we need a new system we need a new Society we need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago but is not only realizable but an imperative [Music] necessity Israel is at war with Gaza the West Bank Lebanon Syria and now Iran more than 180 Iranian missiles struck Israel on Tuesday for the last year Israel has carried out a Non-Stop Killing Spree in Gaza that war is now part of a larger Regional war in the Middle East today we'll talk about what comes next welcome to the Socialist program I'm your host Brian Becker to today we're talking with Ben Norton Ben is an investigative journalist currently based in Beijing China he is the editor of the Independent News website geopolitical economy report which you can find at geopolitical economy.com Ben Norton welcome back thanks for having me Brian it's one of my favorite programs so it's always a pleasure being here well thank you so much for joining uh once again uh the whole world witnessed on Tuesday Iranian missiles coming down into the heart of Israel 180 missiles the Iranian foreign minister invoked uh article 51 of the UN Charter uh meaning that Iran was acting in self-defense uh Israel had assassinated Ismael hania the political leader of Gaza the chief negotiator with Israel uh purportedly for a ceasefire the Israelis assassinated him in Iran while he was visiting Iran to take part in the inauguration ceremonies for the new Iranian president at that time Iran said it would retaliate it said it was also retaliating for the assassination of nasala the leader of Hezbollah of course Israel has carried out many assassinations in Lebanon but Ben we are in a regional war and it's not simply Israel's Regional war against Gaza West Bank Lebanon Syria and Iran this is the United States you've written about it you've talked about it this is the United States 100% not 99% 100% behind this war effort by the Israeli regime uh anyway let's talk about it and as the show goes on we're going to talk about what the impact is not only for the Palestinian and Lebanese and Iranian people not only for the region but for the entire Planet but I want to get your take that's absolutely right Brian I mean Israel really acts as a kind of attack dog for the US Empire the former US Secretary of State Alexander heg under Ronald Reagan famously referred to Israel as an Unsinkable aircraft carrier for the US Empire and US President Biden has repeatedly claimed over decades that Israel is so important for us strategic interest that is Imperial interests that if Israel did not exist the United States would have to create an Israel in order to try to maintain hegemonic control over what is one of the most strategic regions on Earth of course there are many reasons including the very large natural resources oil and gas the geostrategic location of the west of West Asia the so-called Middle East which has numerous trade choke points like in connecting through Egypt the sues Canal also the straight of horuz that Iran could potentially block off through which a lot of oil is traded internationally so the US sees this region as extremely important for its attempt to maintain a global Empire to maintain a choke hold on the global trade system and commodities markets and Israel acts as the 51st US state an extension of the US Empire in this very important region and you mentioned some of the countries that Israel and the US are at war with and in fact it's kind of easy to forget because the list is so long but you there's also Yemen um Israel has been bombing Yemen of course the US has also been bombing Yemen and there's of course Iraq the resistance forces in Iraq that helped to defeat Isis have also been attacked by the US and Israel so the US and Israel are at war with almost every country in the region at least any country that's not a complete puppet Jordan is an is an absolute monarchy but it's run by a us puppet so they never complain about what's going on there so as as for this Israeli attack in Lebanon I this is a massive escalation of what Israel has been doing not just for the past year but for decades of course Israel has invaded Lebanon now three times this the third time and when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 it maintained an illegal military occupation of South Lebanon for two decades Israel was expelled in 2000 after years of resistance by the indigenous resistance in Lebanon which was led by Hezbollah where does Hezbollah come from Hezbollah was founded in the 1980s in response to Israel's illegal military occupation of Lebanon so Israel Bears responsibility for the creation of these resistance groups if Israel didn't attack its neighbors try to colonize their land occupy their land there would be no need for these resistance groups but then Israel cites the existence of these groups to try to justify further aggression further Colonial Conquest the minister of diaspora Affairs for the Israeli regime tweeted he posted this long tweet in Hebrew and he said we do not recognize Syria Iraq and Lebanon as sovereign states he said that so the so Israel is essentially saying we are not only at war with these countries they don't exist to us we want to colonize them and he openly called for Israel to reoccupy South Lebanon like it did in the 1980s and 90s we're talking about a murderous Rogue regime run by farri EX exist to have the full support of the US Empire from both parties Democrats and Republicans and we see these parties competing to see who can be more pro-israel so Trump and the Republicans claim that Biden and Harris supposedly are not pro Israeli enough and let's not forget in the presidential debate Trump said that Biden is a Palestinian as an insult which is insulting in so many levels it's obviously racist but it's also so insulting because Biden has been doing as much as he can to kill Palestinian children in Gaza Biden has given more than $8 billion dollar in military aid to Israel in the past year alone and every war crime committed by Israel has been facilitated by the United States using us planes us bombs us missiles us guns and ammunition and the US has protected Israel on the international stage at the UN Security Council vetoing any resolution that calls for ceasefire or peace even even vetoing the internationally recognized call for Palestine to be admitted as a full member you can look at the votes in the UN General Assembly where two-thirds or more of the entire world votes in support of Palestine and the US and six or seven proxy regimes vote in support of Israel I mean it's absolutely outlandish seeing what's happening and the last thing I'll I'll add here is that it's not just this genocide in Gaza which has been recognized by top experts including the UN special repur on the rights of Palestinians and the UN special rorer on the rights of access to food both of them have said that this is a genocide of course the international court of justice the top un legal Authority is investigating Israel on charges of genocide in a case that was brought by South Africa a victim of an apartheid regime that was also sponsored by the US in Israel it's not just all of that but the obviously the US has been supporting all of this but but now that Israel is waging this war of aggression on Lebanon invading Lebanon the Pentagon has released statement after statement saying we are supporting Israel in what it's doing Politico published an article revealing that the White House behind the scenes encouraged Israel to invade Lebanon so they're actively pushing Israel to expand this Imperial War of conquest and let's not forget as well that Israel started this by launching a terror attack in inside Lebanon which they claimed was only against Hezbollah but many civilians were killed little children were killed when Israel put explosives in civilian technology imp pagers and walki talkis an extreme Act of terrorism that even the former CIA the direct the