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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'.

Behind the Headlines airs live this Sunday, 22 March 2015, from 3-4:30pm EST / 12-1.30pm PST / 7-8.30pm UTC / 8-9.30pm CET.

Running Time: 01:54:00

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Joe: Hi and welcome to the Sott Radio Network, Behind the Headline. I'm Joe Quinn and my co-host this week is Niall Bradley.

Niall: Hello everyone! Yeah it's good to be back, to be here.

Joe: Yes it's good to be here since it's been a long week.

Niall: It has though!

Joe: It's actually been a long week for me since I've been trying to grapple with early 20th century history, and make some sense of it. I was writing an article, took me a few days, several days actually. I had to read a lot to figure it out.

Niall: How many books did you read?

Joe: Oh, about 17 or 18.

Niall: Wow!

Joe: No I didn't read 17 or 18 books - I skimmed quite a few books and I read one in its entirety. But that was just an article I just wrote on early 20th century history; World War I.

Niall: Why?

Joe: Well, since this whole Russia business started last year, it's really brought that Russia and the relationship between the west and Russia into sharp focus. And over that period of time I've been thinking more and more, looking at things that have happened, and the attitude of the west toward Russia and why they're so hysterical, why they're so mad, to 'get Russia', 'get Putin'; put them down, keep in their place, put them back in their box; why they're so, apparently, afraid of Russia. That's been brewing for quite a long time.

Niall: And they've been drawing on strange historical analogies.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: Like, "It's a throwback to tsarist Russia" or "the USSR", it's like what?

Joe: John Kerry said that when Russia - sorry, Putin himself invaded Crimea - annexed Crimea and then when he personally invaded Ukraine, Kerry said something along the lines of 19th century imperialism. And then they've also been making reference to - some general - said that they, over the past year or so, have had to dust off their cold-war play books, in order to confront Russia. All of that eventually and gradually dawned on me that this isn't something new, it's been bubbling away below the surface for a century or more. It's been an on-going policy for a century or more and has been covered up by all sorts of narratives. But now it's becoming much more difficult to cover up because, for some reason, these western powers are much more hysterical, it seems like they feel like they're not so much in control of the situation anymore and they can't create these narratives and sell them to the public so easily and they're exposing themselves - not literally, thankfully - but they're exposing themselves and their true attitude to Russia and Eurasia in general by these hysterical comments. And just stuff that even the average person who doesn't really look too deeply into it is drawing a blank on that one, "I'm not sure what you're trying to say?" or even spotting the hypocrisy of the things that they say, like accusing Russia of invading other countries.

How can the US accuse or condemn anybody for invading other countries with their recent history? So it's just been interesting to see that really there seems to have been an on-going hundred year-plus-long policy, amongst these western elite or powers, whatever you want to call them, British-American, Anglo-American, banking and political elite, for a long time they've had a policy of containment of Russia, in particular. As a means to an end, in a certain sense; as a means to controlling the entire Asian continent and making sure that no competitor to the US comes out of that area. Russia's a problem because of its natural size, its massive size; it's the biggest country in the world, almost twice the size of the US. And then you have the rest of Europe or Western Europe has a lot of people, a lot of natural resources if not oil resources, agricultural and all that kind of stuff. Together, if you put the Eurasian continent together, and if you include China, for sure, if there was to be a unified front there, on the Eurasian continent between say, China and Russian and Europe, that would spell disaster for the people who have put themselves in a position as Ruler of the World, effectively; the US, the global policeman, you know, the one that goes around spreading, 'Freedom and Democracy', is the arbiter of all disputes; that they would be unseated from that position if there was ever a cohesive unity of countries in Eurasia, not all countries necessarily, but in particular Russia and a few of the biggest western European countries, that would be a major problem for them.

And they realised that, a hundred years ago and they went about the process of making sure that never happened; divide and conquer, behind the scenes wars, splitting things up, setting peoples against each other, setting governments against each other, intrigue, all sorts of dirty deals. And as we've seen over the past hundred years, over most of the 20th century, had Russia mostly completely isolated from the much of the rest of the world. At least the prosperous west, by the Iron Curtain and the east-west divide, commies versus capitalism, all of these bogus narratives that effectively kept Russia contained for most of the 20th century.

Niall: Right, so they were commies but are you saying that essentially they were, 'our' commies? Because if they helped set up that system...

Joe: Well, there is a lot of evidence and I'm sure that people who are listening know, at least the idea, the concept, that the Bolshevik revolution was very much like an early colour revolution, although not the first because they had been going on previous to that as well. But in 1917 the Bolshevik revolution was seeded in Russia, in tsarist Russia, to overthrow the tsar and take control of Russia with this phony, bogus, revolutionary group that really didn't represent the interests of anywhere near the majority of the Russia people. But they served the agenda of getting rid of the tsar and changing the entire structure of the country. And in fact what the Bolshevik's did is to destroy Russia, at that time. They basically shut down, more or less, all of Russian industry because of their ridiculous rather nihilistic political and social ideologies that were just - I don't know - they were idiotic. But that's not necessarily communism, that's the particular ideologies as represented by Lenin and Trotsky and the others. This idea of the rising of the ordinary proletariat of the ordinary working man, the poorest or the simplest or the peasants in any country...

Niall: Becoming the owners.

Joe: ...should be the owners, the runners of the country, effectively. It's totally counter-intuitive and it's very difficult to find someone - if you imagine today trying to find someone. Go and get some man or woman or whatever, who's working happily as a farmer for example or any other job that some people might call menial or low-level, and tell them, "No. You're not going to do that job anymore; you're going to run a bank."

Niall: From tomorrow.

Joe: "From tomorrow, you're going to start running this bank." or "you're going to run this corporation." or "you're going to be the head this corporation." or "you're going to be in the management structure of this corporation." Not only is it a very bad idea because of the skills involved or lack of skills involved, but also because the general proclivities of people who earn their living through manual labour, for example, those kinds of people generally don't want those jobs. They like the idea that there is someone else dealing with those kinds of jobs or issues, because they see themselves as being best at whatever it is they do; farming or making things, they're happy at that. Take those people and try and put them into some kind of managerial position where they have to decide things, there's simply not - and this is not a judgement on anybody, this is simply saying that there are people with different proclivities. So the Bolshevik's were just nuts in that way, it was just a ridiculous, nonsensical pipe-dream that they had and tried to impose and it ruined Russia. And I think they may have well been chosen precisely for that, because it did ruin Russia. And then it allowed western, particularly the US, corporations and banking interests, etc., to get access to Russia, because they looked to them as not only their sponsors, but the people who would invest in Russia, and give them loans, give them expertise.

So it was very much a western-backed coup inside Russia, to gain access to Russian society and the Russian land-mass itself and to direct its future. I think that's a very reasonable and provable, as far as is possible, claim to make about what actually happened in 1917.

Niall: Still allowing for the complexity of changes over time so to say, that is not to say that for the entire 70 years Wall Street or the City of London or whatever banking institutions in the west, literally decided policy for Russia and the USSR. What naturally happened, we've seen it in more recent times...

Joe: They don't have to.

Niall: ...the US wants to get in a different regime in country-X, and they do. And for a while they do exactly as they're told. But even within the same generation, that very same leader that they put in starts to learn a few things and he starts to go, "You know what, I'm not so sure about this." and it can happen within the span of one-single leader's time in power that, "Ok, get rid of him." and there's another coup. Things naturally drift back to reality, post-coup.

Joe: They do. But it depends largely on who holds the reins of the economy, who directs the economic progress or development or investment within that country. If western powers or a foreign power has gained access to that kind of control within a country where they control the purse-strings; the actual rulers of that country, in Russia it was Stalin, he could carry out all sorts of policies, he could direct this, he could decide this or that or the other, in many different areas, but if he didn't control the economy, the purse-strings, if he was dependent on an outside force, then it didn't really matter all those other things that he decided to do.

Sure, you can take note of them and see where he went and what he did, but they're not really of much significance when compared to the powers held by those who hold the purse-strings. And one example of this that is pretty shocking, and you can extrapolate from this, but after the Bolshevik's overthrew and killed the tsar and his family and took control of Russia, you had a lot of external investment from the US and the UK, etc., into Russia, in terms of retooling Russian industry with western expertise and money. As early as the 1970's during the Vietnam War, the military vehicles that the North Vietnamese were using in their war against American soldiers, in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, those military vehicles were being sold by the Soviets, but they were being made by a factory in Russia that was owned by the Ford Corporation.

Niall: It's amazing.

