hello and welcome the cross-talk were all things are considered labelle is trumps america first agenda isolating the united states on the global stage sure looks like it and is the e.u. telling its citizens what to think again sure looks like it. cross talking some real news i'm joined by my guest here in moscow dimitri bobbitt she's a political analyst with sputnik international and in london we crossed alexander me curious he is a writer on legal affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate let me go to our going to be curious in london. this program is titled you know us isolate let me go through a quick checklist to back up what i'm saying here we have the pentagon announcing at a deployment of new intermediate range weapons interestingly the europeans haven't

been told much about it the recent warsaw confound where the u.s. essentially stood alone on the issue of iran. rough handling of venezuela as alienating western allies in the western hemisphere continues to support the kingdom of saudi arabia when it comes to yemen that's a very unpopular position to be taking washington's allies essentially shut out of the withdrawal process or troop withdrawal process from afghanistan even though they're contributors to it germany will not surrender its energy independence north stream moves ahead trump imposes visa visa ban on i.c.c. staff probing u.s. war crimes in afghanistan and to top it all off next week president xi will visit italy to sign agreements regarding the silk road initiative here alexander mackerras. donald trump is kind of the odd man out. snoopy and you missed out to turkey which is becoming. a lot. i miss sound of laughter here but i mean it is

a fact if i've never known a time like this when the united states seems to be striking out in all directions and increasingly acting contrary to the interests of its own allies i mean for the main some ways the two most extraordinary cases are on the street where it is cutting directly against germany konami interests and it's difficult if you don't know germany well to know how angry the german business community which has great political influence is about all of that and of course there's all this business with the kurds in syria which is intact in noisy turkey and it looks as if the you know i did states rather than heeding what its allies say is not doubling down all over the place so yes you asked the question is the united states are insulating itself if you want to. say that it's absolutely true i mean if you show

you how to lose friends and entire good nice people at lightning speed that doesn't seem to be any awareness or understanding in the united states of the extent to which this is you know you don't even you know i certainly said in my introduction that you know trumps america first but i'm not sure if it is a america first it's more of a bolton's unilateral ism is what this says here and it has this fig leaf of america first go ahead well i think it's not just drawn in general or that ideology of ultra liberalism is out isolating itself because we see its actions we see it's a dear sweet but because of a lot of people pushing this are neo cons. they are the toss you know they are the guys who actually they are the front man if i may be allowed to use this expression by the agent award that xander has just said ok you mentioned venezuela well trump roast involved. to the perceived military or direct military intervention by the

united states in august two thousand and seventeen and then all of legend america was against it mr santos the president of colombia colombia is the most of us and i'm a dural country. in latin america and saunders was against it i like the phrase how he framed his opinion he said let in america is a quantity of peace and i just thought about it and i thought yes you know since the united states in the end of the twentieth century a stopped interfering directly suddenly we found out that it can do without civil war you know peril and and. you know peril. and that could or are not bahraini and you miss you know they can leave somehow together and we had the north stream you know again coming back to late in america what changed in the last two years you know it was almost two years ago when trump

made that statement was that there was a lot of propaganda demonizing the oil and government and the propaganda is shift in opinions you know now she. and brazil are taken a different position because you know i mean the because the the shock of regime change in venezuela is a failure yet and now you know going to the next level they're all coming to their senses realizing oh my goodness the man of the might have a white house just might invade both sinatra was not yet in power in brazil in two thousand and seventeen of course things changed for the war in brazil with a change for the was here in other late an american country is still it's a combination you know it's a general shift towards neo liberalism in america and it's a lot of propaganda against my door against minnesota it's having its effect the same story with no. to our i agree with that xander that it's against the german

commercial interests but it is also against the interest of europe you know it's it's enough to look at the map what is in europe europe is there is a peninsula actually opinion source through there some of the west or only you your asian continent want to use the nature or resource of your a show in europe is loudness it will make the necessary but i'm going to push back a little back to alexander because there is a large into all of this it is madness and it went away but from a political perspective again it seems to me that this new york can faction in power in the united states see the sees america as you know polar moment closing this is why they're getting so aggressive because their ability to influence events around the world while meaningful now is with every passing day diminishing. that power and they know it and they're reacting to it i think are rare and in venezuela

