Judging Freedom - Kyle Anazlone: Antiwar Latest

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 5th, 2024. Kyle Anzalone from the Libertarian Institute and antiwar.com will be here with us in just a moment on how dangerous is it for American weaponry to be striking inside Russia and how serious is the Russian threat to stop it. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. You have $100 in the bank. It still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power and mine by 24%.

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have predicted this $3,200 an ounce gold. Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620 learjudgenap.com Tell them the judge sent you. Kyle, welcome here. Thank you for accommodating our schedule today. I was supposed to be away and was scrambling to get all of our regulars on and you were good enough to accommodate us much appreciated um Ukraine admits that it has used American weaponry to strike inside of Russia Anthony Blinken admits that President Biden has authorized this President

Macron of France acknowledges that he has Colonel McGregor says the Germans, the British, and the Swedes have also authorized this, but they haven't acknowledged it publicly. How dangerous is this for Western countries to permit Ukraine to use their armaments and ammunition to attack inside of Russia and kill Russians in Russia? Well, Judge, it's extremely dangerous. And I think from the Russian point of view, you have to see it that way. And they consider it as Western attacks directly on Russia. Now, there may be a barrier from our viewpoint in the West that, oh, this is a proxy war. These are actually Ukrainians firing the weapons. Although at least with the British missiles, that is in question as we've had German officials discussing on a conversation that was later leaked that the UK forces are helping the Ukrainians fire

these weapons. And you have to wonder who else has been involved, especially as a lot of Ukrainian forces have been killed. And a lot of these weapons are very complicated to operate. And it takes a lot of time to train Ukrainian forces on these platforms. And we know in a new article from the Washington Post that the Ukrainian soldiers right now being sent to the front lines are receiving barely any training. There's a commander who spoke to the post who said that they have to go through two weeks of just learning how to fire a weapon after they get to the front lines before they could actually see any combat. And so there's no training going on. And yeah, this is a completely needless escalation as well, because a lot of these missiles that we've approved Ukraine to fire into Russia, Russia's already figured out how to combat them with either their

kinetic systems like the S-400, S-300, or electronic warfare systems to easily down these GPS-guided munitions. Here's what Scott Ritter says about some of these munitions. Some of them require communication from satellites, And the communication from the satellites can only be accessed by an American with a top secret security clearance. So we know that Americans somewhere along the line are facilitating the communication necessary to trigger the weapon. And then they have a Ukrainian person pull the trigger. It's not actually a trigger. It's a button that you press, almost like a button on your computer. It's a series of buttons that have to be pressed at the same time for security reasons. And those

numbers change all the time. But those things that are subject to national security protection only an American can engage. It's fair to conclude that Americans are significantly involved, is it not, in the use of American equipment in Ukraine to strike inside of Russia. Certainly, Judge. And we also know they're providing all kinds of other assistance, logistics assistance to get the weapons to where they need to go to be able to fire, intelligence and targeting assistance. You know, Ukraine doesn't have the vast satellite and imagery network that the U.S. does. All the different kinds of drones and satellites that we're able to get information from, we pass that to the Ukrainians. And so there's a lot of ways that the Americans are very heavily involved in now helping Ukraine attack Russia. And Judge, it's important to acknowledge too here

that the U.S., at least on their position, is that they're only allowing Ukraine to target Russian targets in the Belograd region, which is a pretty limited area of Russia. And I believe even the Institute for the Study of War, which is an American neocon outlet, has admitted that this isn't going to be a game changer for the war. And so you have to ask why the Americans are doing this if it's not going to actually change the outcome of the war for the Ukrainians. And it seems more and more likely that what we're really doing here is trying to string the Ukrainians along. As the Ukrainians get more and more desperate, and maybe an offer from Putin looks more and more appealing to Ukraine, if we

give them the ability to hit targets inside of Russia, we tell them that one day F-16s are going to arrive in Ukraine. And oh yeah, you'll be able to use those to hit targets inside of Russia too. These are the things that keeps the Ukrainian government motivated to keep their young men fighting and dying on the front lines. Right. I suppose that some of these Americans with top secret security clearance could be in Langley, Virginia or anywhere in the U.S. I don't know where they're physically located, but we do know that they are a link in the chain, the most important link in the chain, in order to trigger these weapons. And the Russians are not happy about it. The Kremlin has warned Western troops in Ukraine will be targeted. NAWAR.com wrote about that this morning.