Joe: So the Ford Corporation, an American company had a plant in Russia, that was making military vehicles and selling them to Vietnam to fight American soldiers, in the Vietnam war in the 1970's. This is 50 years after the Bolshevik revolution, So let's just extrapolate from that if you want to get an idea of the extent to which Russia, internally, was controlled from outside, at a fairly high level. Above the level of say governments, because governments come and go every 4 or 8 years but someone else may be let's say above that in banking, etc., or investments, etc. were there. It didn't matter which president came along, the same policy continued.

Niall: It's always difficult, I think, for Americans to understand the role that the military has played in different wars. For example, Vietnam, "Did we win it? Did we lose? Was it a draw? What was the objective?" They had the discussion at the time, "What the hell are we doing in Vietnam?" same for Iraq more recently. But if you actually read the way it's termed by the people who set the policy, their goal is never to win, they've already won as such, what they're doing in their own terms is they're, 'managing the conflict' which doesn't mean to solve or to stop it.

Joe: The thing that people don't understand is that the US and many other western European countries, and other countries around the world depending where they are, but particularly the US is largely based on the war economy, a military economy. There are vast amounts of money generated by simply having a war; it doesn't matter if you win or lose. Because the American soldiers who die in a war they lose, but the people who are financing it and are selling the weapons to the US government to give to the soldiers to fight, and also to the other side in most cases; selling to the enemy. Because you know, the armaments industry is equal opportunity, it'll sell them to anybody; it you want weapons, it's the American way of life, it's competition; whoever wants to buy my products, here you go; morality doesn't really come into it.

Niall: Free market baby.

Joe: Right. So there's a very strong motivation to have war, no matter what the result is; because vast amounts of money are made for the big Arms manufacturers. Most of which are in the US or Western Europe. And on that point, in the past week or so, there was an interesting story - I don't know, whoever got this got access to the recording - there was something called an, 'Earnings call' this was in January this year by Lockheed, a big US arms manufacturer. Where I think they get on the line, where they have an open call opportunity, for anybody who's interested in doing business with Lockheed or does business with Lockheed, can call in and ask the CEO some pertinent questions about their business plans and how things are going and should they invest - if you imagine it's very interlocked, how an arms manufacturer obviously sells weapons and they generate an awful lot of money and there are various banks and investment institutions who will invest in that company and want to know how their profits are looking, going forward, if they're going to make a lot of money this next year.

Niall: Tell us where we can make a killing.

Joe: Right. It also has implications for the parts of the world where the weapons are being sold. Is this part of the world a good market? Is there still a good market there? Therefore, are you going to be able to sell a lot of weapons to these people and make a lot of money? And our investments with you are going to...

Niall: What are the prospects for long-term war, "Pretty good actually!"

Joe: Exactly. So this happened on January 27th and it was Lockheed Martin. And the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, a woman called Marillyn Hewson was fielding questions. And there was one question from a man from Deutsche Bank. Which is a German bank but it's an international investment company at the same time and has offices everywhere and does a lot of business in the US, and this guy his name was Myles Walton. So he called in and asked a question, and I'll just let you listen to that question right now:
(Telephone recording)

Operator: Thank you. Now for a question by Myles Walton at Deutsche Bank, you may begin.

Myles Walton (Analyst - Deutsche Bank): Thanks. Good morning. The first one is a clarification. I might have missed it. But the international sales in 2014, I think the last few years have been about 17% of sales: if you can just give that number for 2014?
And then Marillyn, as you look at the Middle East as a customer base, and you think about the threats that exist there, that is one aspect. But the foreign-policy and what we choose to do there is another. And just hypothetical, if the US does move more toward the normalization with Iran over the nuclear activities, does that in any way impede what you see as progress in the foreign military sales front there, from a DOS perspective? Thanks.

Marillyn Hewson (Chairman, President, and CEO): Thanks Myles. First, in answer to your question, we achieved 20% of our total sales on international sales in 2014. So we're pleased with that, and we have over $20 billion in our backlog at year end to that. We've set a new goal to get to 25% over the next few years. Our growing international area is an important element of our strategy and growth for the Company, and we see a lot of expanding demand for international growth. Expanding demand on missile defence, on aircraft programs, on a range of things.

To your question about foreign policy and normalization, and things of that nature, in my discussions with our customers, that really isn't coming up. It is very clear, to the Middle East region that dialogue is going on. But front and centre for them are the needs that they have today, what their critical national requirements are today.

So our discussion is that - is around the national security needs that they have, and there are certainly plenty of threats in the region. Just the volatility, even if there may be some kind of deal done with Iran, there is volatility all around the region. And each one of these countries believes they have got to protect their citizens. And the things that we can bring to them help in that regard.
So similarly, that is the Middle East. And I know that's what you asked about. But you could take that same argument to the Asia-Pacific region, which is another growth area for us. A lot of volatility, a lot of instability, a lot of things that are happening, both with North Korea, as well as some of the tensions between China and Japan; so in both of those regions, which are growth areas for us, we expect that there is going to continue to be opportunities for us to bring our capabilities to them.

Operator: Thank you.
Niall: Oh god! Please translate that for us.

Joe: So, that was the CEO of Lockheed Martin saying to this investment banker from Deutsche Bank who was a bit concerned about the US government having these peace overtures to Iran, making a deal with Iran, where everything was going to be on friendly terms and that would have implications for the Middle East. The serious implications from the investment banking point of view is that there would be some kind of outbreak of peace. That there would be more need for war.

Niall: That would threaten the stability of profits.

Joe: Right. There would be no volatility anymore. And she was responding to him, by reassuring him that volatility would remain, that she's been talking to her 'customers', i.e. the nation states in the Middle East. But also one of her biggest customers is the US governments obviously. So she talks to them and knows what they want. So she was quite happy to calm him down, saying; "Don't worry about, we're still going to make an awful lot of money through war in the Middle East. OK, Iran may go a bit more peaceful but you've still got a lot of war and volatility in other Gulf States." And then she went over to Asia and said...

Niall: It was an emerging market.

Joe: ..."Tensions between China and Japan." Japan being a client regime of the west since...

Niall: Since forever.

Joe: ...since at least the middle of the last century. So you can rely on this volatility and this war, don't worry too much about that because it's all going to be good. If you look at it from that perspective and the way these people are talking, that's their motivation, that's their prime directive, to make sure weapons sales continue to as many people around the world, to as many governments around the world, as possible. And to justify those weapons sales and weapons purchases you need to have conflict, there's no point in selling weapons if they're not used. People can't just buy lots and lots of bullets or missiles...

Niall: Otherwise they won't buy next year's model.

Joe: ...well they won't need them. They won't need to restock. You can't just sell someone a million bullets and never sell to them again; they have to use those bullets so they come back for more bullets. And obviously this makes a lot of money for the American economy because it's a big US corporation; the US government is therefore invested in war, in conflict, no matter of whatever stripe happening around the world. Because it supplies by far the most weapons, it's the biggest arms dealer in the world, the US government, essentially, in league with these US corporations; US-government/US-corporations, same thing. So if you want to have a very simplistic although very true explanation of why the world or the US has been embroiled in war for 227 of a 239 year history, the answer is money. It's good business to have war. The fact that millions of people die is inconsequential.

Niall: They keep having more of them. Its nuts, it's like a sick, global, hunger games. You know where there's an architect of the games and people in it and whether they want to or not they're going to participate. It's so twisted. The Brits meanwhile they had a massive...

Joe: Just on that, as an example of how you generate this conflict, as you just said they like to generate conflict so they can sell weapons and make money. There was a statement from the Pentagon just a few days ago, that they had lost track of $500 million worth of arms in Yemen. The US has been decamping from Yemen over the past week or two; because of conflict there they'd been taking their embassy personnel out of Yemen.

Niall: Err, that's because they were booted out of the embassy by the rebels.

Joe: So the Pentagon is unable to account for half a billion dollars in US military equipment including aircraft, all sorts of different - what else was there; small arms, ammunition, night vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies, donated by the US government to Yemen and they're worried about who has this now. But they're not really worried about who has it, they're happy that someone has it and that they would use it to create a conflict in Yemen because then they would have to fund the other side, whoever is using these weapons against whatever party in Yemen they'll be giving weapons to that opposing side. So it's all good from that perspective. But this is presented as, "Oh, we made a mistake." No, you didn't make a mistake. Or if you made a mistake the reason you 'made the mistake' is being you didn't really care about the results, in fact you're quite happy about the results. It's just this ridiculous notion that people have that their government is trying to prevent conflict.

It's trying to create conflict, all the time, because that's how it makes money. It's like saying that your local butcher is going around the town handing out leaflets about vegetarianism and trying to convince the townspeople to go vegetarian, a butcher isn't going to do that. And it's a good analogy, especially the word 'butcher'.

