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Welcome to the radio network of SOTT.net, your media source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. The Behind the Headlines talkshow takes place each Sunday on the SOTT Radio Network. Analyzing global impact events that shape our world and future, and connecting the dots to reveal the bigger picture obscured by mainstream programming, Behind the Headlines is current affairs for people who think.

From the crisis in Ukraine to the ISIS in Iraq, from increasingly extreme weather to surviving in a world ruled by psychopaths, your hosts, their colleagues (and occasional guests) explore the deeper truths driving world events by exposing the manipulations behind what passes for 'news'.

This week on Behind the Headlines, your hosts examine Putin's peace deal with Europe and the Axis of Evil's likely response(s).

Behind the Headlines airs live this Sunday, 15 February 2015, from 2-3.30pm EST / 11am-12.30pm PST / 7-8.30pm UTC / 8-9.30pm CET.

Running Time: 01:59:00

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Joe: Hi, and welcome to Behind the Headlines on the Sott radio network.This week, we are going to be talking about all the things that have happened last week.

Pierre: No way.

Niall: With a view to describing what will happen next week.

Joe: But the name of this show should be, 'Last Week, Tonight'.

Pierre: 'L.W.T.'

Joe: Well, not just last week, obviously we may go further back in time, as is often required to explain things that are happening today.

Niall: I was trying to think up little introductory lines we could use, but you know, you have to have like, a standard intro.

Pierre: And he prepared one.

Joe: Go for it.

Niall: It's Sunday - this is Behind the Headlines, where we look back at the week that was in a world gone mad.

Joe: Sounds good to me

Niall: Alright.

Joe: We look back at the week that was and what might be, in a world circling...

Niall: Down the drain.

Joe: Circling the toilet.

Pierre: So, what happened last week?!

Joe: I don't know; I wasn't paying attention.

Pierre: Peace. Peace. Peace all over the world. Peace over Europe; peace over Ukraine; was the whole news.

Joe: Yeah, this last week, peace broke out everywhere, so I don't know why people are listening to the show tonight because there's nothing we need to say. It's all good.

Niall: Peace broke out - it's all good.

Joe: It's all bunny rabbits and unicorns. We can all go home now. There's nothing to see here.

Pierre: Our problems are solved.

Joe: Well that's not quite true. There are wars and rumours of wars, and peace, and ceasefires and rumours of peace and ceasefires. But, I suppose the Kiev ceasefire is almost 24hrs old at this point.

Niall: And did they cease firing?

Joe: Well, a little bit.

Pierre: Partly - they did.

Niall: The idea of a ceasefire is that you cease firing; not a little bit.

Joe: Well, you know, you can't expect that kind of things to just...

Pierre: There is a technical point - maybe you guys have some idea about it - because separatists made a statement a few hours ago saying in Debaltsevo - you know Debaltsevo? This enclave; this place where thousands of Kiev troops are surrounded - and they say here, they'll keep on fighting, to some extent, because it is not along the demarcation line. It is within their own territory. And apparently, the ceasefire says that they agreed a demarcation line they'll move all the heavy artillary 70-100km from this line.

Niall: Exactly. So, it covers the cauldron. The cauldron falls within the demarcation line.

Pierre: Oh, yeah?

Joe: I think the point of it is that that's a sticky issue because the rebels have Ukraine and it's a fairly strong hand that they have there and just letting those guys out to possibly come back another day and kill some more civilians in eastern Ukraine might not be appetising to a lot of people, you know?

Pierre: It's a tricky move because if you are in the shoes of these Eastern Ukrainian troops - or as they're called, 'rebels' - you would have some doubts before dropping your hold on this strategic point because, there's been how many ceasefires before? The one in April; the one in September; and both were not respected.

So you have this stronghold - you're about to capture 7000 troops with a lot of equipment. Then there is a ceasefire - you stop fighting; you will lose the stronghold; the Ukrainian troops can go back to their HQ and in a few days, the fighting starts again and...

Niall: I think the Russians take a broader look at this. Ukraine is gone - it's finished. It's collapsing. It might collapse only in 25yrs, but it's finished. It's not going to work. The Russians take a long-term view of this. They don't care if they're going to lose some territory. They projected this onto Putin but actually it's a true sentiment and has some basis in reality: Russia could take Kiev and the whole of Ukraine in a week, you know, no problem. So, there's no issue for them if they "lose territory" (in quotes).

Now, for the actual locals - in terms of their homeland, the Donbass peoples - yeah, it's a bad deal for sure and they are having to make a pretty serious ... [inaudible]. I think Moscow is exerting some pretty serious control over it. I mean, the last time this happened they booted out the leading commander, Strelkov, because he was unreliable.

Pierre: So you think it's Russia that controls the moves and munitions of the rebels?

Niall: Yeah, I mean in this respect, the West is correct - and it pisses them off because they control them so well. But, yes, they do control them.

Joe: Well, they control them because there wouldn't be any uprising - or certainly one not going on this long without the help of Russia.

Niall: The rebels couldn't survive if they had an enemy at the back, too, so...

Pierre: Yeah. But, i was wondering if it was a partial support, you know; maybe logistic - maybe some backing with some autonomy to the rebel forces.

Joe: Well, not really. Because, if you think about it, prior to the Midan coup orchestrated by basically the State Department last year, the Ukrainian military wasn't in very good shape. It was basically Soviet-era military equipment; they had not actually not been funding the military in the Ukraine - the government hadn't been funding it - there wasn't really a proper military to speak of, and all of their equipment was ageing and rusting and stuff, so you had a certain portion of that equipment - and personnel obviously - in Eastern Ukraine. But, certainly based on assessments that have been done before now, in the past year, there's no way that the equipment and the people that were in Eastern Ukraine will have been anywhere near enough to sustain a campaign going on this long. And also the fact that you have a relatively small amount of rebels in Eastern Ukraine fighting against a much larger force from Kiev and other parts of Ukraine, with supposedly the same weapons.

So how have the rebels been able to hold out so long? Not only hold out, but expand their territory and inflict such serious defeats on a stronger force? So, by definition, you have to assume that they have better equipment, better training...

Niall: Right from the beginning.

Joe: Yeah. I mean they have weapons, etc. that are modern Russian weapons against Soviet-era weapons and the thing is that the weapons that the Kiev forces are using are Soviet weapons and the Russians know them inside-out. They made them, right? They know exactly what they have; they know what capabilities they have; and the Eastern Ukrainian rebels have been given weapons and training and have advisors from Russia with modern Russian weapons. So it's really an unequal fight, but in the opposite as you'd expect. You'd think that a small group of people in Eastern Ukraine would be the underdog and would be being beaten down, but they're actually in a superior position to the rest of Kiev, because of this.

The other interesting thing that that suggests then, is that all that weaponry, etc. that the rebels have been using since they started fighting, was all in Eastern Ukraine - I would suggest - before the coup in February last year - almost a year ago which means that the Russians expected this to happen. Not only did they expect and see a coup coming - NATO/US State Department coup coming - but, they obviously had a very definite plan to take Crimea because they took it within a few days - that was well planned in advance - but also to support the people in Eastern Ukraine in advance.

If you think about it, it seems to me that the Russian government had foresaw this - maybe even a few years in advance - and then that brings up the possibility that they may even have... I mean, I don't think they baited them into it obviously, because that's what the US government or US State Department and their various NGO's etc., that's what they do. What happened in Ukraine last year was that kind of colour revolution in the line of several of them that have happened over the last ten years in different places that were inspired by the west.

So, I don't think they were baited into it - it's something that they wanted to do and that they planned to do - but they just didn't expect that Russia would be this stupid because when you're in that position of having this policy of going around the world destabilising countries, overthrowing governments, installing a government, and you do it repeatedly over a long period of time - and we can even go back into the Soviet Era, you know, going back 30, 40, 50 years - and understand that the Russians have been observing the US and the way they do this for maybe half a century. So the idea that they wouldn't know the way that it was going to play out - because they've studied them meticulously; and that put them in a very advantageous position because not only could they predict almost exactly what they would do, but that allowed them to develop counter-measures and apparently it seems that the west were outsmarted because they didn't expect the Russians to be quite so ready to put in a counter-measure.

Pierre: So, the motivation of Lugansk and Eastern Ukraine in general cannot be the only reason explaining the victories made by the rebels.

Joe: No, absolutely not. I mean, they obviously have the military equipment to...

Niall: Well, there are local factors that did well, that seem to be the most passionately pro-Russian, to start with; and then to a lesser degree, along Ukraine's south, towards Odessa. But then, on the other hand, on the other side you've the slice of land called Transnistria...

Joe: The Moldovans...

Niall: And then Moldovans themselves are pretty much for the Russians, so...

Joe: But, from a moral point of view, the people who are fighting for what they see as their homeland or independence against a relatively more powerful state power - they tend to have more motivation to fight. I mean the troops that Kiev, kind of throws at Eastern Ukraine aren't really that motivated. Some of them are just ideological nut jobs - you know, the average grunts who are too stupid to figure things out and have all sorts of silly reasons for going - but I think that Kiev's problem is that a lot of the troops that they're trying to send to Eastern Ukraine don't really have a lot of motivation. They have to be the real zealots - the kind of real fascists and - dare I say, Nazi-types - that would go there to kill - they would have a motivation because they're basically fascists.

The average rank and file, Kiev, adult, military age, man in Ukraine probably thinks about the idea of being sent down there to... you know, in the context of them wanting their independence and it really only being a small sections of Ukraine and, I mean they probably have lots of reasons not to go. And I think that's probably been one of their problems is that they haven't had the man-power, and why 68,000 troops - theoretically out of 100,000 or potentially many more military-age men in Ukraine - that's why 68,000 potentially being killed in one fell-swoop I think was a real problem for them. For me it's an indication of just how tenuous their whole military deployment and their ability to deploy troops is when the capture of death of 68,000 all at once would be really serious problems for them - of their BEST people; people who are actually willing to go, type of thing - THEN what do you do? Well, then you have to start going and dragging people out of their beds at night, sticking a uniform on them and telling them to go, and they'll get two steps down the road to Lugansk and turn around and run back the other way, you know.

Pierre: And as far as motivation is concerned, it's all the worse for those Ukrainian troops - it's waging a war within your own boarders. It's Ukrainian's versus Ukrainians; it might not be easy. Now that you have described how Russia saw it coming - this colour revolution orchestrated by the US and prepared a resistance basically in Eastern Ukraine - isn't it ironic to see the US ambassador in Ukraine, Payette or Jen Psaki's evidence to prove that Russia has deployed heavy artillery in Eastern Ukraine? Because it's not there!

Joe: You mean for the fifth time, or something?

Pierre: Yeah, they keep making fakes that is not there so.

