Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Samuel Trapp on Iran, Israel, Energy Warfare, ICE at Airports, London Arson, and America’s Dangerous Habit of Escalation

Transcript

Samuel Trapp on Iran, Israel, Energy Warfare, ICE at Airports, London Arson, and America’s Dangerous Habit of Escalation · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello.
• 0:00
  Good morning.
• 0:01
  Welcome.
• 0:01
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:03
  This is international flavor.
• 0:05
  You are on damn radio.
• 0:07
  It's Monday morning.
• 0:09
  I'm coming to you live from the Lake
• 0:10
  Ozark real estate of the art studio.
• 0:12
  And you feel free to phone in this
• 0:14
  morning, 573-746-8020.
• 0:17
  Should you feel the urge come upon you
• 0:19
  to chat or to discuss weird things going
• 0:24
  on on the planet?
• 0:27
  There's plenty of that going on.
• 0:29
  I've had quite the weekend.
• 0:31
  So first I'm going to do a little
• 0:33
  bitching cause that's what I do.
• 0:35
  Um, it's frigging cold.
• 0:38
  What is this?
• 0:39
  Yes.
• 0:40
  Saturday it's frigging 81 today.
• 0:42
  It's God knows what.
• 0:44
  They're like 12 and uh, and I don't
• 0:47
  like it.
• 0:48
  So went to bed last night.
• 0:49
  It was hot in the house.
• 0:52
  Woke up freezing to hell kind of nonsense
• 0:56
  is that I don't like it.
• 0:58
  And I, uh, I want change.
• 1:02
  I'm pushing for change.
• 1:04
  Make Sam's house great again.
• 1:06
  That's what we wish to do.
• 1:08
  And we used to be one temperature all
• 1:10
  the time.
• 1:10
  Not this nonsensical nonsense that we are forced
• 1:15
  to put up with.
• 1:17
  Anyway, that's my bitching for today.
• 1:19
  It's over.
• 1:20
  That is all that's.
• 1:21
  Maybe I'll make that for the whole week.
• 1:23
  Maybe I won't bitch again the entire week.
• 1:26
  Well, if I did that, I wouldn't be
• 1:27
  Sam now would I?
• 1:30
  So I have a joke for you.
• 1:31
  Speaking of that, uh, so it's a, it's
• 1:36
  a terrible joke.
• 1:37
  I mean, it's a horrible joke, but you'll
• 1:39
  appreciate it, right?
• 1:40
  Uh, there's a guy in, uh, he's, you
• 1:46
  know, unfortunately doing an accident in his youth.
• 1:49
  He's got a, uh, a fake eyeball and
• 1:55
  he couldn't spend a lot of money on
• 1:58
  this eyeball.
• 2:00
  And so unfortunately he had to take the
• 2:04
  polished wooden version and they had polished it
• 2:08
  up real nice.
• 2:08
  It was really pretty.
• 2:09
  And he'd have to pop it in his
• 2:11
  head and, uh, you know, but he didn't
• 2:12
  have the money for the very expensive eyeball.
• 2:15
  So, you know, it's a glass eyeball.
• 2:18
  So he, he had one that was wooden.
• 2:22
  And he always very self-conscious about it.
• 2:25
  He had a hard time, you know, dating,
• 2:28
  couldn't find a girl.
• 2:30
  So he's, he's got a friend, you know,
• 2:31
  you are when you don't have a date,
• 2:33
  you know, your friend sets you up, friend
• 2:35
  sets you up with another girl.
• 2:38
  And, uh, he's like, well, you know, I'd
• 2:40
  like to, but man, I'm really paranoid.
• 2:41
  I don't like it.
• 2:42
  I always feel uncomfortable.
• 2:44
  I don't know what to do.
• 2:45
  He said, listen, nobody's perfect.
• 2:47
  You know, the girl that I'm setting you
• 2:49
  up with, she's got, uh, she's got a
• 2:53
  hair lift, cleft palate, cleft lip, and she's
• 2:56
  got a hair lip and he goes, he
• 2:58
  goes, Oh, well, I don't know.
• 3:01
  He says, maybe it would be good for
• 3:03
  us to, uh, be in, you know, maybe,
• 3:05
  you know, be, be in misery with each
• 3:07
  other.
• 3:07
  Nobody's perfect.
• 3:08
  And he's going to go and he's going
• 3:10
  to take a date.
• 3:11
  And he says, well, listen, she's subconscious too.
• 3:13
  Don't say anything about it.
• 3:14
  Just go out.
• 3:15
  People are people.
• 3:16
  What difference does it make?
• 3:17
  Why are you putting such a hard time
• 3:19
  in this?
• 3:19
  This is a terrible joke, by the way,
• 3:21
  just so you know, I'm for fair warning
• 3:24
  right here.
• 3:25
  And he says, all right, it's an old
• 3:27
  joke from Sam's, uh, what do you call
• 3:30
  it?
• 3:30
  High school or even junior high school days
• 3:34
  is when this is an old joke.
• 3:37
  So just to preface it, used to be
• 3:40
  able to get away with stuff you can't
• 3:41
  get away with anymore, but Hey, I'm a
• 3:43
  risk taker.
• 3:44
  So, uh, at any rate, um, they go
• 3:48
  out, he says, well, this will be great.
• 3:51
  He'd choose a taker to dinner.
• 3:52
  He says, well, let's see if we can,
• 3:54
  you know, have a nice dinner.
• 3:55
  We'll have a few drinks, you know, we'll
• 3:57
  have dinner.
• 3:58
  It'll be great.
• 3:58
  You know, I'm, I'm really looking forward to
• 4:00
  this very attractive girl just happened to have
• 4:03
  a, um, a hair lip.
• 4:04
  And he goes, he goes, man, you know,
• 4:06
  I'm not a bad looking guy.
• 4:07
  I just happened to, you know, not be
• 4:09
  able to afford the glass eye in life.
• 4:12
  You know, so they go out to dinner,
• 4:16
  things are going well, you know, they're sitting
• 4:18
  there, they're getting along great.
• 4:20
  He's, he's, he's really liking, or he thinks
• 4:22
  she's a, she's a great girl.
• 4:25
  And, uh, he's going, man, this is fantastic.
• 4:28
  She's, she's really good girl.
• 4:30
  And he goes, man, is it possible?
• 4:32
  Could I have finally found a woman?
• 4:34
  And the whole time she's, you know, thinking,
• 4:37
  Oh my gosh, this guy's really great.
• 4:38
  I don't care if he's got a, uh,
• 4:40
  uh, you know, artificial eyeball, what do I
• 4:44
  care?
• 4:44
  And, uh, he says, you're just, she's a
• 4:46
  great guy and she's a great girl.
• 4:49
  And so the dinner's going well, they have
• 4:51
  a drink, they're sitting after the drink, they
• 4:54
  go out to the, they go to the
• 4:56
  bar in the restaurant and they sit at
• 4:57
  the restaurant bar and they're having another drink
• 5:00
  and, uh, you know, having a nightcap, um,
• 5:03
  and, and getting, getting ready.
• 5:06
  The evening is coming to a close, the
• 5:08
  bars and the restaurant is getting ready to
• 5:10
  close.
• 5:11
  And, uh, he, he, he gets up his
• 5:15
  courage.
• 5:16
  It's like, man, this opportunity isn't going to
• 5:19
  come up.
• 5:19
  He gets up his courage and he's like,
• 5:21
  man, he says to her, would you like
• 5:24
  to come over to my place?
• 5:26
  And she says, Oh, would I?
• 5:29
  And he says, hair, lip, hair, lip.
• 5:33
  Do you get it?
• 5:34
  Oh, I hope so.
• 5:35
  Anyways, a week, week joke, but that's the
• 5:39
  joke.
• 5:39
  Sorry.
• 5:40
  That's the, the nature of the beast today.
• 5:43
  Uh, it's a weird day we're talking about.
• 5:47
  Um, so what is in the news today?
• 5:50
  What do we have?
• 5:51
  We have Jewish ambulances being torched in London
• 5:56
  with video.
• 5:57
  They even provided video of all of this.
• 6:00
  Um, this is, this is, uh, you know,
• 6:04
  talk about, um, anti-Semitism, I suppose.
• 6:09
  This is nonsense.
• 6:11
  Uh, police are treating an arson attack as
• 6:14
  an anti-Semitic hate crime.
• 6:17
  Well, that's what they do.
• 6:19
  Um, why am I echoing?
• 6:21
  I feel like I'm echoing in here and
• 6:23
  I don't like it.
• 6:24
  So maybe the, maybe just the volumes up
• 6:27
  a little high.
• 6:29
  Anyway, sorry.
• 6:30
  You have to, uh, train along with me
• 6:32
  here at the real estate state of the
• 6:35
  art studio.
• 6:37
  Four ambulances operated by a Jewish volunteer organization
• 6:41
  in London were set on fire overnight.
• 6:46
  The incident took place in Golders Green area
• 6:49
  of the Barnett Borough at around 1 45
• 6:52
  in the morning.
• 6:54
  CCTV footage shows at least three masked individuals
• 6:57
  setting fire to vehicles belonging to the local
• 7:01
  branch of Hat Zala, a network of volunteer
• 7:05
  emergency medical services that works with Jewish communities.
• 7:09
  London fire brigade said the multiple cylinders on
• 7:13
  the vehicles exploded causing windows in a nearby
• 7:17
  residential building to shatter.
• 7:20
  No injuries were reported.
• 7:21
  The Metro police said nearby homes were evacuated
• 7:25
  as a precaution and confirmed that the case
• 7:28
  was being treated as it's anti-Semitic hate
• 7:31
  crime.
• 7:34
  So there's also some new news on now
• 7:38
  we're going to have ice is going to
• 7:42
  be at the airport now.
• 7:44
  Now, um, I guess you gotta get past
• 7:46
  the, uh, ice officials too.
• 7:49
  Um, I don't know how you feel about
• 7:52
  this.
• 7:53
  Trump says he's going to deploy immigration and
• 7:56
  customs enforcement guys to be standing in for
• 8:01
  transportation security administration, TSA personnel at airports, unless
• 8:06
  the Democrats in Congress unblocked funding for DHS.
• 8:12
  The parcel shutdown that began in February has
• 8:16
  left thousands of TSA employees without pay.
• 8:19
  Well, there's too fricking many of them anyway.
• 8:21
  That's a personal view.
• 8:23
  Probably, you know, people don't like that, but
• 8:26
  Jesus are everywhere.
• 8:27
  You can't swing a dead cat without hitting
• 8:30
  a TSA agent.
• 8:31
  It's nonsense.
• 8:32
  Um, resulting in there now lengthy security lines
• 8:36
  at airports across the country.
• 8:38
  TSA and ice are part of the DHS.
• 8:40
  However, the latter agency received $75 billion, $75
• 8:47
  billion.
• 8:50
  So let's say that again, $75 billion for
• 8:56
  immigration enforcement.
• 8:58
  Is that nuts or what?
• 9:01
  Uh, you got it from Trump's big, beautiful
• 9:03
  bill.
• 9:04
  That was real beautiful.
• 9:06
  We've gone up $2 trillion in debt since
• 9:09
  the man took office.
• 9:12
  Anyway, that was signed into law in a
• 9:15
  post.
• 9:16
  On true social, by the way, which is
• 9:18
  also losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 9:21
  According to a lot of people, uh, Saturday,
• 9:24
  the U S president wrote that if radical
• 9:27
  left Democrats don't immediately sign an agreement to
• 9:31
  let our country in particular airports to be
• 9:34
  free and safe again, I will move our
• 9:37
  brilliant.
• 9:38
  Now all ice agents are brilliant.
• 9:41
  This is great.
• 9:42
  Our brilliant patriotic guys agents to the airports
• 9:45
  where they will do security like no one
• 9:47
  has ever seen before.
• 9:49
  Everything is always like nobody's ever seen before
• 9:52
  where you're going to win so much.
• 9:54
  You're going to be sick of it.
• 9:57
  Uh, this guy, no wonder he's got Higgs
• 10:01
  at the run in the, uh, run in
• 10:02
  the military.
• 10:03
  That guy's a, a, a football, you know,
• 10:05
  cheerleader and, uh, Trump's to football quarterback is
• 10:09
  good stuff.
• 10:10
  Uh, the big beautiful bill anyway, including immediate
• 10:13
  rest of all illegal immigrants that come into
• 10:16
  the country.
• 10:17
  Well, you don't fly in.
• 10:18
  If you're coming in illegally, it's not how
• 10:21
  it works.
• 10:22
  You, you sneak in.
• 10:24
  If you're coming in and the people that
• 10:26
  come in and are usually have a visa
• 10:30
  when they fly in.
