Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon

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TRANSCRIPT:

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 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 the 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, we explore the presidential candidacy of Dr. Cornell West. If you go to Cornell West 2020 four.com, it opens with this brother, Cornell West is a living embodiment of the power of an independent mind forever reminding us that greatness is born of the courage to stand apart and speak one's truth.

(01:13)

I'm with you though, man. We putting smiles on our precious mama's faces. I know mom was there right there in the living room and in the kitchen when you got home and your precious mother had passed. But just think how blessed we are. I think it's very providential as well as significant that we could start this year together.

In fact, I'm glad you mentioned our parents because what would your folks be thinking of their son in these efforts today?

Well, it's hard to say Mom and dad were unpredictable in terms of their judgment and highly predictable in terms of their deep, deep love though, brother, so that they would be loving me to death as they always did up until their death and they loved me now after death on their life. But I think it's hard to say they were such independent thinkers, you know what I mean?

I do. I do know. Lemme put you another way then. What are the two or three most salient points or lessons that you carry forward that your parents instilled in you?

Oh, one is that you want to be in the world but not of it. So that you always recognize as standards bigger than you. You will always fall short of those standards, but never forget what they are. And those standards are always hope. And the greatest of them is love, love of God, love of neighbor, love of especially the least of these love, especially of poor and working people love especially of those friends from on called The Wretched Up the Earth. That's what I learned. West Household, you can see it, my brother Cliff, my sister, Cynthia and Cheryl, and you certainly can see it, Shiloh Baptist Church right on Ninth Avenue at Old Park Brother with Reverend Willie P. Cook and others. So those were the crucial things, not just the values in the abstract sense, but the virtues in the lived concrete sense of ways of being in the world, modes of existing, trying to be forces for good in the language of the great John Coltrane.

(04:05)

I didn't know that.

Oh yeah, yeah. I used to see Sylvester on the organ right there. Shiloh man.

I did not. He's

From Vallejo.

Yeah, I know he's from Vallejo, but I didn't know that he had spent time in Sacramento.

Oh Lord. Yes.

It says on your site, even as a young child, you exhibited the remarkable qualities that would define your life's journey and path to the presidency. In the third grade, you fearlessly stood up to your teacher challenging her ideas and defining the conventional norms of your time. And that stands out to me because during the medal ceremony of the Olympics in 1968, Mexico City, as you recall, John Carlos and Tommy Smith raised their black glove fists during the playing of the national anthem. And on October 17th, the day after that, I went to school, raised my fist during the morning pledge of the allegiance, and I got kicked out of school. And I read that on your site and thought about the parallels of our lives. And here we sit today still challenging the dominant narrative and the ideas and defying the conventional norms of our time. And I think is a very good summary of your candidacy.

That's beautiful. But I think that's also an example though, brother, of how your precious mother and my precious mother and precious fathers as well tried to support into us examples of integrity, honesty, and decency. And when you have a flag that's waving, that's not signifying what it ought in terms of it's talking about liberty and justice for all, but you got lynching going on and you've got degradation, discrimination, segregation going on is just decent to have integrity, to have honesty is to call it into question. And when you do that, you're going to be in the world or not of it because you're going to be going against the grain. You're going to be going against what is popular in the name of what ought to have a certain kind of moral substance and spiritual content to it. And here that was how many years ago now? Man, that was 1968 is,

Oh, that was

50, 52 years. Yeah, that's 56 years. You see, I refuse to salute the flag. My great uncle had been lynched in Texas and they wrapped the flag around his body. So that's what I associated as a young brother. Now that to me, I don't put other people down for salute the flag because some people see that flag and they think of their husband or their uncle or their wife who was killed in the war and they loved, they got right to support their loved ones, and they were fighting for that flag. But that's what goes in their mind. But my mind is the flag wrapped around the body s sw in the southern breeze, that strange fruit that Billie Holiday sing about. So everybody has their right to respond. Same was true with Brother Colin. When Colin saw that flag, he thought all of these young black brothers and sisters being killed, the police, yeah, he gets down. We can understand that somebody else see the flag and they think of their uncle, a great uncle in Hiroshima who's fighting against Japanese fascism. Sure. Everybody's got their lens through which they view the world. We have to be open to that. But most importantly, we got to be true to ourselves.

In talking about your candidacy, you announced your candidacy in the People's Party switched to the Green Party, and now you're running as what you call a truly, truly a people's campaign that is a movement rooted in truth, justice, and love. Why the changes? And where are we with your candidacy today?

Yes, back in June, June 5th, it was the People's party that came forward. It met with myself and Brother Chris Hedges, my dear brother, I have great respect for, great love for. And they were kind enough to make the invitation. When I accepted the invitation, I realized very quickly that there were going to be some very deep challenges. There's going to be some very deep problems there. Chris Hedges and Jill Stein and Jammu Barack and others asked me to meet with the Green Party people and to see whether there's a possibility. We met, we made the shift to the Green Party. We worked very closely for a good while, and I realized that the Green Party had so many different requirements in terms of internal debates with presidential candidates going to different states and state conventions and so forth. And I wanted to go directly to the people because I've been going directly to the folk.

(10:33)

Folks can go to your website, Cornell West 2020 four.com, click on the platform tab and they can see a list of general areas such as economic justice, worker justice, environmental justice, and a number of others. And then below each of those, there are the bullet points that articulate your positions on those issues. And I'd like to get to this point, this particular point, because I think it allows us to speak to a number of things that are impacting not only this country but the world, and that is the United States supporting funding and arming genocide in Gaza. How does an American administration, the Biden administration with the backing of Congress, and particularly the Congressional Blackhawk Caucus, which is supposed to be the conscious of the Congress, how can they back this play?

Yeah, that's a wonderful question though, brother. I think we have to first begin by situating my campaign as a moment in a movement that's rooted in a great tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. Fannie Lou Haman, rabbi Heschel and Dorothy Day. And what they were about was first there's a moral starting point. You see that a precious Palestinian baby has exactly the same value as your baby and my baby, an Israeli baby, a Haitian baby, an Egyptian baby, a Guatemalan baby, but there's been almost 9,000 babies killed a 50 some days. We can see just the level of baity there. Now, every life, no matter what color agenda for me, has the same value. There's no doubt about that. But you start with on a moral premise, then you got to move to your social analysis. How could it be that the United States, the American Empire, enables not just this genocidal assault that's been going on, but how has it enabled the apartheid regime for so long of Israel vis-a-vis those occupied territories with precious Palestinians have been subjugated and degraded.

(13:47)

(14:57)

(15:52)

Jewish voices for peace,

That Jewish voices for peace. If not now, you've got a whole host of them that have been quite courageous in that regard. So it's not a matter and must never be a matter of anti-Jewish hatred, anti-Jewish sentiment. It's hating occupation, domination, subjugation. In this case, it's Israeli subjugation, Israeli domination, Israeli occupation. Now, the sad thing is,

But wait a minute. It's also understanding the difference between Zionism and Judaism. And as much as the dominant narrative wants to try to equate those two, they are not the same. One is a religious practice, and the other for the most part is a political ideology.

That's exactly right. I mean, what makes it difficult really is that you see Jewish brothers and sisters have been terrorized and traumatized and hated over 2,500 years with different attacks, assaults, pogroms, culminating in the show and the Holocaust with the gangster Hitler and the gangster Nazis and so forth. And they jump out of the burning buildings of Europe and they're looking for a place to go. Zionism is a 19th century movement of nationalism that's looking for a home for Jews, a nation state for Jews, and they land on somebody else's land. It's like the pilgrims landing in the new world and saying, there's no people here. Yes, there are. Now of course, in America, what did they say? There's no human beings. There's just buffaloes and Indians. Hey, wait a minute, Indians are as human as you Europeans, we Africans, anybody else? Well, that's part of the deep white supremacy and racism that's happening.

(18:58)

Congo, right?

Not too many Europeans said a mumbling word. Turkey had already killed Armenians with genocidal attacks. Europeans didn't say a mumbling word. Italy had already invaded Ethiopia. Europe didn't say a mumbling word. So you can already see the hypocrisy there. But what makes it difficult in the United States is that our Jewish brothers and sisters who are thoroughgoing Zionists, they use the fact that Jews have been hated for so long as a fundamental foundation of what they do and that they think allows them to rationalize, hating Palestinians, terrorizing Palestinians, traumatizing Palestinians. I'm against traumatizing, hating, terrorizing anybody, anybody. If black folk were terrorizing white folk, I'm going to defend white folk. If Palestinians are terrorizing Jews, I'm going to defend Jews. If Jews are terrorizing Palestinians, I'm going to defend Palestinians. That's morality and spirituality. Now, we live in a moment

And consistency

And a certain kind of moral consistency that you try to hold on now. And I know, man, we live in a moment of such overwhelming baity man, organized greed, institutionalized hatred, routinized, indifference toward the suffering of others, especially the weak. So it's just a matter of the strong just thinking and the rich thinking. They can act and do anything. They like to crush the weak. And what happens now in the Middle East, especially in this situation with Gaza, is that you have Nathan, Yahoo, and others who are using the most reactionary tradition in the history of Zionism, which comes out of Jabotinsky that says that there will be Jewish security only when there's either Jewish domination of Palestinians or Jewish annihilation of Palestinians. That's in the writings of Jabotinsky. Netanyahu's father was an assistant to Jabotinsky that is a deeply, deeply right wing of not outright fascist version of Zionism. Now, there's liberal versions of Zionism that's very different, but even those liberal versions still want to argue that Palestinians would never have equality in their state have equal status in their state. And so we have to be able to put that in historical context. We have the right kind of morality and spirituality for people to understand why people like myself will never ever, ever be silent when it comes to Israeli genocidal attacks on Palestinians when it comes to Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And when it comes to Israeli apartheid regime, that's why South Africa's taking him to the international court.

How does a president Cornell West intervene, interject and change the trajectory of this ongoing genocide?

It means that the policy is qualitatively different than you get into Biden. It's clear that Biden has no concern for the most part with Palestinian suffering. No,

He has said numerous times that he is a Zionist.

He's a Zionist. He doesn't talk about the numbers, he doesn't talk about the suffering. He doesn't talk about the unbelievable pain of Palestinians, not just now, but during the 40 some years he's been in office. You see? So from the very beginning, he makes it very, very clear that these Palestinian brothers and sisters don't count for me. Their lives don't really matter. Now, of course, we got memories of white supremacists in the United States. These black people don't count. These indigenous peoples don't count. They're just farter for our projects. We step on them like cockroaches. We crush them like they're creatures below. And you say, now, oh no, that's not my tradition. So as presidents especially shoot under a West administration, shoot, I'd be calling for the end of occupation, the end of the siege, a cease fire to sit down and come up with a way in which Jews and Palestinians can live together under conditions of equality, with equality under the law and equality in terms of assets to resources. So it's a qualitatively different way of looking at the world and proceeding in that part of the world.

What about the most recent action of circumventing Congress and sending more arms, weaponry, and military resources to the genocide? What about how does a President Cornell West cut off the spigot of the funding?

Oh one, it is not just for me, just a matter of withdrawing aid and cutting off the spigot, but it's a matter of trying to get the leadership, Israeli leadership, Palestinian leadership, to sit down and come up with ways in which they can create a society in which they live together. And whatever financial support I provide is a financial support that would sustain that kind of egalitarian arrangement. There would not be a penny from a West administration for any apartheid regime, for any ethnic cleansing, and certainly not for any genocidal attack and assault on Palestinians or anybody else.

So how do you negotiate with a Netanyahu who you just so accurately stated, his father was an advisor to Jinky who has compromised his own principles to go further, right, to formulate his government. And so with the Troches and all of those other genocidal maniacs,

That's right.

How can you negotiate with someone who is sworn to the annihilation of an entire group of human beings?

Well, one, in any diplomatic process, you end up sitting down with people you disagree with. But you're absolutely right. It would not so much be a negotiation with the Nathan Yahu. It would be a teasing out of Israeli leadership that was open to egalitarian arrangement with Palestinians and teasing out the Palestinian leadership that's open to an egalitarian arrangement among Jews. So you really talking about trying to lure and to appeal to voices and figures and movements. The combatants for veterans, for example, that has Palestinians and Israelis working together, the Baim de meanies who are part of the Martin Luther King Jr tradition of struggling together Palestinians and Jews together, and even try to tease out some of the best of their labor movements, the trade union movements, Palestinian trade union movement, Israeli trade union movements where you do have some, not enough, but you got some overlap of people recognizing that Jews and Israelis can work together for something bigger than them. So you're right, it's not so much a matter of just negotiation, but it's a matter of withdrawal of funds. It's a matter of a certain kind of rejection. We've got to have some wholesale rejection of fascists. And that's true, not just as it relates to Israel and Nathan Yahoo, but that would be true for fascism in all of its various forms. It could be in Iran, it could be in Chad, it could be in Haiti, it could be anywhere. Fascism raises its ugly face.

Moving this out to a slightly broader context, you have the United States through the US UN ambassador, Linda Thomas Greenfield vetoing the calls for a peace agreement in Gaza. Then you have the Ansara LA or the Houthis reaching a peace agreement or working, coming very, very close to a peace agreement with the Saudis and the United States intervening and saying, we will not accept that. We will not accept a peace agreement that we're going to label the Houthis as a terrorist organization, therefore Saudis will not be able to engage with the Houthis without incurring sanctions. Then you've got the conflict between Venezuela and Guyana, and they agree, I think in St. Croix, they come to an agreement and say, we're going to work on this peaceably. And then the United States gets Britain to send a warship off the coast of God. Point being, these are three within the last 10 days. These are three examples of entities in conflict agreeing to work for peace in the United States, injecting militarism into the negotiation. How does a President Cornell West put a stop to that?

One is my brother. We need exactly what you just did, which means you have to respect the people enough to tell them the truth. So a president also has to play a role of a teacher. See the large numbers of our fellow citizens, they don't really know the truth about the Middle East. They don't really know about the truth of Latin America. They don't really know about the truth of the ways in which the American Empire has been reshaping the whole world in its interest in image, both in Latin America for so long, when Latin America was viewed as a kind of a playground for America and all the various cos and Democratic elections overthrown by

Chile, Argentina,

Chile, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada. We can go on and on and on. When you look at how the US government has overthrown democratically elected governments when it was not in the interest of the corporate elite to accept those democratic elected democratic elections. But you have to just tell people the truth. But that in and of itself was a major move. That's a major move to tell people the truth. And then beyond that, to intervene and to act and you say, oh, now as president, based on the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and others, and looking at the world through the lens of the least of these poor and working people, I'm going to be putting forward policies that strike you as so outside of the realm that you are used to because these two parties, Democrats and Republicans have been tied to big militarism abroad. Military adventurism abroad have been tied to overthrowing. Democratic regimes abroad have been tied to 57 cents for every dollar going to them. And oftentimes they get more than they request. But then there's austerity when it comes to education, when it comes to housing, when it comes to jobs with a living wage, when it comes to the healthcare and so forth. That's a very different way of looking at the world. I mean, the very idea of there being a US president who would be an anti-imperialist, and you see, I am a gut bucket.

(32:19)

(33:31)

So as you look at the development of the bricks, the new international economic organization that's Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and then I think they've just admitted about another seven countries into the bricks as both President Xi in China as well as President Putin of Russia, have been talking about moving from the unipolar or the unilateral where the United States is in control of everything to a multilateral dynamic. How does a president Cornell West deal with the development of the bricks?

Well, one, you see, I look at the multilateralism through the same lens. I look at the unilateralism, us unilateralism on the one hand and the multi-country multilateralism because you see the multilateralism is still a combination of elite. And many of the countries that you talked about have high levels of repression and domination in their countries. I look at the world through the lens of the poor and the working classes in their respective countries, and I want United States to be in solidarity with the poor and working classes in India, for example, I'm not impressed by Modi. I know Modi is a Trump-like figure. I know Modi is not concerned about the poor. He's not concerned about the dollars, he's not concerned about the working class in India. So even when he, at those bricks meetings, I know he's not speaking on behalf of the masses of Indians.

(35:48)

(36:57)

Is there an attack on independent thought and a growing sense of anti-intellectualism in the United States? That we look at the rise of the attacks on social media sites. We look at the attacks on independent journalists, the recent resignation of former Harvard President, Claudine Gay, Harvard's first African-American president and a female, and particularly looking at the manner in which she was done away with accusing her of plagiarism. So not only removing her from her position as president, but doing it in a manner of attacking her very character as a scholar, which seems like they almost want to see to it that she never gets another job. And I in her life, is there an attack on intellectualism and you truly as an intellectual, speak to that, please?

Yeah. Well, one is that United States has always been a deeply anti-intellectual country. The business of America is business. America's always been highly suspicious of those voices. That's why they put a bounty on the head of Ida B. Wells. They put a bounty on the head of Frederick Douglass. That's why they murdered Martin Luther King and Malcolm. That's why they kept Paul Robeson under house arrest at 46 45 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. Why they put Du Bois under House of West A 31 grace place in Brooklyn. It's why Eugene Debbs had to run for president from the sale he ran on the Socialist Park. All he was doing was just giving speeches critical of the war. So America has always had a deep anti-intellectual impulse. It is certainly at work today and certainly is manifest today. And you're right. I'm glad you mentioned Sister Gay because I think it's a very sad situation. It shows what happens when you get a little small group of highly wealthy figures, billionaire figures in this case, primarily Jewish figures, who feel as if they can shape and reshape an institution by either withholding their monies or bringing power and pressure to bear to try to eliminate. Dear Sister Gay, they had these major buses with her picture on it right in front of Harvard Yard, national Disgrace.

(41:09)

That's why I'm asking you this

Question. pro-Palestinian stances. I was a faculty advisor to the Palestinian student Group, and they made it very clear that they were not going to have tenured faculties who had strong pro-Palestinian sensibilities, strong pro-Palestinian convictions. Now, at that time, sister Gay was head of the faculty. She was dean of the faculty, which is third in charge after the provost Larry be Kyle, Alan Garber, Claudine gay. And at that time, it was hard for her to come forward and support of me. No, and I didn't want to put her in a position. I know she was new. I know that she's betw and between, but the irony is that her silence at that time about those forces now comes back, or those same forces come back at her.

And what's that adage? When they came for the Jews, I didn't say anything because I wasn't a Jew. When they came for the Christians, I didn't say anything because I wasn't a Christian, blah, blah, blah. By the time they got to me, wasn't nobody left to defend.

Nobody left. Now see, many of us still supported her because it's a matter of principle. It's a deep, deep racism belief because what is happening right now, as you know, when you look at Ackerman, you look at Bloom, you look at Summers, the folk who are very much behind these things, what they're saying is, is that all of the black folk at Harvard, for the most part, do not belong because they didn't get there based on merit and excellence. They got there because of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we're calling all of that into question. You just read the recent piece by Brett Stevens, the New York Times. He's the same brother who says, anybody who calls it genocide must be antisemitic. And yet the next moment Nathan Yahu can call Hamas attack on precious Israelis genocidal. But that's not anti Palestinian. Oh, no, no. See, the double standards, the hypocrisy is so overwhelming that it's hard to even sit still.

(43:47)

Where's the Congressional Black Caucus in defending her?

Oh, congressional Black Caucus is about as weak as pre-seed Kool-Aid. They ain't going to do nothing. So much of they money comes out of the big lobby, APEC and so forth. But also we could say naacp Sharpton n Urban League, so much of their money comes out of Jewish elites so that they got a noose around their neck. They can't say anything. They're not free. They're not free. Can you imagine John Coltrane showing up at the club and they got this scarf around his neck where he can't blow what he wants to blow. And they say, we want you to sound like you're playing Mozart. He said, yeah, I can play Mozart, but I feel like playing Love Supreme. I got to be free. We don't have enough free black folk. They locked in. They accommodated. They well adjusted the injustice

On the domestic front as we move towards the 2024 election, and we see that Biden's numbers have, he's hustling backwards. He's around somewhere between 37 and 40% and on the wane, but one of the things that they're going to tout is omics. And what doesn't seem to get articulated in this discussion about omics is the financialized side of the economy is doing great. If you have a 401k, you are as happy as a clam. If you are invested in stock market, you are invested. You are just ecstatic at how well your portfolio has grown. But homelessness is up in America. Oh, yeah. Homelessness has reached a level in this country. The likes we have not seen in years.

That's right.

