Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Sachs, Seizures, and Sanctions: UN Smackdown as Trump’s Venezuela Raid, Arctic Grab, and NATO “Willing” Circus Escalate Worldwide

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Sachs, Seizures, and Sanctions: UN Smackdown as Trump’s Venezuela Raid, Arctic Grab, and NATO “Willing” Circus Escalate Worldwide · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Good morning. I am Samuel Trapp. This is International Flavor.
• 0:03
  You are listening to DAM Radio. I'm very glad to have you today.
• 0:10
  Once again, I am just somewhat stretching around here, finding all kinds of content to discuss
• 0:22
  and go through and having a very good time. But I have found over the last few days,
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  uh, some, some fakes out there. There's some fakes running around. This is not one,
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  the one I'm going to play you. I've got a, a cut lined up. It's only nine minutes long
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  and it is at the UN, um, a couple of days ago. Uh, I know, I think it was Monday
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  and it's had 1,373, actually it was yesterday. It came up 1,374,000 views.
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  It's Jeffrey Sachs speaking at the UN. He gave a, um, you know, scathing takedown of,
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  uh, US action and the power grab of what's going on. It's a, it's a, if nothing else,
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  it's entertaining, um, to listen to him. He's always been, I don't want to say always right,
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  but he is, uh, he's certainly, uh, well-versed in what's been going on and he's been on the
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  international stage forever. And, uh, he, um, he isn't afraid, you know, and, and I'm glad of that.
• 1:43
  I think he's, um, he's got plenty to add to the mix, by the way, if you feel like calling in
• 1:50
  573-746-8020. I'm really not feeling well this morning. I slept maybe an hour. I have
• 1:59
  serious problems sleeping and last night was particularly horrible. I don't know.
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  It's a pretty damn sad, but I want to provide to you and I, and I, and I want to go through it.
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  I know it's only nine minutes, but I want to go over the, uh, the relatively,
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  uh, I want to go through it slowly, like stop it, discuss it. Um, you know, put some commentary on
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  it because he, I mean, he's, I listened to it twice trying to find anything he was incorrect
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  on, you know, and trying to say, well, you know, that there could be another way to look at this,
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  but I can't find it. And, uh, I'm sure all the, all those who believe that, uh, this is an
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  existential threat to America, um, you know, which I disagree with. And I have a bit of an analysis
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  that was a pretty good one after that. But before I get, you know, that I, that I have to share with
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  you, but, um, I want to, uh, I want to share with you first, the Jeffrey Sachs, where we get started
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  over Venezuela. And, uh, you know, I think everybody needs to, uh, uh, needs to hear this
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  needs to understand what is occurring in the world. And, uh, this, this is, uh, a big deal.
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  Now, by the way, there's a ship that, uh, a Russian ship that has submarines underneath it.
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  That is, uh, West of, uh, West of, uh, England or Ireland. And it was a, um,
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  a tanker that was outside and they, there was a whole bunch of ships that attempted to run
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  the blockade of us, uh, ships. And, uh, the Russian ship got past them and they got pretty
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  damn far and they got, um, all the way to, uh, uh, near England and were headed for the,
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  for the North sea there. And, uh, whether they were, I couldn't tell from the map, whether they
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  were headed toward, um, toward, uh, the, the, the North, um, to go up into the Arctic circle
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  or whether they were headed into the, uh, into, uh, get into the Baltic sea. And I'm not sure
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  where it's going to go, but, uh, it's been, it's been quite the, quite the chase over,
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  over all of yesterday afternoon and, uh, evening. And apparently there were U.S. Blackhawks and
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  stuff like that that were, uh, outside of the, um, uh, you know, on the West half of, uh,
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  of England, Ireland, wherever, whatever the British Isles that they were on the West side
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  of that. And there, there, uh, there's now I see something up on the, on the news that says there's,
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  um, um, U.S. forces trying to board a Russian ship. That is not good. You know? Um, and,
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  and everybody's talking about the idiot, Lindsey Graham putting on a hat. He had a hat made now
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  he's creating merch that says, uh, make Iran great again. Guy's an idiot. And, uh, uh, he's
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  that guy, that guy's gonna start world war III. He's, he's, he's gonna, the guy's a horror story.
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  And, uh, I'm, I'm very much against that, uh, that piece of dog meat if you can tell from my show
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  at all. But, uh, I think I'm going to do the nine minutes. Um, and, uh, you know,
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  where, wherever Trump is going now, he sure as hell isn't the president of peace any longer.
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  Those days are gone. This guy is, uh, uh, fully on board. He didn't get his Nobel peace prize.
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  And so all of a sudden, well, we're, we're bombing the shit out of Venezuela. Then we're
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  going, well, you know, Hey, uh, it looks like we're going into Iran and no, no, no need for
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  UN security council, no need for congressional approval, nothing. You just need Lindsey Graham.
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  It's all you need. And, uh, he can, you know, justify anything, you know, call it, I don't know,
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  you know, call it a tea party, you know, call it, call it something entertaining like that.
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  Cause, uh, you know, you can't call it a war because, uh, then you would need congressional
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  approval while you truthfully, if you're gonna, uh, follow your treaties that are international
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  in nature, then you really got to pay attention to the security council, you know, and the security
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  council is where we turn with Mr. Jeffrey Sachs. And he's introduced first by the current president
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  of the UN security council. Uh, let's see if I can get this all teed up for us. Here we go.
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  I now give the floor to Mr. Jeffrey Sachs, Mr. President distinguished members of the security
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  council. The issue before the council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela.
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  The issue is whether any member state by force coercion or economic strangulation has the right
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  to determine Venezuela's political future or to exercise control over its affairs.
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  This question goes directly to article two section four of the United nations charter,
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  which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity
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  or political independence of any state. The council must decide whether that prohibition
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  is to be upheld or abandoned. Abandoning it would carry consequences of the greatest kind.
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  Let me offer some background. Since 1947, the United States foreign policy has repeatedly
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  employed force covert action and political manipulation to bring about regime change
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  in other countries. This is a matter of carefully documented historical record
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  in her book, covert regime change. Political scientists, Lindsay O'Rourke documents
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  70 attempted us regime change operations between 1947 and 1989 alone.
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  These practices did not end with the cold war since 1989, major United States regime change
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  operations undertaken without authorization by the security council have included among the most
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  consequential Iraq, 2003, Libya, 2011, Syria, beginning in 2011, Honduras, 2009, Ukraine,
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  2014, and Venezuela from 2002 onward. The methods employed are well-established and well-documented.
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  They include open warfare, covert intelligence operations, instigation of unrest, support for
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  armed groups, manipulation of mass and social media, bribery of military and civilian officials,
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  targeted assassinations, false flag operations, and economic warfare. These measures are illegal
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  under the UN charter, and they typically result in ongoing violence, lethal conflict,
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  political instability, and deep suffering of the civilian population.
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  The recent US record with respect to Venezuela is also clear. In April 2002, the US knew of
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  and approved an attempted coup against the government. In the 2010s, the United States
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  funded civil society groups actively engaged in anti-government protests. When the government
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  cracked down on the protests, the US followed with a series of sanctions. In 2015, President
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  Barack Obama declared Venezuela to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security
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  and foreign policy of the United States. In 2017, at a dinner with Latin American leaders on the
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  margin of the UN General Assembly, President Trump openly discussed the option of the US
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  invading Venezuela to overthrow the government. During 2017 to 2020, the United States imposed
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  sweeping sanctions on the state oil company PDVSA. Oil production fell by 75 percent from 2016 to
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  2020, and the real GDP per capita declined by 62 percent. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly
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  voted overwhelmingly against such unilateral, coercive measures. Under international law,
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  only the Security Council has the authority to impose such measures. On the 23rd of January
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  2019, the United States unilaterally recognized Mr. Juan Guaido as interim president, and a few
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  days later, froze approximately $7 billion of Venezuelan sovereign assets held abroad
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  and gave the designated authority over certain of these assets. These actions form part of a
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  continuous US regime change effort spanning more than two decades. In the past year,
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  the United States has carried out bombing operations in seven countries, none of which
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  were authorized by the UN Security Council, and none of which were undertaken in lawful self-defense
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  under the Charter. The targeted countries include Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria,
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  Yemen, and now Venezuela. In the past month, President Trump has issued direct threats
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  against six UN member states, including Colombia, Denmark, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria,
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  and of course, Venezuela. Members of the Council are not called upon to judge Nicholas Maduro.