• 10:31
  If you're coming in from a, uh, a
• 10:33
  non-friendly country, you have to have a
• 10:35
  visa or that you just get turned around,
• 10:37
  right?
• 10:37
  It's not like people are flying in and
• 10:40
  getting allowed in anyway, Tesla and SpaceX CEO,
• 10:44
  Elon Musk, who has emerged as a major
• 10:47
  supporter of the Republican party also weighed in
• 10:49
  offering to pay the salaries of TSA personnel
• 10:54
  during this funding impasse.
• 10:56
  Wonder how much interest he's going to get.
• 10:58
  If any on Sunday, NBC news citing DHS
• 11:02
  estimates report that more than 400 agents have
• 11:05
  quit since February 14 when the parcel shutdown
• 11:09
  started.
• 11:11
  Well, that means jobs are available.
• 11:12
  So you're, you're, uh, improving jobs, right?
• 11:16
  Well, good stuff.
• 11:18
  Anyway, I wanted to, uh, speak a tiny
• 11:22
  bit about what do you think?
• 11:27
  Where are we going to go today?
• 11:29
  How do we, uh, how do we speak
• 11:32
  on this topic without getting, uh, I don't
• 11:36
  know, attacked without, uh, uh, you know, causing
• 11:43
  problems.
• 11:44
  I watched, um, I watched a lot of
• 11:51
  news over the weekend.
• 11:52
  Surprisingly, um, uh, you know, the U S
• 11:57
  is planning for ground forces in Iran.
• 12:00
  You know, we got lots of people on
• 12:02
  our way over there.
• 12:03
  This is BS, friends and neighbors, according to
• 12:06
  Sammy.
• 12:07
  And you know, since it's my show, I
• 12:09
  can say what I like the, I'm going
• 12:14
  to start with this from the beginning.
• 12:17
  Now let us begin at the beginning.
• 12:19
  You do realize my last name was trap
• 12:21
  and a hundred years ago was Vaughn trap.
• 12:23
  And as of now, you know, traps are
• 12:25
  not royalty, uh, except for, you know, minor,
• 12:30
  uh, uh, Kings and Queens who live in
• 12:32
  Chicago and chose to take the name.
• 12:34
  But, uh, here we're just plain old ordinary
• 12:38
  traps, but way back when we used to
• 12:42
  be able to sing.
• 12:44
  When you read, you begin with a, B,
• 12:48
  C.
• 12:48
  And when you sing, you begin with Do
• 12:52
  Re Mi.
• 12:53
  But let's let us begin at the beginning,
• 12:56
  which is a very fine place to start.
• 12:59
  Let's talk about one show that I saw
• 13:06
  in particular.
• 13:07
  I watched a guy, former Marine, uh, now
• 13:13
  a political commentator got his own podcast and
• 13:16
  he was on a program.
• 13:17
  In fact, I think I saw him on
• 13:18
  another program after that.
• 13:20
  So I think, and he's a young man.
• 13:23
  He's, uh, seemed quite intelligent from what I
• 13:27
  saw of him.
• 13:28
  And he, he has a theory and I
• 13:32
  liked his theory and it was very well
• 13:36
  put together and very coherent.
• 13:38
  And I saw, and I watch, everybody knows,
• 13:41
  I watch a lot of international politics and
• 13:45
  I try to keep on top of that
• 13:47
  stuff.
• 13:50
  And basically this is according to him.
• 13:55
  And I've been wondering about this.
• 13:57
  I mean, if we're, if we're really this
• 13:58
  stupid that we're going to, uh, you know,
• 14:01
  go into Iran even further in Israel's, you
• 14:05
  know, greatest wet dream, you know, we're going
• 14:08
  to jump in there and take over Iran
• 14:12
  for Israel.
• 14:14
  Um, you know, we obviously haven't learned our
• 14:19
  lessons, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, figure it anywhere, Somalia,
• 14:26
  Afghanistan, 20 years, hundreds of millions, zero result.
• 14:30
  Did you know that our final forces were
• 14:33
  booted out of Iraq over the weekend just
• 14:36
  now?
• 14:37
  And I, I, I doubt there'll be allowed
• 14:40
  back in.
• 14:41
  So now Iraq has expelled all of our,
• 14:44
  uh, all of our military finally after, you
• 14:48
  know, hundreds of years.
• 14:50
  That's an exaggeration.
• 14:51
  But if I told you once, I told
• 14:53
  you a thousand times never to exaggerate.
• 14:55
  Uh, let's see.
• 14:56
  Okay.
• 14:57
  Let's talk about this is not just another
• 15:00
  middle East war.
• 15:02
  And I think this bears repeating because there's
• 15:06
  a lot of news that has been going
• 15:08
  around that saying this really isn't just another
• 15:10
  middle East war.
• 15:11
  This is going to be a world war.
• 15:13
  And I think that the risk of it
• 15:15
  is pretty freaking great.
• 15:18
  And it's one upsmanship and some people just
• 15:22
  can't handle things without one upsmanship and burletics
• 15:28
  Brian burletic.
• 15:31
  Remember that name?
• 15:32
  Take a look at it.
• 15:32
  If you haven't heard of, he haven't looked
• 15:33
  at him yet.
• 15:34
  This was a pretty good, pretty good talk.
• 15:36
  And I want to combine it.
• 15:38
  I mean, it dovetails somewhat with my views
• 15:41
  on the issue, but a little bit sharper.
• 15:45
  And, uh, it also double, uh, it, I
• 15:49
  watched Sergei Lavrov, you know, just a 20,
• 15:52
  30 minute, uh, interview that was done with
• 15:55
  him.
• 15:56
  And I want to share you a bit
• 15:59
  of a combination of all this, if I
• 16:01
  can possibly get there today.
• 16:03
  And I think I might be able to,
• 16:05
  it's a little bit long in the making,
• 16:07
  but, um, you know, I think it is
• 16:13
  essential because if you get the framing wrong
• 16:16
  at the beginning of how, how I'm going
• 16:17
  to give you this theory, then everything that
• 16:20
  follows it will come out crooked.
• 16:22
  That's just the way it is.
• 16:23
  And this is what's happening in most of
• 16:25
  the discussion in the world about Iran around
• 16:28
  Israel, around the United States, especially around the
• 16:32
  Strait of Hormuz around oil and the broader
• 16:35
  question of where this conflict is really headed.
• 16:39
  Donald Trump changes his mind every day.
• 16:42
  You know, the two to three days ago
• 16:44
  he was saying, we won, it's over, you
• 16:47
  know, and then he goes back to 48
• 16:49
  hour ultimatum.
• 16:50
  You either open the Strait of Hormuz or
• 16:53
  we're going to bomb your, uh, electrical plants.
• 16:56
  Now, this is a big mistake if he
• 16:58
  does, because there were huge, um, bombings, even
• 17:03
  in Israel and Iran has threatened to take
• 17:07
  out D Sal and his desalinization plants just
• 17:11
  like was done to them on one plant,
• 17:13
  but they only, you know, their, their water
• 17:15
  supply is only three, 4%, 5% maybe,
• 17:19
  uh, taken from the seawater.
• 17:21
  The rest of the region is heavily it
• 17:25
  needs it.
• 17:26
  Bahrain, big time, Qatar, big time, all of
• 17:30
  these, these Gulf States that are, they don't
• 17:32
  have any water.
• 17:33
  You know what I mean?
• 17:34
  They're bringing it in from huge desalinization plants.
• 17:39
  So there's these questions of the conflict and
• 17:44
  where it's going.
• 17:46
  They're not getting easy.
• 17:47
  And Trump isn't making it any better.
• 17:50
  Changes his mind every day.
• 17:51
  I mean, today might be another day that
• 17:53
  we've won.
• 17:54
  It's over.
• 17:54
  I've declared it's over.
• 17:56
  Surrender, or we're going to bomb your, uh,
• 17:59
  bomb your plants.
• 18:01
  And so most people are being handed a
• 18:03
  simple, familiar, misleading story.
• 18:07
  Story that is not true goes like this.
• 18:09
  Middle East is unstable.
• 18:11
  Again, Iran is involved.
• 18:12
  Israel is striking again.
• 18:14
  They're the, they're the sane people.
• 18:16
  Actually, they're the lunatics and the U S
• 18:18
  may or may not get dragged in.
• 18:20
  Again, oil prices are going to go up
• 18:22
  and you have to fund it again.
• 18:24
  And this is another one of those unfortunate,
• 18:27
  but somehow routine, routine, um, flare ups, you
• 18:32
  know, that, Oh, gee, it's just a flare
• 18:33
  up, right?
• 18:34
  Okay.
• 18:36
  The world just has to endure these sorts
• 18:38
  of thing until the grownups come in to
• 18:41
  the Straits of Hormuz bringing tons of worship
• 18:43
  and we will calm things down and restore
• 18:46
  order.
• 18:47
  That's because we're the world's policemen.
• 18:50
  That is the typical package, Fox news all
• 18:54
  over it.
• 18:55
  They make me sick.
• 18:56
  You know, you watch these guys.
• 18:58
  Yeah, we're winning.
• 18:59
  No, we're not.
• 19:02
  That's TV version.
• 19:03
  Neat little box that they want to do
• 19:05
  to you in the box is completely wrong.
• 19:08
  You need to listen to people that have
• 19:10
  a clue and those guys need a bigger
• 19:12
  magnifying glass because you know, they cannot find
• 19:17
  a clue at Fox news or anywhere else
• 19:20
  for that matter.
• 19:21
  You know, there's been a, even, even the
• 19:23
  critical CNN, um, I watched something to theirs
• 19:26
  the other day and it was like, geez,
• 19:27
  you're still dummies, but they're making an effort,
• 19:33
  right?
• 19:34
  What we are looking at is not a
• 19:36
  local conflict that might have global contact context.
• 19:40
  We're looking at a global systems conflict that
• 19:45
  is manifesting itself through an opportunity to attack
• 19:48
  Iran through Israel, through the growth, through energy
• 19:52
  architecture of the middle East.
• 19:54
  That is a very different thing than a
• 19:57
  local conflict.
• 19:58
  And if you start from that proposition, suddenly
• 20:01
  a lot of what seems irrational looks very
• 20:04
  rational indeed.
• 20:06
  So we've been trained for years, for decades
• 20:09
  to think of the middle East as a
• 20:11
  place where things just blow up because that's
• 20:14
  what the middle East does, right?
• 20:17
  Some tribal things, sex, some religious things, some
• 20:20
  old hatred, ancient grievances, and then the U
• 20:25
  S has to step in.
• 20:26
  The great powers have to figure out how
• 20:28
  to try to keep civilization from falling apart.
• 20:31
  It's a convenient theory, but it's also insulting
• 20:34
  because it erases the structure of power and
• 20:38
  how it is created.
• 20:39
  It erases logistics, it erases trade and it
• 20:43
  erases most importantly energy and energy transport.
• 20:49
  It also erases the thoughts of Imperial planning,
• 20:52
  finance, who benefits.
• 20:55
  And when you erase all of that, what
• 20:57
  you are left with is what we get
• 20:59
  in America theater.
• 21:01
  And that's it.
• 21:02
  You either hate there's, we hate the religious
• 21:05
  people.
• 21:05
  They're they're religious extremists.
• 21:07
  They're seeking the nuclear bomb.
• 21:09
  They aren't close to a nuclear bomb, by
• 21:11
  the way.
• 21:11
  They have the technology.
• 21:12
  They got scientists, but they're not close.
• 21:15
  They are selling you a lie.
• 21:17
  If you believe that stuff, this has no,
• 21:20
  no chase.
• 21:20
  We're going to get struck by Iran.
• 21:22
  My ass.
• 21:23
  You were, you are now, but you weren't
• 21:25
  before.
• 21:25
  Did you see the video that they put
• 21:27
  out last night all over the news, Iran
• 21:29
  that showed underground stockpiles, tons of them with
• 21:36
  the, just a sample of some of their
• 21:38
  underground stockpiles of weapons that we can't reach
• 21:41
  by the way.
• 21:42
  So one of the reasons I pay so
• 21:44
  much attention is to be as what has
• 21:46
  been coming out of Russia, whether Lavrov, whether
• 21:49
  the talk shows here, the talk shows there,
• 21:52
  whether, what I think are true geopolitical analysts
• 21:55
  and current affairs.
• 21:58
  I don't believe that they're saints over there.
• 22:01
  They know everything or that they're neutral or
• 22:03
  incapable of their own propaganda.
• 22:05
  They have their version of it as well.
• 22:07
  But so of course, I'm not saying that
• 22:09
  they're there.
• 22:10
  I think they're more truthful than ours, but
• 22:14
  then again, we have more to hide.
• 22:17
  Every side has a point of view.
• 22:19
  Every state has an interest.