Niall: Exactly. Yeah so the stuff going down in Yemen this week; there were some massive terror attacks that killed I think over 150 people in, 'suicide bombs' in a mosque in the capital that's been taken over in the last few months by, 'rebels'. Which the west is going out of its way to say are they're mainly of Shia origin, Houthi rebels; don't mind that, that's just the religious epithet added on so that they can - I'll come back to it in a minute why they want to do it. They're Houthi's. Houthi's are named after one of their commanders of the rebel force. They're supported by Nasserite organisations; Yemen used to be a base for the Egyptian pan-Arab ideas in the 60's and 70's. So these guys basically want their normal country back. And they want rid of the guy who inherited it in 2012, the US backed regime, was Saleh now it's guy called Hadi, they took over the capital Sanaa in January I think, no later last year. And a couple of weeks ago, this guy Hadi, was put under house arrest and he escaped and he went to the south of the country, in Aden. And he initially resigned, probably at gun point, then he said, "No, no." took that back and said I'm still the ruler of the country.

The Houthi forces probably used some of the 'war material' left by the US backed regime, because they launched airstrikes targeting Hadi this week. Probably with US jets, "They're ours now!" And low and behold, the US says it's pulling out. And the next things there's a massive wave of attacks in the capital Sanaa which is Houthi controlled. It's, "Oh, it looks like ISIS has just taken hold in Yemen."

Joe: Yawn. Yawn!

Niall: "ISIS or Al-Qaeda or both, oh we're not sure."

Joe: Al-QISIS?

Niall: And the absurdity of it is then Hadi is then going, "Oh, oh! The people that did this to our country, they obviously hate life and liberty and blah, blah, blah" but he can't say it's the enemy because his enemy is the Houthi rebels. Because that's absurd why would they do that in the capital that they now control? So, what's going on?

Joe: There's an external force coming in called ISIS or Al-Qaeda, whatever you want, that is there to fight against or smear or make these revolutionaries, effectively, look like terrorists, to give support to the recently ousted US-backed president. So these are very clearly people who are intervening in this conflict on the side of western powers, they're not interested in Yemen. They've intervened and they've intervened in the way that they always do which is to bravely go and plant some bombs in mosques and slaughter innocent people, that's the nature of these people. And the individuals who do it and the people that control them and pay them, that's their nature, that's how brave and special they are; they're really upstanding members of the human race. They think they're really brave and cunning and smart when they open machine fire on women and children, or blow them all to pieces in a mosque; badge of honour for that, a Congressional medal of honour? I don't know what they should get for that but its real honourable stuff. It takes a lot of bravery as well; you know, to kill innocent women and children. So that's what's going on there.

The strange thing is that these Houthi rebels - Yemen had these previous tin-pot sultans installed and propped up by the west, that were extremely corrupt and a large sections of Yemeni society were impoverished, basically there was no spending on infra-structure and social services etc., and that's the origin of these Houthi rebels; who rose up to essentially demand freedom and democracy. So by the US's script they should be supporting these people. Of course they can't and they won't because the US doesn't want freedom and democracy, despite what it says, but at the same time they can't openly attack them for the same reason because it would look hypocritical. Because essentially they're demanding civil rights and social justice, and when they US can't act directly against a group of people inside a country who have taken power and are demanding justice, they act obliquely, they act through proxies.

Niall: Yeah. It is how it's done and this is particularly important - Jesus, all regions are important to them but if you look at a map of where this is, right next to Saudi Arabia, the Houthi rebels know exactly who the problem is and how it all works. They're aware that the problems in their region come from Saudi Arabia, right next to them. Saudi Arabia is the dominant player in oil in the region; they also know full well that ISIS/Terrorist organisations are funded via Saudi Arabia at least. The added twist to this, all these overtures about peace with Iran, you get an idea of how much of a charade it is. Yes, the dominant religious background to the people in this country are Shia but the propaganda inside Yemen and that's being reverberated in the west is that Houthi are mainly of Shia origin, therefore they're Iranian; Hadi the ousted leader who won't quite give up, he's trying to rile and incite sectarianism in his own country by saying now the Iranian flag is flying over the capital of Sanaa.

Whatever support is coming from Iran is going to be menial, I mean, what can they do, they're surrounded by US forces all over the place, so this is largely propaganda. You're Iranian, how can you seriously deal with these people when the knives are being stuck in your back six ways around you, "Yeah we'll do a deal with you. We'll let you have your nuclear program in ten years if you just play ball."

Joe: Let's be friends.

Niall: By the way, the nuclear thing. Obviously it's such a contrived and farcical issue because Russia's going to be a nuclear reactor for Egypt and nobody bats an eyelid, the issue is to use it as some kind of leverage against them so that they don't turn inwards, and they don't recognise their place as part of the Eurasian community. The sweetener in this is the US or the elites or the powers that be have this reality creating fantasy that Iran/Saudi Arabia will somehow replace the Russian energy supply to Europe. Or at least to become a competing partner and that then become leverage you can hold over Russia. That's why it never makes sense if you try to understand it on its own, only in the context of other issues like containing Russia.

Joe: Absolutely. Look where Iran is. It's a big country with 80 million people, it has a lot of resources and it would be a big player in the Middle East if things changed there and Saudi would be sidelined which is why it appears the Saudi monarchy has this real hatred for Iran. They say it's a bigger and more powerful competitor to Saudi. Saudi with its privileged position in the Middle East and in the world; as you've seen with the Saudi princes holding hands with Bush and Obama...

Niall: Kissing. They really get it on.

Joe: Yep, kissing each other on the lips. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors when they hold hands in public but anyway, doesn't bear thinking about. In 1975 the Saudi's struck a deal with the US for the creation of the petrodollar where effectively the US said to the Saudi's who at the time really were the dominant supplier of oil to the world, to Europe, to America, and the US government struck a deal with the Saudi's to only sell oil in US dollars. And the Saudi's because of their strength in OPEC among the other groups of countries that sell and export oil, they influenced the others to agree, so they all agreed under the aegis of Saudi to only sell oil to most of the world in US dollars. The benefits to the Saudi's were that they were given lots of loans, all sorts of ways and means to ensure that Saudi Arabia was maintained as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East. And that the Saudi regime/royalty would stay in power and the US invested lots of money in Saudi Arabia, giving them loads and loads of weapons and arms etc., to give them all a ridiculously affluent lifestyle with positions of power and privilege, in return for only selling their oil in dollars.

So they would lose out if the system was changed on a grand scale, the Saudi's would lose out; they'd have to take a more equitable position amongst the other nations of the world based on the nature of the country itself, and they would lose and they don't want to lose and they see Iran as a potential threat to that. So does America. But America, as you just said, is playing this different game which is instead trying of some rapprochement of Iran, they're trying to be friends. Instead of always let's have you as our enemy who we're using to scare the world that you're going to get a nuclear weapon and bomb somebody. And Israel is obviously playing a very high profile role in spreading that fear mongering that Iran is going to destroy the Jewish people or wipe them from the pages of history or blah, blah, blah. And that gets a lot of sympathy as well because you have to be concerned about the existence of the Jews, obviously. And there seems to be a division there, where the US is willing on trying a rapprochement with Iran but the Israelis are, "No, we don't want to go there." Because the Israelis remember are right there in the Middle East as well. If the whole system in the Middle East changed, fundamentally, the Israelis would find themselves in a difficult position as well; certainly a lesser position than they enjoy today.

So they're all afraid basically of losing power, of losing their privileged positions. And they can get quite violent when they feel that, these types of people, they're like cornered rats, they get very afraid.

Niall: I just want to expand on what happened in the 70's. It wasn't just a deal where you, as head of OPEC, you will only do oil trade in dollars; it was a kind of symbiosis, it was freaky. Essentially the British and American and Saudi economies merged to a pretty deep level because the massive jumps in profits in oil that they got as a result of it, probably orchestrated oil price jumps in the early 70's, admit that they had all this cash, this profit from all this oil and they didn't know what to do with it. So the City of London and Wall Street said you just come and invest it with us, it'll be safe with us. And it became this kind of symbiotic creature, it was more than just the petrodollar, more than just a vague concept, it means that each is dependent on each other now in a fundamental way; one goes we all go.