Yeah, and that was from our news editor, Dave DeCamp, who writes a lot of really important stories about that this morning. Yeah. And that was from our news editor, David Camp, who writes a lot of really important stories about all of this. And judge, these attacks are ongoing. Ukraine says they've hit a Russian S 300 missile defense system. I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim from the Ukrainian official, just because again, Russia has developed the electronic warfare capabilities to take out the Russian defense, the Ukrainian missiles. So it seems questionable that Ukraine will have had a successful attack in Russia already. But, you know, if it does turn out to be true, this is a major escalation. Wow. Let's play Foreign Minister Lavrov, Chris, warning the West not to do this. We have shown that we will not put up with this and that we will not allow Ukraine to be used as

a direct threat to our security, as an instrument for the destruction of everything Russian on historical Russian lands. They did this for more than two decades, or even 30 years, immediately after the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Their goal was to destroy everything Russian, from the language to the government in this territory, which they wanted to take for themselves. And they were counting on it. But as always happens, if they wake up the Russian bear, then our people have united like never before. These are not empty words.

We saw this during the Russian presidential elections. The Nazi regime continues to use Western weapons to attack civilian targets, towns, and cities. I assure you that they will not be able to cross this line unnoticed. What do you think? Well, Judge, there's been a lot of very loud and stern warnings from Russian officials, from Putin to Lavrov to Lavrov's assistant, Sergei Lavrov, or not, Sergei Rabkov. And they've all been saying very clearly that Russia is considering these major, major escalations and serious threats to Russia,

and Russia is going to respond to them. Now, you know, this could rise, and I think Putin alluded this to using nuclear weapons, which is extremely serious. Russia has also suggested hitting Western targets outside of Ukraine. I'm not sure where Russia is eyeing, maybe its bases in Poland, maybe it's some kind of naval ship from the UK or US or something like that. But Russia says they are looking at Western targets to respond to here. And it doesn't seem that Washington understands the seriousness of this. I think they think, and we have an article at antiwar.com today by Ted Snyder, where he explains it seems the calculation in the White House is if we

do these escalations slowly enough that this isn't going to provoke Russia to escalate to nuclear warfare and we could keep this contained in Ukraine. Now, I think the U.S. is wildly miscalculating. And my only guess here, Judge, is that they're really just trying to get this thing to November so Biden could win reelection and then they could let this all fall apart. But the escalations they're going to have to do until then to keep the Ukrainians fighting are significant and may just provoke Russia to do something vast against the West. They're using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, are attacking targets, Western targets somewhere outside of Ukraine. Here's President Putin's comments three days ago about this.

Vladimir Putin Representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, they should be aware of what they are playing with before talking about striking Russian territory. In general, this constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. They don't bluff, do they? I don't think Putin is bluffing here. And we've had countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania be some of the loudest nations demanding the U.S. escalate time and time again. In fact, it was Estonia that first floated the idea of sending their troops to Ukraine. They want to take on roles kind of on the back end, maybe guarding

sensitive targets, helping with maintenance or something like that. That way, Ukraine can rotate more of their men to the front lines to be killed. And so now we have France saying, and it's expected later this week, June 7th, that Marcon will sit down with Zelensky and potentially announce that French trainers are headed to Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers. And the warning that Putin has given is that these soldiers will not be immune from Russian attacks. You, on your own podcast this morning, a great podcast I might add called Conflicts of Interest, elaborated on the seriousness of this, how, well, let's put it this way, from my end of the world, it is perfectly lawful for the Russians to shoot at French, British, German, Swedish, Americans on the ground helping the Ukrainians shoot at Russians. Doesn't the West know that? I guess they figure that Putin won't do it. I don't know,

Judge. It's really hard to calculate what the thinking in the White House is here. Blinken, Sullivan, Biden's out of it. And I think these people are really full of themselves and really believe that they could just keep weakening Russia here and that Putin won't escalate and do something drastic. They think the French troops, the Estonian troops will be immune from Russian attacks because Russia doesn't want to escalate that far. They don't want to end up in a nuclear war with the U.S. And so, you know, they're really using this mutually assured destruction as an offensive weapon against Russia. They say, well, because we have nuclear weapons, too, it means

that Russia can never nuke us because we'll nuke them bad. So we could do whatever they want to Russia. When, of course, mutually assured destruction should mean that we could wipe out the entire planet with a nuclear war. And so the one thing we can never do is push each other to the brink of fighting one. Chris, post the full screen of Foreign Minister Lavrov. So we didn't get this in Russian or English, but we have this translation. Here's what he told writers on May 30th. I'll read it aloud for the benefit of our friends who are listening to the show as opposed to watching it. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, May 30th, 2024, that's five days ago, quote, we do not rule out additional steps in the sphere of nuclear deterrence. Now this is me, just what you were saying, Kyle. Now back to the quote, because our command centers and the locations of our nuclear

