been. giving. the process so basically what i'm waiting for politically. i d.l.d. stemming from the moment you. let.

alone welcome to crossfire all things considered i'm peter lavelle to force change in iran the trumpeting ministration risks of ending global oil markets also if you want to russian passport being a citizen of ukraine could help. some real news i'm joined by my guest here in moscow dimitri she's a political analyst international and in london we crossed alexander make yours he is a writer on legal affairs as well as the editor in chief of the duran dot com cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate let me go to alexander in london well they can. it is about to begin the

waivers are being dropped may second to end this gambit goes into play it seems to me a number of things are in play here it's the americanization of the global trade system specifically and in the in the petroleum markets here and it is very there's a lot of consequences here and essentially the united states is saying we're going to suspend with free trade and you will trade whom with whom we wish or who we do not wish it is a gambit is very very dangerous and what happens if it doesn't work go ahead alexander well a lot of good points peter because i agree i mean first of all the united states is basically saying to all the countries of the world this is who you can buy oil from this is who you cannot buy oil from when you were in force of years upon years to which may not be your views by using the position that the

dominant position we have through the reserve currency status of the dollar you will risk fines for your companies if you don't obey what we say and in effect the united states is trying to impose an economic blockade only run by stopping its oil exports and it isn't forcing it on all other countries and it is doing so outside the provisions of the un charter and outside the powers of the u.n. security council which under chapter seven of the united nations charter is the body which is also the rights to impose sanctions and economic is on its. sensually a declaration of war is this essentially saying we. see it comes very close to being that are i don't think we're in a situation of armed conflict. but of course we can easily see how it could develop

into this because we're since the united states is imposing on iran what is essentially an economic blockade if these economic instruments these financial instruments it is using don't succeed one can easily see how it can start to do what the british used to do in the nineteenth century which is actually used force to try and enforce that block made on third countries and on iran itself and that could very easily escalate into armed conflict so i think we're not quite there yet but i come back to what i said chapter seven of the united nations charter group by the security council with the power to enforce blockades it is part of the power of the un security council has which includes the power to wage armed action so this sort of thing comes very close to the kind of armed action that is in be each in

the u.n. charter so i guess they were quite there yet but with the distance is very small let me go to you obviously countries like china or most likely going to ignore this a great deal of iranian oil is purchased by the chinese this is a huge i mean smaller countries you know if we really are getting back to the nineteenth century of you're a small country you're going to have to do what the hedge amounts of the world demand but china is a peer of the united states and this type of policy you would certainly undermine the chinese economy and we have we don't we're shouldn't forget global oil prices are or will most likely go up it's a fool's errand to believe the saudis and this is what the trump administration believes that they will be able to pick up the slack that's unlikely well it's not all only the big country of. the european union who are against the. pressure bob

also a country like turkey turkey you know. this is the lead in turkish newspaper we had an article just two days ago which basically said since we are forced to have basically forced to. trade with iran let's remember that not only turkey about also some of the very important u.s. allies such as taiwan such as south korea such as japan they're also forced don't forget iraq exactly and the newspaper says that at some moment the main malfunction because this is what you do to your allies instead of making them richer and guaranteeing your they are security you are making them poor and you have basically been making them less secure and the response from the wrong response from iran is that they signaled that they will not come back to the nuclear deal even if another democratic administration comes to power and they like the expression by a foreign minister mr zarif he said that i'm quoting we have b.

team actively acting against us benjamin netanyahu saudi crown prince mohammed bin solomon and the united arab emirates crown prince mohammed bin diet well been solomon so i think it's a b. team or b s characters make it a b. movie without plan b. that's my descriptor that was but i think that's perfect i believe that i'm going to the right at that to put that on my refrigerator and i've got to let me go back to london and here it seems to me we're truly going to have an alexander is in there you're just going to have a huge black market of oil and the prices are going to be very high and the rain ians will have been experiencing these type of sanctions for a long time they've survived it and people will actually rally around their leaders and this is going to be a big flop when i worry about is it when it is a big flop what the us will do then because they are determined determined to have four. regime change and around and they don't have the tools to do it and what