• 22:20
  Every media system has a blind spot, but
• 22:23
  you know, I'll tell you this much, much
• 22:25
  of the Russian commentary is at least treating
• 22:28
  this as a strategic struggle and not some
• 22:31
  sort of morality show, you know, gee, we're
• 22:34
  right.
• 22:34
  And we gotta, we gotta take care of
• 22:36
  the bad guys.
• 22:37
  It's always the bad guys.
• 22:38
  And that's not it.
• 22:40
  When they talk about Iran, they don't speak
• 22:43
  as if it's just about one bad government,
• 22:46
  one nuclear file, one rash decision by a
• 22:50
  nut job, one temporary exchange of missiles.
• 22:53
  They talk about it as if this is
• 22:54
  a part of a much larger crisis involving
• 22:59
  the very structure of international law, the collapse
• 23:03
  of old restraint and the use of energy
• 23:07
  as an instrument of pressure, which is obviously
• 23:10
  part of the deal.
• 23:13
  If not the entire deal, it's also the
• 23:17
  weakening of the old West centered order.
• 23:21
  That's what's driving it.
• 23:23
  The stuff I've been talking about for nearly
• 23:26
  two years now, both in Russian and in
• 23:30
  English.
• 23:31
  It was why I was driven to go
• 23:33
  to the BRICS conference in Kazan in Russia
• 23:37
  year and a half ago.
• 23:39
  And it's the, it's the weakening of the
• 23:42
  Western centered order, the refusal of a lot
• 23:46
  of people to play along with a business
• 23:49
  as usual.
• 23:51
  And that's a lot closer to reality than
• 23:54
  the nonsense we're getting from the usual talking
• 23:57
  heads.
• 23:57
  So think about what has already happened.
• 24:00
  So before you get into drama, right, the
• 24:03
  maps, military jargon, uh, or even the human
• 24:07
  suffering, which is very real.
• 24:09
  Look instead at the quiet indicators, the ones
• 24:12
  that people who move real goods and ensure
• 24:15
  real cargo and calculate real exposure, what they
• 24:20
  actually care about, shipping routes, shifting insurance rates,
• 24:25
  astronomical risk models, changing ports, less predictable tanker
• 24:31
  traffic, behaving totally differently.
• 24:35
  Uh, in fact, um, infrastructure of, uh, logistics
• 24:40
  is changing incredibly, right?
• 24:43
  Um, naval positions are different.
• 24:47
  Diplomatic language is getting more careful, more evasive,
• 24:51
  and in some cases even more panicked than
• 24:53
  usual.
• 24:54
  And none of that is happening because people
• 24:56
  are worried about an emotional, Oh, democracy first.
• 25:00
  And these guys are dictators.
• 25:02
  They're not worried about that crap.
• 25:03
  This is happening because the underlying system is
• 25:08
  in shock and it's either trying to figure
• 25:11
  out how we're going to absorb it.
• 25:13
  And that is the point that the average
• 25:15
  viewer misses because he is taught to think
• 25:17
  in drama rather than in structure and in
• 25:20
  infrastructure in specific and energy infrastructure.
• 25:24
  The average person says, well, there has to
• 25:27
  be, you know, has there been a world
• 25:29
  war recently?
• 25:32
  It was almost a hundred years ago, 80,
• 25:35
  but has a straight of more moves been
• 25:37
  fully closed?
• 25:38
  No.
• 25:38
  Has China moved?
• 25:40
  Nope.
• 25:40
  Has Russia moved?
• 25:41
  Nope.
• 25:41
  As America invaded, not yet, but we're going
• 25:44
  to, we're getting ready to stupidly.
• 25:46
  Has Europe mobilized?
• 25:47
  Nope.
• 25:47
  They say they're not gonna.
• 25:48
  And because the answer to some of those
• 25:51
  questions is no.
• 25:52
  People imagine the crisis is merely hypothetical.
• 25:55
  It isn't, but that's not how the crisis
• 25:58
  work in the world is built.
• 26:00
  This is how the world is built.
• 26:02
  Highly optimized supply chains, leveraged energy dependence, fragile,
• 26:10
  very fragile political legitimacy, financial markets, cross border
• 26:15
  logistics, precision, and you know, they're all inflated
• 26:20
  and the crisis has begun before the formal
• 26:24
  catastrophe has even occurred.
• 26:27
  Who else paid more than a dollar 50
• 26:29
  a gallon than what they paid six short
• 26:33
  weeks ago.
• 26:35
  So this is when risk is entering the
• 26:38
  bloodstream of the system through extremely high insurance
• 26:43
  rates.
• 26:44
  Now the oil that we're buying now was
• 26:49
  supplied months ago.
• 26:50
  Yeah.
• 26:53
  And why are we getting a new price
• 26:56
  on that?
• 26:56
  Because they can and that's what they do.
• 26:59
  So this is why I keep saying this
• 27:01
  is not about who fires the next rocket
• 27:03
  or who bombs the next energy infrastructure, who
• 27:08
  bombs the next oil.
• 27:10
  Well, you know, it's not about that and
• 27:13
  or these ridiculous posts by idiots on social
• 27:16
  media.
• 27:17
  This is about what happens when the world
• 27:19
  begins to do interesting things.
• 27:23
  They doubt the reliability of one of the
• 27:26
  core energy corridors.
• 27:29
  Okay.
• 27:30
  This is a huge marketing impact or market
• 27:34
  impact.
• 27:34
  Once that doubt is in the market, the
• 27:37
  effects are going to spread far beyond the
• 27:39
  battlefield.
• 27:39
  They've already hit our our gas tanks here.
• 27:44
  And even though we have us economists going,
• 27:48
  we're, we're self-sufficient, we don't need anybody's
• 27:51
  oil.
• 27:51
  Then why in the hell are we paying
• 27:53
  like everybody else is?
• 27:54
  If all the oils come in locally, it
• 27:56
  doesn't have to be shipped through the Strait
• 27:58
  of Hormuz.
• 27:58
  Why in the hell are we paying for
• 28:00
  the Strait of Hormuz?
• 28:01
  Well, uh, you know, people are, it's right
• 28:03
  for people to squeeze as much money out
• 28:05
  of the system as they can.
• 28:06
  It's a capitalism folks, you know, Hey, it's
• 28:10
  an opportunity to raise the prices.
• 28:11
  Why wouldn't you?
• 28:12
  Yeah.
• 28:12
  Well, because it's cheaper here.
• 28:15
  Allegedly.
• 28:16
  Hmm.
• 28:17
  Makes you think, doesn't it?
• 28:19
  It's a political calculation in capitals, nowhere near
• 28:23
  Tehran.
• 28:24
  It's corporate boardrooms.
• 28:26
  It's moving into military planning.
• 28:27
  It's food prices.
• 28:29
  It's fertilizer, which by the way, is the
• 28:33
  number two thing going through the Straits of
• 28:36
  Hormuz fertilizer.
• 28:38
  And you can't get that.
• 28:40
  Everybody's talking about their household budget and how
• 28:43
  much it costs.
• 28:44
  I was telling you last week, how much
• 28:46
  extra did I pay for a, by the
• 28:48
  time it was all said and done, I
• 28:50
  filled up the tank, uh, 25 gallons, uh,
• 28:54
  five times, I guess, 125 bucks, at least
• 28:58
  $150 more than what I would normally pay
• 29:02
  one way.
• 29:03
  Okay.
• 29:04
  To get, to get to Florida.
• 29:06
  Yeah.
• 29:07
  Um, that's why I think the old language
• 29:09
  is completely useless here.
• 29:11
  People go, it's a regional conflict.
• 29:13
  Well, then I want to ask regional for
• 29:14
  who regional for the European economy.
• 29:17
  That's a incredibly vulnerable to energy shock because
• 29:20
  they've blown up Nord stream too.
• 29:22
  And they're, they've gotten rid of Druze but
• 29:25
  pipeline and they're trying to blow that up.
• 29:27
  Uh, Ukraine it's for natural gas and Ukraine
• 29:30
  is, uh, uh, you know, at eternal war,
• 29:34
  they'll never give up on, on Russia, although
• 29:36
  they should.
• 29:37
  And the spring, um, the spring offensives are
• 29:41
  beginning even now.
• 29:42
  So let's pause and take an ask an
• 29:45
  obvious question.
• 29:45
  Why do so many people insist on seeing
• 29:47
  this as a local, local dispute when the
• 29:51
  signs of the systemic strain are visible, visible
• 29:55
  already worldwide.
• 29:57
  Most of it is laziness, but part of
• 29:59
  it is ideology.
• 30:00
  The need to preserve the illusion that the
• 30:03
  world is still organized the way it was
• 30:06
  20 or 30 years ago.
• 30:08
  It isn't, but they want to keep the
• 30:10
  illusion that Washington is at the center of
• 30:13
  it.
• 30:14
  Europe is a moral chorus.
• 30:16
  Yeah.
• 30:16
  You know, they're the, you know, Pete Higgs
• 30:19
  says of Europe, uh, with everyone else reacting
• 30:22
  only to what we do, you know, the
• 30:24
  same old toolkits, sanctions, pressure, proxy war, selective
• 30:29
  law that only applies to others, but never
• 30:33
  to us that is going to impose world
• 30:36
  order or world colonialism.
• 30:39
  But think about the deeper answer.
• 30:41
  If people admitted to what this really is,
• 30:45
  they would also have to admit that the
• 30:47
  old system is weaker than advertised.
• 30:50
  They would have to admit that escalation now
• 30:53
  creates consequences that can't be simply fenced in.
• 30:57
  They would have to admit that controlling the
• 31:00
  narrative is not the same as controlling the
• 31:03
  outcome.
• 31:04
  And we never do that.
• 31:05
  We control the narrative.
• 31:07
  You know, the blue dress narrative is what
• 31:09
  I call it.
• 31:11
  Um, you know, because it is what it
• 31:14
  is, but by God, if I say it
• 31:17
  often enough, people will believe it.
• 31:19
  And that's a painful admission for an empire,
• 31:22
  right?
• 31:22
  For, for, you know, especially one that that
• 31:25
  says it can do anything anywhere in the
• 31:29
  world.
• 31:29
  We're the greatest on the planet and you
• 31:31
  never have to pay any consequences.
• 31:34
  Consequences are common people.
• 31:36
  One of the most revealing things that come
• 31:38
  out in recent commentary, especially out of Russia
• 31:40
  and the Russian media and the strategic talk
• 31:43
  shows that the repeated emphasis on the fact
• 31:46
  that the world is not lining up the
• 31:50
  way it used to, not even Europe.
• 31:53
  And by the way, that's not a small
• 31:55
  observation.
• 31:56
  It's huge.
• 31:57
  In the old model, there'd be a conflict.
• 32:00
  Iraq take an example.
• 32:02
  Then a coalition, Australia's joining in.
• 32:05
  They're going to send over 200 soldiers.
• 32:07
  England's in, they have a 77,000 man
• 32:10
  army and they'll send 15,000 of them.
• 32:12
  Why?
• 32:13
  Because the U S is going and we
• 32:14
  got to support our brothers across the series
• 32:17
  of declarations about international norms only that apply
• 32:21
  to other people, not to us.
• 32:22
  You know, we're the, we're the, we're the
• 32:24
  gunslingers of the, of the, of the world,
• 32:27
  the financial system and the media system would
• 32:30
  move in roughly the same direction like they
• 32:32
  always do.
• 32:33
  And then pressure is brought to bear on
• 32:35
  the people that need to lose so that
• 32:38
  same old winners could win.
• 32:39
  Even countries that are uneasy about it would
• 32:42
  generally fall into line, at least outwardly.
• 32:45
  The model is frayed.
• 32:46
  Now India isn't paying attention.
• 32:51
  They're calculating their own interests.
• 32:54
  China calculates its own interest.
• 32:57
  The Gulf States are pushing back and, and
• 33:01
  calculating their own interest.
• 33:03
  Turkey calculates its interest definitely.
• 33:06
  And they're a NATO member.
• 33:08
  I wonder for how long, even Europe for
• 33:10
  all of its posturing increasingly looks less like
• 33:13
  a person who's just going to fall in
• 33:15
  line.
• 33:16
  And they're acting more like a nervous divided
• 33:18
  energy, fragile, remember appendage of decisions that it
• 33:22
  no longer fully controls.
• 33:25
  That definitely matters because it means that in
• 33:28
  the moment of crisis, these crisis moments don't
• 33:31
  produce the same discipline block behavior that they
• 33:34
  once did.
• 33:35
  They just don't.
• 33:36
  So when I say this isn't a local
• 33:37
  war, I mean not merely that it has
• 33:40
  global consequences.
• 33:41
  I mean that the very shape of the
• 33:43
  world order is now part of the conflict
• 33:46
  itself.
• 33:47
  Iran is one theater.
