and nuclear power in space and in charlottesville we cross to david swanson he is the executive director of world beyond war all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate david let me go to you 1st in charlottesville. going after my introduction right here listening to the president the united states we're in a great ideological struggle against autocracy here very much in tune with what we experienced during the cold war which i remember very well and it was an ideological struggle but is are we living in in 2021 in an ideological struggle on the on the world stage what's your take go ahead do. i think mostly in the fantasies of us propaganda i think the reality is more a struggle between of plutocracy and oligarchies there's no democracy to be seen there's no nobody in the us public has had a right to vote on whether to have a great battle against the autocracies you know we've got. you know it's just not

credible that there's a military threat out there so something is needed and here you know it's just yesterday you see a drone whistleblower fleeting and facing 10 years in prison for telling the u.s. public what its government is doing in its with its military all over the world just yesterday also i see these reports huge numbers of people in california in prison for over 3 years without yet being you know charged or given a trial it could notion that some force is going to come to the united states and take away what's left of our freedoms is just not credible and so you need this this vague justification of we're up against the autocracies and sadly there are people falling for it yeah well david we have to be more worried about the elites not the being the so-called talk received in the world rick let me go to you the same the same question here because this is how we're being sold it

and and you know obviously people in biden in his orbit they're all neo-cons they want another crack at this thing the interesting thing is that it's not a whole lot different than under trump so it you know there are differences in washington but not when it comes the empire it's purely bipartisan go ahead rick. political differences end of the shoreline as you had as you as an earlier this week you know george samwell like another guest discussing the distinction i would argue the opposition between on the one hand international laws and trying in the united nations are good for example and what the united states and nato have been pushing recently under the curious name of rules based international order that term is you that expression is used several times a day by nato secretary general stoltenberg blank and most notoriously in the nato foreign ministers meeting a few days ago and it's clearly they're targeting russians right now that's indisputable throwing them incidentally if you read or listen to blink and address

on march 24th of nato headquarters where he throws russia and china into the same category as north korea and iran and some new axis of evil if you will is that ideological no except in the sense that by rules base or values based international order the united states and its vassals and tributaries to quote the president you know have developed a sort of the social cultural norm that almost serves as the equivalent of a political ideology and it's one that they want to enforce on the rest of the world of the rest of the world doesn't go along with it they're isolated and they're traduced and they're you know they're all to really confront confronted sanctioned economic warfare and ultimately they're threatening of the kind i think version there of actual warfare. we seem to be living in an era of 0 sum i mean either you submit or you will be you'll be threatened with annihilation i mean i thought you know i heard it's not that i ever believe that you know the return of

diplomacy well is 0 sum game has nothing to do with diplomacy and i don't know what rules they're talking about i don't know what norms i mean there are rules and they are norms because as was mentioned earlier rick talked about international law that is the that is the level playing field here not your norms not your rules because you're the one making the rules making everyone else obey it under the threat of force go ahead bruce like a magician you with us is creating. we don't have much real democracy anymore here corporate oligarchies and so i think the us is becoming more author terry so it talks about others. turning again as a look in the mirror and see what's really 'd there we're losing our rights increasingly growing surveillance state lawsuits 'd ability to

protest. as openly as we have the past and growing censorship really dangerous censorship i can't even you know hundreds. more in the local papers for years i've been printing i'm a little bit in the last couple of years and several of the major papers in the state of maine where i live i can't even get her in there anymore because the the corporate forces that own these media don't want to allow the public access to any other opinion other than the talking points that come out of washington. you know it david i mean one of the interesting things if you look at repeated election cycles there's a very strong anti-war anti interventionist. element to our politics but as soon as we people get into office it all changes here i mean afghanistan this situation there 20 years on is a perfect example it is

a very unpopular war particularly among veterans here but they still continue we need 6 more months we need 9 more months i mean it's like talking to a drug addict that's what empire is a drug addict go ahead david. well i of course agree horrible as joe biden was as a presidential candidate if his promises the better promises to us and some of them were being kept things would be not quite so bad the war on afghanistan would be ended the troops would be out. the wars across the middle east and the troops and the weapons would be out. you know and it's incredible that he comes right in and picks up where trump left off changes very little has yet to lift the sanctions against the international criminal court it in for his rule based order has yet to lift the the the trade sanctions tariffs on on china

