BS 123
[00:00:00] Tony: 3,
[00:00:12] Tony: 2, 1.
[00:00:13] Cameron: Welcome to the Bullshit Filter episode 123 Special edition because, uh, Ray has been replaced
[00:00:23] Cameron: with a, uh, smarter, better looking version of Ray, uh, my o my other Ray Tony
[00:00:30] Cameron: Kynaston, and welcome to the Bullshit
[00:00:33] Cameron: Filter, Tony.
[00:00:35] Tony: Thank you, Cam. Thanks for the invite. And I, I feel special
[00:00:39] Cameron: Uh, you invited, you, you, you invited yourself? I think, uh,
[00:00:43] Cameron: actually, yeah. Yeah.
[00:00:45] Tony: I do.
[00:00:46] Cameron: We had a lot, we had a lot of people offered to come on, and I appreciate everyone’s offers, but I did say condition was, you had to watch the Putin interview. No one else, uh, seemed to be up for that. Tony goes, yeah, I can do that.
[00:00:58] Cameron: So he
[00:01:00] Tony: And that, and that was a high price to
[00:01:01] Tony: pay too, by the way.
[00:01:02] Cameron: Was it?
[00:01:03] Tony: Well, I didn’t mind listening to Putin, but
[00:01:06] Tony: Tucker Carlson, gimme a break.
[00:01:09] Cameron: Well, the, the upside is he didn’t, didn’t have much to say in the two
[00:01:13] Tony: it was a, I think a, a journalist would call that a softball interview.
[00:01:17] Cameron: Well, they’ve called it much, much worse than that. But look, and, and here’s, you know, there’s, there’s a couple of reasons for me being interested in this. Uh, number one.
[00:01:28] Cameron: Yeah. Uh, Putin’s obviously a, a major player in global geopolitics right now, and we don’t get to actually hear from him very often in the west.
[00:01:40] Cameron: Uh, and this is the first interview that an American journalist has got with him in over two years since the, this latest phase of the war, uh, began, the invasion began. Um, secondly, uh, you know, I think he’s, uh, he’s an interesting character. You, you know, you, you, you don’t run Russia for twenty-five years or whatever it’s been now, um, without having something going on.
[00:02:10] Cameron: He’s a smart canny player. Brutal, probably. And thirdly, and this is, I guess the main focus I want to give is just the level of outrage in the Western media about. Interview itself, even existing about Carlson doing the interview and, uh, and, and the outrage about the things that Putin allegedly said, which he didn’t actually say, I think, in the interview.
[00:02:45] Cameron: So I wanna cover the media coverage of it, and that’s kinda what the bullshit Filter originally was about, was looking at media coverage of big stories in the West and picking them apart to see if they’re providing a fair and reasonable, uh, coverage of the stories or if it’s bullshit. And I’ve read a lot of new stories about this and, and by and large, uh, I’m calling bullshit on a lot of it.
[00:03:12] Cameron: Anyway, let’s start with the interview, Tony. Um, I mean, I, you and I, I don’t think have talked a great deal about we, uh, Putin or Russia or Ukraine. Do you wanna give me your high level view on what’s been going on over there for the last 10 years?
[00:03:31] Tony: I’m not sure I can or I’m qualified. You, you probably know that far better than I
[00:03:36] Cameron: No.
[00:03:36] Cameron: one on this show has ever qualified
[00:03:38] Tony: yeah.
[00:03:38] Cameron: anything, don’t he?
[00:03:40] Tony: Well, you talk interesting, you said 10 years. I assume you’re referring back to the last time the
[00:03:45] Tony: government changed when, um, uh, Russia, annexed Crimea, and then there was a bit of a coup around that time as Well, Is that what you’re talking about? Is that why you said 10 years?
[00:03:55] Cameron: Well, uh, yeah. So Putin’s view, and, and I
[00:03:59] Cameron: tend to agree with him, is that in 2014 in Ukraine there was a coup, it was a US.
[00:04:05] Cameron: Uh, supported, if not engineered coup. There was an earlier coup, it was a 2004 coup, then there was the 2014 coup, uh, both led slash supported slash engineered, we believe by the, I believe by the United States.
[00:04:22] Cameron: To what degree? It’s hard to say, but there seems to be sufficient evidence to say that they were involved to some degree. Um, but you know, it’s the last 10 years is really when the Donbass situation became a thing. The Crimea became a thing, et cetera, et
[00:04:38] Cameron: cetera. Yeah.
[00:04:40] Tony: Yeah, I found it really hard to, to get to the truth, I guess, on the Donbass thing. I remember, um, when the, uh, probably prior to the Ukraine war, um, starting, I, I did hear some interviews. I think it was on the BBC World Service with, uh, which alleged that there was a flood of. Russian-speaking, um, Russian-affiliated Ukrainians crossing the border back into Russia.
[00:05:09] Tony: And that, that was because of alleged persecution from neo-Nazis in Ukraine on that sort of border region. And therefore, that was the justification for Putin having to take action. So, um, I tried to look up those articles in preparation for this and I couldn’t find them. So I can’t really talk about it in depth, but, but it’s, to me, it’s really hard to, to drill down and find out exactly what’s going on.
[00:05:35] Tony: Um, uh, it, it’s been hard as it always is in, I guess in a wartime situation. It’s been hard to get even accurate information about what’s going on in Ukraine during the war. And I probably relied a bit more on Al Jazeera for, for news on that rather than the Western media. Um, now Al Jazeera does have its problems too, but at least it was reporting issues like that.
[00:05:58] Tony: Pretty failure. And it was actually quite riveting the way they were reporting they were on the ground in the early days, reporting as, as suburb by suburb. The Russians started to get close to Kiev and, and get into Kiev and what was going on there. So that was, that was far better than the Western journalism.
[00:06:15] Tony: Um, and it was far more independent. So, uh, listening to the Putin interview, I think it was really interesting when he started to talk about his point of view on things like, uh, the, uh, the visit of Zelensky to the Canadian Parliament when the speaker and the Canadian parliament, uh, praised a, a war hero who turned out to be a, um, a Nazi or a neo-Nazi.
[00:06:39] Tony: A Nazi, I think actually. And then the speaker had to resign. So that didn’t get, that was the first time I’d heard of that. That didn’t get much coverage over here at all. So there is obviously two sides to every story. And I think, you know, it’s a show like this, which is good to pull it apart because. You know, as, as you know, it’s, um, the media is one of the institutions that manipulates us in, in our points of view and our, our lifestyles.
[00:07:03] Tony: And definitely in the West, that can be shaped by just straight capitalism and who, uh, who is paying for what ads in the media and, and who, what kind of agendas are they pushing and what kind
[00:07:16] Tony: of, uh, you know, political, uh, persuasions are they pushing and or do they have allegiances to or do they control?
[00:07:23] Tony: So it’s a, it’s a big issue.
[00:07:25] Cameron: mm It is, and it it, you know, I guess part of the reason
[00:07:31] Cameron: for me being interested in doing this show
[00:07:33] Cameron: is, uh, you know, the historian side of me knows how I. Regularly Western populations have been lied to historically during wars, uh, going back to World War I all the way through to, you know, Vietnam, um, and the, the Gulf Wars.
[00:07:53] Cameron: And, you know, there seems to be this fascinating cycle where we go through a war, we go through a conflict that we’re either directly involved in or indirectly involved in. And the government of the day and the media of the day spin a whole bunch of propaganda about it. We find out years later that they lied or spun or manipulated or there was no evidence for WMD and, you know, the attacks on this ship or that ship weren’t really
[00:08:25] Cameron: attacks ill that Yeah.
[00:08:28] Cameron: And, and the media says Mia culpa will never do that again. I. And the people tend to say, wah-ha. Now we understand that we will never be lied to again. And then the cycle just repeats. You know, within a decade there’s another incident and the media jump on board. The governments jump on board and the people just go along for the ride and believe everything again.
[00:08:50] Cameron: And inevitably a few years later they’ll go, oh no, we were lied to. Oh,
[00:08:53] Cameron: never again, you know?
[00:08:56] Tony: Well, you raised some great points, Cam, and they’re pertinent to this topic as well. And you know, it’s interesting, I think that there is no crime of misrepresentation in journalism, even though journalists will always say, we need to get to the facts and we want to, um, report them objectively, and we need two sources and we need hard evidence if none of those things happen.
[00:09:16] Tony: They get off Scot-free, and in fact, if they don’t happen, their readership may actually go up. So that’s, that’s the first thing to, to address what you’ve said. But the second thing about what you’re saying as well is that, particularly in this case, there’s an awful lot of money involved. Um, you know, Congress has stalled now on a multi-billion dollar aid package to Ukraine.
[00:09:38] Tony: And as, as we both know, that, that aid probably won’t ever reach Ukraine. It’ll be given to American companies providing arms to, uh, Ukraine, which is, which is fine in terms of helping Ukraine, uh, fight off the Russians, but it’s, it, you know, leads you to think, well, who’s behind that? Who benefits from that?
[00:09:56] Tony: And it’s the arms dealers in the, in the us the ominous manufacturers in the us. To benefit from it. So they’re always spoiling for a fight. ’cause it, it’s a good way to increase sales. So, um, yeah. The, the last 10 years, has it, has it been a swing to the Western Ukraine and has it been natural that Ukraine has therefore felt, um, more antagonistic or antagonized by Russia?
[00:10:24] Tony: And has that been fueled by the military-industrial complex in the US who are saying, well, you know, we, we kinda like it that there could be an antagonism on the border. It may actually work out for us.
[00:10:37] Cameron: mm
[00:10:41] Cameron: mm mm
[00:10:47] Cameron: mm mm mm mm. Mm mm. The, there, there are certain interests in Western countries who love good war because it’s economically profitable. And it’s not just the, the weapons manufacturers, it’s the media. ’cause big conflicts drive newspaper sales, television viewership, radio listeners, which means you can sell more ads.
[00:11:09] Cameron: Uh, and they’re cross related, obvious, uh, uh, often ownership issues between the owners of big media companies and the owners of weapons manufacturers. And, but it’s also, as we’ve, we’ve talked about on the Cold War Show, uh, many, many times and on this show, when there have been studies done on this in the US primarily. Who benefits from the industrial military complex over there? It’s not just weapon manufacturers, it’s businesses of all shapes and sizes. Because particularly US America’s, 800 odd military bases around the world need socks and condoms and food and computers and software paperclips, right? And so every congress person, every senator in the US has people in their district who run businesses, who have Pentagon contracts, and it’s a big chunk of their revenue.
[00:12:05] Cameron: And it’s easy money once you have that contract. It’s not competitive. They’re not like, uh, running a, a tender every year for this. If you’ve got it, you’ve got it. Quite often there’s, there’s a sense of urgency. Oh, we just need the stuff. We’ve gotta get it now. It’s urgent. We need it
[00:12:22] Tony: It’s a rush job.
[00:12:23] Cameron: Yeah. So it’s, it’s good for business.
[00:12:27] Cameron: Anyway, back to the coverage. So most of the coverage that I’ve read, and obviously I haven’t read everything, but I try and get a smattering of, you know, I, I read the BBC and the New York Times, and the Guardian and the ABC here in Australia and CBC in Canada, and try and get a coverage of what the, the major media outlets, uh, saying about this.
[00:12:47] Cameron: It’s a combination, I think, of lies, outright lies and distortion of what Putin said. And a lot of it is just attacking Carlson, both for giving Putin airtime in the first place, or for his weak interviewing skills. To me, the only real crime Carlson committed is having a very punchable face. Uh, he’s, he, he’s just one of those guys that just Chrissie walked through the, the living room a couple of times and I thought she’s going, oh my God, I just wanna punch him in the face.
[00:13:25] Tony: Yeah, he’s a smug white man, isn’t he?
[00:13:27] Cameron: He is, look, he is, uh, like, I mean, you’ve gotta be a pretty horrible person for the Murdochs to get rid of you. You know, when he got fired from Fox
[00:13:36] Cameron: last year, he was the most viewed cable network host in, not only in Fox, but in the United States. And they got rid of him when they were in the dominion of Voting Systems lawsuit.