the former director of CIA the master of terrorism even Lan paneta admitted this was an act of terrorism we're talking about the use of terrorism genocide Wars of Conquest invasion colonialism the worst possible crimes you can imagine are being carried out by Israel with the full support of the US Empire Biden was just asked about Israel's invasion of Lebanon and Biden repeated three times he said we fully support what Israel's doing he said fully fully fully I don't know how something can be full three times but it shows how much the US Empire is committed to propping up this Unsinkable aircraft carrier as it's just committing this Rampage across the region Ben I think it's really important for people in the United States people everywhere but especially in the United States where we're inundated with a Bourgeois capitalist imperialist propaganda which is imperialist it's also racist but it's also designed to deceive the people of the United States it's fundamentally designed to deceive and it sometimes frequently comes comes across as news as objective news from the Independent Media but they all Echo the same line they use the same language and it's always intended to deceive people you know we're the Socialist program I frequently uh quote one of my favorite quotes from Lenin is that people will always be the victims of Deceit or self-deception un they unless they realize that behind every political statement every political religious uh educational declaration made by the powers that be that behind all of that there is a class force a class interest that the United States isn't carrying out this regime uh the the regime change operations in the Middle East the endless war against the people of the Middle East simply because it's BR brutal simply because it's cruel simply because it's the great friend of Israel simply because it loves uh Jewish people so much that it considers any assault on Israel to be like an assault on Jewish people all of these things are basically propaganda lines for the purposes of Deceit and for those who buy it self-deception now one of the big areas of Deceit and SE and self-deception for those who were suckers enough to accept it was the idea that the Biden Administration was sort of caught between a rock and a hard place when it came to Netanyahu and his endless war against the Palestinians and you made the point in one of your uh recent post that Israel has dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza between October and June October 2023 and June 2024 and that was more bombs than were dropped uh by the Nazis on London during World War II and Gaza is a small place it's 5 Mi wide 25 Mi long to drop 70,000 tons of bombs on this area I mean you can't use any other language except genocide to describe something like that but during this entire time period the US has said we really want to ceasefire uh Biden kept saying you know too many civilians have been killed uh we're really uh we're we're unhappy that uh Netanyahu isn't listening to us that we need more dialogue that committed to a ceasefire sometimes we saw him eating an ice cream cone and and saying sort of cavalierly yeah there's going to be a ceasefire next week and then he warned Netanyahu that we have a red line and that's the invasion of Rafa in the southern part of Gaza don't cross that and then Netanyahu immediately started bombing Rafa and invaded Rafa and killed so many people in Rafa and the US did nothing so the the message was always like Biden just can't you know he can't convince Netanyahu to do what Biden wants him to do I want to play a clip this is from this week or the last days it's Matthew Miller the secret uh the spokesman spokesperson for this uh State Department for the Secretary of State uh he's being asked by a journalist about uh the US support for Israel's invasion of Lebanon what the US position is on a ceasefire does the us really want to ceasefire listen I want everybody to listen to Matthew Miller it's one of those rare moments where in spite of the deceit and then the subsequent self-deception you actually get the truth sometimes it just slips through let's listen how does this President of Rafa prend for Le Lebanon so every conflict is different but if you look at what um we continue to engage with Israel about when it comes to Lebanon is ensuring that they have the ability to attack terrorist targets terrorist infrastructure a terrorist organization but ultimately we want to see a diplomatic resolution but was that the case with Rafa for instance not just in Rafa but we've never wanted hold on we've never wanted to see a diplomatic resolution with Hamas oh wait you're for a ceasefire but you never wanted a diplomatic resolution with Hamas well wouldn't that be absolutely the path to a ceasefire I mean this is the pared normally we get pars language here's a rare moment Ben where you can actually hear the truth about the US position over the past year absolutely and and I'm going to talk about that in a second but just because Brian you you mentioned this incredible fact that more than 70,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on Gaza this is a figure that was reported by the financial times which noted and this was back in June it noted that Gaza is the most densely bombed area in modern history out of all of the horrific Wars of the 20th century Gaza has been more densely bombed than even many cities that were bombed in World War II I mean it's absolutely horrifying seeing what's going on and the the US has played the leading role in this every Palestinian killed all of the tens of thousands of children killed in Gaza have been killed not only with the support of Israel but with the support of the United States this is a US Israeli War haritz the leading Israeli newspaper reported citing top Israeli military officials that were it not for us support Israel could not wage this war and that was on Gaza certainly that's true for Lebanon as well not only because Israel needs the constant supply of billions of dollars of weapons and ammunition and planes and bombs but also because if the US stopped protecting Israel on the international stage it would actually face consequences that's why why you know the international criminal court which has a long history of being very biased basically only going after African leaders finally the prosecutor Kareem Khan released this released these accusations of charges of of crimes against humanity against men nahu and defense minister yo Galant that was months ago and the ICC has not actually applied for the arrest warrant because Western countries primarily the us but also the UK have been lobbying the ICC and telling it not to which is ironic because the US is not even a member of the ICC but anyway getting back to your point about diplomacy this is one of the most cynical propaganda campaigns I've seen laundered through the corporate media in the past year so what essentially the way it works is that the Biden Administration has a few stenographers in different media outlets and they constantly leak these stories claiming that Biden had a Stern call with Netanyahu and he said BB we need peace I'm angry with you go ahead and and sign a peace deal and then the us immediately signed off another billion dollars of weapons for Israel but the media has tried to craft this narrative that that Biden's doing everything he can but it's simply big bad Netanyahu is just getting in the way and blinkin is doing everything he can but you know Israel is just so intransigent so they're putting all the blame on Netanyahu who obviously is an odious reprehensible war criminal but by Biden and blinkin are also war criminals and they're essentially trying to scapegoat Netanyahu for their complicity in facilitating netanyahu's crimes and giving him a cre a GLE a green light and cart blanch to do whatever he wants to carry out genocide so it's a way that Biden