So how, two things, one, how do the Democrats square that circle of omics doing so well, but I'll just say poverty as a overall blanket term is on the rise in America when in fact, the Democrats canceled the extra monies that were going into the Wix programs and the other child poverty programs during the Covid era, which I think came out of the Trump administration. And then what does a president Cornell West do?

Yes, again, you see, following the legacy of Brother Martin King, I'm an abolitionist when it comes to poverty. I want to abolish poverty. We could abolish poverty nearly overnight if we had a disinvestment from significant sums in the military and reinvestment in jobs with a living wage, basic income support, housing, and free healthcare for all. We could do that. We have spent $5.6 trillion for wars in 20 years. We could abolish poverty with a small percentage of that.

And wait a minute,

And wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Wars that we have started. Yes, we started a conflict in Afghanistan.

That's

True. We started the Ukraine, Russian conflict.

Iraq, yes.

We started, we went in and bombed Iraq.

That's right.

We went in and assassinated Kaddafi.

That's

True. And Kaddafi warned Barack Obama, don't mess with them. Folks in the West, you have no idea who you're dealing with, do not mess with them. And the United States, and we are right now trying our damnedest to start a fight with China. With

China,

So the Lockheed Martins of the world and the Raytheons of the world. That's

Right.

We are, it's a money laundering scheme. We're taking our hard earned tax dollars, starting fights around the world. And then Lockheed Martin comes in saying, oh, I got the solution. Let's sell 'em some more F 30 fives and let's sell 'em some more tomahawk cruise missiles at a million dollars a copy.

That's right.

I interrupted you, sir.

No, but you are absolutely right. And you think about this though. You got 62% of our fellow citizens are living paycheck to paycheck. 50% of our fellow citizens have 2.6% of the wealth. 1% has 40% of the wealth, and of course, three individuals in the country have wealth equivalent to 50% of Americans. That's 160 million. 160 million has wealth equivalent to three individuals. Now, all the omics in the world, the world does not address that kind of grotesque wealth inequality. This is the kind of thing brother Bernie Sanders was rightly talking about. Now, Bernie hasn't been as strong as he ought on the Middle East, hasn't been as strong as ought on a number of different issues. But when it comes to Wall Street greed, when it comes to grotesque wealth inequality, he still hits the nail on the head. And if we're serious, I was just with my dear brother, pastor Q and others down at Skid Row here in la, because you got almost 40,000 precious brothers and sisters in Los Angeles had their own skid row, their own city, 40% of 'em black, 90% of the town is black.

Sounds like Oakland to me.

Well, yeah, Oakland and I

Sounds like Sacramento to me,

Sister. Sound like s though I live in Harlem, sound like

Over there near Cal Expo in Sacramento, along the American River where all those encampments are.

That's exactly right. I mean, it is a crime and a shame that the richest nation in the history of the world and the history of the species still has that kind of poverty. And of course, it goes even beyond that because you've got fossil fuel companies with their greed leading toward ecological catastrophe and the calling and the question, the very possibility of life on the planet if we don't come to terms with the shift from fossil fuel to renewable and regenerative forms of energy. So that, I mean, part of this is the philosophical question, which is to say, how is it that we, human beings are just so downright wretched, what we used to talk about in Shiloh, the hounds of hell, greed, hatred, envy, resentment, fear all used and manipulate it to crush each other. That's so much the history of who we are as a species, but we're also wonderful. We have the capacity to be better, to think, to feel, to love, to organize, to be in solidarity, but those who are suffering to have empathy and compassion and those two sides, the wretchedness and the wonderfulness,

The yin and the yang,

The yin and the yang, the ugliness and the beauty of a smile, a grin, the beauty of a friendship and a love, the beauty of a mama and a daddy. The beauty of people marching, fighting for something bigger than them. The beauty of being in solidarity with Palestinians and Gaza right now, given the indescribable realities that they have to deal with. But same is true with solidarity, with our brothers and sisters in Sudan, with brothers and sisters in India, brothers Jews in Russia, whoever it is who's catching hell, we ought to be open to our solidarity. Why? Because that fights against the greed and the hatred and the fear and the wretchedness manifest in who we are as a species.

As I was trying to figure out how to close this conversation. Well, you know what, before I get to that, let me ask you this. As you are now not only talking to America, but talking to the world, what are the three salient very important things that you want, those that are listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, other than you being brilliant and being from Sacramento and Southland Park Drive like me, what is it that you want the audience to really understand about Dr. Cornell West?

I want them to understand that I come from a great people of black people who after being terrorized, traumatized, and hated for 400 years, have continually dished out love warriors, freedom fighters, joy shares, and wounded healers. And I'm just a small little wave in that grand ocean. And what sits at the center of that great tradition of black folk just like this, John Coltrane I got it could have been, could be Aretha, could be Luther Vandross, could be a whole host of others, could be a Phil Randolph early by Russian. Rusty is courage to think critically and quest for truth, the courage to act compassionately and in pursuing justice. And then also the courage to love and laugh. To laugh at yourself, to know that you a cracked vessel, to know that you try again, fell again and fell better. That nobody's a messiah, nobody's a savior. We're here to make the world just a little better than we found it. As Reverend Cook used to tell us, if the kingdom of God is within us, then everywhere we go, we ought to leave a little heaven behind.

Amen, my brother. Amen. Let me, so I was trying to figure out how to end this conversation, and it dawned on me as I was going from idea to idea. I said, I've got a piece. This is from a book, knowledge, power, and Black Politics by Dr. Mack h Jones, who I think,

Oh, he's a giant. He's a giant,

And I went to this. It's a collection of essays that he's written over the years and chapter 17, Cornell West, the insurgent black intellectual race matters. A critical comment, and this is part of what Mack writes. Cornell West has established himself as one of the leading political thinkers of our time, and it is fitting and appropriate that we pause and reflect on his ideas. When we engage in such an exchange of ideas, we continue a long enduring tradition within the black community that goes to the beginning of our sojourn on these shores in spite of what our detractors want to say. Principled dialogue and debate have always been a part of black cultural life in the United States, and it is alive and well even as we speak. I've been familiar with West Scholarship for quite some time. I've read and studied most of his published works and found them for the most part to be challenging, insightful, and often provocative.

(56:53)

You moved me very deeply though. Mac Jones was one of the great giants that he invited me to come to Prairie Review, and he was teaching there, and he and I talked together, wrestled together. I learned so much from him. I really just sat at his feet. He was just so, so kind. Adolf Reed worked with him as well, with Mack Jones there at Atlanta University, but for you to read his words at the beginning of 2024, you don't know what that means to me though, man, because I had such deep love and respect for Mack Jones, and he has such a, it is like Brother Ron at Howard Walters, and he has, he's the

Reason I have a PhD in political science is because of him.

Is that right?

Yeah. I studied under him. I went to Howard and studied on him in Howard.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh my God. Because both of those brothers, they were at the peak of academic achievement, but they had such a deep love for the people, the love for black people, a love for oppressed people, a love for people catching hell everywhere in the world, and to see that in the flesh in him meant so much to me, and for you to read those words just fires me up, brother. It fortifies me. I think I'm going run on and see what the end going be.

Well, Dr. Cornell West 2024 candidate for President of the United States, I want to thank you for joining me today. I want to thank you for connecting the dots

As a young brother for me. This is 35 years ago, and I'm talking about Mac Jones. You see, it just meant the world to me, and I'd seen it before in other examples, but to be able to see it. Thank you, my brother. Love you. Respect your man,

Man, and you know I love you folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wi Leon, and stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review. Please share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below because remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge in the show description. 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 and blessings. I'm out

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

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This week's episode features Ray McGovern. Former CIA analyst and foreign policy advocate in Washington, DC. He join us to give some history and context on the Israeli/Hamas war.

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 occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this broadcast, 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. According to my guest self-proclaimed Zionist, Joe Biden, with no witts about him is assuring the destruction of Zionist apartheid Israel as corrupt US Intel leaders have unleashed the dogs of war. We cannot be bystanders, quote, indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. That's Rabbi Abraham Heschel for insight into this. Let's turn to my guest. He leads the speaking truth to power section of Tell the Word a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner city Washington. He served as a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties including chairing the National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President's daily brief. And he also ran the Russia desk for the CIA. And in January of 2003, he co-created veteran intelligence professionals for sanity. He is Ray McGovern. Ray, welcome and let's connect some dots.

Thanks, Dr. Leon

Ray, you recently published a piece at raymcgovern.com entitled, can You give a brief synopsis of what's happening in Israel? And it's based upon a response to a question from, I believe your youngest daughter. She asked you to explain to her what's happening in occupied Palestine and it opens as follows. I was nine years old, 1948 when there was huge celebration in the Bronx at the founding of the state of Israel. No one told me that Arabs had lived on that land for centuries and were displaced by force. Tens of thousands of them crammed into postage stamped Gaza and now host to millions of Palestinians. Ray, I'll throw it to you. Why was it so important for you to write this piece?

Wilmer? Frankly, I was really encouraged that one of my children, and we have five, was interested in knowing what I thought about this.

(03:43)

(05:03)

(06:22)

Ray two things. One, it would be one thing if the scripture said, I will give you this land of milk and honey so that you will not be poor. But that's not what it says. It says so that there will not be poor among you. And there's also a reason why those individuals are called settlers. And there's also a reason why that region is called the occupied territories.

That's right, Wilmer. And it's an embarrassing history we Americans have because we were settlers on the land, peopled by Native Americans, and we kind of pushed them aside just as Israel has pushed the Palestinians aside. So it's not a happy history. But when you're a settler, well, that's a nice way of putting that. You're coming from outside and you've displaced people who have a right to live on those lands. So as I said in the beginning of this piece, I came from the Bronx. I lived there for my first 22 years before I went in and served as an army officer. Now, when I was nine years old, 19 eight, oh man, it was sort of like the 4th of July, 10 times over Israel had a home, right? And as I noted at the beginning, well, nobody told me. Well, he told me that it was not a land for people, a land without any people in it.

(09:15)

(11:07)

(12:17)

There's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of disinformation and outright lies that are being used in support of the Zionist US narrative of this illegal occupation of Palestine, as well as the genocide of Palestinians. I want to read a brief statement and then show a map before I come back to you. Here's a statement. This is from the foreign office, the 2nd of November, 1917, and it reads, dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of his Majesty's government. The following declaration of sympathy with Jewish scientist aspirations, which has been submitted to and approved by the cabinet, his majesty's government view, with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

(14:36)

Well, history can be very antisemitic.

(16:22)

(17:53)

(19:31)

I'm very glad that you put it that way because a lot of times people misconstrue, and I'll just put this on a personal level. I'm not a former, not an intelligence analyst, but I am a political scientist, not a political operative. And so people have a tendency to misconstrue my explanation of events with my agreeing with the events, my saying, I understand why President Putin and Russia went into Ukraine. I understand it because I understand the history. I understand why Hamas took the actions that it did. I don't condone the killing of civilians. I don't condone the killing of children, but I understand why Hamas did what they did. If you could quickly, Tony Blinken, you were just talking about the shift from the unipolar to the multipolar world. Talk a little bit about Tony Blinken and this whole concept of the rules based order, because Tony Blinken in the Biden administration, they love to talk about the rules based order, but when you try to find a definition of it, you can't because it only exists in the mind of Tony Blinken. They rarely talk about international law. They always want to talk about the rules based order.

You put your finger on it, the rules based international order, well, it's a contrived expression. It's meant to substitute for international law and the United Nations. It was invented by Blinken and Sullivan and Nolan, and I mean poin and Laro, the foreign minister have made fun of it. Well, tell us about this. We try to Google it, but could you please give us, can you give us a piece of paper to describe what the rules based into law? And of course they can. And what it means is what we say goes, we make the rules, and that's it.

And you follow our orders.

People are getting wise to that increasing number of people witness the vote at the UN yesterday, 12 to one, the one being the United States. The saving grace here, as I say it, is that the UN is still being respected by China, by Russia, and by some of the other countries that are insisting that we abide by UN regulations. First and foremost in this context, security council resolution 2, 4, 2 of November 22nd, 1967 ordering is to relinquish control of the occupied territories that they seized in 1967. So what's the hope here? Well, the hope was yesterday. The US talks about Russia being isolated. Look,

(23:34)

President Biden, when he went to the region on this, so-called Peacekeeping tour, wherever the heck he was supposed to be doing, he talked about peace. And to your point earlier on, not on this trip, but earlier on he was very clear, I am a Zionist. And then Tony Blinken goes and he says, I am here not only as the Secretary of State of the United States, but I'm here as a Jew. What message do you think that sends to the Arabs in the region who he allegedly is supposed to be trying to find some common ground with and bring about some type of peaceful resolution to this conflict?

Well, I think the word is chutzpah and naivete. If blinken doesn't know how that goes over with the Arab leaders that he is talking to, he is hopelessly blind. Wait

A minute, wait a minute, Ray, does he care? Because what that I remember very clearly probably two years ago when Blinken went to Anchorage, Alaska to meet with the Chinese delegation, and the Chinese delegation got up and said, we're not going to sit here and let you lecture us. We're China. We don't have to sit here and listen to you. And they got up and walked out of the room. That to me, sounds eerily reminiscent or what just transpired with Tony Blinken in the Middle East sounds eerily reminiscent to what he tried to do with the Chinese.

Well, Wilmer, you probably have seen President Biden reading from his little notes, even in a very short a session with Netanyahu. So who writes the notes?

Tony

Blink. Well, Blinken writes the notes.

Victoria Newland.

Victoria Newland. Now, what does Victoria Newland have in common? What Jacob Sullivan have in common? They're all of Jewish extraction. Now, should that ordinarily matter? No. Does it matter? Now? It happens to matter. Now we're talking about a Jewish home land created at the expense of the Palestinian people. We're talking about Zionism, which is a political movement, not a religion. So the three top people at the State Department have traditionally been Zionists, not only Jews, but Zionists. Now, this is not lost on the Middle East leaders or China or Russia. And you could see their hold on Biden from the very first part of his administration. The first thing he did, we got up and he said, now China, China's going to be, has aspirations to be the most powerful country in the world, not only economically, but strategically. That's not going to happen on my watch.

(27:51)

(29:17)

(30:37)

When you look at the surveys right now, when you look at the polling data, the race for 2024 between President Biden and former President Trump, by most polls, is a dead heat, one or two points. It's within the margin of error. History tells us that countries tend not to shift leadership or change leadership in the midst of conflict slash war. You mentioned if they lose the election, I'm sorry, you mentioned if they lose the war, if they lose the election, does Joe Biden need this conflict in his mind in order to save his administration?

I don't think Joe Biden is Compass Menis. I think that Blinken and Sullivan, Nolan, they are extremely Compass mentors. They have a lot to fear. Let's say that Trump wins election, as I said before, the evidence is out there, not only of bribery and those kinds of things, and Hunter Biden's laptop and the inclusion of corrupt former intelligence officials and all that kind of stuff. But Blinken was personally involved in arranging for Biden to win via a subterfuge. What do I mean? Well, when Hunter Biden's laptop was revealed and the scarless repeat stuff on, and his dealings with calling his father's brand name into, well, how did they decide to handle that was three weeks before the election. Oh, what happened? Well, by testimony to Congress, by a former acting director of the CIA, his name is Mikey Morell. He said, I got a call from Tony Blinken, and he said, the best way to handle the Hunter Biden laptop is could you get former intelligence directors to say that it has all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation operation?

(33:56)

(35:09)

I

Think this is an important aspect. It's not really covered elsewhere.

You are former intelligence official, and you understand the subtleties of diplomacy. And one of the things that I find very interesting is when you listen to President Putin, when you listen to President Xi, when you listen to Raisi in Iran, they speak in very subtle undertones. So when Donald Trump assassinated, general

Soleimani,

Soleimani, Iran said, we're going to retaliate, and a lot of people expected the retaliation to be coming shortly thereafter. It did not come well, as Tony Blinken was traversing the Middle East recently, the Iranian foreign minister was doing the same thing with his allies and released a statement saying, Israel, the time is up. Did that convey to you a not so subtle message that people need to be paying attention to?

Well, it does, and that's really one outstanding aspect of what happened over the last week. The notion that the president of Iran would call up the leader of Saudi Arabia to coordinate on what they're going to do. I mean, that's a tectonic shift in the relationship between those two countries. And raci, the president of Iran has been traveling all around, and he's got, he talks to this area and he talks to the Egyptians, and actually the Egyptians and the Jordanians wouldn't even receive Joe Biden when he wanted to see them. So what we need to do is recognize,

And Mohammad bin Salman made Tony Blinken wait an entire day, actually overnight, because I guess he had gone fishing in somewhere in Saudi Arabia, and he was on a fishing trip in Saudi Arabia and couldn't be bothered. So he thinked Tony, again, from a diplomatic perspective, that's one of those not so subtle messages that says, I really don't feel I'd being bothered with you.

And Saudi Arabia is very, very, very important, not only because of the oil, but because of the raro schmo that was going on with China and with others. So maybe the Saudi foreign minister was supervising some beheadings in the public square. You get pretty busy in Saudi Arabia when head start rolling, and I understand he did give Blinken access to a men's room there as he waited. So there's some niceties that were observed, but he gave away overnight. You don't do that with, at least you didn't use to do that with the Secretary of State of the United States of America, least of all. Would the Saudi Arabia's have done that? So that's just one little symptom of the tectonic shift in relations where us is no longer the unipolar power, but rather a bipolar with them with the United States. And I am an American citizen. I really mourn the fact that because they're own ineptitude and chutzpah that would put ourselves in this situation. And I dare say that the Israelis do what everyone thinks they're going to do. Now, it's going to be all hell to pay because the Iranians has Pua, Hamas, the Egyptians, the Hezbollah, the others, even the Saudis for are not going to sit around and tolerate the of 2 million people in Gaza.

Yemen isn't going to be too happy with this either.

Yemen as well. Yeah.

So people watching this, people listening to this, they may be saying, wow, Wilmer, you and Ray are spending an awful lot of time talking about foreign policy, talking about the Middle East. We have homelessness in the United States. We have abject poverty. We have all these declines in the standard of living in the United States. Why spend so much time talking about this instead of talking about that?

Well, because they're connected. As you well know, every billion you send to Ukraine, every billion you send to Israel is at the expense of these people. The poor people in our country that need all that kind of help, there shall be no poor among you. Well, that's a universal. That's a universal, in my view. It doesn't have to be a Hebrew scripture. I mean, the Christian, the Christian, and I say Judeo-Christian attitude toward justice Wiler. We have this American concept of justice where you have this blind lady of all people holding these scales and the images impartiality image, no favoritism to one or the other. Now, lemme tell you something, and your listeners, the Judeo-Christian, the biblical concept of justice is unbalanced and biased to the core in favor of the poor. The hated poor as the Old Testament called the very word in pre Aramaic for justice, denotes not connotes, denotes showing mercy to the poor.

(43:46)

(45:04)

(45:45)

(47:47)

In mentioning Ukraine, you also have a piece at your website, Ray mcgovern.com entitled, fact Checking Putin on Ukraine. President Putin gave an interview right before he went to China for the Belt and Road Initiative Conference, and you say, media consumers should be permitted to learn what Putin said, particularly about Ukraine and Russia's problems dealing with various US administrations over the years. Readers who rely on the paper of record, however, will be shielded from his remarks, and thus, any temptation to ask if they might be true. And you went through a lot of what Russian President Putin had to say. You did your own fact checking. And what were some of the conclusions that you came to regarding President Putin's the veracity of his comments?

Well, I checked them all, and there were two that I needed to consult others on because I wasn't a hundred percent sure. One had to do with when Soviet Russian forces went up there near Kiev and were abruptly withdrawn very early in the war in Ukraine, I always wondered about that. Putin claims that that was part of a deal, not a covenant, but at least a deal. Now, what was the deal? The deal was reached with Ukrainian officials in Glarus and in Turkey. There was a deal to stop the war, to have a ceasefire, to commit Ukraine, not to join NATO, and to bring Russian troops down from where they were threatening Kiev. That's what Putin claims. Now, I checked around because my memory is just one person, but I found out, yeah, that's probably why the Russian troops went down from that area. It's not because they couldn't have taken Kiev, although they didn't really have all that many troops there.

(50:54)

(51:58)

But Ray Ray, that's got to be impossible because Joe Biden has told us that we stand for democracy, that Putin is a dictator and that he's an autocrat, and we stand for the freedom of press in America. Ray, how could you not get something like that published?