[00:13:50] Cameron: And a whole bunch of his texts and emails were gonna become released as evidence. And, you know, it was just evident that he was a racist, vile piece of shit. And it, it was probably gonna cost them. Uh, and, you know, he was up on harassment, uh, accusations from employees. And it had come out that while they were pushing Trump in the last election behind the scenes, he was saying that he hated Trump.
[00:14:17] Cameron: And Trump was awful and he hoped Trump loses so they wouldn’t have to talk about him anymore. I dunno if that’s in the plus or the minus column for him, but he, you know, he was saying that internally, but publicly
[00:14:28] Cameron: praising Trump, you know, so
[00:14:30] Tony: Oh, and pushing the, pushing the voter fraud argument for Trump. That’s why he was so pivotal in that Dominion settlement. That’s an interesting book by Michael Wolf, if anyone wants to read it, to go through that whole process and
[00:14:41] Tony: how they thought in um, offering up Carlson’s resignation, it might help lower the settlement, but it didn’t.
[00:14:46] Tony: Of course, they paid a record settlement to, um, to the Dominion to drop the case.
[00:14:52] Cameron: So I’m in no way, shape or form a fan of Tucker Carlson or, uh, uh, trying to apologize for Tucker Carlson. But
[00:15:01] Cameron: I, I, I think the, the amount of coverage that’s given in these stories to, instead of coverage of what Putin actually said is disproportionate.
[00:15:12] Tony: Right.
[00:15:13] Cameron: If they don’t actually, when they do talk about Putin, they don’t tend to address his actual claims.
[00:15:18] Cameron: One of the exceptions by the way, is Al Jazeera, like the Al Jazeera coverage is typically very dry and factual. Here are the five major points that Putin made in the interview kind of thing, right? So I agree with you, Al Jazeera increasingly is the place where I go to, if I want to actually find out what’s going on or what was said.
[00:15:38] Cameron: Um, they don’t talk about Putin’s actual claims. You know, about NATO enlargement, about the CIA blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, which we’ve talked about a lot on this show over the last year or so about the US and the UK preventing Ukraine from agreeing to a negotiated end of the conflict early on, which we’ve also talked about a lot on the show.
[00:15:58] Cameron: Like a lot of the points that Putin was making are valid. Uh, and you know, we’ve gone over them in previous episodes, so I’m not gonna like reiterate all of them, but the, the. Key issue here is that the Western media, by and large, doesn’t talk about them. If they do, they dismiss them in a couple of words as being nonsense and just move on.
[00:16:23] Cameron: Like there’s no real addressing of the issues in a serious way. And the two questions that I have, Tony, is one, why the lying by the media? Why the lying and the distortion? Why is it that the media needs to demonize our enemies and the Western journalists? And it’s not just when it comes to external enemies.
[00:16:45] Cameron: This happens over and over with internal enemies. We’ve seen this with Julian Assange, we’ve seen this with Glenn Greenwald, we’ve seen this with Matt Tabe. These are, you know, journalists who, when they’re writing stories that the left in support of, they’re considered heroes of the left when they’re attacking the right.
[00:17:07] Cameron: As soon as they write stories that are attacking. The left, particularly the Democrats in the us, they’re vilified not only by, you know, democratic politicians, but all of the Democratic supporters and the media. They attack their own, they eat their young attack. The journalists as being, you know, when Matt Tabe was writing the, uh, Twitter files stuff, he got absolutely attacked mercilessly by the rest of the media.
[00:17:36] Cameron: Greenwald gets it every time. He, you know, says something negative about a Democratic administration. Julian Assange obviously still in prison, and, uh, they’re trying to extradite him so he can serve 173 years in jail in the United States for revealing their crimes. And the second question, building on that is, is how is it coordinated?
[00:17:59] Cameron: How is it that all of the Western media in this particular instance, seem to have the same script? How does that work? How is it coordinated? Like there’s plenty of clips, I dunno if you’ve seen them on YouTube, where they do this with say, Fox News, where they’ll have, uh, you know, one reporter or on one of the shows on Fox, uh, not just on Fox News, but all the Fox stuff making a statement about, you know, this something wrong with the system.
[00:18:28] Cameron: And then they’ll just start adding clips of different Fox hosts saying the exact same words. And it’s just, they, they often when it’s talking about, you know, we’re fair and balanced and giving you independent thinking and it’s just, they’re all reading from the same script. So, and obviously it’s easy to understand how that happens inside of one outlet, but how does it happen right across.
[00:18:51] Cameron: Countries, different media outlets, some of them supposedly independent, like not government, uh, or, or the ABC, whatever we call the ABC here. Like it’s a independent government funded media company that supposedly independent and, and, you know, aspires to a higher level of journalistic integrity. But they’re singing from the same hymn sheet as Fox News and MSNBC and everybody else.
[00:19:23] Cameron: I can’t figure out really how that works if it’s coordinated or it’s just, Hey, we’re on this side of the, we’re on this side of the camp, so we’re just gonna
[00:19:35] Cameron: jump on board.
[00:19:36] Tony: Well, I think the answer is multifaceted. I think lazy journalism plays a part. So, you know, if Tucker Carlson broadcasts an interview overnight in Australian time, then there’s probably gonna be something on the wire. So on the Reuters or AAP or whoever else that these news outlets use, summarizing it.
[00:19:56] Tony: And they, oftentimes, it’s, it’s not the headline story for Australian News, so they’ll just copy and paste paragraphs and put it into their, their newspaper or into teleprompter for the news, and then maybe a day or two later realize they’ve got some of the things wrong, but it’s the news cycles moved on then.
[00:20:12] Tony: So I think lazy journalism is a part, I don’t think there’s a coordinated effort apart from that. I mean, those, those wire services go into every news outlet in the world. So there is a certain amount of similarity in, in what gets reported,
[00:20:28] Cameron: A Reuters or an
[00:20:28] Cameron: AAP feed that they’re grabbing it from.
[00:20:30] Tony: Correct, yeah. Quickly. And, you know, having an editor shout at them that the deadline’s looming and we have to put a story out about Putin.
[00:20:39] Tony: Um, I think there’s a bit of that. I think there’s also, unfortunately, these days probably, maybe it’s always been the same, but it didn’t feel that way when I was younger. There’s more of it these days where it’s an echo chamber. The media’s, the media outlets have drawn sides, which I think is also behind the attacks on Tucker Carlson.
[00:20:58] Tony: He’s from the other side and he’s an easy target, so we’re gonna focus on him. We’re not of that side because our listeners, our readers wanna hear something, you know, written about. It’s written about what they think. Um, and their, their point of view was they’re against the war in Ukraine, they’re against Putin and therefore against Putin, and they’re against.
[00:21:19] Tony: Fox News and therefore Tucker Carlson, even though Tucker Carlson doesn’t work for Fox News anymore. So there’s, there’s that kind of mindset as well. The, the tribalism of the media is more exaggerated these days I think, as well. Um, and then there’s the political sphere of things too. The tribalism either bled from politics or it’s bled into politics from the media, but the same sort of thing.
[00:21:40] Tony: I mean, uh, media Bytes a show on the ABC here at nine 30 in Australia on a Monday night regularly shows every morning news presenter across the commercial networks across the ABC saying the same thing, using the same phrase. So, you know, there’s an element of, of, um, it’s quick journalism. It’s coming from the same source, and occasionally they’re putting their
[00:22:02] Tony: own slant on it to try and appeal to their audience and
[00:22:05] Tony: get them to keep listening and watching what they say.
[00:22:08] Cameron: I think you’re probably right. Um, I think media outlets. No, you know, it’s an increasingly competitive media landscape and hard to run a profitable media business. Um, there’s been a number of articles I’ve read over the last month or so about all the major newspapers in the us, including the ones bought by billionaires like Jeff Bezos are struggling to make money.
[00:22:34] Cameron: They’re, they’re bleeding money and, uh, you know, smaller media outlets like Vice have shut down ’cause they couldn’t become or maintain profitable. Um, it’s, it’s a tough time out there. So they, you know, there’s business people knowing who their audience is. This is what our audience wants to hear, this is what our advertisers need to hear us say.
[00:22:58] Cameron: So they’ll continue to support it and you
[00:23:00] Cameron: just toe the line.
[00:23:02] Tony: Yeah, I was, I mean, I’d add to that. That, um, it was really the internet which killed journalism because when classified ads moved from newspapers to online, and we had companies like Seek in Australia and Realestate.com.au and Domain, and they’ve got other examples around the world where home ads and job ads go online.
[00:23:26] Tony: Then the newspapers lost what was called the rivers of gold, and they became unprofitable and they started sucking journalists to try and, um, cut costs to keep, keep things profitable. So they just isn’t the staff anymore to check. And coupled with, uh, as you say, ad advertisers who. Know that if they take out an ad in the garden, they’re not gonna sell many fridges, but if they take it out in a telegraph, they’re gonna sell all the fridges.
[00:23:54] Tony: So then, you know, you get this sort of cycle of we’ll advertise with you as long as you’re engaging with the readers in the western suburbs who are all new homeowners and wanna buy fridges. As soon as you lose that market, we’ll
[00:24:06] Tony: take our ads and put it somewhere else. So it’s a, it is a real echo chamber,
[00:24:10] Cameron: Or it’s, it’s as simple. Even if that conversation doesn’t happen, it’s like, give me your media kit. Who are your, who are your customers? What are the demographics? Yeah. Okay. That’s not our demographic. Sorry. If you wanna appeal to us, you have to be appealing to
[00:24:24] Cameron: that demographic, and that
[00:24:26] Tony: And the flips.
[00:24:27] Cameron: read you if they hear a certain kind of story.
[00:24:29] Tony: and the flip side applies too. Um, if, if, uh, the Guardian in Australia ran an article praising a. Tucker Carlson, it would start to lose readership and it would start to lose advertisements. And there are just different type of supplies with those ads in the Guardian. I mean, I haven’t read the Guardian for a long time, but I imagine it’s, you know, ads for wind farms and alternative energy and things like that.
[00:24:51] Tony: And they’re not gonna um, they’re not gonna keep paying the price they pay. Now if the Guardian’s readership goes down.
[00:24:58] Cameron: Yeah, so it’s, it’s basic economics, which is driving the slant on the coverage for a lot of these stories. And you know, it reminds me when I first moved to Brisbane, nearly, I don’t know, 16 years ago this year, I guess I was invited to, I think it was University of Queensland to speak as part of a panel to, uh, an incoming bunch of, uh, journalism students.
[00:25:29] Cameron: This is about 2008, would’ve been. And middle of 2008, and they got to, you know, my turn. It was, and the other people on the panel were all like editors and, you know, whatever’s, uh, real media, real journalists sort of people. And they’re all like, oh, it’s a very fine profession and it’s a, you know, it’s congratulations and blah, blah, blah.
[00:25:52] Cameron: They got to me, it’s a bunch of these poor eighteen-year-old kids. And I said, I just feel sorry for the lot of you because by the time you leave here, there aren’t gonna be any jobs left in journalism. And they’re like, oh, what? And, and, and they were like having a go. And I said, look, it’s just the economics man.
[00:26:06] Cameron: Like these journalism businesses are bleeding money and it’s not gonna stop. The economics of the, of the industry has fundamentally changed you. You, there aren’t gonna be any jobs. And they, they all said that I was being hyperbolic, uh, classic Cameron Reilly hyperbole, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, it played out that way.
[00:26:25] Cameron: You can’t fight the economics right.
[00:26:27] Tony: No, you can’t fight economics
[00:26:29] Tony: You’re right. But I think also too, around that time, I, I mean, um, wind the clock back a bit further, when I did intro journalism at Queensland Uni and, uh, I, I worked out pretty soon that, you know, from talking, but being in tutorials with editors from papers and, you know, lots of people would come and talk to the journalism classes almost every week.