• 33:48
  Israel's completely another.
• 33:50
  The Gulf is a third.
• 33:52
  And by the way, Israel isn't getting anywhere
• 33:54
  near the support that they used to get.
• 33:56
  And including from me, by the way, I
• 33:59
  think Netanyahu's a bad man.
• 34:01
  That's what I think.
• 34:03
  The Gulf is another.
• 34:04
  Europe's energy vulnerability is another.
• 34:07
  Asian import dependence is another Russia's role as
• 34:10
  an energy and strategic actor is a third
• 34:13
  and a big one.
• 34:14
  China's patient observational position you ought to be
• 34:18
  paying attention to because they're watching and trust
• 34:22
  me, they're learning.
• 34:23
  The declining credibility of old institutions is a
• 34:26
  third in the hypocrisy around international law is
• 34:31
  front and center, not a side note.
• 34:35
  This is the architecture right here.
• 34:37
  You can no longer claim that we even
• 34:40
  remotely follow the rules that we helped create.
• 34:45
  So this is, this is the architecture of
• 34:48
  what's going on and it's another point that
• 34:50
  has to be made plainly.
• 34:52
  Much of what we're witnessing right now is
• 34:55
  not confusion.
• 34:56
  It's not incompetence, at least not alone.
• 34:59
  And it isn't merely a case of leaders
• 35:02
  blundering around in the dark.
• 35:04
  Some of that of course is certainly true.
• 35:07
  Some of the people speaking publicly sound like
• 35:10
  they're deranged.
• 35:12
  You know, you listen to not Netanyahu.
• 35:16
  That guy's out there.
• 35:17
  Okay.
• 35:18
  If you listen to ours, typical spokesman, you
• 35:21
  know you get your Lindsey Graham's, that guy's
• 35:23
  nuts.
• 35:24
  You know, in my humble view you know,
• 35:26
  morally numb, ignorant people that are out there
• 35:30
  talking about this.
• 35:32
  Oh, you know, it's, we've got to take
• 35:34
  care of dictators around the planet.
• 35:36
  No, we don't.
• 35:38
  Let them take care of their own damn
• 35:40
  dictators.
• 35:40
  We don't have anything to do with it.
• 35:42
  If you cannot fully control the rising world,
• 35:45
  you can still try to make it's credible,
• 35:47
  critical nodes unstable.
• 35:49
  So if Israel and the U S can
• 35:51
  continue to paint Iran as the goon squad
• 35:55
  and that they're going to, you know, lob
• 35:58
  a nuclear weapon when Netanyahu finally throws out
• 36:04
  the bomb, it'll be not his fault at
• 36:07
  all.
• 36:09
  That's the way it goes.
• 36:10
  It's not his fault.
• 36:11
  You know, he didn't do it.
• 36:13
  He was forced to just like he's forced
• 36:15
  to invade.
• 36:16
  Now he's forced to bomb the crap out
• 36:19
  of Southern Lebanon.
• 36:21
  Now it's nonsense, right?
• 36:24
  So if they obviously are not in control
• 36:27
  of the world anymore and they're taking some
• 36:30
  desperate measures here right at the end of
• 36:33
  that dominance, if you can't stop your energy
• 36:36
  dependence from reconfiguring toward your greatest rivals, Russia,
• 36:42
  China, India, you can threaten the channels through
• 36:46
  which that dependence is managed, right?
• 36:49
  And suddenly what looked like chaos in the
• 36:52
  beginning begins to resemble the method that we
• 36:55
  have used for years now.
• 36:57
  And it's a new method.
• 36:58
  They have to do something like this or
• 37:00
  you know, you can't say that what they're
• 37:02
  not, what they're doing is not logical.
• 37:05
  It's logical from the point of view of
• 37:07
  a, of a flailing and, and a drowning
• 37:10
  world order from 30 to 50 years ago.
• 37:16
  This doesn't mean that every actor in that
• 37:18
  field wants the same thing.
• 37:20
  Far from it.
• 37:21
  Israel has its own logic, its own obsession
• 37:24
  and its own internal politics, its own ambitions.
• 37:27
  It wants more, more land.
• 37:30
  You got people down there slaughtering with abandon
• 37:34
  and these are private citizens.
• 37:36
  They've opened it up for settlement.
• 37:38
  You know what that means?
• 37:39
  It means go in and kill people and
• 37:41
  take their land.
• 37:42
  That's what's going on right now.
• 37:44
  Believe it or not, that's what's happening.
• 37:46
  Um, its own strategic, its own relationship to
• 37:50
  permanent war.
• 37:50
  It loves permanent war.
• 37:52
  It wants permanent war.
• 37:53
  It thinks it's the strongest to attend 11
• 37:56
  million people in the world.
• 37:59
  They think they're a superpower.
• 38:00
  They are because they got nuclear weapons and
• 38:03
  Trump has his own logic.
• 38:05
  If you can find it, you know, whether
• 38:07
  it's ego, theater, domination, impulses, methodology, grievances, you
• 38:12
  know, he's always aggrieved somehow.
• 38:15
  Those stupid people before me didn't know what
• 38:17
  the hell's going on.
• 38:18
  And I do.
• 38:19
  And he has a breathtaking indifference to long
• 38:22
  term coherence of anything he has fully bought
• 38:27
  into.
• 38:28
  Um, you know, I'm in charge period.
• 38:32
  The American deep state, if we have to
• 38:34
  use that term has its own continuity of
• 38:37
  purpose.
• 38:37
  And right now it's in lockstep with Donald
• 38:40
  Trump because it's broader than any one president
• 38:44
  and far more patient than Trump's public tantrums.
• 38:48
  Europe has weakness that is masquerading as a
• 38:52
  democratic principles, right?
• 38:54
  Russia has opportunity and danger all at the
• 38:57
  same time.
• 38:57
  China sees risk exposure and longterm advantage.
• 39:02
  The Gulf monarchies are watching their own vulnerability
• 39:05
  right now.
• 39:07
  So this isn't some choir singing from one
• 39:09
  sheet of music.
• 39:10
  It is a system under a massive amount
• 39:13
  of stress and each actor is responding to
• 39:16
  that stress from his own position.
• 39:19
  And that is where I think the Russian
• 39:21
  commentary from Lavrov, despite its obvious bias is
• 39:25
  pretty useful and everybody's got their obvious biases.
• 39:28
  You have to read that in when you,
• 39:30
  uh, when you listen to it, that's how
• 39:31
  it works.
• 39:32
  Uh, because it keeps dragging the discussion back
• 39:35
  towards structure, just like China, by the way.
• 39:37
  And just like India, by the way, it
• 39:39
  asks questions like who controls the corridors, who
• 39:42
  bears the cost, who can wait, who can
• 39:45
  absorb the shock, who benefits from prolonged instability,
• 39:50
  United States, by the way, who gains from
• 39:53
  more costly oil, who loses from unreliable shipping,
• 39:57
  who's trying to force whom into what hierarchy.
• 40:02
  These are adult questions and they're the right
• 40:04
  questions.
• 40:05
  Compare that with the child is nonsense.
• 40:07
  We get ill over the West.
• 40:09
  Is this good for Trump?
• 40:10
  Is Netanyahu overplaying his hand?
• 40:13
  Will Iran blink?
• 40:14
  Is this escalation a symbol?
• 40:17
  You know, this isn't analysis is gossip.
• 40:19
  You know, it's theater, just like I say.
• 40:21
  So let me say something else about time
• 40:23
  because, uh, you know, it's also misunderstood.
• 40:27
  You hear warnings about catastrophe and assume that
• 40:29
  if catastrophe doesn't show up immediately, then the
• 40:33
  warning has to have been overblown.
• 40:36
  But hang on coffee drinkers of America unite,
• 40:43
  but strategic crises do not always announce themselves
• 40:48
  with a single clean, um, press conference, right?
• 40:52
  They begin as a progressive corrosion, which we've
• 40:56
  been watching for a while.
• 40:57
  Confidence weakens first behavior changes.
• 41:01
  The contingency plan is a permanent policy.
• 41:04
  The financial distortion sets in.
• 41:07
  I mean, think about the story.
• 41:08
  I just read to you.
• 41:10
  We can't come up with a budget and
• 41:12
  the budget goes October to October.
• 41:14
  We're in freaking March and we're talking about
• 41:17
  a government shutdown because we can't figure out
• 41:21
  how to pay department.
• 41:23
  Oh, lab services is BS.
• 41:26
  I mean, what kind of country do we
• 41:27
  live in?
• 41:28
  Who's the third world country?
• 41:29
  The one with a what?
• 41:31
  40 trillion nearly in debt.
• 41:34
  What are we?
• 41:34
  We passed 39.
• 41:35
  I want to say, and a nearly 40
• 41:39
  trillion in debt or, you know, somebody who
• 41:45
  doesn't have any debt at all, far, far
• 41:49
  less, uh, which is Russia, by the way.
• 41:52
  And, uh, China didn't have a lot of
• 41:54
  debt either.
• 41:55
  Nowhere close to what we have.
• 41:59
  So this contingency planning, financial distortion, alliances, fraying,
• 42:06
  domestic politics are crap.
• 42:09
  And the military move that would once have
• 42:11
  been unthinkable is now thinkable because the ground
• 42:14
  has been prepared psychologically and structurally in that
• 42:18
  sense, the crisis is not waiting for the
• 42:20
  future.
• 42:21
  It's already underway.
• 42:22
  Uh, that is why I want to talk
• 42:25
  about, uh, something that is not just another
• 42:28
  middle Eastern war.
• 42:29
  This is not a replay of the sectarian
• 42:33
  script of, uh, you know, dictators.
• 42:35
  There are dictators over there.
• 42:37
  They're all dictators.
• 42:39
  You think it's not a dictator in Qatar?
• 42:41
  Who's one of our greatest friends and allies.
• 42:43
  The guy's a Prince.
• 42:44
  He's in charge period.
• 42:47
  That's it.
• 42:48
  That's a monarchy, but that's okay.
• 42:51
  We're allowed to have monarchies, you know, long
• 42:53
  as they're friendly to us, but you can't
• 42:56
  be a monarchy or a, uh, uh, a
• 42:58
  one rule family in Iran or anywhere else
• 43:02
  for that matter.
• 43:03
  And what business is it of ours, whether
• 43:05
  they act like Qatar or whether they act
• 43:07
  like, I don't know, any of the other
• 43:09
  places over there, Saudi is run by a
• 43:11
  Prince.
• 43:12
  Okay.
• 43:13
  Emir or something like that.
• 43:15
  What are they, what they call the guy,
• 43:16
  a future control of strategic flows in a
• 43:18
  world that no longer agrees on who is
• 43:21
  entitled to control them.
• 43:23
  The Gulf States aren't even in agreement that
• 43:26
  the U S can come in and run
• 43:27
  it like they want.
• 43:28
  The American troops being booted out of Iraq
• 43:31
  is a big deal.
• 43:32
  And they actually had to ask for more
• 43:34
  time to get their people out.
• 43:36
  NATO troops had to beg yesterday to get
• 43:39
  out and they're out.
• 43:42
  And I doubt they ever get let back
• 43:43
  in.
• 43:44
  Okay.
• 43:45
  So, you know, stop thinking about this as
• 43:49
  a box called Iran.
• 43:51
  Iran's just, you know, a small node.
• 43:54
  It is not the story.
• 43:56
  The real story is the system, the energy
• 43:58
  routes, the financial assumptions around them, the alliances
• 44:02
  and the fear surrounding all of it, the
• 44:05
  rebalancing that is going on.
• 44:09
  Once you start looking at it this way,
• 44:11
  it's not, it's, it's a lot more interesting,
• 44:14
  not who started it, not who said what
• 44:17
  on TV, not even who can score the
• 44:19
  next tactical or political point, but rather who
• 44:22
  is trying to reshape the map of dependence
• 44:25
  and who's trying to survive the reshaping and
• 44:30
  who's planning to inherit the order that emerges
• 44:33
  afterward.
• 44:35
  So I watched that Brian Berlitic that I
• 44:38
  was telling you about and I found it
• 44:40
  quite interesting.
• 44:42
  Now that we've talked about this conflict, it's
• 44:45
  more systemic.
• 44:46
  The next thing we have to do is
• 44:49
  confront how it's actually being managed or in
• 44:53
  my view mismanaged by the people supposedly trying
• 44:56
  to be in control of it.
• 44:58
  Because one of the most striking things you
• 45:00
  see is that a number of conflicts is
• 45:03
  that the doctrine can be summarized very simply.
• 45:09
  Escalation now we'll deal with the problems that
• 45:12
  it brings to us later.
• 45:14
  That's almost too crude to be real, but
• 45:16
  it's absolutely real.