Joe: Yeah, they prop each other up. Obviously the benefit to the US from the petrodollar has been immense in the sense that everybody needs oil, oil is only priced in dollars and if France wants to buy oil, first of all it has to buy dollars. So it goes to the US treasury, the Fed, and says, "I'd like five billion dollars please" and the US says, "Ok, well how are you going to pay for those?" and France has to pay for it in tangible assets and it does so but the US just has to fire up its printing presses and churn out a bunch of paper. So that gives the US a free-ride in the world economy. It was a massive benefit and it was only for them, essentially. And like you said, when they increased the oil prices, the US was happy to see the oil prices go through the roof at this period because it meant massive profits for Saudi Arabia, oil producing countries, who then, like you just said, invested a lot of those profits in America, which was good for the American economy.

Niall: Although, it wasn't then invested in actual infrastructure, it was sent into these casinos of Wall Street and London, and used then to get a better return on the profits they could make by further exploiting other parts of the world. It became this liquid hot cash - it's a weapon, that's how they tied everything up.

Joe: Military, Covert ops - who knows where it went - funding the CIA, the national security state -

Niall: And went to funding terrorism.

Joe: That's part of it. Like I said, the kick-back was that Saudi Arabia got massive loans, massive infrastructure investment from the US in return and it got favourable weapons deals, essentially it was a protectorate in the middle east of America. It was a sweet deal. And they don't want to lose that so any intimation of any change of that structure in the Middle East scares the crap out of these people. And they're willing to do anything, to do anything to stop it from happening.

Niall: Well, last week there was a weird story: I was like, "What's going on here?" they had Prince Charles come over to Washington.

Joe: Yeah on a camel, dressed up as Lawrence of Arabia.

Niall: Charles of Arabia. To have an informal chat with the White House about how does he see relations with the Gulf monarchies and Saudi Arabia - I don't know what the outcome of it was. The British government - not the government, Britain's permanent government, let's say, not the actual administration or cabinet - for a good thirty years now, have had Chuck/Charles as their sort of friendly diplomat. The emissary to Saudi, Kuwait...

Joe: He's gone beyond his official remit of just a figure head, emissary for the Great British people, around the world, to make them look good, noble and upstanding; as they are, obviously. So he spends a lot of time and has a relationship with the Saudi and Gulf state monarchies even in Bahrain and Brunei over in Asia. Because he's a royal and they're royals, so it's like a bit of his 'real' royalty rubs off on their phony royalty and they feel good about it and stuff. But apparently Obama or the US government thinks that Charles has, in these conversations, where they've been doing a bit of smooching drinking some tea that kind of thing that he's gleaned some...

Niall: Maybe he's got some pillow talk.

Joe: There's some pillow talk. And maybe a bit of inside information was divulged or maybe he has their confidence essentially. It's almost like a throwback to a hundred years ago where the monarchs, Edward VII for example and George V in the 20th century, were used in a similar capacity by the lay politicians, the lay power brokers, those were used to interface with the other monarchs in Europe for example Edward VII in 1905/10 was used to smooch up to his cousins or his relatives who were the Tsar in Russia, the Kaiser, who were also related to the Hapsburgs in Austria. They're all interrelated, in bred; they were sent out to do some deals. Because I think the royals didn't really like - although they weren't really as smart or as capable - they looked down on the politicians. But they really shouldn't have because the politicians were far more devious than they were. So your royal was used to interface with other royals, and to leverage whatever pressure or whatever you could put on him and onto others in his country, to get what you wanted.

But going back what I was saying about history and why I wrote that article, it's obviously a revisionist history. There are a lot of books on revisionist history these days, that it's genuine revisionist history where they marshal facts and data that paint an extremely different picture of, for example, the 20th century. We can safely say that our understanding or the understanding that the average person has, of the history of the 20th century, is fundamentally and profoundly flawed. It's just effectively totally wrong. There's evidence to make that case. But it's almost that the lack of evidence, or the evidence of a lack of evidence, is more compelling.

There's a story that came out a few years ago in 2013, it was in the Guardian and the title was: Foreign Office Hoarding 1 Million Historic Files in a Secret Archive. So the story basically is that the British Foreign Office unlawfully hoarded more than a million files of historic documents that should have been declassified and handed over to the National Archives, i.e. made public. Most of the papers are many decades old, some going back to the 19th century. And they document in fine details British foreign relations throughout two world wars, the cold war, withdrawal from empire and entry into the common market.

To give you an idea, the Foreign Offices secret archive is estimated to hold 1.2 million files and occupies around 15 miles of floor to ceiling shelving, fifteen miles of shelving.

Niall: That's a lot of incriminating documents.

Joe: People call this staggering. And deliberately against official policy they kept all of these documents secret. And more than likely they are the most important exchanges, memos, diplomatic messages etc., and more; a million files we're talking about, from the major events of the 20th century that have shaped our world today, are being kept secret for some particular reason. Now that's what I mean about the evidence of the lack of evidence, i.e. the evidence that they're withholding evidence, is in itself the strongest evidence to back up the argument that our understanding of 20th century is completely flawed and the little evidence that we do have to point to that being true should be backed up by another million documents. And therefore could provide conclusive proof of that argument but they're a secret so, sorry, you're not getting them.

Niall: It's interesting that what's compelling us to fundamentally rethink recent modern history is, like you said, this change, what happened last year in Ukraine. Because when you can see in real time, the making of a false history, you go, "Hold on a minute, hang on, that's just crazy." It hasn't happened before - wait - it has happened before and you start to dig and you realise, oh it's not that it's just happened a bit before, it's how it has always been. The extent of the chasm between the reality that's presented and actual reality is as deep. Hence the need for revision in the 20th century and where it's leading us today; you conclude the article with a warning: given the way it's been shaped, this history, and given what's going on today...

Joe: Given the effort that these people went to, to gain control over as much of the world as possible, to dominate the world as much as possible, you're clearly talking about people who have a very particular psychological make-up. I can't grasp it myself; I can see what they do but I can't imagine, I can't put myself in their shoes; I can't imagine myself thinking about the world in that way. If you just think about it, can you imagine yourself in a position where you desire to influence the course of the lives of millions of people? Or where you decide that you're going to overthrow the government of this country, and you're going to have a war in that country, "Let's have a war there." So you're looking at a map and you're just drawing lines on a map and you're saying, "We're going here and we'll do this, and then this will happen here." you're working with the entire globe there.

Niall: And we'll fund both sides, and we'll keep talking to both sides; no one of them will think we're an enemy. We'll be a friend to both.

Joe: We'll lie to everybody basically. There's a quote from Cecil Rhodes, who was the source of the Rhodes scholarship that people like Bill Clinton and various high level politicians and presidents were on. It's funny that a scholarship was created in the name of this, 'great guy'. But one of the quotes that sums up that kind of mentality, apparently he was out one night looking at the stars and he said, "To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach." - you might think some philosophical, deep, soul-felt comment was going to come about the smallness of the human being and the vastness of space - no he says, "I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that.

It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far." Look up Cecil Rhodes and you'll see he was a flaming racist as well. He figured that Africa needed to be civilised completely by the white man and the more the British white man expanded its presence around the world the better the world would be.

So my analogy or vision of these people looking at this map and deciding the fate of millions of people and changing countries and changing governments doesn't go far enough; because obviously for Cecil Rhodes that wasn't big enough; he was looking up at the stars and yearning to colonise and annex the planets.

Niall: (Laughter) Earth is easy-fry to them. What's astonishing is the time line you've given in the article that sets this off; the British empire comes out of splendid isolation where they don't give a damn about who's their friend or not and then makes Japan their friend, which is on the other side of the planet, in the late 19th century, and manipulates it into a war with Russia. Over there! Practically near the Bering Strait! And they can do this from London, 120 years ago.

Joe: I'll give you another analogy. A comparison, between us and them, effectively is: 18 year old boys in the school-yard and their ability to manipulate and control 6 or 7 year olds, this is something that people probably have experience with where older boys will manipulate younger boys and get them to do bad things. That seems to be the way, from a psychological perspective, this difference in maturity, but it's a pathological maturity; a difference in the level of cunning and deceptiveness and malevolence and deceitfulness that these people had that allowed them to control and influence and manipulate their peers in other countries, like you just said in Japan. Not only did they have that ability but they had that strong and belief that they could and should go around the world and bring everybody to heel; governments whoever, to bring them under their control. And they have that naturally; somehow they're brought up with this idea and it's in them to go and do that. And that makes them extremely unnatural. It makes them very un-human even, because the vast majority of human beings don't feel that way; in that way.

Sure human beings manipulate and deceive other people, etc., but the scale of it and the firm belief that, "I have to go around the world and amass as much power as possible, for me." That ambition, matched or married with, essentially, psychopathy, the psychopathic mind, is, as attested by the history of the world, a very dangerous combination. These are the kind of people they're dealing with; these are the kind of people who plotted the control and domination of the globe, and they did it a long time ago and they got a good run out of it, largely over the course of the 20th century. And now they find themselves, at a time when they thought when their plans would all be coming to fruition...