[00:26:47] Tony: There’d be a different editor or, or someone coming along. They, you know, first of all, sport played a big part in, in journalism in Queensland. And secondly, it was a, it was a club, it was a network and they, the people who would, you know, that they were after were knock about rugby types who could have a beer with anyone and get, you know, catch someone off guard and do a gotcha type article.
[00:27:08] Tony: Uh, there there was two camps. There was those types of people, which was I think the, the, the majority. And then there was the, the, um, as you say, the honest independent professionals like Eleanor Taylor, I. Who argue at university. I think she now edits the Guardian, um, who does have, have high journalistic
[00:27:26] Tony: standards, but, but they’re in the minority. And and they’re in the minority because they, the careers that that they started off in just weren’t there
[00:27:33] Tony: for them in the end.
[00:27:35] Cameron: I think they’ve always been in the minority. And have you ever read Chomsky and Herman’s
[00:27:40] Cameron: manufacturing consent?
[00:27:42] Tony: Yeah. And seen the documentary.
[00:27:43] Cameron: Hmm. So the model that they put forward, which was Herman’s model, um, Chomsky gives him credit for it, and they got it from an Australian guy. You ever read the Australian guy that they got that from Herman Got it from, can’t remember his name.
[00:27:58] Cameron: He passed away quite young, sadly. Um, but he, he was a, I think he was from Queensland. He wrote a book in the early nineties, um, which I’ve got somewhere. But he, he basically broke down the model in the same way. And they, and Herman and Chomsky reference him and, um, give him credit for breaking it down. But he was basically saying that. You know, uh, and I, I think I talked about this a bit in our psychopath book, but that if you are, when you are interviewing as a journalist to get inside of a media organization, they’re looking for are you gonna fit in? Are you gonna be part of the team? Are you gonna work well? Are you, are you going to fit in with the culture of the organization?
[00:28:40] Cameron: And they will weed out people that have views that are diametrically opposed to them politically. Uh, and if somebody sneaks through and who has diametrically opposed, uh, political views and it starts to show up and they’re writing, they’ll be, they’ll be urged to get in line. And if they don’t, they’ll be put on the.
[00:29:02] Cameron: You know, a different bait, a sport bait or something that doesn’t have a political leading or, or an independent opportunity for independent thinking, or they’ll get fired or, or, you know, or conditions will be made so difficult for them to continue working there that they will pack their bag and go somewhere else.
[00:29:20] Cameron: There are different filter mechanisms that have always been in place to weed out the
[00:29:25] Cameron: undesirables.
[00:29:27] Tony: And the, the classic example, which happened just recently was Antoinette Latouf at the ABC.
[00:29:32] Cameron: exactly. Which you might wanna explain that story for our many international
[00:29:36] Cameron: listeners.
[00:29:38] Tony: Yeah. So, uh, she was a casual presenter who came in, uh, to the ABC, which is our, our national broadcaster, um, just on a short-term contract. Uh, and it was, you know, a light and breezy type type role. But, but she was, uh, an Arab Australian who was, um, pro-Palestine and, uh, and, and, um, against the Israeli aggression in Gaza.
[00:30:05] Tony: And she lasted three days and then was, um, sacked under pressure from a bunch of, uh, well, supposedly under pressure from a bunch of Jewish lawyers. I’m
[00:30:13] Tony: not sure if that actually happened, but that was alleged.
[00:30:16] Tony: Uh, but she was sacked by the ABC anyway, ’cause of, um, uh, certainly a, a heightened media profile over her stance.
[00:30:23] Cameron: Well there, I mean, there’s, there was evidence that the um,
[00:30:27] Cameron: Zionist Lobby group of Jewish lawyers, etc. Tried to put pressure on the
[00:30:32] Cameron: ABC. Coincidentally or not fired her. So yes, it’s not hard to draw the dots, even though the ABC denies that it had,
[00:30:43] Cameron: uh, any influence on it.
[00:30:45] Tony: Yeah. And I’ll say it. allegedly happened that way, but, but certainly the fact is she was, she was sacked after three days.
[00:30:52] Cameron: So I wanna talk a little bit about, uh, Putin’s, uh, claims
[00:30:57] Cameron: about the history. So,
[00:30:58] Cameron: uh, early on in
[00:30:59] Cameron: the interview, he says to Tucker, are we gonna have a serious conversation or is this just gonna be light frothy entertainment? Um, Tucker says, no, it’s gonna be serious. And Putin says, let me, let me take
[00:31:10] Cameron: 30 seconds to explain the history of Russia and
[00:31:12] Tony: Yeah.
[00:31:14] Cameron: And he’s obviously a fan of my podcasts because
[00:31:18] Cameron: half an hour later,
[00:31:19] Tony: podcast. Yeah.
[00:31:21] Cameron: half an hour later, he finally wrapped that up. But. Uh, a lot of the criticism about Putin in the media when he does this stuff is about his version of the history of Russia and Ukraine. Uh, and I, I’ll give you an example here. This is from the BBC, an article entitled Tucker Carlson Interview Fact Checking, Putin’s Nonsense History.
[00:31:49] Cameron: And they say, Sergey Radchenko historian at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Study says the President’s claim is a complete falsehood. Vladimir Putin is trying to construct a narrative backwards, saying Russia as a state began its development in the ninth century. You could equally say that Ukraine as a state began its development in the ninth century exactly with the same kind of evidence and documents. So you, you see a lot of this in, um, the media coverage sort of. Uh, uh, sweeping attacks on Putin’s version of the history. But then they don’t actually say what he got wrong. It’s a complete falsehood. Alright, what did he actually get wrong? They don’t actually say what he got wrong. It’s just, oh, it’s just all nonsense.
[00:32:42] Cameron: So not being an expert on the history of this part of the world, um, what I did was I took the transcript, um, of the interview, took all of Putin’s statements and I put them into ChatGPT and I said, let me give you some quotes about the history of Russia and Ukraine and tell, tell me if they’re factually correct or not.
[00:33:08] Cameron: So I threw it all into ChatGPT and basically what it gave me back was, listen, this is actually correct. Um, the interpretation though. Of what this means is, uh, it’s a particular interpretation. Uh, and there are, it could be debated, you know, there are other views and, you know, it’s complicated. State-nation history, state history, very complicated and complex.
[00:33:39] Cameron: And there are a lot of intertwining factors and, you know, a, a different points of view that could be debated, et cetera, et cetera. But factually, it didn’t really have, um, any criticisms of, uh, I mean, I, I sent you the, the, the link to the
[00:33:55] Cameron: chat. Did you have a chance to read through that?
[00:33:58] Tony: I did, yeah. I read the other links too, from the B, B, C, et cetera on what they were saying about, about that too. Um, I, I, I guess, you know, let me preface my comments by saying, I, I think there’s a reason behind Putin spending half an hour at the start of the interview saying what he did.
[00:34:13] Cameron: Sure.
[00:34:13] Tony: Um, it’s, and it was, I, I, um, looked up.
[00:34:18] Tony: You know, the, the history as well. And I came across a Forbes magazine article, which I thought was, um, interesting, where they went into the, the fact that Putin had written an essay about this before the war and was basically regurgitating this in the first part of the interview. Um, I. Yeah. But, um, but, uh, the essence of that, of the Forbes article was that Putin wasn’t speaking to Carlson.
[00:34:42] Tony: He was speaking to his own people that, yeah, the, the Forbes article didn’t call it propaganda, but that’s probably what it was. It was Putin laying out his reasons for the war and hugging on the heartstrings of a particular demographic in Russia that, you know, he thought would support it, um, by going through the history of Ukraine, especially people who were older and, and probably had memories from World War II.
[00:35:06] Tony: So I, I think that’s one of the reasons why Putin did all that. I think the other reason he did it was it’s not a bad ploy. If you’re being interviewed and you’re not a hundred percent sure that the interview is going to give you a good hearing, it’s just to. To keep talking, to keep pushing your point of view and just see if they push back and ask questions.
[00:35:25] Tony: And, and Carlson didn’t, so Putin just laid out his whole manifesto for invading Ukraine, um, and which was, you know, couched in the guise of history. So I think that’s the first thing to say about it. Whether it’s right or wrong, Putin was talking to a demographic in Russia. It was, it was essentially propaganda and Carlson never picked him up.
[00:35:44] Tony: The other beautiful thing about that is because probably a lot of journalists didn’t have two hours to listen to the whole interview. They focus on the first 10 minutes. Um, and Criticise the history of it. But, but as we both know, it’s, it. History’s always open to interpretation. You know, I was trying to find analogies to it, and I sort of came up with two.
[00:36:04] Tony: One would be to say, if Australia invaded New Zealand on a justification that Captain Cook landed in both places, that, you know, it’s, it’s a pretty weak justification for it. But on the other hand, if the Aboriginals say, you know, we wanna take back Australia and we wanna fight for it because we were invaded, that’s probably a closer analogy to the sort of line that Putin was pushing, that Ukraine was part of Russia historically, and it’s, you know, through various events in history got separated and now it should be rejoined.
[00:36:33] Tony: So, you know, I, I get why he’s pushing that argument. But it, but you’re right, it was weak journalism to focus on that and to try, and it was smart of Putin to pick a fight on that. Like, let the journalists debate history with him.
[00:36:45] Tony: They’re not gonna win.
[00:36:47] Cameron: Yeah, look in Tucker Carlson’s preemptive example to airing the interview, he talked about the history lesson that Putin gave him and that they, he thought it was filibustering. He’s just trying to use up the time. Um, but then he changed his view on that. Uh, I don’t, I disagree that Putin was doing that for a Russian audience because Putin has no trouble.
[00:37:13] Cameron: Communicating to a Russian audience in Russia. He, he’s in Russian Media all the time. You know, he’s written articles, he gives speeches. He doesn’t need to tell this story to a Russian audience. The Russian audience that support Putin know this story and they
[00:37:29] Cameron: know his views on it.
[00:37:30] Tony: Well, sure. But, but this was the biggest story in Russian News. I mean, every, every news outlet was trumpeting the fact that a Western journalist had come to Russia and, and sat, sat down with Putin for two hours,
[00:37:41] Tony: and it had been a good interview. So it was getting a higher media profile. And the Russian audience he may have been targeting may not live in Russia.
[00:37:47] Tony: They may have
[00:37:48] Tony: maybe expats in the west as well.
[00:37:51] Cameron: Okay. I I, I do think he’s telling that story for international audiences as well.
[00:37:58] Tony: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:59] Cameron: But here’s my point, is that whatever his reasons are for telling the story, the story’s not incorrect as far as I can tell. With the limited amount of time I’ve had to research it. And also the fact that when I read the Western Media criticisms of the history, they don’t actually point out where he’s wrong.
[00:38:19] Cameron: They don’t say, this is factually incorrect or that is factually incorrect. Look it up. They go, well, yeah, but I could say that about this. Or it’s a, or blanket statements like it’s a complete falsehood, which it’s obviously not. Now I’ve got a lot of time for Sergey Rodchenko read a couple of his books.
[00:38:38] Cameron: He’s written a lot of good books on particularly the Cold War and the Atomic Bomb. Now he’s a Russian born academic, uh, I think Canadian academic. Um, Russian Canadian, but based at John Hopkins now. But, um, it’s obviously not a complete falsehood. So again, I have this question in my head is why can’t.
[00:39:02] Cameron: Academics or the media that are choosing which academics, and we know that they pick and choose who they’re gonna quote from. Why do they have to lie about this? Why do they have to say, why can’t they say, well, look, factually what he’s saying is correct. However, his interpretation of it is biased. Why does it have to, why do they have to say it’s a complete falsehood?
[00:39:24] Cameron: I remember when, um, the invasion first happened and I was on Facebook and I saw his story and friends of mine, um, in, in the US saying the same thing, complete falsehoods, including one guy who comes from that part of the world, complete falsehoods, f you know, Putin’s, fake history, blah, blah, blah. And I go, well, tell me exactly where he is wrong with the history.