and of course kamla Harris now that she's running for president they can tell their leftwing critics at least a few of them you know who at least pretend you know some people in the Democratic Party who are a little uncomfortable with the fact that their party is supporting genocide so they you know say we should be a little less pro-israel and maybe have more of an equal approach and talk about Palestinians well then Biden and Kamala can say to them look we're trying to stop this war but we can't do anything because it's all Netanyahu but in reality we know from so many reports that behind the scenes the White House including Biden and kamla Harris have given a complete green light to everything that Israel is doing because it's not just Israel acting on behalf of Israel's idea of its interests which are Colonial interests but because Israel is acting on behalf of us Imperial interests to expand to try to expand us Western hegemony across this region where for decades there have been so many resistance forces and Israel has been the attack dog that was used by the US Empire to try to liquidate any Progressive revolutionary Anti-Imperialist force in the region whether that was the communist movement especially the Palestinian communist groups like The pflp by the way while isra while Israel has been carrying out this these terrorist attacks in Lebanon and assassinating political leaders not only has it assassinated political leaders from Hezbollah which is a registered political party in Lebanon it has democratically elected representatives in the parliament but Israel has also been killing leaders of the pflp which is a Palestinian socialist group but Israel has been killing them because Israel's goal is to liquidate all of the leaders in the region who oppose Israeli colonialism and US imperialism Israeli colonialism being one of the projects of the US Empire of course Israel goes back to the British Empire it was the British Empire that gave the green light to the creation of Israel through the bow four declaration in 1917 which was signed a year after the syes Pico agreement that was exposed by the Bolsheviks After the Revolution in Russia in 1916 the British the French and the Russian zarus Empire carved up the Middle East West Asia and the British Empire said we'll get Palestine and the French said we're going to get Lebanon we'll get you know they'll carve up the other countries in the region so a year later the British says we're going to allow the creation of this Colony this Zionist Colonial project in Palestine the historic homeland of the Palestinian people and then after World War II and especially after 196 7 Israel moves into the US Imperial orbit and becomes a US Imperial protectorate as the former US Secretary of State Alexander heg had an Unsinkable aircraft carrier for the US Empire and here we are today Israel's longest serving prime minister Netanyahu by the way is an American it's not often known people forget you know why does Netanyahu speak with an American accent he spent the most formative years of his life in the US he was educated in high school College in the US he got his first job in Boston working with Mitt Romney in in Consulting and then he gave up his citizenship but to become involved in Israeli politics but then he moved back to the US and got citizenship again before giving up his citizenship a second time to become Israel's prime minister so n yahu is an American that's why he's also so close to the Republican party you know he has been lifelong friends or at least for his adult life been friends with many republican leaders I mean it's it's really the perfect symbol of what Israel is in this region and it's constantly at war with every Progressive Force so they liquidated the Communists and then the Arab nationalist forces were also attacked by Israel Israel tried to liquidate all of the Arab nationalist forces including in the PLO and then you had the rise mostly in the 80s and 90s of Anti-Imperialist islamist forces in groups like Hezbollah which have a kind of Islamic oriented nationalist ideology led by people like Hassan nasala who had formed a lot of international alliances with other revolutionary movements especially in Latin America he was close to Ugo Chavez and praised the bolian revolution in Venezuela so these are you know nationalist movements that are seeking National Liberation they take different forms whether it's communism whether it's you know Arab nationalism whether it's Liberation theology but the point is that Israel has tried to liquidate all of these revolutionary movements which of course benefits the us Empire as well and finally as you said Brian of course Washington is not acting out of benevolence it's acting out of its own economic interests so us companies can main maintain control over the region so they can overthrow any independent leader who might try to pursue an independent path of Economic Development whether it's socialism whether it's resource nationalism that does not allow foreign corporations to privatize their financial sector to sell off their state own Enterprises to privatize their natural resources any independent government that pursued that kind of policy like muhamad garfi in Libya is overthrown exterminated by the US by Israel they're really part of the same Imperial project Ben the um the the two parties are are basically speaking with one voice here when it comes to Israel they're as you mentioned earlier they're kind of dueling with each other to see who can be more belligerent more vociferous and support of Israel uh Trump the other day said uh if he was president and if Iran uh well basically he threatened explicitly to obliterate or bomb the Smither in Trump's eloquent language bombed a smithin all of Iran's cities so they're promoting a genocide against the people of Iran now Iran is a big country it's got 90 million people it's got a very formidable military it has been act it's acted prudently uh actually in in response to many many targeted assassinations of its leaders its military leaders its scientists I mean there's a campaign of Terror launched I think by the United States and Israel against Iran that's gone on for many years and I want to I want to sort of probe this a little bit uh there's different elements of the US Iran relations that have to be examed but of course you will remember that General solomani who was Iran's like foremost military leader or one of them and who was uh going to Baghdad in early January as part of a peace Miss mission to see if there could be a negotiated end to Strife in the Middle East uh he was invited by the Iraqi government the US is occupying Iraq the US knew that solomani was coming to the to the airport I think it was January 3rd 2020 and uh Trump ordered his his assassination so he came to the airport got out of the plane or got into a car to drive to these peace talks and a US drone came and obliterated the car destroyed it now just if the shoe was on the other foot everybody if let's say Iran invited uh or knew about uh US military leader a top General coming to a third country and just decided because they determined that the this US general was involved in Terrorist activities overseas as the as the US claimed falsely about salamani that Iran just decided to kill them blow their car up at an airport of course the US would go to war there's no way the US would not go to war it would be a fullscale war no matter what now what what the Iranians did after the killing of solomani is they said we're going to retaliate and they did retaliate they struck 11 or 12 or maybe more US military bases in Iraq and they showed that they could penetrate US Air defenses and quite a number of US soldiers were wounded did uh but they also carried out the attack in a way not to completely destroy those bases which they could have done in other words they were sending a message to Washington