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  They are not called upon to assess whether the recent US attack and ongoing naval quarantine
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  results in freedom or in subjugation. Members of the Council are called upon to defend international
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  law, and specifically, the UN Charter. The realist school of international relations,
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  articulated most brilliantly by John Mearsheimer, accurately describes the condition of international
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  anarchy as the tragedy of great power politics. Realism is therefore a description,
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  not a solution for peace. Its own conclusion is that anarchy leads to tragedy. In the aftermath
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  of World War I, the League of Nations was created to end the tragedy through the application of
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  international law. Yet the world's leading nations failed to defend international law in the 1930s,
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  leading to a renewed global war. The United Nations emerged from that catastrophe as
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  humanity's second great effort to place international law above international anarchy.
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  In the words of the Charter, the UN was created to save succeeding generations
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  from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.
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  Given that we are in the nuclear age, failure cannot be repeated. Humanity would perish.
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  There would be no third chance. To fulfill its responsibilities under the Charter,
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  the Security Council should immediately affirm the following actions. The United States shall
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  immediately cease and desist from all explicit and implicit threats or use of force against
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  Venezuela. The United States shall terminate its naval quarantine and all related coercive
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  military measures undertaken in the absence of authorization by the UN Security Council.
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  The United States shall immediately withdraw its military forces from within and along the
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  perimeter of Venezuela, including intelligence, naval, air, and other forward-deployed assets
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  positioned for coercive purposes. Venezuela shall adhere to the UN Charter and to the
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  human rights protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Secretary
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  General, I recommend, should immediately appoint a Special Envoy mandated to engage relevant
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  Venezuelan and international stakeholders and to report back to the Security Council
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  within 14 days with recommendations consistent with the Charter, and the Security Council
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  should remain urgently seized of this matter. All member states should refrain from unilateral
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  threats, coercive measures, or armed actions undertaken outside the authority of the UN
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  Security Council. In closing, Mr. President and distinguished members of the Council,
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  peace and the survival of humanity depend on whether the United Nations Charter remains
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  a living instrument of international law or is allowed to wither into irrelevance.
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  That is the choice before this Council today. Thank you very much.
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  I tell you what, that was a kind of a brutal takedown, you know, of the complete
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  lack of law that we follow. You know, I speak on this program fairly often about
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  rules for the but never for me, and this is yet another example of it. And my despising
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  Lindsey Graham aside, you know, and people like him, which is Marco Rubio now, he's getting out
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  there and talking about how, how wonderful this all is right now. And he is, you know, talking
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  about how, you know, we, this is all justified, because there's oil in Venezuela. Okay, that
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  is the only justification of this whole thing. So they started with the premise that, you know,
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  it was all about Maduro being a criminal, and that's that. And, you know, it's, that's it.
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  You know, we were told we were bombing people and killing and blowing up small ships, small boats,
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  with two, three, four people on them at a time, so that, so the drugs wouldn't get to the United
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  States. Now, where's all of that now? Where's the discussion about that little tidbit, which we all
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  knew was a lie then, you know, and now, and we knew they were doing it, because they were testing
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  Americans to see if Americans would put up some kind of a, some kind of a, hey, wait a minute,
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  that's not right. And of course, we didn't. It's like, there were a few of us that bitched,
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  but everybody else is going, yeah, take him out. And we're just killing people, you know, we're
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  blowing them up. And I always was saying, I mean, always, it's only been two, three months,
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  but I was always saying, all right, well, if that's the case, why aren't we blowing up the
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  crack house in East St. Louis? Why aren't we blowing up the meth lab and, you know, just
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  blow it up? You know, we don't give a crap, you know, who's on it. You know, if the cops know
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  where they are, that means we just call in the military and blow it up. That's, that replaces
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  law, right? That replaces any sort of civil rights or any sort of thing at all. The law of the sea,
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  oh, that doesn't count anymore. Are you kidding me? We're the biggest, baddest dog around,
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  and we're going to force world war three or Russia, you're going to stop the, um,
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  the, uh, the boat, or, you know, the ship that you've got headed around the North sea and going
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  into there. But that, that thing is being tracked by several, um, submarines, Russian nuclear
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  submarines that are around it is what I have been, uh, led to understand and that I've been
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  following. We are pushing the buttons and there's another sort of, uh, uh, another sort of way to go.
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  So remember that this, um, uh, there was a fake John Mearsheimer video that, uh, that I have been,
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  uh, trying to dig into. And it was actually rather entertaining because the AI on it was so good
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  that, uh, the guy was speaking Russian quite well. And, uh, and it was an interesting story,
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  the title and, and, and what, uh, threw me off in the beginning is Mearsheimer and far as I'm aware,
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  doesn't speak Russian, but maybe he does. I don't know, but, uh, it started out and it
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  was supposed to be, uh, an hour and a half long and it turned out to be, uh, 13 minutes.
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  And it was an interesting statement. Now it isn't, it is absolutely, uh, from my research,
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  it cannot be attributable to John Mearsheimer. Okay. But it's, uh, if you start with combining
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  the facts that, um, that, uh, were just laid out in the UN by Jeffrey Sachs and then tie it in to
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  the money that we know Russia and China have put into Venezuela and you put in the same, you know,
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  you add on for the end of that, the ship cruising, uh, up past England right now with the U S and
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  hot pursuit. Click, click, click. No, we should be rush school. Pico train. That is, uh, uh,
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  Trump and companies, Roscoe Pico train and, uh, uh, Lindsey Graham is boss hog every day.
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  We could have different, different numbskulls that are, uh, that are running the planet.
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  You know, there's Hatcher County. We're going to get them Duke boys. We're going to get them
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  Putin boys. And, uh, that's, that's what we're after right now is trying to create world war
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  three. Were any of you paying attention yesterday to the, uh, the new coalition of the willing
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  commentary coming out. And, uh, this is, uh, again, everybody knows this is crap. And right
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  now, and that idiot, um, uh, Starmer is, uh, he and McCrone and Zelensky have met now,
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  guess who else is there though? Jared Kushner. He's there. And, uh, now he is, uh, he's a
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  businessman. He makes deals. He's not a politician. He creates things. Let me get my
• 22:27
  glasses. Cause I want to share this with you. Hang on. And I want to share what these nuts are doing
• 22:36
  now. Um, let's see my little iPad is well, it's a tablet actually. Um,
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  Venezuela is one of the biggest pressure points of the, of the new multipolar world. I want to
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  get back to that. But before I do, I want to talk about this, um, you know, whether or not
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  that now there's, there's allegedly S four hundreds that were in and Trump made some
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  comment about them and how the, Oh, geez, they all failed in Russia. Well, uh, they, um, uh,
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  they have some advisors and they have some things like that, that have actually been in, um,
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  Venezuela, China as well. The numbers that China is given is about, uh, uh, they're saying these,
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  they have invested about a hundred million in the last 10 to 15 years inside of Venezuela.
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  Obviously Venezuela is a touch point. And it is true that, um, that, uh, Barack Obama started
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  making these big deals about Venezuela way back when, and none of us were paying attention to
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  it because, you know, you don't go and destroy, um, you don't go and destroy the, uh, the world
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  because of oil. I said, well, we do, but that's, that is not what people were, uh,
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  people thought it was an unreal, unreal threat, you know, and, and this, uh, escalation that has
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  come about in the last, um, a couple of months is, you know, because of drugs and nonsensical
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  stuff like that is now coming out. And Trump has come out and said specifically what all the rest
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  of us already, you know, figured long ago that this was completely about, um, resources, oil,
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  gas, anything else, name it, gold. And so I heard one Russian commentary yesterday,
• 24:45
  talk about this ship cruising along in, uh, uh, outside of England as being full of, uh, of gold.
