well you know i peter i don't know that's that's that's kind of hard to say what i will say is this i think what has happened is that we have now gotten a de facto freeze for freeze this was the proposal you have that was made by moscow and beijing years ago and i wrote on this subject about a year and a half ago and i got excoriated now for saying that but this is what it is this is what is now de facto in place and so this is this is a big deal it is you know the u.s. the u.s. military exercises this year the joint us are ok exercises are a shadow of their former self last year we had three aircraft carrier battle groups participating this year it's one small aircraft it's really an assault ship with a short takeoff and landing j thirty f. thirty five so it's

a huge deal now there are huge military asymmetries on the peninsula which are going to be astronomically difficult to resolve so we may get a start in these in these discussions when the two korean leaders may meet they may in a few days they may even declare and then to yes the korean war at least hostilities but it's going to take a lot of tough slogging to work through some of these details and to particularly to put in place the security guarantees which i think the north koreans are going to insist on to go forward daniel let me go to you i mean the security guarantees that's what it's always been about and i'm glad that john mentioned the freeze for freeze because that's been around for a while nobody in the mainstream media says that where that idea comes from but i can tell you if you go to last year during the security council you could see the russian and chinese ambassador at length go through that. process here daniel before we go to the break go ahead in new york. well i just want to remind your

viewers that that in two thousand and two george w. bush virtually declared war on north korea which he somehow blamed for nine eleven but north korea was was one of the three countries comprising the so-called axis of evil and the u.s. invaded one of those countries has you know it's been sort of rattling at the other ever since and so north korea had had grave concerns regarding its own security so kim jong un figured his only protection lay in a nuclear power nuclear weapon which he had any old. let me jump in here hold that thought gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the korean peninsula state with our team.

in the heart of the swiss alps this is a place probably more secretive than the pentagon more mysterious than the cia and better guarded than for knox swiss customs are here permanently and all the site is controlled by them and they impose the opening times though of just the opposite it was abducted from his office the procedures in place of the strictest in all europe masterpieces by artists like pecans oh and modigliani i can't boards and sold in the side this warehouse that's where the report comes in that it covers up deals which are naturally discreet commercially discreet step but also discreet because they concern fraud. some of those paintings are linked to dark secrets nobody knows how many of these secrets they kept inside the geneva freeport such a place like china you'll never obtain an inventory of all the works in the freeport who knows how many there are three hundred three thousand three hundred

thousand is it a matter of confidentiality only is it the world's black box of the art business. welcome back to cross like we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the korean peninsula and the possibility of peace. ok let's go back to daniel in new york you were taking us down history lane you were you were just talking about the axis of eagle to pick up from there go ahead daniel yeah so in two thousand and two with this axis of evil speech george w. bush essentially declared war on north korea and that's that speech has never been rescinded anyway this one nope no apology issued no you know no taking back etc so

so so kim jong un figured quite logically that it's only protection lay and having a nuclear weapon capable of striking the united states mainland which he apparently has achieved so that is his that is his is great you know is great chess pieces ace in the hole and i don't think we're going to limp here but i really doubt that he will agree to fold denuclearization unless the us needs is willing to engage equally and equally grand gesture which trump might be willing to do but i can guarantee the rest of the foreign policy establishment or blog as you call them will not they will raise holy hell and they will essentially block from from doing that. in washington can you reflect upon that because that's been my inkling for a moment long you know i'm like john said i'm perfectly willing to give donald

trump credit for this if this is just kicked it off ok fine ok but there are forces . you see it all the time being in the corporate media mimics the in the their corporate owners ok they're not keen on seeing breaking out particularly if it means negotiations as equal that's not in their d.n.a. they don't operate that way go ahead absolutely absolutely correct first let me back up a little bit out here and say that yes i totally agree with john that a huge amount of credit is also due to donald trump because let us remember before you talked about fire and fury and destroying north korea he also probably went up further than any u.s. president had had talked about and talked about particular some assurances that he doesn't see the collapse of the north korean regime he doesn't seek regime change he doesn't want to have an invasion all of thirty eight over the thirty eighth