if you hit us you have many valuable so-called assets meaning US troops stationed all over this area there's 40,000 US troops in the region we can kill them if we want to we can hit them we can penetrate your defenses but we're not doing that but we're showing you that we can do that and so they bombed these American military bases in Iraq and at that time Ben the answer Coalition which I'm part of was organizing Mass demonstrations tens of thousands of people came out into the streets immediately it looked like there would be a major war with Iran and the masses of people in the United States were against the new war we were starting to organize big protests but after about two weeks Trump made it clear that they were not going to retaliate for Iran's retaliation for the killing of solomani so the Iranian military hit the American military bases and Trump stepped back the big bold audacious braging conceited you know megalomaniac Donald Trump who said that they're now going to obliterate Iranian cities he actually stepped back because the US ruling class was afraid of a regional war with Iran that was very instructive so Iran had a a measured response but it sent a message to Washington and that message landed because the US stepped back so here we are now actually right here we are now four years later uh Iran has also it hit it said it hit military targets by the way the other day when it struck Israel and you know the US is saying that um the US is saying that the Iranian missiles were shot down that uh America and Israel's Iron Dome their air defenses you know caught all the Iranian missiles that they were ineffective um but actually uh Israel's official policy is that you cannot tell the truth about those damages the Israeli times two days uh yesterday said we can't tell you the exact amount of damage or the locations where these missiles struck because we're not allowed to based on Israeli Defense Forces IDF sensors that's the law of the land in Israel they can't tell the truth about how much damage was done but Iran appears to have struck basically military Targets in other words what what the Iranians are trying to do is send another message like we're prepared to fight we're prepared to go to war but in other words a measured response but now the ball is in Israel's Court in 2020 Trump steep back if Israel does not step back now and it's got the us behind it there's going to be a full-scale regional war in the Middle East that's the that's what we're looking at right now that's absolutely right Brian and on this point of trump threatening to obliterate Iran in fact the pre vice presidential debates were just held and CBS began the vice presidential debates asking the first question was if Israel launches a preemptive strike in scare quotes on Iran would you support it and both candidates intimated that yes that they would support it and there was basically no difference in the response between the Democrat Tim Walls and the Republican JD Vance they both just talked about how they waxed poetic on how much they love Israel and would defend Israel and its attacks now it's hilarious calling this a preemptive attack because Israel has already attacked Iran many times you've talked about the assassinations carried out inside Iranian territory also before a few months ago Israel bombed Iran's Consulate in Syria which according to international law is part of its Sovereign territory that was an act of aggression and an act of war against Iran and Iran did respond proportionately previously in a measured way and it's very uh noteworthy that also in that debate JD Vance criticized the Biden Harris Administration saying that the world no longer fears us and he said if Trump were in power the world would fear us again which says a lot about what their idea of you know make America great again means it means make the US the world's bully it's the Hedon that everyone around the world is afraid of because they think the us could bomb us and invade us of course that's still basically the situation under the Democrats there's not that much of a difference but of course they say it openly when it's a republican especially someone like Trump who you know says the quiet part loud when Trump was a president he boasted that he was keeping troops in Syria to take the oil he said it like 10 times in an interview in Fox News we're taking the oil the oil is ours we're taking the oil so as for the Biden Administration the Biden uh Administration including Biden himself and Kamala Harris praised Israel for assassinating the Lebanese resistance leader Hassan nasala and openly gave the green light for Israel to invade Lebanon and they con immediately condemned this Iranian counter response erasing the fact that Iran was acting proportionately in self-defense and that unlike Israel Iran only went after military targets there of course as you said Israel has a military AR censor so the media in Israel is basically all state media not that the US media is really independent we know that the US media claims to be independent but also Echoes the propaganda of the CIA and the Pentagon but especially in the case of Israel they don't even pretend that their media is independent the military censor is very strong but they have not claimed that any civilians were killed and Iran has said very clearly they were going after military targets and only military targets so it actually says a lot about how the Western propaganda narrative is in fact the complete polar inversion of reality the US government absurdly claims that Iran is a so-called State sponsor of terrorism which means nothing I mean let's not forget the South African anti-arty leader Nelson Mandela was on the US so-called terrorist list until 2008 over a decade after he became president of post-apartheid South Africa so the US claims any political leader or any political group that opposes the US Empire is a so-called terrorist that's why theya claim Cuba supposedly supports terrorism it's a nonsensical term but meanwhile Iran Only Hits military targets whereas Israel has been carrying out genocide massacring women and children who have been the majority of the victims in Gaza so that for me I think that fact alone if when people of course a lot of people don't know about this because of the propaganda in the western media but when people do learn about that I think it's a very eye- openening moment a lot of people you know in the in the runup to the November election Ben people who are fearful that Trump will launch Mass deportation against uh immigrants an openly explicitly racist policy uh that he will you know as he said obliterate Iranians cities that he will go to war again against Muslim people as he you know inaugurated his first term uh in in 2006 well before he was took office right after the election in 2016 said he was going to ban Muslims uh his position on abortion rights on I mean on there's so many issues that Donald Trump is just such an extreme reactionary and the Republican party is such an extremely reactionary organization uh so people think like okay I don't like the Democrats policy I don't like genocide I don't support what the Biden Harris Administration uh have done regarding Israel I don't like that but given the options we you know we have to choose the Lesser evil now okay that's an understandable argument in American politics in one way because absent a parliamentary system uh you know it's a winner take all it's the two ruling class parties you have independent socialist candidates like Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia from the party for socialism and Liberation there's of course uh Jill Stein Cornell West people who have a independent position but they're not allowed into the debates they're you know basically the Democrats are at war against the uh socialist candidates they've expelled uh Claudia from the ballot in Georgia