Well, I guess my point Wilmer here is that I've long since stopped trying to get something in The Times or the Washington Post. I used to be able to do that 10 years ago, like twice a year. But the alternative media, for God sake, the progressive media is now saying, oh, that sounds a little bit too. So here, I check these things. I double check with the people who know about things they're not quite sure about. I put it out there and say, well, that sounds a little bit too, we can't run that. So that's the alternative media. That's the binder where nobody wants to feel like they could be susceptible to criticism of being pro Putin, that my friend, is how bad it has become.

I was at dinner with some friends, and one of them asked kind of a generic question about this media and whose interests are being served, and this can't be some invisible cabal that is behind the scenes, being sure that a particular narrative is only being articulated. And I said, no, it doesn't really have to be a cabal, because when you look at Jeff Bezos, for example, and he owns the Washington Post, and he owns Amazon, and look at where Jeff Bezos has received most of his money from Amazon Data Systems, which is a defense contractor. I said, look at, what's his name, knowns Tesla, and he controls X, and where does he get most of his money from? SpaceX and starlink defense contractors. So it doesn't necessarily have to be a cabal as much as it is the confluence of interests that understand which side their bread is buttered on. Is that fair to say?

Well, Wilmer, I have an expression or an acronym called the Mickey Mat, the military industrial Congressional Intelligence Media, academia think tank complex. It's in some dictionaries now. Okay, why do I say media? Because the media is controlled by the rest of the Mickey Mat. That's the situation we're in now. Now you mentioned Jeff Bezos, and you correctly pointed out he gets lots of money from the federal government, CIA, and others. Okay, but the people he picks, well, there was a fellow named Fred Hyatt who ran the editorial section of the Washington Post, like the op-ed section. Okay? And before the war in Iraq, about 90% of the op-eds were, oh, yeah, they're weapons of mass, weapons of, okay, so what happens after the war when there are no weapons of mass destruction? He goes up to the Columbia School of Journalism, and when a naive student says, Mr. Hyatt, you kept saying that there were weapons of mass destruction as flat fact, and it turned out not to be any. How do you explain that? And Hyatt famously said, well, if there weren't weapons of mass destruction, we probably should not have said that. There were,

(56:58)

We have just about a minute and a half or so left, and I want to read, this is from M-S-N-B-C, and this is from the April 6th, 2022. In a break with the past US is using Intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid. What that means, boys and girls, is M-S-N-B-C is admitting that they are lying to the American people under the pretext of the noble line. They're lying to you. Boy, Ray McGovern American people, first of all, Ray, thank you so much for your time today, and where can folks find your work?

Well, I'm sure that Plato and his noble liar kind of turning around in the grave right now.

Where can people find your work?

Oh, where? Okay. Well, I am Twittering. That's @RayMcGovern. Okay. My website is raymcgovern.com. I'm also on Facebook and on Instagram, so I hope that you'll tune in. My son who runs my website always says, Ray, always say, always add. If you don't get it, you won't get it. You don't get it. But I'm too humble to say that.

Ray McGovern, thanks for joining me. Big shout out to my producer, melody McKinley. Thank you all so much for joining the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Folks, 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. Stay tuned for the new podcasts 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. I'll see you all next time, and until then, please treat each day like it's your last, because one day you'll be right. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Peace and Blessings. I'm out.

Joining us to delve into the details on Haiti and so much more, our guest this week is Dr Jemima Pierre, professor at the Institute for the Study of Gender, race, sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

You can find me and the show on social media by searching the handle @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube.

Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

All our episodes can be found at CTDpodcast.com.

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 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 and the broader historical context in which the events occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that are impacting the global village in which we live on today's episode. The question before us is why is the United States working to reinve and colonize Haiti? My guest is a professor at the Institute for the Study of Gender, race, sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She's a member of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor of the Black Agenda Review segment of the Black Agenda Report. And she's the author of a very, very substantive piece, Haiti as Empire's Laboratory, Dr. Jamima Pierre. Dr. Pierre, welcome to the show and let's connect some dots.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

You write in your piece that the Global Fragility Act presents new strategies for deploying us hard and soft power in a changing world. It focuses US foreign policy on the idea that there are so-called fragile states, countries prone to instability, extremism, conflict, and extreme poverty, which are presumably threats to US security. Explain first, what is the Global Fragility Act and why should Americans, not to mention its victims, be so concerned about it?

Yes, so the Global Fragilities Act was actually presented in 2019, I think under Donald Trump, and then was ratified under the Biden administration. And it really is a way to be brand new as foreign policy. And I don't know if your listeners know about the Monroe Doctrine, which the US passed about a hundred years ago, which basically said that the US had access that no one can encroach in US' influence in the Western Hemisphere. And through the Monroe Doctrine, the US was able to assert its influence, occupy invade nations whenever it deemed necessary, and got away with it for a hundred years. And so the upheaval that we've seen throughout Latin America, the regime changes, the support for support for military dictatorships and so on and so forth has occurred through the Monroe Doctrine. But the Global Fragility Act was really brought by the conservative think tank, the US Peace Institute, which is actually misnamed as far as I'm concerned.

(04:10)

(05:19)

One of the things that popped in my mind when you said Haiti and then you said Libya, one of the common threads between the two are the Clintons, because if I remember my history correctly, it was then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton that convinced then President Obama, then President Barack Obama to invade Libya and assassinate more Mark dfi. And we know that Hillary Clinton, again, was very much involved in the destabilization, the most recent destabilization of Haiti.

Oh, definitely. Well, the Clintons, they've got dirt all over them. I mean, when it comes to Haiti, the Clintons, I have a piece that I wrote a long time ago, about 11 years ago. I say the Clintons are omnipotent, omni, the present, they're everywhere. And so we have to think about what Bill Clinton did by killing Haiti's rice production facility by dumping the rise of his Arkansas farmers into Haiti and destroying Haiti's rise economy. So we have to think about what he did when he was president, but they've been dealing with Haiti for a long time. And we have to think also about after the earthquake where Obama put Clinton and Georgia re bush in charge of Haiti eight. And the people that benefited the most from the earthquake that killed 300,000 Haitians was the Clinton Foundation, which raised tons of money. And Haiti saw nothing except for these fancy hotels that they're making profits off.

(08:17)

You mentioned Bill Clinton decimating the domestic Haitian rice production in his book, the Choice Sam yet talks about the tie of rice to the start of the Vietnam War and how many people don't discuss one of the major motivating factors for the United States to go into Indo-China had to do with protecting American rice interest because they didn't want Asian rice flooding the market. And then that also made me think about nafta. And what NAFTA did to the domestic corn production in Mexico decimated the production of Mexican corn, which then decimated the livelihoods for Mexican farmers, which has contributed to immigration of Mexicans into the United States. So again, the show is called Connecting the Dots. And so any thoughts on that?

Well, definitely I think, I don't even remember where I saw that recently that rice farmers, is it Rice? Rice producers were looking forward to having access back again to Haiti's market once this military invasion happened. And so there's a lot of things to think about under Reagan. Haiti, the Haitian government was forced to kill its local pigs, the black pigs, I don't know if people have heard about this, but you can look up Haiti black pigs. Black pigs are indigenous to that region. And Haiti was told that the pigs had some disease and they had to basically kill the entire population of black pigs on the island in order. And then they were replaced by the white pigs from the south of the US and pigs who are from the US not are not used to the climate in the Caribbean. So then they required very specific kinds of feeding food to eat.

(11:30)

You write in your piece in April of 22, the Biden Harris administration affirmed its commitment to the Global Fragilities Act by outlining a strategy for its implementation as detailed in the strategies prologue, the US government's new foreign policy approach depends on willing partners to address common challenges and share costs. Ultimately, the document continues. No US or international intervention will be successful without the buy-in and mutual ownership of trusted regional, national and local partners. And you touched on that in your open, but I think it's very important for people to really understand. That's really nice flowerly language, but it's not innocuous. That is a very nice way of saying that the United States is going to use organizations, indigenous organizations in order to promote American interests.

Oh, definitely. Not just indigenous organizations, local states. I mean the recent upcoming invasion, military invasion of Haiti supposedly over gangs is actually being led supposedly by Kenya. And so all of a sudden you're asking yourself, Kenya's, all the way across the world on the east side of the African continent, what does Kenya have to do with Haiti? Well, before Kenya, the US tried to use Racom, which is a community of Caribbean states and nations. And that didn't work as well before them. They tried to get clac, which is the central and Latin American communities to lead in the invasion. Before them, they tried to get Brazil. So before them, they tried to get Canada to lead the invasion. And before that they tried to get Brazil to lead the invasion. The thing is to not have boots on the ground, as we've seen in the US in Ukraine, for example.

(15:14)

(16:23)

(17:15)

So to that point, what this results in and what the Global Fragilities Act does is it takes the Department of State and it combines the Department of State and the Pentagon. And it's using, as you said in your piece, the hard power is the Pentagon. The soft power is the Department of State and under the pretext or pretense of bringing stability to the country, that enables the United States to go in with the military and engage in regime change and engage in control of the domestic space, but leaving out the fact that the reason the country is unstable in the first place is because of American policy in the country.

Oh, definitely. And that's one of the key things we have to remember is this 2004 coup deta is a coup deta where Canada Friends and the US got together in Ottawa and Canada in 2003 and decided they needed to get rid of our elected democratically elected president. And then they follow through with this coup deta. And then it was given a go ahead by the UN because they run the security council and the other states on the permanent council also need to be held accountable because they sat quietly and let the US and France run this right the same way they did with Libya allowing a no fly zone of Libya. And so Haiti has been under occupation since 2004. And so at the beginning of the coup DTA in 2004, Haiti had about 7,000 elected officials. As of today, Haiti has zero elected officials, the US and the UN through the core group, which is a group of unelected non Haitian officials from the European Union, the organization of American states that meet that.

(20:40)

Assassination was that Ju Moiz the

Assassination, Jon Moiz, right? I have to put that an aside, that assassination happened about a month after Moiz came back from Russia trying to establish relationships with Russia. And I have to, this is an important piece that I think matters. And that was the first time Haiti was trying to establish relations with Russia. So part of that is because Haitians were protesting against intervention from the very beginning. They were always in the streets. And people forget that Haitians have been protesting against us, meddling for the longest times from 2018 19, in 2020, there were millions of Haitians on the street protesting to get rid of this public government that the US had installed and so on. People were protesting over and over again, and the US could not get this passed. And I don't know if you realize it. And then so all of a sudden, this gang problem emerges and it seems out of hand because the amount of guns entering the country the past two years has been unprecedented. And they're dumping guns and ammunition into the country. The guns are coming directly from Haiti. So they're fomenting this idea that there's this gun

Coming directly to Haiti,

To Haiti through the ports that are owned by the elite, the ports that are owned by the elite, the Haitian oligarchy that a couple of 'em have been named in the UN report just last week, that they need to be sanctioned. The US hasn't sanctioned any of them. They have not followed through the embargo that the Chinese government said that they should put. So they basically created, exacerbated the gang problem. That's what I should say. They exacerbated the gang problem. So then every news media you see about Haiti the past year has been about gangs, not about the fact that Haitians were protesting the fact that this illegitimate government signed this deal with the IMF to remove fuel subsidies and made life extremely expensive for Haiti, or the fact that the people were protesting this prime minister that was installed by the US in the core group. And so we forget that people are protesting against US Empire protesting against a defacto government that they didn't elect, and now we're only focusing on gangs. And it's easy to do that because they can manufacture that consent because they can control everything that's going on Haiti. So then they create the basket case, and then they come in and they say, well, we have to fix this problem because they need help.

What is the average daily income for a Haitian?

Oh, I haven't checked that in a while, but it's under three us. I think it's under five US dollars per day.

Okay. Okay. $5 a day under.

(24:24)

Yes, definitely. Well, in addition to the guns, you have to think about ammunition. You can have a gun if you don't have ammunition, what can you do with it?

Throw it at somebody.

And so I have to say, so in the past three years, a number of high powered military grade guns in the country has gone up to almost a million. And so you're trying to figure out these, and then when you see the pictures, you see pictures of young men in flip-flops and mismatched shorts and rioty shirts,

Raggedy t-shirts and shorts,

Raggedy T-shirts where they dump us youth clothes in Haiti. That's what they're wearing,

That a lot of that clothing is made in Haiti, right,

Right. Am I right? Exactly. And then set back as charity right after people stopped wearing them. Right. But yeah, so you have to ask yourself and you're like, well, is this really what is this problem? It's not like militaries are fighting against people. It's not like there's a civil war in Haiti. It's like these young men who are being paid to wreak havoc. And because the unemployment is so high in Haiti, it's really easy to find some young men and give 'em some guns and make them think that they're doing something or you send them annual ammunition. And just recently the Haitian police stopped a van that was full of ammunition coming from the Dominican border into Haiti. So we have to think about that. And this is the other part is Haiti has had a problem paramilitary since the US occupied Haiti in the 1915, changed our constitution and set up the Haitian police when they left 19 years later, which became the bane of our existence, but also led to the coming to power of Papa Doc and his really horrible military force, paramilitary force, Tonto Maku.

(27:57)

(28:51)

537 mass shootings in the United States the 1st of January, 2023. And

That's right. And we only have 360 days, 365 days in the year. The reality is in places like Jamaica, they've been under state of emergency because of gang violence. And so why is Haiti and you have to think there's something else going on. It can't be just about the gangs. The other thing is the biggest gangsters in Haiti, as I always say, is the us, the core group and the UN mission there, because how gangster can you get meet in a different country, France, Canada and the us, they meet and they decide they're going to remove an elected president, or how gangster can you get any more gangster than Hillary Clinton flying in and changing the election results of a supposedly sovereign country? So we have to redefine how we're thinking about this gang thing and really think about, well, who's funding these young men and who are the real gangsters of the world that can allow this to happen or that make this happen and then turn around and present themselves just because they're wearing suits, they present themselves as the real people that can bring solutions.

The name of this podcast is connecting the dots. Who did the United States follow into Vietnam, France? Who is the United States following t, Niger, France? Who is the United States following into Haiti, France? Should we be connecting these dots? Dr. Pierre? Are these relevant dots to connect?

I think on some level, I think for West Africa, it's very interesting in terms of seeing the fall of French influence and empire. And I think the US is coming in to clean up to make sure that West Africa doesn't fall in the hands of supposed Russia. And so as France wanes, they're jumping in to do that. And I think with Haiti, it was the same thing. It was like the US came in, especially in the early 19 hundreds and through its Monroe doctrine, was basically to get rid of the European presence. And because there were a group of Germans actually that were trying, that owned a lot of stuff in Haiti that were doing business in Haiti, and the US did not want to have anyone outside of themselves to control the political and economic situation in the region. And so that's exactly what's happening. The US took over from France way early in the early 19 hundreds, and it's been doing that, and then France then just turns around and becomes a junior partner and continues the work of the White West Elite.

Well, and not to get too deep into the weeds, but wasn't the basic premise of the Monroe Doctrine. It was an agreement between the United States and Europe. The United States committed to staying out of the affairs of Europe if Europe agreed to stay out of the affairs of the Americas, leaving the Americas to the United States.

Exactly. Exactly. Except that now the Global Fragility Act, the US is viewing Europe as junior partners, as intensifies its control of the region,

Who was the face of US policy going into Haiti and ushering out Jean Beron aee. Was it Colin Powell? Was he the face? The story that I understand is he was the messenger that went in to Haiti and told President Risid, you got to go. There's a plane on the tarmac if you don't get on it.

Yeah, it wasn't Colin Powell, it was the US Ambassador to Haiti. I forgot his name at the time that actually the Marines had, but it was Colin Powell that was with Georgia re bush threatening. And if you go back to the media, you'll see it's always a black face. I mean, there's always a black face to do that work,

Right? That's the point I want. That's the dot. I want to connect because it's now Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin that went to Kenya with the bag of cash to establish what a five year defense agreement with Kenya in order to entice them. So another black face on American imperialism. I call that minstrel diplomacy. Your thoughts.

Definitely. And that's the most disappointing part, is that this has been going on. It

Doesn't always Wait, wait minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. And it was, when we want to talk about the Racom and the Global Fragilities Act, it was a, not Gregory Meeks, it was the minority leader in the house from New York,

Hakeem Jeffries.

Hakeem Jeffries, and it was Hakeem Jeffries. It was Vice President Kamala Harris,

Kamala Harris

That went to Caricom. And when you mentioned Global Fragilities Act, I think that was Co-sponsored by Karen Bass.

Karen Bass, and I forgot the name of the other person. Yes. It was two black

Faces on two

Black faces of the Empire. And if

We go to the un, Linda Thomas Greenfield,

And the State Department representative for the region is Brian Nichols. And this is the most disturbing part to me is because it wasn't always this way. So for Frederick Douglas, the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglas was sent to Haiti as a US representative in the late 18 hundreds, wasn't he? Ambassador? Yes. To sent to Haiti, and they really went, they sent him to actually negotiate to get this Bay Molson Nicola, which they still want actually to basically set up a base there, a US military base there. The Haitians have always gone against that, which is why they ended up setting up the base in Guantanamo Bay. So if you look at the map, it's a perfect way place for, it's between Cuba and Haiti, and this bay is there. And so it is perfect for the US ships to go through, get through the Panama Canal, wherever they need to get through to get to the Pacific.

(36:20)

(37:38)

Them. But why abstain? Why not vote no and kill the deal?

Right? Because that's what I'm saying. I think they're looking out for their own best interests. I think they don't want to ruin their relationships with these black countries who are pushing. I think that's part of that, right? So they voted no all along and this time, so if you have Nia Motley, you have Ruto, you have all these people saying, this is Pan-Africanism. We're going to go help our brothers and sisters in Haiti by sending a military intervention. That's what Ruto is using. They're using the language of Pan-Africanism Racom is using the language of helping our brothers, even though Caricom has some of the most draconian anti Haiti immigration policies, deportation rules, but they're all using this language. And I do think that actually applied the pressure that the US got them to apply on China. Russia actually worked to get them to abstain. At least they didn't vote yes. But the abstention, I think, is a result of the pressure.

You mentioned the training of Haitian police through these Kenyan interlocutors or these Kenyan invaders, and these Kenyan forces have been labeled as Kenyan police. But from what I've read, they're not Kenyan police. They're Kenyan paramilitary forces that have a reputation of being incredibly, incredibly brutal against their own countrymen.

Yeah, definitely. And what's most distressing about this situation is that the only solution that these people think that they can have for Haiti and Haitian is a violent military. One is the one that has to do with force. They never tried. They never tried diplomacy. They never tried actually sanctioning these elites that they know run guns into the country. So yeah, the thousand police is not police. It's pe, military force, but also Kenya has a terrible reputation in Somalia in the proxy war there going in there and devastating Somalis. And so for me, just because they're black, in fact, if anything, I think these police officers will treat Haitians worse because they're black in a way that they wouldn't, can you imagine sending a Kenyan police force to Europe? Or why not send a Kenyan police force to Ukraine to help? And so part of that to me is it is telling, and I want to quickly just say

Briefly, oh, well, the reason you won't send those black Kenyan forces to Ukraine is because the Nazis, the racist Nazis in Ukraine would chop off their heads. That's why.

Well, definitely. But this idea that it's easier to watch one black group kill another. Oh, no, no,

No. I truly understand the basis of the

Question. No, I know.

Go ahead.

Yes, yes, we know. We know. It's really distressing to think about that because look at what's happening right now in the Occupy territories where you have Zionist state destroying killing. And right now, as we know, more than 7,000 people, 3000 children, and we have an internal, so-called gang problem, but we're getting a chapter seven military deployment to invade Haiti. But Zionist state Z, its entity can get away with killing how many people, and nobody's thinking about sending a military force to stop this bombing. So just think about that. No, the

Military force that's being sent is facilitating the bombing

Is to facilitate it. And so I want people to make those connections because you have to think, well, why isn't it absurd to send an armed military force to deal with gangs? So-called gangs in Haiti, but you're not doing it for Jamaica, which has been under state of emergency for two years over gangs. You're not doing it in the Middle East. And so we have to think about, well, this makes no sense. This idea of a military invasion of Haiti makes no sense in light what's going on in light of Ukraine and in light of what's going on in the occupied territories.