Joe: Well, it's not surprising, but that's all they can do.

Pierre: Yeah, the support is not heavy artillery. Its guns, it's...

Joe: Behind the actual war - or even over and above the actual war - is a propaganda war that's been going on for a long time and that's what the US has been fighting; they have been largely fighting Russia on a propaganda level and so they continue with that; just because there might be a ceasefire or an agreement in Ukraine that may... I mean I don't have much hope that it will last, but assuming it does, that's not going to stop the on-going propaganda war by the West - by the US in particular but also the EU - against Russia. That's going to continue unabated because Russia is - and has historically been - their enemy, the enemy of the West because of where it is - we've talked about this before - because of where Russia is; because of the size of Russia; because of the resources it has; because it's the biggest country by far on the Eurasian landmass and all things being equal, Russia would be the dominant player in Eurasia which has the vast majority of people on the planet and the vast majority of resources on the planet and if you have all of those countries in Eurasia, including China, Russia, India, the EU, all the way down to the Middle-East, I mean it's game over for the US.

The US is just isolated and it shrivels up and blows away because it's completely out of the game and it would have to come begging basically and it would have to be the junior partner, ishrad (correct word?) to this Eurasian block and that's what these people in the US who simply want power for its own sake and have enjoyed global hegemony for so long - they can't - not only that they won't, but they can't - give it up. Pathologically, they can't conceive of saying, "Well, we had a good go at it - almost 100 years, there. Let's just call it quits. We've been bested - it's time to pack our bags up and go home and just accept this - accept the reality and the facts on the ground." no, they create reality and create facts on the ground and it's not so craziness, it's...

Niall: I have some anecdotal evidence for the long-view of Russia. So, apparently, what was going on in the mid 1990's is that ex-KGB people, Russian intelligence and military people were reading a book, a novel - their kind of equivalent to Tom Clancy - called, The Third Imperium, and the book cover says a lot: it's basically the Russian Empire recreated. Well, it's not the Russian empire per-se, but it shows a Eurasian block from Dublin and the Atlantic, to Vladivostok and Japan in the Pacific, coming all the way down, including Iran, most of the Middle-East, and the Levant - that includes Israel - and Ukraine.

Anyway, it's a novel, - it's a story, it's fictional - it's set in 2053 and it's about a guy: he's looking back and how it all started with the civil war in Ukraine.

Pierre: Ah. And when was it written? In the 90's?

Niall: Early 90's.

Pierre: Yeah, and what is striking about this Minsk Agreement was signed between Russia, Ukraine/Poroshenko, Merkel/Germany and Hollande/France, that there was one guest missing - and one important guest is - the US and Ukraine is a US force, so how can they be reliable?

Niall: That's a point - there's this multi-level. Obviously Russia and Putin care about the situation in Ukraine. They want to minimise suffering - I think that's very much in their goal: ceasefire - let's just stop killing each other, that's a very good reason to stop. So when people who are in the alternative who are upset because they don't continue the war and just lift the West, I mean, you know, that's just stupid; these guys are just trying to calm the situation. Now that's one thing.

The other part of this multi-level approach is that they're very much engaged in - like Joe said - propaganda war. When you have a situation where Merkel and Hollande go secretly to Moscow, followed by a series of talks, the difference between the Minsk II talks and Minsk I is that there's no EU... Catenation wasn't there; there was no US representative there. And this one guy, Paul Craig Roberts was saying that Russia has sold out the rebels: you don't understand, dude, this is a major propaganda coup, when you have Russia and Europe dealing with moving into a uniform position and the US is nowhere in sight. What have we seen in the whole week since then? It's all these noises by the US to arm them.

Joe: But that ties into what we were saying about the weaponry and the imbalanced weaponry, the US has been brewing for quite a while and it came to a head in the past week or two where they were almost frenetic about demanding that the US send modern weaponry to the Ukrainian military because they were being destroyed, basically.

Niall: John Kerry arrived in Kiev on the day that the news broke that they were going to have these talks, so that's where the timing of these things comes in; there's a competition between Washington and Moscow for Europe.

Pierre: Yeah, exactly and what I'm wondering is if the US sticks to its policy of arming Ukraine and to control Ukraine and put more pressure on Russia, isn't this belligerent behaviour could trigger a division between the US and Europe?

Niall: The place that this leads to is another general European war. That's where the mechanicalness of its inevitable conclusion goes there. The only response to ward off that possibility - that probable outcome - is Putin and the Russians.

Joe: Well, Merkel and Hollande now want to word that up as well because they realise the reality of it which is if the US arms Ukraine and the Russians don't back down - and Merkel apparently was convinced of the fact that the idea, the threat of arming the Ukraine with US weapons was not something that scared him - suggests that he was willing to meet that challenge and he may have been calling their bluff and he may have been playing on the fears of Merkel etc., he may or may not have gone there but this could have ended up - or will end up, if you go there - into a larger war in Ukraine, which as Niall was saying would spill over into EU nations right next door - could possibly spill into EU nations right next door and that scares Merkel as the great lady of the European Union and Hollande, the nations of the EU, but doesn't stay on the business of doing which is having as much: when in doubt, have war. You know what I mean? Because it shakes things up and you get rid of governments. They figured they could control it and NATO wouldn't lose much....

Pierre: But the way you say it is, you could have it complete with on one side, the US and on the other side almost the rest of the world.

Joe: Yeah.

Pierre: Europe, Russia - which has big players, China...

Joe: Well, I think not necessarily the US on one side; you would probably have Europe on the side of the US in a war against Russia.

Pierre: Oh, so you don't see Europe switching; despite Merkel and Holland's move and their reluctance to go to war?

Joe: No, personally I don't think so. But they don't want to see that happening, because that means a war on European territory in Western Europe, which means just the Second World War all over again. And that's what they're scared of doing.

Niall: They can't really go there because how do you have a 'restrained' (in quotes) conventional war when the ante can be up all the way to nukes.

Joe: Well, you have it by proxy, basically, is what you do. You distance yourself from it by saying that we're not actually at war here but you start forming all sorts of militias and the members of the military of the European countries would take off their clothes and put on just standard cameo gear and say they're militia, you know. So you can keep a lid on it; and that would work in both the US's and Russia's favour because they don't have to say that they're officially at war with each other. But that's the way modern warfare in the past...

Pierre: Since Nagasaki and Hiroshima; there's been no nukes and there's been many proxy wars between the US and...

Joe: Well, you could say the first real proxy war in this theatre was Afghanistan in the late 70's, and they decided that's the way they wage war from then on - how the US wages war, and other European countries, and Russia, to a certain extent. Russia is a bit more upfront about it, like in Chechnya and stuff, the major conflict they had, in which they sent in their regular troops - and of course, the US sent their regular troops to Iraq - but depending on the situation, they'll use proxies basically, you know.

Niall: I mentioned Ukraine's imminent collapse and I was thinking of its economy more than anything. For months they've been wrangling with the IMF in particular; the IMF was very sticky about giving it any more money - or at least what terms will come with it. But oh boy, did they cough up as soon as the Minsk agreement was on the table. The same day! They were like, oh yeah, we suddenly have like 40bn but yeah, 17.5bn will all go straight to the predators who Ukraine owes the money to, but it's all with a view to keeping Ukraine from defaulting and from essentially ending up in joint Russian/EU management.

Joe: Ending up back where it started, more or less.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: Which highlights the fecklessness and pointlessness of all of this - is that the most likely outcome of all of this is that it's going to go back to the way it was before Midan last year.

Niall: Yep.

Joe: And nothing will be achieved and I think even the Russians are aware of that and see it, and that's what they want - that's what they're willing to settle for because that's a natural order and it wasn't quite so bad and sure, you need to reform Ukrainian politics a little bit and kick out 90% of the politicians, but that's the same everywhere, so...

Pierre: Ukraine economic state: I gather the field data on that is quite scary actually. Ukraine basically is bankrupted. It's ironic seeing to see the European Union being so adamant to straighten up Greece and meanwhile the media are not really mentioning the very poor economic state of Ukraine: the economy contracted 5% in the second quarter, 2014; industrial output dropped 12% in July; debt is sky-high. Yeah, it's a bankrupt country - much more than Greece, actually. But they have to keep it alive because it's a strategic pond,

Niall: There are a million internally displaced people in Ukraine proper; that's in regions not affecting by all the shelling and the war. Another million have left for Russia - that's a UN figure but I think it must be much higher because the Russians are doing something as the 'aggressive nation' (in quotes), that they shouldn't be doing. I mean, if their first, primary interest was to expand the borders to incorporate some of Ukraine, they would not be welcoming millions of refugees. They'd be saying, "Stay there so we can hold the territory". But no, their first consideration is to open borders and people are going in. They're doing what they were doing in the Vietnam War in the US - people would go to Canada to dodge the draft; that's happening en masse with Ukrainians flooding over to Russia.
So it's beyond the raw economic data of it; the human scale is just...

Pierre: There's an economic crisis and there's a social crisis.

Niall: Seriously, I went to visit the Brookings Institute Website, because you tend to get an eye on what the think-tank policy pushers in Washington...

Pierre: For the listeners, you could give a background of this institute.

Joe: They're the policy makers.

Niall: What, the Brookings Institute?

Joe: Yeah, people know what it is, more or less.

Niall: It's a private/public/.... it's where there churn out the ideas which invariably get translated into policy in Washington. I mean, it's just one of many institutes. So, the title of one by, one of their top guys; Shapiro, An Alternative to Arming Ukraine. This guy is trying to bring things back from the brink. It's interesting because we say they're reality creators and that they don't really deal with the facts of life, but he is actually stressing that there's just no way around it - that "we now need to enter some kind of negotiation to revise the European security order on terms acceptable to Russia and the West."

He establishes first of all that "Ukraine is just one battleground in a broader struggle between Russia and the West over regional order in Europe. We can't trust Putin's side but we also can't just overthrow his regime". That's very honest of you. I'm sure they would love to, but what I'm getting from it is an acknowledgement of reality and a kind of a really sad, sad effort to remind people why the US is even necessary because as I'm reading, I'm going, "You're kind of excess baggage, here, in this bargain. What interest do you have in it at all? There's nothing you can bring to this to either solve the problems or to... there's no need for anything American in Eastern Europe.

Pierre: But, on one side, you have this institute advocating de-escalation or a diplomatic settlement and on the other side you have US officials who are pushing towards an escalation.

Joe: Well, there's obviously conflicting...

Pierre: Yeah, trends.

Niall: Well, they are and they aren't. They send weapons but they say, "Oh it's a good peace deal"; yeah, Merkel did good coming up with that, as if she did it - that was Putin's thing through and through. But, yeah, they're got to vicariously claim ownership of it via Merkel and the EU.