Niall: They thought history had ended.

Joe: ...where they could lord it over everybody, "We're done." This guy Putin and the Russian government comes along and somehow is able to not roll-over in the face of this and it seems that what it comes down to is the nature in a person, and somehow manage to get into a position of power without being completely corrupted and...

Niall: Or co- opted.

Joe: ...to maintain a different, more benevolent vision of the world than these other people who've controlled the world for so long. And that is enough apparently. Any country could do that, if it was big enough and had such a person rise to power; anybody at any time could have come along and theoretically said, "No" to the western elite that were controlling the world. But it appears that a person of such calibre and where fate would be and the stars would be aligned where they would rise to a position of power, happens very rare, but it seems to have happened in the case of Putin in Russia.

And all that was necessary was the will in that kind of a person to say 'No.' and he's been saying no for the past 15 years. And this is something that's thrown these western elites, these rulers of the world; it's thrown them for a loop. As we've seen over the past few years, they've tried every which way to demonise Putin, to shame him, trigger him, and it's not working because he's not one to be shamed or manipulated or coerced, or to be diverted from the path that he's chosen. He's saying, "Well, I've chosen a path that goes against your chosen path and I have the resources to make a good go of taking reality in a different direction and I can also try and gather more resources to me to do that. And I can also try to gather more resources to me to do that and I'm intent on doing it. I'm not interested in being corrupted and I don't agree with your ideology. So I'm going to go a different way. And I'm going to see if anybody else wants to come with me."

And that's the one thing that they never expected apparently. These people in the west never suspected that somebody would come along and do that. They thought that everybody was corruptible or coop-table or that they had everybody under the thumb already.

Niall: Or if they suspected that someone was going that way they usually got to them and killed them.

Joe: Right. How many people have come along who have expressed such ideas or desires but they were missing certain aspects of their character, of their personality let's say, they weren't as aware of the nature of what they were up against; these ambitious psychopaths in the west.

Niall: Or they got a glimpse but then forgot.

Joe: Or they just weren't able to go there. Because a lot of people aren't able to go there, aren't able to conceive of the depths of the depravity, of the perfidiousness, and so people don't expect - things happen out of the blue and they get taken out. You can site various different people: Benazir Bhutto was one is one example. And I think those people just didn't have the skills, the awareness to protect themselves, to see those ideas they had come to fruition, because they weren't smart enough essentially. But Putin has a lot of the right qualities. Maybe most importantly is that awareness, that understanding of the nature of the enemy. And coming from an intelligence background he would have been steeped in that world and he's used that to his advantage to protect himself. And to carry on the policies that he wants to carry on.

And these people really are foaming at the mouth; if there was one expression I would use to characterise what has happened in the past year or two, vis a vis the west and Russia, it's just a tidal wave of foam coming out of the mouths of western politicians towards Russia, and ridiculous, hysterical, nonsense stuff. It's been laughed at all over the place, even people who may not be on the page as us, are making fun of these hysterical outbursts from these powers, they're so childish and puerile, "Putin shot down MH17. Putin killed all my children." I mean no rational is going to accept that and not call it ridiculous. And here when I say 'rational people', there are not a lot of them around but there's still a few, you know.

Niall: Ok!

Joe: The people that read the gutter press in the UK, the Sun, the Mirror or even the Times, those rags, where it says on the front in big, black, bold letters, on the front of the gutter press in the UK that a lot of people read and believe, people who maybe haven't dealt with their brain power, where it says: "Putin killed my children." ["Putin killed my baby"] That's a very categorical statement right there. It's a simplistic message being transmitted into people's brains that 'Putin was a killer'. The details of: well Putin didn't really kill your children; somebody blew up a plane in which your children were in. The line of culpability to stretch it, immediately right back to Putin within a few hours of it happening is ridiculous. I mean why would you - these people don't engage in that kind of thinking - and the powers that be that produce these papers know that. And what they want to impress on these people is that, 'Putin's a killer', 'Putin's a thug', 'he's a bad man' and 'he's a poopy-head'.

So go around and take a poll in the UK today and, "What do you think of Putin?", "He's a thug. Have you any evidence to back this up? No I just think he's a thug." And that's how it works. The thought process just stops there; "Can you explain why? No, I hate him. Why do you hate Putin? Because he kills people. Can you name any of the people he's killed? Yeah, well no. But I know he kills people."

When you're dealing with that inability to critically think, what do you expect? But anyway, this is the kind of thing people are doing to try and demonise Putin. And not just leaving it to the press but they're coming out and making statements themselves that are extremely hypocritical and are laughable. And when they're challenged on it, like some people in the US state department, at these press conferences have been challenged by reporters there, they make fools of themselves trying to explain their statements; "Putin's being aggressive, he's trying to colonise Europe. Yeah, but you're the one who first expanded NATO to Russia's borders. No we didn't."

Niall: "Russia came closer to us."

Joe: "Russia (somehow) came closer to NATO. No I think you'll find, if you look at it, it was you who moved closer to Russia. Well, we're going to leave that question and move on." That's the level of discourse. And for them, those intelligent people in the US state department to expose themselves to that kind of ridicule, to me, says extreme desperation.

So we're getting back to the point, these people are extremely desperate. They're rulers of the world, they have ruled the world for so long and just at the point where they thought they were going to enjoy the fruits of their long machinations and manipulations to control the world, somebody like Putin and the people he's surrounded with in Russia, come along and spoil the party. These people are very annoyed and not only do they spoil the party but they're it looks like they may be a real threat to the positions of power of these ambitious psychopaths in the west, that things might go completely wrong for them and they may end up on the dirt heap.

The things that prop up their positions like the petrodollar, the control of the Middle East hegemony and control of other countries around the world, may all be slipping from their grasp. And these people will lose their positions of power. And they're deranged - you have to understand by normal human standards these people are actually insane, they're insane but they still function very highly. So you can't try to find a rational understanding, or explain what they're doing rationally, you can't really get inside their heads, you just have to understand that they are insane in their drive to maintain their positions of power. You could say, "Listen, why don't you just drop it? You've had a good run of it over the 20th century, it all went well"...

Niall: You can still dominant in some way.

Joe: Right, "but reality bites here and you're going to have to step down and take a demotion. But you'll still be extremely well off; you'll have a lot of money, etc." No. Those people, that's the last thing they're going to accept; they will not accept that. They have worked hard to be the rulers of the world and they are not intending, by any stretch of the imagination, to take a cut in pay or power. So what do they do? They'd like to maintain those positions but what if they can't. What if the writing is on the wall and they see it in some vague way that they feel, "Ok, this is getting desperate, we need to do something." What's left for them to do? Are they going to have a nuclear war? I don't think they're going to have a nuclear war.

Niall: Why.

Joe: The reason I don't think they will have a nuclear war is because I don't think a nuclear war was ever on the cards. And I can't back this up really other than citing some not very political or politically correct or maybe even for some people, believable evidence. It goes into a slightly different domain and that's the domain of extra-terrestrials and UFOs.

Niall: Ufology, yeah.

Joe: But in Richard Dolan's books, he cites examples of: it might have been during the 50's or 60's, there are military reports that UFOs appeared over US nuclear silos and switched everything off. And my extrapolation and interpretation of that is it was made clear to the ruling powers in the US at the time, and in other places in the around the world, maybe in Russia and other nuclear powered nations, that they were not ever going to be able to decide to fire or to launch a nuclear war; in fact the message was: nuclear war is not on the cards. The threat of nuclear war is the tool that they use. The most important aspect to nuclear weapons is the threat. And you can hype up the annihilation and the potential that the world is going to be destroyed and all that kind of stuff, and you will get everything you want in terms of controlling of the people which is the main goal here. It's not this fighting between oligarchs or putting people in positions of power; the real point of the control system on this planet is to control the population. And the threat, that you can promote, of nuclear annihilation will give you the power to do everything you want in terms of controlling the population without ever having a nuclear war.

And because in fact the idea of a nuclear war would be completely counter-intuitive or counter-productive to what we want to do. We want to control the people not want to wipe them out; we're farmers, we don't go in and riddle all our cows with bullets, slaughter them all and throw them on the slag heap. We farm animals, for profit and what we get for them; we don't blow them all up and leave ourselves bereft of...

Niall: There's another aspect to it. The most common theme of the abductee phenomenon in the 60's and 60's and to this present day - oh, a lot of it's silly but the pattern is always there, it's the same message more or less; they're being told, "We're here to protect the free-will of this planet, to prevent a nuclear war."