You mentioned China a little bit earlier, and I always say to folks, when you engage in these type of conversations, it's usually a good idea to have a map in front of you so that you can understand the geopolitics. So we know that China has been establishing relationships with Nicaragua. We know that China is establishing relationships with Guatemala, and those are in Central America. And we know that there's been discussions about China building a canal to rival a Panama Canal through Nicaragua. And we know that the United States does not want that to happen. And we'd also know that the United States has been anxious to build a naval base in Haiti. So if you could connect those dots. Am I wrong to, again, the show is connecting the dots. Am I wrong to connect those dots?

No, you're not wrong at all. The Global Fragilities Act specifically names China and Russia. So let's get that clear. And so one of the things is the waning power of the empire, right? Because they know that what their military used to be able to do, they can't do anymore. Look, they got beat by the Taliban 20 years later. How many trillions of dollars they destroyed Iraq, when was the last time the US won a war? I mean, let's be real, except maybe World War ii. And even that,

They

Had a lot of help from the Red Army. Let's be real

Panama,

Right? Panama or

A big, huge military power called Panama,

Right? Grenada, we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Grenada. Or you land in Haiti and you send special forces and you remove the sitting president. So they know that they're losing militarily. They know that they cannot sustain the multiple fronts, but they also know the rise of China and Russia is inevitable. Not even. They're already there. And so they know that they can't compete. And so they have to figure out how to mitigate that. And I do think so. That connection is good. Do you know that Haiti is only one of 11 countries that recognizes Taiwan, right? So what does that tell you? And they were forced to recognize Taiwan. And I think, I don't remember if it was under Duvalier who was a staunch anti-communist and really terrorized

Who forced Haiti to recognize Taiwan.

It was the US government to right,

But wait a bit, Dr. Pierre, that can't be because we have a one China policy. So how could that be?

No, it's just really fascinating. The more I think about it, the more I come to know this history, and you realize, well, why is Haiti only one of 11 countries to recognize Taiwan? And why was Taiwan coming to Haiti to sign bilateral deals and so on and so forth? And so part of that is they've been able to keep Haiti as one of the few in the region as one of the few people to recognize Taiwan as opposed to China, even though the US itself, as you say, has a one China policy. So I do think this is all connected. I think the US is trying to entrench itself. It wants to be near Haiti, closer to Haiti because it's worried about Venezuela. It is still mad about Cuba. It's worried about this. You're right, this canal that Nicaragua wants to get with the help of China and war with China is inevitable.

(47:01)

Talk if you would please, about the Dominican Republic, the Dominican Republic's role as it relates to Haiti and Columbia as well. Because I think that I read a number of reports that some of the assassins that went into Haiti and assassinated President Maise were Columbia or were out of Columbia, and we know that Columbia is one of the training bases for the CIA as the CIA projects this power in Central and South America.

Yeah. Well, so Columbia also outsources mercenaries, and so it's very easy to use trained

By the

United States, right? 23 out of the 26 mercenaries come out of Columbia. Columbia's interesting. And I'm not a Columbia expert. What's interesting is the fact that they elected this leftist president, but Columbia has a long history of, right-wing governments also would fey to the us. And so we have to ask Columbia, well, why are there still US military bases in Columbia, right? So why did they sign an agreement to be with NATO to be like a NATO ally, NATO ally? And so Columbia is definitely part of that. I think I forgot your question, but No,

I was asking about the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Columbia as it relates to being proxies basically for the United States.

Well, definitely, and I don't know. I know the relationship with Dominican Republic, with Haiti, and one of the things, Haiti during the Haitian Revolution took over the entire island to get rid of the Spanish and to end slavery. And it's a very complicated history. And after Haitians beat the French, they had to take over the entire island in order to stop the constant attacks that were coming around, but also they got rid of slavery. And so then the Spanish help the elites get back. That part of the island and the relationship has always been fraught. The Dominican Republic has a deep anti-Asian, which is very much deep in racism. And so then that you have is our legacy with the Dominican Republic is in 19 seven massacre, parsley massacre, where they chop down about 30,000 Haitians and dumped them in the river, which is why that river, if you've heard that, and it uses called Massacre River, is the Dominican Republic massacre.

(50:41)

(51:45)

Wait a minute. To that point, I read and that the Clintons have purchased an inordinate amount of land in Haiti to build a private resort. Basically the model, what's been done in Jamaica.

Jamaica, definitely Jamaica, Barbados, all those places that the other thing we have to talk about, the mineral wealth in Haiti. Wait,

And one more point real quick is that you talked about resistance. I believe if those Kenyan forces make land on Haiti,

They won't know what's coming.

They got to fight on their hands that be prepared to manage.

Yeah, I don't think it is going to be as easy as they think. And

You wanted to hit on the mineral.

On the mineral. And people also don't remember, don't know that Haiti, you can look this up. There are all these reports that Haiti has millions minerals and that people want, in fact, when they decided to start mining for gold, the first person that got a mining permit was Hillary Clinton's brother,

Brother out of Canada, right?

And so we have to think about Canada too, because Canada's people think of Canada as like Little Brother and Peter, but Canada has been front and center. In fact, Canada still has big manufacturing hubs. Gildan still produces T-shirts and stuff like that in Haiti. So it's just really interesting to think about how I wanted to end by saying, this is not a victimization. I think people like to say, oh, poor Haitians. Oh, look at this. People suffer so much they can't get a break. And I'm like, well, the truth is they've been fighting back, which is why they can't get a break, and they're going to continue to fight back. And you can't only see them as perpetual victims. What you need to see is do analysis and connect the ways that all the, the ways that Empire has tried to keep the people down, despite the fact that they're standing up to fight back.

You've got a hard stop. I greatly appreciate you giving me the time today. You talked about minerals. There are geological reports that show there may be more oil off the coast of Haiti than there is in Venezuela. Venezuela, and Venezuela has the largest reserv of oil in the world. Dr. Jamima Pierre, how can people find you, connect with you if they need to?

Yeah. Well, you can find me on YouTube through all these various interviews and my publications all over just a basically

Black agenda report

And black agenda report, as well as the Black Alliance for Peace. We have a whole Haiti resource page.

Dr. Jamima Pierre, thank you so much for your time. Really, really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you folks. I got to thank my guest, Dr. Jamima Pierre for joining me today. And thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, leave a review, and please, please, please, please, baby. Please baby. Please share my show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. 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 again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace and blessings. I'm out

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

Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

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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 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, we will discuss the recent belt and road form for international cooperation. Recently, over 500 people were killed as a result of an Al Ali Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza. And the US has provided Ukraine long range attack s missiles for insight into this. Let's turn to my guest. He's a Moscow based international relations and security analyst, mark Sloboda. Mark, let's connect some dots.

Pleasure to on connecting the dots.

So Russian President Putin recently went to Beijing to participate in the third Belt and Road forum for international cooperation. Mark, how significant was this meeting?

Yeah, so I think that this meeting was significant for a number of reasons. First, for President Putin on a personal situation, it is the first time that he has left Russia since the Wess pushed international criminal court charged Vladimir Putin with the crime of helping families and caretakers in East Ukraine move their own children out of the range of Kiev regime artillery that had been bombing them for the last 10 years, also known as abducting children, which evidently is a crime when Russia does it in a time of conflict, but is not a crime when the US does it, when they move thousands of children out of Afghanistan and many thousands of children out of Vietnam in a previous generation of conflict. But besides that, the Russian Chinese relationship bilaterally, I think is probably the most important bilateral relationship for both countries. And both presidents seem to have a good working relationship, often described as a friendship and a deep understanding with each other.

(03:47)

(05:09)

(07:00)

Just asked Olaf Schultz in Germany that question you mentioned each time gee and Putin get elected, we keep hearing from Western narrative, particularly from Biden authoritarians, authoritarians G is an authoritarian, Putin is an authoritarian, can just briefly explain the fact that they're elected, they don't control their elections. They have different electoral processes than we do. They have different democratic constructs than we have, but that doesn't mean that they're authoritarian.

Yeah, I mean this is a label that is tapped on essentially to any country now that lies outside of US-led western global hegemony that does not align itself and does not meet the West's self-reflective standard of what democracy looks like. And it really, it is a way of exerting moral superiority. The idea that we are both morally and systemically superior than those people over there who are our adversaries in a different time. It was communists of course, and there have been other labels in history and certainly labels are applied to the Western countries. They are imperialists. They are hegemons. This is a standard othering device. I live in Russia, I immigrated to Russia from the United States, and I have lived here for most of two decades. And I have to be honest, after having some experience as a volunteer for the US Democratic Party, I find that politics in Russia on a whole is no more or less substantive than the democratic nature beneath the sheets of politics in the United States. I don't want to go out of the way to make it seem like it's a democratic utopia or anything like that far from it. But on a whole, knowing the warts inside and out of political systems in US and Europe and now Russia, I think that over in a general context that they're expressed themselves roughly equally. There is

Politics plus they also reflect the intricacies of their cultures. And so I was having a conversation with some folks a couple of days ago and I said they were, oh, well G is an authoritarian. And I said, well, I've seen polls from Harvard and Princeton and some other western universities that show like 96% of Chinese people like their government. And I think it was 87% of Russians polled like their government support government. So if it's working for them, then who in the world am I to say that it's not good, it's not right, or what we have is better. I know Joe Biden would love to see 60% approval rating, let alone 96% approval rating.

Yeah, I think not only approval of the current government, but I've seen similar polls that asking peoples of different countries whether they think they live in a democracy and quite overwhelmingly, certainly over the 50% margin, the people of Russia feel they live in a democracy and certainly the people in China do as well to an even greater degree. Again, it doesn't look like western liberal democracy, but perhaps you could consider it of a more technocratic bureaucratic nature. But as you point out, there is a thousand multi-thousand year history of Chinese bureaucratic constructs that they are laying their future and their choices on top of. Meanwhile, in the United States, people generally feel that they don't live in a democratic system, that their government is not responsive to their needs and interests. And you could say that that is, oh, I mean all the people in Russia and China are ignorant.

(13:35)

You are absolutely right. I've been to Iran twice and was very blessed to lecture at probably somewhere between 10 and 15 universities throughout the country. And as I traveled throughout Iran, I was amazed at how well informed the questions that these students asked me. They were right on it, man, in terms of an understanding of the politics of the moment. And again, the questions that they asked me were spot on. It indicated that they were going beyond the rhetoric, they were going beyond the talking points. And it was shocking to me how well-informed in spite of the wall that you talk about in terms of the internet, they were on point, man.

Yeah, I think it's interesting that this label is applied to adversaries like Russia and China, Russia, which has opposition parties and elections. They don't do very good right now because since the economic catastrophe of the nineties, I think the Russian population has been more united in their political vision of a path out of that and forward and retaking what they see as their place in the world after the self dissolution of the Soviet Union. That will not last forever. And a lot of people question whether it will last after Putin at all. But there is opposition political structures. The biggest opposition political party in Russia is the communist party of the Russian Federation, which polls generally somewhere around 15% of the population. And in foreign policy, it must be said, they largely agree with the current government of Vladimir Putin, but in domestic issues, they constantly fight for the Duma for things that leftist parties always fight for, more social benefits, more spending on education and medicine and other things. And if anything, I think probably the communists would probably, if they were leading the country, would probably take a more hard line foreign policy position than the current government. I think that when the US

Speak to that, because a lot of people listening this will say, wait a minute, a harder line than Vladimir Putin. Oh my God. You can't get a harder line than that when the people making those observations have never listened to the man, have never read any of the speeches that he's given. And so they, again, he's evil, he's insane, all of these, he's a dictator, all of these kinds of things.

Yeah. Again, the fact that they don't hear what Vladimir Putin has to say for himself because the western media specifically does not reproduce it for them. And I have to say that Russian media does this. I mean, there are still government funded projects in Somi that translate word for word western articles in print media and televised and put it out there for Russians to listen to, not only from the United States and Europe, but from all over the world. That tradition doesn't exist on the west. It's not that it is banned, although in some cases in Europe, Artie and Sputnik are banned, aren't they? Or everything is done to take them off the airwaves as is done in the United States, and of course not just with RT and Sputnik, but now with press TV from Iran. And there are calls of course to do the same to the Chinese CCTV and now even Al Jazeera in the current climate because as the state media arm of Qatar, they are now seen as being anti-Israeli.

(19:55)

Domestic government leadership,

Any real assessment of their domestic political system. And I have to

Say mbss is chopping heads. I mean

Literally as a chopping more than heads, these bones aren't sorry. Right. As a veteran, well, I'm both a military, a US military veteran and shall we say a veteran of the US political system with all the warts that the US political system has with its systemic suppression of third party movements. And I'm talking, I mean Americans don't even know this for the most part, but their own two parties of power, the Republicans and Democrats regularly sue third parties to keep them off the ballot, right? I mean, they regularly go to court every election cycle to keep them off the ballot and the whole structure of 50 separate elections and the intricacies run by the party in power, either the Republicans or the Democrats in the state does everything possible to prevent the emergence of any other voice than those two and the electoral college and the eternal problems with campaign finance and lobbying. But Americans somehow feel their political systemic superiority so strongly that they don't even think when their political and media elites judge the political system of another country. And as far as most Americans reflexively are concerned, they think they are the only democratic country on earth and the only good people, which is really kind of another iteration of we are the chosen people of God, political meme throughout history.

What is more authoritarian than not having a presidential primary in a system that is based on primaries? What is more of a dictatorship than imposing Joe Biden upon Democrats instead of holding a primary look at what the Democrats did to Bernie Sanders during the Hillary Clinton campaign, hence Julian Assange's email leaks, which demonstrated all the machinations that the Clinton campaign went through to see to it that Bernie Sanders could not become the Democrat nominee. What is more authoritarian than that?

I got to tell you.

Am I right?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I don't want to go too much myself into US domestic politics because

I just raised that

As examples myself from that. I don't want to cast stones. I don't necessarily feel that it's my place to, but I'm actually a confession. I'm originally from Scranton, Wilkesboro, Pennsylvania. That's where I was born. Anyway, that's also Joe Biden's hometown, where he was born. And I distinctly remember the video. I mean, I was too young at the time to remember it politically, of course, but I've seen the videos of Joe Biden running for Congress admitting open, right, that the system is corrupt, that corrupt people are elected to office, and that at the time, the only reason he wasn't corrupt is because he wasn't given the money by the oligarchs, by the rich of the country that he had asked for because he was too untested of yet, but that if he was, he would've taken, I mean, I think there is no greater condemnation of the US political system than admissions like that coming from the very seat of the president, or I mean, shall we take the words of prior presidents Jimmy Carter coming right out and saying, America is no longer a democracy. It is an oligarchy.

You mentioned that President Putin went to China for the conference and that this was the first time that he had left the country in quite a while. That to me speaks volumes in how comfortable he must be in the midst of the Russia, Ukraine conflict. His country is at war, and he feels comfortable enough to leave his go to China for a couple of days. That to me says that he's comfortable not only in his position domestically, but he's also comfortable in his country's position internationally.

Yeah, I don't think Putin does. He perfectly understands, I think as a leader what he knows and what he doesn't know. And he has made it quite clear that he does not micromanage his generals in the conflict and in the intervention, the special military operation as they call it in Ukraine, the intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict that has been going on for a decade. Also, of course, neither Russia nor China, nor it must be said, or the United States or India, are signatories to the Rome statute of the international criminal court. So that is not an issue on the trip. In fact, when the international criminal court tried to bring charges against the US, US leaders and military leaders for crimes, alleged crimes, yeah, committed in Afghanistan, in Iraq, they sanctioned the court, they sanctioned the judges, they sanctioned the prosecutor, they threatened to remove funding from the United Nations. They put arrest warrants out for the judges and the prosecutor until the issue was withdrawn. From my understanding is there were even threats made against the families and lives of

SDA was the judge. Yes. I don't remember her first name, but her last name is sda, and her family was sanctioned and threatened.

Yes. So I don't place any credits to that. And one of the reasons I don't place any credits on these charges is anything more than an instance of geopolitical capture of a un institution, which unfortunately happens far more often than it should. But my full disclosure, my wife is from Crimea, which is considered, at least according to the us, to still be part of Ukraine. And we have family all over East Ukraine, and there are some 5 million Ukrainians living and working in Russia. And that is a side of that conflict. The fact that there has been a civil conflict in that country since the openly US backed overthrow of the government there in 2014 is the internal divide in that country. And again, I know Americans think that through their propaganda bubble of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the ancient three networks and Fox and CNN, that they have a better idea what is going on in Ukraine than most Russians do. No, they don't because there are 5 million Ukrainians living in Russia who tell them all the time on tv, in media and in person because of how much families are interrelated on both sides of the border, they know far, far more about what is happening and has been happening politically in that country, not only for the last year or two, but of course going back decades. And it is the height of hubris, I think, to think otherwise.

Switching gears a bit, recently, over 500 people were killed as a result of the Al Ali Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza. And we are seeing this escalation of the conflict in occupied Palestine. As I've been listening to President Xi, as I've been listening to President Putin, they have been trying to find a way to first of all bring about a ceasefire and second of all, negotiate a settlement. I listened to Joe Biden talk about peace, but all he really seems to say is we back Israel a hundred percent. We'll provide more weapons into the region, but we need to have peace. So

Go ahead. Joe Biden has also said, you don't need to be Jewish to be a Zionist. And I think

And has said very clearly that he is a Zionist

And has said that if Israel did not exist, then the United States would have to create it to pursue its interests in the Middle East because it serves such as a convenient platform for the US projection of power into the Middle East.

Wait a minute, lemme throw one more in there. Tony Blinken said the last time that he was in the region, he said, I am not only here as a Secretary of state, I am here as a Jew. So forget independent thinking. Forget being a neutral arbiter here in a Jewish state. That sounds more like imperialism and

Neocolonialism than anything. Mark Sabota. Yeah. Tony Blinken also by the way, mentioned that his family were originally from Russia and that they left the country, his grandfather because of pilgrims in Russia. And I'm really interested in the timing of pilgrims and his grandfather because certainly in the distant past there were pilgrims against Jews in Russia as there were many countries, but within the lifespan of his grandfather, it would make me really seriously question that characterization and feel he's inflating his family's political disagreements within the country. But that certainly also says in the current tensions with Russia in Ukraine and the proxy war there, that he also has a personal ax to grind as do so many people driving US foreign policy on the region like Victoria Newland, whose own family is originally from Ukraine, so there is that as well. But Putin, the Russia has already put forward at the UN Security Council a resolution calling for immediate ceasefire, and this was shot down by the US and Western countries with the US saying that the resolution could not, they couldn't vote for it because it did not criticize Hamas enough, which is obviously the most important thing when you're trying to craft a ceasefire to stop people from actively killing each other.

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One of the things that I found incredibly telling and quite a contrast was as Tony Blinken was on his Middle Eastern tour talking to US allies, the foreign minister of Iran was on his tour of the region talking to Iranian allies. In fact, lemme take a step back. When Trump assassinated Qem soleimani, the revered Iran in general, Iran said, we will retaliate. And a lot of people thought that that meant, oh my goodness, well, over the next few days, Iran's going to do something and Iran didn't do anything. Now we've got Tony Blinken, he was on his trip. Joe Biden was there on his trip, and at the same time, the Iranian foreign minister was talking to Iranian allies, and now the Iranian foreign minister has come out and said, Israel, your time is up. Talk about what an even height, another escalation of this conflict could mean in the region and what it could mean in the world.

Yeah, there was an interesting article out yesterday in the Financial Times where an anonymous US official acknowledged that as a result of the US and the rest of the West, so wholeheartedly backing Israel in this to the degree that they have, and this obvious green light for the ground operation, which is a ethnic cleansing of Gaza, of the Palestinian population, ordering 1 million people to get out of the way. Of course it's an impossibility, where would they go is the most obvious question, even if you were able to order a million people at a time to leave their houses. But there is an alignment of global sentiment and forces, political forces going on the financial Times. This US official and the Financial Times laments that as a result of this, that this is incredibly damaging to us influence in what the US usually likes to call the global south, where if you think of the West, you think of the rest and he says they will never listen to us again. I mean, if they were already, then we've lost them, not just the Islamic world, but more broadly. And because of the recent reproach month between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the normalization of diplomatic relations, thank

You, China.

