hello and welcome to crossfire of things or consider time peter lavelle failure in her noise what are the lessons to be learned also the stalemate in venezuela and a briggs it update and much much more on this edition of crossfire. sucking some real news i'm joined by my guest here in moscow going deeson he is a professor at the higher school of economics as well as author of that ok of western civilization and the resurgence of russia and in london we crossed alexander material he is a writer on legal affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com regimen cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump any time you want and i always appreciate let me go to london first. let's reflect upon the failed summit in hanoi what is the most important lesson to be learned if anyone wants to learn any

lessons go ahead well well for name the united states needs to revise its approach to negotiation because what the united states doesn't have to give beyond dong from the situations is they they did we do negotiate tool they make demands of maximalist demands and they expect the others to take you late to what happened in hanoi as the donald trump came along he made the usual demands the united states always makes with complete denuclearize ation and steps towards denuclearization and he said to kim jong. un not repaired to anything in return. i'm not prepared to lift all moderate sanctions in any way and it was john bolton. and he mortal nuts apparently glenn you know one of the things i found very interesting is in terms public approach right. before the summit in hanoi is he was

talking and talking about him trying to convince the north korean leader what kind of future his country can have prosperity. make you know the potential is enormous i mean is his a pearl a tip language as usual but what was interesting is that the koreans north koreans are first and foremost interested in security guarantees and then we can talk about what can happen after that complete. misconnection between the two leaders in i think. in the u.s. all because you get a straight in effect demonstrating this is a communist country former adversary adversary of the united states. it's not allied with china and now they're becoming more and more prosperous you've got great relations with the u.s. such a disk could be you if you just fall for the land get rid of nuclear weapons maybe we won't bomb you and i guess maybe you're going to so you're going to bet the farm

on a maybe here no that's of course what the north koreans are thinking about it but i would necessarily say that it was failure i mean there was in terms of getting the grand deal they were hoping for a different it didn't it didn't get it but this i feel was always an overreach however at the end of it they didn't get back in their trenches and begin threatening each other instead they kept speaking kind words didn't this really blame each other in getting he was it was an exit yeah and that then of the day north koreans said they're going to test nuclear weapons so long range missiles and americans want to in a military exercises on their borders now how long this lasts not a thing but it hasn't failed yet i guess there is a good one i like your optimism look at a london alexander. the good news about all of this here the. mainstream media fails to report and the pentagon and the state department.

probably behind closed doors irked about is that the two koreas are actually working together this is the real story here ok the real story is can the united states let go and let the koreans sort out their own affairs because they're there making progress go ahead in line that's exactly right just quickly make one very quick point which is of course yes the it man is no friend of the united states after that was a conflict which the united states lost in a way that secured yet nans security guarantees now with career it's rather similar there are two koreas the two koreas are now negotiating with the chancellor they have concerns about each of them as concerns about security south korea does not want to new korean war on korean territory it also has an aspiration to move forward with its relations with the north because that's very important south korea

economically also and the risk the united states takes by sticking to these maximalist positions and not moving forward is that the koreans will start to negotiate with each other and will cut out the united states ok that's a good way to end this part of this topic let's move on to venezuela i'm calling this program deadlock so we went from a noisy now let's go visit venezuela the coup attempt apparently has stalled the the. the photo ops in the media coverage of the humanitarian aid over the bridge failed here and then we have the random guy chosen by the united states basically in exile where does this cold go from here because the u.s. still has a lot of tools in its toolkit you know guess it boils down to what temple do because. is still a lot of uncertainty about what kind of

a president he will be in foreign policy again when he ran for president it was very clear he would have been more for morse now it's a bit uncertain whether or not after syria iran whether or not this is something he will really follow through i think initially it could be it could have seemed like a hanging fruit in terms of like a nonviolent something that minimal effort such a change the government completely but now that they have to use the term it's going to be a walk in the park when the cake walk this sounds like you know the planning for iraq two thousand and three here know that there's a complete misunderstanding of what's going on in venezuela and i guess his base is looking at him as well because if he does decide to use military force against spencer allowed then essentially he's done the same as obama bush and everyone before him so it is an interesting time to look at his presidency because so far he's only use kind of the threat of war in order to extract concessions but now