are perfect examples go ahead i think you're absolutely right and this is this is what gives this whole thing its frantic quality so we see more and more threats now against the germans to cancel north stream too because of course germany doesn't build the pipeline and that supposed at least going to cause germany to drift away from the united states so we're abusing the dollar system now to threaten our own our allies we are using to negotiate with north korea because that might actually reduce a convergence between north and south korea which might also threaten our political position so we're going against south korean interests and we're interrupting possibilities of south korean trade with north korea and with great e.u. regimes and this is exactly what it is that is driving it it is this fear that this moment is slipping out of the u.s. hands and so you doubled. you put more and more pressure you use all the leaders

that you have sanctions dollar whatever you put pressure on your own now lies to try to keep them in line and what you're actually is you're antagonizing you know it's earlier say with alexander macarius here i think it's with us it's so telling that italy as a member of the g seven is willing to start getting involved in the in china silk road i think that's of a huge story the italians have been openly rebuked in a in a rather rude way i would say and they're going to continue their power to be we're working with the chinese i mean they can it's basically the way the trump administration is treating europe is it gives them even more initiative to say no go ahead alex. and of course what people said because people can read the data they can see the they can read the runs so the italians understands that these union poland moment is going and that's what makes them

vulgar the you peons generally are starting to sense this which is why are there not falling in line with the united states over the why way affair the these attempts by the united states to block europe from you know using chinese technology to develop their g five systems so or you see the rebellions reading. and of course what the united states is doing is instead of working we need to analyze what's still it must be stressed once they want to be friends with the united states it's now threatening them and that of course changes the dynamic completely and accelerates the roasters of these countries peeling away from the united states more and more on top of that we have the rise of these populist movements left and right challenging the neo the new liberal order here while at

the same time you have washington antagonizing the center in europe go ahead well indeed if we look at their recent actions of the united states for example exit in their i.n.f. treaty right it is now absolutely clear the americans had been preparing for this because they're going has nothing to do with russia no real or perceived absolutely imagine was it wasn't at all to this week that the united states are going to do to a new one will be rated to fly within eighteen months and it will be start getting to get in on in august two thousand and nineteen the other one will be ready in five years it will be longer range it will be three to four thousand kilometers most likely and the second one will be placed on go arm to it with rats and water china and russia and the first two are only be policed in eastern europe . i mean like in germany maybe in paul and maybe all in the old range so it's

poland in or maybe that might exist not noticed in europe president poroshenko of ukraine has made there i think it's it's a really dangerous statement he said that ukraine is working on missiles that would be able to heap more score ukraine was one of the centers of sort of building here and you know the biggest block in music should go once you crane to become a target is that what he's doing. he's playing with fire because military people if you could in russia are very nervous they don't know everything about politics the know where the danger is you know if there is a missile in ukraine and it can hit moscow in three minutes and you can place you know a nuclear warhead on it then. i want to think alexander mackerras for joining us here on this edition of the program now we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on some real news stay with r.t. . breaks

it count. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see if. they taste it as because that that has become a top forty dot is they in that case if you it gives it not to is that one day is to be leaving j.c. buick but more figures for your god because it gives. the audience to do even the board.

welcome back to crossfire where all things were considered i'm peter let me remind you we're discussing some real news. and now we're joined by john laughlin in paris he is a lecturer in political philosophy and i says the catholic university and john

great having you on the program here this whole segment is catered to you from ideas that you sent to my producers and some very appreciative and very valuable the first one here is the european parliament they say that rushes to this information campaigns main source of do some from ation in europe and also we have the european commission peddling their digital single market strategy we. i will go into detail john out when i look at these two pieces of news here i'm not going to take the bait you know what it is it's censorship member citizens of the european union in russia is being used as the straw man go ahead john. yeah and this trend is quite an old trend now it's getting worse and these these resolutions and these decisions that you mentioned are very recent but the roots of this go back to a year or two ago for example to a couple of resolutions voted in twenty sixteen but also two debates that have taken place to new european parliament in january twenty eight hundred and the