parallel etc etc so he has tried he had made a lot of assurances also in his early months and that hasn't had that has he has not got adequate credit for that so yes i mean in other ways also donald trump deserves credit and that's that's that's that's perfectly fine you know the one but really good thing going for donald trump is that the u.s. system provides huge in on foreign policy huge amount of power not just to the presidency but to the president and so he can really override his staff because frankly this is all going to come down to donald trump and making that deal with jungle in which the foreign policy establishment has not been willing to contemplate and part of the reason it's not been willing to contemplate it's easy to say that all the came regime for ever and the kims never never. on their from their part always cheating etc etc which is which is not entirely

true it is partly true not entirely true but just too many forces i think for people in washington are western and in. cornwall mindset confrontational attitude to north use station geopolitics with the thirty eighth parallel being that trip wire and it's not easy for many off them to come to terms with that you know what the peninsula could be just insulated from that whole geopolitical environment let's ask john because john that was his line of business for a while i mean what are the forces moving against this here and beyond because it's donald trump's idea but i mean the you know talks through the bureaucratic inertia that you know that would be against this go ahead well i think i would disagree i think that currently the top leadership of the u.s. defense department is not against what trump is trying to do and we just saw that in syria we saw the d.o.d.

weighed in and so we had symbolic strikes against syria rather than the more far reaching operation that some were advocating so. i think that we have to be a little bit careful here now i would take this back even a little bit before the axis of evil speech people forget that nuclear weapons were first deployed on the korean peninsula during the eisenhower administration and we had at one time nine hundred fifty nuclear tactical nuclear weapons in korea this is this is now a de quite well we had seven thousand and western europe. anyway. president bush the elder who's now ill in the hospital was the was the one who decided to put an end to this this kind of madness and so we began withdrawing them but you know

you don't have to explain the nuclear issue in terms of the evil nature of the north korean regime although perhaps the some of that that that can be part of the explanation it's really an action reaction sequence and we took the initial action and the north koreans then responded to it so i think the same dynamic can be used in the current circumstances and terms of confidence building measures and hopefully we can walk this back i agree completely that having. a progressive president in seoul is a huge help and i think china and to russia can also help but. i think it's going to be really difficult to unravel this not which which we've tied ourselves up in peninsula in these various asymmetries ok daniel i

think this kind of leads to where i want to go in the program i mean i am sure that there is there's a sense that if if the u.s. in there's the perception of the u.s. backing down the perception of the u.s. . involved in a diplomatic process that would be deemed as a piece meant here that would have a ricochet effect through all of the other in tangling alliances the u.s. has in the pacific is this part of the thinking there because it is john said you know to untie this or not here there is a huge ripple effect through the entire region go ahead daniel. this totally true totally true and would be a huge ripple effect in washington as well where all these countries have their have their interests they have their they have their you know their little alliances japan most particularly russia and china as well so if you know. the north may be playing a kind of vietnamese game where they're trying to you know seek a closer alliance with the south in order to protect themselves against china so

therefore that's certainly possible and china could be getting nervous as well and china has friends in washington and. you have to take the japanese wouldn't be very happy with that unified strong powerful korean peninsula so you know that they wouldn't there to hold the fence thinking would have to be rethought keep going daniel. and japan has tons of friends in washington also so so i think that we're going to see a huge ripple effect from the north northeastern northeast asia on to washington. pile on and you know and trump is on one hand trump has got great power as a as a u.s. president but on this hand politically he's very. yes he is really on the ropes it's a ferocious problem. so i don't know i doubt very much it'll be able to withstand these forces and i think that he will i'm pretty sure he is incapable of engaging

in the same kind of grand gesture that kim jong un is willing to engage and you know let me go back to sort of i mean you know he won the presidency he surprises it's all the time you know maybe it'll work this time i don't know i mean don't you think also it's just a mindset i mean north korea is this cartoonish evil character the axis of evil i mean it's so convenient and there's so many people that have made entire careers out of demonizing and i'm not i'm not siding with the north koreans or its leadership i don't do that kind of thing i i'm basically a realist when it comes to foreign policy so but i mean don't you think that's part of the problem here is he is changing minds you know taking a fresh look and there isn't this really an amazing opportunity that we may never see again go ahead. oh absolutely absolutely this is as good an opportunity source the end of the korean war in. as since the end of the korean war to have a peace regime on the peninsula as well as since the denuclearization declaration