Pierre: You say it was Putin because actually the terms of Minsk II agreement is almost a replica of what Putin proposed weeks ago.

Niall: Yeah, the....

[Silence audio drops out]
Operator: Hey everybody. Looks like we lost their call? Yeah, they just dropped out, so I'll play a little clip here until they get back online. Hang tight.
Male voice/audio clip: Some people look at a flag swaying in the breeze at The White House and they say, "That's America". Me? Whenever I see an American flag hung in the window of a basement apartment by guys who have better things to do with their money than buy curtains...
[Audience laughter]
...I say that's America to me.
[Audience laughter]
In America, there are 51 states - or maybe it's 80 by now. Does England count? I'm not quite sure. The one thing I am sure of though is if I'm standing in a warehouse beside a time-clock and the guy is punching in for his best friend who was too hung-over to get out of bed...
[Audience laughter]
...then I'm standing in America.
[Audience laughter]
...the make-over capital of the world; the place where every young man has to answer - in his heart - the question: What do you love more: your girlfriend or your car?
[Audience laughter]
And where that young man can buy a beat-up car for $300 and have to spend $1000 to insure it. Where else can even a paper-boy auction the film-rights to a book? A woman on an assembly line works out her overtime in her head to infinity and at the exact same moment, her husband gets into a car accident because he's looking at a girl in a tube-top.
[Audience laughter]
In America, where spelling doesn't count... people's pets do.
[Audience laughter]
Where else can a guy get a job riding a whale at Marine Land, but in America?
In America, a guy's girlfriend breaks up with him over the phone, so he gets a gun and kills the principle. Everyone is sad, until they get the day off.
Next week, another guy, another gal, another "we can still be friends" phone call - uh oh, the assistant principle gets it and everyone's sad, because they don't get the day off, because he's just the assistant.
[Audio clip fades out]

Joe: Okay. We had a little technical glitch, there. We hope you enjoyed that interlude.So, yeah, you were saying?

Pierre: Despite - on one side - we have Shapiro and his Washington centre in advocating escalation like some kind of diplomatic agreement, and on the other side you have US officials that are pushing towards a military escalation in Ukraine.

Niall: Yeah, well I'll just stress that what I was reading out there by this Brookings Institute guy is kind of ah... he had a moment of clarity a little too late, let's say. The horse has already left the barn.

Joe: It's also only one paper - one policy paper - and like I said, there's competing factions there and who's going to win the day, type thing; given that the US's track-record - I mean, I don't think there's any chance that the doves - you know, the anti-war people, will prevail, You know? It might come up now and again. I mean, that paper - as you said - it would be an objective analysis of the situation but it could be used to say, "How do we fix this? Let's not go with your theory. Okay, you've done a good analysis of what the problem is and what we're facing; how do we deal with it?" I.e. "Let's leave off the table the idea of backing down or accepting defeat in any way whatsoever. How do we WIN this", you know.

So, the Brookings Institute - and there are several other of those types of institutes - for a long time they have effectively been the overt shadow-government. There's maybe a covert shadow government - puppet masters who pull the strings and all that kind of stuff - but there's actually an overt shadow-government; people think it's actually the executive branch of Obama and all... but not really. It's these institutions that actually have actual scholars, you know. Because some people wonder - most people don't wonder - how someone like Obama, with no schooling, no history in many areas of policy that you would have to supposedly implement and make decisions on - how does he make these decisions? Okay, he certainly has advisers, but even those advisers that he claims would actually be within his government - none of those people have a track-record of analysis, like historical analysis or political analysis; they're not really people who are smart enough to make those decisions, they don't know enough. So they look to the institutions that take in people who are coming out of political science and history degrees, etc., from Yale and Harvard and stuff, and they come in, and these are the people who have worked in government, that have spent a lot of time developing theories and researching essentially political science and history and psychology and a bunch of other things. And they clearly are the best people to use to develop policies and to come up with the best idea of what to do and then they give it to the government, the government gives it to Congress and Congress knows what to do; they all basically pass it along and it's supposedly come from the Commander In Chief, but it doesn't; it comes from these unelected individuals who get together and decide what should be done.

And that's the way it's always been. I mean, it makes a mockery of the idea of democracy, obviously. You know, your elected representatives may have some sway over the local details of what happens in a particular State or whatever - you know, budgetary considerations, etc. - but in terms of what the country actually does, the people in Congress have very little to say or sway whatsoever. It's all given to them to simply rubber-stamp by the President who gets it from these institutions.

An example is, you mentioned Victoria Nuland - or did you? You mentioned Payette, the ambassador, and she was the one that had the conversation with Payette about Ukraine, about essentially installing a new government in Ukraine last year, and she's married to Robert Kagan who works in the Brookings Institute, so the policy that Victoria Nuland was implementing in terms of Ukraine was given to her by her husband who works in the Brookings Institution. He and his friends all put it together and they went ahead and implemented it. So, it's a bit sad, the whole thing.
But these people are war. Like I was saying earlier on; they're not going to submit. People in that position who think they're in a position of complete dominance, are not going to back down; especially if they're pathological, which a lot of them are. They're not going to back down from complete control or what they think is complete control, so they just keep going and going and going and engaging in increasingly crazy and self-defeatism - because the end-game of this pathology is that you start engaging in self-defeatist policies, you know, where you finally run into a wall and reality starts to intrude, and that should be the time for a normal person to say, "Okay, we've reached the limit. Let's change things here." They can't change things - they're on a course and they keep pushing and when they hit that wall of reality, which has to be provided to them by Russia, they just become increasingly crazy. At that point they start developing crazy ideas that ultimately aren't even in their own interests, but that's the way all crazy people go, right?

Pierre: And I guess the greater chasm between reality and the wishful thinking of these pathological leaders, the harder the fall. And today, this chasm seems gigantic. When you hear some of those US official's statements, sometimes there's no... Again, I'm going back to this example - it's on the ground - no, connection with reality. When you check those statements about alleged heavy artillery, tanks or Russian presence on the Ukrainian ground and the way... I have in mind this Jen Psaki the mouthpiece of Washington when she's being asked by journalists about, "Okay, what about the evidence? What about the facts?" - basic questions, really down to Earth and the way she answers these questions, she's totally oblivious to the daily basic facts like reality, evidence, facts; she lives in another world, in another universe - she's disconnected, now.

Joe: Well, there was also the guy who you mentioned earlier on who's a senator, right.

Pierre: Ambassador Payette?

Joe: No, the Senator who produced the latest images this week. It was a guy who's a US Senator who had got the images from Kiev recently or in the past few months, and he passed them to a news outlet - I think - and the news outlet took them and ran with them and that was in the news just a few days ago. They're kind of grainy, blurry blotches on the ground and they have the little symbol saying 'Russian Artillery' etc., and it looks like the same as the previous one - just ridiculous. But, it's really interesting, because what you're saying there about... I mean, they're lying and they're blatantly lying; it's embarrassing at this point, but they don't seem to care, they don't seem to have any shame, they continue to produce these ridiculous lies and make-believe stories, and push it out to the media.

And the thing is, that's what they've always done, but in a different context in that in the past when they did that, they were in a position of controlling - they had enough control for example where they would have been able to put some artillery or tanks of something that looked like Russian tanks, and would have better images and would be able to convince people that that was true and that would have become the historical truth. And that's happened so much in the past where what we think of as historical truth is simply made up in the minds of these people. But, they had the power and the ability to actually create that reality on the ground at some point and it was more convincing to the world and the world could then accept it. But now, they're not in that position any more - they're not so powerful any more - and therefore, what they're left with is simply the words, the allegations of... you know - 20 years for the baby in the incubator story to come out, you know? Everybody believed it, you know? They were able to get this girl, you know? Ordinary Kuwaiti girl who worked in the hospital and they had the baby in the incubator and eventually it was agreed that she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti President or...

Niall: The Saudi Ambassador.

Joe: Was it the Saudi Ambassador, yeah? So she wasn't even Kuwaiti, but she said she was in Kuwait because this is what Saddam's forces had done. And it took years for that to come out and everybody believed it and went to war on it. And they're trying to do the same thing now with these allegations of Russian artillery etc., that's all they can do. And they would like to have war based on that - that's what they're pushing for; some kind of serious, extra sanctions up to and including in whatever way destroying Russia, forcing them back down - complete dominance. And it's all falling apart - it's coming apart at the seams for them; it's like that Kuwaiti story of the babies in the incubators. If you imagine the day after, she testified to congress about that - it's a day after it was revealed who she was and that it was a complete lie. That's what's happening today; that's how bad it is for the US today because as soon as they produced these new images, by and large, these new images of Russian artillery in Ukraine are laughed at. Not even a day later - it's like ten minutes on twitter later - and people are making fun of it and nobody believes it. So it's uncomfortable for them, but... tough shit.

Niall: And it's producing all kinds of crazy making effects - well, on their part. Obama put in front of a camera this week and gave an interview to Fox Media which is basically a new website but is actually a major online corporation. It was started by the former head of AOL, I think, so not a nobody. But anyway, he's put up there and told to say some things and they have a conversation about world affairs and what's going on at the moment, and Obama has to remind people that the US spends ten times more on its military than the next five combined, or whatever...

Joe: Ten.

Niall: And he had to remind them that, you know, now and again we strong-arm people: if they don't do what we want, we tell them what to do. I mean Jesus Christ, it's got to the point where he's like, "Do I have to spell things out in black and white? We own your asses!"

Joe: Yes, that's what they have to do - they're being exposed!

Pierre: Yes - a last resort. There's nothing else.

Joe: Yeah. So the mask comes off and they feel, "okay, we're up against it so much here." Maybe they don't consciously think this, but what happens is that they feel that pressure of a strong opposition against them and it's not working out - they're not getting away with what they usually get away with. And they're not following the script so they say, "Okay, instead of the implied power or wink and a nod - everybody knows the US reign supreme" - it sees its own people are thinking that maybe that isn't true anymore, so we have to be more clear about it and say it openly: the US IS the most powerful country in the world; we have the biggest and most powerful military in the world and you'd better "do what we say, otherwise, you know what we're saying, with our whole 'military thing' and stuff and I'm the Commander In Chief." I mean. it's barely veiled anymore; like, what the US has always done covertly - they're now being forced to do it a little bit more overtly to maintain its position and the delusional aspect of it leaks in - and this may have been just a mistake - but when Obama said in that Fox News interview last week that, "We're the most powerful country in the world and we are the largest country in the world." Now, of course, Russia is almost twice the size of America - America isn't even second in terms of landmass...

Pierre: Yeah, Canada is bigger.