• 45:17
  The one upsmanship and the gamesmanship and the
• 45:20
  I'm, I got the bigger wiener than you
• 45:22
  here is, is, is ongoing.
• 45:24
  It is crude, but true.
• 45:27
  That's all this is.
• 45:28
  You know, you got a bunch of, you
• 45:30
  know, the big football players in the locker
• 45:33
  and the small wimp over in Iran and
• 45:36
  that's what we got.
• 45:37
  That's what we got.
• 45:39
  I don't believe that's reality, but that's what
• 45:41
  people think we got.
• 45:43
  If you watch us TV, uh, you, you
• 45:45
  know, what about the language of deterrence?
• 45:47
  Doesn't exist.
• 45:48
  Sending a message, still restoring credibility.
• 45:52
  None of those things matter.
• 45:53
  But when you ask for obvious followup, what
• 45:56
  happens after the message has been sent?
• 45:58
  What does success actually look like?
• 46:01
  What is the structure of the piece that
• 46:04
  follows?
• 46:04
  You either get silence total or a slogan.
• 46:09
  We're going to take out a dictator.
• 46:11
  Well, you already did that.
• 46:12
  Now what?
• 46:13
  So you did that.
• 46:14
  It allegedly in Venezuela, that's not what you
• 46:16
  did.
• 46:17
  You just put in the next generation and
• 46:19
  that's the exact same thing you did in
• 46:21
  Iran.
• 46:22
  You put in the next generation.
• 46:23
  Why won't you stop now?
• 46:25
  Maybe you have a, how about, how about
• 46:28
  Iran sends you 50?
• 46:30
  What was, how many was it?
• 46:31
  50 billion barrels of oil for free.
• 46:33
  We got to steal 50 billion barrels from
• 46:35
  Venezuela.
• 46:36
  Yay.
• 46:37
  It's not about narco terrorism, not remotely.
• 46:40
  It's about something else.
• 46:43
  So this is where the analytics come into
• 46:46
  play.
• 46:47
  You don't have to accept every element of
• 46:49
  my argument, uh, you know, to explain the
• 46:52
  behavior of the official narrative, because, uh, you
• 46:56
  know, when you think about it, that's where
• 47:00
  the tension exists and it's worth laying out,
• 47:04
  you know, something for you.
• 47:05
  One is that Israel under Netanyahu is the
• 47:09
  primary driver that has been pushing for confrontation
• 47:13
  and war with Iran for years.
• 47:17
  Um, and Israel claims it's existential.
• 47:20
  Iran definitely sees this as existential and they're
• 47:23
  not going to budge because of it.
• 47:24
  They're not, you know, they think they're in
• 47:26
  a fight for their very existence and trust
• 47:28
  me, they are.
• 47:29
  Now the U S is coming out and
• 47:31
  saying, we want to tear this up into
• 47:32
  little chunks.
• 47:33
  They'd rather have 50 different independent local monarchies
• 47:37
  than one big Iranian monarchy.
• 47:40
  That's what they're trying to do.
• 47:42
  They give a crap about a dictatorship.
• 47:44
  It doesn't matter.
• 47:46
  So the alternative view, and this is where
• 47:48
  Berlitz issue came in is that the U
• 47:50
  S is not being dragged by Netanyahu, but
• 47:55
  is instead permitting Netanyahu to act on their
• 47:59
  behalf and shaping the escalation because it serves
• 48:02
  the United States as larger strategic purpose.
• 48:06
  And in that version, Israel isn't the, you
• 48:09
  know, master of ceremonies, but is an accelerant,
• 48:13
  you know, a very willing accelerant, a forward
• 48:16
  instrument, a partner, an aggressive partner whose aggression
• 48:20
  can be folded into a broad design.
• 48:24
  If that's true, which I believe it is,
• 48:28
  the picture is changing dramatically because now you're
• 48:31
  not dealing with a superpower being manipulated.
• 48:34
  You're dealing with a superpower that is perfectly
• 48:37
  aware of the manipulation and is proved proceeding
• 48:41
  anyway because it believes the longterm strategic payoff
• 48:45
  justifies immediate stability.
• 48:47
  Now I'm not saying that everything is centrally
• 48:50
  controlled or that every actor is following a
• 48:52
  slit, a script world is far too complex,
• 48:56
  but there is a difference between total control
• 48:59
  and direction.
• 49:00
  I don't believe the deep state ever was
• 49:03
  totally a control.
• 49:04
  I think they're, you know, they all have
• 49:06
  the same goals financially and power structure that
• 49:14
  they have always had.
• 49:16
  And this is very much like a similar
• 49:19
  situation.
• 49:20
  So there was a lady I also watched
• 49:24
  named, uh, Kareen Givorgian and her analysis was
• 49:28
  pretty useful because it talked about a concept
• 49:33
  that's ignored in the West.
• 49:35
  The idea that escalation between major powers doesn't
• 49:40
  produce a clear winner among the powers.
• 49:42
  Instead it creates a space for a third
• 49:45
  force actors who are not at the center
• 49:49
  of the conflict, but are who are able
• 49:51
  to take advantage of the natural disorder that
• 49:55
  surrounds it.
• 49:56
  And that's a shift because traditional model is
• 50:01
  binary.
• 50:02
  One side wins, the other side loses.
• 50:04
  But what she was describing is something to
• 50:06
  what we see in a number of historic
• 50:08
  situations where the direct participants exhaust themselves, weaken
• 50:13
  their own positions, disrupt their own system, and
• 50:16
  in the process create an open space for
• 50:19
  somebody else to step in.
• 50:23
  And I think that's very real possibility here.
• 50:27
  So let's ask a different question, not just
• 50:30
  who is escalating, but who benefits from the
• 50:33
  escalation continuing.
• 50:34
  And this is where it's much more complicated
• 50:37
  because the benefits aren't even evenly distributed.
• 50:41
  They're not even immediate.
• 50:43
  Some actors benefit from high energy prices today.
• 50:46
  Some benefit from a disruption to their competitors.
• 50:49
  Some benefit from the opportunities of rebuilding and
• 50:53
  some benefit from weakening of alliances and others
• 50:58
  are benefiting just because they're not caught in
• 51:00
  the middle of the storm, Russia.
• 51:02
  And this is why the lack of a
• 51:04
  clear end game, because we don't have one
• 51:07
  isn't just a failure of planning.
• 51:10
  It's at least in part a reflection of
• 51:13
  the fact that for some of the key
• 51:14
  players the process is the objective.
• 51:18
  That's America.
• 51:19
  The process is the objective.
• 51:23
  Prolonged instability, continued war, another 200 billion that
• 51:30
  the military industrial complex gets to spread around
• 51:35
  as it sees fit.
• 51:38
  That serves as the strategic purpose itself.
• 51:41
  It reshapes economic markets.
• 51:44
  It reshapes political alignment.
• 51:47
  It creates new dependency and new security.
• 51:51
  It opens doors that might otherwise be closed.
• 51:55
  Now that is dangerous because the assumption underlying
• 51:59
  it is that the instability can itself be
• 52:01
  contained, that it can be calibrated, that it
• 52:04
  can be increased or decreased as needed.
• 52:06
  But history isn't that kind of assumption.
• 52:10
  A factor doesn't take it into place time
• 52:14
  and again.
• 52:14
  We've watched where actors believe they're managing escalation
• 52:18
  and all they're doing is managing the, the,
• 52:23
  the deep state.
• 52:24
  If you want to call it that Afghanistan
• 52:26
  for 20 years, Iraq for Jesus, we just
• 52:29
  left there.
• 52:30
  The line between pressure and chaos isn't always
• 52:34
  where people think it is.
• 52:36
  And so I would watch Lavrov because you
• 52:39
  know, the, the sick part is he's the,
• 52:42
  he's the only adult in the room that
• 52:44
  I'm watching.
• 52:46
  Well, it's not true.
• 52:47
  Not the only, but there aren't any here.
• 52:49
  I'm trying to find one.
• 52:51
  Here's a joke.
• 52:52
  And Lavrov, you should watch his, his, his
• 52:56
  interview yesterday with a guy.
• 52:59
  Jesus, I can't remember pier V canal, the
• 53:04
  first, first channel one, I suppose it would
• 53:06
  be.
• 53:07
  He talks about international law, mutual restraint, negotiated
• 53:11
  boundaries are no longer the governing principle.
• 53:16
  He was blunt.
• 53:16
  He says that what we are seeing is
• 53:18
  a return to a world in which power
• 53:20
  is exercise for its own sake and no
• 53:25
  constraint.
• 53:26
  And whether you agree with his interpretation or
• 53:28
  not, you can't deny what we're watching.
• 53:31
  Targeted killings, decapitation strikes taking out.
• 53:35
  That's illegal by the way, attacking people's energy
• 53:39
  infrastructure.
• 53:40
  Like Donald Trump is talking about going in
• 53:43
  and bombing the hell out of all your
• 53:44
  power plants.
• 53:45
  That is a war crime in case you
• 53:51
  were wondering.
• 53:52
  And now we're just, yeah, go get them,
• 53:55
  bomb their nuclear plants.
• 53:56
  That's a war crime sanctions as a weapon,
• 54:00
  selective application of rules.
• 54:02
  That's continual.
• 54:03
  It's been that way for at least my
• 54:05
  entire lifetime and doesn't exactly inspire confidence in
• 54:10
  stability of our old system.
• 54:12
  So when you combine these elements, the willingness
• 54:15
  to escalate without a clearly defined end game,
• 54:20
  the possibility that escalation is serving a broader
• 54:22
  strategic objective, continue the war at all costs.
• 54:27
  The emergence of third actors who benefit from
• 54:30
  this instability and the erosion of the norms
• 54:33
  that once constrained people, you begin to see
• 54:36
  this situation is very different.
• 54:38
  It isn't just another cycle.
• 54:39
  It's a different kind of cycle.
• 54:42
  And that brings us back to the problem
• 54:44
  we were talking about.
• 54:45
  If you're escalating with no map, if you're
• 54:47
  applying pressure without a clearly articulated structure for
• 54:51
  what comes next, then you are just gambling.
• 54:54
  That's all we're doing.
• 54:55
  Not with your own position, but with the
• 54:57
  system itself.
• 54:58
  And in a world that is already more
• 55:00
  fragmented and more sensitive disruption, it's not a
• 55:05
  small gamble.
• 55:07
  Once this prospect, prospect prospect begins, the actors
• 55:13
  adjust.
• 55:15
  And once the markets adjust other alliances begin
• 55:19
  to wobble, you can't just declare the experiment
• 55:22
  is over and we'll go back to what
• 55:24
  we said.
• 55:25
  And that's what we're experiencing right now.
• 55:27
  So before, you know, we move on, look
• 55:31
  at the pattern of escalation with no clearly
• 55:34
  defined destination.
• 55:35
  We have no idea what we're doing.
• 55:37
  Donald Trump changes his mind every single day.
• 55:41
  And I wonder what today's change is going
• 55:43
  to be.
• 55:44
  So the energy system itself is the real
• 55:48
  battlefield.
• 55:49
  What have I said on this show before?
• 55:51
  Multiple times, similar to, uh, uh, uh, what
• 55:56
  was the name of the show with, uh,
• 55:58
  um, Kevin Costner, build it and they will
• 56:03
  come, you know, uh, the field of dreams
• 56:06
  or whatever it was called.
• 56:07
  Um, you know, build it.
• 56:09
  If you can control the system, you control
• 56:13
  the logistics, you control the infrastructure.
• 56:18
  Then you can control the energy battlefield, right?
• 56:23
  The modern world runs on energy.
• 56:27
  Uh, ships move, planes fly, fertilizer is produced,
• 56:32
  food is transported.
• 56:34
  Industry depends on it.
• 56:36
  Your, your heat, Sam being cold depends on
• 56:40
  it.
• 56:40
  Electricity depends on it.
• 56:42
  Most importantly, the entire financial and economic structure
• 56:47
  that people take for granted is built on
• 56:49
  the assumption that energy will continue to be
• 56:53
  available and flow in a predictable way.
• 56:57
  When you look at the map, not a
• 56:58
  political map, but a map of alliances and
• 57:01
  borders, um, you know, energy flow we're talking
• 57:05
  about, you see the world quite a bit
• 57:07
  differently.
• 57:07
  You see pipelines, shipping lanes, choke points or
• 57:11
  moves, terminals, refineries, transit quarters.
• 57:16
  You see narrow passages or moves through which
• 57:19
  enormous volumes of oil and gas must pass.
• 57:25
  We hear that name pretty often, but most
• 57:28
  people don't grasp what it represents.
• 57:30
  This isn't just another strategic location.
• 57:33
  This is one of the most critical arteries
• 57:35
  in the global energy system.