Pennsylvania and Ohio now even though they the petitioners had met all the requirements so people think okay we don't have real options about who's going to win so we can have e either a protest vote to say no or we can vote for the Lesser evil okay so that's that's we all know this is the the dynamically bad nature of American democracy the tortured form of American democracy but I want to highlight for people that Dick Cheney who was the architect of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 you know when he was vice president for George W bush who all Democrats hated as a terrible war criminal people made movies about him they talked about Cheney was the real evil force uh behind George W bush that bush wasn't smart enough to be that evil that it took Cheney's intelligence to be that evil I mean that was I mean that's what we were all everybody knew that 20 years ago but now Cheney is supporting kamla Harris so are three other 300 other National Security officials many of whom were Republicans in the bush Cheney Administration who carried out all these heinous crimes in the Middle East they're supporting K Harris not because of for any other reason than they think Donald Trump because he's an unpredictable figure because he's mainly only concerned about Trump he might do things that somehow sort of departs from the dominant Narrative of ruling class imperialist politics like when he started to negotiate with Kim Jong-un for a possible peace treaty in in Korea so they don't want him only because he's unpredictable but I tell I'm I'm saying to people who you know don't want Trump how can you support an Administration the Harris wals Administration if it's got the support of Dick chain and all of these other warmongers and as we get closer and closer to the election you see Matthew Miller and Harris herself and Tim Walls echoing all of the lines of what used to be branded as the neoconservative politics of the George W Bush Administration these are now the politics the essence of the politics of the democratic party which doesn't mean that Trump isn't bad but it does mean that the Democrats offer no solution if you care about genocide racism colonialism oppression uh all of the manifestations of contemporary capitalism and imperialism and in the case of the expanding Regional war in the Middle East this can't be more Stark that's absolutely right people have to ask themselves where do you draw the line when in supporting the so-called lesser evil what kind of evil is no longer justifiable is Gen side justifiable lesser evil the the Biden Harris Administration has been sponsoring a genocide I mean h h we get to the point where people keep saying lesser evil lesser evil well the evil gets so bad that even the Lesser evil is so beyond the pale that there is no way of justifying these crimes and it's also something that you people need to think about in the medium to the long term of course us bgea so-called democracy which is not a democracy it's a plutocracy and it's a the so-called capitalist democracy is a system in which Rich billionaire oligarchs control the system they buy politicians through so-called campaign contributions then they they create policy through lobbying especially after citizens united the Supreme Court ruling just open the floodgates for an infinite amount of bribery which is legal in the US in many countries what happens in US politics is illegal but it's just common it's how politics is done in Washington but even aside from all of that people need to think of course busha democracy in the US prioritizes only the short term so people only think in two or four year Cycles but we need to think about what the the medium to long-term effects are on us society which is becoming more and more violent more and more extreme we see so much systemic structural violence just everywhere you look and whether it's the police brutality against black people against Latinos against indigenous Nations whether it's the homelessness which I mean is just so overwhelming in big cities it's just incredible and when you travel around the world as I fortunately have had the opportunity to do you can see that it's not normal in in most other big cities even in the global South even in very poor countries you don't see this kind of extreme homelessness now there are of course people living in you know uh Shanty towns and such but they at least have something over their head I mean the the barbarism of capitalism in the US is just so extreme and in yourr face and then when it comes to health care and the price gouging and then now in if you look at Wall Street with the growing inequality and asset managers buying up apartment blocks and now one of the main funders of Donald Trump the most highest paid the highest paid corporate executive on Wall Street step schwarzman who's the CEO of the asset manager and and private Equity Fund Blackstone it's this is the largest corporate landlord on Earth they have 300,000 housing units that they own in the US they have these corporate landlords are just taking over huge parts of housing in the US and charging exorbitant rates so increasingly landlords were already bad enough when you had some horrible slum Lord who refused to fix a broken faucet but now you don't even have a real person as your landlord your landlord is this abstract corporate monstrosity on Wall Street that is sucking wealth out of everything and giving it to a small handful of oligarchs the point is that us Society is becoming so brutal and the Democrats say you just have to keep voting for us because we're the Lesser evil and every four years every two years every four years politics keeps lurching to the right moving to the right moving to the right I remember very well when Bush was president because for me that was my political Awakening I was a teenager I remember going to protest against the Iraq War it was really an eye-opening moment that and the financial crisis made me who I am I mean and I think for my generation there are a lot of people seeing the flagrant violation of international law the US killed more than one million Iraqis in a war of aggression I mean that that changed me and then the 2008 financial crisis caused by these neoliberal policies I mean you can see the the barbarism of the US regime I it's not this is not a democratic government it's a regime and then you can see that the political class says well every few years you just have to support the Democrats because they're a lesser evil even though they keep normalizing the worst crimes of 20 years ago so now rightfully the Democrats wanted nothing to do with George Bush in the 2000s and there was all this in pop culture there was there was this great moment of all this anti-bush you know uh uh anti-bush come kind of like cultural moment you saw like bands like Green Day American Idiot you know all this stuff it was very popular right everyone hated Bush it was like cool to be anti-bush and then now here we are less than 20 years later and the Democratic party is praising Bush and the most blood soaked criminal neoconservatives in his administration and saying yeah they support us so we have the biggest possible tent imaginable so I what I what worries me imagine in 20 years from now they're going to be rehabilitating Donald Trump when we have Adolf Hitler two. know I mean of course I shouldn't be flipping about these things they can be very dangerous obviously but you get the point I'm getting at people keep acting like Trump is the worst possible thing that could ever exist but we now see open white supremacists open fascist forces in the Republican Party who not only talk about mass deportations of undocumented immigrants they're talking about deportations of citizens who are black citizens Latino citizens they they want to create a white ethn State I mean we're talking about about extreme fascistic politics becoming more and more