hello and welcome to cross talk we're all playing for considered i'm peter lavelle the russians are coming the russians are coming for well over the last year and a half this is the message western audiences have been sort of twenty four seven what is behind this hysteria what does this message aim to achieve how is russia supposed to react importantly are we facing a possible conflict. cross talking anti russian hysteria i'm joined by my guests lord richard both in london he is a member of the u.k. house of lords in paris we have john laughlin he is a historian specialist in international affairs and in washington we cross that we strand him he is an investigative journalist as well as co-host of fault lines on

radio sputnik all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate let me go to john laughlin in paris first john what do you make of this because when i hysterical environment like we see in the united states in the u.k. and now spreading through europe there's no words of reason that can be spoken no dialogue is allowed whatsoever and if you question if we look at the case in point of this poisoning alleged poisoning incident in the u.k. in salisbury you know i see no evidence whatsoever being provided i've been asked by western media outlets to talk about it and i say talk about what there's nothing to talk about him in jail there is some evidence that i see some pictures of the guy and his daughter in a hospital give me something no just take our word for it and that's essentially what the americans said kicking out so many diplomats that historical level we just take the word of our can you. colleagues that is not rational go ahead john. well i

mean there are two things that are very frightening about this whole business one is obviously the geopolitical aspect but yes as you say in your question peter the other is the what is what it says about the internal political climate both within britain and in the state i mean you say there's been no evidence that's true but what i think is even worse is that the explanations that are given by the british government are completely incoherent you know the foreign office is making fun of russia saying it's offered thirty different explanations but boris johnson says mutually incompatible incompatible things in the same sentence for example when he appeared in front of the foreign affairs select committee he said that the script polls had been attacked with a chemical weapon so that russia would leave a fingerprint or a footprint on this attack so everyone would know who it was to intimidate other future traitors and then in the next sentence he said that the novacek attack had revealed

a secret weapons program which russia had hidden from the international community and from the relevant. statutory bodies well these two statements cannot both be true either russia wanted to advertise this as a murder knowing it would be traced back to russia or all russia was trying to keep it secret but one of the two of them cannot be true at the same time and indeed on the first day we heard that the police say that the poison was somehow administered through the front door of their house while in welcher well well yeah but i mean you've been attacked by a chemical weapon you decide to go to a cemetery then you go for a beer then you go for lunch an italian restaurant and it takes four hours for the chemical weapon to act i don't call that military grade i don't think that would work very well on the battlefield do you it's amazing or let me go to lord lord richard in london i mean in it seems to me that this is styria is it being conjured up in jindo because of domestic. issues in the u.s. and in the u.k.

we have we see massive political changes going on in europe nato countries by the way this is a very interesting way to kind of keep the alliance cohesive because that is fraying ok go ahead in london. well it's fraying but the whole of the this story just doesn't hang together i mean we're asked to believe that a member of the russians. went to will appear on a sunday in the middle of the day and sprayed some poison or the door knob i mean come off it originally we called. in with her lucky and yet he's so dangerous he spreads all over the place so we want to bring her luggage you know made the line do we leave bin or something i mean. the people in the hospital. i mean it has certain overtones of a russian internal dispute. the russian community in london each

difficult straits. but also when. the rules sort of pictures from the hospital we've seen nothing was. going on here you know only let me go only horse the police involved in it with police the most incompetent police force in britain tried to free x. prime minister edward heath i wouldn't trust him to look for my cat if he was missing most alone an even bigger. let me let me go to leave here but also you know one of the questions i asked in my introduction is that or what does washington in london expect russia to do if there is no evidence provided proving guilt when the russians are cutting this left kind of the wilderness here you have no evidence he won't share the evidence but you're going down this path of expulsions

with other things being threatened in the future i mean what do you know from the russian point of view you know how are they supposed to react to this kind of hysteria it's like dealing with an analyst sent headley. well i'll tell you let me take a slightly country position i actually don't think this is exactly about domestic policy i think this is about covering up in particular us foreign policy disasters specifically in syria and ukraine let me let me say this ukraine for instance we see that nato has already come out and said well we're expelling diplomats at the poisonings part of it but also annex in crimea etc etc right they don't want people to know that what happened in crimea came right after the us fomented it cool in ukraine which and this is the other thing it's not being reported the media but anybody can look it up it's not working out well poor shank