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  It doesn't have oil on it and it's not Venezuelan oil that's under sanctions. And even so,
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  what right do you have anywhere in the world to just stop boat, you know, commercial traffic boats
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  anywhere you want. Right. I, I, I am truly against that. And, uh, we, we are now clearly
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  in bully territory, you know, that's, um, uh, you know, the realism, the great powers, the hate
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  rivals coming near their own borders. Okay. Now we've done it to Russia by creating things in,
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  in Ukraine by regime change, right on the border of Russia. And now that it's happening in
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  Venezuela, what are we saying? What are we saying? We're saying the exact same thing that Russia has
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  been saying for years. Well, when, and we jumped straight to straight to 10, well, that went
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  straight to 10, you know, we're just blowing people up. That's, that's how it goes. We go straight
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  to 10. And, uh, now the whole world is wondering, I mean, what nuts are, and by the way,
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  the push toward D dollarization and getting rid of the petro dollar, which was all done in,
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  in, uh, IMF was all done in world bank was all done, uh, with, with U S dollars
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  is now gonna go much faster. China has already created their alternative payment structures.
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  So has Russia. Everybody is paying. I heard an interesting analysis yesterday that, uh,
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  you know, certainly rings true. And, uh, it wouldn't surprise me if this is not the case. So
• 26:50
  it goes like this, that the people, so, so it starts with 3 trillion being borrowed each and
• 27:01
  every year by the United States. Okay. Donald Trump knows this 3 trillion each year being
• 27:12
  borrowed by the United States. That's an enormous freaking number. Okay. And
• 27:19
  instead of people buying because of the petro dollar, because of a stable dollar, because of
• 27:27
  what people are doing worldwide. And I've been reporting on this for a year and a half people
• 27:33
  are selling. China has sold truckloads. I mean billions and billions every quarter.
• 27:45
  And guess who else has Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, isn't taking American debt. I told you that
• 27:53
  except in, uh, they are, but in much, much smaller numbers and everybody is doing it.
• 27:58
  And every time we do something like Venezuela, what are you going to do? You're going to start
• 28:05
  the push even faster to diversify. Nobody's saying the dollar's going to collapse tomorrow,
• 28:13
  but the U S debt is going to be huge. Nobody trusts us. They don't trust us in the UN.
• 28:22
  They sure as hell don't trust us in Europe. And the, so, so the start of all of this starts with
• 28:31
  huge money, big finance, right? With big, big finance. And they know that the U S is going to
• 28:39
  find it harder and harder to fund its debt, to fund the fact that we have been able to sit on the
• 28:51
  shoulders of the rest of the world's assets and watch our, because the more currency they need,
• 29:02
  you know, if everything's traded in the dollar, the entire world is our oyster.
• 29:06
  Well, that is not the case anymore. Certainly China is limiting that. And is it, is it going
• 29:11
  to be done tomorrow? No, it's not, but it is getting harder and harder to find takers
• 29:19
  for American debt everywhere, because there's no there's no security in it. There's no,
• 29:32
  I mean, assets are being stolen. You know, assets are being frozen all over the place, right? We're
• 29:39
  freezing assets everywhere. So that's part number one. And who knows this Trump, the businessman
• 29:45
  who else knows this, you know, Lindsey Graham, I think is an idiot, but, but, well, that's only
• 29:51
  because of his, uh, of his, uh, uh, continual war, war, war for everything that he likes to, uh,
• 29:59
  that he likes to foist upon the rest of us and never has to pay the price of being wrong.
• 30:05
  Never. And he's always wrong. And here he's going to be wrong once again. And so enter into that,
• 30:12
  your Venezuela concept. So about a wonder Hugo Chavez in 2006, 2007, like I told you the other
• 30:21
  day, they were, uh, taking all of the oil assets of Venezuela and they were nationalizing them.
• 30:36
  And what Jeffrey Sachs was talking about was the Venezuelan, uh, gas, uh, state gas, or I'm sorry,
• 30:45
  oil and gas company that, uh, uh, was had taken over and nationalized a bunch of these and told
• 30:51
  everybody they had to, uh, they had to, uh, work and have these and have the state agency or the
• 31:01
  state company be the, uh, majority owner in any sort of thing. And you had several, um, people,
• 31:08
  um, several companies pushing back on that, all the U S companies, all of them.
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  And, uh, some settled, some stayed there and some did it well, the allegation goes,
• 31:18
  according to this interesting, um, a scenario that I listened to yesterday was that the,
• 31:27
  the problem is, is all the people on New York that know about the money crisis,
• 31:32
  the trillions that are coming in the Petro dollar collapsing, like everybody knows it is because
• 31:38
  everybody's diversifying Russia, China, they haven't done anything in the dollar. India
• 31:44
  is trading in rupees. Saudi Arabia is accepting both Saudi Arabia is accepting you on instead of
• 31:51
  dollar. And they aren't all, uh, uh, trying to, you know, trying to go further in that regard.
• 31:59
  And, uh, the, the problem with that is all of the ports that were built in the, you know,
• 32:08
  on the South part of America, all of the refineries are built for, uh, Venezuelan,
• 32:19
  the, the, the gas and the, I mean, sorry, the oil that comes from Venezuela. So all the ports
• 32:25
  on the South part of the, of the Gulf or in the Gulf of Mexico, all the refineries that come from
• 32:32
  there, they were built for Venezuelan crude. And over the last 10, 15, 20 years, you know, 2007.
• 32:41
  And so it's 19 years, you know, they have been trading more and more and we have them under
• 32:48
  sanctions because they nationalized. And you heard, you heard, uh, uh, Jeffrey Sachs talk about how
• 32:55
  they were, uh, taking, you know, they were, uh, forcing this oil. Well, it's because they know.
• 33:05
  And, uh, let's see. Oh, the news is coming on that says that this tanker has been seized
• 33:12
  in a Venezuela linked tanker in the Atlantic and, uh, discussing options. And that, uh, Trump now
• 33:21
  just said that, uh, Venezuela will turn over 50 million barrels a day or something for 50 million
• 33:28
  barrels. And the U S seized a tanker allegedly in the Atlantic UK and France, um, participating
• 33:36
  or something like that. Well, we'll have to get into that a little bit later, but the, so the
• 33:42
  concept of taking the oil that Venezuela has, if Venezuela is pushing it all off to Russia and
• 33:50
  China, which was happening because China's funding the infrastructure, then the crisis
• 33:56
  reached ahead and everybody's known about it. And this year it really reached ahead because
• 34:05
  everybody knows what the, what the stress is of what is going on, uh, with, uh, with the oil
• 34:11
  markets in the United States and the failure to borrow. And that is what Trump notices.
• 34:16
  And so the, the thought process is that now that Trump has come out of the closet, so to speak,
• 34:23
  and it's clearly not about, you know, um, uh, narco terrorism, you know, there's nothing to do
• 34:30
  with that. This has to do with controlling resources in Venezuela. And now the U S seizing
• 34:38
  a Venezuela linked tanker in the Atlantic. I see that they're very careful not to call it a Russian
• 34:43
  tanker or a Russian, uh, piloted tanker. That's kind of interesting. Um, and I I've been following
• 34:51
  that a little bit, but I don't see anything from the, uh, opposing part right now. I might have a,
• 34:57
  have a look at it, but at any rate, the, uh, 303 billion barrels of proven reserves that are in
• 35:07
  the, um, you know, that are in the Venezuelan area, uh, for the United States, Venezuela,
• 35:15
  uh, has always been what they call critical. You heard what, um, Jeffrey Sachs said that, uh,
• 35:22
  that, uh, Obama called, uh, Venezuelan existential threat years ago, and that, uh, everybody has been
• 35:33
  paying attention to this for different reasons. Right. And so this, this Monroe doctrine stuff,
• 35:39
  you know, it's, it's now evolved. And, uh, so the military economic pressure in Venezuela by Russia
• 35:48
  and by China, more importantly, has now, um, reached ahead. And so this is why everything
• 35:58
  is coming and you can agree or disagree or whatever. I don't like the, uh, the, uh,
• 36:05
  methods that we are using and the fact that we are not, um,
• 36:13
  following the law that we don't even make any pretense to follow the law. Nothing.
• 36:20
  We don't follow the law of the sea. We don't follow the UN charter. We don't follow our own
• 36:27
  law on jurisdiction. You can't, you take a, you go and capture some guy in another country and
• 36:33
  then bring him in and you, uh, and then you say, well, now we have jurisdiction because we stole
• 36:38
  him. And so you have the military go do a military action and bring some guy. And then you take
• 36:44
  jurisdiction, the judge ought to throw that crap out. You know, that is not how you get jurisdiction,
• 36:49
  but he won't, you know, he, I mean, he'd be, he'd be, you know, shredded for that at this point.