Yeah. It's brokered by China and not all peaches and cream. But the last week saw the first direct phone call between the president of Iran and the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, and they both agreed, they expressed a common position on what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, and is what Israel is doing and how unacceptable it is. And that is already an amazing geopolitical change. Like the world has shifted, and I have to constantly ask myself, is this real right that the world has changed so much? And there's a saying attributed to Lenin that decades pass and nothing changes. And then at other times in weeks, decades pass decades of change ensue. And we're I think, living in one of those periods, one of those latter periods now where things are changing so fast and we

Minute, wait a minute, a minute. Because to that point again, China helped to broker the reproach mon between the Saudis and the Iranians and the United States was in the process of brokering a reproach mon between the Saudis and Israel, and then Hamas attacks Israel and the Saudis say out Israel, that conversation we were about to have, let's put that on hold because that decade of change has taken place in the matter of a day.

Yeah, Saudi Arabia was really looking for under, shall we say, a newly foreign policy mature Moham bin Salman, who has obviously changed himself a lot in recent years from what he was when he first came into power as the heir to the ailing king who has really been running the country. He is looking for a multi-vector foreign policy with a minimal amount of conflict. So he wanted to have the foreign policy options with bricks, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but it doesn't mean that he wanted a complete severance of relations with the United States either. And since the Trump administration, the US has been pushing very, very hard on their policy of trying to get Arab countries to recognize in Israel and to normalize relations, diplomatic relations, and others, which would also be tantamount to accepting Israeli occupation of large parts of Palestine and ever increasingly more so, you can see where the Palestinians probably regarded a normalization deal being pushed by the US between Saudi Arabia and Israel as an existential issue for them.

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Other hand, wait a minute, and don't forget the Russian killing of babies in the Ukraine, the women's hospital that wasn't a women's hospital.

That is I think, a case for the point, again, for the way the US wages information war mostly against its own people, which is another fascinating at a rabbit hole to go down. But I mean, it's not to say that Israel doesn't routinely kill, I mean, on an essentially daily basis, Palestinian civilians through its process of settling, ethnic cleansing, political

Oppression, it bulldozers, villages, indiscriminately arrests, detains people without charge, and basically

Regularly summarily executes people who resist that,

Right?

So anyway, I believe that Hamas' primary motivation in launching this attack, a wasting military resources that they had spent years building in secret plans that they had. The timing of this tells me that it was to prevent that Saudi Israeli reproach month deal being pushed by the US from going through, because they saw it as existential for them. And if that was the goal, then it has been successful because as a result of Saudi's disproportionate response to, if Israel had said, we are going to do a targeted anti-terrorist operation in Gaza against the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad leadership who were responsible for this, and the people who carried it out, I think there would've been a very different global reaction to this. If instead we didn't have Israeli leaders saying that we're going to destroy Gaza, that we're going to wipe Gaza off the face of turn it to

Dust,

Dust, and that all Palestinians civilians are the enemy. We heard that from Naftali Bennett. That would've been a very different situation. And there is, I think a much more substantial reaction, not only from the usual suspects, we've heard that from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Sufi, sorry, the Shia organization there. That is demonized wrongly in this particular case because it doesn't use terrorist tactics by the US and Israel, and no country in the world really outside the West as a terrorist organization that if Israel goes a ground operation and begins cleansing Gaza, then Hezbollah will open up a second front war on the Israeli north, and then there will be a two. Iran has voiced very similar that prospects that if the Israeli government's atrocities against the Palestinian people, which as a result right now are approaching 4,000 dead, which by the way is almost four times the number of people that the Hamas' operational s of flood attacks killed four times.

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Rocks, rocking chairs, and I want to reiterate hypersonic missiles. That means that Joe Biden has basically sent two targets for Russia to attack.

Now, Russia is not going to just attack American aircraft carriers

World

War ii realize. No, I realize that it's meant as a deterrent,

Which, so what is a deterrent that does not deter?

That's a good question. Unfortunately, I think Russia has seen several red lines be crossed in the recent years with the US escalation in Ukraine and hasn't responded, which has led numerous White House officials to say outright, we don't believe in Russian red lines. That means that we can keep poking the bear. And no matter what they do, they won't respond because they fear a nuclear conflict more than we do. That is, well, it's more than madness. It is the death of mad. It is the death of mutually assured destruction, which takes us back to a very early Cold War era that we should all be afraid of.

Just really quickly, we have just about two minutes left, and I'm glad you made that point, because whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Syria, whether it is the Black Sea, the United States seems to continue to believe a, when Vladimir Putin or when Xi Jinping says something, they don't mean it. And when they make a commitment, they will not honor it. And what I have come to see over the years is they don't bluff. They don't play, they don't joke. We got a minute.

Yeah. So how to mesh that difference between, I think demonstrable reality and what the US ruling administration as seeing as their politicized reading of their opponents, that does not match up with reality. That's a recipe for disaster,

Really. Wow. Well, I want to thank my guest, mark Sloboda. Mark, thank you for joining me today.

Thanks for having me, Dr. Leon. It's been an honor and a pleasure to be on the show.

Thank you, mark. Big shout out to my producer, melody McKinley. Thank you so much for joining the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. 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. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share my show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'll see you next time. Until then, treat each day like it's your last, because one day you'll be right. I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Peace and Blessings. I'm out.

This week's episode features the incomparable Alexander Mercouris, the editor of TheDuran.com and host of The Duran show on YouTube.

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All our episodes can be found at CTDpodcast.com.

Transcript

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 of these events take place. During each episode, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historical 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, we explore the relationships between some of the major conflicts impacting the geopolitical landscape. We'll connect some of the dots between what's happening in Ukraine and Europe, what's happening in Gaza and the Middle East, and what's happening with the relationship between the United States and China. To help me connect these dots is the editor in [email protected] and host of the Duran on YouTube, Alexander MEUs. Alexander, welcome to the show.

Delighted to be with you again, will Mur, and it's a great pleasure to be on the show.

Thank you so much. And Alexander, let's connect some dots. First, does it make sense to connect the dots between, again, what's happening in Ukraine and Europe, Gaza in the Middle East and the US and China? Because many people see these issues as unrelated, and of course we can add conflicts from other regions as well. But for the sake of time, let's just start with these. Does it make sense? Are these events related? Alexander Urs,

They are absolutely related. If you see that there is a single connecting thread, that thread is there. It is US policy. The United States is intimately involved in every one of these conflicts. It is the major arm supplier and financial provider to Ukraine and its major diplomatic backer. It is the arm supplier and funder of Israel and its major diplomatic backer. And the same applies to Taiwan, which is of course in the early stages of what is looking like an increasingly dangerous conflict with China. And yesterday there was an article in the Financial Times by a man called Gideon Rackman, who is a very, very well connected journalist, not just in London, but in Washington. And he said that he had discussions with various US officials including members of the Democratic Party and also people within the administration. And they also agreed that these conflicts are all connected with each other.

(03:14)

When you discussed Ukraine, you mentioned finance and arm supplying. When you mentioned Israel, you mentioned finance and arm supplying. And when it comes to Taiwan, we know for example that Taiwan is now pointing high Mars missiles at China. We know the United States has sent a lot and continues to send a lot of weapons into Taiwan. So many times people hear the military industrial complex and they put that in some kind of grand conspiratorial context. But it sounds like weapons is, and the sale of weapons is the primary motivation here behind these conflicts.

Absolutely. That is what is driving them in every single case. What has been pushing these conflicts is that the United States, the administration, the political backers of the administration, the various lobbyists in Washington, and you can trace all the lobbyists, all the funding ultimately comes back to a certain limited sources. And the military industrial complex is overwhelmingly the biggest. So the military industrial complex that funds the NGOs, the lobbying groups, all of those people, the think tanks that proliferate in Washington, they are all intimately involved in all three of these crises. And they have all made sure in every case that they're pushed in the same direction. So Ukraine was being pushed towards NATO into an alliance with the United States against Russia in the Middle East. Israel was being encouraged to advance relentlessly within the Palestinian Territories and to forge separate peace agreements with Arab countries, which disregarded the interests of the Palestinians in the former British mandate territory of Palestine and in Taiwan. Now, there is apparently arms packages being prepared for Taiwan, which apparently are intended to completely reequip the Taiwanese army. Its ground forces to the tune of $10 billion. And I got that by the way, from the B, b, C. So we are seeing major funding and military buildups in all of these places. And of course, when lots of weapons are supplied into conflict zones where an area in crisis is flooded with weapons in this kind of way, war follows.

Let me read quickly, let's start with the Ukraine. And there's a piece in the Washington Post entitled Miscalculations Divisions marked Offensive Planning by US and Ukraine. They describe, the Washington Post describes the conflict as a stalemate, but when Secretary of Defense, Austin asked the Ukrainian defense Minister Resnikoff what was going on, this is what Resnikoff said. Ukraine's armored vehicles were being destroyed by Russian helicopters, drones, and artillery. With every attempt to advance without air support. The only option was to use artillery to shell Russian lines, dismount from the targeted vehicles and then proceed on foot. We can't maneuver because of the landmine density and tank ambushes. This is according to Resnikoff. And the Washington Post then says, as winter approaches and the frontline freezes into place, Ukraine's, most senior military officials acknowledge that the war has reached a stalemate. Alexander, that doesn't sound like a stalemate to me. That sounds like an ass whipping.

Well, absolutely. It's not a stalemate. It is a disaster. In fact, that article in the Washington Post, which is enormous, it is in two parts. If you actually read it carefully. It's an attempt to defend US policy. It's attempt to throw all the blame on the Ukrainians or most of the blame on the Ukrainians for what went wrong in this summer offensive, which has taken place this year and for the coming debacle, which is now shaping in Ukraine. Now let's me just deal quickly first with the stalemate situation. It seems that the US Defense Minister Secretary Lloyd Austin has just recently had a meeting with Ukraine's overall military commander, general Valeri illusion in Kiev. Lloyd Austin was recently in Kiev and Lloyd Austin was told by illusionary that for Ukraine to win this war, it needs 17 million shells and 400 billion worth of equipment. This is all over the Ukrainian media.

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When I talked to Brian Tic, when I talked to Mark Sloboda, when I talked to Scott Ritter, they all say Russia hasn't even started the fight yet yet. And that if Russia decided to go all in full bore, it would be a massacre. And so getting back to the Washington Post piece and what Ulu is telling Lloyd Austin that he needs, again, they haven't even started fighting yet. Your thoughts?

No, this is absolutely correct. What all of those gentlemen have told you is absolutely true. And you can see this when you actually look at the military units that are conducting most of the fighting at the moment on the Russian side. And it's a very remarkable fact, which again, no part of the western media or western governments ever acknowledge, but most of the fighting in Ukraine is not for the moment being conducted by the regular Russian line army. They haven't yet deployed their heavy divisions. They're tank divisions, they're armor divisions, they're heavy infantry. The people with the infantry fighting vehicles, they're

Air force,

They're air force to any great extent, they're holding back their missiles. Most of the fighting, most of the forces that are currently advancing are a very interesting collection of forces. They're the Don Bass militia who have been retrained and re-equipped. And you are carrying out the biggest offensive, it's ongoing at the moment, which is successful by the way, in a fortified place called elsewhere. It tends to be paratroopers, light infantry, in other words, from the regular Russian military. But these are elite infantry, but there's not relative, many of them. It's chechen fighters, it's various volunteer groups. There are lots of volunteer groups now fighting alongside the Russians in Ukraine. The Russians so far are holding their main army back and it's growing in size. It's growing in size at the rate of 1600 men a day, and apparently around 450,000 have joined up in the Russian military just this year. And the Russian arms production is worrying and increasing all the time. So it's absolutely correct. They haven't actually properly speaking started yet.

And here's something that I don't hear anybody in the West really, and this is very, very fundamental. The United States with Ukraine as its proxy has engaged Russia in the very type of conflict that Russia has been preparing to fight for the last 20 years. And they're fighting it in Russia's backyard. And Scott Ritter, Scott Ritter was on this 0.2 years ago that NATO just doesn't have it. The United States just doesn't have it. I don't remember the number of artillery shells that Russia is sending out all day, all night, but a war of attrition and an artillery type of battle is exactly what Russia has been preparing to fight. So basically the United States stepped into the trap without enough equipment, without enough soldiers, without enough logistics. It was a fiasco from the outset.

Absolutely. Now, this is where I'm going to come back to that Washington Post article because it's actually extremely interesting because what you can see if you read that Washington Post article carefully, is that the people who really wanted this offensive that we've just been through in the summer were the Americans, the Ukrainian general, the same Ukrainian general that I mentioned before. Valeri, illusionary told the Americans last year, look, this is what I need in order to carry out an offensive. And he pitched the number. He thought so high that the Americans would find it impossible to fair it, and apparently the Americans gasp, this is what this article said. But then they went ahead and provided it and they started training all these men and they went through all the various war games and simulations and all of these kinds of things. And you could see immediately that they were feeding into all of this, their own presumptions about the Russians.

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You mentioned morale, and we heard early on in the conflict people saying that the Russian people were turning on Putin and all of these kinds of things. And what seems to have been missed is the Russian people are behind his government a hundred percent. And their ire was not directed at the fact that he intervened in Ukraine. Their ire was directed at him for not doing this sooner and not going in more forcefully. There are many who I understand to be saying, why are you nickel and dimming this? Why don't you just go in, kick butt, take names and move on. But he has a different strategy and his generals have a different strategy in terms of their response. Is that accurate?

That's absolutely correct. And this has been a longstanding thing, and I've been saying this for years, and all of the people that you've been mentioning at that, Brian Tic, mark Vota, Scott Ritter, would tell you exactly the same thing. But then of course we spend time talking to Russians, not just the kind of Russians, Westerners, talk to other Russians, the kind of Russians that you will find in the streets, the people who drive you, the taxes, who you meet in hotels, those sorts of people. And the important thing to understand about Russia is this is an extremely educated society. This is a very educated society indeed. And it's a politically very educated society. Also, it has to be because Russia's history has been such over the last hundred plus years where you cannot not be educated or well-informed about political and geostrategic matters, and you've had constantly people telling you why is Putin pulley his punches?

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In fact, I'm glad you mentioned diplomatically because what gets missed, again through lack of context in reporting from the Western media is Putin is playing to the world. What we see now is he, whereas Joe Biden told us he was going to turn the rubble into rubble and he was going to bring about regime change in Russia and he was going to make Russia a pariah and all of that kind of stuff. When you look at President Xi, when you look at President Putin, when you look at President Raisi, when you look at Maduro in Venezuela, these guys are now on the international stage as statesmen, and it's Joe Biden who is looking and as well as Netanyahu as the odd men out.

This is absolutely correct. Now, this is by the way, something which the Russians themselves are not used to at all. For most of the 20th century, they've been accustomed to a reality where the United States and the West essentially represented the world, and Russia itself felt itself a fortress, an encircled fortress. And this is very much if you spent time in Russia, this is still very much the instinct that a lot of Russians have, which explains why, by the way, they weren't say, we've got to wait and see, try and argue things with the Chinese, explain things to the Indians, make deals with the Venezuelans and all the others. They didn't really see it in those terms. Of course, Putin did, and this is where he's completely different from any other Russian leader that has come before because Putin understood that there are fundamental changes in the world that provided Russia behaved with self-control and discipline far from being isolated globally. It would be supported globally because most of the world could see what was really going on, and it would be the United States that would be isolated globally instead. And that is exactly what has happened, and that is something new. And the Russians themselves, I'm talking about the Russian people are astonished by it. And from everything I'm hearing rather exhilarated intoxicated by it, they did not expect things to turn out this way.

And of course, you cannot in this conversation really have this conversation with also talking about the power of Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister Wang y in China. Those foreign ministers, again, unlike Secretary of State Blanken, they're true statesmen. They are men that have a much broader understanding of context. They have a much broader understanding of diplomacy. They have a much broader understanding of history, and they bring a whole, well, basically Blinken is playing checkers while these guys are playing three dimensional chess. Let me quickly, let's move because we could spend hours on this part of the conversation. The broader, let's connect the dots between what's happening with this Ukraine, Russian conflict and the broader context of Europe. Because there are reports now for example, that the Bavarian mayor, Marcus Soder, the prime minister in Bavaria, is saying that the increased energy costs, and there are a number of factors now that this whole conflict is having on Europe. The United States blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, cutting off cheap natural gas to Germany is having an incredible industrial impact. I think Goodyear and Michelin are closing tire plants in Germany because manufacturing costs are too high. This has become an incredibly treacherous, has had a treacherous economic impact on European countries. You're in London, you know this better than I do.

Oh, absolutely. Now the great success, the great achievement of the United States in the post Cold War period has been the Americanization of Europe's political elite. And it has been an astonishing thing to see, explain

What that means.

Well, what has happened, and this is not easy to explain exactly how it's happened, and I suspect that there's a lot of this story that we don't quite know, but over the last 30 plus years, Europe, which had its own, each country in Europe had its own political leaders, its own politics, its own history of diplomacy. Remember modern diplomacy as we understand it today, the kind of diplomacy that Avro and Wangee and John Shankar of India and other countries conduct. The rules of that game were created in Europe, and they were being practiced in Europe until very recently, until well within our lifetimes, if I can say. So, all of that somehow seems to have ended. And what happened was that at some point, the Europeans, the European leadership class, its political class, came to identify itself very much with what's called the Euro-Atlantic Project.

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And I think it's also important to understand that the de-industrialization of Europe, particularly the de-industrialization of Germany, was one of the objectives of this ridiculous mission in Ukraine, that this was a broader water intention to de-industrialized Germany and to sell Germany American liquified natural gas.

Absolutely. But here again, you see how things have changed in a way because what the United States is now effectively doing is it's cannibalizing its own alliance. It is instead of supporting its allies, it is now predating upon them.

In fact, wait a minute, wait a minute. Because to that point, it's important for people to understand that when the US blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, the United States was attacking another NATO ally Germany. So under Article five, other NATO allies very well could have decided to come to the defense of Germany in the manner that they deemed fit. But of course, the United States is the head of nato. So that didn't happen. But it's just an important point I think for people to understand that the United States engaged in an act of war against a NATO ally.

Absolutely. Of course, that is unequivocal. I mean, if you attack the vital energy infrastructure of a country and use explosives against it by any historic law of war, that is an act of war, no question. But this is what the United States increasingly has been doing, and you're quite right to say how they've pushed a very, very hard bargain on liquified natural gas. They're tempting European businesses to relocate to the United States. They're trying to exploit the de-industrialization of Germany, in other words, to their own advantage. But of course, this is the diametric opposite of what the United States once did in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States sought to build up European economies because he wanted a strong Europe strong allies so that he could withstand the Soviet Union and its allies. Now, when the United States itself feels diminished, its trying to supplement its own power by predating, by feeding on its allies. And yes, that will work for a time. It will make the United States stronger relatively than it might've been, but at the cost of weakening its overall alliance weakening the collective west, in other words. And in the long term, this is a bad policy as any policy that involves cannibalization ultimately is.

So let's switch gears now from talking about the conflict in Ukraine and its impacts on Europe to what's going on in the occupied territories in occupied Palestine. There was a piece again in the Washington Post who will run Gaza after the war. And the piece says, US searches for the best of bad options. And they're trying to figure out, of course, they want to totally get rid of Hamas. They're talking about could the Palestine authority be the solution? But the interesting thing is nobody seems to be talking to the Palestinians about who they want to run the area. And all of this conversation, in my opinion, is sheer evidence of what the grand plan has been from the very beginning, which is the Zionist government in Israel is a settler colonial state, and as a settler colonial state, you remove the indigenous people so that you can expand the space for your own. This is basically a humongous land grab on the Mediterranean Sea.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are people in Israel who are making talking straightforwardly about this now to an extent that we've never seen before. Some of the language coming out of officials in Prime Minister Netanyahu's government is absolutely at that kind. And this is where I'm going to say what my own personal view about US policy throughout this crisis has been, or how it started, which is when the crisis began in October, there was unequivocally an Israeli plan to force the entire population of Gaza out of Gaza, relocate them in Sinai in each Egypt. Qatar was supposed to provide a tent city to house them there. And of course, once Gaza had had its population expelled, Israel would've quickly finished off Hamas occupied Gaza, Israeli settle settlers would've moved in, and then sooner or later they'd have finished off what is left of the West Bank where there's been increasing amounts of violence and aggression as well.

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Putin is on his way to the Saudis.

The Saudis.