Joe: ...but that's the mentality he has that he's been imbued with and brought up with, is that not only does America have the strongest military and the biggest economy, but it also therefore must be the biggest country in the world, right! I mean, "America - what - takes up 50% of the world's landmass? More or less, right; I mean, that's what it feels like to me!"

Niall: And you got a hint of it last year when they made it expressed what's always been a kind of covert doctrine among 'wink-wink, in the know' people in the US, that the US does what it does because, "we are an exceptional nation". That was never really uttered; you wouldn't say that to the camera, until last year. So again, it's a barely veiled psychopathy writ large.

Pierre: But, what is true is that the US's military budget is humongous; much greater than any other national military budget. But on the ground, is it a reality that the US troops, the forces are so dominant?

Joe: Well, yeah, I mean they are dominant in the sense that they threaten everybody and they've placed themselves all around the world in - whatever it is - almost 181? ...technically almost every country in the world has a US military base of some description or a US military presence of some description. So yeah, they rule the world militarily and they do have the strongest military, but...

Niall: And they have high tech. They own space.

Joe: Right. But they've enforced that dominance through that military by threats and by implied threats that, "Well, we could come and make examples of countries", you know, like Iraq and Libya and Syria and stuff, you know; bombing them, etc... They show their force, they show their strength periodically and assume that that will cow other people and other countries. But, the problem is, what are they going to do? If people start disagreeing with them are they going to bomb everybody? They can't do that - it doesn't matter if you've got the biggest military in the world.

Niall: Here's another major problem in terms of conventional warfare: their troops have not been in a real war for 70 years. They don't know what it's like to fight a half-decent enemy.

Joe: Well, Vietnam...

Niall: Maybe Vietnam, and there they just resorted to just, rather than pacify them, they just lit the entire country, carpet bombed it. American troops probably wouldn't win a conventional fight.

Joe: The American people wouldn't have the stomach for a real fight. I mean the American people have been conditioned and programmed with this idea that they're the greatest country in the world and have the strongest military - therefore, "When we go anywhere, we have to win". And the people have come to expect that. So if the US military ever took on an equal foe, and even if it was just a stalemate, if they got as good as they gave basically, I think the American people would...

Niall: They'd quickly lose.

Joe: And it's very cynical of them obviously. They would lose the stomach for it if they started being defeated or a lot of them started coming home in boxes, but it's very cynical of them to support the military and support the US and think the US is the greatest country in the world as long as they're always winning - always beating down the small guy. It's not exactly a very honourable approach to take, so...

Niall: Ah, I read something today ties into it. It's... I mean, I knew it before but when it's spelled out in black and white, you go, "okay". So, among the noises coming out of Greece - in terms of, "Which way do we (Greece) look - West or East?" kind of thing, apparently there's some discussion in the Greek government about where in the future to buy their arms from. Traditionally, they've bought them from the US and Western corporations. But somebody in Greece - and he's just quoted as a 'Greek weapons expert' - he's said that they're thinking or switching to buying Russian arms, but they're more reliable and effective during crises, since "they cannot be switched off by the manufacturers of weapons systems produced in the US." And then he goes on, "Think of what happened to Saddam Hussein. He bought French Weapons, including air defence systems, radars. At the critical moment, all electronics were switched off remotely via satellite.

Joe: Umm hmm.

Niall: Holy shit. I did not think of that before. That's why Saddam never gave a damned response - because the weapons they gave him, they controlled - they just - that's the only way they will enter into a fight with anyone - if they control it.

Yeah: If they know they're going to win; if it's going to be a Turkey Shoot. The reality of America and the American Military and what it does in the world is so completely the opposite of what people believe it to be - what they've been programmed, you know, to believe that the American military stands for what it does; that it goes around the world as world police protecting the underdog and fighting for freedom and democracy and bringing people out of slavery, etc., etc., when the exact opposite is true. They go around the world attacking and shooting largely defenceless people. And that's why they've reined supreme, because they've chosen their battles in that way and they've manipulated wars and conflicts in such a way that they will always win; which means that you're fighting someone who's effectively defenceless.

Niall: And they do it in all spheres. They come in saying, "We'll give you a massive loan to boost your economy" and what they do is they inject 'funny money' into the country, and they know that they'll be indebted then; they know they won't be able to start paying back the interest, and 'boom', American corporations suddenly own all the assets in the country - that's the economic hit men. So in all spheres it works that way: "You need us, so we'll make a deal with you" and it seems attractive initially, until they realise, "Oh my God, what just happened?"

Pierre: It's a trap. And what you say is true and in addition to the interest and the very real collateral assets - like land, houses etc., there are also the conditions to get the IMF or World Bank or US funding. Usually a country will only get a loan - which is a toxic loan - if it agrees to privatise and destroy the social laws. So yeah, it's a trap - a serious trap.

Joe: That's actually what's happening - I don't know if people are aware of it - but there have been a lot of changes in Yemen over the past four or five months. Starting last September, there was a kind of coup by the rebels there - the Huthi rebels - and it progressed to the point where last month - January - they stormed the Presidential Palace and they didn't want the President to resign, but he resigned anyway. So there's been a big change there in Yemen and just recently - just this past week - the US embassy and the Brits and a bunch of other embassies all evacuated all of their personnel under US marine guard etc., and left. Because the US embassy isn't just any embassy - it has a bunch of marines attached to it and a lot of weapons and actually a lot of military vehicles as well - you know, humvee's etc. So they had to leave all of those, but apparently they broke them all so that the Huthi rebels wouldn't get them. But they've also asked that if any of them were still in working order, could they give them back, please. Or that's what Jen Psaki of the State Department said.

So basically, I'll just read you one quote that sums up it up. These Huthi rebels have been an ongoing problem in Yemen since 1950, when under British occupation; when the British basically did what they did in most of the other Middle Eastern countries, which was set up these trumped up Sheiks or Emirs etc. who would be loyal to the British, in exchange for power and wealth, etc.

Niall: It was trying to kick out any Nassarites, because Egypt was aligned - or trying to get aligned - with Yemen.

Joe: Right; basically a pan-Arab, socialist nationalism/internationalism, which the British didn't want because of the access to the horn of Africa and the Indian ocean; it was very strategically important to the British at the time and it continues to be important for Western powers, including the US. France's 'Total' has oil interests in Yemen; B.P. has oil interests in Yemen. But the people there have been living under that kind of a regime which has created a very poor underclass and it's these Huthi rebels who've been fighting for a long time, and they're the ones who finally were able to stage a coup and get rid of these kinds of tin pot dictators who've been established for Western interests.

And last August, when they were getting close to affecting this change of government, their spokesman said, "Our demands are like the demands of the Yemeni people who seek a decent life, a good economy, security, stability and freedom of expression." You know, these people can't be characterised as fundy-Islamic nut jobs - it's not I.S. or anything like that; these are genuine people who have had enough, basically, and just want proper infrastructure in the country and an end to corruption and they seem to have achieved quite a lot, although, there's obviously going to be pro and contra groups in the country. But I don't think the West is going to just walk away from that. I think that Yemen is going to explode in the near-future as a result of this. They're not going to sit back unless they can find some accommodation with these people. But if these Huthi rebels are true to their origins, then it's anathema to what the West wants and the West is going to... I wouldn't be surprised if we see some kind of civil war type situation springing up in the area.

Pierre: Terrorism, violence...

Niall: Via Saudi Arabia - what happened last the time?

Joe: Yemen was just... like an example was the underwear bomber - remember the knicker-bomber? He was trained supposedly by Al Qaida in Yemen, which is just a Western construct. That was done and he was used - and I wrote an article on it, called The Underwear Bomber: Crushing Freedom with Phoney Arab Terrorism. He was under some kind of... he was sedated in some way or was on some kind of drugs and he was escorted onto the plane and I think he had a handler on the plane...

Niall: Wasn't he the son of a Nigerian banker?

Joe: Exactly. He was just this young guy who was totally manipulated and he tried to set fire to his underpants, basically, on the plane - and that was a bomb, and it just failed and burned his keks, you know. But, the thing is, that was used then - that was in 2011 - and that was used to up the whole drone strikes and basically US military focus on Yemen to keep their people in power. I mean, when they said they fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen, they were bombing and sending missiles from drones against these Huthi rebels - ordinary people - the same as the Ukranian rebels; they were the same kind of people; they wanted actual democracy - actual freedom. But, it's called 'Al Qaeda in Yemen' which is totally...

Pierre: Yeah, rebel terrorists with one funny case...

Joe: Yeah, the underwear bomber, yeah. Yeah, that's the justification. This guy tried to blow up a plane coming into Chicago or wherever it was by lighting his underpants on fire and he was and he was trained... our intelligence - our machine called 'intelligence' that spits out this intelligence - also known as the Brookings Institute or similar kind of think-tanks - they told us that Al Qaeda in Yemen trained him to try and attack America with an aeroplane and remember what happens when America gets attacked by aeroplanes. So we need you - tin pot dictator in Yemen - to allow us access - or allow our drones access - to blow up people in houses, at wedding parties, etc., in Yemen, and keep these people down and of course...

Pierre: Terrorist cell; it's called 'Terrorist Cell'.

Joe: Terrorist cell - oh right, yeah, yeah; sorry, I'm diverging from the script there. And obviously, the leader in Yemen who is part of a long line of quizzlings, essentially - Western quizzlings - he's happy to do that because, "your enemy is my enemy; it's the unrest in my country. If I don't do something about it - and I can't do something on my own because they're too strong - I need your help to keep them down so that I stay in power." It's all just...

Pierre: Win-win.

Joe: It's all so prosaic. And that's why it bugs me about the whole "Terrorism" and "War on Terror" and all these convoluted narratives and stuff. If people just got real about it and just imagined... I don't know - people can allow for the fact or even use some experience of somebody in their neighbourhood or the idea of a school-yard bully and what his motivations are - it's very simple and prosaic and accessible to people to understand what's going on in the world and why it's happening. But they don't apply it because they're bamboozled and bullshitted with all these supposedly noble ideals of freedom and democracy and the evil enemy, the bogeyman, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But if you just push all that away as obvious propaganda nonsense, you can understand what's happening on the planet just on the basis of largely normal - let's say - normal human motivations with the exception that it's not really normal humans; it's pathological and involving psychopaths etc. But, it's still something to which people can relate and that people have personal experiences of in microcosm and they could understand it very easily. But also, apart from the propaganda, the impediment to them going there and accepting that reality - which is far more believable and realistic - is that it would involve dismantling of their own image of themselves as part of the Western world and civilised and freedom and democracy. People in the West all feel good about those ideas, you know? So that's why they support the government and their propaganda: "Yeah, tell us more. Tell us more about how we're going around the world being civilised and giving wonderful technology and freedoms to all these people because we enjoy them here and we want everybody else to have them."