• 36:56
  So I don't know. I want to, um, I want to have a quick look, um, at the, well, there was an emergency
• 37:06
  meeting and it ends really the, uh, two and a half, three hours, the emergency meeting of the
• 37:13
  UN security council. Boy, I tell you what it was, uh, uh, worth watching. Let's put it that way.
• 37:20
  It was definitely worth watching. Um, but I want to go to and see if there's any of the
• 37:27
  Russian news is, uh, here it is. Um, yeah, they say that us forces attempted to board
• 37:39
  a, uh, Russian oil tanker. The Marinera vessel has been shadowed by us
• 37:47
  warship for days. American military forces are attempting to board a Russian flagged oil
• 37:54
  tanker in the North Atlantic photos from the vessel show citing American officials.
• 38:01
  Reuters also reports that the U S coast guard and military have begun an operation to seize
• 38:07
  the vessel. This tanker previously named the Bella one was approaching Venezuela before the new year
• 38:15
  when the U S coast guard tried to detain it in the Caribbean sea. The crew declined to let
• 38:21
  American officers aboard and change course heading toward the Atlantic. The tanker has
• 38:27
  been followed by us worship and aircraft from NATO countries ever since the photos from the Marinera
• 38:35
  capture a military helicopter trying to land aboard the vessel, which Washington claims is
• 38:42
  involved in transporting oil from Iran and Venezuela in violation of American sanctions.
• 38:49
  By the way, this isn't how you deal with American sanctions under the law of the sea. And that ain't
• 38:56
  me saying it it's the law of the sea, you know, uh, footage published earlier shows a Russian flag
• 39:03
  tanker. Uh, let's see. There's a video of it too. On Tuesday, the Russian ministry expressed concern
• 39:11
  over the abnormal situation surrounding the Marinera. And for reasons unknown,
• 39:17
  the Russian vessel is getting excessive attention from the U S and NATO military
• 39:22
  disproportionate to its peaceful status said a ministry representative. The attempted seizure
• 39:28
  comes just days after the U S conducted a military raid in, uh, Venezuela. So we'll be watching that.
• 39:39
  And, uh, let's see, there's, I tell you what this, um, I wanted to get to this, uh, nonsensical
• 39:52
  and I can't, I'm having trouble with my, with my, uh, my glasses. I wanted to talk about this
• 40:00
  coalition of the willing and, uh, Keir Starmer, the genius, you should hear that guy. And, uh,
• 40:08
  you know what I'm going to do though? I think I'm going to play the beginning. If I can find this
• 40:13
  video in my history of, uh, of, uh, Alex Christopher, who, while I, um, while I find this,
• 40:24
  because this needs to be watched. And the trouble is, is my history was, was rather lengthy because,
• 40:32
  I was watching a little bit of, um, of, uh, of, uh, television shows, you know, and
• 40:44
  excuse me, I want to get to Alex, but I can't find him. Um, Oh, here we go. The, the,
• 40:52
  no, that's in Russian though. I need to find it in English. Uh, anyway, I got to get better about
• 40:57
  finding these in the beginning. And, uh, there's a guy named, um, who's this guy. There was another
• 41:04
  guy that I wanted to share that blasted Trump too, from on the, on the, uh, floor of the Senate.
• 41:10
  Let's see here. Thomas Massey, Republican from Kentucky. Let's see if we can follow him for just
• 41:20
  a minute. Okay. See what he has to say because he was a representative state house representative.
• 41:29
  And here is what he had to say. It's only four minutes long. So we'll start with that.
• 41:35
  Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction that did not
• 41:41
  exist. Now it's the same playbook, except we're told that drugs are the WMDs. This is about oil
• 41:47
  and regime change. Mr. Speaker, James Madison warned us that in no part of the constitution
• 41:53
  is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace
• 41:59
  to the legislature and not the executive. Madison called it the crown jewel of Congress.
• 42:05
  The framers understood a simple truth. To the extent that war making power devolves to one
• 42:10
  person, liberty dissolves. If the president believes military action against Venezuela
• 42:16
  is justified and needed, he should make the case and Congress should vote before American lives
• 42:22
  and treasure are spent on regime change in South America. Let's be honest about likely outcomes.
• 42:29
  Do we truly believe that Nicholas Maduro will be replaced by a modern day George Washington?
• 42:35
  How did that work out in Cuba, Libya, Iraq, or Syria? Previous presidents told us to go to war
• 42:42
  over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Now it's the same playbook,
• 42:49
  except we're told that drugs are the WMDs. If it were about drugs, we'd bomb Mexico,
• 42:54
  or China, or Colombia. And the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez.
• 43:02
  This is about oil and regime change. And when it comes to regime change,
• 43:07
  we've already been down this road with Venezuela with nothing to show for it. In 2019,
• 43:12
  we recognized Juan Guaido. We seized their embassy here in DC. We were told that regime
• 43:18
  change was imminent. Years later, Maduro remains in power. Today, we're told to place our hopes
• 43:25
  in other exiled figures. Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Karina Machado. I wish them well, I do.
• 43:34
  But Congress should not express moral sympathy in the form of a blank check for military
• 43:39
  escalation and American lives. And let's take a moment to acknowledge the contradiction at the
• 43:44
  heart of this policy. This administration tells us that the Maduro regime is made up of narco
• 43:50
  terrorists, and by escalating toward war, we would predictably create countless refugees.
• 43:58
  At the same time, this administration has moved to end temporary protected status
• 44:02
  for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and deports them back to the very regime it condemns.
• 44:09
  So which is it? Are we prepared to receive swarms of the 25 million Venezuelans who will likely
• 44:15
  become refugees and billions in American treasure that will be used to destroy and
• 44:20
  inevitably rebuild that nation? Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the western hemisphere?
• 44:26
  If that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people,
• 44:32
  and in accordance with our Constitution. And yet today, here we aren't even voting on whether
• 44:38
  to declare war or authorize the use of military force. All we're voting on is a war powers
• 44:44
  resolution that strengthens the fabric of our republic by reasserting the plain and simple
• 44:49
  language in the Constitution that Congress must decide questions of war. I urge support
• 44:55
  for this resolution and I yield back. Gentleman, time had expired. Yes, yes, yes. You like that
• 45:04
  nonsense. Now, that was before the takeover, the I'm in charge moment that came up.
• 45:17
  So I told you before that I was reviewing the Mearsheimer and there appeared to be a
• 45:22
  fake one circulating around. And in but I also went and found the real one and the real comments
• 45:31
  that were that it was based upon. And this one was on the judging freedom show on December the
• 45:40
  18th, where the administration had boxed itself in and was fishing around for ways to get out
• 45:49
  and was talking about escalation because strategy wasn't working. And, you know,
• 45:55
  it they were boxed into a corner and they couldn't do much about it. And so they're they're
• 46:01
  improvising world order on the fly. I mean, they're just now the rails have come off. You
• 46:11
  know, this is what they're doing. Russia. Russia has been watching. China has been watching
• 46:17
  Mearsheimer and company and many, you know, lots of people have been discussing this.
• 46:22
  The usual people that are against this have been talking about it, including this
• 46:32
  script I just gave to you. On the, you know, Thomas Massey that was speaking about it
• 46:40
  in the in the talking about constitutional powers, but those haven't stopped before
• 46:47
  haven't stopped the globalists before. But I'm I'm sounding the alarm bells, like many others,
• 46:55
  that this is just more of the same. And I it really saddens me to have to talk about it.
• 47:05
  You know, Nebensia, the representative of Russia to the UN, the ambassador to the UN, Nebensia,
• 47:15
  he spoke about this and he said that, you know, this is banditry. It's a knife. And, you know,
• 47:23
  a knife in the US is rhetoric that there's a rules based order. There are no rules. You know,
• 47:29
  there aren't any rules to them. Sachs said the same thing. The Republicans said the same thing.
• 47:35
  Mearsheimer says the same thing. Everybody in Denmark is saying the same thing, because now
• 47:41
  Trump is making no bones about the fact that we're stealing Greenland. We're going to do it.