zero who the us back in the ukraine is not very popular in fact his. favorable rating is not only below trumps it's blow hillary clinton's he's about a six percent used to be favorable rating in syria right now we're seventy days or so into this african disaster really have one u.s. ally turkey working with another u.s. ally the free syria army to attack a different u.s. ally the kurds. it's a complete ruin and so i have been worried about this ever since well you know what i want to say i want to let on how you know it is two thousand and thirteen i saw this for myself i think i think that you're on to something here but i think that it's really you know that the so-called russia threat in this hysteria that is created it's really one size fits all i mean it does serve the purpose of i'm going to john here now in paris it does serve the purpose of masking failures because

everything is a failure now when it comes to foreign policy one right after another ok in this particular case russia was invited into syria so that's why they can pin something on russia but i still think i strongly believe that is a lot of it is domestically driven and russia is a good punching bag it's the good old favored boogieman you even have people in the u.s. national security council in the pentagon saying those things in public thank goodness things are getting back to normal go ahead john. yeah i do think there's a geo political angle firstly there's no doubt that since the ukraine revolution since the annexation of crimea or the reintegration of crimea and of course since the intervention in syria russia has started to fight back let's not forget that the americans under of all fits in one thousand nine hundred two said that they wanted full spectrum dominance and russia has started to readdress to route to redress very slightly the geopolitical balance and i do believe that that is one of

the aggravating factors but i also think that the aggravating factors in this russian history but i also think there's a very specific reason to this specific scriptural case which goes beyond the syrian and crimean cases and that is that britain has a particular need within the context of the brics it negotiations yes the reason may when she became prime minister said she wanted a full free trade agreement with the european union i believe that was a major strategic error on her part because it put her in the position of someone who wanted something from brussels because she wants something from brussels she has to give something in return and what britain can offer in return is military power and the secret services in other words the british have a clear motive for trying to show the europeans that the europeans need them they need their protection they need their security services and they need their armies and we can see this in all kinds of areas not just in the script case we see it for

example also in the fact that the british commissioner now in brussels is the commissioner for the security union he's a former ambassador who's worked on security issues all his life and the british in other words have been given the role if you like of creating for themselves and for the european union in the future a security role in which britain once praxedis happened will continue to play and will continue to continue to weigh so that's my view about the jewish political imperative behind this particular case. against a background of much bigger geo political rivalry with russia over many years a lot of literature about it i think it's really interesting how the british prime minister is use this issue because she's been very vocal on it she was right out of the gate when this happened here and i agree with john laughlin that this is has a lot to do with the difficulties of bragg's it what kind of relationship the u.k. is going to happen to have with the with the european union it plays very well go ahead in london where the first reality of course is that if you leave

a club you're never as well off as if you were in a club and there's no way that britain is going to be better off outside the european union. or is it so the point yes of course britain has a security role from from an independent nuclear power britain is not a us dependent nuclear power. i think is something in the script poll does not make sense he'd been here for twelve years if he hadn't been briefed i can't believe he was any use isn't a security at state so why they i still go back to my favorite theory which is the internal russian spat and we still haven't got to the box where he's connections were things of doubt about he was. used to go to russia in warsaw and go well i think he was more closely involved in the russian community

than we've been told and i wouldn't be surprised. if you're going to jump in here we're going to go to a break and i definitely agree with you you know britain is the god's playground for oligarchy in a lot of others unsavory characters that britain led and we go to a break now after our break we'll continue our discussion on the anti russia steria stay with r.t. . well

there are some was so much at all of them mama. i don't mind my little bit of that oh so many of them although. the old ritual of the few. i'm not critical of what if they are going to be chilcote downloader but no one of the soup. tureen yanukovych with the news going to get so for those few inches if not stiff the question is three yes for no yes the chest but us now with the first six let's go there for everyone that is for cooks and thought some.

one else seemed wrong one old bull just don't all. get to shape out these days comes to educate and indeterminate equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. the most expensive fish in the world each one selling for tens of thousands of euros it continues to grow its entire life if it was thirty years old you might have a two ton fish out there and yet they don't get that big today because we're way to good catch. it's only we haven't done so for much larger mission was once there was much what i mean distributed we have politicians that are in office for a few years they have to get reelected everything is very very short term our

system is not suited and is not clear for the long term survival and that's why we have the catastrophes. welcome back across like where all things are considered i'm peter reminder we're discussing anti russia hysteria. ok lee as i said in my introduction and we've been going we've been watching this thing unfold this hysteria this fictional. real conspiracy theory conjured up by the political elites in the media where does it stop because it seems like it's taken on a life of its own it has a momentum of its own because when you look to connect dots in a conspiracy theory you can find a lot of dogs because you've left your senses ok you only see what you want to see and