mainstream in the US and people expect that oh well you know if we just vote for the wide the broad tent of the neoconservatives and the right-wing Democrats then we'll just eventually things will be better but how are things going to get better we we've I've been told this my entire life keep voting for the Lesser evil and things will get better and we're got we got to the point where now the same people who said we have to vote for the Lesser evil against George Bush are now saying we have to vote for George Bush's allies because they're the Lesser evil there's no end to that logic at some point you have to draw a line and if you don't draw the line at genocide unfortunately I don't think people will ever draw the line yes I I agree with you um you know in in the other element of this I want to turn to another Topic in a moment but another element of this of course Ben is that the United States has been so racist and premised it's the capitalist system here and the country's existence has been premised on racism against Black America against the black community against indigenous people uh the fact that you know it took 200 years for a black person a black man in the case of OB Barack Obama to become president I mean many people in Black America were understandably feeling feeling like this is a step forward Against Racism because finally after hundreds of years hundreds of years of first slavery and Jim Crow and then just brutal racism of all types to have a black man named Barack Obama become president that's that's a sign and the fact that so many uh white people even voted for Barack Obama is also a sign of progress in the case of in the in the case of kamla Harris if she becomes president she'll be the first black woman to be president and the first woman to become president so those are understandable um you know sentiments because people The Fight Against Racism and sexism has been but racism in America especially targeting Black America has been such a a principal vehicle for the emergence of capitalism and imperialism so this is the Dilemma of us politics it's a complicated dilemma in many ways but I think what we're trying to emphasize here is that if there're if if we supporting the Democratic party not because of who their candidate is or isn't not the personality not the the person themselves but the institution of the democratic party it is a capitalist ruling class institution it is at the center of imperialism and the Republican party is at the center of of imperialism and in that sense uh people don't really have an option because if you're voting for them if you're supporting either party you're ending up basically forced to to to vote for those parties that are going to oppress you and oppress other people around the world I mean Lenin said the um Baja democracy people have the opportunity every few years two or four in the case of the United States to vote for who will oppress them for the next period of time that's the variety offered the working class and oppressed people under the system of capitalism anyway I want to turn to another topic as we sort of move towards towards the end here but I want to go back to the geopolitics of this and you and your you all of your work your studies are are premised on a geopolitical assessment uh you do amazing work I want people at the end will'll have people will will tell people again how to go to your website because you're looking at geostrategic and economic Trends on a global scale and I think they're so important the contributions you're making but let's go back to this geostrategic sort of intervention on the part of Barack Obama back in 2011 where he was trying to bring US troops and was bringing US troops out of Iraq after they had invaded in 2003 and he said in in Australia it's time for a pivot to Asia now what did that mean people weren't really certain what it meant because it was IL defined it was kind of like just became a slogan pivot to Asia well what it meant from a geostrategic point of view was to Pivot away from endless Wars that the US was basically losing in the Middle East and getting bogged down in the Middle East or in the case of Afghanistan South Asia um or Central Asia that that the that the US needed to move towards towards pivot towards Asia to confront China it wasn't really like for peace it was for another kind of Confrontation but a confrontation with China and Obama represented a wing of the political establishment in the US that made the argument by endless wars in the Middle East all we're doing is allowing China to rise peacefully when what we should be doing is using our air force and Naval power to confront and contain China so that they can't rise peacefully I mean that was the basic message we it wasn't immediately clear in 2011 it's certainly clear now because the pivot to Asia has been in full swing but the us at the same time Ben isn't able to or doesn't seem able to do the pivot now I mean it it has pivoted it has said sent 60% of US Naval and Air Force assets to the Pacific but it's involved in another endless war in the Middle East bogged down in Endless losing Wars and I want to talk about this dynamic because it's really an interesting and important more not interesting so much but an important contradiction for imperialism for us imperialism I want to go back to 2015 uh and Netanyahu was I'm we're going to play a clip of Netanyahu speaking before Congress or two clips actually here's a Obama representing the US ruling class saying let's pivot to Asia let's get out of endless war in the Middle East let's have a nuclear arms deal with Iran let's have the beginning of semi normalization of relations with Iran which actually happened in 2015 and yet Netanyahu who was then head of state of Israel was invited by the Republicans and the Democrats accepted where he spoke to before both houses of the US Congress trashing completely trashing President Obama's main foreign policy objective the sitting president of the United States so Netanyahu comes to the US Congress and basically even though he said some nice words about Obama which were kind of throwaway lines basically trashing his foreign policy and both parties rise in support and give Ovation after Ovation after ovasion to Netanyahu as he's trashing Obama and now here we are you know less than a decade later but Trump trashed the nuclear arms deal Biden continued Trump's policy uh and the US has bogged down in another mid East War let's hear Netanyahu and then I want to get your your thoughts this is an important contradiction that haunts us imperialism in its geostrategic plans let's listen to Netanyahu 2005 before Congress Iran's goons in Gaza its Lackey and Lebanon its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of Terror backed by Iran Assad is slaughtering syrians backed by Iran Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq backed by Iran hutis are seizing control of Yemen threatening the Strategic Straits at the mouth of the Red Sea along with the Straits of huz that would give Iran a second sh choke point on the world's oil supply uh Ben I mean at that moment Obama was involved in negotiations to try to have an agreement with Iran Netanyahu comes before both houses of Congress we could have shown the 30 seconds of constant Ovations for him I mean it was way more than 30 seconds but sustained almost minute long Ovation let's talk about this contradiction for us imperialism China is rising um Iran is stronger in spite of sanctions Russia is back on its feet you know we have all of these indications of a multi-polar world the US unipolar power era following the collapse of the Soviet Union it's not fully ended but it's m you know it's ending uh let's talk about that contradiction I want to get your thoughts about it absolutely well you have to think of it also from the perspective of us Imperial planners right because there are a lot of