• 47:47
  We're going to take Greenland. And then you got the idiot Lindsey Graham wearing around selling
• 47:53
  hats that say make Iran great again. And then, you know, hey, man, we're going to start war in
• 48:00
  against Denmark. We're going to start war against Iran. We're going to keep it up against Venezuela,
• 48:09
  although Marco Rubio doesn't want to be the guy in charge, you know, doesn't want to be
• 48:13
  running that. He's got too many things going on. We have the idiots still pursuing the same old
• 48:21
  war in Ukraine. And so we'll be on what, four fronts? Or are we just supposed to say, yeah,
• 48:28
  that's it. That's just what we're supposed to do. That, yeah, this is what we're doing.
• 48:37
  I don't know. I'm actually somewhat tired of it. And I wanted to spend about half of the time on
• 48:44
  it this morning, because it's a very big story. And the fact is that we are playing with matches
• 48:57
  near a powder keg. And, you know, the people in charge are, this is what they're doing.
• 49:05
  They are accelerating. They are increasing the rhetoric. They are increasing the antagonism.
• 49:17
  They are creating more opportunities. And somebody's going to, somebody is going to push
• 49:22
  back. Somebody's in this stuff about what Keir Starmer, I found that video, but I have to
• 49:33
  click on it here. Hang on one second. We'll get to Keir the genius. He is not the sharpest tool
• 49:48
  in the shed. By the way, Jaishankar spoke about, he gave a message to Trump yesterday and he was
• 49:56
  talking about, you know, that people need to just calm down. And we have this coalition
• 50:03
  of the willing. Here is Keir Starmer on British TV. And where are we here? Let's see if we can
• 50:13
  get us there. Because these guys are, once again, loopy. And on the stage is Zelensky,
• 50:24
  Macron, and Keir Starmer. And this thing is only about three and a half minutes long,
• 50:30
  but listen to this. This is a more troubling, more troubling discussion because they know
• 50:36
  this is never going to work. And they try to frame it as if you can ever get this done.
• 50:42
  We're committing. And now Jared Kushner is there committing. And he made some comments on it too.
• 50:48
  So I'm going to let the whole three minutes and 45 seconds play. If you will pay attention. Here you
• 50:55
  go. European and American allies side by side with President Zelensky standing for peace.
• 51:03
  And we are closer to that goal than ever. But of course, the hardest jobs are still ahead.
• 51:10
  So we're here today to keep driving that effort forward. And we've had a very constructive meeting,
• 51:17
  which is built on the excellent progress made in negotiations over recent days and weeks.
• 51:23
  The purpose of the coalition of the willing is to help deliver a peace that can last,
• 51:31
  and to work with the US to guarantee Ukraine's security for the long term. This work is now
• 51:38
  more advanced than ever. Today's joint declaration set that out in clear terms.
• 51:45
  On top of that, and alongside President Zelensky and President Macron,
• 51:49
  we went even further today. We signed a declaration of intent on the deployment of
• 51:56
  forces to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. This is a vital part of our ironclad commitment
• 52:04
  to stand with Ukraine for the long term. It paves the way for the legal framework
• 52:10
  under which British, French, and partner forces could operate on Ukrainian soil, securing Ukraine's
• 52:18
  skies and seas, and regenerating Ukraine's armed forces for the future. We discussed these issues
• 52:26
  in detail today. And so I can say that following a ceasefire, the UK and France will establish
• 52:34
  military hubs across Ukraine and build protected facilities for weapons and military equipment
• 52:41
  to support Ukraine's defensive needs. And with our coalition partners, we've also agreed
• 52:48
  significant further steps. First, that we will participate in US-led monitoring and verification
• 52:56
  of any ceasefire. Second, we will support the long-term provision of armaments for Ukraine's
• 53:04
  defence. And third, we will work towards binding commitments to support Ukraine in the case of a
• 53:11
  future armed attack by Russia. This is all about building the practical foundations on which peace
• 53:19
  would rest. But we can only get to a peace deal if Putin is ready to make compromises.
• 53:29
  And so we have to be frank. For all Russia's words, Putin is not showing that he's ready for
• 53:37
  peace. Over the last few weeks, we've seen the opposite. Further horrific strikes on Ukraine,
• 53:45
  killing and wounding civilians, and cutting off power for millions of people
• 53:49
  in the dead of winter. His forces hit a hospital in Kyiv just yesterday. And he's
• 53:56
  tried to distract from peace efforts with unfounded claims of attacks on his residents.
• 54:03
  Now this only hardens our resolve. We will continue to step up our support for Ukraine's
• 54:09
  defence in 2026 to ensure it gets the equipment and backing it needs to continue the fight.
• 54:16
  And we will keep the pressure up on Russia, including further measures on oil traders
• 54:22
  and shadow fleet operators funding Putin's war chest. We will continue these efforts
• 54:29
  until they come to the table in good faith, and until we realise the goal that we all share
• 54:35
  of a just and lasting peace. Oh yeah, that that is the same thing we have heard
• 54:45
  for forever. And everybody knows it's a pile of crap, that that is not going to be part of it.
• 54:55
  And they keep talking about a ceasefire. They don't talk about peace. What has Putin said,
• 55:03
  and what has what has Donald Trump backed up over and over? Since at least, you know,
• 55:10
  since well before Alaska, and certainly after Alaska. And now he's got his,
• 55:17
  that his son-in-law, Kushner, that is over there saying,
• 55:26
  trying to make a deal on this, but they're forgetting the key parts. First of all,
• 55:31
  Russia will never agree to NATO forces, however you want to split them up. Maybe it's only
• 55:38
  England and their 70,000 strong military that England has. How are they going to split them up?
• 55:47
  You know, yeah, Russia's real afraid of them. You know, the million man army,
• 55:50
  which is even larger now. And Ukraine has lost, has been decimated. And they don't have any people
• 55:59
  left. They can't field an army now. And Russia will never put up with them being there. And
• 56:10
  you can say what you will about, about Russia bombing things inside of Ukraine over the last,
• 56:19
  over New Year's holidays. And today is the Russian Orthodox Christmas. Putin was in a Russian
• 56:27
  Orthodox church earlier today and celebrated and talked about peace and gave some well,
• 56:39
  well-received Christmas commentary. And nobody paid any attention to that. All they care about
• 56:51
  is UK and France say they're going to set up military hubs in Ukraine following a peace deal.
• 56:59
  They know that's never going to happen. But with Starmer, I'm sorry, with Kushner standing there
• 57:04
  with Starmer and Macron, and he made some commentary as well about this, said that some
• 57:13
  of the framework had already been established at Mar-a-Lago between Trump and Zelensky a couple
• 57:23
  of weeks ago, that they have been discussing this. But this coalition, the Bill of the Willing is
• 57:31
  just nonsense that they have put out that everybody knows. I mean, even the people,
• 57:41
  as they're saying it, they know that nothing is going to come of this. And
• 57:48
  by the way, there was an interesting dubbing of an Ahmat commander, and Abdi Al-Audinov,
• 57:58
  the guy that Chechen forces that are operating inside of Ukraine, he did a post yesterday on
• 58:08
  his Telegram channel and said that Maduro was sold out by his own leadership. And I think that's
• 58:14
  been pretty clear to everybody that sees what has happened as well. And I don't know. The trouble is,
• 58:26
  there's a lot of mistruths going around. Oh, let's watch this. This was on CNN earlier,
• 58:34
  and I wanted to share this as well. How long is this one? This one's only a couple of minutes,
• 58:41
  and this shows, what is this guy's name? Hang on a second. He's with Kushner on this. Let's see.
• 58:51
  The United States, for the first time on Tuesday, backed a broad coalition of Ukraine's allies in
• 58:58
  vowing to provide security guarantees that leaders said would include binding commitments
• 59:03
  to support the country if it is attacked by Russia again. The pledge came at a summit in
• 59:08
  Paris of the so-called Coalition of the Willing to firm up security guarantees to reassure Kyiv
• 59:14
  in the event of a ceasefire with Russia. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Whitkoff said after the
• 59:20
  summit that President Donald Trump, quote, strongly stands behind security protocols.
• 59:25
  Those security protocols are meant to, A, deter any attacks, any further attacks in Ukraine,
• 59:33
  and B, if there are any attacks, they're meant to defend, and they will do both.