• 57:37
  A significant portion of the world's oil passes
• 57:41
  through that narrow stretch, literally the bottleneck through
• 57:46
  which the lifeblood of the global economy must
• 57:50
  flow.
• 57:52
  And you know, I watched another Jeffrey Sachs
• 57:55
  analysis this weekend too, because he cuts through
• 57:59
  the noise and reminds us that, uh, something
• 58:02
  is so obvious, but it gets ignored.
• 58:05
  You don't need a full closure of the
• 58:07
  Strait of Hormuz to create a crisis.
• 58:09
  You do not need to physically block every
• 58:11
  tanker.
• 58:11
  You do not even need a dramatic cinematic
• 58:13
  moment where the world suddenly realizes that this
• 58:16
  is an important spot.
• 58:18
  All you need is a critical, credible risk
• 58:21
  to that system.
• 58:22
  And we already have that.
• 58:24
  By the way, Iran says we haven't closed
• 58:26
  it.
• 58:27
  You know, we're letting our ships through.
• 58:29
  And if your ships want to pay, they
• 58:31
  can get through too.
• 58:32
  We'll let them through.
• 58:34
  But you know, we're tired of being treated
• 58:37
  this way and we control the straight.
• 58:40
  And I'm not so sure that, uh, uh,
• 58:42
  you know, let's say that hard, uh, uh,
• 58:45
  car, car, that, uh, Island, that they take
• 58:48
  it.
• 58:48
  If you think that I ran, which has
• 58:51
  bombed the crap out of several things over
• 58:53
  the last couple of days, when that, when
• 58:55
  Donald Trump says, you open the straight, it's
• 58:58
  a horror moves.
• 58:58
  And they say it's already open.
• 59:00
  And they're just open to ships, uh, paying
• 59:03
  in Yuan.
• 59:05
  It's open.
• 59:06
  You want to pay in Chinese currency.
• 59:08
  Great.
• 59:09
  China's far more stable than you nut jobs
• 59:11
  in the West.
• 59:12
  If you want to pay in that currency,
• 59:14
  then we're willing to keep the, the, the
• 59:17
  straight open and we'll accept that.
• 59:19
  Or you want to pay the Piper, you
• 59:21
  know, we'll let it go.
• 59:22
  But we're tired of being your whipping boy.
• 59:24
  And, uh, insurance is noticing insurance is all
• 59:28
  about it.
• 59:28
  Supply chain has done.
• 59:29
  I'm not saying I agree with this.
• 59:31
  I'm just saying, this is reality.
• 59:33
  Okay.
• 59:33
  And so people don't get it.
• 59:35
  They're waiting for the next event for Trump
• 59:37
  to go in and blow up Garg Island.
• 59:39
  That's going to help, right?
• 59:40
  Uh, that'll help.
• 59:42
  Not at all.
• 59:42
  Or if he takes it over, you know,
• 59:44
  what's going to happen.
• 59:45
  Then Iran's going to destroy it.
• 59:48
  No doubt.
• 59:49
  This is an existential threat for them.
• 59:52
  This is the end game.
• 59:53
  We are at the end game and there
• 59:56
  ain't no way.
• 59:58
  Think about this.
• 59:59
  Like, uh, Afghanistan, think of it like Iraq
• 1:00:03
  and any other of the jokes of wars
• 1:00:06
  we've been involved in, in the last 30
• 1:00:08
  years in the middle East.
• 1:00:09
  Number one, none of them want us there.
• 1:00:12
  Number two, they have no positive end game
• 1:00:17
  and concept of us being, they don't want
• 1:00:20
  us to be like we were in Europe
• 1:00:22
  all over all of military bases, us military
• 1:00:26
  bases all over in a world where energy
• 1:00:29
  is critical.
• 1:00:30
  They're, they're changing.
• 1:00:30
  They're changing the way they think Qatar, a
• 1:00:33
  dictatorship, a monarchy, by the way, just so
• 1:00:38
  you know, uh, and, and, and I'm not
• 1:00:40
  against it.
• 1:00:41
  I don't care.
• 1:00:41
  It's not my country.
• 1:00:42
  It's a beautiful country, regardless of who's running
• 1:00:44
  it.
• 1:00:45
  It's beautiful.
• 1:00:46
  They know they're not going to be beautiful
• 1:00:48
  if they don't do something about this.
• 1:00:50
  And there, you know, they may join, they
• 1:00:53
  may be part of the coalition, but they
• 1:00:54
  don't have much to add.
• 1:00:55
  There's only 347,000 total there anyway.
• 1:00:59
  They don't, they, what kind of army do
• 1:01:01
  they have?
• 1:01:02
  It's not large.
• 1:01:04
  They're dependent upon that kind of thing.
• 1:01:06
  And they've been a great middleman for both
• 1:01:09
  sides and for Hezbollah, for Iran, for Israel,
• 1:01:14
  for all of them.
• 1:01:15
  And what Israel reward them with bomb the
• 1:01:17
  hell out of them.
• 1:01:18
  Didn't say a word about it beforehand, nonsense.
• 1:01:20
  So the conversation about Iran is interesting in
• 1:01:24
  this regard, because Iran is not just another
• 1:01:26
  country in the middle East.
• 1:01:27
  It's a, it's proximity to one of the
• 1:01:30
  most important energy choke points in the world.
• 1:01:34
  And as the capability, not necessarily permanently, but
• 1:01:39
  to make hormones unreliable, no matter what, the
• 1:01:44
  U S isn't going to stop that by
• 1:01:46
  putting a few warships there.
• 1:01:47
  Okay.
• 1:01:48
  To introduce uncertainty, to raise the cost of
• 1:01:51
  using it, to force adjustments in behavior.
• 1:01:54
  You don't have to believe in total control
• 1:01:57
  to exercise influence.
• 1:01:58
  You only need the ability to create doubt
• 1:02:00
  and risk.
• 1:02:02
  So connect that to the broad geopolitical picture.
• 1:02:05
  If you're China and you rely on imports
• 1:02:07
  to pass through these routes, the stability in
• 1:02:09
  the Gulf is not a regional concern.
• 1:02:11
  It's a core strategic interest and we're watching
• 1:02:14
  them already sign new contracts with Russia for
• 1:02:18
  natural gas and for more oil.
• 1:02:21
  And they have the two big pipelines that
• 1:02:23
  come through the Southeastern part of Russia.
• 1:02:27
  And now, and those are, those are pipelines.
• 1:02:31
  They're there and they have a huge volume
• 1:02:34
  going through there and they're connecting them through
• 1:02:37
  other routes as well.
• 1:02:39
  And, uh, and China is taking more because
• 1:02:42
  of the instability that's going on.
• 1:02:44
  And China's watching quietly.
• 1:02:46
  You know, if you're the United States, you
• 1:02:47
  might believe that you are less vulnerable, but
• 1:02:50
  you're still tied to this global system.
• 1:02:52
  Uh, even if you have all just your,
• 1:02:55
  your own, um, you are a net exporter,
• 1:03:00
  not a net importer, but even so we're
• 1:03:03
  still paying.
• 1:03:03
  So the argument put forward by Berlitic is
• 1:03:06
  particularly provocative.
• 1:03:08
  He suggests that the goal isn't to shut
• 1:03:10
  down the flows, but destabilize them in a
• 1:03:13
  way that impose costs on competitors, particularly China.
• 1:03:18
  That's what Trump is doing.
• 1:03:20
  He's trying to make it expensive for China.
• 1:03:23
  Remember what he said last week?
• 1:03:24
  There was a conversations about, well, you have
• 1:03:27
  to go back to the petrodollar cause that's
• 1:03:29
  not happening anymore.
• 1:03:30
  And we're losing our assets because of it.
• 1:03:33
  So he wants to force them back to
• 1:03:35
  the petrodollar.
• 1:03:35
  I heard a, uh, one of the, um,
• 1:03:38
  recent shows that I watched said that if
• 1:03:40
  Iran comes back in and agrees to do
• 1:03:43
  everything in dollars again, with their own natural
• 1:03:47
  resources, then, you know, and give up on
• 1:03:51
  the hormones and you know, whatever, anything, anything
• 1:03:54
  else that Israel wants and that the U
• 1:03:55
  S O force, um, then we can have
• 1:04:00
  some sort of agreement.
• 1:04:01
  You must agree to this, but whether you
• 1:04:03
  fully accept that argument or not, it, it,
• 1:04:05
  uh, provides a lens through which certain actions
• 1:04:09
  make more sense than they do today.
• 1:04:12
  If the goal was simply to eliminate a
• 1:04:14
  threat, it's already gone.
• 1:04:16
  You killed off the top.
• 1:04:18
  You know, Trump says we already won.
• 1:04:19
  We already killed all those guys.
• 1:04:21
  Then you would expect to see a strong
• 1:04:23
  emphasis on deescalation on negotiation, on a clear
• 1:04:26
  end state.
• 1:04:27
  We don't even know what the end state
• 1:04:29
  is, but the goal includes managed instability.
• 1:04:34
  If that's what we're looking for, then the
• 1:04:36
  pattern is quite a bit different.
• 1:04:38
  You see repeat pressure points, you see actions
• 1:04:40
  that increase risk, but they don't resolve anything.
• 1:04:43
  You see a willingness to operate in a
• 1:04:46
  gray zone if not completely out of control.
• 1:04:50
  But the critical thing is this kind of
• 1:04:53
  strategy carries itself enormous risk.
• 1:04:56
  Cause while you may intend to create a
• 1:04:58
  controlled instability, you're operating that a system that
• 1:05:02
  is inherently sensitive to such risk.
• 1:05:05
  A small disruption will have a large effect.
• 1:05:08
  Miscalculation is a big mistake and once confidence
• 1:05:12
  is eroded, you're not going to restore it.
• 1:05:16
  So there was an Iranian guy named Morandi
• 1:05:19
  who I watched as well.
• 1:05:21
  So he had an interview and he reminds
• 1:05:23
  us that Iran is not a passive actor.
• 1:05:26
  It's not waiting to be pressured.
• 1:05:28
  It has prepared for this scenario.
• 1:05:32
  Thus the weapons show of what they have
• 1:05:36
  and they are not running out anytime soon.
• 1:05:40
  It has developed capabilities designed to operate just
• 1:05:45
  under this type of conflict.
• 1:05:48
  It is considered how to respond in ways
• 1:05:51
  that impose costs and you know, but they
• 1:05:57
  don't invite immediate and I don't invite Netanyahu
• 1:06:01
  pushing a nuclear bomb just yet cause we
• 1:06:04
  know that's where it's come from.
• 1:06:05
  At least I know, you know, you can
• 1:06:07
  call me wrong, you can call me a
• 1:06:09
  nut, but don't think so.
• 1:06:11
  So now that the picture is all complex
• 1:06:15
  and you have a system that depends on
• 1:06:16
  a stable energy flow and you have actors
• 1:06:19
  willing to introduce instability, the U S and
• 1:06:23
  you have other actors capable of responding in
• 1:06:26
  ways that will amplify the instability.
• 1:06:29
  I ran that isn't a representation or rep
• 1:06:33
  recipe for control.
• 1:06:35
  It's increased volatility.
• 1:06:38
  So when you hear discussions about Iran, about
• 1:06:41
  strikes, about response, about deterrence, you need to
• 1:06:44
  keep thinking of something else.
• 1:06:45
  Very simple, a very fundamental question at the
• 1:06:50
  end, who controls the flow of energy in
• 1:06:54
  a world where the flow can no longer
• 1:06:57
  be taken for granted.
• 1:06:59
  If you, if the, if the flow is
• 1:07:04
  out, you know, is instable like it is,
• 1:07:07
  that answer to the question is going to
• 1:07:10
  reshape absolutely everything else and it'll shape economic
• 1:07:15
  outcomes and political stability and alliances at the
• 1:07:20
  end and the balance of power overall.
• 1:07:24
  And right now that question isn't even being
• 1:07:26
  discussed.
• 1:07:27
  It's being contested not through direct confrontation, but
• 1:07:31
  through positioning through signaling through, uh, well, I
• 1:07:35
  don't know, creation of more risk mismanagement of
• 1:07:39
  expectations.
• 1:07:41
  That's why this matters.
• 1:07:43
  That is why it's important.
• 1:07:46
  Okay.
• 1:07:49
  And let's see now that we've established that
• 1:07:54
  this isn't a local conflict, this is a
• 1:07:56
  global conflict already and that escalation is proceeding
• 1:08:00
  without a clearly defined destination.
• 1:08:02
  Nobody knows where we're going.
• 1:08:04
  I don't even think Trump has, he hasn't
• 1:08:06
  articulated it well if he does.
• 1:08:08
  And the real battlefield is the energy system
• 1:08:11
  itself.
• 1:08:13
  We need to turn to a question that
• 1:08:14
  is in many ways even more important than
• 1:08:16
  anything we've covered so far.