they're going to do is probably blow up the oil markets in the process and you know what it's a lose lose lose lose lose for everybody go ahead alex well i agree i mean where there is demand as the researcher in raining or it will there will be supply because of course as you correctly say all prices will rise and that he's going to incentivize all sorts of people to find ways of selling that all you want because they're going to be big profits and there are all sorts of people around the world as we quite clear about this who are prepared to accept those sorts of risks and as you correctly say smuggling is going to grow and of course if you are committing yourself to a policy or regime change and publicly and as. even in. publicly and as determinately as the united states

is doing how do you back off example losing face the risk is that if one strategy doesn't escalate you're going to escalate succeed you're going to escalate on another and that is the slippery slope that the united states is now on it's made a massive commitment to regime change in iran it's as you correctly say destabilizing the oil markets if that policy doesn't succeed if it starts creating heavy economic costs for the united states it is very easy to see how the united states could start expanding this strategy by doing all sorts of things like perhaps attacking iranian oil installations or doing other dangerous things well you know it is crimes but alexander. also has a tools in its toolkit. the straits of power moves they think you know what i'm

getting at here if iran is going to suffer so tremendously and it might rain can turn around and others will suffer too i don't think that it wants to do that it's the last resort but it's certainly possible absolutely this is why we originally had the j c p l a because there was an assessment not just by the united states and the bomber but by the world powers that there was a balance of force if you like in this in this area and in that situation you needed to compromise and compromise was the j c p l a if you throw out that compromise and disregard the balance of force you to release all sorts of dangers that flow from the inevitable escalation already with consequence is that this on the oil market and in this policy is consistent with

and escalate further greater and greater dangers were the rise you know you are talking and we just heard from alexander escalation here how our lives are being held hostage here and their companies are being held hostage as well. what does this do to global trade in general mean the united states and i think donald trump is right to want new trade deals i think a lot of them were bad but they were done pretty or political reasons and now they're there's more financial reasons here but you know the united states and china are in the midst of very important trade talks in now there's a possibility that during these trade talks the united states are going to start sanctioning chinese company and i mean that's kind of i thought i. would say the patience of the cheney is leadership is awesome because they keep suggesting situations they get suggest and compromise us facing almost direct pressure. from

the united states like mr trump almost made it at them to isolate china for wrong from the international economy but we're talking about huge figures here because iran right now is exporting two point three million barrels a day and if the sanctions are introduced and they're respected by the countries that we've mentioned this will go down to fund million. barrels a day that's a huge discraft and we have we don't think we should remember also the shenanigans being played by the united states again spend is wayland examiners walen oil industry i mean you do the simultaneously really. the point is that what does the united states want from from iran they say orpen the regime change but also abandoning iran through gentle allies what does it mean it means that iran would allow al qaeda to operate freely in syria on its border no way iran is going to allow their paid i want to be your be analysis about this because the law of

unintended consequences is definitely in play here are you gentlemen i want to say goodbye to alexander me curious in london thank you alex for joining us we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on some real new stage with r.t. . join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics or business i'm showbusiness i'll see if. you know world's big partisan mob and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that made history media refuses to tell more than ever. we need to be smart we need to stop slamming the door on the 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 we're watching closely watching the hawks. the people that are now doing those manufacturing jobs also start to innovate because that's where the innovation happens on the factory floor so the factories or been moved to china as you point out the b.t.o. like china we've moved all our jobs manufacturing over china now all the innovations in china so we don't it's not it's not created in california built in china is going to be created in china built in china. welcome back across the uk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing some real news.

ok now we're joined by john laughlin in france he is a lecturer in political philosophy at isis the catholic university then john welcome and welcome to our program today. we do speaking to my producers you said you wanted to paint a broad canvas of what's going on in the country known as ukraine we this had presidential elections where we have a comedian a political unknown about to be inaugurated and since then. we get a mixed signals from this so minsky character during the campaign he used russian and ukrainian which was obviously. a move towards some kind of reconciliation and then now after being elected he seems to echo more of what puerto shankar was saying and then i hear he wants to meet with putin but merkel and mccrone have to be there i guess as some kind of chaperone i don't know john. it's