You know, people themselves are invested in perpetuating propaganda and bullshit so that not only is the government lying to them, but they're lying to themselves. And it's like, if they could just wake up for a minute and say, "Listen, just get over yourself for a minute. Just stop your brain for a second and just think about this in practical terms and how it would happen if what you understand happens on a micro scale in your local community or at your local school with a bully, or some asshole in your neighbourhood who's terrorising the whole neighbourhood; just expand that out to a global sphere and you see, it all becomes quite clear what's actually happening and why it's happening."

Pierre: Yeah.

Joe: It's not a mystery.

Pierre: It's exactly that. It's exactly that and psychopathy on a micro-scale exemplified by the school-yard bully is exactly the same as what you described previously. We are talking about the US - the US empire; macrosocial entity which doesn't back down, doesn't see reality as it is; that is into wishful thinking; that is into violence; driven by greed; always more power; never enough!

Joe: Will evoke pity...

Pierre: Yeah! Oh Yeah.

Joe: ...to serve its agenda in a certain situation like, "we were attacked".

Pierre: Yeah.

Joe: "I'm the victim now"

Pierre: Start to defend freedom.

Joe: Switching from victim to aggressor and back - just all sorts of manipulations to get what they want.

Niall: The people know this. There's a remarkable choreography going on this week between The White House and ISIS. I don't know how this happens, but ISIS has announced that its creating provinces outside of Syria and Iraq and they're setting up - well, it's just bluster really, but - the gist of it is that ISIS as far as it is concerned is expanding its caliphate; it's taking Afghanistan and Pakistan next, and all of North Africa - and Bosnia too, by the way. And at the same time, Obama announces he's taking unlimited three year war against ISIS, wherever they may come up anywhere in the world. Like Syria, like Europe, like North Africa, like all the way into central Asia, it doesn't matter; wherever it rears its ugly head.

Joe: But that's a reiteration - that's a...

Niall: You thought voting in Obama ended all this bullshit?

Joe: But that's a reiteration or a retooling of the war on terror. They said that about the war on terror, when, after 9/11 they said that they were going after Al Qaeda and its affiliates wherever they are in the world. And there were all sorts of generals and people saying that it's going to be basically an unending war or it's going to be at least 50 years or 60 years - some ridiculous things like this, you know, where it was totally incongruous with the actual threat. They were supposedly going after one small group of people, but then you expand out, you know, they're trying to sell everywhere like metastasising all around the world and it'll just keep growing and we'll hit it in one place and it'll pop up somewhere else. It has to be a war on the entire world. And was just nonsense, you know, it was just totally unrealistic and unbelievable. But they got away with it.
The reason they're saying that - or the fact that they're saying that - exposes their real agenda, which is global domination. What they're really saying is, "We want to be able to put our military and attack any country around the world as we see fit when our interests are threatened and our interests are control over the entire world."

Pierre: Yes. And here you can see a major inconsistency in the US narrative - imperial narrative. On one side, there is this technological achievement. When you see pictures from satellites - today, you released information from a satellite - and they can read the letters of newspapers with them, okay? Then they're telling us that they're not able to neutralise a few crazy Jihadists in the middle of the desert? And, like Payette releasing satellite pictures...

Joe: These really bad satellite pictures, yeah.

Pierre: ...The heavy artillery battery: it's one, grainy black dot, and they can read a newspaper with satellites.

Niall: I'll tell you why...

Joe: Exactly. And the Russians have come out in response to this and said... most people know that the CIA or the NSA have satellites that can read them and I think the example that they used - or the reference they used - was that they could, in high definition see something one metre square on the ground from space. And they said that basically means they can see, very clearly, a child's bicycle in someone's front yard.

Pierre: Yeah, look at the weather. Payette's picture...

Joe: It's ten times worse - a hundred times worse - than Google Earth.

Pierre: ...than Google Earth. And Google Earth is nothing compared to the top civil technology, which si nothing compared to the top military technology.

Joe: So why are they producing crappy...

Pierre: A group of Jihadis or this miserable, pathetic picture that do not speak... they're inconsistent with the rest of the narrative - there's major inconsistencies.

Niall: But the reason why it's inconsistent is because like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ISIS doesn't exist.

Pierre: Yeah.

Niall: I'm going to read you something I found from 2007, New York Times: "Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional" the US military said. For more than a year, the leader of one of the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi. As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organisation publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed. On Wednesday - this was from 2007 - a senior American military spokesman provided a new estimation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed. Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima."

A bogeyman that doesn't exist just like bin Laden died in 2001 of kidney failure, and then they recreated videos where he got younger and they had big voice-overs. They're literally making this shit up - there is no Baghdadi.

Joe: But this is the name - al-Baghdadi - that was not people's radar until recently. That report that you're just reading from was from 2007. Nobody in 2007 had heard of al Baghdadi. Previous to that it was 2006 with al-Zarqawi. Anybody who heard about al-Zarqawi, he was the kind of guy, black hack on his head, beard and stuff, he was blown up. He was the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and that's...

Niall: I had already forgotten about him.

Joe: Right. He was the guy the US was fighting against up until 2006 when they bombed his house with two 500lb bombs, but actually had a good picture of him afterwards - of his body. He had a little scratch on his cheek, or a little small bruise on his head and this was after. And they have a video of the house being bombed - that kind of jet fighter, grainy, black and white image; you know, the camera on the plane...

Pierre: One ton bombs?

Joe: One ton bomb, yeah. You know, it was a bomb... you could see the house and trees around it and stuff. It was quite a big house but not massive or anything. And he was in there, supposedly, and they dropped this 1000lb bomb or two 1000lb bombs and one of those bombs just creates a massive 'X' blast - you know, like a cross going out at the sides and there was just nothing left; like, it levelled trees all the way around and there was just a crater - there was no house afterwards.

And then, they showed a picture of him and he was in the house and the house had been obliterated - but he was in the house - and it showed a picture of him afterwards, "Yeah, we got him. He's dead and here's his picture" and he had a little cut on his cheek. So that's the kind of thing that has been passed off on people.

Well, in 2007 and al-Baghdadi comes along. Well, not comes along - he was in that 2007 article from the New York Times, but nobody really heard of him because after al-Zarqawi there was just this Mr. Magoo, Zawahiri, who took over... well, there was Osama bin Laden still going on and al-Zawarhiri which was the guy in the glasses, you know, the guy in with the white beard; and Osama was leading the crusade until Osama was taken care of and dumped - you know, he was sent to swim with the fishes with some concrete boots, supposedly.

So, the thing is, al-Baghdadi the name, only appeared recently with ISIS; but, this is a different al-Baghdadi. So it's really amazing that that story is there from 2007 saying that this al-Baghdadi that nobody had heard of in 2007, they were saying 2007 that he didn't exist. Nobody really knew about him but they were saying in 2007 that he didn't really exist, he was a fictional character and anything recorded was voiced by an actor, etc., and that it was used - like you were just saying - it was used to... well, what did they actually say? What was the rest of the report? Do you have it there?

Niall: Yeah, I do, yeah. In their narrative that was being said at the time, this Rashid al-Baghdadi was the head of Islamic State in Iraq...

Joe: Right.

Niall: ...an organisation backed by Al-Qaeda.

Joe: Right. So it's this minor story basically that in 2007 there was an organisation called Islamic State in Iraq - right? ISIS.

Niall: The ploy was to invent Baghdadi, a figure whose very name establishes his Iraqi pedigree...

Joe: Of course, Baghdadi - right?

Niall: ...install him as the head of a front organisation called 'The Islamic State of Iraq and then arrange for Masri - I think that's the then Prime Minister of Iraq...

Joe: No, no, Masri was Al-Qaeda. There's a different story about him. When he made that statement or when he made statements in the name of Al-Qaeda - I wrote an article on it - he was in an Egyptian prison. When he was supposedly recording... I mean, the whole thing's just a farce... - go ahead.

Niall: The ploy was to get Baghdadi to swear an oath of allegiance to Masri and thereby establish Islamic State's credentials as the successor organisation of Al-Qaeda.

Joe: Right. And this is 2007 remember people, right? 2007 they were talking about I.S., with a leader called al-Baghdadi and now, what...

Pierre: Eight years later, they're fighting ISIS.

Joe: Eight years later it suddenly reappears? A different guy called al-Baghdadi who is claimed to be the leader of...

Niall: Islamic State.

Joe: Islamic State, but in 2007, someone, his namesake, was doing the same thing, creating an organisation that has been exposed in 2007 as a front-organisation. And then it repeats eight years later and no one bats an eyelid? I mean...

Niall: Okay: they have some control over the Middle East, so that they - like you were saying earlier - what they can't do in Ukraine is actually get in there and control the facts on the ground. So they can actually - via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and other countries - they can actually get enough nut jobs into the region and say, "look at these idiots waving flags and executing people. So that's real - we're not saying that's fictional ... these assholes terrorising people in the Middle East - most of them actually from Europe, but anyway... The narrative - the plot-line - it's all fictional.

Really, what they're working with... the war on terror is basically a series of plot-lines that are effectively created or wheeled back out whenever it's expedient, a series of plot-lines and a great big database - that's what Al-Qaeda is, it's a database of informants - of people who got swept up as police informants - usually back in Europe - because they were into drugs and they got in with the wrong crowd and then the system says, "Well, we'll let you off if you do a little thing for us", and the next thing you know, they're wearing turbans and going to the Middle East waving black flags and it's great fun shooting up people. And that's the War on Terror.

Joe: Yeah. And to go along with that: this is a mainstream media report - it was in the telegraph, the one that I'm reading - from 2004 that says, "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader", this is the guy I was talking about who was killed in the bombing and was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 until 2006 - two years - he was what the US was fighting against in Iraq, "the terrorist leader believed to be responsible for the abduction of Kenneth Bigley" which was one of these videos of a beheading - one of the early videos of a beheading, "is more myth than man according to an American military intelligence agent in Iraq. Several sources say the importance of Zarqawi - blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq - has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration's desire to find a villain for the post-invasion mayhem". This guy says, "US military intelligence agents in Iraq say, "We were basically paying up to $10,000 at a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq. Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions: We needed a villain - someone identifiable for the public to latch on to and we got one.""

So these guys - these are US military intelligence analysts saying this in 2004 - I mean this was in the mainstream media but obviously had no bearing on the narrative, on the truth of situation; it didn't affect the truth of the situation which was that they were making it all up. The whole point was, it was the school-yard bully making up stories about other kids who were attacking him and were stealing from him and this was why he had to do this, you know - that's what it is: it's fairly prosaic and simple, you know? But, people don't want to believe it.