[00:39:49] Cameron: Then they just disappear and they don’t come back to it. Like, he’s not like Putin’s a, he’s not an idiot. I love the fact that he said, uh, Carlson, I believe your background is in history. Right? ’cause Carlson’s got his Bachelor of history. I was thinking, yeah, Ray’s got a Bachelor of history too. I mean, they’re not worth much in the US apparently.
[00:40:06] Cameron: Uh, he, uh, but I’m pretty sure that Putin knows his history. He’s not just making this stuff up. Like he’s, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s, he’s a smart guy. He’s very well, you know, and, and, and the other thing I always think is,
[00:40:25] Cameron: I’d love to see an American president sit down and give an hour-long lecture on history.
[00:40:32] Cameron: Could you imagine Joe Biden sitting down and giving an hour-long lecture on something that happened, like the history of a region of the world over
[00:40:40] Cameron: 1500
[00:40:41] Tony: Well, you. You’d need a, like a
[00:40:43] Tony: sign language expert beside a, beside just going, no, no, no, no. Just
[00:40:48] Tony: He
[00:40:48] Tony: didn’t mean the, he didn’t mean the
[00:40:49] Tony: president of Mexico. He meant the president
[00:40:51] Cameron: Of Egypt. Yeah. Did you see John Stewart on the Daily Show last
[00:40:56] Cameron: week covering that?
[00:40:58] Tony: no.
[00:40:59] Cameron: He was telling the story and you know how the, um, special prosecutor looking into Biden’s Garage document said that he was a,
[00:41:08] Cameron: a well-meaning not nice old man with a poor memory. And then he had the bit where Biden got up, uh, in front of the Press Corps to like dispute this.
[00:41:16] Cameron: And then he, he walked away from the podium and John was like, yes, you nailed it. And then Putin starts to walk away. And then, uh, sorry. Putin. Biden starts to walk away. Then he stops and turns around and goes back to the party, mean John’s. Like, no, don’t go back. Don’t go back. And that’s when he delivered the president of Mexico line.
[00:41:36] Tony: Uh.
[00:41:38] Cameron: Like he is like, let, let me do a, let me do a one, uh, man play of what all of Biden’s advisors were doing at this moment. It’s just they’re throwing their notepads and pulling their hair out and screaming. Uh, anyway, um, so again, uh, the key point here is that it, it, it’s often interesting when I’m analyzing media stories about stuff like this to pay attention to what they’re not saying
[00:42:05] Tony: Mm-Hmm.
[00:42:07] Cameron: versus what they are saying.
[00:42:10] Cameron: Again, it’s if he is factually incorrect, if it is a complete falsehood. Why aren’t you telling me how it’s factually incorrect? I mean, that would be the obvious thing to do. It’s complete falsehood. For example, he made, he made points 1, 2, 3, 4, and five, and they’re all, and this is why they’re incorrect, right?
[00:42:30] Cameron: When they don’t do that, my bullshit filter goes off and I’m like, hold on a second, and well, why aren’t they telling me why it’s wrong? This article goes on to say, Mr. Radchenko denies Mr. Putin’s claims that Ukraine is not a real country because it was formed in its modern form in the 20th century. Now, Putin never said, Ukraine is not a real country.
[00:42:50] Tony: Mm.
[00:42:51] Cameron: Carlson said that,
[00:42:53] Tony: Yeah.
[00:42:55] Cameron: but Putin never said that. So again, they’re putting words in his mouth to make it seem
[00:43:04] Cameron: like he’s taking view. Now, what he did say is. After World War II Ukraine received, in addition to the lands that have belonged to Poland before the war, parts of the lands that have previously belonged to Hungary and Romania today, Western Ukraine.
[00:43:18] Cameron: So Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Ukraine, and they still remain part of the Ukraine. So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will. Now, I don’t think that’s the same as saying Ukraine is not a real country.
[00:43:38] Tony: Yeah.
[00:43:39] Cameron: Am I being
[00:43:40] Tony: Look. No, no. Look, I agree with you a hundred percent. Um, but again, I, I think I’m kind of chomping at the bit to go past the history part of this interview because, uh, you know, I think, I think Putin’s very smart and he knows that a lot of the journalists wouldn’t get past the history part of the interview.
[00:43:56] Tony: And you can debate history until the cows come home and, and, uh, you know, he, neither side’s really gonna win. I agree with all your points about, about the attacks being subjective and,
[00:44:08] Tony: um, not focusing on the facts and just focusing on interpretation, but I’d much rather talk about some of the other things that Putin’s talked about in the, in the interview.
[00:44:19] Tony: Yeah.
[00:44:19] Cameron: let’s get to it
[00:44:20] Cameron: then. What do you wanna talk about?
[00:44:22] Tony: Well, I think all of the, all of the things that, um. He, he spoke about that interests me, were after that. So he, he, he made a claim that Poland started World War II, which I thought was, was interesting about the invasion of Poland and, and how they invited Hitler to, to come into Poland. Um, you know, so again, not
[00:44:43] Cameron: no, not that
[00:44:44] Tony: historical subjective interpretation, but a quite a big one I thought.
[00:44:49] Cameron: he didn’t say they invited him to come into Poland.
[00:44:52] Tony: I think he did. I’ll try and find, I’ll try and find the, the, um, art, the article, if I can do it quickly.
[00:44:58] Cameron: What he said from memory was that he called
[00:45:03] Cameron: Poland a collaborator. he said they collaborated with the, Nazis. Some historians have taken issue with that, and I think that’s a, that’s a fair thing. Like collaboration is a big word, but. What is factually correct is that when Hitler was, um, when, when the Munich agreement was signed, which was going to give Germany some land, and Czechoslovakia, Poland jumped on board and took land from Czechoslovakia as well when they were weak.
[00:45:37] Cameron: They took advantage of Czechoslovakia’s, uh, weakness at the time to grab some territory. And then Hitler wanted some territory from Poland. The Danzig corridor. Poland refused to give it up, and so Hitler invaded, but they had been in, in Putin’s words, they collaborated. Now, you know, you could pick that apart.
[00:46:06] Cameron: Did they collaborate or did they just take advantage? Like the, the issue that I’ve read that historians have is that collaboration. Suggests, uh, joint strategic diplomatic agreement to attack a, a country in this instance. Um, did they have, were there diplomatic conversations between Nazi, Germany and Poland?
[00:46:30] Cameron: Yes. Is that collaboration the way it’s portrayed as well? Poland didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter because Nazi Germany was this more powerful, aggressive country on the border, and so they had to go along with it wasn’t really collaboration. And I’m like, Hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, you could say the same thing about the Munich agreement.
[00:46:56] Cameron: Um, you know, was Neville Chamberlain collaborating with Hitler when they agreed to the Munich agreement, or was he just feeling like I. They couldn’t, they didn’t want to have a war with Nazi Germany at the time. So appeasement was the better option. Is that collaboration? I think it maybe is
[00:47:18] Tony: Yeah, maybe so. So the, you’re right about, I, I shouldn’t have said that. Putin said Poland invited Hitler in the quote is in 1939. This is Putin speaking After Poland cooperated with Hitler, it did collaborate with Hitler, you know, Hitler offered Poland Peace and a Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. We have all the relevant documents in the archives demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany.
[00:47:39] Tony: The,
[00:47:40] Tony: so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Königsberg. Yeah, so the, the, the, the claim was collaboration.
[00:47:51] Cameron: collaboration and cooperation, and
[00:47:53] Cameron: again, like he’s not wrong. From a particular point of view, you can argue what is the definition
[00:48:00] Cameron: of collaboration and cooperation. But they did, you know, they did cooperate, they did take advantage of the situation. You can say, well, they didn’t have much option, but you know, neither did the, the Vichy government in France have much option, but we still criticized them as collaborators.
[00:48:22] Cameron: I mean, you can say no and get shot, but, or you can collaborate and try and make the best of a bad situation,
[00:48:29] Cameron: I guess. I dunno,
[00:48:31] Tony: Yeah, Well, I guess like,
[00:48:33] Tony: sorry. No, I’m not disagreeing with you. I guess the reason for raising that is to talk about, there seems to be the, the link between what happened in that part of Europe and World War II and what’s happening in Ukraine and neo-Nazis, and that that was a, a kind of a key point that, that Putin’s making.
[00:48:49] Tony: He was, he was saying that one of his reasons for invading Ukraine is a denazification, or that’s one of, one of his requirements for a truce is the Denazification of U of Ukraine. And I thought, I still think that’s very interesting. And, and again, I’m wondering whether he’s, he’s playing to his audience at home on that one because I read a couple of articles.
[00:49:10] Tony: NPR was this one. Uh, NPR was a good one. Um, about, about the issue in Ukraine, I won’t read it out, it’s quite long. But basically it says that, um, sure they’re in the N Nazis in Ukraine, about 2% of the population. There’s the people who fall in the, I think it’s called the ZOS Regimen. Um. Before the Ukraine war and during the Ukraine war.
[00:49:33] Tony: Uh, but they point out that 2% of the population who claim to be neo-Nazis is actually less than that. The situation in the US where there’s far more ultra-right, uh, members of the public than in Ukraine. So it’s a fairly normal thing in a lot of Western countries. It’s particularly in Europe to have, uh, sort of fringe neo-Nazi element.
[00:49:51] Tony: So why, why do you think
[00:49:53] Tony: Putin is making a big deal of Denazification, the denazification of
[00:49:59] Tony: Ukraine?
[00:50:01] Cameron: I think, I think this is, um, part of, you know, his, um, propaganda back to his home audience. Um, and I’ve always felt that this is the weakest of his arguments and his justifications. But what I also have seen happen in the last couple of years is how the Western media has absolutely tried to refute. This argument that there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine when before February, 2000 twenty-two, the Western media was regularly running stories about Nazis being a big problem in Ukraine.
[00:50:47] Cameron: And I’ve got an archive of documents about this. Here’s a quote from a rolling, recent Rolling Stone article about the interview. It says, Putin spoke at length about his wish to bring Denazification to Ukraine. And while the nation does have a dark history of association with Nazism and neo-Nazi factions, particularly in the context of World War II experts widely agree, this is a propaganda ploy used as a justification for the invasion.
[00:51:13] Cameron: Except, um, you know, there are lots of, uh, articles, as I said that seem to think that West had a problem with the Nazis in Ukraine before the invasion. Here’s a link to a Reuters article. From, um, the 7th of February, 2024, it said, oh, hold on. No, that’s on, uh, that’s on Nord Stream. Let me, um, get to the find.
[00:51:49] Cameron: Yes. Here we go. This is from the Guardian in 2014, Azov fighters are Ukraine’s greatest weapon and maybe its greatest threat. And this is around about the time of the beginning of the Donbass situation, the Guardian says, but there is an increasing worry that while the Azov and other volunteer battalions might be Ukraine’s most potent and reliable force on the battlefield against the separatists, they also pose the most serious threat to the Ukrainian government and perhaps even the state.
[00:52:17] Cameron: When the conflict in the east is over. The Azov causes particular concern due to the far right, even neo-Nazi leanings of many of its members. The battalion’s symbol is reminiscent of the Nazi wolf’s angel. Though the battalion claims, it is in fact meant to be the letters N and I crossed over each other standing for national idea.
[00:52:37] Cameron: Many of its members have links with neo-Nazi groups, and even those who laughed off the idea that they are neo-Nazis did not give the most convincing denials. Fighters from the battalion told the Guardian last month, they expected a new revolution in Ukraine that would bring a more decisive military leader to power in sentiments similar to those of many Azov fighters.
[00:52:58] Cameron: Despite the desire of many in the Azov to bring violence to Kiev when the war in the east is over. The battalion receives funding and assistance from the governor of the Donetsk region, the oligarch Serhii Taruta. In 2018, the US declared C-Fourteen or S-Fourteen, the CIS Group, uh, in Ukraine as a hate group.