a broad picture of what's going on in ukraine. well you know peter i think that this is an occasion not for political commentary but instead for literary criticism that. there is a strong tradition in the twentieth century and incidentally a tradition that's in many ways linked to ukraine of surrealism and satire in literature some of the greatest writers in russia like mccardell dark of nikolai gogol have described fantastical scenarios in which reality and fiction blend into one another and in which you don't know which is which and very often this satire is used in a political context it's particular case of course with goggle who knows famous stories the inspector all the knows are about satirizing political authority and this is a an old russian tradition this mingling of fiction and reality and politics it goes back if you like to the famous potemkin villages built in crimea to deceive

catherine the great and it goes all the way through to soviet jokes doesn't it you know the satires that satirical jokes that people used to tell in the later soviet period to make fun of their power this ukrainian election is an example of that you know people say we live in a post-modern area era when there's no difference between truth and reality. and it's certainly true that lots of people are brought up on reality t.v. where real life situations are presented for entertainment on that television what we have here is satire becoming reality and the victory of a comedian who rose to fame prevent presenting a political satire in which an ordinary man becomes president almost like by accident a bit like chancy gardner exact going beyond their. dates actually shows in my view amazing maturity on behalf of the ukrainian electorate because

what they are saying is politics or at least ukrainian politics is a joke and we're now in the position in ukraine rather like the scene in x. four in king in shakespeare's king lear where the full speaks truth yes while political power has gone mad so that i have nothing else to say to you apart from these rather philosophical reflections because. this is this goes beyond the usual. just like when you described it as an artist so you can put the motif i appreciate that diem and let me go to you one of the things that i think is very interesting is that when we were flecked upon the failures of the push and co regime is that the political elites and i think is a mask for deep deep corruption because i think that would zone if he had any kind of political messages and you know it's really about corruption i would argue is that he's not much different from puerto shango he just wants less stealing ok

however the paradigm that they're in reflecting on my what john just said is that they're pursuing a. binary the does not exist i mean they are pursuing nationalism but they have no nation and it's one of the reasons why it doesn't work go ahead well. i agree with drawn there by the way war and while we. what russia does but they were born in ukraine so if we follow what the current western polish is like there is nothing in common between russia and ukraine they wouldn't be able to believe in russia because they would be korean citizens and you would have to rewrite all the western history of russian literature because then they would be considered ukrainian writers which of course they weren't they were russian writers but you're exactly right about. the situation and the western reaction was absurd there was a moment of panic before the second round of action when suddenly all the western

newspapers started writing they didn't sneeze inexperienced and that putin may out to eat him and suddenly they were full of praise for poroshenko let me just call to the new york times rolled in a detroit credit i had a television character for president crazy and that's what they wrote about he crashed his shelf ball issue for us yes thirty thousand people killed and they call him we're going down fifteen percent in two years he's trails pollution favorites but he can take radiate for some credible reforms since he became president in two thousand and fourteen yes five hundred russian writers pretty bit at one thousand russian actors not able to enter ukraine great reforms huge difference you know ukraine and russia are very much of a candidate in the united states so imagine that you live in canada and you cannot listen to frank sinatra because he's pretty but that drone of course was on in russia was the same as frank sinatra in the united states they were often compared

you live in canada and you can't you can't listen to the songs that you i mean you can listen to them on the internet but you can't watch it on television you can't mention it in an article these people are pretty limited but to the election was a complete rebuke of all of that let me go back to the journal said no because they voted seventy five percent against twenty. five. and no it's very important no suddenly all of the western newspapers say that you should not need which involve on ok and we hear from the guardian that western diplomats you know want to ask you again stuart came to the set but it just little time with that goes on because i want to go to john here john i mean this was a complete failure five year plan failure of regime change in ukraine because it's gotten him nowhere whatsoever and it was quite remarkable where was victoria nuland when poroshenko needed her and her cookies here i mean this is an abject failure of western policy and they can't even admit it but they never do go ahead john. yeah i

