hello and welcome the cross-talk were all things are considered labelle is trump's 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. crossed 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 to i always appreciate let me go to our going to be curious in london or those programs as the title you know a u.s. isolate let me go through

a quick checklist to back up what i'm saying here we have the pentagon announcing it a deployment of new intermediate range weapons interestingly the europeans haven't been told much about it the recent warsaw where the u.s. essentially stood alone on the issue of iran. rough handling of venezuela's 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 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. looking and you missed out to

turkey which is becoming increasingly i miss that a lot i miss so not last 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 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 isn't tagging nicely in turkey and it looks as if the you know i did states rather than heeding what its allies say is now 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 winners or understanding in the united states of the extent to which this is sure it is a america first it's more of a bolton's unilateral ism is what so late in itself because we see its actions we see it's a dear suspect but because i and all of it actually for pushing this are neo cons. they are the top 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 toward that xander has just said ok you mentioned venezuela well trump pursed involved to the possibility or a direct military intervention by the united states in august of two thousand and seventeen. and then all of legend america was against it mr santos the president of

colombia. is the most of us and i'm a dural country. you know or in latin america and saunders was against it i like the phrase how he framed he is 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 you 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 when trump made that statement was that there was a lot of propaganda demonizing the minister and government and the propaganda is

shift in opinions you know now she and i didn't 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 band of the might have a white house just might invade yeah well both sinatra was not yet in power in brazil in two thousand and seventeen of course things changed there's 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 north stream too i agree with that xander that it's against german commercial interests but it is also against the interest of europe you know it's in it's enough to look at the map what easy europe. europe is

a peninsula actually opinion so are stretching through there some of the west you your asian continent want to use the nature or resources of your a show in europe is loudness it will make the necessary votes are going to push back a little back to alexander because there is a logic to all of this it is madness and it went away but from a political perspective again it seems to me that the in this neo-con faction that's 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 fusing 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 double down you put more and more pressure you use all the leaders that you have sanctions dollar whatever you put pressure on your own our allies to try to keep them in line and what you are. we're actually if you're into agonizing

you know it's earlier say with alexander mackerras 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 path 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 say 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 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 of these attempts by

the united states to block europe from you know using chinese technology to develop their g five systems so all 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 on left and right challenging the new 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 exiting

that 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 violated as it was in all to this week that the united states are going to do to win you one that will be rated to fly within eighteen months and it will be start getting to get in on in august one thousand nine hundred 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 rather than water china and russia and the first one may be policed in eastern europe. i mean like in germany maybe important maybe all a bit of 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 hit mosque or ukraine was one of the center. building you know the biggest block in music should go in once you are you crane to become a target is that what he's doing. he's playing with fire because he is because military people it could in russia are very nervous they don't know everything about politics they 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 thank 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. . they

take it as because at that big comet that what you don is staying in that case if you it gives it not is that one thing has to be leaving j.c. feeling good yes but more figures for you don because if we tax the audience to do even abortion. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next the multiple different clubs on one hand it is logical to go from fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and the fresh perspective i'm used to suppressing and i saw one on

t.v. . i'm going to talk about football not for you or else you can sink i was going to do. by the way what is it that's lying here. oh oh oh oh oh dear it's. been a real good shot to begin murders like. sometimes . young people are deciding if they want to not like their parents not like the liberals. the blacks always drug school. problems but you're not going to focus a lot it's the most ubiquitous going out there most police departments use that

almost over stores and the school tell to poker got their hands on them twenty four hours. we were teaching these kids about racism about police brutality taking pride in their yard these kids are a part of history. 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 i'm very appreciative and very valuable the first one here is the european parliament they say that russia this information

campaigns main source of dissent from ation in europe and also we have the european commission peddling their digital single market strategy which 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 in the european parliament in january twenty eight hundred and the trend is to deal with what they call fake news 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 one and only 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 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 punt 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 authoritarian 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 color in 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 rights of the populace groups the this approach to the media is actually fueling it and so what they're well movie an interested to my mind is a euphemism for political correctness. you know our political correctness discredited itself simply because so many people were called politically incorrect simply because they were right people who were against the war their 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 are muddying 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 didn't 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 muted 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 and all the rest of it the problem is it's a proposal to start legislative criminal criminal proceeding and this is not a demon 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 absolutely 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 conifer you 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 stigma here once you condemn russia and its propaganda and its barks and all that there is 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 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 is story you know he went to a column called fergus falls which doesn't exist which is which 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 going to there there was only yvonne 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 got you we get your points of fake news can work in both directions or we got to go to court and to write it differently if you wanted to

write a bad thing somalia in the last day of john it seems to it seems very disingenuous that this whole debate started on watching the big tech companies you know looking at facebook 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 permanent battle against the forces of dog. 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 been here 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 and i 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 there was most of my family were working. there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objectively than today but there was an expectation of the things were going to get better. of there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america where shade by the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy

attack solo doubt engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to no on. one set of rules for the rich opposite of the rules for. so that's what happened when you put her into the. room should through we'll switch who 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. you know if i can say that i own for example all the brooklyn bridge and i and i sell a bond against the brooklyn bridge myself a billion dollar multibillion dollar bond against the brooklyn bridge while by somebody at a company say ok we'll deliver them the brooklyn bridge and i say why can't i don't

have a deed just like in the two thousand a sub prime crisis there were no deeds for the houses that goldman sachs package says collateralized markets obligations and then sold into the fashion market and the wholesale derivatives market because they didn't have the d.n.a. they were just making stuff up by pulling rabbits out of their hat. on. to get a former soldier that. can make them say i was going to make. and sell it for a minute and how much that the who committed the passage says therefore isn't and never was not imposed by now.

with just two days to go until the u.k. is supposed to leave the european union the prime minister is dealt a new setback as the commons speaker rules out of the parliamentary vote on teresa mayes plan also the. french government prepares to ban yellow plastic rallies in certain areas after widespread vandalism and looting. duch of police arrested the chief suspect in a street car shooting and contract in which three people died. and the prime minister of new zealand promises tougher gun laws after for.