and continues with the weapons that the united states take the 50 countries on earth that the u.s. government itself calls the most oppressive $48.00 of them 96 percent are getting weapons and training and funding of their militaries from the united states military and so it's incredible that you can do that while at the same time preaching democracy and peace and rule of law it makes absolutely no sense to me and it requires incredible contortions and what i said that concerns ended when biden by they call scootin a bad name and putin says i wish you good health the new yorker magazine tells me putin just threatened by it and by wishing him good health if this is what's required at this point i'm rick what you know we're told over and over again i'm like you know you mentioned you know a bit you know a new axis of evil is coming to into play here but what is is there any credible

threat that russia and china present to the united states if there is a threat how would you define it go ahead britain of course there is not just for example have to speak arithmetic the russian annual defense budget last time i checked with $69000000000.00 u.s. spends 10 times that and if you can if you combine us with other nato nations military spending is over a trillion dollars a year so you know russia with a population of $140000000.00 some odd people and spending only $69000000.00 on defense while the u.s. is spending you know i think up to 720000000 sometimes 30. 1000000000 rather last year so this is not a credible threat nor is it with china though i should mention that at the recently concluded nato foreign ministers meeting in brussels that the 6 key threats that nato believes faces in the world russia's right at the top china's number 5 incidentally of the 6 and in between are you know big issues like cyber security and so forth by the way and to david's comment about joe biden one should not have

been under any illusions about that since he entered the u.s. senate 973 he was not only supported he was very unlikely agitated for every american war every american proxy or every regime change every color revolution all the way down the line i don't believe we should have expected anything other than. you know the sort of almost maniacal you know the antithesis of diplomacy the only thing unusual is this is the 1st time probably since the nixon administration the u.s. government was threatening china and russia simultaneously and tennis and he played one off against the other. i mean he was you know you know i get it when i know russia but no way to tell we're going to talk a little bit about that in the 2nd part of the program but you're but you're absolutely right i mean when you look at it you know you can think whatever you want to richard nixon ok but on his foreign policy it was quite brilliant and what we've seen since the end of the cold war is particularly in this century here

policy after policy and then of course ukraine came in 2014 and that's when a lot of people and the foreign policy blob won't won't admit it but that's what russia said nuff enough enough of you people foreign minister lavrov said only yesterday he said that he's willing to sit down and talk to nato but if you just want to lecture about ukraine they don't want to sit down and talking about essential what they have done is that the u.s. is actually pushed russia away completely let me have 20 seconds to bruce before we go to the break here go ahead bruce. well you know that you know us main interests and. that's the bottom line that's the modus operandi in the us everybody else claim that we're the exceptional nation and at the same time. all the evil things the endless wars the regime change lucian's

everybody running we're all bros i got to jump in here i got to go to a hard break and after that hard break we'll continue our discussion on geopolitics day with r.t. . so

what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race off and spearing dramatic development is only really i'm going to exist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very. time to sit down and talk. shows seem wrong. but all the rules just don't call. me. yet to shake out just to become educated and engaged with equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

the crisis ends and the crisis begins that's the way used to be now there is just one crisis on top of another you don't know where one starts and one stops and it's just a multiple crises stacked up you know right there and you're thinking there's some my goodness gracious what happened. today i. think. we are here to ask.

welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered on peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing geopolitics. please go back to david in charlottesville one of the things i've been looking at over the years here is that we do live in a multilateral world that is the reality here but the foreign policy blog in washington and the think tanks and all of their donors don't believe that and they will and this is one of the reasons why we see such an erratic foreign policy because washington believes in me and you know polar world but it's not that's no

longer the case and that's why we're seeing so many tensions said differently countries can say no. this is what we're exactly we saw in anchorage go ahead david . i agree and i think rick maybe it was right to point out that the united states is going after a couple of big countries at once but people in the united states not so much disproportionately people who identify as the democratic party blame russia for everything where those who think they're republicans blame china for everything works out well for the government as they can blame both them for everything but people sort of you pick your identity determines which foreign nation you hate but with with respect to rick one of the ways the military is this magician that bruce speaks of is with its budget and the pentagon budget that we all denounce a speech enzymes russia's military budget is only a chunk of u.s. military spending that the nukes are in a different departments the whole way of security is in

a different department it adds up to one and a quarter trillion dollars a year in u.s. military spending which rushes to the incredible credit and praise of russia is you know far less than 10 percent of that and it is it is enormously to the credit of the russian government that it puts more money into things other then militarism it should put more as you put everything into things other than militarism but it doesn't even china it's a tiny fraction you have terms of its g.d.p. or its population it's a tiny fraction going into militarism and the threat is just not credible and see a need all this this vague talk about ideology to make it credible you know rick that's why we don't have health care i give all go to the military ok they have health care ok the car pick $1000.00 an hour you know we can't afford it bill gates we got to we're spending too much money on things that we are wasting money on here and an expert you well you wrote a very interesting article recently about nato expansion and nato is to leave all

its grinning from ear to ear now we've got china and china ok i mean what's it going to be is it going to be an asian nato or does nato want to take over the pacific go ahead rick. thanks for raising that issue a document was published last november by nato it's called. nato 2030 modeled after the u.n. 2030 i suspect a nato 2030 united for a new era it's a 67 page documents online via people look at it and it'll be used of course for the upcoming summit nato summit later this year and that in turn the summit will be used for crafting the 1st strategic concept as nato deems that since 2010 in the document they talk about expanding their partnerships and i don't think one person in a 1000000 in the world right now realizes that the military bloc nato which at the time of the fragmentation of the soviet union 1901 at 16 members and no partners

now has 30 members and 40 partners that is 70 countries all together on every inhabited continent colombia is now a member of what nato aptly to love me and really colombia a military program. that's correct right as of 3 years ago i believe and that's a book look this is by no means the end of it in this document nato 2030 they openly talk about recruiting india into a nato partnership most likely partners across the globe india has a population larger than the 1000000000 people who inhabit nato countries in one fell swoop but in the article you're alluding to peter i mentioned that in addition to having and i'm defining asia including west asia the middle east that nato only has one member in asia which is turkey it has 19 military partners in the asia pacific region and what clearly came out of the nato foreign ministers meeting a few days ago was to expand that even more dramatically and you're correct it's not an asian aid nato this is

a different proposition right an asian nato would be the equivalent of nato in the asia pacific region this is actually expanding nato into the asia pacific and in addition to the 19 partners it already has they're envisioning no less a country than india you know being poor pulled into the nato orbit that. a pretty clear signal to china but it's also an attempt to dislodge russians being india's major military ally an arms supplier ok you know i mean so that nato is solved it's really great dilemma because it never it doesn't really have a reason to exist ok russia is not a threat to nato even though we hear analysts propaganda now they want to take on russia and china and they found the reason to exist here and a way i look at it bruce is this is replacing the united nations ok that this is going to be this is going to be a military alliance that will replace or they can ignore the united nations and there is no security council there's only one head honcho and we know who that is

that's the u.s. go ahead bruce ingo you hit the nail on the. u.s. so i know you know. religion and mongolia as partners and listen to exactly what the plan is to get rid of the united nations and have a global alliance united states claim look we have the support of the entire world as they then go work regime change her relations countries around the world so this news indeed the strategy and undemocratic effort to create their own military alliance to get rid of the united nations would just because of the security council who don't control i want to mention one other thing when we were talking about the military budget it's my understanding the last couple years russia has actually cut their military gets

a house yes they're going to deal with poverty more i wish the. other yeah well i wish it were christmas every day to david you know i know you have a good good historical knowledge. when you think about this ever growing military alliance around the world i think you remember what happened in august $1014.00 so the entire world is going to be put at the mercy of a border dispute and then we have world war 3 i mean this is pure insanity and what it is is it is ignoring diplomacy how to resolve problems because the problem is these miele cons do not recognize piers and there can be no country because appear because once you admit that then the exceptionalism dies and that's what's that's what's in play right now go ahead david. absolutely right i made the reasons that the united states kept out of the league of nations after world war one other then