[00:53:23] Cameron: And I’ve got a, an article from Radio Liberty, which is a. US, uh, propaganda Radio station in Europe. Set up part of the Marshall plan says Ivan Stupak, a former SBU employee, SBU being the secret service of the Ukraine with 10 years of experience, said at certain stages the SBU involved its operational contacts.
[00:53:49] Cameron: That is, they found certain common points of view with leaders of C-Fourteen, and directed them to solve certain operational tasks. Um, and it goes on to talk about all the connections between government funding and Secret service and the far-right movement, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s plenty of stories like that.
[00:54:09] Cameron: Uh, but from before twenty-Twenty-two Western governments and the Western media definitely did see these Nazi groups in Ukraine as a significant issue. But post the twenty-two invasion, oh, it’s all just propaganda that Putin. Is spinning. Now, I do think, as I said, it’s his, probably his weakest argument. I think his strongest justification is for is the Nazi, the NATO, uh, enlargement.
[00:54:37] Cameron: But,
[00:54:39] Cameron: you know, I do think he is being genuine when he says part of the conditions that they have is the elimination of neo-Nazis off the border between Ukraine and Russia. I mean, I, I, you know, it’s important for us outside of Russia to remember that the Nazis killed 20 million Russians in World War II
[00:55:04] Cameron: and you know, part of.
[00:55:07] Cameron: The breakup of Germany after World War II was to ensure that the Russians were never bothered by the Germans, the fascists. Again, fascists obviously having a big hatred at the time for communists and Jews, uh, and particularly Jewish communists, um, Ukraine. It’s more Catholic fascists that have been the problem.
[00:55:28] Cameron: But, you know, he, it is a, I think it’s a genuine concern and I think it’s a, a genuine issue, whether or not it’s as big a deal as he makes it out to be,
[00:55:38] Cameron: you know,
[00:55:39] Tony: Well, well actually, I mean, I highlight it because I think, I think you’re right. I think it was a big deal and I think that there was certainly Russian. Speakers in Donbass who were chased out back into Russia by, by, uh, some element of that military slash neo-Nazi, um, power in the Donbass reasons. So I think it is actually an, an issue.
[00:56:03] Tony: Um, but, but as you say, that’s one of the things about the war that gets, gets clouded. It’s, uh, the West has gone from a, from acknowledging the existence of these people to saying it’s propaganda by Putin. But I actually think it’s a key issue for them, not just because of the history of fighting against the Nazis and, and all of that, but because in the Donbass region that’s kind of borderland.
[00:56:25] Tony: There is a, I can’t, I can’t speak to it being a, a neo-Nazi mentality, I’ll call it the pro-Ukrainian mentality. And there’s a Russian affiliated population, and the two haven’t mixed very well, and I think Putin probably is legitimate in asking for claims. Whether it should be called Denazification or not
[00:56:43] Tony: is another issue.
[00:56:45] Cameron: The ABC had an article that I read, Tucker Carlson Vladimir Putin interview explained. It said. Russia’s aim to denazify, Eastern Ukraine, a claim that has been described as propaganda by hundreds of historians who study genocide. I read that and I thought, what if historians who, what do historians who have studied genocide have to do with his claims about Nazis in Ukraine?
[00:57:11] Cameron: It seems like a non-secretary, but, but I read, um, this article again, this is, um, from Radio Freedom. Facebook bans Ukrainian, far-right Group Over Hate speech, but getting rid of it isn’t easy. And it said Human rights groups such as Free. This is from 2019. Human rights groups such as Freedom House of Warned that Azov’s increasing visibility and impunity is a cause for concern.
[00:57:37] Cameron: Far-right? Political forces present a real threat. To the democratic development of Ukrainian society set a recent Freedom House report referring to Azov and similar groups. That threat is not due to political support. Polls show its political party. National Core is supported by less than 1% of Ukrainians.
[00:57:54] Cameron: But because the far right is aggressively trying to impose the regender on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those who oppose political and cultural views. Last month, group of seven ambassadors in Kiev sent a letter to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov urging him to act against the groups, which it said threatened to disrupt the country’s election and usurp the role of the Ukrainian National Police.
[00:58:20] Cameron: The ambassadors asked the ministers to also consider outlawing the groups down the road. Would you be so kind as to outlaw Nazi groups? That’d be great. Thanks. So in twenty-nineteen, the G-Seven was writing a letter to the Ukrainian government. Say, you’ve gotta denazify your country. Now Putin says it and everyone’s like,
[00:58:41] Cameron: ah, what’s he talking about?
[00:58:42] Cameron: It’s all
[00:58:43] Tony: Yeah. And look, and not just that, but like this NPR article. Uh, talks about, it’s a harmful distortion and dilution of history. They say, talking about the, um, Holocaust experts, even though many people appear not to be buying at this time round. Laura Jakusch, a professor of Holocaust studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts told NPR over email that Putin’s claims about the Ukrainian army allegedly perpetrating a genocide against Russians in the Donbass region are completely unfounded, but politically useful to him.
[00:59:14] Cameron: See, like,
[00:59:15] Cameron: so
[00:59:15] Tony: Were they there? That’s the first thing. But the other thing too is these articles always end with the point
[00:59:20] Tony: being made. Anzalensky is a Jew.
[00:59:23] Cameron: yeah.
[00:59:24] Tony: As if, as if that kind
[00:59:25] Tony: of, you can just go, okay, well, we’ll just wipe our hands of a
[00:59:27] Tony: Nazi problem in Ukraine then.
[00:59:29] Cameron: Which Putin himself said in the interview, and he said, and Zelensky’s father or grandfather fought the Nazis. He goes, why? I said to this is Putin saying it. He said, I said to Zelensky, why aren’t you getting rid of these guys like your own father or grandfather who was fought against these guys? Seems strange to me that you’re allowing them in your country, but what am I gonna do?
[00:59:51] Cameron: Kind of thing. Um, but like, I dunno, man, like it just drives me nuts that Cameron Reilly with a couple of hours on his hands can look up the history of neo-Nazis in Ukraine and there’s all this stuff. And yet the mainstream media seems to think they can just run this stuff. And like, there’s just no sense of, oh, maybe we should
[01:00:16] Cameron: just tell the truth about this. And, you
[01:00:18] Tony: and there’s, no fact-checking, right? Like you would think NPR, which is the National public radio in the US, would have a more independent stance on things, but. Putin says that he needs to denazify Ukraine. They go straight to an academic who disagrees with that, and they publish the academic side.
[01:00:33] Tony: Now, whether this is meant to be balanced journalism, I’ve got Putin’s argument on one hand, and there’s academics on the other. I’m not sure, but it doesn’t, I found it very hard to get to the facts on this, you know, what is happening in the Donbass region? How many, how many Russian speakers had fled across the border back into Russia?
[01:00:50] Tony: Was that a legitimate reason for Putin invading and what’s happening now? Why is there a Jewish president in in Ukraine, but he’s allowing the neo-Nazi Azov’s brigade to take a lead part in the war? They’re really interesting questions. I don’t have an opinion either way, but I’m not getting at the facts through the media.
[01:01:09] Cameron: Well, you know that before Zelensky was the president of Ukraine, he played the president of Ukraine on television. Which reminds me of,
[01:01:17] Cameron: I don’t know, just Ronald,
[01:01:19] Tony: Ronald, Reagan Yeah.
[01:01:21] Cameron: even to a certain extent.
[01:01:23] Tony: Yeah.
[01:01:23] Cameron: also, look, we’ve, we’ve talked about this a lot on this show, Tony, but there, um, are you aware of the Victoria Newland
[01:01:30] Cameron: phone
[01:01:31] Cameron: call from 2014?
[01:01:32] Cameron: You’ve
[01:01:33] Tony: I’ve heard it on your show before.
[01:01:34] Tony: Yeah.
[01:01:34] Cameron: Right. So there seems to be, uh, that as evidence that, uh, among other things like her talking in other interviews about
[01:01:44] Cameron: how much money they spent on democracy in Ukraine before the Maidan protests it, it just fits the, the template, the CIA’s template that they’ve been following since they overthrew Mossadegh in the early fifties in Iran for going into a country, uh, behind the scenes funding.
[01:02:09] Cameron: Protest movements, activists, uh, political troublemakers saying, listen, do this. We’ll, we’ll have your back, you know, we’ll, we’ll give you air cover, et cetera, et cetera, and if you win, we will support, you know, you and your chosen, or we’ll tell you who to put in power, but we’ll give you air cover. It just fits the model.
[01:02:29] Cameron: And then when that call was leaked, it just seems to be pretty strong evidence that that’s what was
[01:02:35] Cameron: going on behind the
[01:02:36] Tony: Yeah, well, I’m gonna draw a longer bow, right? That, that the, if the CIA was gonna fund anybody, it’s more likely to be on the right than on the left. And if, if the, if the military industrial complex in the States is funneling money towards fighting in the Ukraine, and the league group is the ASOS group and they have links to neo-Nazis, and you could also draw the line that America’s happily funding them.
[01:03:01] Tony: So
[01:03:03] Tony: we’re not finding out what’s going on
[01:03:05] Tony: here, unfortunately.
[01:03:06] Cameron: Well, the US tends to. Support whoever’s going to best serve their interests, which makes sense, whether they’re on the left or the right, but usually it’s on the right, as you say. Um, there’s the famous, uh, uh, what was her name? Jeannie. Something begins with Letter F doctrine. Can’t remember her name. Fitz Gibbons or something like that.
[01:03:36] Cameron: Fitzsimmons. She was a strategic advisor, uh, in the Reagan years and basically her doctrine was, yeah, it’s easier for us to do business with guys who are on the right than guys on the left. Right. You
[01:03:52] Tony: Yeah.
[01:03:52] Cameron: So they’re usually gonna be the ones we’ll do business with. The other issue that all these articles take is about the outbreak of the conflict in Donbass in 2014, uh, which they usually try and, um, lay at the feet of Putin, make it sound like Putin invaded.
[01:04:13] Cameron: But I always point to a Rand Corporation, uh, um, article investigation report on this Rand Corporation being obviously a, an American, um, think tank when they did their report on it, uh, 10 years ago. They said the conflict started as a local affair, but was quickly supported by Russia. Set a coterie of, well-known local political agitators, businessmen and members of fringe political organisations with a Russian imperialist bent led the effort.
[01:04:48] Cameron: Moscow sought to foster this movement in Ukraine through oligarchic connections and intertwined circles of powerful regional business interests. Combined with local criminal elements. The tactics appeared to be improvised, employing a diversity of individuals with little in common, other than their opposition to Ukraine’s new government.
[01:05:06] Cameron: Russia fostered the subversion with a supporting cast of intelligence operatives, its own citizens and informal network of fighters from the post-Soviet space and local security forces who turned against Ukraine’s government. So if the Americans were running their own. Secret operations to install a pro-American government in Ukraine Russia had their own forces in there to maintain a pro-Russian government.
[01:05:33] Cameron: Uh, and the two were fighting behind the scenes. But you know, what ended up happening is the Donbass breakout was genuinely, according to Rand, a civil war. It was a local affair with both sides, you know, having secret support from other major powers. Um, but it was at Moscow marching an army in Now what the distinction is between the two, you know, there’s another
[01:06:03] Cameron: story
[01:06:05] Tony: Yeah.
[01:06:05] Tony: But, uh, that’s, and that’s a good point too. We, we’ve,
[01:06:08] Tony: you know, we might sound, I might sound critical of the US on all this, but it happens on
[01:06:12] Tony: both sides. We’re just calling it out ’cause it’s not reported.
[01:06:15] Cameron: Yeah. I mean, we, anyone who’s spent any time studying Cold War history, uh, knows that this is the way the Cold War has been played out. You know, it’s, uh, uh, uh, it’s a, it’s a soft power. It’s hybrid warfare. You’re trying to influence the, the, the media and the government and the businesses and the politicians in a country using bribery and influence and, uh, promises and all that kind of stuff, and, and all of the major powers, if they can afford to do it, do it.