• 1:08:18
  And Lavrov brought it out pretty well.
• 1:08:21
  He, uh, he's impossible to ignore.
• 1:08:25
  Now Burletic, the Iranian guy, Mamdani or whatever
• 1:08:29
  his name was, um, they are talking theoretical.
• 1:08:33
  Um, they are talking structural, economic, uh, and
• 1:08:38
  then analytical.
• 1:08:39
  But this guy Lavrov is acting as inside
• 1:08:43
  the state powered systems themselves.
• 1:08:46
  He's part of the issue.
• 1:08:48
  And when he talks, you can't ignore him.
• 1:08:50
  Not because he's neutral.
• 1:08:51
  He's not, not because he's beyond criticism.
• 1:08:54
  He's not, but because he's one of few
• 1:08:56
  figures that speaks consistently at a state level
• 1:09:00
  who describes what is happening in terms that
• 1:09:02
  go beyond the immediate crisis.
• 1:09:05
  He isn't talking about good versus evil.
• 1:09:08
  He also isn't talking about Iran as an
• 1:09:10
  isolated case.
• 1:09:11
  He isn't talking about Israel as an isolated
• 1:09:14
  actor.
• 1:09:15
  He's talking about the breakdown of the operating
• 1:09:19
  system of international relations.
• 1:09:21
  And that's a different level of analysis than
• 1:09:24
  what most audiences are given.
• 1:09:27
  That's why I think he's a hell of
• 1:09:30
  a lot smarter or at least more realistic
• 1:09:35
  than the rest of them.
• 1:09:36
  He ain't selling you some kind of a
• 1:09:38
  theater, some kind of a TV show, some
• 1:09:41
  kind of a, who wants to be a
• 1:09:42
  millionaire program.
• 1:09:44
  You know, uh, what was the one that
• 1:09:46
  Donald Trump had?
• 1:09:47
  Um, where he sells, you know, people would
• 1:09:50
  let's make a deal or whatever it was
• 1:09:52
  he was doing where people would sell him
• 1:09:54
  their ideas.
• 1:09:55
  He ain't doing that.
• 1:09:56
  Lavrov's not doing that.
• 1:09:57
  He's saying, watch people.
• 1:09:59
  It's getting destroyed right before your eyes.
• 1:10:02
  And his central argument, which I've heard fairly
• 1:10:08
  often in one form or another is the
• 1:10:12
  world is moving away what was once described
• 1:10:15
  optimistically as this rules based order.
• 1:10:19
  The only people that cling to that are
• 1:10:21
  the people who never followed those rules in
• 1:10:23
  the first place.
• 1:10:24
  And now it's going to a system in
• 1:10:26
  which power is exercised more directly.
• 1:10:29
  We're the biggest, we're the biggest, baddest player
• 1:10:31
  on the block.
• 1:10:32
  We're the biggest bully and therefore we get
• 1:10:34
  to do what we want, uh, more selectively
• 1:10:37
  and with no constraint.
• 1:10:38
  That's what's happening.
• 1:10:40
  Now the word rules based or the phrase
• 1:10:42
  rules based order is a bit of a
• 1:10:44
  marketing scam anyway, because those rules were never
• 1:10:47
  applied evenly.
• 1:10:48
  But what Lavrov is pointing to isn't just
• 1:10:51
  a hypocrisy of that.
• 1:10:52
  He's pointing to a shift in other people's
• 1:10:55
  behavior based on the fact that everybody says
• 1:10:57
  it is now just a hypocrisy, a shift
• 1:11:01
  in even the pretense that there's some kind
• 1:11:03
  of a universal rule, that there's some kind
• 1:11:05
  of a UN charter.
• 1:11:07
  Nobody's paying attention to it in the West.
• 1:11:09
  The only people they try to apply it
• 1:11:10
  to is not themselves.
• 1:11:13
  You know, he's, he said, uh, the universal
• 1:11:16
  rules pretense is less important than the assertion
• 1:11:20
  of force sanctions, economic pressure, and strategic positioning.
• 1:11:26
  And apparently we're all about that here now.
• 1:11:29
  Now we, you know, Donald Trump can just
• 1:11:31
  say, I'm the rules based order, period, end
• 1:11:34
  of sentence, move on.
• 1:11:37
  I'm going to send my army and I'm
• 1:11:38
  going to take care of you.
• 1:11:39
  Well, good luck with that theory too, because
• 1:11:41
  it'll be another 20 year war.
• 1:11:44
  So when Lavrov talks about this, he often
• 1:11:46
  ties it to energy and that is where
• 1:11:49
  his perspective is relevant to what I already
• 1:11:51
  talked about.
• 1:11:52
  He says that Western policy, particularly American policy
• 1:11:55
  is increasingly treating energy not as a commodity,
• 1:11:59
  but as a control lever, sanctions on Russian
• 1:12:02
  energy, pressure on European supply interventions in countries
• 1:12:06
  like Venezuela and Iran.
• 1:12:07
  All of these, according to Lavrov, aren't separate
• 1:12:11
  policy decisions, but are part of a broader
• 1:12:13
  effort to shape who produces the energy, who
• 1:12:16
  consumes it and under what conditions, when you
• 1:12:20
  place that argument alongside what we've already talked
• 1:12:23
  about, choke points, about harmoos, about risk, about
• 1:12:27
  vulnerability, you begin to see that these are
• 1:12:30
  not competing narratives.
• 1:12:32
  They're just a different description of the same
• 1:12:35
  reality.
• 1:12:37
  Now you don't have to accept Lavrov's framing
• 1:12:39
  to recognize that it's internally consistent.
• 1:12:42
  In fact, you shouldn't accept it because, uh,
• 1:12:46
  you know, you can't rely on the perspective
• 1:12:48
  of only one actor when coming up with
• 1:12:50
  a thesis, especially one so deeply involved in
• 1:12:54
  the conflict itself.
• 1:12:55
  But you should compare his statements with observable
• 1:13:00
  behavior.
• 1:13:01
  You should ask whether the actions we are
• 1:13:03
  seeing targeted strikes, economic warfare, selective enforcement, shifting
• 1:13:11
  justification, depending upon who you're talking to, whether
• 1:13:15
  they're part of a rules-based framework or
• 1:13:18
  a power-based framework.
• 1:13:20
  And when you do that, honestly, truthfully, you
• 1:13:25
  can't, it's, it's hard to argue that the
• 1:13:27
  old order, which is us, is functioning the
• 1:13:31
  way it once did, even if it never
• 1:13:34
  functioned perfectly to begin with.
• 1:13:36
  We never followed the rules base order, but
• 1:13:39
  now forget about it.
• 1:13:40
  Nobody's paying attention because they know that the
• 1:13:42
  rules do not apply.
• 1:13:45
  Um, China isn't responding.
• 1:13:48
  Russia isn't responding to the situation with a
• 1:13:50
  dramatic military jester.
• 1:13:52
  It's responding with caution, with observation and long
• 1:13:57
  term repositioning.
• 1:14:00
  It understands that its own economy depends heavily
• 1:14:04
  on energy flow that passes through vulnerable regions.
• 1:14:08
  You saw by the way, that sanctions are
• 1:14:11
  lifted on Iran by Trump they're lifted 30
• 1:14:17
  days lifted, no sanctions.
• 1:14:19
  He needs that oil to flow.
• 1:14:21
  If that doesn't tell you something extreme, you're
• 1:14:26
  not paying attention.
• 1:14:27
  And, uh, Russia, no, no, uh, no, uh,
• 1:14:31
  no sanctions for, for, for oil in certain
• 1:14:34
  areas.
• 1:14:34
  India can buy oil from whoever they want.
• 1:14:39
  And they always did anyway.
• 1:14:41
  But now Besant is claiming it was his
• 1:14:43
  idea.
• 1:14:45
  I allowed them to, you know, Donald Trump's
• 1:14:47
  going to allow them for 30 days to
• 1:14:48
  buy oil from wherever they want.
• 1:14:50
  Gee, thanks Donald Trump.
• 1:14:51
  As if you now control, uh, India too,
• 1:14:54
  you don't.
• 1:14:54
  And they were always buying it from who
• 1:14:56
  they wanted.
• 1:14:57
  Never has there been an agreement for them
• 1:14:59
  to not buy oil from Russia.
• 1:15:02
  They talked about it.
• 1:15:03
  Trump said, you can't do it.
• 1:15:05
  Or we're going to, we're going to tariff
• 1:15:06
  you.
• 1:15:07
  Well tariff away then.
• 1:15:09
  And then Trump changes his mind.
• 1:15:11
  And you know, you don't hear about it.
• 1:15:12
  Two, three days later, China isn't responding to
• 1:15:15
  this situation with any sort of dramatic military
• 1:15:18
  gesture.
• 1:15:19
  It's watching.
• 1:15:20
  It's observing cautiously long term.
• 1:15:25
  It understands that what's going on.
• 1:15:28
  India continues to purchase energy, ignores political pressure
• 1:15:33
  that forced alignment in earlier eras.
• 1:15:37
  It is balancing its relationships.
• 1:15:39
  It's paying in yuan.
• 1:15:41
  A lot of times it's paying in the
• 1:15:43
  ruble.
• 1:15:43
  Russia's accepting the rupee to the Indian money.
• 1:15:48
  So tell you what, it refuses to lock
• 1:15:52
  itself India into a position that might become
• 1:15:55
  disadvantageous.
• 1:15:57
  If the system shifts, it's acting on its
• 1:15:59
  own behalf.
• 1:16:00
  The Gulf States have started doing something comparable.
• 1:16:05
  They have ties everywhere, multiple axes, they avoid
• 1:16:10
  committing fully to any one direction.
• 1:16:13
  Even if they do give Donald Trump a
• 1:16:15
  $400 million airplane.
• 1:16:16
  So he ignores them.
• 1:16:19
  You know, even Europe despite its rhetoric has
• 1:16:22
  showed signs of strain.
• 1:16:23
  It's caught between its alignment with the U
• 1:16:25
  S and the economic realities of dependence that
• 1:16:30
  have never been resolved.
• 1:16:32
  So what ties all of these things together
• 1:16:35
  and the behaviors is not coordination.
• 1:16:38
  There's no single meeting where all these countries
• 1:16:41
  sit down and agree on a plan.
• 1:16:43
  What ties them together is something more subtle
• 1:16:46
  and probably more significant.
• 1:16:50
  A recognition that the system itself is changing
• 1:16:53
  and survival in the changing system requires flexibility,
• 1:16:58
  not blind alignment.
• 1:17:00
  Canada, you're watching them do the same thing.
• 1:17:02
  They started working with China.
• 1:17:05
  Trump is having a fit over it.
• 1:17:06
  You can't work with China.
• 1:17:08
  Well, why not?
• 1:17:09
  You don't want to work with us.
• 1:17:10
  You treat us like you're lackey.
• 1:17:12
  You're where you're whipping child to the North
• 1:17:15
  and Mexico's you're whipping child to the South
• 1:17:17
  and Cuba is going to be your 51st
• 1:17:20
  state or is it 54th?
• 1:17:22
  We don't know anymore.
• 1:17:23
  It changes by the week.
• 1:17:24
  You know, who's going to be next.
• 1:17:26
  So Lavrov's perspective, he isn't just describing strange
• 1:17:31
  Western behavior, which is constant in his review.
• 1:17:34
  He is describing the responses to Western behavior
• 1:17:39
  and saying that if the system is no
• 1:17:41
  longer governed by even marginally consistent rules, countries
• 1:17:46
  have to adapt to a reality in which
• 1:17:48
  power is exercised more openly like the U
• 1:17:51
  S is displaying right now.
• 1:17:53
  Well, we'll come and beat you into submission.
• 1:17:55
  If you don't do what Israel says, we'll
• 1:17:57
  beat you up.
• 1:17:58
  You know, I'm big brother, you know, this
• 1:18:00
  is what we do.
• 1:18:02
  And they're adapting.
• 1:18:03
  It doesn't mean more confrontation.
• 1:18:05
  It means patience.
• 1:18:06
  When Trump is gone, things go back to
• 1:18:09
  normal may well, whatever normal meant.
• 1:18:11
  It means waiting to see how far escalation
• 1:18:14
  goes, how stable it remains and more importantly,
• 1:18:17
  what opportunities it creates.
• 1:18:19
  Now this introduces a dynamic very different from
• 1:18:22
  what people are used to in the past,
• 1:18:24
  a major conflict produced a kind of gravitational
• 1:18:27
  pull.
• 1:18:27
  You had to pick one side or the
• 1:18:29
  other neutrality wasn't allowed.
• 1:18:32
  Basically countries were drawn into one camp or
• 1:18:35
  the other pressure, current environment aside, the gravitational
• 1:18:41
  pull is certainly weaker.