trend is to deal with what they call fake news most of which of course is blamed on russia to deal with it not by having a counter strategy for for example counter-propaganda or all what they call strategic communication but instead by having censorship and by for example requiring social media companies to remove and i'm quoting now to remove suspect political content from social media platforms and we can see in all these various resolutions and legislative acts of the european union move towards the ever increasing ever more thorough tarion deployment of coercive measures of legislative measures against political opinions which are considered to be against the mainstream and indeed maybe well may well be against the mainstream the pretext

being that they are somehow being expressed these opinions by people in the pay of moscow or people who are playing moscow's game and so we're entering here we can watch it in real time if you like we're entering into exactly the same totalitarian logic that ceased communist regimes themselves which were dictatorial because they believed that they were under attack from forces abroad that was the whole cole reason for stalinist paranoia stalin believed that trotsky and his friends abroad were conspiring to bring down the soviet system which frankly they were but that's what caused the dictatorship. and in the same way the european union has got itself now into a psychological mindset according to people that disagree with the mainstream are somehow fifth columnists a case of the let me stay here with john here and again coming from the european commission. this struck me as really quite bizarre and dangerous media

literacy is a prerequisite for a vibrant modern democracy the problem is that who determines what media literate literacy is going to say which on here go ahead. well these are phrases like the phrase i mentioned just now suspect political content which are obviously open to abuse and indeed invite to be this if you say literacy is required that is another way of saying that only intelligent people. people should be allowed to have opinions well if you say that that's a point of view but logically that means that those same people those illiterate people with suspect political views should not have the right to vote and should not be part of the democratic process now there have been hot times of history periods of history in which universal suffrage did not apply but everybody all the same people who say that they should be literacy or whatever they of course say oh

my god of course you know universal suffrage is the absolute cornerstone well it's either one thing or the other yeah and what we're trying to do is to introduce criteria to bypass the inevitable results of universal suffrage which is that not everyone is always in agreement and used as i say these legislative and or thora tarion measures to put the screws on political dissidents political dissidents which incidentally is rising as we know and which has taken power in a number of european countries italy hungary poland and so on and of course that's why they're afraid of it you can't win team of the this whole approach to the public sphere and the exchange of ideas when you start saying media literacy is a prerequisite for a vibrant modern democracy this is only going to increase dissident thoughts and the rise of populist groups the this approach to the media is actually fueling it

absolutely well movie and interesting it to my mind is a euphemism for political correctness you know our after political correctness discredited itself simply because so many people were called politically incorrect simply because they were right people who were. against the war there the american invasion or iraq were called politically into incorrect so they invite this they have invented this new term media literacy and it's a media literacy poorness approved by the european commission and who is one of the first victims of this kind of approach you know our money in the panel was forced to undergo psychiatric tests what they did in the soviet union exactly. exactly and they like the for the formula that they use they wanted to find out if she's capable of understanding remarks and answering questions well ten million ten million a friend of all person voted for this woman is she able to understand they remind

us of the yes so you're trying to tell me that now there are psychiatry and psychologists i do believe go back to john here you want to jump in go ahead cicadas you get accused of spreading a fake news psychological testimony and looked and was mooted but the suggestion was then withdrawn so it was actually levered it out even that was mooted shows this this what i want to say to demers this of course you're absolutely right that media literacy is in the midst of political correctness but the problem is even deeper because in the european union european parliament resolution on russia voted this week voted last week. the. proposal was to fight against governments and political parties who are said to be extreme right and populist and so on and who are of course said to be agents of moscow on the basis that their views are incompatible with the values of the

european union as lay down in whatever article it is of the european treaty in other words the proposal to introduce a legislative legal and removal procedure against people who are you know accused of being in the pay of moscow this is a this is a proposal not just to discredit people by saying your politically incorrect and illiberal in the rest of it the problem is it's a proposal to start legislative criminal or criminal proceedings against this medium and what is the path that we're going down watching this happen here we saw this with jordan peterson in canada now we're seeing in the european union we are going in the direction of enforced speech before it was things you probably shouldn't say in the public sphere now in for speech meaning you must say this and and there will be penalties severe penalties if you don't go. back to this decision