Do

You see how the pieces are all coming together

And connect the dots there because you mentioned the Saudis and the Iranians have found reproach mon and have come back together. That was due to the diplomacy of President Xi and the Chinese. We know the relationship between China and Russia, and now Putin is on his way to Saudi Arabia. There are a whole lot of dots that are being connected here, and it's not to the advantage of the United States.

No, not at all. Now, I think the first thing to understand, and we have to say this base point, we're going to come to China in more detail in a moment, but the biggest single change that has happened in the world over the last 30 years is the emergence of China as an economic, political, and military superpower that is at least the equal in all of these things, economics, politics, military affairs, as the United States itself is. And that has completely changed the global geometry. It means that even during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was a significant alternative poll and rival to the United States, it could not match the United States at every spectrum of power China can. And that has changed the situation globally. And we see how it's playing out in the Middle East because as is so often the case in the Middle East, what the Chinese do, and they do this very intelligently, is that they set out their positions.

(43:03)

(44:20)

Two things on Gaza before we move to China. One is the Hamas strategy. I believe that the Hama strategy is a much longer term strategy than the Americans give them credit for. I don't think that their strategy is to win militarily. I think that their longer term strategy is to win psychologically, to make the settlers, the Zionist settlers in Israel so uncomfortable with their reality because they've been sold this bill of goods by Netanyahu and others. We will protect you, we will defend you against those evil Arabs. And now all of a sudden that sense of security has been broken, and I don't know that they'll ever be able to regain it, especially with Hezbollah in the north waiting. You've got Syria in the waiting to take over the Golan Heights. This thing could become an incredible conflagration in the region, the likes of which neither Israel nor the United States can manage your thoughts on that point?

Absolutely. Now, first of all, let's just say something about Hamas. I mean, a lot of people have been talking about Hamas and some of the things they say are true, but one of the things they consistently do is that they underestimate Hamas itself. It is a highly intelligent organization. It it's politically extremely sophisticated. This is something people consistently underestimate. And what you are describing, actually, the psychological nature of the struggle is that the classic struggle of a insurgency, a revolutionary, a national liberation movement, you can't win on the battlefield against an army. You win politically hearts and minds. Well, Dr. Kissinger, who's now hopefully in another more fiery place actually for it rather, well actually when he was talking about Vietnam, the insurgency, the revolutionary, the National Liberation Movement, all it has to do in order to win is survive. If it survives, it wins.

(48:03)

(49:12)

And in the interests that I mentioned such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria as it relates to the Golan, I didn't mention Iran, I didn't mention Yemen. There are a whole bunch of factions that will join this resistance. And I hadn't thought to ask you this, but this just comes to mind when we look at the conflict as it's existing right now. And those other factions that I've mentioned are still standing on the sideline that tells me they're standing on the sideline because contrary to Western reporting, Hamas is doing a much, much better job than the West wants to admit. And those other factions are standing on the sideline saying, this is not the time for us to get involved because this business is being handled by Hamas. Is that a fair assessment?

Absolutely. I come back to this. I mean, Hamas doesn't need to defeat the Israeli army in Gaza. It knows that if you're trying to do that, it would destroy itself. And that's not what it's doing. What's doing is it's resisting. And so long as it is able to keep resisting, it is winning. Now, this is something again, people don't understand. Israel talks about conducting this operation for a year that already tells you how much resistance there is, and that resistance will grow because more

People enjoy. And that goes to Nala's statement a couple of weeks ago when he asked the question very clearly, how long do y'all want to do this? Because we're in it till the end. And he said, said, I don't think you all have the stomach for what you're about to get into.

Well, that is absolutely correct. And of course, Israel, it's a small country. Its economy is now coming under increasing strain. Casualties are growing. There is going to be increasing problems within Israel itself the longer this goes on. And that isn't even to consider the bigger political diplomatic backlash that there is going to be if there is a year of war. So you could see that this is playing out in exactly the way that Hermas wanted, and it was predictable. It was entirely predictable. They're going to just talk about the general picture, the Hezbollah and all the rest, because I actually, now, this is my own view, and I've consistently taken the view view that these huge American military deployments to the Middle East, two aircraft carriers, one in the Persian Gulf and a higher class submarine equipped with 150 tornado, not tornado missiles, aircraft, all of these things.

(53:42)

(55:03)

(56:34)

And you mentioned time in what's important I think for Americans to understand is whether you're talking about Russia, whether you're talking about Arab states, whether you're talking about China, they have a different concept of time because their cultures are much older than the United States has been in existence. We're talking thousands of years of history that they understand, hence the adage, you have the watches, but we have the time. And President Putin, when Biden announced that the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier group was on its way to the Mediterranean, Putin said, why are you doing that? He said, you're not scaring anybody. These people don't scare. So let's move because we have just a few minutes left. Let's move to the discussion of China because I'm trying to figure out who in Taiwan hasn't been paying attention to what's happened in Ukraine and why would the Taiwanese government want to become Ukraine part two?

Right. Well, I think the first thing to understand is that there are elections in Taiwan, and there've been elections in Ukraine and both in Ukraine. There were lots and lots of people who were very worried about the situation and didn't really want to see a certain political leadership aligned with the West take power. And I'm sure the same is true in Taiwan. We must be much more skeptical. I mean, I'm sorry to say this, but it's a fact about the outcome of elections. Elections in these kind of countries don't necessarily reflect the feelings and ideas and thoughts and motives and intentions of the people in these countries. They are much more attuned to what people in Washington want to see the outcome that people in Washington want to see. If we're talking about Taiwan, I'm not saying that the elections there are be straightforwardly rigged, but you're going to have the media in Taiwan promoting a certain view. You're going to see splits within the opposition parties, and that apparently has happened. You're going to see all kinds of problems like that start to build up. And of course, that opens the way for a party like the one that we're seeing in Taiwan win the

Election. We're now seeing opposition parties in Taiwan being investigated, lawsuits being filed against them as they are trying to coalesce in order to go against Drawn a blank on her name, the current prime minister, president of Taiwan, but Joe Biden met with President Xi in San Francisco, and during the press conference, president Biden talks about, oh, we had a great conversation and blah, blah, and then he turns around and calls GA dictator. This makes absolute, why do you want to try to pick a fight with China in China's front yard? I was saying that Ukraine is Russia's backyard, Taiwan and the South China Sea, that's China's front yard and just like Russia, China, hypersonic missiles, those aircraft carriers groups that the United States wants to send to the region, those are nothing but targets.

Absolutely. This is entirely correct. I mean, it is at fundamental levels irrational. I think this is something we need to say. I mean, American policy in Ukraine is misconceived. American policy in the Middle East is misconceived also, but American policy towards China, towards Taiwan

Is

Insane's insane. It's completely rational. Unfortunately, there also seems to be an enormous bipartisan support for it. Now, I'm just going to just, if I may just speak briefly about the San Francisco Sam, because the Chinese were very reluctant to go, Xi Jinping didn't want to go. Xi Jinping had basically lost all trust and confidence in Biden at the start of this year over the balloon incident. The relationship between the two was rocky. We have a Chinese readout from one of their earlier meetings in which Xi Jinping all but called Biden a liar to his face. That readout really ought to be better known than it is, but eventually the Americans persuaded si shing to come. So why did he do it? I think it's extremely straightforward. The Chinese use the San Francisco Summit as a device to demonstrate their power. They got the Americans to agree to all of the conditions they set for the summit meeting.

(01:02:44)

Because they're doing business in China. Your iPhone, the batteries for your Tesla, they're doing business with China.

China, exactly. And that was what the Chinese, in their subtle way were wanting to demonstrate. They were trying to show to the Americans, to the American political leadership, to the people in Washington. Look, we are far more strong, far more powerful than you seem to understand even in your own country. When our leader comes, he's able to change the landscape around him, and that was what the Chinese were trying to do. I have to say this. I think that there is this very sane demonstration of power that the Chinese made in San Francisco is going to inflame some people in Washington even more for them. The very concept of a country that is equal and equivalent to the United States in power and which is exceeding the United States in some form of power is against nature. It is so abhorrent that they have to find some way of reversing it.

(01:04:55)

Which they realistically don't have because Washington is about, what, 7,000 miles from Beijing? What makes the United States, just from a sheer logistical perspective, I understand the United States has bases all over the world. Japan, I got all that, but you're still basically fighting a 7,000 mile war in China's backyard. And it's not, if this breaks out, it's not just China. It's China and Russia, it's China and North Korea, it's Russia and North Korea. You can bring South Korea into the fight if you want to. I think North Korea will handle that. You can bring Japan into the conflict if you want to. I think North Korea, as I say on the street, we'll let North Korea handle the light work, and it makes absolutely no sense. Connect these three dots and we'll get out.

Well, this is absolutely correct, but it comes back to this extraordinary degree of overconfidence that Americans have, which we've seen in Ukraine. I mean, this idea that this offensive that the Americans were planning in Ukraine last summer would succeed this utter underestimation of Russian military capabilities.

Wait, let me just quickly jump in, and I think you know this better than I do. When the United States engages in war game simulations against Russia, it loses when the United States engages in war game simulation against China. It loses every single time. Their systems are telling them. The systems are telling the Pentagon you can't win the fight.

Absolutely true, but they ignore those stipulations. That's the trouble, because this is exactly,

Don't confuse me with the facts. Please confuse me with the facts.

This is exactly what happened with the Ukrainian offensive, the Washington Post article goes all kinds of detail because of course, they then change the war games. They factor in all kinds of assumptions that they make about the other side, and that enables them eventually to come out with the answer that they will win, and they do this send of the Chinese, I've been reading article after article in the American media, now the American military media, which is a strange place by the way, but about how actually the Chinese militaries of paper tiger, the Chinese weapons systems don't really work. The Chinese soldiers are inexperienced. They've never really known war until now that Chinese generals are incompetent and corrupt. So all we have to do is just go in and fight them, and we will show to the Chinese what's what, and we will win. And that's exactly what they did in Ukraine this year, and that's what they think they're going to do with China.

(01:09:07)

Americans need to read Sun Zu, the Art of War if they want to play the Chinese cheap, because a lot of those strategies are still applicable and making an incredible amount of sense. Alexander Mercurius from the Duran, thank you so much for joining me today. I greatly, greatly appreciate it.

My great pleasure. Let's do this again,

Folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share my show, follow me on social media. You'll find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where 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. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. Peace and blessings. I'm out

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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 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 these events occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. What are we to do when neither party is interested in representing our interests and we don't seem to be willing to demand that they do? For insight into this, let's turn to my guest. He's a lifelong activist and scholar, former dean of the African-American Studies Department at Ohio University, and former director of the King Center in Atlanta, and former host of morning conversations with Tom Porter. He's Tom Porter. Tom, welcome, and let's connect some dots.

Good morning and thanks for having me Wiler.

So Tom, there's a lot going on right now. There are certain times or moments in history when you look back at some time later and you say, wow, that was a pivotal moment. That was the time that changed the world, the industrial revolution, the first man on the moon, the assassination of Dr. King. I believe that we're in one of those moments right now, the transformation from a unipolar to a multipolar world with the US no longer being the unipolar hegemon, the US Empire and Neocolonialism are struggling to survive. Tom, with that being understood, your assessment of what I've just stated and what are we to do?

It's an interesting question. At the same time that the world is, and rightly so focused on the events that are happening in the Middle East, not dealing with it in terms of a historical context, but at the same time that this is happening, there's a big meeting in China celebrating 10 years of the Belt Road Initiative where countries from all over the world are there. We are at a pivotal moment in history and what's happening in the Middle East. It is a reflection of that. It's a reflection of something historically that was wrong from the very, very, the state of Israel was founded in 1948, not in the biblical times of old. And not only was it founded in 1948, and the question you have to really ask yourself, why did they simply allow the Jews to stay in Europe? That's an interesting question. So now if you look at what is happening in the Middle East and if you deal with the results and not how the results were obtained, that is the state of Israel is a geopolitical construct.

(03:37)

You mentioned the 10th anniversary of China's Belt and Road initiative in the fact that a number of countries from all over the world came to China in order to convene, and you had President Putin spending three hours meeting with President Xi, and this is a rarity. When Putin and Lavrov traveled, foreign Secretary Lavrov traveled together. Lavrov goes to meet with Wangee, the Chinese foreign minister, and they're talking about all kinds of trade initiatives. They're talking about security initiatives, all of this taking place, and the United States isn't in the room. That, in my opinion, speaks volumes about how the world has changed.

Well, the West is no longer the center of the world. The West is no longer the dominant force in the world, politically, economically and actually militarily because you have around the world, as I said, different organizations and formations and the west has been left out. I mean, take Israel for years. Yesterday the United States representative of the UN vetoed a proposition that was put on the table by Brazil, vetoed it as it has in the past, and that is whenever the subject of Israel misdeeds would come up at the UN and it would pass overwhelmingly, but it was vetoed by the United States. The problem is now that the world is not paying any attention to that veto. But what is also interesting in all of this, Wilma, is the presence of blacks out front representing this country. It was a black woman who vetoed it, Linda Thomas Greenfield.

(07:09)

(08:42)

Go ahead.

So we don't make the connections between what is happening in the Middle East and potentially what could happen to us in this country as we are marginalized more and more. It's not just gentrification, but it's also the reduction of the quality of education and our school systems. It's also the quality of healthcare. It's everything that we consider the misery index,

And it's all of those things, the misery index that we keep being told that we can't afford to ameliorate or we can't afford to solve, but somehow we can find a hundred billion dollars to send to Ukraine. We can now have a president in Joe Biden who wants to send not only money to Ukraine, but now also send more money to the settler colonial state known as Israel. And you even have Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury, saying, oh, we can fight wars. We can afford to fight wars on two fronts. That's not a problem at all. Well, if we can fight a war on two fronts, then why can't we fight the war on poverty? Why can't we fight the war on homelessness? Why can't we pay teachers in this country who are supposed to be educating the most significant resource in our culture, our children? Then why can't we afford to pay them more? Why can't we fight those fronts instead of printing money in order to send to Ukraine and in order to send to the settler colonial state known as Israel?

Exactly. And the problem that I'm having in all of this Wilma, is, and as I talk with my friends, I say the fundamental question that we must ask ourselves today. What does all of this mean for us? Should we have representatives at the Belt and Road Initiative in China? I visited Palestine and Lebanon years ago in a delegation that was led by Jack odell, and one of the things that I admired about the Palestinians, even though they were in a large ghetto, they were organized. They had their own Red Cross, they had their own school system. They acted as if they were in exile. We act as if we belong to something, which each and every day is saying to us that you could stay here, but under our conditions, and we have to really ask ourselves, should we? The UN has already said that the conditions of black people in this country is similar to crimes against humanity. Should this woman who represents the United States represent us at the un or should we have our own? We have to connect ourselves to the forces that are moving forward, not continue to stay and plead each and every day for the devil to accept us in hell.

What I hear you saying there is we should be having an international Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. We should, as Mrs. Hamer did at the Democrat Convention because Mississippi would not seat black, a black delegation that we should create our own and take that to the United Nations.

Exactly. We have to act as we really are. We are people who are really in exile, whether we believe it or not, there was never any intention to free the slaves and there was never any intention when they were freed to honor that freedom in any meaningful way was never a 40 acres in a mule. I mean, there was never, they had no plan for black people of African descent in this country beyond slavery any more than they had a plan to give the land back to the Native Americans. They never had any plan, and they still don't have a plan. And we have been continuing in each generation, our politics has been focused on trying to convince the people who run this country that we are worthy of being a part of this piece of SHIT. Rather than saying, Hey, I mean it's like critical race theory.

(14:25)

You mentioned putting black faces on the front of all of this. If we shift the conversation, for example to Haiti, that would be a perfect example of what you're talking about. It's Hakeem Jeffries who has been traversing the Caribbean, trying to convince Caribbean countries to join the US invasion of Haiti. I believe Kamala Harris was a part, I know she's not part of the CBC, but she was at one point that she also was down at Racom trying to convince Caribbean countries to back the US invasion of Haiti. And now they finally convinced Kenya to get on board and send a thousand Kenyan. So-called policemen to Haiti, and fortunately the Kenyan Supreme Court has said not so fast they think that this move violates the Kenyan constitution. But I just use that as an example of how African-Americans are put on the face. I call it minstrel internationalism because it's black face on white folks foolishness

Without a doubt. They haven't really asked anybody black to comment on what is happening in the Middle East. Only to say that I support the state of Israel or the state of Israel has a rhythm.

Right to exist.

Right to exist and right to defend itself. Well, that's an interesting question because it goes back to 1948. It's not like this is an old situation, and it was a land grab that the people who settled and formed the state of Israel were not from that part of the world world. Their history was in Europe. And that's why I say it was a geopolitical construct. I mean, they considered putting it where Uganda is, and then they were going to put it in Latin America. So they considered a number of different places. So there's nothing sacrosanct about the state of Israel because the other thing is they say that Israel is the only democracy in the, if in fact Palestinians were allowed to vote in elections in Israel,

They'd be outnumbered.

Yeah, they'd be outnumbered. But again, we have to ask ourselves, what does this all mean for us? Biden's making these crazy statements. What does it mean to us? What does it mean to us that we give Israel more money than we give the whole continent of Africa every year, but we take more out of the continent of Africa every year.

Go ahead, finish that.

Then we take out of any other continent.

And to that point, that's one of the things that motivated Niger to throw the French out of Niger, which was we have some of the most precious resources in our country that are extracted from our country every year and somehow some way we're one of the poorest countries in the world. And they were saying, we have to change that dynamic. And what did they do took, and you know what? I think this is a great place to talk about the difference between flag independence and real freedom. Because for example, when you look at Palestine, they have a flag. When you look at Niger, they have a flag. When you look at so many of these former colonial states, which are now neo-colonial states, they got their independence, which means they got a flag, they got a government to a great degree, they control a lot of their politics, but what they don't control was their economies. And when you control your economy, you then have real freedom. And that's what a lot of these resistance movements now are about, is controlling their, what did Gil Scott Heron say? When I control your resources, I control your world.

That's right. It's interesting because I'm constantly having to remind my friends from the Caribbean that who like to talk about we have our own flag, and I have to constantly remind them that brother and sister, that's just another place where the slave ship stop. Don't get this stuff twisted. And it's very important that we understand that because they are using, do you notice that people who were black Americans now refer to themselves as black American of Jamaican descent, black Americans, of what they were comfortable in being black Americans. And now that they understand that the country is using them, the Black studies movement was undermined by bringing reactionary Africans and people from the Caribbean into leadership. You don't have to take my word for it, do a survey. So because you can come here and don't have a commitment to the struggle of black people in this country, and you leave the real struggle that's going on in your country. So we're beginning to see that not only, but just notice this from now on, people who now say that I'm a black American and of so-and-so, but when you were taking advantage of everything that we had fought for, you were happy in being a black American.

But here's a point that I haven't heard anybody mention, and that is the Balfour Agreement from 1917, which is where the whole agreement to establish a colony in Palestine was agreed to in London. And one of the provisions of the Balfour Declaration was the civil rights and protections of the indigenous Palestinians will not be assaulted. They will be protected. In fact, if you read the Balfour Declaration, Israel isn't mentioned. All it talks about is a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine with a capital P.

That's interesting. But see, there you go, raising those vicious truths,

Connecting the dots,

Which is really so important that we understand, as Cabral would say, connecting the struggles that we understand the interrelatedness of the world in which we live, in which China talks about bringing the world together to solve pressing problems,

As does Russia,

Right? The West, basically everything is a matter of national security. They're motivated. The new justification for every dirty deeded that they want to do is it's a matter of national security. If black people really begin to push hard, they're going to say that it's a matter of national security that we have to deal with. Not that the issue that they're raising is not important. They're not even talking about unifying the world even to solve the problem of climate. They're not talking about peace. They're talking about war, strategic interests and what have you. They're not even discussing building a better world, because if they talked about building a better world, they would have to change the system. And I mean something as simple as trying to solve the climate problem. Well, you could always say that by so-and-so and so-and-So we're going to eliminate the use of automobiles and have more public transportation more. I mean, you can go some places in this country, like my state of Ohio, if you don't have a car, you can't get around. There's no rail system. I mean, one of the things about the east coast, you can go to Philly, you can go to New York, or you get in the Midwest, it gets tricky.

You can go to Europe and never need a car with trains and buses and subway systems. You can go to Europe and never need a driver's license.

It's a mess, I tell you.