Pierre: And I think there's something very psychopathic - and maybe I'm reading too much into it - but the fact that the bully or that here, the US agent, release the information and tell the truth. "Yeah, we made this terrorist leader up. It was created out of nothing." I think it's psychopathic in the sense that you abuse the people, you lie to the people and you tell them that you lied. And what is very disheartening as you said - and you said it previously as well - that these whole psychopathic dynamics at the micro-social level - the local bully - as well as the macro-social level - the Western Empire - can only last if there is this agreement - this threat; this agreement or non-reaction - this apathy - from the people, because this 0.1% or whatever percentage is only living and sustaining its wealth and power because of us - because of our work. The industry and all the production comes from the normal people.

Joe: Exactly. And it's to keep those people down, that is the source or the focus of the War on Terror. The war on Muslim terrorism is absolutely a ruse to justify Western government's bombing of the ordinary citizens of countries who happen to live in countries that happen to be of strategic interest to the US. And the US's overarching strategic interest is maintaining control over probably the most important region in the world, which is Eurasia, and therefore their main enemy is Russia, and therefore the war on terror ultimately is focused on containing Russia and securing all that the US and the West needs to secure to make sure that Russia never rises up into a position where it can actually threaten US hegemony.

Pierre: Yes. It's really a farce. When you were describing how funny and fabricated and manufactured those so-called terrorist leaders like al-Zarqawi or al-Baghdadi were I had this picture in my mind where you have a, you know, this puppet master: on the left hand, you have John Kerry wearing an American flag T-shirt, and on the other side you have al-Baghdadi or Zarqawi or whatever terrorist leaders, and they're talking to the audience - us, the people. And al-Zarqawi is saying, "Be afraid; be very afraid, we are terrorist leaders; we are very mean; we will destroy you." And then John Kerry saying, "No, no, don't worry; we are the US state; we're going to protect you; well, we'll have to pay a bit more for taxes for military expenses and you will have to forget about your civil rights, but it's all for the good. And then we'll prevent the terrorist threat. And it appears through what we are seeing, that the US will not destroy ISIS because a) it does not exist and b) this bunch of mercenaries that are so easy to neutralise, they need them because it's almost two sides of the same coin: the US administration and ISIS are complementary.

Joe: Yeah - two cheeks of the same arse.

Pierre: That needs a good kick, yeah!?

Niall: Well, The Economist has a magazine cover this week, and they have this shadowy image of Putin, a photo, and he is holding up a hand with all the strings dancing below it.

Pierre: Talk about projection.

Niall: Projection, big-time. In a way they're kind of right though: Putin does have the situation by the proverbial balls.

Joe: Yeah. I mean, there's always going to be a puppet master or puppet masters or people who are controlling things from behind the scenes and using their power and influence to control other people. But, the question is, what is their agenda? What are they trying to do as a result of that? I mean, it seems to me that unless you live in some Utopian ideal world type thing, where everything is out in the open and everybody tells the truth and nobody ever influences anybody else, that's not the world we live in. So, in this world - and in the nature of it and the nature of human beings, I suppose requires some people to be in control and there to be secrets and influence and manipulations and all that kind of stuff. So, that's the way it is and that seems to have to be in this world. But the question is, like you just said: what's the agenda? What is the purpose of that, you know? Because there's always going to be enemies - there's always going to be them versus us in this world, to some degree.

Pierre: Of course, and in front of you, that's the Western Empire: that's a big, big player. So even if you use all this behind the scenes negotiation and you don't tell all the truth and you use communication smartly, like Putin does, it's not even for sure that you're going to win. So if you are in this unicorn fairy world where you tell everything to everybody, you're sure you're going to lose. The enemy is too big, too powerful.

Joe: Yeah. So, there were a couple of other terror attack type things going on: this is what drives the whole thing - keeps it ticking over, you know - the periodic terror attacks. It kind of reminds me of Plato's cave a little bit - the way we were talking about it there, you know - like seeing images on a wall and people believing that the images cast were what was actually going on as opposed to just shadows on a wall, you know; that the actual movements were happening behind them. People in a theatre watching a play on a stage and there's good guys and bad guys - like you were saying - two puppets and one of them is saying, "Ha ha ha, I'm going to get you, I'm an evil man", "No don't get me! Get 'em, get 'em!" and there's a drama going on and people are transfixed by it. But the difference is, that's kind of the way it works in this world, except that they make it more real by... if you imagine a theatre where everybody is watching this all on stage, and they have a bad guy and a good guy and they're rooting for the good guy, and there's a bad guy, but now and again someone in the audience is actually killed - you know what I mean? To really make it real, you know? When the bad guy on stage says, "I'm going to kill someone" then somebody actually dies and everybody in the audience is actually terrified and so they remain even more transfixed to the drama.

Niall: That's exactly what happened in Copenhagen. I mean, they were actually in the middle of having a little meeting about...

Pierre: Freedom of speech?

Niall: ...the fallout from 'Je Suis Charlie' and a woman there was giving a speech about freedom of speech and democracy and we will not bow, and the next thing we hear over the audio that's been released, "ch ch ch ch ch" someone's shooting through the window.

Joe: Yeah.

Pierre: And what is another very psychopathic trait is how they keep reacting to what is exactly the same script. When you read it, there were several shooters, only one, and then after like in Toulouse or like in Charlie Hebdo...

Niall: How many more times??

Pierre: ...after doing a shooting it is the ritual, it is tradition, you have to go to a synagogue or a Jewish place, or Kosher market, some threats and it's caricature. And this lack of creativity is a hallmark of the psychopathic mind.

Joe: Yeah. This guy was a 21 year old Danish-born.

Pierre: Known by the intelligence.

Niall: Did he play computer games?

Joe: Probably. He was probably like one of our callers from last week.

Niall: He was one of the Battle toads, trying to kill some baddies.

Joe: He was from 4chan. They've said he's Danish; 21 or 22 years old, Danish-born. Therefore, they assume... He could be of good Middle Eastern or average...

Pierre: Second generation.

Joe: They haven't released that. They're being a bit cagey about that. They'll only release his name, you know. So, he goes and kills someone at this meeting that you're talking about - a meeting about free speech and...

Niall: Yeah, it was apparently a low-key affair and apparently the French ambassador had just given a talk, so he was threatened.

Joe: Right. So, one person is killed, and then later on that evening - which was last night - he goes to a synagogue and shoots a guy at the synagogue and wounds another person - he killed two people. And then he takes off to a house and they have him under surveillance and then he's shooting at them - supposedly - and then he gets shot. But the interesting thing is that they wind up going to the synagogue, Netanyahu immediately came out an capitalised on that by... yeah, I mean, they're putting up 180 -what's the conversion rate in the Israeli Shekels to dollars? It's something 180 million Israeli Shekels - it's a lot.

Pierre: Big amount of money.

Joe: Dozens of millions or whatever, to facilitate Aliyah, which is movement of... and Netanyahu came on and made a speech in Hebrew very emotionally telling all the Jews of Europe that, well they need protection, they should be protected everywhere but, "this another example of how you're under threat and Israel is your home, blah, blah, blah, blah, you need to come to Israel, come to Israel, come to Israel." And I think a lot of people - a lot of Jews - are going to heed that call, you know, which is strange because I can't think of a more dangerous place in the Middle East right now, you know?

Pierre: As you said during the previous show, Netanyahu did the same speech, basically, in France right after the Charlie Hebdo event. And in France today - which is a small country - is the first provider of Aliyahs in the world. And Denmark will follow, of course, because most people - Jew or not Jew - buy into the terrorist narrative.

Joe: Yeah. And, I mean, it's terrible because it's almost like you see this train-wreck coming, you know? And you can't do anything about it - but the idea has been going on a long time where Israel has been aggressively encouraging Jews to go back to Israel. I wrote an article - or read an article, maybe; I'm not sure if I wrote it or not - anyway, it was basically talking about gathering all the Jews into one place, because that was a quote by someone - I can't remember who it was - but someone had this ideal of gathering all the Jews into one place, you know?

Niall: It was Golda what's-her-name.

Joe: Golda Meir.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: Former Israeli Prime Minister. But, it was kind of a lament for the ridiculousness and the misguided policy of getting as many of the Jews of the world into Israel when it has been - for 60 years - a tinderbox - and is only getting worse and has only gotten worse, really, over those years - under the supposed objective of protecting them; of it "never happening again." The mainstream media and the Western governments and everybody has been talking for a long time about the idea that the Middle East is a tinderbox and it could be ignited at any moment and you could have major war there, you know? Talking about Iran having The Bomb - although it's probably not the case, but, Israel has nuclear weapons. There are plenty of heavily armed Arab countries all around Israel. Why put all the Jews in one small piece of land in the Middle East surrounded by enemies that continue to be provoked as enemies? It just doesn't make any sense.

Pierre: It's irrational and for people to do the Aliyah, they need to be hysterisized because - objectively - the threat in Western countries is not this big: I'm talking about statistics here - about the actual data. So, they are so hysterisized that they come to think that living in Israel - a powder keg in the Middle East - surrounded by Muslim countries is safer than living in Denmark or France. There's a serious mind-job going on here. And that's why along with those terrorist attacks, there's a lot of mediatisation of anti-Semitism. We all think whatever, but in the end, in the news, it's all over the place. And it adds up to this sentiment of paranoia, of fear, of threat, that is necessary for those Jewish people to make this move, which is a big move because not only we are talking about public safety which is low in Israel and the Middle East in general, plus, when you do your Aliyah, or you leave a country like France or Denmark, these kind of countries, you have a life there; you have a network; and then you go to the Middle East, in the desert to live...

Joe: Yeah, it's very strange.

Niall: But it's more than that: you've been there for generations.

Pierre: And that's your roots.

Niall: If any religious group needs to consider getting out of Europe, it's surely Muslims.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: If you can, go back to... sigh ...of course, that's what the far-right is saying: "Go home", you know, "Get out of our country". I mean, that's on the rise.

Joe: Yeah. What's strange about this Copenhagen shooting is that this guy had a violent past and was known to police. He'd been arrested on several occasions. He was known as even being involved in weapons smuggling and stuff like that. So he wasn't your average low-level kind of criminal.

Niall: They found him and they killed him, right?

Joe: Right. Yeah, he shot at them - supposedly - and they shot him. But, it's very strange that someone like that... and if he turns out not to be any kind of Middle Eastern or Arab or North African extraction, well...

Niall: I think he is. They announced his name before we came on air.

Joe: They did?

Niall: They gave him a Muslim...

Pierre: Mohammed al-Arabi??

Joe: al-Baghdadi??

Niall: No, something of Middle Eastern origin.

Joe: Are you sure, because I couldn't find anything about his name, and...

Niall: Anyway, he was Danish-born.