to this statement by the european parliament which was voted by four hundred two votes against one hundred sixty three they took russia out of there out of the group of strategic partners or the european union well the what strategic partner now means nothing because you either have allies or you have neutral kind of who have enemies but it's amazing that the european parliamentarians are doing everything to spoil their relations with russia i mean no one forced them i don't believe that the united states could force them you know just take this last seaborne he made the right downside in doing that ok actually it's a. it's hollow ok but would like we started out this me here once you condemn russia and its propaganda and its barks and all that there's a logical continuation we're do we go next in this is what we're getting at here. is what you just said in forced speech let me just give you one example you know

first the biggest piece and the most harmful piece of fake news was about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of saddam hussein because it led to a war none of these people was brought to justice or even given moment that you know there were tens of thousands of people in the united states and in europe involved in it and if we're talking about fake news you know the latest scandal india should be good with a report that closely lotos i deliberately chose this example because it's not about russia they sent him to the united states to write what years are there americans to have voted for trump so he invented the whole story you know he went to a column called fergus falls which doesn't exist which which exists about the he described it in a completely different form you know there were two civil society activists michele anderson and jake grown who just went after he is like asians and saw first there

was no call electric power plant near there near the restaurant where he's supposed to saw it second he saw it he said that there were four chimey as you know same day in small print of there there was only vonn and it was thirty miles away also it's just interesting there was no wild boar stuffed wild boar in the tallent hole because wild boars do not exist in minnesota and we get you we get your points of fake news can work in both directions or we could just write couldn't write it differently if you wanted to write a bad thing said molly and i asked agent it seems to it seems very disingenuous that this whole debate started on. watching the big tech companies you know looking at facebook and and google and now the european union its commission they want to be the censor they want the same control these big tech companies had they want to replace them for forty seconds go ahead. well what i want to say is that.

the point about russia and the hostility to russia that dmitri babich has just rightly mentioned this is not some spin off this is not some pretext it's a pretext of course for political control in europe but it is the absolutely defining saying about how these people think these people who regard themselves as liberals regard themselves as engaged as in a parliament battle against the forces of darkness. whether those forces of darkness are in moscow or in or in budapest or wherever and that is what gives them that's what makes them get up in the morning and that's why they their battle as they see it is extremely day. of run out of time here but john laughlin is absolutely right but the problem is is that vai are the darkness here many thanks to my guess here in moscow in london and in paris and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk rolls.

during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember that was most of my family were working. there wasn't it was bad you know much worse objectively than today but there was an expectation of the things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america where shade by the turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy. attack solo down engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles

according to no on. one set of rules for the rich officer several sure. that's what happens when you put her into the hands of a narrow sector of will switch rule is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. what politicians do something that. they put themselves on the line and they did accept the reject. so when you want to be president or injury. or something i want to press. you to do i have to be cross as a white woman for three of them or i can't be good i'm interested always in the

waters in the hottest. place should. show some same wrong but all roles just don't call. to me to get to say proud just because that's ok and in against me because betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. oh oh oh it gets crazy you know. we've been a real good shots to begin murders controls all life. but sometimes our in the last communities young people are deciding if they want to not like their parents not like them liberals. are

always drug school again you always have problems but you are going to focus a lot is the most ubiquitous known out there most police departments use it almost every stores in the school tell them they could get their hands on economies in twenty four hours. rick chinese kids about racism about police brutality taking pride in them being all these kids are a part of all history.

if you truly care about your many lives you'd support the saudi led effort to prevent yemen from turning into a puppet state of the corrupt british islamic republic of iran the us secular state stands firm on support for the saudi led coalition's bombing campaign in yemen despite a us senate vote to end it move the donald trump has threatened to veto. new week with third time lucky for some reason made british prime minister is expected to. vote once again as she pleads for support for the much maligned deal. headlines this monday the united states deploys a nuclear capable strategic bombers for war games on one.