a lot of people are scoring political points on that journalist number one this is a this is a gravy train you could say would ever you want and you'll never be held accountable because there's a whole conspiracy behind it you don't understand how deep it all is this is what drives people insane and we have it on a societal level right now go ahead leon washington well here's what i think is interesting about you brought up the media and that is a great point because that's the other thing that's going on here globally because of technology because. everybody's got a cell phone everybody has internet access the media's grip on a monopoly on information about news and politics has changed and they are desperately worried about that i think and again this is my view and you're never going to hear this from the media people are buying it what i've said is in a sense we're watching like the gulf of tonkin play out in real time remember the gulf of tonkin was what got the us into the vietnam war and years later we figured

out that was a fake story people right now i see my sense is if you talked to people in america and you said are you buying this russian narrative at least thirty percent or so are going to be like no not at all not at all possibly higher now they're never going to poll on that but what i'm saying is despite the fact that the media is beating the same drum every single day i don't think it's working with the american people because the fact is people are doing their own research eventually it will be into the middle east the middle it's what's important here i can do agree with you ok but what is important the population there they're not polled and they're not asked to vote on what the should be done about it that's left to the powers that be and they're very pliant medius to nod refers ok john let me go to you because mike i said this has a momentum of its own and how do you back down how do you deescalate when you start

making these who horrific historical comparisons see i've been saying this for a half a year you can ratchet up but you don't know how to go down and then you get to a tipping point where it gets to a point of pride and hubris and that's when the worst decisions are made think of the obvious one thousand nine hundred fourteen go ahead jim. well history is littered with examples like this but i don't think they want to ratchet it down they want to ratchet it up even if it had been an attack committed by the russian state which i don't for a minute except there would have there might have been other ways of dealing with it we know that the ultimatum was given and then the expulsions were announced by london before any evidence could possibly have been acquired because on the day before the expulsions were announced in the house of commons by mrs may the assistant commissioner of the metropolitan police in charge of counterterrorism said the investigation was very complicated and would be going on for weeks or

months so again you know we know that the police do not know how the poison got there so if the police don't know then how can the government know so we know that the goal is to ratchet it up and the reason why it's to ratchet up is for the reasons is the reason i gave earlier they need to secure the cohesion of the of the atlantic alliance and the european union just as they did on the mh seventeen you're a member of the malaysian airliner shot down over which crashed over ukraine i went before coming on the program i went onto the website of the dutch authority which is supposed to be launching a criminal investigation into that in other words see who they think did it do you know when their last press conference was it was in september two thousand and sixteen so in other words the inquiry has run into the sands or for that matter you remember the usual poisoning that was another russian backed poisoning in ukraine in two thousand and four where do you think that inquiry went for five years when

you know was president of ukraine and the entire ukrainian state operators at his disposal nowhere the fact is that these allegations are made their milk for all they're worth politically and then they're forgotten about and i expect if you invite us on in a year or two about scribble we'll find the same thing as happened with him lord richard well the way in on that because. you. do you see more ratcheting up i mean i agree because we have a history of this but i mean how far can it go before there is a crisis point here ok i mean you had the lunatic. nikki haley you know i mean unbelievable you know i always say that she has a ph d. in hillbilly studies and now she represents the united states at the u.n. ok i mean she said it could abit new york city i mean cock about crisis. and what i have seen noticed over the last year and a half it is preparing the western audiences for some kind of conflict go ahead in

london which is what worries me because i think we need to deescalate i mean we've gone on and on about crimea most of the quite simple have a u.n. sponsored poll as to whether they want to be in russia on pretty sure i know the answer but we have a process we have one in zone and nine hundred fifty s. so you know if we want to deescalate code but. cannot be done with the present foreign secretary in defense secretary grandstanding around possibly figure hammond who is the last foreign secretary would be a much better choice because he's a bit karma but we have to deescalate because if these carries on what are we going to do the british people i do not think who except war. and that's where it's needed to be that. he's needing to go to the so he could be comes in and the go back to leon washington the. lord richard roth is absolutely

right but it's not going to happen because of hubris ok this is this is the problem the the authors of these narratives of these fake stories are painting them so how have painted themselves into a corner because if you choose the path of deescalation then that's called appeasement and that will not be allowed this is why this is a dangerous dead end because even having a rational discussion about it means you're a putin troll that's where we're that's where we are unfortunately go headlee well i'll tell you i've thought a lot about this obviously be it because look i work for support nick i work for sputnik because i saw through this russia thing i wouldn't work for sputnik if i thought this all every demonization that i hear were true but i looked into it myself and i see what's going on i'm going to tell you it's a radical suggestion i think it's going to have to come from russia and from