people in Washington whose job is to sit around and think about how the US can project power around the world try to maintain a hegemonic control over the different regions of the world and this is something that we've seen for for decades that us Imperial planners have always emphasized the importance of dividing the different powers in Asia among each other because you can divide and conquer that way and if you go back and read in in the 1990s the former US National Security adviser SPV binski who was the architect of the famous proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in which the CIA aborted the mujahedin that became Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to try to overthrow the Afghan socialist government which was allied with the Soviet Union well binski was one of these Imperial strategists along with people like Kissinger who you know wrote many books and in brin's case he published a book in 1997 which is called the Grand chess board and he he perceives the world in this way as a chess board and he wants the US Empire to win this chess game and dominate the world and the the biggest fear that he had was he was expressed concern over the possibility of what he called an anti-hegemonic Coalition of China Russia and Iran and for decades US policy was to try to separate China Russia and Iran going back to the 1970s when um Kissinger in the ni Administration famously oversaw the normalization of ties with China you Brian have done a great series on on this program on the sinos Soviet split and the history behind that essentially the US was taking advantage of this very unfortunate historical tragedy of the sinos Soviet split and trying to further uh increase that divide and try to normalize with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union and they were ultimately successful in that and when Trump came in Trump wanted to do the exact opposite and actually Kissinger encouraged Trump to try to improve relations with Russia in order to try to separate Russia and China in what was known as kerian triangulation but it was the reverse of what happened in the 70s but actually although it is a little well known that Trump tried that and this led to the whole Russia gate thing which ironically sabotaged those attempts although I think they were ultimately fule because we've seen that Russia and China have economically integrated in so many ways they have very complimentary economies but what also is forgotten is that part of the pivot to Asia that the Obama Administration declared which this was in the first Hillary Clinton the first term of the Obama which was when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State Hill Hillary Clinton also had a strategy that was referred to as the Russia reset and famously she met with Russian foreign minister Ser lavro with a big red button and they pressed the button and said we're going to reset Russia relations and then of course you have the Iran nuclear deal which the us obviously they didn't expect Iran to move into the Western camp but they wanted Iran to try to be neutral because they were preparing for war on China and as you often point out Brian I like this phrase that I've actually stolen from you sometimes when they say pivot to Asia they mean war in Asia it's not pivot to peace in Asia it's pivot to war in Asia and specifically War on China and then you start having all this propaganda about the South China Sea South China Sea I remember in the 2016 presidential campaign there in the debates they were just all everyone in the both Republican and Democratic parties were arguing about the South China Sea and then you have all this propaganda about Taiwan which has been part of China for hundreds of years and when the US normalized relations with China with the People's Republic of China the US recognized that there's only one China and that on both sides of the Taiwan straight they recognize that there is only one China Taiwan is part of China but the US recognized that legally in the three communes in the 70s and early 80s that established us PRC relations but in spirit the US has been violating that agreement so the point I'm getting at here is that this has been prepared for for many years in fact if you go even back to the Bush Administration we were talking about some of the neoconservative forces which have now become completely bipartisan what's interesting is that if you go back and look at some of their early documents before 911 a lot of their focus was of course on Iran but also on China and this goes back to you know the late 1980s and the attempt at trying to overthrow the Chinese government and the sanctions on China in 1989 and all of that dun sha ping gave a very fascinating speech in 1989 it's not that it's not very well known and dun sha ping famously said that the US is starting he said just when we think that the cold war is over the US is starting a new Cold War and it's on both the socialist countries and the global South as a whole he said that in 1989 so uh you know this idea that we're in a new cold war is actually not so new but the point is is that you know there was all this obsession with trying to after the overthrow of the Soviet Union in 1991 in which the CIA and US played a key role along with you know traitorous forces in in in Moscow also there was an attempt to do the same in China CH and many people assumed that even if the Chinese government the Communist party was not directly overthrown there would be some kind of Gorbachev figure who would come to power and especially when Clinton allowed China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 that China would you know just become a complete capitalist country eventually the Communist Party would be overthrown they were obviously wrong about that and we see that in recent years I mean the Communist Party always maintained a socialist line um despite the market reforms it still is a market social a socialist market economy in which the state plays a key role about one-third of GDP comes from state owned Enterprises which are concentrated in the the Strategic commanding Heights of the economy in China the banking system is state owned the infrastructure companies are state-owned the metal working electrical grid is all state-owned telecommunications is state-owned so much of the important parts of the economy remain state owned following a unique socialist model but the point is is that us assumed that China would follow the same path as the former Soviet Union it did not do so so then the Bush Administration was considering ways to try to subvert China and then 911 happened and they moved a lot of their attention to the so-called war on terror and this essentially allowed China some more Breathing Room although of course the US never really gave up the National Endowment for democracy which is a CIA cutout was always active supporting you know neoliberal groups in China anti-government groups but the point is is that China did not be it was not at the top of the list but now what we've seen especially in the past decade is that China's economic rise has been absolutely remarkable there is nothing like it in in modern history 800 million people being lifted out of poverty through a state-led anti-poverty campaign China has also moved to the highest level in the global value chain of producing very advanced technology and essentially the deal was when Nixon normalized relations with China when Clinton allowed China to join the WTO the deal was that the US would allow China to integrate into the US dominated Global Financial system and global trade under the condition that China would simply produce cheap consumer goods for Western markets which was a way for the US and Europe to maintain low inflation rates despite the fact that real wages have been stagnant since the neoliberal era in about 19 76 real wages have been stagnant but despite