something that has not been addressed. And to that end, I should say that from my point of view, the research is much more invigorating than the writing. I mean, the writing is fine, but the writing is like work because what

I meant, I'm sorry, what I meant was what piques your interest and motivates you? How do you pick your topics?

How do I pick my topics? Well, I'll give you an example. I was watching a documentary just the other day on black British history, and it was shepherded by a black British subject. He happened to be in Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone in West Africa was started as a direct result of the British being ousted from what is now in the United States in the late 18th century, and many so-called black loyalists wound up moving to Nova Scotia and Canada to London and eventually to Sierra Leone. And so as he was walking through the archive in Sierra Leone, it occurred to me that there might be an interesting story there concerning black loyalists. That is to say black people who fought against the formation of the United States of America post 1776 and then wound up in Sierra Leone. So I made a mental note to write the Sierra Leone archive to see if they have a website.

(05:42)

Gotcha, gotcha. It's that constant state of wonder and always interested in looking for the next question that's really telling. Let's move to some of the current topics of the day. Israel's war in Gaza threatens to spill into Lebanon and beyond in response to over 75 years of occupation and oppression. On October 7th, Hamas launched an attack on the settler colony known as Israel. And in response to that attack, Israel has escalated its response to a genocidal devastation of Gaza. Hamas has confirmed the targeting of a deputy head in Dia, a residential area in southern Beirut. Saori was just recently killed. What are your thoughts on the US policy towards this genocide and how do you see this, it seems now to be expanding and escalating beyond the confines of Gaza?

Well, obviously the United States is an aider and a better with regard to this enfolding genocide and the US authorities should be very careful because in light of the fact that the South African government pursuant to the Genocide Convention, has brought a case before the International Court of Justice, the World Court, there is a possibility that there will be figures, Lloyd Austin, Anthony Blinken, perhaps Mr by himself who may have to consult a lawyer or a travel agent before they step out of the jurisdiction of the United States of America. Recall that there is a topic under international law known as universal jurisdiction that led to the late Chilean dictator Gusto Pinoche being detained in London for a number of weeks pursuant to a warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate in light of Chile. The others to say the country of Mr. Pinoche torturing and slaughtering Spanish nationals. He barely escaped being brought before the Bar of Justice in Madrid.

(08:59)

(10:14)

(11:32)

(12:45)

(14:00)

(15:00)

To that point, I think a lot of folks either didn't listen to what the Hezbollah leader Nasra said on the eighth or the ninth when he gave his speech, one of the points that he was very, very clear to make or one of the questions he was very, very clear to ask was How long are you all willing to do this? And that question just to me was very reminiscent of the Vietnam question, the Kong question, the general Jaap question, who wrote the book? What people's war, people's army, how long are you willing to fight a counter insurgent urban gorilla war that you're not really prepared to fight? And the point that he was making was, we're here till the end because we're fighting for our freedom and we'll die standing on our feet. We refuse to keep living on our knees.

Well, that's a very important ideological point. And speaking of which, one of the heartening aspects of this otherwise tragic situation is that because of this understandable focus on historic Palestine in the US media, you see that many of our friends on the left and some even beyond the left or beginning to refer to Israel as a settler colonial project. What's interesting about that is that I think it's also leading some on this side of the Atlantic to begin to look at the United States itself as a settler colonial project. That is to say that that was its origins hundreds of years ago before the settlers revolt of 1776. And speaking of which, it's not beyond the realm of imagination that as this conflict in historic Palestine unfolds that the 708,800,000 settlers on the West Bank occupied territory may be forced to evacuate as a part of a wider peace deal.

(18:28)

(19:33)

(20:35)

(21:45)

And to that point, what you see when you look at the dynamics in the region, you've mentioned Hezbollah in the north, you've got Syria, you've got Anah in Yemen or the Houthis as they are known, and they are all acting on one hand in their best interest, but their common enemy is the United States and it's aircraft carrier in the region known as Israel. And on October 7th, there was a lot of analysis that was saying, oh, Hezbollah was behind this, that Hezbollah was collaborative. And again, Hassan Raah was very clear. He said, we weren't involved on November 7th, but we're in on November 8th, October. We weren't in on October 7th, but we're in on October 8th. So if you would talk about those dynamics, particularly Anah, because they seem to be wanting this smoke, they seem to be wanting this fight, who would've thought that a small poor country like Yemen would now be having the international impact that it's having on world trade as it is selectively attacking ships that are traversing that body of water?

Well, there's quite a backstory to go back a year or so recall that the Ansara law was in a death match with its neighbor in Saudi Arabia and fighting the Saudis to a standstill. But then what happens is that China brokers a peace accord between Iran, a close ally of the Yemenis and the Saudis, and then of course, that leads to a drawdown of the conflict between the Saudis and the Yemenis. And note that with regard to this, so-called Convoy, that the United States is trying to knock together for a confrontation with the Yemenis that the Saudis have not joined in, in fact, the only neighboring country that has joined in as the Seychelles, which is far distant from the Saudi Yemeni border, far distant from the Red Sea and far distant from the Suez Canal as well.