But you know, I'm glad that you brought up war versus solving problems because going back to the meeting that recently took place in China, while that meeting was taking place in China and they were cutting economic deals, they were cutting development deals, they were talking about how to make the world safer and improve the world. Joe Biden was in the Middle East fanning the flames of war, encouraging Netanyahu to invade Gaza, telling him, I've got your back. Go ahead and go on in. And I found it ironic that a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, we were looking forward to the Saudis signing a deal, an agreement to recognize the colony known as Israel. And then once Hamas went in and sent those missiles into the colony, the settler colony, Saudi Arabia said, no, that's probably not a good idea right now we need to sit back and reevaluate all of this. Tony Blinken goes to Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman makes him wait damn near an entire day before MBS sits down with Blinken sending a very clear message. The dynamic is changing

Because what the Arab nations have to deal with

Are the Arab people,

The Arab people, the Arab streets, and you got mostly all over the world. The population is getting younger and younger in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia. It's getting young and younger, and they definitely want a better world, a world free from war. And what Biden and blinking and these people are all selling more war. Why would you send more military weapons to a country that's already just overburdened with weapons? And the thing that they don't mention in any of these discussions is that Israel has nuclear weapons that's always had them. And in contrast to when South Africa gained this political independence, the one thing that they had agreed to was to emulate their nuclear weapons. South Africa had nuclear weapons under apartheid, and one of their leading, if not leading most important trading partner was Israel. Was Israel. When people say Israel is an apartheid state, it has always supported apartheid. So that's not really, but a small step from supporting apartheid someplace else and instituting the same practices in your country. And Biden goes without any understanding, without any mentioning of the apartheid nature of Israel or in mentioning in a real meaningful, substantive sense, freedom, justice, inequality for the Palestinians. He didn't even mention the two state solution, I don't think.

No. What he did mention that he did in his last speech, he did utter the words to state solution. But what he did not do as he called for peace, he never talked about equality for the Palestinians. And he talked about democracy, but he never spoke about democracy for the Palestinians. Because if you talk, people need to ask themselves this question, what does it mean when Netanyahu or Ben or Mulch talks about an Israeli state? Nobody asks, what does that mean? And it's important for me to say right here, this is not an antisemitic conversation. This has absolutely nothing to do with Jews because this has everything to do with Zionism. And it's important for people to understand. Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jews. So this conversation has nothing to do with antisemitism. It has everything to do with freedom and justice, not only for the Palestinians, because it has everything to do with freedom and justice for the world. Because if you solve that problem of the settler colonial state and the genocide that's being exercised in the settler colonial state, you can solve a lot of other problems at the same time.

Well, Israel will never be safe within its borders until it deals fairly with the Palestinians. I mean, you can't just, as Fanon would say, we rebel because we can't breathe. We rebel because we can't breathe. You have 2 million people pushed together in what is nothing but a ghetto. And then you're taking more and more of that each day. You're shooting more and more of them each day. We have to get beyond this notion that if we criticize Israel or if we criticize some behavior of some members of the Jewish community, that we will be accused of antisemitism.

(31:29)

You mentioned a world free from war, and I want to just reiterate the point that at that economic in China, they weren't talking about war. They were talking about peace. But what does Gil Scott Heron say? Ask them what they're fighting for and they'll never tell you the economics of war because you were asking about why is the United States sending more weapons into the region? The reason is Lockheed Martin makes a lot of money when they do Raytheon, which by the way, our Secretary of Defense sat on the board of makes a lot of money when they do. That's why these cluster munitions are being sent into Ukraine. Why? Because they've been sitting on the shelf for years because they've been banned internationally. They want to clear their basements and their shelves, say again,

Their inventory.

They want to clear their inventory why? So they can get contracts for new weapons. That's what a lot of this is all about. And because sending more weapons into Ukraine at this stage of the game isn't going to change the dynamics on the battlefield. That war is over. It's done. The only question now to answer is how much longer does the United States want to push Ukraine to continue to take this weapon? That's the only question.

And the fact is sitting, all these are matters into the Middle East, these ships and what have you. It's just a show and supporting the military industrial complex because the United States is not going to get involved in a war in a Middle East because it will inflame the whole Middle East and the state of Israel will cease to exist if that happens. So I mean, it is bs, but there's an old saying that capitalism can only grow under war, and socialism can only grow, can grow only in peace. And so the Chinese know that if we can build a better mousetrap, and we can't do that if we just trying to build up an army, what have you, we have an army, what have you, but we don't want to get in any kind of war at all. We're not going to get sucked into something. With Taiwan, we played a long game. The Taiwanese are Chinese people, and there's a difference between the government and people. So capitalism, the history of capitalism has been, war has been plundering, has been rape. That's the history of capitalism. It was founded

Markets and resources, markets, resources and labor. That's

We were both the market and the labor.

We, well, in fact, many will argue that that's one of the reasons why they had to end enslavement in this country was because they needed those enslaved individuals as customers.

That's interesting because that is basically what we are even in the country days, is consumers.

(36:01)

Which is one of the things I always, and you were much closer to that than I was, than I ever could have been. I always felt that one of the mistakes that we made early in that game was getting back on the bus. Once we decided to not ride the bus. We should have sent the bus company into bankruptcy.

Right. And started our own.

Exactly. Exactly.

I mean, the history of black people in this country is that when we did our own, we had more power and greatest strength and greater community. You take the, I remember growing up with the Negro Leagues, it was nothing like it. And who cared about what Babe Ruth or somebody else was doing?

We had Hank Aaron, right? We had Josh Gibson.

The whole myth that black quarterbacks didn't have whatever it took to be quarterbacks, whatever were quarterbacks in every black high school to every black college in the country. They just wasn't playing in the NFL.

And look at the NFL today,

Right? And that is why the Negro Leagues, and that's a whole nother discussion about Jackie Robinson, not him personally, but the integrating of baseball had absolutely nothing to do, but fairness of being right by black people. It had to do with the fact that more people were going to see black baseball than was going to see white baseball. And whenever black baseball and white baseball meant black

Baseball, baseball won.

The same is true with the A, B, A and the NBA. More people were going to watch Dr. J and Artist Gilmore, they were going to watch the NBA. So we say we got to merge it. And it's so much that in America, it's like the difference between jazz and black music. Anybody can play jazz, but everybody can't play

Black music. Can't play black music. Well, it's interesting that you brought up the ABA and the NBA and comparing that to the integration of baseball, because when they integrated baseball, they didn't bring the black teams into Major League baseball. No, they did not. They brought the black players because if you bring the black teams, you have to bring black ownership. And I think it was Queen Mother Moore. And again, you may know that, you probably know that history a whole lot better than me, but I thought it was Queen Mother Moore in New York that kept advocating for don't take the players out of the Negro Leagues, integrate the teams. But when they went to the A, b, A and the NBA, the ABA was still, that was white ownership in the A, B, A. It was white ownership in the NBA. So what did they do with the A, B, A? They integrated players and teams instead of just players. Because if they had done the same thing with basketball that they did with baseball, a lot of those A teams would've folded.

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. So same, we see the same thing playing out today, and they give us Jay-Z and Queen B give us Obama and Michelle. They give us all of these things. And at the same time that the life for the majority of black people in this country is getting worse because it's good that magic decides to give some black kid a scholarship, but that's not the same as quality education for all black kids. That's like a lottery. You get lucky if Magic knows you or jz. JZ gets to do the Super Bowl a halftime at the Super Bowl, but that doesn't mean anything to these black kids who are out in the street, who can't go to the Super Bowl, can't go to a local NFL game,

May not have a television in their home to watch the Super Bowl.

It doesn't really mean anything. And so this kind of tokenism and we get caught up in it. I mean, right now we're kind of caught up in what's that? Will Smith and Jada? Jada Ja

Pinkett.

I don't know what it's all about, and I don't really care because it's really not that important. It just really isn't that important. So we have to be very, very,

Or the discussion about Tyler Perry and what Tyler Perry is doing and how great it is for black people, even though he has a non-union organization in Atlanta, and we know what unions did to help create the black middle class. He made a lot of his money playing off of stereotypes of black people.

He still, I mean, I think about a week ago I saw one of his movies, it was late at night. I turned on a movie. It was why I got Married or something. And it's basically black people playing white people in black face. That's basically what it is. I mean, the kind of issues that they have and the kind of jobs that they have

And the responses and solutions that are provided are not ours. In fact, I remember Barack is saying They playing you better than you.

No question.

So here's the question, Tom, what are we to do? We're looking at 2024 right now. We're looking at Trump and Biden don't know if Trump's going to get there because he may wind up in jail. Don't know if Biden's going to get there. He doesn't really know where he is. So given that right now, that's what we have. They're talking about Robert Kennedy now has declared he's going to run as an independent. Dr. West has left the Green Party and he's running as an independent. So to those that are watching and listening right now, Tom, what are we to do in a duopoly where neither party is concerned about us and we don't seem to be concerned about demanding that they are.

One of the reasons why they had to derail Jesse's campaign had and the Democrats derailed his campaign and led by a segment of the Jewish community. People forget that when Jesse announced that he was running for president and the convention center in Washington dc, the Jewish Defense League interrupted his announcement. And everywhere Jesse went in those early days, and in those early days, he called it the road team. It was myself, Jesse, and Florence Tate, the press secretary. We were traveling from city to city, and the JDL was harassing us at every place that we went. And it was because of the nation of Islam providing us security of security that they backed off. I can remember our first meeting in New York with a Jewish community, Jewish leaders in New York. Percy Sutton met us backstage with a Yama Corps in his head explaining to us how we had to deal with how we had to relate with Jews.

(45:09)

(46:30)

(47:35)

And not defending us?

That's right. And all of these so that if they're not doing that and we have to call 'em out, we have to call out the Black Caucus. If you say you represent us, this is what we want you to do. We'd be better off without you.

And in the state of things today. In fact, I'm glad you mentioned the Black Caucus, because I've said for a very long time that when you look at the original, I think it was 13, when you look at the original Black Caucus and you look at where they came from, they came out of the struggle. They came out of the community and they came out of organizations and organic, many of them organic organizations within the community we're now a couple of generations removed from that. And I don't think that it's an accident that they are now less progressive, less effective than the original group that was known as the Conscience, conscience of the Congress

And less connected to the community because they're not funded by the community. They are funded by outside interests, and they no longer see that they have to represent us. They don't go home to their communities. You don't hear anything from, I don't know any members of the black community, somebody, I mean Meeks, I don't know anything about Black Caucus. Yeah, black Caucus. I don't even know them anymore. I used to know all of them. I used to participate, but it's nothing to participate in now. And we've got to have a whole new thinking that's in line with where the world is going, not where the world has been. So that we need to have both a domestic and international policy. We need to be connected with the Belt and Road initiative. I'm not talking about just black people in this country, and there are some African countries that are connected.

A lot of them are.

We've got to rethink what does Pan-Africanism mean today? Because it is still important. I mean, we've only been in this country a short while, so I mean, it ain't like we've been here for a long time. So as Africa is beginning to emerge, that we must emerge with it. We must have a new way of thinking about Pan Africans and what does it mean? And the Chinese are trying bit by bit to reorganize Ong and the African, Asian and Latin American conferences that used to take place in this country. I mean in the world, we have to rethink all of this, but we have to also in rethinking that realize that we need these formations in today's world.

We need these formations in today's world. And you talk about organizing, and a lot of people listening to this might say, well, what do you mean? Well, when you look at, for example, the L-G-B-T-Q community, they organized, they demanded, they got a president to come out, an African-American president to come out and support same-sex marriage. You look at the women's movement and they organized. They demanded, and they got an African-American president who very proudly and rightfully says, the first piece of legislation that I signed was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And now you have folks that'll say, well, why is the African-American community complaining when there are African-American members of the L-G-B-T-Q community, there are black women that benefited from the Lily led better Fair Pay Act. There's a difference between being an indirect beneficiary of a policy. There's a difference between being an indirect beneficiary of a policy and being a direct beneficiary of a policy.

Well, as I say, I believe in reciprocity. And if you come to me, and I've experienced this before in the past, people asking me to support something, I said, where do you stand on the issues that affect black people? Don't come to me and say that our struggles are similar. I mean, I don't need to tell me that your struggle is similar to mine. I need you to tell me where you stand on those issues that impact me. When Kamala Harris was in Africa recently, the complaint of the Africans is that she spent more time trying to convince them why they should be involved with the LG community. I can never say that, right? Too many letters, but they complained that that's all she was talking about, the Africans. But where does this community stand?

Lemme just quickly interject that in that issue of L-G-B-T-Q on the continent, that issue was not an indigenous issue or an organic issue to countries on the continent. That issue was brought there by white evangelicals

Who

Went there and raised that and presented that as something that mattered in countries that didn't give a damn about it.

Again, as I say, we got to have a clear agenda, and it's got to be rooted in reciprocity, and it's got to be an agenda that impacts African people wherever they are. And because if you don't think about it in a large sense, what you'll get is what's happening to reparations. I mean, I think it's Evanston, Illinois, which has for some reason, they of doing something with reparations, and now they become a leader in the reparations movement. And then we have to watch these organizations in the black community because people are leading organizations today who 20 years ago were anti-socialist, were anti-communist, Ron Daniels and your mentor, I would say your mentor, but Ron Walters, they were part of expelling Ami Baraka from the Black Political Movement because he was a socialist. And yesterday Ron Daniel's organization was in Grenada supporting the anniversary of Maurice Bishop's movement. But 20 years ago, these people were on the opposite side. It's interesting that the MacArthur Foundation gave Ron Daniels $500,000. I don't know what for, but I know a leopard doesn't change its spots either. So they're bringing all of these people back. Al Sharpton, who used to be a snitch. How do you decide that you're not going to be a snitch? You go in and tell the people you were snitching to, I'm not going to do it anymore.

(56:29)

But what did they do

Right? Tom

Porter, I got to thank you as always, my brother. Thank you so much for joining me today. Big shout out to my producer, melody McKinley. Thank you so much, folks for joining Connecting the Dots podcast. I'm Dr. Wimer Leon. This is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. And remember, talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share my show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links on the show in the show description. I'll see you next time. Until then, treat each day like it's your last because one day you'll be right. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Peace and Blessings. I'm out

Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd

All our episodes can be found at CTDpodcast.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

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 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 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 question before us is what has happened to academic freedom and free speech? For example, there's an article in the Manitoban, the student newspaper of the University of Manitoba Canada, and it's entitled you of Manitoba, professor Soft on Putin, an Alumnus, thoughts on a Professor's Interactions with President Putin. My guest is a professor in the Department of Political Studies and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg Canada. She's an author of numerous books, and she's the subject of this article. She's Dr. Radhika Desai. Dr. Desai, welcome to the show, and let's connect some dots.

Dr. Radhika Desai (01:44):

Absolutely. Wilma, let's get going.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (01:46):

So you and your husband attended the Valdi Discussion Club and all expenses paid trip to Sochi Russia. You went earlier this month and this forum, the Valdi Forum, is billed as a wide ranging conference about international issues. Russian President Putin speaks at the conference every year. Now, as a result of your attending this revered and respected international conference, you and your husband have come under attack. So if you would please, first let's explain to the audience what is the VALDI Conference?

Dr. Radhika Desai (02:25):

So the Valdi Club is called the Valdi Discussion Club, and as its name indicates, every year, well, first of all, it holds discussions of course, throughout the year. It has a very good website with some leading commentators from around the world posting analysis of what's going on in the world, in the world economy, in world politics, et cetera. And then every year it has an annual conference to which it's an invitation only event. And of course the press is there as well. And every year they essentially analyze the world context in which the fast changing world context, shall we say, it's been going for 20 years. Indeed, the last conference we went to was the 20th Anniversary conference. A couple of other things about it that are important is that firstly, because Russia has been, if you think about the last 20 years from 2004 onwards, Russia has really been sort of in the eye of the storm that is changing the world so quickly and so rapidly, particularly over the last few years.

(03:28)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (04:17):

And so you and your husband attended the conference and you even were able to submit a, well, you and your husband were able to submit a question to President Putin. And one of the things that for me is utterly amazing is he takes all comers, the questions aren't really screened. You're able to ask him anything that's relevant to world events, and he will at times speak for two and three hours just openly engaging with the press. Absolutely. I can't imagine Joe Biden, I can't imagine Barack Obama, bill Clinton. I could see doing it, but because it's so, it's structured but unstructured.

Dr. Radhika Desai (05:12):

Yeah, I mean, you are absolutely right about that. And I think the fact that we have political leaders who can barely read a teleprompter, let alone talk for four hours to essentially unscripted questions. This is really quite interesting. But anyway, to get to the point, president Putin, I've asked questions before. So I remember earlier in a 2014 Valdi Club conference when I had a previous possibility of asking a question, it was completely unscripted. And I had asked him about his economic policies for Russia and why he wasn't being, shall we say, more developmental in his policies. In one of my criticisms of President Putin would be that his economic policies remain a bit too neoliberal even today. I mean, of course they've become much more developmental than they were in 2014, but that's a small point. But anyway, this time around

Dr. Wilmer Leon (06:05):

Minute, it's important I think for people to realize that not only is Vladimir Putin and attorney, he has a PhD in economics.

Dr. Radhika Desai (06:17):

Yes.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (06:18):

A lot of people don't know that.

Dr. Radhika Desai (06:21):

True. Exactly. And as I say, I mean, in fact, I have a very good friend of mine pointed this out to me years ago that Putin is one of the few people who can simply give speeches that are really interesting, historically informed as he did this time around, and then engage with the audience on unscripted questions, giving a wealth of information and detail about what his government is doing. So it is really quite interesting. But anyway, this time around in more recent years, we have been asked to submit questions. So I submitted a question last year, but I wasn't called upon to ask my question, but this year I was called upon, and the question, I actually hadn't submitted a question when we set off, but then the Canadian Parliament engaged in the most astonishing act, essentially the Canadian Parliament on the occasion of President Vome Zelinsky visit to Canada, invited to Parliament, a man, a very old man, a 98-year-old man who was billed as a great hero veteran who had fought against the Russians. And the entire Parliament stood up and clapped. And by the next day, however, essentially the, you know what had hit the fan and the entire country was a Russian news stories about how this man was a Nazi. Now, how could such a thing happen? The fact of the matter is we have a deputy prime minister who is of Ukrainian heritage, who has a PhD in Russian and Ukrainian studies. There's absolutely no way that the Canadian government did not know that it was bringing a Nazi to Parliament. There were

Dr. Wilmer Leon (08:08):

Hoka is his name.

Dr. Radhika Desai (08:11):

Exactly. So Mr. Hunka, the Parliament, not even a single person in the hundreds of people in Parliament actually thought to ask, wait a minute, if he was fighting the Russians in the Second World War, who was he fighting with? And then it emerged that he was a member of a certain Kian division in the Waff ss. And this was actually totally a collaborationist Nazi unit which had participated in the genocide of Jews, Russians polls, and of course, Roma President Putin, in response to my question, also reminded us that an uncounted number of Roma people had also been attacked by these people and eliminated by these people. So anyway, no one in parliament had the guts to ask this question. And to me, and the whole country, of course, was shocked and really, and I felt it was really important to give President Putin a chance to have his say on this matter, because which is the country that is most wronged by this, it is Russia. Because of course, the direct target of this action was of course Russia. We were applauding Mr. Hunker because he had fought the Russias. So what better thing to do than to ask the president of that country, who by the way, is also the target of a demonization campaign in the Western media.

(09:43)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (09:59):

Russia, I even wonder, was he responsible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, and did he murder Jimmy Hoffa? I mean, he gets accused of everything.

Dr. Radhika Desai (10:11):

Of everything, exactly. And the fact is, we have to remember that if it had not been for the Russian contribution to the Second World War, if it had not been for the Russian effort, which cost Russia anywhere between 25 and 30 million lives, I mean, this is,

Dr. Wilmer Leon (10:27):

We'd all be speaking German now.

Dr. Radhika Desai (10:30):

Well, exactly. I mean, it was the critical contribution to the defeat. I mean, think about it this way. The Soviet Union rescued the capitalist west from its own, shall we say, from the very monster that it had created, namely fascism and Nazim. So in that sense, in this current war, which is essentially a proxy war, that the US is waging against Russia using Ukraine as proxies, fighting Russians, as John Muir Heimer likes to say, to the last Ukrainian in this war, all we hear in the West about Russia is of course the wall to wall propaganda that is everywhere. It's anti Putin and it's even anti-Russia. We are de platforming Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky. I mean, this is ridiculous. And so it has gone to such an extent. And so one of our purposes in attending the conference was that we want to remain in touch.