mentioned to make sure i mentioned bill got off and go precisely because of course i know that they are both from ukraine i've been to the uk of sousing here. but to continue with the literary. or the literary way of answering your question about failure peter. what i think is that again if we look to the theater of the absurd and to surrealistic should we can find we can begin to wait make our way to the to find an answer one of the most famous examples of surrealist literature is the italian author appear in delos play six characters in search of an author when the soviet union collapsed in one thousand nine hundred one you had fifteen republics in search of a history fifteen republics who had historically been part of russia when i say historically i mean going back many many centuries even in the case of the baltic states and suddenly they found themselves obliged to invent

a story for themselves net history yet the word story and history is the same in every other language apart from english the story in russian in german east well in french they had to invent a story for themselves and you know one way and the out one way or the other all of them managed to do it you may not have agreed with the story you may not have agreed with the baltic states national narrative you may not have agreed with the. invocation of central asian medieval warriors in the central asian republics you may have disagreed with them but all of them managed to come up. with a national narrative which gave their states some kind of reason to exist ukraine failed in the ok john you've got a mini jam i want to talk about one more i want to talk about one more issue here and then go into demi here let's talk about the lack of justice for maria in the unit in the united states eighteen months prison nine months already served well as

just be. noble biquad not be a spy because if you agreed to cooperate with the investigation in your a spy that means you're a traitor and you are no longer welcome in russia but russia said fine you know let's put it that let their projects get out of there because let me remind our listeners that madea britain is a twenty nine years old young woman who can paint in the united states i mean she she just means order with people from the national rifle association she is in a party in russia that advocates are the right to bear arms and she was arrested in july last year she was kept in solitary confinement for several months she was promised that she would be deported if she cooperated with their investigation and now she gets nine months more the maximum and the judge. who gave her this sentence is saying your a young woman the hard work and telent that you have everything in front of you and

then you give her nine months you care to really enjoy. the last minute i have turned to john in front of me this seems to be a verdict of spite because the thing that i find so brands of brands of all that not only is this was. not guilty of anything other than what so many other people do when washington is is to lobby for foreign governments if this is a survival outcome here john are your thoughts it absolutely is but forgive me for once again using a history illusion we are dealing here with a fantasy that's trying to see that she was a spy a fantasy that the trumpet ministration was somehow. part of it and an example of collective hallucination in which people can no longer distinguish between reality and their. wild imaginings and this poor woman is the victim yes that spite but also of collective hallucination and of

a narrative that ran out of control and began. to take control of reality itself its theme of the last twenty seconds when the judge was given that sentence the judge said it was not just a misunderstanding by a foreign student it was and that back against the united states well we could that there was no could lose it and it still continues you know if you don't think it's a mistake once demon you know better because a mistake was loving america and loving guns had nothing to do with politics whatsoever and she's put into this meat grinder is what john laughlin said this great nation and that's all the time we have here many thanks to my guest here in moscow london and in france and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time remember.

what politicians do something. they put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president i'm sure. somebody wanted. to go right to the press this is what. three of the people. interested in the waters of. the ship. they can come and blow our brains out at any given time if we can't really do anything actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people. wore it legally get away with. all the fire crawls

stillbirth all the trouble here's the point it's how. flying to k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist they are the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse all than the people who destroyed the world trade centers of the scroll why. be neat and politically false and needs to come. from. but ideally dillman before it got into pasta house been. giving political guidance to the process so basically what i'm waiting for he's an alter politically . ideally extending from the moment you feel.

as if we'll go through a period of sort of full schedule if bush but if. you do what you know will be well to the minute that it was and i go to. look. losing because it's a feeling. of a good enough that all you want to go to the brink of an enemy that is a liberal socialist that you know you'll know paul. enough well it was pretty good way to lose a. lot of what you still do which could be oh i don't get it done well but i come. here to. your money you know did you storm the lead here so my look down from mood subversion during the curator conferred some are going to be.

in the stories that shaped the week the first ever summit between the flu. putin and kim jong il and boosts bilateral relations with the focus also on breaking the nuclear deadlock on the korean peninsula. russian national maria jailed in the u.s. for failing to register as a foreign agent but her lawyer insists she is a victim of washington's current political climate. and. maria's activities in the us were illegal. in and of themselves but she got caught up in this and she rushes hysteria. sprains ruling socialists claim victory in an election that's also seen the far right held in the parliament for the first time.