Are you referring to Joe Biden's coalition of the willing that seems to be unwilling? Is that what you're

Referring coalition of the willing that's unraveling.

And

It's understandable because if you know anything about US foreign policy in recent years and decades is that Washington is an unreliable partner. Despite spending a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon, they were chased out of Afghanistan in August, 2021. They were able to overthrow Libya in 2010, 2011, but obviously have turned that North African country into a kind of charnel house. They were Ed in Vietnam, 19 75, 19 53, after sending thousands of troops to the Korean peninsula, they were forced into a truce, which is held until recently. Although keep in mind that the North Koreans who fought the United States to a standstill in 1953 has been suggesting that they're willing to rumble again if the United States does not stop its provocations. So it's understandable why the Saudis would not be enthusiastic about joining the So-called Coalition of the Willing. But I should also go back a bit further than the past year.

(27:33)

(28:54)

(30:20)

(31:42)

And you and I for the last 30 minutes, we've been discussing Gaza, we've been discussing the settler colony of Israel, we've been discussing Yemen and Anah. Why should African-Americans care? That is something on my radio show inside the issues on SiriusXM that people call in and ask all the time. Wilmer, you spend all this time talking about the Palestinians, Wilmer, you spend all the time pick up what's happening in Venezuela, what's happening in Argentina, what's happening in Peru, why should we care? Now, you just touched on a bit of it, but explain to my audience as African-Americans, why does this matter to us?

Well, first of all, I pay quite a bit in taxes, and I'm sure there are many in your audience who do the same politics amongst other things is about where do your tax dollars go. Now, if those who call into your other programs and object to talking about foreign policy, I guess they don't care where their tax dollars go. Well, sorry, I do care where my tax dollars go. I just mentioned that a trillion dollars is spent annually on the Pentagon, which can't seem to win a war anywhere. So obviously there is a mismatch of revenue, taxes, and purposes war when we should have a match between revenue, taxes, and education and healthcare. Secondly, with regard to historic Palestine in particular, that conflict could trigger World War iii. Now, maybe there are those in your audience who think that there's some sort of black neutron bomb.

(34:54)

(36:08)

You mentioned the Zionist settler colony of Israel and a seven front war, and what we see playing out right before us in terms of American foreign policy is I'll just say a multi-front war. We've got the United States and Ukraine, we have the United States in Gaza, we have the United States trying its damnedest to pick a fight with China. So those are three fronts. Then we've got Venezuela and Guyana with the United States convincing Britain to send a ship over there. We've got the United States involved now in Argentina. So help me understand who it is that seems to think that a getting involved in these multi-front conflicts is a good idea, let alone who thinks we can win. To your earlier point, we haven't won anything since 1953. And the other point is we're the ones that are starting the conflicts, we're starting fights, we can't win. I don't get the logic, and I know there isn't any,

Well, I'm sure that those who are nit pickers would point to the successful invasion of Grenada in 1983,

And Panama

Could sit comfortably in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. I guess you could count that as a victory. But I think in

Order Panama,

On Panama, and of course,

Oh wait, I left one out because now we're also trying to get Kenya to be the menstrual black face on white foolishness as we try to invade Haiti.

I think that in order to understand these conflicts, you have to understand the military industrial complex. That is to say, if you look at the stock of Lockheed Martin, look at the stock of Raytheon, look at the stock of Boeing, or look at the front page of the New York Times a day or so ago talking about how high level Pentagon officials like Esper, the Pentagon chief under Mr. Trump and Top Generals, they're now defecting to Silicon Valley with all of these harebrained science fiction schemes about new weapons that they expect the Pentagon to pick up the tab for. So the US military and the Pentagon is basically a slush fund for the 1%. And obviously it does not matter to a degree whether or not the Pentagon is fit for purpose or whether or not the Pentagon actually is spending tax dollars in a manner that will allow us imperialism to overthrow regimes.

(41:08)

(42:22)

(43:34)

We saw recently Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, go to Kenya, sign a five year mutual defense pact with Kenya as the United States is trying to convince Kenya that they need again to be the black face on American imperialism and go into Haiti. The Kenyan Supreme Court has said, wait, not so fast. And I think on around the 25th or 26th of this month, we'll get a decision from the Kenyan Supreme Court. When I saw the photograph of Secretary Austin with his counterpart from Kenya signing this agreement, it made me wonder if the United States is trying to buy a bulwark in Kenya as we see Niger fading and we're seeing a turn anti colonialist turn in a number of other African countries. Is the United States trying to buy a friend in Kenya?