[01:06:48] Cameron: I, I tend to subscribe to John Mearsheimer’s geopolitical realism camp that says that major powers in any region, um, know that if they’re not the strongest power in the region, then they’ll, they’re gonna get attacked. They’re gonna be, you know, attacked by other stronger powers. It gets back to the dark forest hypothesis kind of right, that if.
[01:07:15] Cameron: If you are a power in a region and you think there’s another power coming up that may be stronger than you, you kind of have an incentive to get in and hobble them or weaken them or take them over. Because if they become more powerful than you in the future, then you are the victim.
[01:07:30] Tony: Mm-Hmm.
[01:07:30] Cameron: It’s just political
[01:07:32] Tony: And we’re seeing it play out with Australia and the Pacific. Islands at the moment too, as Russia tries to ramp up if its influence and Australia has to counter. So it happens in every, uh, China, I’m
[01:07:42] Tony: sorry, China, uh, it happens in every sphere of influence. I agree. But we just don’t read about
[01:07:47] Tony: it overtly.
[01:07:50] Tony: We try and put the, try and connect the dots, but we don’t read about it overtly.
[01:07:53] Cameron: it
[01:07:53] Cameron: doesn’t get talked about in, you know, mainstream media outlets, like, okay, Mearsheimer does. But as Mearsheimer says, like increasingly he and his colleagues, uh, who push realism just a shut out of the media. I, I heard him being interviewed. I think it was on Lex Friedman’s podcast a while back, and he was saying like, even in the early two thousands when he and, um, his colleague whose name escapes me, wrote a book on the Is,
[01:08:27] Cameron: Hmm,
[01:08:27] Tony: Was it Green Wall?
[01:08:29] Cameron: no, no, no.
[01:08:31] Cameron: Um, he’s passed away, but he was a leading scholar, uh, Stephen Walt when he and Stephen Walt wrote a book called The Israel Lobby, which I read 20 odd years ago, talking about the, the influence that the Israel lobby has in US politics. Uh, he said even though they got attacked right across the board, at least they were given airtime.
[01:08:55] Cameron: You know, they were able, they were being interviewed in the New York Times and they were on television and that kinda stuff. He said, now no one will even. Talk to us, uh, about, you know, what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. It’s like he said, it’s far more of a closed down media ecosystem today than it was 20, 30 years ago
[01:09:18] Cameron: in the United States,
[01:09:20] Tony: That’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, that’s, that speaks
[01:09:23] Tony: and that speaks volumes though, doesn’t it?
[01:09:25] Tony: If, if the, if a media outlet’s applying council culture, rather than saying, come and debate this
[01:09:29] Tony: with the Israel lobby, uh, it’s not really journalism, is it?
[01:09:33] Cameron: Um, no, it’s, it’s, well, you know, I mean, I, however you wanna define journalism. Um, I’ve got some other
[01:09:42] Tony: Yeah.
[01:09:43] Cameron: here I wanna run through. So, um, this is, uh, from the BBC for fans who managed to stay tuned any longer. The reward was a rerun of Putin’s top twisted arguments. some neutral journalism for you. Um, he, they go on to say he aired his regular grievance about NATO expanding east into what Russia sees as its area of influence. We never agreed Ukraine could join NATO, as Putin put it, but it’s having an aggressive, unpredictable neighbor like Russia that’s led Ukraine to seek extra security.
[01:10:22] Cameron: Not true. Uh, we know the history of this. We know that all of the polls in Ukraine. Said, uh, you know, going back 20, uh, 10, 20 years ago showed that that people had no interest in joining NATO. But then the coup happened and there was, uh, a lot of investment by NATO in, uh, Ukraine to build up, like promotion for NATO.
[01:10:53] Cameron: A lot of funding in there. And of course, then they ended up with a pro-American government after the 2014 quote, coup if it in fact was a coup, which, and they’ve been pushed into joining NATO by various forces. But before that, Ukrainians had no interest in joining NATO, nato, uh, it’s, they say Putin has always characterized the mass public protests in Kiev a decade ago as part of a western backed coup, which they were not, says the BBC, according to whom, based on what evidence.
[01:11:24] Cameron: Mentioned Victoria Newland’s phone call. No, just, and this is BBC man.
[01:11:30] Cameron: Like, um,
[01:11:32] Tony: It’s journalism. It’s really, it’s really editorial, isn’t it? It’s not journalism at all.
[01:11:36] Cameron: yeah, It’s all editorial these days. Um, New York Times Tucker Carlson’s lesson in the perils of giving airtime to
[01:11:43] Cameron: an autocrat. Mr. Putin conducted a history lecture that provided a one-sided, often false narrative about Ukraine says The New York Times one-sided. Yes. False. Probably not. Hillary Clinton in an interview this week with Alex Wagner of MSNBC called, uh, Carlson a useful Idiot, and Mr.
[01:12:04] Cameron: Putin’s puppy dog Mr. Carlson gave Mr. Putin room for uninterrupted disquisitions. That’s a new word for me.
[01:12:13] Cameron: What’s a disquisition? Tony? You ever use that
[01:12:15] Cameron: in a
[01:12:16] Tony: no idea. No.
[01:12:17] Cameron: On longstanding and decidedly one-sided grievances about Ukraine’s origins and independence movements, said un uninterrupted. He actually did interrupt him a number of times, Carlson, in that first half hour rant.
[01:12:32] Cameron: He kept trying to interrupt him, and Putin was just like, just, just hold on. Let me, let me finish my story. And he would
[01:12:38] Tony: seconds more, 30 seconds more.
[01:12:40] Cameron: he was saying he was uninterrupted, but it’s not. He, Carlson tried to, I interrupt him on a number. Carlson looked very confused and very troubled from the beginning of the
[01:12:48] Cameron: whole thing.
[01:12:49] Cameron: Like, where’s
[01:12:49] Cameron: this going?
[01:12:50] Tony: I’d be inclined to agree with someone who said that Carlson Softballed Putin.
[01:12:54] Cameron: Softballed him, sure, but
[01:12:55] Tony: tried, tried to interrupt a
[01:12:56] Tony: couple of times, but but once every 10 minutes isn’t really, you know,
[01:13:00] Cameron: but what are you
[01:13:01] Cameron: gonna do? I mean, how are you gonna say, look, just shut the fuck up Mr. Putin,
[01:13:06] Cameron: and, and answer my questions. I mean, you’re not gonna get anywhere with that, I don’t think Putin’s gonna
[01:13:12] Cameron: let you run things. Although the
[01:13:14] Tony: I, I must imagine,
[01:13:15] Tony: sorry. I, imagine, that the, one of the conditions for the interview was that it couldn’t be edited too otherwise, you know, uh, Carlson may
[01:13:23] Tony: have decided just to let it run and then cut it down for use, but he didn’t do that. So I’m guessing that was a condition.
[01:13:29] Cameron: Probably. And, um, I was gonna say that, you know, uh, since the interview, Putin has come out in Russian Media and said that he, he found the interview disappointing and almost
[01:13:40] Tony: Yeah,
[01:13:42] Cameron: Carlson’s taking a victory lap. And Putin’s, like, I actually expected him to ask some hard questions. Like, uh, I, I was prepared for an aggressive
[01:13:51] Cameron: interview and it was really not.
[01:13:52] Cameron: So, so
[01:13:54] Cameron: that’s,
[01:13:55] Tony: yeah. No, exactly.
[01:13:57] Cameron: Putin’s, even Putin’s not giving him, uh,
[01:14:00] Cameron: any, any props for it.
[01:14:02] Tony: And Putin said a lot of interesting things. I mean, the whole, there was a discussion, well, there was a, the
[01:14:06] Tony: point about Boris Johnson intervening in the, in the Peace
[01:14:10] Tony: talks, I Ukraine we’re having with Russia. I mean that, that, that could have been a whole topic of interviewing itself, but it just sort of
[01:14:16] Tony: sailed through.
[01:14:18] Cameron: Yeah, and we’ve, we’ve talked about that on this show. We, we know that that’s true. Um, we know that they were, you know, Zelensky and, and Putin, uh, all their representatives were on the verge of signing an agreement early in 2022. Then Boris Johnson, when he was still Prime Minister, made a three day trip to Kiev, and then the deal was off.
[01:14:40] Cameron: And basically, Boris Johnson in his own words, said that he told Zelensky not to surrender, that he had the full support of the West. Now, what else he said, uh, about what would happen to Zelensky if he did surrender? Um, we don’t know, but it’s, it’s quite obvious that the war would’ve been over. Within a couple of months if the US and the UK hadn’t decided to prolong it forever.
[01:15:08] Cameron: Which reminds me a lot of the Afghanistan situation in the late seventies, which I’ve done shows about, it was deliberately extended for 10 years by the United States in the words of Zbigniew, Brzezinski, Jimmy, Carter’s, national Security Advisor, uh, at the time. He later said that he went into Carter and said, if we play this right, we can give the Soviet Union its own Vietnam.
[01:15:39] Cameron: And then he was quite proud of the fact that they did that later in life, um, that they managed to economically bogged down and cripple the Soviet Union by supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. And this, to me just looks like the same thing. They’re using the Ukrainians as. Uh, fodder now to try and further weaken
[01:16:01] Cameron: Russia economically New York
[01:16:04] Tony: Potentially it’s, it’s backfiring though in the us. I mean, they’re, they’re the one who’s bogged down in Congress with contention over paying so much for the war in, in Ukraine.
[01:16:13] Cameron: Yeah, but the guys in the US that got the
[01:16:15] Cameron: money, it all played out
[01:16:18] Cameron: perfectly, right? I mean, the way I’ve always pictured it’s a win-win
[01:16:21] Cameron: situation for American businesses with this if they win and they managed to keep control of Ukraine. Then they get access to its markets, they get access to. Its, its natural resources.
[01:16:34] Cameron: They, they get, you know, bases again, more bases on the border of Russia to further weaken Russia. I mean, what’s up for grabs is all of the energy supply into
[01:16:44] Tony: grain.
[01:16:45] Cameron: you know, and grain. Yeah. Right. All of that, all of the economic supply that Russia has a big chunk of, if you’re an American business person with interests in Europe and in the Middle East, et cetera, et cetera, you want to get access to those markets.
[01:16:59] Cameron: If they, so if they win the war, they get that, or get to keep that or get more of that. If they lose the war, well, you know, we still got a hundred billion dollars of, uh, American taxpayers money over a few years, like happy days.
[01:17:14] Cameron: Right. It’s a
[01:17:15] Tony: Yeah. So there’s no incentive to do the, to do a negotiation. Is there a peace negotiation?
[01:17:21] Cameron: Not if you are an American businessman or an American politician. Yeah, if you’re a Ukrainian soldier, maybe, or a
[01:17:27] Cameron: Russian soldier. Um, another interesting thing in the New York Times, as Putin threatens despair and hedging in Europe,
[01:17:35] Cameron: it actually admits that Putin was complaining about NATO expansion back in 2007.
[01:17:40] Cameron: It talks about this conference that just happened at the Hotel Bayeriska Hof. It says in the Hotel Bayeriska Hof, the conference stage where Mr. Putin warned in 2007 that NATO’s eastern expansion was a threat to Russia Mr. Navalny’s widow made an emotional appearance on Friday hours after a husband’s death reminding attendees that Mr.
[01:18:03] Cameron: Putin would bear responsibility for it. Um, leaving aside the Navalny stuff, uh, it’s a rare admission in the Western media that the NATO expansion issue. Didn’t just start getting invented by Putin in February, 2022. You know, that normally in Western media just gets rejected out hand as being nonsense.
[01:18:30] Cameron: Got nothing to do with NATO, despite the fact that Putin and before him, um, you know, going back to Gorbachev and then, um, who was the guy after Gorbachev? I’ve got a mental blank. Uh, Yeltsin, Yeltsin all took issue with the NATO expansion when it started happening in ninety-six under Clinton. I. You know, they’ve been beating on about it for nearly 30 years.