• 1:18:43
  Countries are maneuvering on their own and they
• 1:18:47
  have far more alternatives.
• 1:18:49
  They have more ways to absorb pressure without
• 1:18:51
  fully capitulating.
• 1:18:52
  And as a result, escalation isn't consolidating the
• 1:18:58
  system of power.
• 1:18:59
  It's fragmenting it further.
• 1:19:02
  And this fragmentation is going to have profound
• 1:19:05
  implication because it means the outcome of the
• 1:19:09
  conflict is not going to be determined just
• 1:19:12
  by those who are most visibly involved in
• 1:19:15
  it.
• 1:19:15
  It'll be shaped by those who are sitting
• 1:19:17
  on the outside, China, Russia, notably India, who
• 1:19:22
  are preserving their own flexibility and are able
• 1:19:25
  to move decisively.
• 1:19:27
  Once the direction of change becomes clear, us
• 1:19:30
  is wasting all kinds of money, 200 billion
• 1:19:33
  in a couple of weeks with more on
• 1:19:35
  the way.
• 1:19:36
  This is not cheap and we don't have
• 1:19:38
  the way to keep it up.
• 1:19:39
  And meanwhile, cheap drones are coming all over.
• 1:19:42
  And we have ICBMs coming in all over
• 1:19:44
  the Middle East and we can't stop them
• 1:19:48
  because we ran out of defensive missiles, giving
• 1:19:52
  them all to Ukraine for another war that
• 1:19:54
  we didn't need to be involved in.
• 1:19:56
  So I tell you what, I think we're
• 1:19:58
  in trouble and not in trouble.
• 1:19:59
  We're America.
• 1:20:00
  We're, we're, we're, we're going to be just
• 1:20:01
  fine, but we're involved in a longterm scenario.
• 1:20:05
  We can, you know, we can play attrition
• 1:20:07
  games too.
• 1:20:09
  Um, so the important actors aren't going to
• 1:20:11
  be the ones making the loudest statements on
• 1:20:14
  TV.
• 1:20:14
  They're going to be the ones who say
• 1:20:16
  very little, but are preparing very carefully, very
• 1:20:21
  carefully.
• 1:20:22
  And this brings us to another uncomfortable, uh,
• 1:20:25
  but necessary conclusion.
• 1:20:26
  If Lavrov is even partially correct in his
• 1:20:30
  assessment that the old system is collapsing and
• 1:20:33
  if behavior of the other actors reflects a
• 1:20:36
  recognition of that breakdown itself, then we're not
• 1:20:40
  simply witnessing a conflict in a stable order
• 1:20:44
  that's always been that way.
• 1:20:46
  We're witnessing a conflict during a transition between
• 1:20:49
  two different orders and transitions are inherently stable
• 1:20:53
  in the first place.
• 1:20:54
  There are periods in which old assumptions no
• 1:20:57
  longer hold, but the new structure hasn't been
• 1:20:59
  fully formed yet.
• 1:21:01
  These are periods in which miscalculation is dangerous
• 1:21:07
  because the rules of the game are not
• 1:21:10
  defined.
• 1:21:12
  So as we move on, you know, the
• 1:21:15
  question that flows from the understanding of what
• 1:21:17
  we're talking about is the system is changing.
• 1:21:20
  If the system is changing, if the rules
• 1:21:23
  no longer are reliable, if energy is the
• 1:21:28
  central lever, which obviously it is because every
• 1:21:31
  time Trump takes over a different place, it's
• 1:21:33
  to increase power or steal resources.
• 1:21:36
  And if countries are positioning themselves for what
• 1:21:39
  comes afterward, regardless of who wins, then who
• 1:21:44
  is actually going to control that system afterward
• 1:21:48
  becomes a very important question.
• 1:21:52
  And so the real question is who gets
• 1:21:54
  to control what comes next.
• 1:21:58
  So this is where discussions fall apart because
• 1:22:03
  they're not designed to think in those terms.
• 1:22:04
  We don't know what the outcome is going
• 1:22:06
  to be.
• 1:22:07
  They're focused on an event, not on a
• 1:22:09
  structure.
• 1:22:09
  They're designed to keep people engaged in the
• 1:22:11
  immediate drama, not the longterm result.
• 1:22:15
  But if you step back and look at
• 1:22:16
  whatever the pattern is, you begin to see
• 1:22:18
  is not a conflict unfolding, but the reordering
• 1:22:21
  process beginning to take shape, not fully, not
• 1:22:25
  complete, but visible from behavior of the actors
• 1:22:29
  involved.
• 1:22:29
  When systems are under this type of pressure,
• 1:22:32
  they don't just snap back to where they
• 1:22:33
  were before.
• 1:22:34
  They adjust and they reorganize and they redistribute
• 1:22:37
  influence and dependency in ways that often become
• 1:22:41
  clear only afterward.
• 1:22:43
  The key point is that the actors who
• 1:22:47
  shape the reordering aren't always the ones who
• 1:22:51
  dominate or win or lose in the conflict.
• 1:22:56
  This is the idea of the third force
• 1:22:58
  that Burletic touched upon and that Mamdani talked
• 1:23:02
  about that we're talking about where this is
• 1:23:05
  central.
• 1:23:06
  When major players engage in sustained confrontation, they
• 1:23:09
  expend all kinds of resources and disrupt the
• 1:23:12
  systems that they themselves depend upon.
• 1:23:16
  They create openings for other people, openings for
• 1:23:18
  others that are less directly involved, less exposed,
• 1:23:21
  more flexible, and far more patient.
• 1:23:25
  Those actors don't need to win a war.
• 1:23:27
  They just need to be in a position
• 1:23:29
  to take advantage of what the war changes.
• 1:23:33
  And when you apply that to the current
• 1:23:35
  situation, the implications are difficult to ignore because
• 1:23:39
  while the US and its immediate allies are
• 1:23:42
  deeply engaged in managing or forcing escalation, and
• 1:23:48
  Iran is positioned as both a target and
• 1:23:50
  a responder, other actors, China, India, Russia, other
• 1:23:55
  regional powers who aren't committing themselves fully to
• 1:23:58
  one side or the other, but are preserving
• 1:24:01
  their ability to move in whatever direction proves
• 1:24:04
  most advantageous, then you'll get to see what
• 1:24:08
  a meaningful action really is afterward.
• 1:24:12
  China in particular stands out very much.
• 1:24:16
  It is heavily dependent on energy from that
• 1:24:19
  region.
• 1:24:19
  So it has a clear interest in avoiding
• 1:24:22
  a catastrophic disruption, but is also in a
• 1:24:25
  position to benefit from the various instability that
• 1:24:28
  is weakening the existing structure, especially if that
• 1:24:31
  instability creates an opportunity for investment.
• 1:24:34
  They have money that they're no longer investing
• 1:24:37
  in the United States.
• 1:24:39
  They have money for reconstruction, for new agreements,
• 1:24:42
  for expanded influence in a region previously dominated
• 1:24:46
  by the United States.
• 1:24:48
  They do not need to rush.
• 1:24:50
  They got the money.
• 1:24:51
  It does not need escalation.
• 1:24:53
  It can afford to wait, watch, and step
• 1:24:57
  in when the time is right.
• 1:24:59
  And that is a different kind of power
• 1:25:01
  than the one most people are used to
• 1:25:03
  thinking about.
• 1:25:04
  It isn't a power expressed through immediate action.
• 1:25:06
  They're watching us whittle away our own resources,
• 1:25:11
  openly discussing, not having defenses to cover all
• 1:25:14
  of our obligations, taking people from the South
• 1:25:18
  China sea and moving them into the Middle
• 1:25:21
  East.
• 1:25:22
  Think about that, friends and neighbors, and the
• 1:25:25
  picture that it paints for a people like
• 1:25:29
  China and for Taiwan who's scared shitless right
• 1:25:33
  now.
• 1:25:35
  Jeez, something's going to happen.
• 1:25:37
  The US ain't going to be there.
• 1:25:38
  We're going further and further toward mass escalation.
• 1:25:42
  This doesn't mean that there's any kind of
• 1:25:44
  predetermined outcome or that there's any guarantee about
• 1:25:47
  who's going to emerge as the primary beneficiary.
• 1:25:50
  It's too complex for that, but there are
• 1:25:52
  too many variables, too many potential points of
• 1:25:57
  failure and too many ways which things will
• 1:25:59
  escalate beyond anyone's control.
• 1:26:02
  And so the outcome isn't going to be
• 1:26:04
  shaped by who fights, but by who adapts
• 1:26:07
  best to the changes.
• 1:26:09
  And that's why the control of energy routes,
• 1:26:13
  stability of choke points, and the ability to
• 1:26:15
  manage or exploit disruption are critical because they
• 1:26:21
  determine not just who suffers in the short
• 1:26:23
  term, but who gains in the longterm.
• 1:26:25
  In a world where the old rules are
• 1:26:27
  no longer reliably enforced, they never have been,
• 1:26:31
  at least for the last 30, power is
• 1:26:33
  exercised more directly.
• 1:26:35
  That's fairly new.
• 1:26:37
  At least we claimed we weren't doing it
• 1:26:39
  willy nilly before.
• 1:26:40
  Now we're just doing it because we're the
• 1:26:41
  biggest, baddest bully on the block and where
• 1:26:46
  actors are increasingly operating based on their own
• 1:26:49
  calculation rather than a collective framework of any
• 1:26:53
  kind.
• 1:26:54
  These factors are far more important than they
• 1:26:57
  were before.
• 1:27:00
  There's a tendency in times of crisis to
• 1:27:04
  look for something clear, to look for a
• 1:27:06
  simple answer, to look for a clear line
• 1:27:09
  between right and wrong, between aggression and defense,
• 1:27:14
  between cause and effect.
• 1:27:16
  They're still important at a moral level, but
• 1:27:19
  they obscure the structural realities.
• 1:27:23
  That's unfortunate to say, but true.
• 1:27:25
  Systems do not reorganize based on morality.
• 1:27:29
  They reorganize based on power, resources, and the
• 1:27:33
  ability to shape outcome over time.
• 1:27:37
  That doesn't mean morality is irrelevant.
• 1:27:39
  It means that morality alone does not determine
• 1:27:42
  the structure of the system.
• 1:27:46
  Morality for us is a loaded question.
• 1:27:50
  It's something we ignore if it is in
• 1:27:54
  our best interests.
• 1:27:55
  We ignore non-democracy monarchy structures if it's
• 1:28:00
  in our interest, but when it's not, we
• 1:28:03
  claim that we go to war because there's
• 1:28:06
  a dictator in this state.
• 1:28:08
  What we're watching isn't just a conflict.
• 1:28:11
  It's a moment of transition.
• 1:28:14
  And it's a big transition.
• 1:28:16
  Positions are going to be adopted.
• 1:28:18
  Opportunities are going to be seized and they
• 1:28:20
  may not come out as you think they're
• 1:28:23
  going to come out.
• 1:28:25
  I just want to leave you with one
• 1:28:26
  final thought.
• 1:28:28
  The question isn't who wins this week, this
• 1:28:31
  month, or even this year.
• 1:28:33
  Trump says he won already.
• 1:28:35
  The question is who's building a position that
• 1:28:38
  will allow them to shape what comes next?
• 1:28:42
  Because in the end, the side that controls
• 1:28:45
  the condition of the future through energy, trade,
• 1:28:48
  relationships, and influence is the side that will
• 1:28:51
  define the system.
• 1:28:53
  And right now the world is only focused
• 1:28:55
  on the conflict and the future as being
• 1:28:58
  quietly reconstructed while we're not paying any attention.
• 1:29:02
  That's what I say.
• 1:29:04
  So I appreciate you listening to International Flavor
• 1:29:07
  today.
• 1:29:07
  I'm Samuel Trapp coming to you live from
• 1:29:11
  the Lake Ozark real estate of the art
• 1:29:13
  studio.
• 1:29:13
  You can always listen to our former shows
• 1:29:15
  at law.
• 1:29:16
  I'm sorry, at damradio.com forward slash podcast.
• 1:29:19
  You can go out to internationalflavor.com and
• 1:29:22
  do the same.
• 1:29:23
  I do another show on Fridays called civicoutlaws
• 1:29:26
  .com where we focus on Missouri government overreach.
• 1:29:31
  Hope you join me on Friday.
• 1:29:32
  It's going to be an interesting week, a
• 1:29:35
  lot going on on that end.
• 1:29:37
  So join us in when you get an
• 1:29:41
  opportunity.
• 1:29:42
  We love to have you.
• 1:29:45
  I hope you have a very nice, but
• 1:29:46
  apparently very cold mid Missouri day.
• 1:29:49
  Bye-bye.