to talk about football not. going to go. by the way. a u.s. army veteran is charged over the ledge to bomb plot targeting christians and jews in revenge for the new zealand. face veils in public as part of a security crackdown following the feature sunday massacre. subsequent picks a fight with indian farmers over the problems of the going to the company that's selling brand of potato chips. and a german contender for the european commission's job says if elected he will belong to a project designed. into europe that has. the

latest on these stories you can head to our to. the next step of the u.s. push for regime change in iran and if you're watching in the u.k. political talk show getting. in welcome to crossfire. change in iran the trumping ministration risks ending global oil markets also if you want to russian passport being a citizen of ukraine could have. 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 crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate the. alexander in london well the gambit 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 big 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 are 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 all 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 on a rant by stopping its oil exports and it isn't forcing it on all other countries and it is doing so. right the provisions of the u.n. charter and signed the powers of the un 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. 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 a wrong 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 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 did they were quite there yet but the distance is very small let me go to you. obviously countries like china or are 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 trumpet ministration believe that they will be able to pick up the slack that's unlikely well it's not at all only the big country or so. the european union who are against this pressure but also a country like turkey turkey you know. this is a leader 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 there are also for still 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 iran 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 would add that i'm going to go right at that to put that in my refrigerator and i got it let me go back to london and here it seems to me we're truly going to have an alexander is that 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 u.s. will do then because they are. are determined determined to have force regime change in iran 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 at the restraining or it will there will be supply because of course as you correctly say oil 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 it's be 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 exactly we are losing face the risk is that if one strategy doesn't escalate you're going to escalate succeed you're going to escalate on a nobbler 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 even 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's crimes but alexander we care a so. also has 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 around 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.m. because there was an assessment not just by the united states and the bomb 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 that compromise was the j.c. pretty early way if you throw out that compromise and disregard the balance of

force you. all sorts of dangers that flow from the inevitable escalation already we see 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 that leadership is awesome because they keep suggesting situations they've given interest and compromise. facing almost direct pressure from the united states like mr trump almost made an attempt 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 and 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 whale and examine its way when oil industry i mean if 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 the pay that i want to be your be analysis about this because the law of unintended consequences is definitely in play here are a gentleman 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 and some real new stage with r.t. . this if there were a prius or. some other if it's bush but it. would be a will boil to the minute that it was not go to the. losing is its ability.

to get is that all you want to go to the brink of an enemy that is a reversal a risk that you'll fall. into the well was pretty. but gravely as a little girl crow would choose the two which could go along with the gun on a first come in the. near deer luther's you're going to be yelled good you'll see a storm will lead to its or my look from moods should version of doing the cloture croakers smirk. when i was told some seemed wrong but old roles just don't hold. the old beliefs yet to shape our disdain comes to educate and indeed train equals

betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. welcome back to crossfire where all things 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 john welcome 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 have presidential elections where we have a comedian a political unknown about to be inaugurated and since then.

we get a mixed signals from this zelinsky character during the campaign he used russian and ukrainian which was obviously. a move towards some kind of reconciliation and then now if you're being elected he seems to echo more of what puerto shanker 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 chaperon i don't know john give us 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 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 yes exactly being there. 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. for in king in shakespeare's king lear where the full speaks truth yes while political power has gone mad ok so. i have nothing else to say to you apart from these rather philosophical reflections because. this this goes beyond the usual. just like when you described as an artist so you kept with the motif i appreciate that the him 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 polish and 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 that 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 wrong and by the way war borgata when was. what russia does but they were born in ukraine so if we are for the current western polish just like there is nothing in common between russia and ukraine they wouldn't be able to

leave 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. that of 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 ski's inexperienced 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 bush in court he crashed his shelf ball issue for us yes thirty thousand people killed and they call and we're going down fifteen percent in two years he's trails polisher 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 can not 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 to 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. and know it's very important not all suddenly all of the western newspapers say that you should look neat which involve the long ok and we hear from the gaiety and the western diplomats you know want to

again stork into 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. how 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 while 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 the reception of you by a slightly bigger national narrative which gave their states some kind of reason to exist ukraine failed in the ok john you've got a mini gen i want to talk about one more i want to talk about one marine issue here and then over here let's talk about the lack of justice for a marine in the unit in the united states eighteen months prison nine months already served well as just be. global because she agreed to cooperate with the investigate us and the west and used. for example bloomberg immediately admitted that she could not be a spy because if you agreed to cooperate with the investigation in you're 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's get out of there because let me remind our listeners that madea buton is a twenty nine years old young woman who can paint in the united states i mean 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 hardworking and telent that you have everything in front of you and then you give her nine months you can actually enjoy increase in the. last minute and a half sen 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 in washington is is to lobby for foreign governments and this is

a spiteful outcome here john are your thoughts it absolutely is but to get me to once again using a mystery illusion we are dealing here with a fantasy that's trying to see that she was a spy trying to see that the trumpet ministration was somehow. couldn't stop it and an example of collective hallucination in which people can no longer distinguish between reality and. while. 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 over reality itself you have steam in the last twenty seconds when the judge was given that sentence the judge said it was not just some misunderstanding by a foreign student it was an attack against the united states well we have heard that there was no could lose it and it still continues you know if you don't think

it's a mistake was diem and you know better because mistake was loving america and what loving guns had nothing to do with politics whatsoever and she's put into this meat grinder is what john laughlin said this great loose a 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. put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. some want. to go right to the

pros this is what the three of the people are. interested in the water. this is a sticker from the open water bottle found in the stomach of the fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell. they're the bad ones they're the litter bugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all of this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. and soon. be taken away and only stay in your own special projects funded. on the line your best bet is yes. but for now the mountains of moist only grow

higher. join me every thursday on the alex simon shore and i'll be speaking to get out of the world of politics sports business i'm sure i'll see you there. i am extras or this is the kaiser report what happens when you combine five g. satellites and artificial intelligence dystopian nightmare or a liberating technology let's find a space well one certainly finds competition for american corporations

that apparently we can't compete against so it's my way or the huawei i only my way always that is in the title my way or the highway how us all to made him over china's five g. giant fell flat in south east asia apparently southeast asia is ignoring the u.s. threats to not use five g. that the five eyes partner nations have all basically stopped using weiwei but that's that includes the u.k. australia new zealand canada and one of the person i think but the region is shaping up as a key battleground in a war between the us and china to influence the roll out of super fast five g. internet service is billed by experts as an era defining technological shift that could pave the way for breakthroughs in everything from artificial intelligence to the creation of smart cities so era define.