Well, that's a possibility because if you look at East Africa in general, particularly East Africa that abuts the Red Sea, which we've already made reference to, that region is on fire right now. I mean, look at Ethiopia, one of the most populous nations on the continent, which just had this internal conflict with regard to Tig Gray. The latest news is that the Ethiopians in search of an outlet to the Red Sea, which they lost when their former province Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia about three or so decades ago, they've just cut a deal with Somali land, which is not a recognized nation, although it's part of the larger Somalia. And now what's happening is that Ethiopia now has that outlet to the Red Sea through Somali land. The Somalis are in high dungeon, they're very upset. Now, some of you may think that there's nothing they can do about it because after all, they have their own internal problems with Al-Shabaab, but oftentimes you need an external issue like Ethiopia to get Somalis to rally around the flag.

(46:44)

(47:54)

Where's the Congressional Black Caucus? Where's the naacp? Where's the voice? The conscience of the Congress, I wrote a piece a while ago, is the conscience of the Congress unconscious, particularly as it relates to the invasion of Haiti. You've got people like Hakeem Jeffries and Kamala Harris trying to go down to Racom and twist arms to get some of the Caribbean countries to have backed his play. They all said no, which is why the United States, I believe, which is why the United States wound up in Kenya and a willing recipient of America's larges in terms of again, being the minstrel face on American imperialism. Where is the conscience of the Congress here?

Well, with regard to the Congress, there's a split in the Congressional Black Caucus, particularly with regard to Palestine, where you have a stalwarts like Cory Bush of St. Louis and Andre Carson of Indiana, who happens to be a Muslim, some Lee of Western Pennsylvania, Jamal Bowman of Bronx, Westchester, New York calling for a ceasefire. And as a result, the Israeli lobby, the Zionist lobby, is pledging to spend a hundred million dollars or more during the 2024 electoral cycle to make sure they do not return to Congress. Those stalwarts do not include the aforementioned speaker in waiting. So-called honking Jefferies. Wait a

Minute, wait a minute. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I get a sense of some hypocrisy or inconsistency here because you have APAC openly threatening and admitting to what I would interpret as involving themselves in American elections. But somehow if China is alleged to have done it, or if Russia is alleged to have done it, that's the reason for us to go to war. Is it me or is that some sense of hypocrisy?

Well, obviously when we come to power, we'll have to have a thorough investigation of the Zionist lobby. As a matter of fact, I was just rereading DU autobiography and I got into the chapter where he talks about when he was indicted 1951, allegedly being the agent of a foreign power because he was campaigning against nuclear weapons and campaigning for peace. Now, fortunately, he was able to escape prison at the age of 83, but that tells you how seriously, the US Justice Department, at least at one time took this question of registering as foreign agents. But in any case, the list of stalwarts that I was reciting does not include Gregory Meeks of Southeast Queens, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I could go on in this vein. So obviously we have some house cleaning to do with regard to these elections.

(52:31)

(53:42)

(54:50)

(56:01)

Isn't that overreach the very same problem that the United States is facing on the global scale as again, we look at the failure in Ukraine and newsflash to folks that war is lost as we look at the fight that the United States is trying to pick, as we look at the development of bricks and the growth of bricks, as we look at what's happening again in Peru and what's happening in Argentina and what's happening in Bolivia and what's happening in Venezuela, the United States, and again, the United States trying to overthrow Haiti, well, not overthrow, but reinve because it already controls the government, what's left of the government. So we're transitioning from the unipolar to the multipolar, and with the United States fomenting, all of this unrest has to a great degree sanctioned itself right out of the party because a lot of the countries that I've mentioned, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, they have all developed relationships. They're developing currencies to lessen the impact, if not eliminate the impact of American sanctions. So all of that isn't that overreach what the American Empire has been experiencing, and we will look back 10 years from now and say, that was the beginning of the end.

Well, certainly it's overreach. I mean, I'm glad you mentioned Argentina because in a message to comrade earlier today, I was drawing an analogy between the new government in Argentina coming to Power about three weeks ago under President Belay and the Zionist lobby, because Argentina had the rare honor of being asked to join the bricks, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, which is the rising challenger to us, imperialist hegemony, but for various reasons that need not detain us here, they slapped the side, that invitation because they're making a bet on the pass, on the continuation,

(59:09)

(01:00:15)

(01:01:19)

Dr. Gerald Horn, as always, my brother, thank you so much for your time. I greatly, greatly appreciate that analysis. Thank you so much for giving me your time, giving us your time, and joining us today.

Thank you for inviting me,

Folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for the new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge and talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Warmer Leon. Have a great one. Peace and blessings. I'm out

Connecting the dots with Dr. Where of politics, culture, and history.