• 59:38
  A statement by coalition leaders also said that allies will participate in a proposed U.S.-led
• 59:44
  ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism. Talks to bring the almost four-year conflict to
• 59:50
  end have accelerated since November. Until recently, much of the focus was on pledges of
• 59:56
  military aid for Ukraine's forces and possible contributions to an international reassurance
• 1:00:01
  force. But attention has now shifted to legally binding guarantees to come to Kyiv's aid in the
• 1:00:07
  event of another attack by Moscow. Kyiv has long said it cannot be safe without guarantees that
• 1:00:13
  are comparable to NATO's mutual defense agreement to deter Russia from attacking again. Moscow wants
• 1:00:20
  any peace deal to bar Ukraine from military alliances. Yeah, and it's rather odd that no,
• 1:00:29
  but that they think that this is going to move the ball somehow. I don't know. I, it'd be nice.
• 1:00:40
  Um, let's see, um, there was an interesting commentary about, uh, Merz telling Zelensky,
• 1:00:50
  at that, I believe it was at the same meeting, and, uh, there, there's some interesting
• 1:00:57
  commentary coming out. Um, the Merz tells Zelensky to stop young men from leaving Ukraine.
• 1:01:06
  So Merz says that the, that the West has certain expectations that Kyiv has to meet in exchange for
• 1:01:14
  economic aid. Ukraine must create conditions that encourage its young men to remain in the country
• 1:01:21
  rather than fleeing to Western Europe, said Friedrich Merz. He said, uh, he was standing
• 1:01:26
  next to Ukrainian leader at the press conference following this, uh, coalition of the milling,
• 1:01:32
  willing meeting in Paris and the UK and France. Now, you know, where we talked about in the event
• 1:01:38
  of any peace deal, um, but Moscow categorically rules out any of this. So this is more waste of
• 1:01:45
  time that these people get together and have more meetings and they do it every three to six months
• 1:01:51
  and they get together. This is the same thing is, uh, as the lens keys, uh, peace plan.
• 1:01:58
  And then his victory plan that he did in 2024 and early 2025.
• 1:02:06
  Well, no, both of those were in 2024 and 2025. They've done nothing but lose. You know,
• 1:02:12
  they've been, they've been getting, uh, they've been set back on their heels. Um, according to
• 1:02:17
  the German chancellor, rebuilding Ukraine and providing security guarantees are indivisible.
• 1:02:24
  Only an economically strong Kiev can present a credible deterrent to Moscow. But Ukraine's
• 1:02:32
  backers have certain expectations that Kiev should meet in exchange for economic assistance.
• 1:02:39
  And here's what Mertz said. Ukraine must make sure that it's young men can find decent jobs in their
• 1:02:46
  own country rather than traveling to Germany, Poland, or France. And I think this is an
• 1:02:52
  expectation that Ukraine can and will meet. The chancellor refused to speculate on how soon a
• 1:02:59
  diplomatic solution might be found saying that no one can say today whether the arms will be
• 1:03:04
  silenced in Ukraine in six weeks or in six months. And, uh, you know, um, gives recruitment drive is
• 1:03:12
  increasingly brutal, you know, uh, with manpower shortages, with heavy losses at the front,
• 1:03:18
  large scale draft dodging up to, uh, and, and desertion up to 400,000 is what the estimates are.
• 1:03:27
  400,000 have draft dodging or desertion. Hundreds of cases are documented where enlistment officers
• 1:03:34
  are violently snatching people from the streets. And last month, Maria Zakharova, the Russian
• 1:03:40
  foreign ministry spokesman said that authorities in Kiev have told draft officials to tighten the
• 1:03:46
  to the max, to get as many as 2 million new troops by early 2026. And, uh, uh, you know,
• 1:03:55
  that's, um, not going to happen. Let's see. There's more news on this. Uh,
• 1:04:02
  us European command says they have, uh, has been captured that tanker that has been captured,
• 1:04:10
  was intercepted for violation of us sanctions. Now this is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The
• 1:04:17
  action taken by us justice department and department of Homeland security said us
• 1:04:24
  European command, the vessel was seized in the North Atlantic pursuant to a warrant
• 1:04:29
  issued by a us federal court after being tracked down by the us coast guard guard ship Monroe.
• 1:04:37
  We are just taking jurisdiction anywhere we want to, aren't we? So it's all about,
• 1:04:42
  none of this is about the law. And, uh, you know, we have become lawless. There, there is no law.
• 1:04:52
  We don't have to follow it. We just refuse. And, uh, you know, now we're proud of it. We're,
• 1:04:58
  we're just totally proud of it. And, uh, I tell you what there's there, I wonder what's the,
• 1:05:07
  the ultimate end story going to be about, um, by the way, Fyodor Lukan, Lukanov,
• 1:05:16
  Lukyanov editor in chief of Russian global affairs. And he's chairman of the Presidium
• 1:05:20
  on Council of foreign and defense policy. And he is a research director for the Valdai
• 1:05:27
  international discussion club, the one where Putin speaks every year. And he saw says in a
• 1:05:32
  world where wars solve nothing, Trump's brand of pressure politics may be the closest thing to
• 1:05:39
  modern peace. And this was an, an, an interesting article that I wanted to share with you.
• 1:05:45
  If there were in a war, an award for the most unfulfilled personal wish of the year,
• 1:05:52
  Donald Trump is the runaway winter winner. I'm sorry. He, his desire to receive the Nobel peace
• 1:05:58
  prize has been so overt and his actions so clearly aligned with that goal that the disappointment
• 1:06:05
  of his is palpable. Eight wars by his own count were stopped a ninth supposedly in the works
• 1:06:12
  all in less than a year. Has there ever been anything like it in history? Exactly. And still
• 1:06:20
  no prize for him. Damn liberals. Trump's vanity is an easy target for irony, but in fairness,
• 1:06:27
  one point deserves acknowledgement. Thanks to this politician, the notion that war is abnormal,
• 1:06:34
  unnecessary, even has been a constantly present discussion in public discourse. Why he personally
• 1:06:42
  needs this is beside the point, even given the fact that while rejecting full scale war,
• 1:06:48
  Trump is more than comfortable showing force muscle flexing and selective application,
• 1:06:54
  the mass casualties and destruction inherent inherent in traditional warfare strike in New
• 1:07:01
  York real estate developer as pointless. There are other ways to compete and to course
• 1:07:06
  counterparts into agreement. Yes, they are often blunt, inelegant, and abrasive, but they are far
• 1:07:13
  less traumatic for States and societies. And that alone makes them preferable. Everything is
• 1:07:19
  relative. After all, even the brazen operation to seize Venezuela's present president,
• 1:07:27
  complete with strikes on military targets turned out to be relatively precise and only moderately
• 1:07:33
  bloody. Of the eight wars, Trump claims to have stopped. Some had nothing to do with him at all.
• 1:07:40
  The spring clash between India and Pakistan, for instance, or the oddly tacked on case of
• 1:07:46
  Egypt and Ethiopia, while others predictably did not end after Washington proclaimed yet another
• 1:07:53
  lasting peace. Trump does not resolve the underlying cause of conflict.
• 1:07:59
  They simply do not interest him. What he does try to do, sometimes successfully,
• 1:08:04
  is to contain their most violent manifestations. Why does this matter? A couple of decades ago,
• 1:08:12
  military force was written off as an anachronism. The assumption was that in a globalized world,
• 1:08:20
  normal States no longer rely on such primitive tools, and yet force has returned to the center
• 1:08:26
  stage in international affairs. The illusions of the turn of the century, sincere for some,
• 1:08:32
  performative for others, have dissipated. Countries have once again turned to the most familiar
• 1:08:37
  method. All the more so because not everyone disarmed, even during the area when international
• 1:08:43
  relations were supposedly being economized. With the decline of the liberal world order,
• 1:08:51
  many States exhaled in relief. Doing things the old way is simply clearer. Meanwhile,
• 1:08:57
  the fear of a war that could be final and all-destroying has noticeably faded over the
• 1:09:04
  years of globalization. But the idea that this means a simplification of international interaction
• 1:09:11
  is an illusion. War itself has changed, and past experience with armed conflict applies only in
• 1:09:19
  limited ways to today's realities. The most brutal and destructive elements remain direct military
• 1:09:26
  confrontation between armies, often fought in cities, but is far from the only component.