and agreements of the early one nine hundred ninety s. to do during the nuclearization let me go out a little bit on a limb here and make two points you know with regard to denuclearize nation most people and i totally agree understand there the views that this is going to be very difficult close to impossible he's not going to give it up i'm one of those feel very tiny minority but who believes that this is very doable and i can really give it up because given junk i've done is not in the same position as saddam hussein. but you had to go hide it that's why you develop it in the first place to trade it away for security guarantees it seems logical to me exactly. exactly let me explain that point also you know what is a nuclear weapon the focus of a nuclear weapon is to call unacceptable damage to the adversary he already can do unacceptable damage to their adversary by crushing seoul with this conventional guns and therefore a nuclear weapon over and above that is something that he can leverage and he can

bargain and which is exactly what he is doing and therefore i would say that this is doable this is a great opportunity but what we have to do also is this cannot be a process which has sprung out over many years on a decade on its action for action with five hundred steps which then breaks down after twenty steps this has to be a big grand bargain account in a truncated where and then to define time period and i think it's doable let me go to look at let me go to john john you're on the negotiating team for the united states what would you tell your boss dollars trying to do in forty seconds go ahead hey i what i would tell him to do is just have a good vibes in the in the meeting apparently that was the case when pompei i went there i think what's. different this time around is that the negotiations are not being run through a bureaucratic process and a lot of people are criticizing trump on this score it's it's

a crisis situation and people forget what we were talking about last fall we're talking about the imminent prospect of war on the peninsula so i think things are moving in a good direction i am concerned about the asymmetries. also we're going to have one possible drop out in this process prime minister abbay is in deep political trouble i'm not sure if he's going to be able to survive or not but yeah i think we we just have to hope that the intercooler goes well ok and in a way moon isn't playing that is vance gentlemen we have run out of time and very rarely do we end on a positive note many thanks to my guests in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on c.n.n. and remember.

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know how shameful. is going to be done it will be an admission from the. new global economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to education and is being supplanted by the right to access education low its high education is becoming just another product that can be bullish and sold so it's not just about education anymore it's also about running a business where you could also through sheikha. couldn't you. want is the place of students in this business model before college i was born now and i'm extremely more higher education but the new global economic

wall. russia says it is waiting for other nations to admit they manufactured another child up to the czech president says his country produced and stored a nerve agent similar to that used and it's all very poisonous. u.n. chemical weapons watchdog contradicts its own chief or earlier said up to one hundred grams of no child was used to poison a former russian spy and. i did not want to hear about all oh i'm not. dozens of palestinians demonstrate on the israel gaza border for a sixth consecutive friday and on that way to live fire and tear gas from i.d.f. soldiers. two journalists mounted

a legal battle and us against their alleged inclusion in the government killing they say that they are wrongly suspected of having links to terror groups. or i broadcast my direct from our studios in moscow this is r t international and john thomas certainly glad to have you with us now russia is urging foreign powers to declare whether they have produced of the novel nerve agent in the past comes after the czech president admitted his country manufactured a substance similar to that used in the poisoning of former double agent sergei screwball and his daughter in the u.k. there. was produced and tested in the czech republic it was a small quantity though we know when we know where it was done it would be hypocritical it's pretend that such a thing never happened to be to want to now we expect answers from other countries

that as we said had and still have the potential to develop the chalk russia says the revelation undermines the u.k.'s case but in a statement to r.t. the british foreign office repeated its claims that only russia has the technical means and motive to target the screwballs separately there has been confusion in the probe being conducted by the international chemical weapons watchdog the director general and other o.p.c. w staff have given conflicting views on how much of the nerve agent was used the o.p.c. w. would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent was used in soulsby on the fourth of march twenty eighth the quantity should probably be characterized in milligrams. for research activities or protection you would need for instance five to ten grams or so but even in souls free it looks like they may have used more than that without knowing the exact quantity i'm told it may be

fifty one hundred grams or so which goes beyond research activities for protection of the saga that started on march fourth with the poisoning of sergei script and his daughter yulia and the snowball effect it has seen we have certainly seen quite a bit of backtracking and lots of questions in fact about evidence this latest statement from the o.p.c. w. follows statements from their own chief of this organization saying that it was probably from fifty to one hundred grams used in this attack and we've seen tweets from the russian embassy here in london questioning what exactly one hundred grams of such a nerve agent on a door handle would look like of course with a door handle reference being discussed as one of the possible ways this cripples had been poisoned so that's one latest example of how we've gone from some information becoming completely different another example that made headlines here in london of course was when scientists from the porch and down the board tory said they could not identify the source of the nerve agent used in the attack while