he's kind of at a crossroads either push a stimulus u.s. military in or he starts backing off so it's i would be very careful to look at my crystal ball on this one i think everyone here let's go back to london ok to weigh in on that because it looks like the planning for this they thought it was going to be easy they thought it would be just a. lot of the government would collapse once they chose in their their favorite one and now it's not come about and now we have been is when you are looking to move them out of its export oil operations to moscow out. lisbon i mean the material government has resources and of course the most important thing is the military remains loyal and this is something washington miscalculated you know that i warned you about abrams he's a trouble maker he'll make you false promises go ahead alexander well i can't you lay should. i think what they've done has actually strained. the venezuelan

government i think it was actually quite unpopular for us because of the situation with the economy but it's quite clear that most venezuelans do not want to see their president pick for them by the united states very few of them and heard at this quite ill individual who none of them had elected and i think what has happened and it's entirely unsurprising is that the people of venezuela and the military of venezuela have rallied to the defense of their country as they see it and i think the great danger here is that now the political prestige of the united states easing this is in engineering before all of the venezuelan government at a time as i said when venezuelan opinion is rally behind that government and when international opinion has very far from moved against that development venezuela

has friends that the united states will now double down and you mentioned the name elliot abrams and of course he has used to really all castrating wars against latin american countries and there's already talk of blockades and of tightening up sanctions and imposing secondary sanctions against other countries and of course the day injuries that this conflict could escalate and grow and draw neighboring countries that's a very good point you know because. as we speak right now colombia and brazil seem to be getting cold feet again with i like your phrase of the low hanging fruit to look like was going to be a done deal or it's not a done deal and if there were to be a military operation against brazil and i agree with your logic trump probably doesn't want to go there because of his reelection prospects here but colombia doesn't want to be pulled in as alexander mackerras just said i mean this could it could be a regional conflict and nobody. really needs nobody wants. but what are the u.s.

is options right now which is continued intends to be economic warfare against the population of venezuela and i think the u.s. is running out of options because obviously it could continue sanctions make life more difficult and hoping that it will do over time bring down the government but. quite correctly pointed out a lot of it's backfiring because i think a legitimate argument can be made that my daughter has done some mismanagement of the government since chavez. passed away but of course now that i was on the record as saying that they might call for the united states to invade his his country his own country is so obvious let's not going to sit well with venezuela so that was all in a polarized country but that's not going to win him much support from the other side and. again. we have invested too much into intervention just it's just saying that all the cards are on the

table that this all aggressive rhetoric is cheap but he hasn't actually. put on the red line such as obama did something that could be used against him so he left him enough room to maneuver to pull back and well the interesting let me finish of the segment with what alexander me curious. rhetorically very interesting here you know this rhetorical battle against socialism and using venezuela as an example is actually part of his domestic. reelection bid here twenty seconds alex go ahead yes i mean that's exactly the point because you. see economic crisis in this way and he's talking about how the like a world opponents of the united states he's left wing democratic opponents in the united states to find themselves socialists and he says well we don't want in you know in the united states what's happened in venezuela plays to him politically in jamaica ok and it was actually did i mention it's

a very interesting dove tailing here are a gentleman we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on some real new stakes with r.t. . what i see every tuesday and hear things what they're dorie. i see people who are afraid not see these young some women in these ways and purposes and i see those as really scared. to get lewsey. all they have to all or that is the color of their skin that's all they have going for themselves to their white skin. i think it's gone into a nihilistic fever that's why they got to hit the road and get out the traveling

across america to find what makes america take them to charlotte is the genius of this place especially american hero this is a weak point about how much ultimate has gotten so we always are on the bridge assembly line this gun culture is really important. because. we're starting last with begin to headed east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the bees i think i want to leave now it doesn't get any more ground on the earth it may be completely different but the end of this journey. they all. fell. swoop oh please. please yes to all this is all the.

low sun. oh. oh.