[01:18:59] Cameron: Stop the NATO expansion. Stop the NATO expansion. Stop the NATO expansion. Finally, they invade and they say, why are NATO expansion? What? That’s dev. Well, that’s got nothing to do with it. Never heard that before. Like seriously. And again, the way the media just writes it off as that, it’s just nonsense. It’s got nothing to do with NATO expansion.
[01:19:16] Cameron: Like it boggles the mind.
[01:19:18] Tony: Yeah.
[01:19:19] Cameron: CBC, Canadian broadcasters barely mentions Putin’s actual talking points. Only after 30 paragraphs of Criticising Carlson did they get to anything that Putin had to say.
[01:19:33] Cameron: Putin, in the Russian interview where he said that the interview was disappointing also said he’d rather have Biden continue as US president because he’s predictable. Can you imagine if he’d said the opposite, how the Democrats would be losing their damn minds at the moment if he said, oh, I’d rather have Trump as president.
[01:19:49] Cameron: See? See? Trump’s a Russian puppet. He said, Biden, and this is like
[01:19:56] Cameron: crickets.
[01:19:57] Tony: Yeah. Biden’s, other Putin puppet. Yeah. No, I, I did see that one too. The other interesting thing I thought, um, that was, let’s slide by Carlson again, was when Putin told his story about,
[01:20:08] Tony: uh, going to Clinton and saying, uh, Hey, that Russia joined NATO? Were you, and Clinton said, yeah, okay. And then came back that night and said, no,
[01:20:16] Tony: sorry.
[01:20:16] Tony: Can’t do it.
[01:20:17] Cameron: My advisors told me I can’t do that. Yeah. Yeah. That’s well, uh, documented as well that Russia tried to join NATO. I. Just got shut out. Um, you know, and this goes right back to, um, Gorbachev, plenty of interviews on record about this when they were doing the whole collapsing of the Soviet Union and, uh, you know, the, the promise about No NATO and he agreed to the reunification of Germany.
[01:20:48] Cameron: He was putting forward propositions that they form a new security, global security alliance that they could all be part of and, you know, was given nods and winks. Oh, sure, sure, sure. We can do that. And then just shut out. It just, you know, once the Americans felt that they’d won the Cold War, they weren’t giving up any play in anything.
[01:21:08] Cameron: Politico called it a two-hour love-in, they mentioned the Russian President’s fanciful history lesson. On the Nord Stream stuff, they said several countries have been publicly blamed for the explosions with varying degrees of evidence. Ukraine has said Russia was responsible, which the Kremlin has denied.
[01:21:27] Cameron: While Moscow has previously blamed the UK without presenting any evidence to support that assertion, either, they don’t mention at all the, uh, us, uh, being involved. Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist at his sources said it was the CIA. They don’t mention that. They don’t mention that the US blamed Ukraine for it either.
[01:21:49] Cameron: Um, just not worth mentioning apparently. Um, there’s, um, I mentioned that, that there’s a Reuters article for the 7th of February. Uh, the Rolling Stone said, um, something about. Uh, we’re talking about the Nord Stream, the Rolling Stone Magazine article said Investigations have yet to determine who was behind the sabotage.
[01:22:14] Cameron: And then they link to a Reuters article from the 7th of February. It says, the White House last year dismissed a blog post by a US investigative journalist alleging Washington was behind explosions as utterly false and complete fiction. I was like, they fucking wrote off Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer, Prize winning investigative journalist who broke the My Lai story massacre in Vietnam, who broke the Abu Ghraib torture story 20 years ago as a blog post by a US investigative journalist.
[01:22:49] Cameron: Like it makes it sound like it’s some hack conspiracy, like it’s me sitting in my bedroom writing about it. You know, fucking Seymour Hersh. They just write off
[01:23:00] Cameron: like, seriously, this
[01:23:02] Tony: they can ’cause none of the, none of the, none of the outlets in the
[01:23:04] Tony: America, America picked that up. You’d think the first thing that the head of the Washington Post would do is say, oh, who’s journalists? Let’s, let’s go and talk to them. Let’s see what their sources are. Let’s, let’s, you know, try and replicate the work that they did.
[01:23:16] Cameron: all the New York Times where he won a Pulitzer Prize,
[01:23:19] Tony: yeah. Oh no. We’ll just take the press release
[01:23:22] Tony: from Washington and read. I
[01:23:23] Tony: print that.
[01:23:24] Cameron: like I’ve, You know, I read Seymour Hurst’s blog, um, and he’s, you know, been saying for, uh, whatever it’s been now, six months since he wrote that story. You can tell by the lack of coverage that my story is getting.
[01:23:38] Tony: is accurate.
[01:23:39] Cameron: How close to the bone it is, right? Yeah. If it was wrong and they knew it was wrong, they would come out and say that the fact that they are, you know, tackling what’s actually being said in it, um, stands for itself.
[01:23:53] Cameron: They go on, sorry. In the Reuters article to say, the US and German Media have reported that the yacht could have been used by Ukrainian or pro-Ukrainian groups citing leaked intelligence reports and people familiar with official investigations. Kiev has repeatedly denied any involvement. The Washington Post citing leaked information posted online wrote last June that the United States learned of a Ukrainian plan to attack the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline three months before they were damaged.
[01:24:21] Cameron: So of course what happened is when Seymour Hearst came out with his story, the uh, Washington Post slash US government came out with their own
[01:24:30] Cameron: story. Oh, well we heard
[01:24:33] Cameron: that it was probably
[01:24:34] Tony: Our sources say,
[01:24:35] Cameron: did it. Uh.
[01:24:38] Cameron: You know, and it just goes on like, um, the, the amount of
[01:24:44] Cameron: obfuscation. The other thing that I wanted to point out that Putin talked about a lot that didn’t get any coverage in any of the articles that I saw was the role that the failure of the Minsk agreements
[01:24:55] Cameron: played.
[01:24:56] Tony: Yeah, I, I was gonna highlight that?
[01:24:58] Tony: too.
[01:24:58] Cameron: What,
[01:24:58] Cameron: what did you have on that?
[01:25:00] Tony: No, no. Go ahead. I, I’ve gotta find my notes.
[01:25:03] Cameron: Well, for people who, uh, first time listeners, um,
[01:25:08] Cameron: uh, uh, when the whole thing broke out in the Donbass region in 2014, there were
[01:25:12] Cameron: a number of attempts to try and bring about a peace settlement there. They were called the Minsk agreements because the meetings happens in, in Minsk and Belarus. Um, and it looked like they had a, a template for.
[01:25:28] Cameron: Some sort of a settlement in the Donbass region. And again, it just failed. And aspersions were cast around as to who failed and why they failed and who was to blame for not upholding their end of the agreement. A bit like the whole, you know, Palestine Israel thing that’s been going on forever, each side blames the other.
[01:25:47] Cameron: But, um, Putin puts the blame on the failure of the Minsk agreements on Ukraine in the West for not upholding their end of it. And there is, there’s a fa uh, um, a fascinating interview with Angela Merkel, who was one of the sponsors of the agreement when she was the Chancellor of Germany. She was interviewed by a German magazine, desight recently, where she said that the Minsk agreements had been an attempt to give Ukraine time to defend itself. She said, um. Putin said, it turns out that no one was gonna fulfill all these Minsk agreements, and the point was only to pump up Ukraine with weapons and prepare it for hostilities. So then I got this from, um, Reuters. Uh, I think according to former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Minsk agreement served to buy time to Rearm Ukraine.
[01:26:48] Cameron: I’ve got the actual interview here from Dezeit. It says this is quoting Merkel, but that requires us to also say what exactly the alternatives were at the time. I thought the initiation of NATO accession. By Ukraine and Georgia, which was discussed in 2008, was wrong. The countries neither had the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully thought through, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its assistance rules.
[01:27:21] Cameron: And the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. The aim was to gain time through a ceasefire in order to later achieve peace between Russia and Ukraine. She also used this time to become stronger. As you can see today, the Ukraine of 2014 15 is not the Ukraine of today. As we saw in the battle for the Bolshev railway town in Donbass at the beginning of 2015, Putin could have easily overrun them back then, and I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much back then as they do now to help Ukraine. So, um, yeah, basically she seems to be confirming Putin’s assertion that the Minsk agreements were really just, uh, an attempt by the West to buy time to, you know, rearm Ukraine and build them up so they could basically, uh, not sign a peace agreement with
[01:28:25] Cameron: Russia,
[01:28:27] Tony: And also I think, um, as Putin alluded to, the Minsk agreement never really held, there was always
[01:28:31] Tony: ongoing breakouts of fighting over that time as well. And, and you know, basically he was saying he couldn’t trust the signatories to the Minsk agreement.
[01:28:41] Cameron: particularly when, you know, one of the key sponsors of it comes out and says, we, we were just using it to buy time in the
[01:28:47] Cameron: first place. It
[01:28:47] Cameron: wasn’t, wasn’t serious.
[01:28:49] Tony: Yeah. And it wasn’t just Merkel, it was the, um, other German, uh, leader before her, I think, I’m just trying to find his name. Uh, Steinem Steinman. Anyway, one of the, one of the, uh, key negotiators and of, of that time might not have been a, sorry, she, he might not have been, uh, Merkel’s equivalent, but certainly someone
[01:29:08] Tony: higher up in Germany also came out and said it wasn’t working.
[01:29:12] Cameron: Yeah.
[01:29:13] Tony: Just trying to find his name now.
[01:29:15] Cameron: And
[01:29:16] Tony: yeah, sorry.
[01:29:17] Cameron: well, and the thing is, I guess my point was gonna be I, This doesn’t get talked about in the Western media. You know, the fact that the Minsk agreements were just a furphy. Secondly, um, again, Putin’s, no dummy. Whatever you think of Putin, if he’s the embodiment of all that is evil or not, he’s no dummy.
[01:29:40] Cameron: And if, and, and if he knows that the peace agreements or the, the, the attempts in good faith to negotiate a settlement in the Donbass region would just deploy, used by the Wests to buy time to so they could, um, and fund and, you know, start building bases and putting weapons on the border of Russia. What do you do?
[01:30:04] Cameron: This is a question I’ve always asked about this. If, if you are Putin, what do you do? What are your options? If you’ve spent 30 years trying to reach a diplomatic negotiation about NATO expansion, that has just been ignored. And, and, and again, this didn’t come up. I’m surprised it didn’t come up. Carlson asked him when the last time he spoke to Biden was, and Putin just sort of like, I, I don’t know.
[01:30:25] Cameron: I don’t remember. I can’t remember everything. I know it was just, it was January, 2022. They discussed, well, Putin tried to discuss. Ukraine joining NATO and Biden told him. It wasn’t open to discussion, it was off the
[01:30:42] Cameron: table.
[01:30:44] Tony: I mean, I know you’ve done a, a long history podcast on Napoleon, but it’s very Napoleonic. This Putin’s saying, I have tried to defend my border, to defend my country, to keep my people safe, but you keep attacking. I’ve signed Minsk one and Minsk II, and for 10 years we’ve had clashes on the border. Still after I withdrew, what more do I have to do?
[01:31:07] Tony: How, how, how can you say I’m the aggressor if I then, you know, cross the border with my tanks trying to
[01:31:14] Tony: protect my border.
[01:31:15] Cameron: That’s the thing that infuriates me with David Markham. I mean, if you talk about why Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, David will give you all the arguments where he tried. He tried diplomatic measures to avoid war. But he realized, ’cause he was no dummy, what was going on. They were building up forces on his border and war was coming.
[01:31:38] Cameron: So rather than the war happened on his territory, he took it to their territory. And it’s, uh, you know, you you would say that that’s a, a just action. I mean, war is bad, but when you, when your enemy is building up forces on their border and you believe that they have
[01:31:54] Cameron: malicious intent,
[01:31:56] Tony: And you’ve had 10 years of a history of a broken treaty when you’ve tried to resolve it peacefully.