Joe: "If something doesn't change nuclear destruction is coming on your heads." people being shown images of a destroyed world, "We need to bring peace." but that's the same message coming from the government effectively. Which was that 'the world is on the brink of destruction at any moment' and so when Obama picks up the red, hot-line and says, "Go!" or he himself pushes a button and launches some - that's nonsense. The impression of that threat, or the 'reality' was always there and was promoted to people and was also promoted by so-called UFO abductees. They were told by aliens that this was the future for us if 'we did not do something about it', so promoting that fear based manipulation. The point is...

Niall: They can't go there.

Joe: So no nuclear weapons; no nuclear war.

Niall: That's why we see everything short of it; Regime change, subversion, all of these very expensive campaigns to set up phoney opposition, years in advance, set up elections, get your party in, control both sides; they will do everything possible but they can't go there

Joe: So no nuclear war. And so the question is: What is left in the armoury, or up the sleeves of these people who've set themselves up as the rulers of the world, the dominant power in the world; what's left for them to do in the face of this pressure they feel of a change in the system, coming or being planned by Russia with China, with the new Asian investment bank, a replacement for the IMF, the BRICS alignment, blah, blah, blah. There's a change in the order coming and they are going to lose; what can they do about that? They can't stop it from happening. Because the only way to stop it from happening would be to bomb them all but they can't bomb them all because conventionally Russia can defend and they wouldn't win that kind of a war, it wouldn't change much; nuclear war, everybody dies and they're not allowed to do it anyway. So what's left? The one thing that has leveraged their position for so long, as rulers of the world, is what we talked about earlier, the US dollar, as the worlds reserve currency, and the petrodollar, i.e. the US economy; what's it based on, it's based on the dollar. That's the fundamental aspect of the US economy is its currency.

So the one thing that they could do, as I imagine, is to crash the US economy while the rest of the world still holds large amounts of US currency and is largely dependent, in this interlocked economic system; as set up by and controlled by the west. They're largely dependent on the US economy remaining afloat for various different reasons, one of them being that they hold a lot of US dollars.

Niall: Although they may not want to.

Joe: They may not want to and China has been trying to divest itself of US dollars. Recently, over the past year, it has got rid of billions and billions, but it still holds over 1or 2 trillion dollars. Other countries hold large reserves of US dollars. The point is if the US economy went down everybody would be affected. You'd have a serious global economic crisis, unlike any anybody has ever experienced; worse than the 1930's Great Depression.

It would be a catastrophe for everybody. And they see that as, "Well, this is our last desperate move. This is the last thing we can do, which is to destroy the US economy, as a means to destroying the rest of the world and the opposition that we feel from Russia and China and the BRICS and stuff. Bring everybody down." And the analogy I used in the article I wrote was: a chess player who sees himself a few moves down the line that he's going to be check-mated. And he's not the kind of person who likes to lose, so rather than being check-mated, before that actually happens, he swipes all the pieces off the board, turns the board over, kicks the table out the window and says, "Well, I didn't lose."

Niall: Or he sets the board on fire and then he screams, "Fire!" and everybody has to get out of the building.

Joe: Something like that. But the end result is that he ruins the game for everybody, for either both players, and all players, as a way to avoid losing. And when things get back - you get a new table, a new board, whatever - and you say, "The only way we're going to resolve this is we have start again." from scratch. And that would be the effect of destroying the global economy which is reliant and hinged to the US dollar as the reserve currency, as petrodollar, etc., and all the interlocking mechanisms they have, that are controlled from the US and from US bankers, etc. They control large parts of the world economy. They could very easily if they wanted to, destroy the world economic system. Because when there's major economic crises' in countries very often what happens is the government is replaced, it falls, it resigns. You're talking about food scarcity, pensions not being paid...

Niall: Salaries not being paid.

Joe: ...salaries not being paid, companies closing down...

Niall: Savings being wiped out.

Joe: ...runs on the banks, people charging into the banks to get all their money, banks close the door, "Sorry, nobodies getting anything." in the US it would mean the evisceration of the pension funds; all US government public employees - of which there are several million, I don't know how many million exactly but a lot - they would have to go home, everything would be shut down; all government agencies would be shut down. Obviously companies that rely on the government for a large part of their contracts - arms companies might do better, but agricultural companies, etc. Basically a lot of lay-offs, a lot of shut downs of factories, the knock on effect of food deliveries, department of homeland security coming into cities and distributing food, people starving, people looting, the police-state forces in the US coming and having pitch-battles with people.

Niall: So basically the worst nightmare that so-called conspiracy theorists have been warning about for some time would actually be on the cards in this situation. And presumably the powers that be will be prepared for the synthesis or the new order that would emerge from it; which would of course involve a hell of a lot of brute force because you have such chaos, especially in the US.

Joe: Yeah. One world government; an agreement by whatever governments are left afterwards; governments that have been overthrown, Russia's government has been overthrown, China's government overthrown, different people put in power, a whole new world order, and everyone agrees that the way the economy was managed previously, with the sub-prime crisis and all the crises' in the banking system was all just rotten, that's what caused this whole collapse; we have to put a new order in, what about no-money?

We have technology, so let's have it all electronic. Let's not have actual cash anywhere; justify that in some way or other. Chips, they're already doing it, implanting them under the skin of people, to make it easier - you can see where that would go under the stewardship of these types of psychopaths in positions of power; it would be horrible. They would inaugurate a very dark, dystopian, 1984 type - much worse than 1984 in fact - society, a globalised society where everyone is under one system; a one world government, in all but name or even in name. I don't know if they'd call it One World Government but they might try to maintain the semblance of sovereignty in some way or another but everybody would sign up to one system 'to prevent this horror from ever happening again'.

Niall: (Exhales) Crikey. Now people have been saying this for a long time. Do you want to predict - when's it coming?

Joe: I think the time is ripe right now and I think that plans may be being made for it right now to happen. In the past maybe 2 or 3 years the US has gone above 100% debt to GDP, i.e. the US is bankrupt, officially and technically it went bankrupt in the last 2 or 3 years, it's now at 105%. The US governments owes...

Niall: More than the value of its economy.

Joe: More the value of the US itself. And it can't do anything to increase its value because it outsourced all sorts of jobs. And it also can't do anything to reduce its spending, to at least stop the debt increasing, because a large part of the reason for the debt is the warmongering and the sending of the military around the world and financing the military; they have to do that because that's the way they maintain control. It's kind of game-over as far as the US economy is concerned.

There are other countries with above 100% debt to GDP, not many, I think Italy is one of them at 120% but very few, just a few major world economies are above that. But none are in the position of the US in terms of size and its influence, its effect on the world. So it's much more scary that the US is effectively bankrupt than any other country. Interestingly, Russia has only 10% debt which is a good position to be in right now, maybe, I don't know it it'll help any but it can't hurt.

Niall: Jesus. The thought of Russia and China being embroiled in this to the extent of being part of such a totalitarian system - that would definitely make it global. But we're talking about a scenario that could be so chaotic that it would cause a similar type of upheaval in other countries as well.

Joe: Possibly less. In terms of - all the sanctions, over the past year, that have been imposed on Russia and what it has forced Russia to do in response; to diversify, in terms of the business deals it does with different countries; to basically get away from its dependency - forced removal of Russian dependency or involvement with the western banking and capital system, may actually work to its favour. And this is the kicker, this is the irony that in their efforts to destroy Russia, they may actually be in a better position to survive what they are planning to do to try and destroy Russia.

Niall: And then what, Russia becomes the new head of the New World Order?

Joe: No.

Niall: Not necessarily.

Joe: No. I'm just saying that Russia and other countries may not suffer the immediate consequences in such a negative way. It may fair a little better. But in terms of the ultimate point of 'New World Order', I don't think it's going to make any difference because Putin is going to die some day; nothing last forever Niall.

Niall: I know I know. I think the main take-home point is that...

Joe: He's not going to die someday he's going to retire someday.

Niall: ...the chaos of such a scenario will cause such unpredictable things.

Joe: It will be awesome to behold!

Niall: It will be awesome to behold. And therefore you can't say how it plays out. The powers that be who are currently camped in the US just decamp? Use Europe as a base again?

Joe: No, they don't decamp. If they're going to decamp they'll decamp into their bunkers or something if they have to but they'll be surrounded by the 'best of the best' of the US police-state forces. Those people long-ago...

Niall: They'll still be getting paid, somehow.

Joe: ...they don't need to be paid, those people are beyond money, and they have their own private economy, effectively. Sure they've thought about all those things, those people don't leave anything about their own well-being to chance, that's pre-eminent for them; they are the most important people in the universe. So I'm sure they've made lots of different plans for that kind of scenario. Like back in 2007-8 there were reports of strange work being done at Dick Cheney's house, underground, in his basement, some major, major excavations going on.