• 1:09:33
  And not only the most important one, the term hybrid war, commonly used to describe modern
• 1:09:40
  conflicts, is vague and imprecise. But in the absence of a better concept, it'll have to do.
• 1:09:47
  It encompasses everything, economics, social structure, information in its many forms,
• 1:09:53
  and technologies of political control. The disruptive impact of each of these
• 1:09:58
  non-standard components on a country's overall capacity can exceed that of a conventional
• 1:10:05
  combat operation. The danger of such hybrid war lies in the way it corrodes the foundation of
• 1:10:13
  almost all interaction, because it turns everything into a weapon, including diplomacy,
• 1:10:19
  which is supposed to rest on a baseline of trust. That doesn't exist anymore. Trust in agreements
• 1:10:26
  reached with an adversary in an era where the information environment is not only distorted,
• 1:10:32
  but also total, it is increasingly unclear what can serve as a reliable point of reference at all.
• 1:10:41
  I mean, nothing, I agree with this, because nothing is, you can look at everything out there,
• 1:10:48
  and everything is politicized and twisted, everything. And this is a dangerous condition,
• 1:10:55
  one that fuels further fragmentation of the world, no longer even along block lines, but in chaos,
• 1:11:04
  hence the low predictability of conflicts. They start with one issue and morph into a bundle of
• 1:11:10
  disparate, sometimes unrelated storylines that nonetheless catalyze and entangle one another.
• 1:11:17
  Like, why don't we start with narco-terrorism that is suddenly all about oil and what are you doing
• 1:11:24
  trying to take our Western Hemisphere resources and move them to China? You know, saying you can't
• 1:11:34
  do business with people in China, because we have put infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.
• 1:11:42
  Our infrastructure is there, and we built this dependent on a continual and constant supply
• 1:11:49
  of Venezuelan oil, and now you don't want to do business anymore? Well, that means we have to go
• 1:11:54
  and steal your stuff. That's how it works, right? And so, at any rate, this inevitably raises the
• 1:12:01
  question, does war actually achieve the goals for which it was launched? Of course, there have been,
• 1:12:07
  are, and will be contradictions that cannot be resolved without a direct test of force.
• 1:12:12
  But those cases are far from universal. If one looks at the record of military intervention
• 1:12:17
  since the end of the Cold War, there are remarkably few examples that are unequivocally
• 1:12:25
  labeled as success, at best, relative success. The purposelessness of U.S. military operations
• 1:12:35
  in the 21st century has become a cliché, and a number of other confrontations, including
• 1:12:43
  ongoing ones such as those in the Middle East, do not actually resolve core problems either.
• 1:12:51
  Donald Trump doesn't shy away from conflict. He generates it by every means available,
• 1:12:58
  from provocative personal behavior to punitive economic measures, from deals of extraordinary
• 1:13:04
  cynicism to personal intolerance towards specific individuals. The Venezuela operation has made that
• 1:13:12
  abundantly clear, yet he tends to be restrained when it comes to the most destructive element of
• 1:13:18
  all, the one that exacts the highest price above all in human terms. And the prospect of prolonged
• 1:13:24
  entanglement seems to provoke in him something close to a genuine idiosyncrasy. Whether
• 1:13:31
  intentionally or not, more likely intuitively, Trump reflects the spirit of the contemporary
• 1:13:38
  world. It is a world that demands maximum effect at a minimal cost, and where cutting through
• 1:13:45
  many Gordian knots with a single stroke is no longer possible. Only the slow, exhausting process
• 1:13:52
  of untangling them through competitive interaction with other actors. Nothing can be resolved once
• 1:14:00
  and for all, but extremes can be avoided by constantly managing tension. Perhaps that is
• 1:14:07
  a formula worthy of a Nobel Prize in the second quarter of the 21st century. Did you like that?
• 1:14:15
  That was by Fyodor Lukyanov, who's editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs. And interestingly,
• 1:14:26
  not negative for Trump. It wasn't a horror story for him. And a lot of times when you're reading
• 1:14:36
  international stories regarding him, they will be a horror story for Trump. And especially lately,
• 1:14:46
  you know, there's very little positive in the last week that he started off 2026 with a bang,
• 1:14:53
  that's for sure. And we have people, you know, all the standard a-holes are out there talking,
• 1:14:58
  oh this is great, you know, we captured the narco-terrorist. But now we're talking about,
• 1:15:05
  let's see, the US threats over Greenland has made NATO pointless. Denmark could count on
• 1:15:16
  the solidarity of the whole of Europe in the standoff with the US, said Polish PM Donald Tusk.
• 1:15:23
  So NATO will lose its meaning if conflict breaks out within the bloc. And this is interesting. How
• 1:15:31
  in the world are you going to take Article 5 and say that Denmark has to, you know, that everybody
• 1:15:41
  has to come to the aid of NATO if America is the one that's stealing Greenland? This is funny.
• 1:15:52
  Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Tusk voiced his support for Denmark in the reinvigorated row
• 1:15:59
  between the NATO state and the United States. Washington has reiterated its aspiration to
• 1:16:06
  get the island under its control, citing its own national security interests and the need to
• 1:16:13
  protect the Arctic. No member should attack or threaten another member of the North Atlantic
• 1:16:19
  Treaty. Otherwise, NATO will lose its meaning if conflict or mutual conflict occur within the
• 1:16:26
  alliance. That's Tusk. You know, if you want to put the stress in the right spot or say it properly.
• 1:16:37
  While Denmark could count on the solidarity of the whole of Europe, the bloc's members must ensure
• 1:16:43
  that transatlantic ties, which are the foundation of NATO and our security, do not suffer in the
• 1:16:48
  coming days and months. He said these remarks come as Poland with Denmark, the UK, France,
• 1:16:54
  Germany, Italy, Spain made a joint statement on the Greenland issue. The group argues that
• 1:17:00
  security in the Arctic must be achieved collectively by NATO and recognizes the U.S.
• 1:17:06
  as an essential partner in this endeavor. Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark
• 1:17:13
  and Greenland and them only to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland. The statement
• 1:17:20
  reads. You want to talk about a moron, I'll share that with you here in a minute. This guy's nuts.
• 1:17:29
  And did you watch him? He was he was being interviewed. Well, I haven't even told you
• 1:17:33
  who it is. Let me finish this article first. In the aftermath of the operation operation to kidnap
• 1:17:37
  Venezuelan President Maduro, the U.S. again declared its aim to seize Greenland from Denmark.
• 1:17:45
  Speaking to The Atlantic in an interview on Sunday, President Trump said the U.S.
• 1:17:49
  should control the Arctic Island, given its strategic location, purported competition
• 1:17:54
  with Russia and Chinese Navy. We do need Greenland. Absolutely. Trump stated both
• 1:18:00
  Danish and Greenland authorities have rejected Washington's renewed claim to the island. Danish
• 1:18:04
  Prime Minister Fredrickson urged the U.S. to stop threatening its historically close ally,
• 1:18:11
  warning a potential attack on her country would effectively end NATO. Greenlandic Prime Minister
• 1:18:17
  James Frederick Nielsen slammed Trump's superpower rhetoric as unacceptable and
• 1:18:23
  insulting. No more fantasies of annexation, he wrote on Facebook on Monday. So let's talk about
• 1:18:32
  Trump's crazy aid, you know, here. This this guy's nuts. And this is the guy allegedly going
• 1:18:40
  to be in charge of of Venezuela, too. But this guy, I watched him on TV the other day and it was
• 1:18:47
  odd, you know, even though it was on CNN that I saw him. This is this guy's out there. He is
• 1:18:56
  he is all in and he's nuts and he's incoherent. Also, when he was speaking about this,
• 1:19:03
  I wish I could find that video. Maybe I'll have to find it and play it for you tomorrow.
• 1:19:07
  But U.S. President Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, reiterated that
• 1:19:14
  Greenland should belong to the U.S. and called Washington's formal position is what he called it.
• 1:19:20
  The senior aide, widely considered a key architect of Trump's agenda, that's frightening,
• 1:19:27
  claimed no country could prevent the U.S. from annexing the Danish territory. He's nuts.