vladimir putin in particular if lattimer imagine this just imagine this what if lattimer putin started doing addresses to the west directly to the west five minutes on you tube once a week here's my perspective right to here's what i think. now they would go nuts the media would go nuts because the fact is they would try to do what they've done to his son which is just shut him down but the fact is that would only make people want to listen more and i think i have no hope that this is going to appen from the from the west it's kind of a who much to that interesting idea of john you know that's akin to trump on twitter here knowing the style of lot of your post and i don't think that's something he would do but marie is a car of playing that role right now and i think quite effectively john where is this all going. where what is the what the goal is what

in the west is just have russia's surrender its sovereignty and break itself up and allow. neil liberalism to you know scour the russian economy i mean i don't know what the goal is when do they say we have achieved what we wanted which you know there's no goal set goal stop bad behavior i don't know what that means because i see the west involved in bad behavior all the time and no one is stopping them go ahead john. well the fact is there is a big geo political battle i said earlier that crimea and ukraine represent geo political victories for russia against a background of twenty years twenty five years in which the west and the americans in particular have wanted to have full spectrum dominance they know other words they've wanted to dominate all areas of military activity and to do so in a way that even a coalition of allies could not possibly threaten them and they've achieved that because the americans have because as we know american military spending is

equivalent to the spending of the seven next countries added up together i think to understand the current environment we have to look at a document that was produced the national security strategy document produced on general the nineteenth of this year by the. by the american administration which changes the view of russia and china from the previous obama administration and says that russia and china are now strategic rivals obama has left open the possibility that there could be cooperation trump himself in spite of his occasional friendly words towards russia has said that he wants to maintain this total full spectrum dominance and he doesn't want any country or coalition of countries to be able to threaten it and therefore that's the goal so that is the answer and you know if you ask me what i think the worst case scenario is i'm afraid i have to say that you know boris johnson mentioned at the dinner the guild

hall dinner on wednesday he said it was like crime and punishment i'm afraid it's war and peace trump has just appointed one of the craziest men in the world john bolton to be a national security adviser who's answer to everything is war and preventive war if necessary these people are crazy i would be tempted to say trump is the only sane man in the white white house but i'm afraid you can think that that's true. but i know in other words i think that. they are spoiling for a fight ok well john let me ask you also i mean. do you think that this is. a concerted agenda expect another horrific story another poisoning or something like that as we come up to the world cup. well you know who knows i mean these things come along every five minutes to these new accusations whether it's seventeen or using or fake news or invade you know they just never stop so i think

yes the world cup is going to be a moment which. will be very uncomfortable for the west because it would show you know a pleasant a side of russia russia and that is something they want to avoid that so you are terrified of because if you compare moscow to a lot of western cities now moscow looks better many thanks and i guess in london paris and in washington d.c. and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember cross talk tools. apply for many clubs over the years so i know the game and so i got. the ball isn't only about what happens on the beach with a funnel school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the super money. and spending to get the twenty million. it's

an experience like nothing else because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful game but great so we'll. going to. how does it feel to be a share of the greatest job in the world it's as close to being a king as any job there is a good business model helps to run a prison now we do or don't like is there nobody you know visitation they don't no one comes in anymore we don't have to serve them anymore is cost effective that's what they want to do that at the moment they don't give a damn if you do the chores and that there are actually paying us to put it back into the louisiana incarceration rate is twice as high as the u.s. and breach what she could is behind such success.

climb the famed off her who is writing extensively on environmental issues and social justice issues went to these conferences in puerto rico and her takeaway was that a bunch of people all showed up and this is a danger to the local economy and to the local fabric of society so the first thing that strikes me is that left like they owe me feel they have a monopoly on good intentions which i'm not sure where that comes from. if i'm insurgent or terrorist group enjoys foreign sanctuary move no matter how much militarily put a show you put on them they will be in one way to. revive hibernated themselves and come back time it would be like counting. on north

to take you know loose. this hour's top headlines on r.t. international russia expels sixty u.s. diplomats and shots the american consulate in some petersburg in retaliation over a set. by washington state department says. there is no justification for the russian response throughout sixty of their people saying that these. action is justified there is we don't see this as a diplomatic tit for tat. throwing open its doors to refugees. sixty five thousand failed asylum seekers simply because they have no papers.