it wasn't given the us special privileges like the un later what it was because people were smart enough not to want to be committed to any wars that somebody else got into which is exactly what nato does to all of its members that commits them all to wars that somebody else gets into which is just a disaster waiting to happen meanwhile you have people across the united states convinced that somehow bizarrely trump was anti nato and therefore nato is good at nato is in fact not a gag of criminals but a judicial body of some sort to long the lines of should so that if there's a nato war it's a good and legal one which is of course not the exact opposite of what it is when you get more people involved in a crime it's just a bigger crime you know rick a few weeks ago twitter announced that anyone and i'm paraphrasing here so i don't want to be fact checked here but if you criticize if you challenge the faith and

that's the word faith in nato i only have faith in god i've never heard anyone having faith in a military alliance i mean this is look i mean i'm serious when i i had to read it over again i mean what is this again is this the onion is this the babylon be you know challenging our faith in a military alliance this is got this is going to the extreme go ahead rick. yeah thanks for pointing that out i mean it has nato has virtually been enshrined as a deity as a religion i should just follow up real quickly on what bruce said which is a key point some 12 years ago. who had been assistant secretary general of general secretary of nato and humanitarian coordinator for iraq. had a major article in a journal in switzerland warning just what bruce was talking about that nato affectively is moving to supplant the united nations as an arbiter of international relations particularly of international conflicts and this was particularly clear

during the general secretary shep's of kofi annan and ban ki moon who seemed to bend over backwards to accommodate nato when you start talking by the way the united nations and 194 members last heard. 70 of those are nato members and growing then they're all but supplanting nato simply by recruiting its members on mas but over on this question of you cannot call a question nato this is you know i put it the transcendent euro land they could land assist you know whatever term has been used over the last few you know it's basically a supra national. you know political trend that subordinates all 30 members of nato leading the united states in some instances you know the atlantis is project that wants to remake the world and i would just argue by the way when you look at who these powers are founding members of nato and so forth you're

looking at all the great colonial powers of the last 500 years i mean you can get britain france spain portugal germany italy and so forth and i think you know metaphysically if you will there is a part of the west that does not want to give up that 500 year dominance of the globe and nato is the military mechanism by which they can maintain and even extend you know that sort of global dominance you were talking earlier about to. let me jump in here has urged i mean. good we're almost out of time i want to go to bruce here is that and i'm really glad that rick brought up this neal colonia agenda here because bruce they the west cannot conceive of having china is a peer because for 500 years it has been european countries have controlled the global system they cannot consonant the fact that china is the equal to the west 40 seconds go ahead bruce well isn't that a reasons. concept well primaries i'm a liberal so yeah i'm from liberals yeah. well one last word about nato is they've

created these wars. to ramstein air force base germany and some nato now understands that. yeah there is. this version need. weapons in space program to use not. russia china i'm so glad you brought that up because that's an expert that you. an expert in and i really appreciate it that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests in chicago about and in charlottesville and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at the see you next time and remember. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of

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new york is really what america is about. when our mayor took office he was elected because of his campaign on our city being a tale of 2 cities the haves and the have not and those who have not are usually the ones who wind up being very hard out of the city has always wanted to forget about iowa city has wanted to forget about the people who are buried there wanted to forget about the fact that there is a potter's field but there is a place where difficult stories are hidden the fact they were using inmates to maintain this act is burial site where 1000000 souls are buried where so much of new york city history is buried is to commence of the inequality that exists in this city for centuries.

shocking images of children killed in a crossfire as violence between israel and palestinian militants says it's a 2nd week now there's no end in sight. their children their 23 and 4 years old what do they do that made it necessary to get all that they were to pieces. becomes a city's between israel and gaza militants continue with missiles fired from both sides and israel blaming hamas for the escalation and civilian deaths. i want to say as a former commander of the citizens of gaza we love you we want you to leave my life you need to know.