Niall: Creepy-creepy.

Joe: Creepy-creepy was creating a bunker for himself in one of his houses. So I'm sure these people think that way and they make plans and they have the resources to do that and to protect themselves but it's all futile anyway because of the ultimate threat; the fact that there's a power in the universe or the universe itself has a plan for the planet and it has a recurring plan for the planet which is when things get so bad, and it looks like this is a failed experiment essentially, under the stewardship of the psychopaths in power that we just wipe the slate clean and start again. No harm done. Nothing ever began, nothing ever ends and we just go round and round in a cycle. The point is that this is a playground; a school for people to learn and grow and if it all goes wrong and the system has degenerated to a point where it's not possible for everyone to have a broad range of experiences - if it turns into a slave planet where everybody who's born on this planet is immediately in chains, going down the mines just to spend their whole lives chipping at a rock face, that's subverted the point, the grand universal point of life on planet earth. And at that point you wipe the slate and start again.

The Earth will be remade a-new with lots of birds and springs, valleys and meadows and stuff. And the first humans will come along and we can start all over again. And we can all come back for another go! Yeah!

Niall: Oh my god. That doesn't bear thinking about. Whatever that is that's some ways off, but the immediate thing is probably chaos. Listen people, don't be so shocked. Because you've had this in slow-motion to this day; everyone's suffering economically, everyone's feeling the - you can almost taste the psychopathy in the air, where it becomes 'Ok' to think torture is good, for example. When you have to live with that around you it's like; ugh so you're aware of it. The only take home message here is that it will profoundly deepen in a sudden way to the point where there are serious, serious dangers.

Joe: Yeah. And the people I feel the sorriest for, are people who fall into one of two or both categories. There's those who are completely clueless about this happening and they're just living their lives, particularly people in affluent countries, where they continue, even today, to have everything they need, they're living the high-life and they think the world will continue as it is, and they're completely dependent on the system, they tend to be authoritarian followers and they look to authority for protection; those people are in a very bad position.

Because they lack the awareness of what's actually going on, they're completely oblivious to any of this, to any of the downward trend in the global situation and where it's likely to go. But they're also completely unprepared in a personal capacity for dealing with it, when it happens, they would be completely dependent on psychopaths in power to feed them. Can you imagine? Being ignored or worse you'd be thrown into a prison camp. And those people will be caught completely caught unawares, in a state of shock. And they won't be able to move and they won't have the resources to move or do anything about it. Because, particularly, like you said, they're living in big cities; they're dependent on the system.
You can still be in that position, where you're living in an affluent country and you're living your life normally, but if you have that awareness of this possibly going to happen or coming down the pipe, you can, even just in your own mind, take some practical measures to prepare for something like that. There's nothing wrong with that. But even more important is the awareness that that could happen because it primes you to do something or take some action; not just to sit here bewildered thinking, "I'll just shelter in place and wait for the government to come and save me." At least those prepared won't be blinded by that ridiculous belief.

The other people who are in a better position are people who have suffered; who have lived most of their lives in poverty and have had to rely on their own resources to feed themselves and have developed skills to survive in quite hard conditions; those people are in a better position because they'll immediately be better able to deal with - for some people it might not change much -(Laughter), the effect on the upper middle-class American or European would be devastating because of the fall in their quality of living and the conditions of their life. But that just might bring them down to the level of someone in India or Africa that has been living like that their whole life. So for some people it might be like, "Oh, yeah, well, nothing's really changed here you know; it's still shit."

So the people that are listening to us obviously, most of them are in the former, in the first category of being fairly well-off and able to provide for themselves; a roof over their head, a job, all that kind of stuff. Obviously those people who are listening to the show: you're being given this information and probably already had this in your head, and that's very important; to have that awareness. To know what to do, to be prepared for something catastrophic coming down the line, in terms of social chaos; it's extremely important, not to be shocked by any of that. You will be shocked, but not to be so shocked that you're immobilised and that the only thing you can think of doing is to wait for the Department of Homeland Security or the equivalent to come and help you. Because you'll know that when this happens the government is going to use it gain more control over you.

Niall: Yeah. Because the people who run the government are complete and utter control freaks, like they always are.

Joe: Absolutely. They'll freak out. This is in any country; this is what they do best. When there's social chaos they know what to do. It's like John Lennon said, 'When they get you violent, they know how to handle you.' So that's what will happen in most developed countries, first world countries, the government will swing into action and say, "Don't worry we're here to handle the situation. We know exactly what to do."

Niall: And in the US a lot of people will take up arms at that point.

Joe: Well the fact that there are three hundred million guns in America doesn't augur well. People think it's for their protection and stuff but in that kind of scenario it's not really good. It'll make the situation worse. People in countries where there isn't such a proliferation of guns will be in a better position because the potential for that kind of real, social violence and bloodshed between the force of the state and the people isn't there.

Niall: Interesting times ahead.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: I think Laura in her history of these kinds of times in the past, she always talks about the, 'signs and wonders' that happened then. And yes, we've had a few glimpses of it; of course we've talked about fireballs and some really large chunks of something entering the atmosphere. These days they are doing the impossible already. They're being seen and filmed; they've been mean picked up by cameras for up to a minute as they enter the atmosphere. Physicists would have said that's impossible, it only lasts one or two seconds. But everyday I'm reading something that is: 'physically impossible'. A few days ago there was a massive aurora at both poles, they said as a result of a big solar flare. It wasn't a particularly big flare. But whatever combination of conditions exist at the moment, the Aurora in both Borealis and Australia, north and south, was really strong and it came way further south than normal, and way further north in the southern hemisphere . And I thought it was interesting that at around the same time NASA put out a story that there was the first ever aurora seen on Mars. It was actually picked up late last year; it wasn't at the same time as this one. But they were astonished (Laughter) because they said it was physically impossible.

Joe: Because Mars doesn't have an atmosphere, an atmosphere that would produce an aurora.

Niall: It doesn't have a magnetic field. And their jaws just dropped, apparently when the data and pictures came in.

Joe: It just got one apparently. Maybe it bought one from eBay or something.

Niall: It just picked one up. They said it was a glowing pink aurora. And it wasn't just a flash; it covered the entire span of the planet just as we have.

Joe: The electrification of the solar system.

Niall: Something like that. They also noticed - the space craft picked up - dust clouds, a thousand miles up from Mars; also a first, in the last few months.

Joe: Well speaking about space rocks and things coming from space onto the planet and stuff, that's another useful aspect of this, 'stand-off' with Russia with the implied potential for nuclear war is that if a big or a bunch of fireballs happened to land in the US or Europe or somewhere like that, you can imagine they would say, given what they said about MH17 and blaming Russia, if they can blame Russia for shooting own planes with no evidence, they can certainly blame Russia for firing a nuke at Europe or the US when it was actually a chunk of space rock. I wouldn't put it past them put it that way. The State Department can say all sorts of things that you would never believe, that you shouldn't believe.

Niall: That's if there's still a State Department at that point; if things go non-linear and the chaos...

Joe: Yeah but that's the last thing to go though; the propaganda outlets, the mouthpieces of the government.

Niall: ...that'll survive with the cockroaches to the very end.

Joe: Shelter in place, shelter in place. Because they have to keep communicating with the population when everything else goes down it's like, "Listen to you government." The emergency wireless...

Niall: ...the emergency broadcast system.

Joe: The emergency broadcast system. Straight out of - Jen Saki, it'll be her voice. She'll be promoted...

Niall: Oh my god.

Joe: ...talking about Russia invading Ukraine, shooting down planes, firing nuclear missiles. And shelter in place. There's a funny story actually included in the article you wrote just recently, on the hysteria about Russia. (Full-spectrum chaos: US Empire in free-fall as crises pile up http://www.sott.net/article/294155-Full-spectrum-chaos-US-Empire-in-freefall-as-crises-pile-up) Lithuania, which is on the north-eastern-western Europe (Laughter) there's a little enclave that's part of Russia but more or less part of Europe, right on the Baltic sea, beside Lithuania. It's separated from Russia, it's a Russian enclave and a lot of Russian's visit Vilnius the capital to do shopping. And recently because of this whole hysteria that's been going on for a year or two, there were trains that came from Kaliningrad which is the Russian enclave, and they stopped in the station. But the Lithuanian foreign office or state department, whatever you want to call it, they announced a major alert that the Russians may be invading because on this train that came across from Kaliningrad, there were a lot of military age men, that's what they said.