previously before that we saw boris johnson talk about how he has been reassured by the exact same aboard torie that russia was behind the attack we have of north verify the precise sort of storage you ought to see we are actually was manufactured so to be fully you will not tell you to look cool down to say where it is from we haven't yet been able to do that but when i look at the the evidence from the people from from portland they were absolutely categorical and i asked the guy where so i said are you sure and he said as they dug and of course a lot but not least we saw russia being identified as the culprit in this massive saga that brought relations between russia and the u.k. to a brand new low and while russia was being called guilty almost immediately we have to remember that any official results of an investigation are still yet to come. former british army officer trials sure bridge believes the confusion over the numbers may be more than just

a counting error but one can look at that and say well ok it's very easy poppy to make a mistake an image of an interview when say grams when in fact you meant milligrams but that is actually contradicted by what the i.p.c.c. . have said because they have said no it probably would have been actually a milligrams but actually in fact we haven't been have to make any estimate at all and so burn in mind that they have actually contradicted what their own chief has said it makes you wonder what was the reasoning behind the chief actually saying something that appears to be not just a mistake but at least officially untrue certainly it was grassed upon by headlines in the west that said that this was further proof that such a huge substance so huge amount could only come from a state of course to boasted a case that this might be russia for quite some time we've had confirmation that actually that central plank of the u.k. government's claim to only russia could produce this was actually likely to be untrue and this of course admission from the czech president is further

confirmation of that i mean even the chemists themselves who produced this substance of themselves going on record and said that it's highly likely that for example britain and other countries have themselves in small quantities produce that. itself declared intelligence analyst in the us has accused rapper kanye west of secretly working for russia. now looks at the ever growing army of kremlin agents remember when being portrayed as a russian spy was funny. a bit of a joke. over. what he'd done in the dark when and just. what he or russian spy assaulter. who isn't funny now could be anyone in the oval office in the pentagon madison square garden. can years recent coordination with trump along with his use of

infamous or rhetoric and symbols confederate flag reek of products here just join up the dog's hind year indorse trump publicly their friends. i'm not saying can you west is involved at all in the trump russia scandal but i am saying he has russian ties and was there right after the twenty sixteen elections scott did walk in or perhaps work in a contributor for the us news channel m.s.n. b c and also founder of russia gate agrees there are just too many dogs not to connect them kanya west went to russia he went to russia he literally flew to moscow and walked around the jew see what he got up to i shouldn't be doing anything it's now so or vs why didn't we see it before we see it

now and there are more of them clint eastwood openly backed trump and the russian connection is blatant clint eastwood speaks russian. pretends. oh and robert de niro he hates trump or so he says but look at the fact he cool owns a chain of alter a luxurious restaurants in moscow and he's opening a new one soon you know who goes to his restaurant oligarchs we're not blind anymore there could be russian spies in my audience and i would know everyone is a suspect. are you a russian spy now you know russian spies. ellen the generous knows what's up

we need lists so i've put together a quick one to start things off this is a list of american stars who've recently been to russia they held. and did business it's time to wake up russian agents everywhere the president the republicans hollywood your neighbor your friends maybe probably even you. the pentagon has admitted that u.s. soldiers are directly helping saudi arabia protect its border with yemen that is in spite of previous comments in which officials said the u.s. is only helping the saudis with aircraft refueling logistics and intelligence sharing. the million dollar relationship. is. your security. service.

but you support the saudi led coalition with intelligence your military advice and logistical or priority is the fight against al qaeda and you arabian peninsula and isis in yemen extent of our support is refueling and sharing and so american reports on the pentagon's mixed messages concerning its role in the conflict in. this latest development contradicts the pentagon statements that indicated that u.s. military assistance to the saudis in yemen was limited to intelligence logistics and aircraft refueling but so far what we do know is that a team of a few green berets apparently arrived on the saudi you many border sometime last year and according to the pentagon they've only been there to protect the border however reports suggest that they've been helping them destroy who the ballistic missile launch sites and it's worth mention.