• 1:19:35
  Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, has been a flashpoint between Washington and Copenhagen
• 1:19:41
  since Trump's return to office when he revived a proposal from his first term to take over the
• 1:19:47
  island, citing U.S. national security. Tensions escalated last week when Miller's wife, Katie,
• 1:19:53
  herself a former Trump staffer, posted a map of Greenland draped in a U.S. flag with the caption
• 1:20:00
  soon on X. This post coincided with America's military raid on Venezuela and was followed
• 1:20:08
  by Trump saying Washington absolutely needs Greenland. Asked to comment, Miller confirmed
• 1:20:15
  Washington's ambition. The president, here he is, the president has been clear for months that the
• 1:20:20
  U.S. should have Greenland as part of the overall security apparatus. That has been the formal
• 1:20:25
  position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration, he told CNN on Monday.
• 1:20:31
  Pressed on whether military action was being considered, he deflected the question but
• 1:20:36
  insisted nobody's going to fight the U.S. militarily over the future of Greenland.
• 1:20:41
  That's a scary comment. He questioned Denmark's claim to the territory, arguing obviously
• 1:20:48
  Greenland should be part of the U.S. if America as NATO's leading power is to secure the Arctic.
• 1:20:57
  Danish and Greenlandic authorities vocally reject Washington claims, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:21:02
  I believe the U.S., here's what he said, I believe the U.S. president should be taken seriously when
• 1:21:10
  he says he wants Greenland, said Frederickson on TV2 Monday. But if the U.S. were to attack
• 1:21:16
  another NATO country militarily, everything would stop, including NATO itself. This is crazy town.
• 1:21:26
  Greenlandic prime minister, blah, blah, blah. We already heard that part. When the U.S. president
• 1:21:31
  says we need Greenland and links us to Venezuela and military intervention, it's not wrong,
• 1:21:37
  it's disrespectful. Our country is not an object of superpower rhetoric. No more fantasies
• 1:21:45
  of annexation. These are frightening times. You know, Trump, the peace guy,
• 1:21:57
  this is, and have you seen this X post? If you go out to Katie Miller, she has literally posted
• 1:22:04
  Greenland with a flag over it, obviously AI generated, but that's what she has done.
• 1:22:11
  And she held senior communication roles during Trump's first term
• 1:22:15
  and briefly served in 2025 as an advisor and spokesperson for Elon Musk. Though no longer
• 1:22:23
  with the government, she remains closely connected through her husband, Stephen Miller,
• 1:22:28
  Trump's deputy chief of staff. Her post prompted a swift response from Denmark's ambassador.
• 1:22:36
  Isn't that crazy? Just a friendly reminder about the U.S. and the Kingdom of Denmark.
• 1:22:41
  We are close allies and should continue to work together. U.S. security is Greenland
• 1:22:47
  and Denmark security. Greenland is part of NATO, the Kingdom of Denmark, and the United States
• 1:22:55
  work. Where's the rest of that post together to ensure security in the Atlantic, the Kingdom
• 1:23:03
  of Denmark has significantly boosted its Arctic security efforts in 2025 alone. We committed one
• 1:23:10
  point, I'm sorry, 13.7 billion to be used in the Arctic and North Atlantic because we take our
• 1:23:17
  joint security seriously. And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity
• 1:23:24
  of the Kingdom of Denmark. I'll tell you what, Trump is frightening me.
• 1:23:33
  And that idiot, I shouldn't call him an idiot, but Lindsey Graham and his make Iran great again.
• 1:23:42
  I don't understand why so many people are so into war all of a sudden. And it seems like,
• 1:23:49
  you know, we have so many people out there just going, yeah, great, let's go to war. And they're
• 1:23:58
  not the ones going to war, you know? And, you know, okay, why do you have an army if you're
• 1:24:04
  not going to use it to go to war? You know, maybe nonsensical. I don't know. It's, oh,
• 1:24:16
  did you hear about the Canadian that Zelensky appointed to run his economics deal? She's the
• 1:24:26
  Nazi collaborator. She's a descendant of, she's not a Nazi collaborator, her ancestor was.
• 1:24:34
  Chrystia Freeland is confirmed taking up an unpaid economic advisor role in Kiev.
• 1:24:42
  This is interesting. She will be stepping aside from her role as a prime minister's special
• 1:24:50
  representative for reconstruction of Ukraine. And in the coming weeks, I will also leave my seat in
• 1:24:56
  parliament, she said on Monday. One of the most prominent figures in Canadian politics, Freeland
• 1:25:02
  has held ministerial positions in international trade, foreign affairs, and finance. In September,
• 1:25:06
  she resigned as a minister of transport to become Ottawa's special representative for
• 1:25:11
  reconstruction of Ukraine. She's had a controversial family history, archived evidence and research show
• 1:25:21
  her maternal father was editor-in-chief Ukrainian language newspaper in occupied Poland and Austria
• 1:25:26
  that published Nazi propaganda during World War II. Freeland has long rejected knowledge of these
• 1:25:32
  facts and claim that they are Russian disinformation. And but she's the granddaughter
• 1:25:40
  of this Nazi sympathizer that everybody wants to talk about. Let's see how many US,
• 1:25:51
  seven US military personnel were injured during the raid in Caracas, according to media reports
• 1:25:57
  set up. Pentagon official during the assault, American commandos abducted blah, blah, blah.
• 1:26:03
  On Tuesday, several US media outlets, AP Fox News quoted Pentagon as saying that seven service
• 1:26:08
  members suffered gunshot wounds and injuries from shrapnel. Five have already been returned to duty.
• 1:26:15
  Two others are still recovering. According to reports, an unnamed official said US intelligence
• 1:26:23
  was still gathering information on the number of Venezuelan casualties. But on Monday, Venezuela
• 1:26:29
  said 24 security officers were killed during the US raid, bringing death toll to 56. Venezuelan
• 1:26:38
  Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino said US force had killed in cold blood,
• 1:26:44
  a large part of Maduro's security team, soldiers and innocent civilians. New York Times,
• 1:26:52
  citing a senior Venezuelan official, claimed that 80 people, including security personnel
• 1:26:57
  and civilians, were killed. Monday, Cuban authorities said that 32 Cubans lost their
• 1:27:02
  lives in combat while attempting to fend off the criminal attack perpetrated by the US government.
• 1:27:07
  According to that statement, they were fulfilling missions representing the Revolutionary Armed
• 1:27:11
  Force of Ministry of Interior. Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, were transported to New York
• 1:27:17
  and appeared in court and both pleaded not guilty. Russia, China, several BRICs and global
• 1:27:23
  South nations strongly commend US actions and call for immediate release of Venezuelan president.
• 1:27:31
  I listened to an interesting speech, actually, by a Chinese official given in English,
• 1:27:40
  uh, discussing these exact things. And, uh, it was, it was, uh, pretty brutal,
• 1:27:46
  uh, what she said. And maybe I'll be able to share that with you tomorrow.
• 1:27:51
  But, uh, that is as far as we go today. I, uh, tomorrow I'm going to talk to you about,
• 1:27:59
  I'm going to continue with the, uh, the Missouri issues with, uh, civic warriors.com.
• 1:28:10
  With, um, modern law ecosystem.com and issues related there too.
• 1:28:18
  Uh, I didn't have time to dig into the parts that I wanted to dig into in that regard today.
• 1:28:25
  And so I will follow up again with them tomorrow. And so I, uh, I encourage you to, uh, come to us
• 1:28:34
  every day. Uh, today's Wednesday, by the way, the, uh, longest day in, uh, damn radio broadcasting.
• 1:28:45
  And, uh, I will, you know, plenty to listen to today. So stay tuned right here in, uh, on
• 1:28:54
  damn radio.com forward slash life. And you can go to damn radio.com forward slash schedule to get
• 1:29:00
  the daily schedule. Uh, you can go to damn radio.com forward slash podcast and listen to all
• 1:29:06
  the, uh, previous shows. Um, mine, you can always go out to international flavor.com and listen to,
• 1:29:14
  uh, uh, those shows in their entirety. I appreciate y'all being here and coming up
• 1:29:21
  is a damn swag. And, uh, we're going to start it for you. Even now have a very nice day.