Joe: Yeah, the point being that he had this violent past but apparently no past of anti-Semitism or anything like that. And they're trying to figure out if he was linked to the Charlie Hebdo attacks or if he was inspired by them or something like that. But, it's just strange that someone who has this violent past appears to be a fairly...

Pierre: Cold-blooded...

Joe: Well, a determined, kind of, criminal - you know, criminal behaviour of a general sort, but then suddenly go and shoot someone at a synagogue. You know, it's very strange that he would choose to do that. What kind of climate has been created, where - of the two options he had - he killed someone at one of these free speech talks and then he goes, "Well, I'm going to go to a synagogue now", you know?

Niall: Yeah, what's the connection? I'm not seeing the connection.

Joe: No - I don't know. I mean...

Niall: But it's repeating itself; I can't understand.

Pierre: Yeah, the connection is obvious...

[Audio clip from film, V for Vendetta]
High Chancellor Adam Sutler: What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television. This message must resound throughout the entire interlink. I want this country to realise that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I was every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos. I want everyone to remember why they need us!
[End audio]

Joe: Yeah, well...

Niall: So that's why it happens.

Joe: Well, that's why it happens...

Niall: Oh...

Joe: But I just think it's very bizarre that it would... I mean, of course, Netanyahu and the Israelis are waiting for any moment to give them justification to have, because they want Jews to come to Israel. So, they're waiting to capitalise on any reason whatsoever, where a Jew is attacked or if a Jewish person is killed, or whatever. But the whole thing is bizarre that it would... that it feeds into that. That happens so consistently; especially after Charlie Hebdo and then this...

Niall: No, but it also feeds into what's going on in Ukraine. The peace deal and then, oh, terror attack in Europe - remind them why they need us? I'm thinking here of the US occupation of Europe.

Pierre: Yeah, I don't think we mentioned it: if I correctly remember, during this free speech event in Copenhagen, one of the guests was Larson... the cartoonist guy.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Pierre: He made the initial cartoon in 2004/2005 - anti-Muslim cartoon - that was then translated by Charlie Hebdo and published by Charlie Hebdo, and that led to the alleged first attack: the burning of the offices. So, the modus operandi is the same and the connection between the Charlie Hebdo event and the Copenhagen event is very clear: you have the French Ambassador, plus you have the cartoonist who started all the controversy about the Muslim cartoons.

Joe: There are markers there, basically, that take you straight back to Charlie Hebdo and the media is trying to promote it and stuff, and yeah, it's like a reminder. It's like this criminal guy - for some reason - decided to just stage his attack in such a way that it would provide a stark reminder to the public - particularly in Europe - of the Charlie Hebdo attack. And you even had the replay of Netanyahu saying the same thing in response to this attack as he said in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack, which was, "Jews need to come to Israel. Jews need to come to Israel." It's just bizarre. I mean, I'm not a coincidence theorist, you know?

I don't like to go too crazy about coincidences or anything like that, you know? I mean, forget about conspiracy theories - they're even worse - but coincidence theories are just... I mean, I think it's a sign of irrationality among people who focus on coincidences all the time and say that, "Oh, it's just a coincidence", because that's not the way the world works, you know? Usually there's a means and a method and a plan and a strategy - even with the ordinary person in the street: they have some plan to do certain things - but things just don't happen so easily by coincidence, you know? And you see a lot of coincidence theorists in the government and in the media and I think we really should come down hard on coincidence theorists because I think they're dangerous to rational human discourse and just the general health of society, for a healthy social-mind, type thing. Coincidence theorists in the government and media should be... I think there should be some laws passed outlawing coincidence theorists.

Pierre: Soon; soon to come.

Joe: And I think that the people, who visit coincidence theorist websites, like mainstream media websites - where it's all explained in this kind of like totally unbelievable, irrational and bizarre way where things just happen by accident and we just have to respond to it spontaneously without looking to see an obvious narrative going on here. It's just really a sign of like a psychosis, I think.

Niall: Totally. And, Dave Cameron might be suffering from it - the British Prime Minister. I mean, the day the Minsk agreement was signed, you know, "Peace in Europe!", but the British made sure that a shipment of armoured personnel carriers arrived in Kiev. But that's just a coincidence!

Joe: Yeah, they would say that that's a coincidence, but really, there's a certain mental agility there, and it's not good.

Pierre: No. Roosevelt was not suffering from the coincidence theorist syndrome since he declared, "In politics, nothing happens by chance." and this being said, this Copenhagen event I think looks to me like a psychological operation. It's like, it's been shown by science that when you get a vaccine, if you get a very small dose a few weeks later of the same substance - the same vaccine - it's called a 'reminder jab'. How do you call that in English when you get this second jab? Well, we see this second jab, it will increase the potency of the initial reaction and maybe on a co-level, a similar pattern occurs where there is some kind of resonance - this reminder, you know? This is a very similar event on a smaller scale that is used to amplify the effects of the first event - the Charlie Hebdo event - in our psyches; to reinforce.

Joe: Well, that's what I'm saying. This guy needs to be investigated. Well, he's been killed now, but everything should be done to look at him and look at his past and look at his background to see if there is a connection between him and the Charlie Hebdo attacks because they seem so similar that it's almost like - and this is what I'm saying - coincidence theory just doesn't get it here. They're not just two isolated incidents; this guy obviously had someone who maybe was supporting him - like financing him - and that they're goal was clearly to remind everybody about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And I don't know who that could be, right? Who would want to do that, or whatever, but it should be investigated - put it that way. It should be investigated, the connection between these two events and who's behind him and who is trying to remind the European people about the Charlie Hebdo attacks and about everything they were told then and why they would want to do that. That's the rational way to look at this.

Niall: And, within a couple of days, we hear that he was radicalised by a Yemeni cleric.

Joe: Right. But that might be the case, but I want to know why these radical clerics or groups that are behind him would want to have him do this in such a way that it sends such a clear message to the ordinary people of Europe to remind them about Charlie Hebdo and remind them about everything that they learned about Charlie Hebdo, which was that Muslims are evil; Muslims are terrorists; we need to look at that, you know? And there needs to be a government statement about it.

Niall: I have complete faith in our government.

Joe: But they won't do that because they're coincidence theorists. They'll say there's no direct connection. They'll look into it, they'll make mention of it, but they won't follow that logical process.

Anyway, Canada did the same thing. Police foiled a shooting plot. Canada's gone all FBI terror plot. Canadian police say they foiled a plot to carry out a mass-shooting in the Halifax area on Saturday - yesterday. Three suspects arrested, and a fourth reportedly shot himself dead after police surrounded his home.

Niall: Was that the Islamic State of Ottawa?

Joe: At least two suspects had intended to go to a public venue with a goal of opening fire to kill civilians.

Niall: With the intention of.

Joe: Yes.

Niall: Okay.

Joe: But then the Canadian...

Niall: Read their intentions?

Joe: The Canadian FBI forgot to give them guns. Canadian, what is it, CSIS? They forgot to give them the guns and the boots to wage a full ground war on Canada. So, it didn't work out. But, they got them, anyway. But that's Canada - that's where Canada's headed.
There was a story just recently about...

Niall: Well, you know Canada has to fight them over there so they don't have to fight them over here?

Joe: Yeah.

Pierre: Yeah, and the population has to be primed in order to relive those military operations overseas. And Canada had its own terrorist event, so again that's just a reminder: a secondary vaccine jab.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: It could just be a coincidence.

Joe: Well, there you go! You're falling into the coincidence theory.

Pierre: Coincident theorist!

Joe: Yeah, you're a coincidence theorist. You're one of those crazy coincidence theorists - like everything just happens by accident and stuff and it's not related. Nobody is controlling anything, you know? It's all just, "Oh, look, just this happened and then that happened and they're not connected and no there's no power behind anything. Nobody wants to do anything on this planet. It's all just, "Oh, oops - I did it again" you know, like Britney Spears says.

Niall: Sing it for us, Pierre.

Joe: No don't.A senior American climate scientist has spoken of the fear he experienced when US intelligence services apparently asked him about the possibility of weaponising the weather as a major report on geoengineering is to be published this week.

This guy, Professor Alan Robock stated that three years ago, two men claiming to be from the CIA called him to ask whether experts would be able to tell if hostile forces had begun manipulating the US's weather - "Cos it's getting awful rainy over here. There are a lot of floods, a lot of droughts, and a lot of tornadoes, there's thunder-snow, all sorts of stuff; is it the Russians? Tell us. Are the Russians doing this?" This is how crazy these people are, you know? But what he actually said was he suspected that the purpose of the call was to find out if American forces could meddle with other countries climates instead. So we can't screw Russia over in Ukraine, let's see if we can give them a horrible winter or something. "Can we dump like 500ft of snow on Russia and then wait a while until it thaws and then it'll be ours?" This is what the CIA spend their time doing: coming up with mad-cap, mad scientist kind of plots and ideas to try and maintain their control of the world, basically. I mean, they're nuts; they're crazy; but the strange thing is that - or the scary thing is that - there may be some ability for them to actually go down that path a little bit and actually start geoengineering and screw up the world for everybody, you know?

Pierre: Right. Remember, during 9/11, there was a grade 3 hurricane 100 miles from New York?

Joe: Oh yeah.

Pierre: A coincidence.

Niall: I don't remember, because I didn't learn about it until 10 years later.

Joe: Yeah,

Pierre: Yeah.

Niall: It's mad. But, the thing about this is, most people online you see, when they notice something odd with the weather, the gist of most of the comments are to the effect that this is all geoengineering by secret US government. You see, they're already convinced of these ideas - that the extreme weather we're seeing is all of these mad-cap CIA scientist designs already in action. So seeding this idea, this is actually a long time coming and it's actually taken root out there in people, such that the first thing you hear whenever there's something unusual happening is that people go, "Oh well, it's HAARP" or "It's chemtrails" or it's... you know?

Pierre: And maybe the objective is, maybe people posing as CIA agents - whether they were CIA agents or not - did give a visit to this scientist, but the objective was not to know about the ongoing technology. The objective was for the scientist to talk to them, "Yeah, I know that", to reinforce the belief that indeed, the US government was able to tamper weather, which is a way to distract from the reality, which is far grimmer than that. Yes, the weather is crazy, but human beings cannot alter it much.

Joe: But you don't have to worry because you know the green movement and the kind of global warmists, and the people who want to save the planet from human-made, anthropogenic global warming? We're in safe hands with them, because there's a woman called Christina Figueres who is the executive secretary of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is like a top-dog on climate change and pushing for all the measures to stop climate change and pushing the idea that the planet is warming and in the Northern Hemisphere we're all going to be living on boats basically, because we'll be flooded and the Southern Hemisphere they'll all be dead because of drought. But she said recently - or what she said is being understood as an admission that it's not really about warming; warming isn't really true; that the whole goal of pushing the warming agenda is to destroy capitalism.