the fact that obviously there were very high costs of education and and Health Care and housing the average person they they did feel that in some areas but when it come to consumer goods you know when it came to household appliances Furniture clothing basic Electronics people felt that they at least had slightly better lives because they were able to get access to these very cheap Goods Goods that were produced in China and basically the US deal was we'll allow China to do that as long as China remains in this subordinated position as long as China does not try to compete with our big Tech monopolies will allow Outsourcing of the low value added Commodities that aren't that important for our economy but China will not be allowed to compete with our Silicon Valley monopolies China's gotten to the point where not only is it competing but it's actually out competing them which is why the US is now returning to tariffs and adopting this this fantasy of the free market which has never exist and never will exist you know it's always with the dominant economic power preaches this is what the British Empire did but they never actually practiced free trade so anyway how does this relate to the US strategy in West Asia the point is is that us Imperial strategists have this intractable contradiction that they're that they're facing which is that they want to maintain what they know what they call full spectrum dominance or if you go back to the the wolfowitz doctrine in the 1990s after the overthrow of the Soviet Union us Imperial strategist said quite clearly we must prevent the emergence of any near peer strategic competitor we cannot allow any country become as powerful or nearly as powerful as we are so we we must do whatever we can to divide the different powers and divide Russia and China from Iran divide Russia from China try to create more conflict between India and China to try to break up institutions like bricks these are the kinds of policies that are discussed in Washington sometimes quite openly in think tanks like the Atlantic Council and when it came to the pivot to China all of what the Obama Administration was doing was trying to isolate China to prepare for war on China but for a variety of reasons they were unable to do so which ultimately reflects the fact that the US Empire is not omnipotent they cannot maintain control over every region of the world they can't try to control all Latin America all of Africa through africam all of West Asia through these constant Wars using Israel as as a Launchpad to wage all these wars in the other countries in the region and now of course in East Asia and of course EUR Asia with Russia and Ukraine I mean despite the fact that the US has this Rumple s skin policy of being able to print dollars which is the global Reserve currency and Export inflation around the world and doesn't feel it in the way that other countries don't have that ability to do and you know Janet yelen the US Secretary of the Treasury she famously said a few months ago she said yeah we can afford funding these different Wars because of course the US can just print the money that it needs to fund these wars but the reality is that despite that despite the many advantages that the US built for itself when it built its Empire this Imperial infrastructure after World War II it's not omnipotent we see that in Latin America the resistance forces the Anti-Imperialist forces have always rebelled against us imperialism whether that's Cuba Nicaragua Venezuela Bolivia across the region they always have failed to try to colonize Latin America we see that especially in West Asia with the resistance forces in Palestine in Lebanon inyria and Iraq and Iran and Yemen we see that increasingly in Africa in the Sahel and Burkina Faso and Mali and ner we see that certainly in East Asia with China on the rise Vietnam on the rise and many countries simply saying even if we're not going to openly challenge the US Empire we want to at least have our own independent development path and we want to pursue non-alignment to create a more democratic World Order which many people in the global South have been referring to as a multi-polar world but you can also really think about it as the kind of New non-aligned Movement trying to re re revive the spirit of the bandom conference of 1955 and create alternative financial and Economic Institutions so countries can finally pursue some kind of alternative economic path whether that's socialist whether it's some kind of nationalist path like we see in countries like Indonesia like we see increasingly in Latin America and as well I mean the reality is that the US dominated Financial system is one of the strongest tools of the US Empire had to impose neoliberal Orthodoxy and countries especially after the overthrow of the Soviet Union there really no other economic alternatives for countries any country that tried to pursue an independent economic path was put under brutal sanctions and a blockade like Cuba or was overthrown like former Yugoslavia in in NATO us NATO Wars we're finally getting to a point where again there are these alternative infrastructure and institutions being built that allow alternative Paths of development and the US is desperate to try to Snuff those out to destroy all them but it's again facing this intractable contradiction because the resistance has grown so much in so many regions that the Empire can no longer hold everything together and it it tries to move forces to East Asia but then it loses more and more control of West Asia the so-called Middle East so then it has to bring forces back so it can't and then in Latin America there's constant rebellions going on now in Africa their forces are kicking out the French neocolonial forces and the US neocolonial Force so at some point the system is going to break what concerns me though is that I think some extreme Hawks in Washington recognize that their days are numbered their empire no longer can try to maintain unipolar control over the world like it had or at least it tried to impose in the 1990s what concerns me is that they they think their calculation is that in this historical moment if we wait another decade we will be too weak to try to to try to decapitate China so instead what concerns me is that some of these extremists say we should act now war on China World War II because otherwise it means the gradual decline of our hegemony yeah and of course Netanyahu and the Israelis don't want the US to Pivot to Asia or anywhere else the Israelis have a very particular interest to maintain us focus on Israel's agenda uh in the Middle East and as a consequence uh you know that sort of connects the United States to a a strategy it can't avoid there is the other factor which of course we saw on October 7th and and that is that the Palestinian resistance movement in spite of all obstacles I won't stop fighting and the Israelis and the Americans can say well October 7th was a terrorist attack but in fact uh the fighters who came across Gaza across that border across that wall they were going into areas of Israel that had been Arab homes Arab Villages that had been burned down and destroyed by the Israeli regime so uh this Spirit of resistance on the part of the Palestinians won't die there's solidarity from other Arab uh people and other peoples in the Middle East that won't die so this is a a contradiction that us imperialism can't escape and that the Israeli regime in spite of all of its military prowess also cannot Escape anyway we're going to leave it right there uh Ben Norton I want to just tell people how to reach you or reach your website it's geopolitical economy.com geopolitical economy.com Ben Norton thank you so much thanks so much Brian keep up the great work that you do and sending love to everyone at breakthrough it's probably the best media Outlet out there so keep up the amazing work thanks so much