welcome back to crossfire for all things considered i'm peter lavelle remind you we're discussing some real news. ok now we're joined by john laughlin he's in france he's a lecturer in political philosophy at i sense a catholic university bendy john welcome to the program glad to have you on my least favorite topic. that there was a democracy deficit now i'm convinced there is the worst problem is the leadership deficit here can you do your best to try to sum up what's happening now with brags that this is like a two year nightmare that never ends go ahead john in france. well if you're bored peter you're you're not alone there are sixty million british citizen who feel the

same way as you do and many no doubt hundreds of millions of observers from all around the world i completely agree with your question and what strikes me about this ridiculous drawn out nightmare is that it's in bodies one of the systemic problems of today's politics and that is the inability to change anything the inability to effect any kind of genuine alternative to choose an alternative so we see this of course with bricks it the agony over bricks it over mrs may's deal his response to leave everything as it has the last forty years. and the same goes for populism in europe and for donald trump what we see is in all these three cases people announcing radical change promising radical change and then sticking with the policies that have existed for decades trumps.

colonise nation the colonization of trumps foreign policy by the neo cons is a perfect example of their trump based us the opposite of a neo con foreign policy and we have of course now you can you can't remove in the oval office for neo cons at the moment and the same goes for the european populists who make a lot of noise and you know claim they're going to put an end to immigration and so on i'm thinking critically of it. but actually stick with the same policies and particularly of course with their commitment not only to the european union but also to the atlantic alliance so what it's there we live in let me jump in here you know glenn john brings up a fascinating point i mean it seems that the double whammy here is that you have a inflexible neo liberal philosophical outlook and then you have a structural problem where there is no food it's in fluid enough for for any kind

of change so you have this structural problem and this ideological problem reinforcing the worst parts of both. and i think what john mention is very much will summarize this or what defines the populist i mean this seems like the ask the right questions this is what brings them into power that is questions which has been suppressed for too long however they don't really have an answer and i think this is problematic so the question that would ask is you know to what extent is this neoliberal economy going to work here and so the seller has been struggling for two decades to an extent through a mass immigration until the social fabric begins to tearaway has nato expansion is a medicine i say for this endless wars medicine is safer so they ask all the right questions which social no one has been allowed to ask but one of the rides the wave into office on this election is the effectively don't have any great answers and they don't necessarily do much to change you know you're going to go back to john in in friends i mean then i ask

a very serious question and i'm not trying to be flippant or anything but i mean but what is democracy for if people are given choices the voice vote for choices something different and nothing comes about i mean it's all throughout the continent and brags it is probably the most glaring example but there are many other examples that demonstrate the same phenomenon go ahead john inference. well we don't live in democracy in europe it's very straightforward i've spent twenty or thirty years explaining that the european union is an undemocratic organization and showing why and showing through with constitutional arguments why that's the case but we can see it in the pronouncements of politicians to reserve may is the absolute epitome of a european politician who regards the brics it vote as an absolute catastrophe she regards her role in this whole thing as clearing up a mess created by voters and that view is held across the entire continent and

certainly of course in the institute actions of brussels cameron david cameron the prime minister who organized the referendum is regarded as someone who created a terrible situation for no good reason at all in other words these people are really opposed to democratic choice precisely because of what i just said which is they do not want things to change they do not want there to be a choice they do not want people to say yes or no to something they want people to follow the lines which have been set down and which are institutionalized particularly in things that european union and i don't think the populists lack the answers that's not my diagnosis what i think is the populists and indeed politicians of all colors lack is courage yes we know that many things in the european union that various individual governments don't like viktor orban doesn't like the immigration thing he's fighting on that but on the russian issue we also

no matter who sell beanies party the league has a full partnership with united russia they are full allies of the governing party in russia but they have not changed they have not managed to abandon that for example the sanctions against russia even those even though those are prolonged every six months as a result of a unanimous vote see we see this extraordinary phenomenon of group. or at least. which means that actually very little ever changes in politics you know again i guess it's crystal clear what john is saying here is it. from an elite perspective it's the people that have failed not the leadership of these countries and not the leadership of the e.u. because they're infallible they're like there it's almost like a purple ball we cannot be wrong only you can be wrong glenn yeah it's in the way we actually had a prime minister making that argument because we we rejected the twice so she said