(11:32)

(12:29)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (13:36):

And as a result of this, your prime minister, Justin Trudeau, apologized profusely called the honoring of Mr. Hunka in your parliament, a joint session of Parliament as an accident. But here's what I find to be really, really confusing, is Zelensky was there, and Hunka was brought in as a kind of a tangential honoring of Zelensky. And what we know very clearly, even though many in Western mainstream media don't want to discuss this, is that with organizations like the Wright sector and the as Ofv Battalion in Ukraine, that there are Nazis many call, but they ain't nothing neo about 'em. They are Nazis who honor the late Stefan Bandera, who was a just brutal, horrific war criminal. And so all of this was orchestrated as a way to pay homage to Zelensky and then pay homage to the Nazis that the United States is paying training and organizing with in Ukraine. Now, is that rhetoric on my part or is that supported by the data?

Dr. Radhika Desai (15:09):

Absolutely supported by the data. I mean, and by the way, it's not just the United States, the Canada, and the Oh yeah, absolutely are also contributing to the training and equipping of this army, of which Nazis are such an important and big part. In fact, I would say they're the kind of cutting edge of the army. So absolutely this is the point. But the other thing that occurs to me when you were sort of reeling out all these facts is that we are often told when we point out that there are Nazis, Ukraine has a Nazi problem, we are told, oh, well, of course Ukraine has no Nazi problem because President Zelensky is Jewish,

Dr. Wilmer Leon (15:47):

A Jewish. So here

Dr. Radhika Desai (15:47):

You are, you want to respect this Jewish gentleman who is, and you bring a Nazi and applaud him in front of this guy. What kind of a ridiculous thing it is. Wilma, I think many people, of course, prime Minister Trudeau said, oh, it was a regrettable mistake. It was a tragic accident, et cetera. There was nothing accidental about it. The fact of the matter is that nobody gets into Parliament without being vetted. The people would've known there's an entire process of vetting, and even if there was no process of vetting, the fact of the matter is that our Deputy Prime Minister, Christia Freeland, is not only of Ukrainian origin in Canada, her ancestors have been the beneficiaries of laws that explicitly encouraged Nazis to immigrate to Canada in the post-second World War period at a time when it was difficult for Jews to immigrate to Canada.

(16:50)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (18:12):

What, if anything, does this say to you about the broader issue or context of white supremacy? And what I mean by that is when I was in high school and learning history, oh, the Nazis were evil, Hitler was evil. All of that is true, and Hitler was vilified. The Nazis are vilified, and oh, the one thing you don't want to be called other than anti-Semitic, you don't want to be called a Nazi. But what we find out now is the United States worked with them in World War ii, the United States insured Safe Passage, and I say United States, and also in that is United States allies insured safe passage of a lot of Nazis to the United States, to Canada, to South America. So one, then I think this only begs the question was or was the conflict, or is the conflict not so much ideological, but procedural? Oh, because does that make sense? I think you got my question.

Dr. Radhika Desai (19:32):

Yeah. I mean, I think that of course, during the, first of all, in order to understand the second World War, you have to see in a certain sense, the first World War and the second World War as a single conflict, it was a single inter imperialist conflict. So in that sense, the First World War, everybody recognizes that it was an inter imperialist conflict in which although Western countries, the Anglo-American part of the west continues to maintain the silly idea of German guilt. In reality, all the imperialist powers, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, everybody included, were all equally complicit in the outbreak of the First World War. So there was this conflict, and then after it ended the versa, so-called Versailles settlement actually settled very little. It simply laid the foundations of the causes that would lead to the Second World War, because as I say, it settled very little.

(20:35)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (22:06):

Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazis in World War ii.

Dr. Radhika Desai (22:11):

Very interesting, very interesting. I didn't know that. But yes, or people like Churchill and so on, they were secretly or openly the royal family for that matter, everything. So I mean this already then of course, there was this terrible war and the discovery of the Holocaust and all of these things, but even thereafter, in order to preserve capitalism, in order to ensure that the enormous sympathy that communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular had among the masses of Europe, would be pushed back essentially the West Connived in keeping many fascists in power in countries like Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. So in that sense, there was already this collaboration. And since that time, I mean, the fact of the matter is that, take for instance, something very recent, the Bernie Sanders Trump thing, Sanders campaign as a left-wing politician, he was absolutely not allowed to come anywhere near power. I mean, not within sniffing distance of power, but the election of Trump could be tolerated.

(23:27)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (24:47):

In this article that I referenced in the Open an Alumnus thoughts on professors' interactions with Russian President, I'm going to read a bit of it. I'm an alumnus of the Department of Political Studies, and I am a former student of Professor Desai. I cannot say that I aligned with all of her positions at the time, but after finding out that she had spent part of last week shilling for War Mongerer Putin, I found her actions to be particularly disgusting. The student continues, former student continues, A discussion club may seem like a noble endeavor in a free and democratic society. However, in Putin's Russia, public discourse is manipulated and dissenters are repressed and punished. I would be shocked if this Valdi forum was anything more than premeditated theater for Putin to stoke his own ego. Couple of things. One, if this was a former student of yours, this individual obviously didn't spend a lot of time paying attention in class.

(25:52)

Dr. Radhika Desai (26:48):

Yeah, I mean, first of all, let me just say that this idea that there is no freedom of speech in Russia, and for that matter in China, I often encounter this because as it happens, I have a very big range of academic connections, both in Russia and China. And I visit these countries regularly for conferences and so on. And what I found is very ironic, but the actual spectrum of opinion in both of these countries in Russia and China is actually much broader. In all of these countries, you have sort of open expression of neoliberal positions on the one hand on the right, and then socialist positions on the other. And everything in between is at least expressed. Whereas what we find here is that there is a systematic suppression by the mainstream media of anything but a set of views within a fairly narrow spectrum of opinion.

(27:47)

(28:37)

(29:37)

(30:36)

(31:21)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (32:10):

And to your point about censorship and what's going on in Gaza, and to your student that talks about suppression in Russia, university of California, Berkeley law professor Stephen Davidoff Solomon called out some of his students for supporting anti-Semitic conduct on campus. What this law professor did was wrote a open letter to the law firms that he is in touch with telling them not to hire certain of his students who have proven to be pro-Palestinian. Quote, my students are largely engaged and well-prepared, and I regularly recommend them to legal employers. But if you don't want to hire people who advocate hate and practice discrimination, don't hire some of my students. anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley. That's just one example of the stifling pressure that academics are imposing upon their own students. We know what happened at Harvard, thank God the president of Harvard, I think her last name is professor President Gay, did not succumb to the requests and the pressure to turn over the names of Harvard students that were protesting in support of Palestine. I believe the same thing has happened at Columbia University. So these are just examples, real clear examples of how stifling the pressure can be in the United States.

Dr. Radhika Desai (33:59):

Absolutely. And when you do that with students, it's a bit like get them young, so that sort of slap them into shape before they get into bad habits sort of thing, according to the authorities. But this sort of thing is going on around the world in the uk. They're trying to ban the Palestinian flag and trying to essentially, they're persecuting people for going to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. But you know what? Wilmuth around the world, what we are seeing, especially in the Western world, is that the Western world's leaderships, which are all repeating the same mantra of Israel, has the right to defend itself completely ignoring the context, et cetera, the historical context and everything. They are completely out of touch with the vast majority of the people.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (34:51):

And they're ignoring international law.

Dr. Radhika Desai (34:55):

Indeed. And they, in fact, absolutely, they keep saying that they should abide by international law. But the fact of the matter is Israel is not abiding by international law. It has already declared that it is at war, but at the same time, it is essentially by corralling all the people of Gaza into Gaza, not allowing them to leave, depriving them of water, electricity, sanitation, bombing hospitals killing children over 2000 of them already. This is completely against international law and

Dr. Wilmer Leon (35:33):

It, it's called collective punishment. And collective punishment is a war crime. Now, I don't think you're making that up. I know I'm not making that up. If you pay any attention to the International criminal court, if you know anything about, and this conversation is not anti-Semitic Pro, international law and collective punishment is a war crime.

Dr. Radhika Desai (36:06):

Absolutely. And it is. It is also pro justice. I mean, at the end of the day, what these people

Dr. Wilmer Leon (36:11):

And pro morality

Dr. Radhika Desai (36:14):

And promo, they decontextualize, everything Hamas, everything begins in this discussion of the West today. Everything begins from the 7th of October when Hamas attacked Israelis and killed many of them and so on. But the fact that Palestinians have been living, Palestinians have had their land occupied since 1948 and before 1948, this is completely forgotten the fact that Palestinians have been displaced, that the Palestinians have the right to resist, and they have the right to self-determination. All of these things are completely swept under the carpet. It's really shocking. And this is entirely a result of the fact that the spectrum of opinion has been narrowed. The forms of censorship that I pointed out earlier operate both in media and in scholarship, so that more and more we are hearing either completely irrelevant things or things that are only repeating what the authorities want repeated.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (37:17):

And let me give an example of that. President Obama published an op-ed thoughts on Israel and Gaza, and I'm going to read the three opening paragraphs. It's been 17 days since Hamas launched its horrific attack against Israel, killing over 1400 Israeli citizens, including defenseless women, children, and the elderly. In the aftermath of such unspeakable brutality, the US government and the American people have shared in the grief of families, prayed for the return of loved ones and rightly declared solidarity with the Israeli people. As I stated in an earlier post, Israel has a right to defend its citizens against such wanton violence. And I fully support President Biden's call for the US to support our longtime ally in going after Hamas, dismantling its military capabilities and facilitating the safe return of hundreds of hostages. But even as we support Israel, we should also be clear how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters. In particular, it matters as President Biden has repeatedly emphasized that Israel's military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations. I just wanted to read the opening here because this is really where I formulated the earlier question to you about white supremacy. And this being not a matter of ideology, but a matter of strategy. Because what I take away, there are a number of fallacies in what Obama wrote, but what I take away in that last paragraph is Obama saying this slaughter, slaughter Hamas, as you want to just be a little nicer in how you go about doing it,

Dr. Radhika Desai (39:13):

But it gets worse than that Wilma, because the very next paragraph. So it says all of these things that we should try to avoid as much as possible, not try to avoid, only try to avoid as much as possible, which is already a big qualifier. But then, or

Dr. Wilmer Leon (39:29):

Don't do it because you're violating international law.

Dr. Radhika Desai (39:33):

That's right. Yeah. How about that? He already is giving Israel a free pass there, but then he says, this is an enormously difficult task, so trying to minimize the suffering of the civilian population is already too difficult, so it may not be possible to minimize it anyway. And then he says, the United States has fallen short of this high values when we are engaged in war. And then he says, it is understandable that Israelis have demanded that their governments do whatever it takes to root out Hamas. And then he repeats the, oh my God, if I hear it one more time, my head will explode. They are using civilians as human shields. So he repeats this old trope that the Israeli government sources never fail to repeat. And so the thing is that this whole thing is really a gift. He's doing nothing. He seems to be calling for sympathy for Palestinians and so on, but Israel has rights.

(40:39)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (41:58):

Bad for business

Dr. Radhika Desai (42:01):

And it's bad for business. But also the fact is that at this rate, there will, and he says that there will not be enough actors in the region who support Israel's right to exist and also support the Palestinians will not be able to broker a deal. But at the rate at which Israel is going and the way in which the United States is completely behind Israel, there will be very few actors in the region who will continue to recognize Israel's right to exist because the street will not allow them, the ordinary people. I already read in today's newspaper a report that the Tunisian parliament is going to outlaw any kind of normalization of relations with Israel, and also essentially prevented citizens from engaging in any kind of contact with Israelis. So this is already one of the reactions. And I would say that if as the collective punishment of Gaza continues, as children continue to be killed in Gaza, the whole world is going to turn against Israel. It's not good for Israel, actually, for the way in which this is unfolding.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (43:14):

Libya, I believe, has taken a similar action as Tunisia is taking. And we know that based upon the Abraham Accords that the United States was trying to broker reproach monk between Saudi Arabia and the Zionist colony of Israel, and that as a result of Hamas' action, the Saudis have put that whole thing on hold because to your point, they see what's happening in the street and they don't want to be overthrown following the United States down this rabbit hole. And they see what's happened in Ukraine. They see what the United States is doing relative to Taiwan, and they see that's a formula for World War iii.

Dr. Radhika Desai (44:10):

Absolutely. And I just like to add one other thing. I mentioned street. You mentioned street. The fact what we know is that you, many, many of the governments of the Middle East, including Arab countries, would have been happy to compromise with Israel. But what has held them back, what has kept the Palestinian cause on the front burner throughout all this time is popular protest and P, we talk about how the Arab Street has been essentially the defender of the Palestinian cause, the people who have essentially not allowed it to be snuffed out. But today, I would say that people in the West are also fed up with this one sided support. I mean, I'm reading in the papers not only about big demonstrations in the capitals and big cities of Middle Eastern countries, but throughout Europe as well, and also in North America. I mean, you folks, you've had huge demonstrations in your big cities in the United States. We've had big demonstrations. London apparently had a demonstration that was 300,000 strong, which is the biggest demonstration of its sort since the 2003 February, 2003 demonstrations against the Iraq War, which were historic, as you will remember.

(45:30)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (46:40):

The title of the show is Connecting the Dots. Is it hyperbolic for me to look at, again, Ukraine, look at what the United States is trying to do with Taiwan, and look at how now the United States is involved in this conflict in Palestine and see similar traits. And I'm just using the three most recent events. I don't have to go too far back in history. I can talk about Afghanistan, I can talk about Iraq, but just looking at where we are right now, again, Ukraine, Taiwan, Juan, and Palestine. Am I wrong to connect those dots?

Dr. Radhika Desai (47:24):

Absolutely. No. And you know what? All three of them are interesting proxy wars. And by the way, the United States has developed the idea or developed the practice of proxy wars into a fine art because the United States used Islamic fundamentalists to fight Russia in Afghanistan, for example, and other such. There have been many such ways in which they have done so in the present context. Yes. So the United States,

Dr. Wilmer Leon (47:53):

The United States is doing that in Congo right now.

Dr. Radhika Desai (47:56):

Yes, exactly.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (47:57):

Doing the same thing in

Dr. Radhika Desai (47:57):

Congo. The United States is fighting Russia via using Ukrainians. The United States hopes one day to fight China using the Taiwanese. And today, think about this, what is probably given the possibility that if Israel stages a land invasion of Gaza today, it may be very difficult for Iran to stay uninvolved. And Iran has been the consistent defender of Palestinian rights throughout this period. Really an important and interesting point now in this context, then what will happen, the United States will use Israelis to fight Iran. And so again, as I like to say, everyone who's in our countries in the US and Canada who's saying we are standing up for Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera, they are the ones contributing to the destruction of Ukraine. And it may ironically be the case that everyone who will say we stand up for Israel's rights to exist, et cetera, et cetera, and to defend itself, will essentially be contributing to the destruction of Israel. So there may be one of the biggest ironies of all,

Dr. Wilmer Leon (49:08):

You mentioned people standing up and saying that they're trying to prevent the destruction of Ukraine, but what they are also supporting in that is a destruction of the United States. Because when you look at the budget, when you, I think very recently, or Joe Biden's now trying to get another 125 billion to be sent to Ukraine, and people need to understand what this money is doing. The United States is paying the salaries of Ukrainian civil servants. The United States is paying for the pensions of Ukrainian civil servants when the UAW is on strike in the United States trying to get pensions restored in the United States. All of this under the pretext of democracy and defending democracy, when it was the United States in 2014 with the Maidan coup that went in and overthrew the democratically elected jankovich government in Ukraine, which was the precipitant to where we are today, the hypocrisy in all of this is nauseating.

Dr. Radhika Desai (50:28):

And also when they say, I mean anybody knows when the United States says that it's defending human rights and democracy, what it's really doing is first of all, it's using usually some sections of the middle class as essentially the protesters who will protest against the government that the United States does not like, et cetera. So they're again using them as instruments and appealing to their liberal principles, et cetera. But more to the point that the kinds of rights and freedoms the United States wants to see realized in all the other countries of the world are those rights and those freedoms of US corporations to go there and do as they please engage in whatever economic activity that they want to, and all sorts of exploitative activities that they want to get into. So that's what the defense of human freedom and human rights actually amounts to. Anyway. And then on top of that, the irony is that the United States requires all its partner countries. Whoever wants anything from the United States must enact neoliberal policies. What are neoliberal policies? They're precisely the policies that make democracy impossible, because in a capitalist society, you cannot have anything like a functioning democracy without making some substantial material concessions in the form of good wages, good welfare states, et cetera, to the ordinary people. But this is precisely what is made impossible. So what is there for ordinary people to vote for?

Dr. Wilmer Leon (52:05):

And that's a great, great point. And there's something else I think from a societal and a cultural perspective that needs to be taken into account here. And that is the United States, and this has been a stated objective since this whole Ukraine conflict started. The United States wants to engage in regime change in Russia. They want to get rid of Vladimir Putin. But I've seen independent polls, and what I mean independent, I mean from Princeton University and other US Ivy League institutions that say over 86% of Russian people support their government. I've seen independent polls from, again, American institutions, 96% of the Chinese people support President Xi and the Chinese government, we tried to overthrow Ade in Syria. He won the last election with 86% of the vote. And I have friends of mine that were election observers in Syria who said, free and fair election. Same thing with Maduro in Venezuela, free and fair elections. So my point is there forms of democracy because of their histories and their cultures are different than our form of democracy. But that doesn't mean they're not valid. That doesn't mean they're not supported by the people, and that means that does not mean that they should not be supported by us.

Dr. Radhika Desai (53:44):

Absolutely. I mean, I remember I used to teach a course on democracy and capitalism, and my students had to read this particular text written in the seventies by CB McPherson, a very important Canadian Marxist philosopher, but also very widely respected. And you read there in the seventies, it was completely natural for people to say, you know what? We may have our form of democracy, but it is a liberal democracy. But in the communist countries, which existed at that time, they also have their own form of democracy, and that's a different one. And third world countries are trying to realize their own forms of democracy. So this type of pluralism had to be accepted because the fact that the Soviet Union existed was an important restraint, constituted an important restraint on the West and on the United States. The moment the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, the United States has gone full fledged into this completely delusional quest for supremacy around the world, which is an impossible quest.

(54:48)

Dr. Wilmer Leon (55:34):

We have just about probably four minutes left and you saying that just made me think. When you listen to President Putin, he talks about the shift away from the unipolar dynamic to a multipolar dynamic. When you listen to President Xi, he talks about the shifting away from a unipolar dynamic to a multipolar dynamic. And I just heard Joe Biden say recently, we're getting the sense that the world is shifting and we need to consider a new world order. I've heard that before. And then he says, and the new world order needs to be led by the United States. I said, Joe Biden, man, you are, if not senile, you are at least out of your mind.

Dr. Radhika Desai (56:28):

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, as I said, there is a certain level of delusion. I mean recently, I can't remember the exact words, but President Joe Biden was asked whether the United States could fight a two front war, and he said, of course we are. Of course we can. Of course we can. We're the United States. I mean, the fact of the matter is Wilma, if you think about it, and you are the historian, I'm not. But if you think about it, the United States has never won a single war, which it has fought on its own. I mean, not counting it later,

Dr. Wilmer Leon (57:01):

Ii, since World War ii, the United States, maybe we could say Grenada, and maybe we could say Panama, other than those two, the United States hasn't won a thing where didn't win Vietnam. I could tick off the didn't win. Afghanistan didn't win. Iraq we're like, oh, for five.

Dr. Radhika Desai (57:26):

And so the question arises. We are told in the same breath that the United States, we are told that the United States spends almost a trillion dollars a year on its military. What good does that do if the United States can't win wars?

Dr. Wilmer Leon (57:44):

What if the United States spent a trillion dollars on its infrastructure? Dr. Radika Desai, how can people reach you and connect and read your work?

Dr. Radhika Desai (57:54):

Well, my email is very easy to find. So if you just Google ika dea, university of Manitoba, you'll find my email and my website is ika dea.com.

Dr. Wilmer Leon (58:05):

I want to thank my guest, Dr. Rika Desai for joining me today, and thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share my show, follow us on social media. You'll find all the links below in the show description. And remember, folks, 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. Wier Leon. Have a good one. Peace