So they stopped the trains, got people onboard, checked everybody and they announced it as a possible Russian invasion: a covert Russian invasion, plain clothes young Russian men. Of course there were old ladies and children but there Russian men but finally they had to cancel the alert, to stand down their armed forces - all 15,000 of them - because it turned out they were just planning to invade some Lithuanian shopping centres for the latest...

Niall: Nike goods.

Joe: ...the latest Nike goods, yeah. So that's just an example of - it's hysterical. The only thing you can say is that the planet has descended into hysteria, on so many different levels.

Niall: Is it hysterical or from another perspective is it priming?

Joe: Well it's priming but when someone primes you, you aren't hysterical about something. They start screaming at you to get inside because the sky is falling - are you going to go with it? Why do saner heads not prevail? Why does anybody take up this hysteria that's being projected, particularly from the US, trying to historicise people, why do they even respond to it, why do they accept it? It's ridiculous. To the level of thinking that the same train that comes everyday from Kaliningrad to Lithuania might be an invasion. A covert invasion on a commercial train with Russian soldiers disguised in plain clothes - that was their invasion? Really?!

Niall: The reason I suggest agency and deliberate - listen to this, at that very same time tanks are pouring into Latvia and other ports in that part of the Baltic region, and the US CENTCOM [centre of command] for Europe plan is to go on a massive convoy, basically a parade to show off US troops through the Baltic's, down to Poland, come close to - or maybe into - Ukraine, and then come back to home base in Germany.

Joe: So what you mean is the governments in those countries and in league with the US is trying to prime the population?

Niall: Yeah. To accept this, on the basis of projecting that, which doesn't exist, meanwhile right in front of their faces is the actual invasion, so to speak.

Joe: Ah, they don't mind being invaded by NATO. NATO being US military; it's the only time when the US military will ever, has ever be welcomed with flowers - what do they call it? They say it in Iraq - they would be welcomed as liberators; well maybe the II world war here and there. But yeah they're crazy. I don't know if the politicians in Europe actually believe it themselves or whether they know its bullshit and they're just promoting it to the population. Who knows, a bit of both? But I would say that some of them are really nuts, some European leaders are just crazy, they are - they're character disturbed.

Niall: Some of them are just crazy but I think a large part - they have everyone by the nuts. You can see the French government wants to say one thing but they're very cagey about how they say it; in other words they don't want to be so clearly anti-Russia. Hollande is saying, "Russia's our friend. It's a big country. Putin's the leader. What am I supposed to do? I'm going to deal with them." He's not onboard; he's not saying the right things. But he won't go the whole way and condemn what's going on because his country is...

Joe: Beholden to...

Niall: ...they can't get out of it. The planet is jerry-rigged. In large part due to what we were talking about, the Dollar; the power of US currency but there are other factors too, other layers to it; once you're a member of NATO, your military structure is NATO...

Joe: It's compromised.

Niall: ...it's part of the same centralised system. And it goes on; there's industrial espionage, that whole STUXNET thing, blackmail, "We've got information on you." they have IT systems in every major corporation in nearly every country, probably controlled by the US. I mean at that level the internet itself is questionable as to what exactly it is - all internet traffic is routed by the US; they have the world by the nuts. That's in large part why I think nobody really says what they really want to say.

Joe: I think what they have on French president Hollande is they have pictures of meat and Flanbe.

Niall: Flan - what's Flan?

Joe: Well he's made fun of because there's this flan which is a jelly-style dessert and they make fun of him, comparing him to this wibbly-wobbly jello. And it's called Flanby.

Niall: Not much of a rigid structure there.

Joe: Well he's not got much of a back-bone, let's say. And I think the NSA has pictures of him tucking into loads of flan; on social media he'd be destroyed.

Niall: His career would be over.

Joe: It's all speculation that he's fond of a flan or two. Anyway, I think we might go for an alternative take on - well, we haven't actually addressed the topic yet but we don't because we're not the experts. Our expert in pop culture is our friend Relic. And he's back again with all the latest news.

Niall: Take it away Relic!

Relic: Well, hello kids. Its Relic here, again, bunkered in for the evening in my little log cabin on the snow swept shores of upper Lake Canada. Winter is in full swing here in my part of the world and well, judging by all the crazy cold weather I've seen around the globe so far this year, I'd say this place is starting to look almost tropical. So, let's see. What sorts of news has appeared on my radar this week from the infotainment super highway. Breaking news: Members of Hollywood's inner circle gathered at Comedy Central studios this week to poke fun at heavily tattooed, Calvin Klein underwear model and former pop idol, Justin Blieber, in what critics are calling a, 'brutally honest roast' of the 21 year old, monkey wearing, bad-boy-toy, whose breakout hit One Last Lonely Girl, brought high fructose corn syrup ear candy to an entire generation of eleven year old girls. Hey Mr. Blieber, while you're at it, how about singing one less crappy pop song? Oh well. I have only one comment really to make about the roast of Justin Blieber: tastes like chicken! Aha. Heck, I'm not sure what that even means exactly; let's leave that open to interpretation.
Our second story of the evening concerns Titanic-movie superstar Leo-nardo Di-Caprio and pop diva Rhiannon. Now most folks are probably aware that this singer Rhiannon was named after a very nice Fleetwood Mac hit-song from the 1970's. Whereas one can only surmise that Leonardo was named after one of the lesser-known Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Anyways, the TMZ, television program is reporting that Mr. DiCaprio and Miss Rhinannon are currently dating each other because the two of them were photographed together last month at her birthday party. And everyone knows that any time celebrities are photographed together at birthday parties is rock solid, clear-cut, undeniable proof that some shenanigans must be going on behind the scenes. TMZ, known for its objective, hard-hitting, journalistic standards, seems oblivious to the fact that the newly bearded, Wolf Of Wall Street was seen earlier this year with half a dozen scantily-clad, super models, drinking wine , smoking vaporizers and partying on a beach at St. Barts. Maybe this is what David Bowie would can an example of Modern Love. Well, whatever the case may be, we here at Behind the Headlines can only wish the happy couple a long, successful, drama-free, monogamous relationship. Right and if you'll believe that, I have some beach-front property on the moon to sell ya, haaa.

In other news, Cinema Blend is reporting that the mad-hatter actor, Jonny Depp, was injured on the set of the Pirates of the Caribbean part five, when a strange young man dressed up in pirate regalia, barged onto the sound stage brandishing a knife. It later turned out that the man in question was actually Jonny Depp himself, who came on the set wearing his Edward Scissor hands costume and apparently forgetting which film he was supposed to be in. Production continues.

Meanwhile, over at Fox news, several of their brain-dead talking heads were quite upset at the Oscars this year when the Clint Eastwood film, American Sniper, was snubbed by leftist Hollywood when it didn't win the Academy Award for best picture. The movie tells the patriotic true story of psychotic mass murderer, Chris Kyle, who bravely assassinated up to 255 complete strangers from a great distance away. According to the pundits at Fox, American Sniper is not an obviously racist's propaganda film but a pro-American classic that left vice president Joe Biden, leaking saline water from his eyeballs. What Fox forgot to mention was that the movie wasn't snubbed entirely and actually did win one Oscar for best sound editing. And that's because there's no sound that Americans know better than that of a good old, Made in USA, freedom bullet, tearing through the flesh of a dark-skinned, Muslim person, overseas; true story.

And lastly: At the Paris fashion show this week, high-profile, male, super-models, Hansel McDonald and Derek Zoolander, took to the catwalk to announce the beginning of production for the movie Zoolander II.
Announcer: Without much further ado, I give you, the Derek Zoolander Centre for Kids Who Can't Read Good.

Derek Zoolander: (Whispers angrily) what is this, (Sound of smashing) a centre for ants?!

Announcer: What?

Zoolander: How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read if they can't even fit inside the building??

Announcer: Derek it's just a...

Zoolander: I don't want to hear your excuses!! The centre has to be at least.... three times bigger than this!
We all love the first Zoolander and can only hope that this new movie will keep up the fine comedic tradition of portraying supermodels as the vacuous, superficial albeit ridiculously good-looking, empty shells of human beings we all know and love them to be.
Well, that's all for now kids. Until next time, it's Relic here, raking in the coals of my old-wood stove, saying: always remember to keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars.

Joe: So there you go, thank you Relic. That was another fascinating pop-culture roundup. Full of insightful insights into the world of pop-culture which is probably part of the reason that the whole land is going to be destroyed in the not-too distant future. Justin Blieber, he's to blame, him and his ilk.

Anyway, I think we'll leave it there for this week folks. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the show. And thanks again to Relic. We will be back next week with another show and we hope you'll join us then.

Niall: Same time, same place, see ya!

Joe: Have a good one.