She said that, "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally - within a defined period of time - changing the economic development model that has been reining for at least 150 years since the industrial revolution." And she goes on...

Niall: I think there's some truth to that.

Joe: But that's what their real agenda is, that they want to greenify the whole world and have us all vegetarians and living like pagan cows.

Niall: I think there's a strong, powerful faction there that wants to convince people of limited resources; that they effectively deliberately sabotaged industrial development in the second and third world countries. In fact, they came up with this scale or hierarchy of first world, second world, third world; this all comes from people going out in the 1970's and they decided to come up with this idea that there were limits to growth, and that they would use the idea of a limited number of resources and global warming to convince people to basically agree to become poor. Or stay poor.

Pierre: Yeah and here is the twist. You said something very important: convince people to remain poor as a way to protect the planet - that is a key element and when you look at the history of the ecology movement and global warming, one of the main economic doctrines is the advocacy for negative growth. Negative growth means less resources are consumed; shrinking GDP's; less wealth, less money, less income; but, in a nicer world - it's a kind of trade-off. But where it's very vicious is that today, look at the hard data is very clear: 1% owns as much as the poorest 99%. Let me repeat: the 1% owns as much as the remaining 99%. So, the problem doesn't come from the 99% that are slaves to the elites and that are already poor. Its cunning in the sense that this ideology tries to make the slaves, the poor, accept and even embrace their poorness; not to save the planet but in order for the 1% to get even more!

Niall: Yeah. Their vision of the future is them with maybe a small slave population and all the useless eaters just...

Pierre: Yeah, so it's true: we consume more than the planet can give; we are destroying the planet; but it doesn't come from us - the poor - it comes from a very small fraction of the population that abuse, use and rapes the population and the planet and they won't change their mode of living, their way of living.

Joe: So, yeah, and in the US, multiple major airline carriers have begun discussing requiring vaccination records for all passengers before allowing them to board a flight, i.e., if you haven't been vaccinated you can't get on a flight. I mean, this vaccination business has gone a little bit too far in that clearly someone - i.e., Big Pharma and the politicians who go through that revolving door between corporations and back into politics - they would like everybody - as many people in the US as possible - to be vaccinated. The whole idea is about preventable disease spreading by way of air travel - any kind of disease: airborne, whatever, flu, Ebola, whatever they come up with next as the next scare - they want to give people vaccinations; a lot of people travel by air in the US, back and forth, and that'll be the justification for sticking them with some mercury and some dead or semi-dead viruses.

Niall: They probably have some good data that vaccinated populations are dumber and so it works, so let's roll this out.

Joe: It'll make a lot of money.

Niall: Oh, it'll make money.

Joe: So, yeah: 'Papers please'. It's back to the future.

Pierre: Maybe the most damning evidence concerning vaccines: it makes you dumber - it doesn't make you healthier actually when you look at the epidemiology studies; i.e., the epidemics within a population, years after years, you see that after the introduction of a vaccine usually the rate of occurrence of the palliative disease results - for example poliomielitis - drops a little bit. Then, it goes back to the initial level, and then it rises up. So vaccine is counter-productive in the long run.

Joe: Yeah, because the disease adapts, the virus adapts. Yeah, there's been a lot of news about it in the media and I get this from my intelligence sources really, this information; the same intelligence sources used by the US government: social media. There's been a lot of talk in social media/Intel circles about measles, so there seems to be a big push on to have parents vaccinate their children against measles, and even to have adults vaccinated against measles because you know there's these strains coming out all the time, but yeah, the MMR - the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination - they're pushing that, but obviously this includes adults as well. So it's very dystopian and weird and strange.

Pierre: Another reason why the rate of occurrence of these disease increase after several years of vaccination, as you say there are new strains - mutations - and also the vaccines are detrimental to health because of the additives you mentioned: mercury, aluminium, all those chemicals - they reduce the efficiency of your immune system that is the first natural defence - and very efficient defence when it's not compromised by those additives - first defence against virus and bacteria's.

Niall: The US cops are still shooting people left, right and centre.

Joe: Yep. There's a video of a guy in Washington State...

Pierre: Pasco.

Joe: Pasco, Washington State and it's very clear that he had his hands up and he wasn't posing any kind of threat, and it's just amazing to see these cops - two or three of them - just like, start shooting on him for no reason whatsoever: "I was scared, so I shot him".

Pierre: And the lies again...

Joe: "He looked at me the wrong way, so I shot him".

Niall: I think it's not that they're scared. They just assume now that when someone does something like jay-walk, you have to take them out.

Joe: Oh but the narrative is always, "I was in fear of my life".

Pierre: Yeah. And also there are these lies that add insult to injury. Not only did they kill him and the family is mourning, but they blame the victim - "he was throwing rocks at us, he was threatening us" - but if you see the video he was not throwing rocks.

Joe: He may have thrown rocks previously, but when he was actually shot he had turned and had his hand up like that, completely just standing on the sidewalk. But the narrative from the cops is always, "I was in fear of my life", "I was in fear for my life" because that's what they usually say when they come up with some narrative because how do they explain shooting someone totally unarmed and obviously no harm and then shooting them? So they come up with some bullshit story that, "He looked at me the wrong way" or "He was putting the evil eye on me", you know.

Niall: He was American, right?

Joe: Yeah.

Pierre: Hispanic-American.

Niall: Yeah, because the only official body of any kind to raise any questions about it was the Mexican government. When it takes the Mexican government to explain the basics of moral civilisation or decorum... But, what can you expect? Things are just so bad; this week was Valentine's Day - yesterday - and the theme du jour - the romantic, the commercial, the thing everyone's talking about is this movie, Fifty Shades of Grey which is basically a pornography movie. In fact, it's worse; it's a pornography movie with S&M and bondage and it's just mass-marketed as the romantic thing to see this week in the West. We are so screwed. Do you understand how screwed we are?

Joe: That's the bench-mark for where we're at morally and conscience-wise in our global society and it's been promoted obviously it's coming out of the US, you know, that seems to be the seat of all this, in terms of the quantity and the quality - or otherwise - of the kind of stuff that comes out, you know? But they didn't get enough people hooked on this; it was pitched largely - and I'm sure a lot of men read it - but it was the book that came out a couple of years ago that was mass-marketed and a lot of people read it - particularly women, because it was promoted to them: "You should read this book if it's the last thing you ever do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" but then there's only so many people - particularly in the US - in which many people read; a lot of people don't. Like, when it's being promoted by that guy, what's his name? Kane... Kane West? He is a rapper.

Niall: Kanye West.

Joe: Oh, I'm sorry, Kanye...

Niall: Kanye. You've got to get with it, Joe!

Joe: Yeah, how out of touch I am. It's Ka... its spelled Kaaaeen-yh, oh no, it's Kanye. Okay.

Pierre: Kanye.

Joe: I got the 'N' and the 'Y' backwards. But apparently, he's the best...

Niall: Hipity Hopity...

Joe: Hipity Hopity Bop Bopper this side of... this side of ...- Pink Floyd. So, one of the things that he said - and people obviously listen to him - is that, he said, "Sometimes people write novels and they just are so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I'm a proud non-reader of books."

Niall: [Uncontrollable laughter]

Joe: So, they didn't get enough people... to... but people do be so wordy sometimes.

Niall: True; I try to cut it back.

Joe: I have to agree with him on that, you know? And I would never want a book's autograph - whatever that means - but anyway, because a lot of Americans don't read books, they weren't able to get this perverse, messed-up movie or story or message into people's minds. So then you go to movies and you get everybody basically, marketing etc., you can get just everybody to see it - and it's probably even crasser. You know, at least with a book, there's some nuances and stuff...

Niall: Yeah, and not everyone has to see it. Everyone gets the gist of it. They see the image of what's going on and you get a headline here and a headline there and boom - it's imprinted: it's seared; you have to be in a hole the last two weeks to have missed it.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: And the message is clear from the authorities: they're saying S&M and being psychopathic in a relationship is perfectly awesome. In fact, it will make your life better for you.

Joe: It's something to aspire to, yeah.

Pierre: And that's total Universal values that I notice, as well. You know there are waves of spam, and that gives quite an interesting...

Niall: A what? A ways of...?

Pierre: Spam - spam email.

Niall: Oh, spam.

Pierre: At the time, a few years ago it was Viagra. And then it was about penis enlargement techniques, you know? It's like Rolex watches. And in France over the last weeks, the big spam thing was a website with the slogan, 'I love, therefore I cheat'. And actually, today, I read it again - I was thinking, 'I love, therefore I cheat' so, you perceive the paradox - the conundrum - in this sentence? It's in your face. And actually, you know, you cheat because you don't love and here it's a total reversal, it's just psychopathic.

Joe: Yeah, well we have to go back to Ponerology - the ponerization of society and it's all just spelled out in the book, Political Ponerology, just how that process of infection seems to occur, because when there's so many people... it's not just the powers that be that are doing this anymore - although, they play a big part in it, obviously - but that infection has and is spreading, you know? Because ordinary people taking this up and putting it out there; they're adopted or have internalised the psychopathological world view and have made it their own and they're now the carriers of it. It's pretty horrific.

But on the bright side, there was a fireball very close to where we are just this week. As much as all the craziness that has been going on, the fireballs and crazy weather and sink holes and sonic booms which may or may not be associated with fireballs - but there was a fireball: we didn't see it, but it was on Tuesday, very close to where we are and it shot across the sky. And I don't know if it was the same one or another one that was seen down over Barcelona, which is quite a ways from here. So yeah, we're always reading about them, you know, elsewhere in the world, and then, okay, we didn't see it, but we got a little...

Pierre: Glimpse. There is hope.

Niall: Hope! What do you mean, hope?!

Joe: As long as one of them hits Kenyee Westee on the head and him and all the rest of them - you know - then we might have some hope.
Anyway, I think we'll leave it there for this week, folks; we've got to the top of the hour, more or less. So, we'll be back next week, probably, with another behind the headlines show bringing you all the juicy Intel from behind the headlines - the stuff that people aren't telling you; i.e., the sane stuff and normal stuff you know, like kind of the straight up, in your face, 'duh?' stuff. That's what we'll be bringing you next week. But, what's happening tomorrow?

Niall: Tomorrow on the Sott radio network, there is the Health and Wellness show. Make sure you tune in for that.

Joe: Tune into that as well. It's at 6...

Niall: 6pm Eastern time?

Joe: Yeah, so until then, thanks to our listeners and to our chatters and we love you all, you're super-cool, so yeah, tune in next week and we'll be back then. Have a good one.

Niall: See you next week. Bye, bye.

Pierre: See you next week. Bye.