. putting it up the referendum would be a mistake because the people devolved quite emotionally while. they all act in their politicians they would know really what's best for our signs and they get in it's not that different from britain our c.e.o. john pointed out it's the political class never wanted this for cameron this referendum was a way of restoring harmony among the tories and taking some air out of the balloon and didn't expect the referendum to go through but now that it's gone through there sensually offering two options either the remain the respects it so that only a name or we can say. the e.u. so because no deal would be american as well is it would be a better choice because they had two years to try to figure something out here let me go back to john in france here i mean just how much longer can these that lead to hold the populations in voters in contempt. well the situation we're describing is very similar to the one that was going to church by battled back in

one nine hundred fifty three i would treat exactly as you have i'm trying to think of equality as well go ahead. he said well they'll have to dissolve the people and elect another you know the government continues but the people has to change the other so it's not possible to answer your question. peter when when is it how long is it going to carry on we thought or i thought or some of us about it might things might change in twenty sixteen but people were predicting the downfall of the soviet system for many decades before it happened and you know it's very difficult to know exactly when it will happen in the case of the european union which of course as we as i've said many times on your channel there's a number of resemblances to the soviet union yes so it's not possible to say all that we can say is that there are increasing tensions and there is no good news for the european union yet everything is bad news so there's north-south conflict

between germany and the southern european countries over the euro crisis and the debts there's east west conflict on the liberal values versus traditional values particularly with poland and hungary there's obviously the major crisis with brics it which means the european union is losing the world's financial capital its second biggest contributor and one of its bigger meant biggest member states there and there and there is no good news to temper this series of bad news events which has been going on now for for well over a decade and so at some point it will collapse but when i pass on that question and go back to glenn here you know one of the interesting things is when you look at these populist movements across europe they're very dissimilar in many ways with the way i look at populism is a dirty word apparently in the mainstream here when what these populist movements are doing is is pushing up against the. i'm in an ideology that doesn't work and of course every single country will have its own specific elements there but this

populism is deemed bad because they're demanding change change or a status quo that isn't working for them i mean i think even on a rhetorical level this is trying to pollute any kind of activism in people wanting to regain sovereignty in every sense of the word and i think the best thing if the establishments really want to get rid of the populace the best thing they could do is to engage with their arguments yesterday and that's the reason why these people have come to power is because to ask the questions which been denied now. so you can ask this in terms of what is the what is meant to be european us pointed out to us it's about cultural. history it's what should be the ideal like anomic politics or so what about tradition the sense of community i mean this experiment wants to destroy nation states they want is destroyed any sense of

community i mean everybody is basically either married to or a ward of the state but effectively they're trying to suppress the populist movement in again with because they want a gaijin with arguments like the bricks it or. the pole sanghera stick because they're very different colors because the less they're all portrayed the the rest being a racist. or they're simply kremlin puppets so this is the way of censure of shaming opposition me i must go on a real quick question we got thirty seconds. when it's all going to be another vote ok twenty seconds i hate to quarter you on this topic go ahead john. i believe they'll be a series of votes on the twelfth of march thirteenth and forty march and my feeling this morning is that they will probably be a deal in other words that mrs mazed fill in a slightly game and it will go through britain will leave the european union at the end of march very soon but then the battle will really stop but then he's out of

all really start to write down rather than to leave it up it there but we'll be but we'll be in touch with you on this topic here many thanks to my guests are here in moscow london and in france and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on r.t. see you next time remember rolls. congo. the maternity town the slums go in and you may never get out so those are the differences. my teenage gang rules here. want to do to move. the mud. we were. but. maybe will be. told.

to. her. you know. and now it's looking for the yeah well i knew you as. well in the land of the little. you know with. the mickey rooney who is all i see. you know world's big partners the mob and. it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bath and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the

hawks. my son doing drugs my nephews was still in drugs my system just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abuse we started going after the users in a prison population sewer we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill i became convinced that the war on drugs was a mistake there are countless numbers of people who are in prison for. certain sins for minor minor offenders in the drug trade it's a lot watching your children grow up and miss you in wave and say by day as you're walking out of a business it's just it doesn't get easier. the

british prime minister visits the city of souls on the first anniversary of the poisoning of a former russian double agent and his daughter moscow alleges that london's withholding the full truth of what happened twelve months ago. when his wireless self proclaimed interim president back on home soil but risks arrest for defying a travel ban but washington is threatened a significant response if anything happens to one. hundred offshoot of the al qaeda terror group stages a deadly surprise attack in syria the u.s. offers a million dollar reward for information on a somewhat larger.