[01:32:01] Cameron: and 30 years in this case of them saying, don’t put NATO, you promised you wouldn’t gonna put NATO bases on our
[01:32:07] Cameron: border. And they’re like, shut the fuck up. We’ll do whatever we want. What do you do? That’s always been my question. Do you just like politically, if he just sits there and lets it happen, he’s
[01:32:19] Cameron: not gonna survive.
[01:32:21] Tony: mm-Hmm,
[01:32:21] Cameron: Let alone, you know, for the, the EE economic and military security of the Russian people, he needs to act. I am not justifying. His invasion. I’m just saying that from his perspective, I felt like he, he really had no option. It was
[01:32:39] Tony: hmm,
[01:32:40] Cameron: We’ve tried everything else. That’s failed. Yeah. A a as Von Klausowitz said, to paraphrase, war is the extension of diplomacy by other means, right?
[01:32:51] Cameron: When diplomacy
[01:33:03] Tony: with the issue of Gershkovich when Carlson thought he’d be able to take a trophy home from Russia and have an American, uh, released and Putin was all over it straight away with all the facts.
[01:33:16] Tony: You know, we are working on this, there’s discussions going on. Uh, there might be a prisoner exchange. We have a mine. This guy, you know, who uh, who was captured by the Americans after he assassinated. Uh, uh, what was the, um,
[01:33:30] Tony: oh, I’ve forgotten the name of the place now that, anyway,
[01:33:33] Cameron: Che, wasn’t it a
[01:33:34] Tony: Chechen. Thank you. The Chechen.
[01:33:35] Tony: The Chechen Rebel. Yeah. But, but that was, to me, that was Putin
[01:33:38] Tony: just completely and just had all the facts at his fingertips. Wasn’t gonna be gotcha’d,
[01:33:44] Cameron: hmm.
[01:33:45] Tony: just laid it all out off the cuff. Brilliant.
[01:33:47] Cameron: And the thing that always gets me about, uh, I don’t know if you, did you ever watch the Oliver Stone interviews with Putin
[01:33:52] Tony: No, I haven’t.
[01:33:53] Cameron: going back a few years, but it was like four hours of interviews. Um, late 2000 and like 17, 18, something like that.
[01:34:02] Cameron: The thing that always gets me, and this is what Oliver Stone said, ’cause Oliver Stone, you know, he did the same thing with Castro. He did the same thing with Chavez in Venezuela. He, like he said, those guys are big personalities and grand pronouncements and obviously also both very intelligent, very successful leaders of their country, depending on how you wanna measure success, I guess.
[01:34:25] Cameron: And Putin is the complete opposite to those guys. The thing that always fascinates me about these Putin interviews is he’s very quietly spoken. He doesn’t rock up wearing a uniform, you know, military badges and everything. Um, you know, Castro always just wore basic greens. You know, you never saw Castro with military, um, adornments, like a Gaddafi.
[01:34:45] Cameron: He was just, you know, military greens. ’cause he said, we’re at war and I’m a soldier, so, you know, I come dressed as a soldier, but Putin is just very quietly
[01:34:55] Cameron: spoken. Very matter of fact. Very look, here are the facts. You know, I’m laying the facts before you reminds me a lot actually of Assad in Syria, if you’ve ever seen interviews with him.
[01:35:08] Cameron: Very, very similar. I I’m not gonna compare the two guys ’cause I don’t think Assad is anywhere near what Putin is in terms of, you know, intellectual power, but very, very simple. Uh, you know, in interviews, very quietly spoken. Very matter of fact. Here’s the facts we see, you know, Putin exudes this quiet intellectual.
[01:35:31] Cameron: Confidence about his position, what his facts are. He’s always very respectful too. When, like, when, when, same with Oliver Stone interviews. When Carson was saying, well, what, what happened in this conversation? What happened in this meeting with Biden or with these leaders or with the, he goes, look, it’s not my place.
[01:35:51] Cameron: It would be, it would be not right for me to talk about things that were said in private. If you wanna know what your president said, go ask your president if you wanna know what Bill Clinton said. Carson, what do you think happened with Bill Clinton? He goes, it wouldn’t be right for me to, you know, speculate.
[01:36:06] Cameron: Go talk to Bill Clinton. Like, he’s always, he’s not advancing conspiracy theories. He is not advancing agendas. He’s just like, it’s not for me to say I, I, I know what I know, but you know, it, it’s the depiction of him in the western media is this bond villain. Doesn’t come across to me in these interviews.
[01:36:27] Cameron: Like does he have people assassinated? I don’t know. Quite possibly. Do American presidents have people assassinated? Yeah, absolutely. All the time. Does he arrest journalists? Sure. As Julian Assange in prison because of the us Sure. I mean, he does what he does and they talk about that like, as a Christian leader, you have to kill people.
[01:36:46] Cameron: Like how do you, how do you justify that? Right.
[01:36:51] Cameron: Um.
[01:36:53] Tony: I think you’ve raised the last point I wanted to talk about, and that was the timing of the interview. And, and I, I, I’ve, I don’t want to sound, uh, like any sort of Putin apologist for a minute. Um, apart from saying that he’s a smart guy and he doesn’t get a fair shot in the media, but what did you make of the Novelli.
[01:37:12] Tony: Uh,
[01:37:12] Tony: death, uh, around the soon after this interview was put to air, it was the interview, the bright shiny object to distract from something going
[01:37:20] Tony: on.
[01:37:23] Cameron: Look, um, well first of all, I’m not convinced that, you know, there’s any evidence that they like deliberately assassinated him. People die all the time. People die in prisons all the time.
[01:37:36] Cameron: Um.
[01:37:37] Tony: Especially in subzero Arctic
[01:37:40] Cameron: Sure,
[01:37:41] Tony: concentration camps.
[01:37:42] Cameron: but reports are that like the day or a couple of days before Navalny died, he appeared in court and he seemed to be healthy and un unlike
[01:37:49] Cameron: Julian Assange, who apparently is too sick to appear in
[01:37:52] Cameron: court. Um, but you know, again, I I, I don’t think Putin would try and time anything like this because I don’t think he really gives a rat’s ass.
[01:38:05] Cameron: I don’t think he cares what the Western media says. I don’t think he cares what western governments say. I think he’s a, like, bit like MBF in Saudi. Arabia having Khashoggi hacked to death with a, an axe in a bathtub. He doesn’t care. Like say what you want. I mean, you think I’m a bad guy, okay. I killed one of my enemies.
[01:38:24] Cameron: Who cares? What are you gonna do? Not buy my oil, like shut the fuck up. I don’t care. I think, I don’t think Putin really cares about bright, shiny objects. I don’t think he cares what the Americans think. I don’t, I do think he wants to. Finish the war in Ukraine. And in order to do that, he needs the US and the EU to stop funneling weapons into Ukraine.
[01:38:46] Cameron: I don’t think he wants a war there. Uh, um, whether or not the Navalny thing was timed with the upcoming Russian election and the interview, look, I, I don’t, I, I don’t think it matters. I don’t, I don’t think Navalny was gonna cause any problems in the Russian election. I’m pretty sure Putin’s got that stitched up by means, fair or foul.
[01:39:08] Cameron: I, you know, he is extremely popular. That’s the other thing the media never talk about here. All of the, all of the surveys that get done by credible western, uh, polling organizations say that he’s incredibly popular in Russia. Maybe because he gets all the pro-Russian propaganda from the media. Or maybe just because, you know, look at Russia before him under Yeltsin.
[01:39:33] Cameron: It was a basket case. Whatever else you wanna say about him. Like Hitler taking over Germany. He’s made the country stronger. He’s made the country in many ways, more economically viable, stronger, better standard of living. Is it perfect? No, but as he talks about in the, in the, the Oliver Stone interviews, it was a basket case when he took over 20 years ago.
[01:39:58] Cameron: It takes a long time to re, you know, not just rebuilding from the Soviet era, but then rebuilding from when the Americans went in, uh, under Yeltsin. Clinton sent his American strategists in and they just sold everything off to the oligarchs. You know, Putin’s been trying to. You know, rebuild the country and it takes time.
[01:40:20] Cameron: It’s a hard, it’s a hard slog, particularly when you’re facing all the other things that they’re facing with Western imperialism and all that kind of stuff in their region. So, no, I, I look, I, I dunno whether or not he was behind Navalny’s death. I, I dunno. Uh, you know, and, and every time anyone dies, Putin apparently personally signed the order.
[01:40:40] Cameron: I don’t know that that necessarily needs to be the case. There’s probably a lot of people between Putin and the guy that, um, you know, commits the act that, that are making de decisions for themselves. I don’t think the president of the United States personally authorizes everybody that every CIA operative Assassinates know.
[01:41:03] Cameron: I don’t know. What
[01:41:03] Cameron: do you think?
[01:41:05] Tony: No, I, I was just raising the question. I, I, if my personal opinion is, I think Nevali just died of, of, I’ll call it natural causes, and he’s in a subarctic, what’s it called? The polar bear or something facility, um, which is basically a death camp. And it just happened to coincide. But I guess that raises the, um, you know, the other issue for me is that it was a Western pile on, again, when Nevali died, that it was caused by Putin.
[01:41:32] Tony: Um, that, you know, see, he may have said some smart things during the interview, but this is what he’s really all
[01:41:37] Tony: about. This is what he does. So it’s, um, and I, and you know, I don’t for a minute think that if Putin didn’t do it, that he’s capable of doing it.
[01:41:45] Cameron: Sure.
[01:41:46] Tony: Yeah,
[01:41:46] Cameron: He’s ex-KGB and he is the leader of a country, like he’s capable of doing anything that he thinks is in the best
[01:41:52] Cameron: interest of his country. I’m sure.
[01:41:54] Tony: Yeah. But also it raises for me the bigger question of, um, of methods of government.
[01:41:58] Tony: And, and that could be behind some of the, you know, the slants of the media is like, you know, do, do, do. I do, I think do, do I think that Western democracy is the best form of government? Well, you just have to look at all the leaders we’ve had in the last 15, 20 years, or is a benevolent dictator
[01:42:16] Tony: a better form of government,
[01:42:18] Tony: um, even though that there are downsides to that if you are in, in opposition.
[01:42:22] Tony: Um, so I think that’s an interesting
[01:42:23] Tony: question to, to talk about as well.
[01:42:26] Cameron: The irony there is that the West loves Lee Kuan. Yew the West couldn’t get enough of Lee Kuan Yew and he was a benevolent dictator, as you say. And their system of government was very much like the Chinese system of government and who, you know, if you believe the books that I’ve been reading basically studied s Singapore’s form of government under Lee, Kuan, Yew and said, yeah, we want, we wanna have that, you know, we wanna be like that.
[01:42:53] Cameron: Let’s, let’s find the best and the brightest and give them positions of political power rather than just somebody who’s able to man manipulate the electorate to vote for them. That doesn’t make any sense.
[01:43:04] Cameron: Let’s find the best and the brightest.
[01:43:05] Tony: Yeah, well the best of the brightest do run power in the West. It’s just that they do it to line their pockets. It’s
[01:43:11] Tony: a little bit different.
[01:43:12] Cameron: You think Trump is
[01:43:13] Cameron: the best and the brightest
[01:43:15] Tony: No, I think Trump’s the mouthpiece. He’s the Ronald. Reagan.
[01:43:18] Cameron: Oh yeah. Right. Yeah.
[01:43:19] Tony: The best of the brightest are on Wall
[01:43:21] Cameron: Steve Bannon. Oh, wall Street. Okay.
[01:43:24] Cameron: All right. Well, that’s all I got. TK. Thanks for joining me. That was a good
[01:43:27] Cameron: chat.
[01:43:28] Tony: discussion. Yeah, thank you,
[01:43:30] Cameron: than we normally get to talk about these things at
[01:43:32] Cameron: the end of QAV.
[01:43:34] Tony: It is. Yeah. This could be the first of our after hours
[01:43:37] Cameron: Could be.
[01:43:38] Tony: podcast.
[01:43:39] Cameron: All right. Thank
[01:43:40] Cameron: you. TK. Cheers.
[01:43:42] Tony: Bye.