forces will be in the range of American forward-based missiles, close quote. So the Russians know what missiles the Ukrainians have from the United States. The Russians know how far those missiles can attack. The Russians know what those missiles are likely to attack. And the Russians are now saying we might use some form of nuclear weapon to prevent that from happening. Hello, Tony Blinken, David Cameron. Don't you guys get it? Right. And it's even worse, Judge, because not only is the U.S. permitting Ukraine to hit Russian

targets inside of Russia, but Ukraine is attacking Russian missile warning systems, early missile warning systems, what they use to detect potential incoming nuclear missiles from the West. And there's a really important article by Theodore Postol that's published in the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. And he explains how when Ukraine attacked these early warning systems in Russia just in the past couple of weeks, it reduced Russia's warning time for a potential nuclear threat to six to seven minutes. And so this is considered a hugely strategic vulnerability for Russia.

And Ukraine is attacking their warning infrastructure for incoming missiles. This is absolutely insane. And that's why Russia is making these kinds of statements, because they're worried, what is the West willing to do? How far are they willing to go to try to do what they say they're going to do, which is take back all the Ukrainian territory from Russia? Chris just informed me that Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has confirmed that Ukraine has used U.S. weapons to strike against Russia in recent days pursuant to the authorization of President Biden and in defiance of the warning by Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin. This is worse than Vietnam, in my view, because of the warning by Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin.

This is worse than Vietnam, in my view, because of the sophistication of the weaponry involved and their ability to kill larger numbers of people in smaller times. My column tomorrow is called War and Indifference. The government is indifferent to the Constitution. Has there been a great debate about whether we should have war on Russia? Has there been a declaration of war against Russia? Can the Congress even declare war against Russia when it poses no military threat to the United States? No, the United States poses the threat to Russia. We just have it in black and white from the Associated Press. The United States is attacking Russia, just using Ukrainian troops to do so.

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Judge. And your outrage is definitely warranted. We've been fighting this proxy war against Russia for over two years now. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this. And there hasn't been any real declaration of war or even a debate about whether one is needed or not. It's just completely absent from it. The only real question is, how much are we willing to support Ukraine? What are we willing to allow them to do to Russia? Well, let's switch gears to the other hotspot. One member of Congress, I suspect a few others will agree, some progressives,

and maybe Congressman Massey in the House, has agreed or has stated he will not be present on the floor of the House of Representatives when accused war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, speaks to a trans transition of Congress.

Do you know who that member of Congress is? Is it Bernie Sanders? It is Bernie Sanders. He probably doesn't agree with you or me on many things. But he does on this and he has the courage of his convictions and he's Jewish. But it shows you again the stranglehold that the donor class has in the American Congress that in this environment they would invite Netanyahu. Right. Not only the stranglehold on Congress, but also the narrative, because, you know, if me or you were to say, oh, we shouldn't invite Netanyahu

to speak before Congress, we would be slammed as anti-Semites. And the only member of Congress refusing to attend is a Jewish one. So that, that kind of defeats the narrative, but that will never be highlighted in the mainstream media. Uh, you reported this morning, uh, that the United States will pay for and then deliver brand new, uh, $3 billion worth of, uh, F-35s. How many jets is that? That's 25 jets from Lockheed Martin. And of course, the F-35 isn't that great of a warplane, but it's important to understand here what despises Israel. It's not just warplanes, and they don't need particularly advanced warplanes to drop bombs on Gaza because Hamas doesn't have any air defense systems, radars, or anything else that would suggest they're a natural army

that could fight a standing army armed by the U.S. like Israel has. But it buys them a lot of influence in the U.S. That's why they buy F-35s and they're buying some F-15s as well. That way they're paying off all the big weapons makers and influence centers in the U.S. like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. You also write this morning, and this really is a head scratcher, the United States is field testing anti-drone weapons in Gaza. Wait a minute. Is the United States military present in Gaza, whether it's for some sort of a test or any other reason?

I mean, Gaza's not Israel. How did the U.S. military get there? Well, Judge, you see, there's a little exception here. You're not in Gaza if there is some water. And so there's a photograph of what these are. They're called M-LIDS. It is a bunch of electronic warfare systems in a giant 30 millimeter chain gun put on top of an m ramp which is a mine resistant vehicle and they part this thing in what looks like maybe a foot or two of water and so they claim that that's not actually on the ground in gaza which is completely ridiculous and is toddler logic right you can imagine a two-year-old saying oh i'm not crossing the line while leaning over have they put this anti-drone equipment on the floating dock which has already collapsed and is of no value to feed the starving uh victims in gaza is that where they put it yeah so initially

i guess where they've had most of the time is either on the pier that's attached to the shoreline or they had it on landing craft and i guess those were kind of just floating time is either on the pier that's attached to the shoreline or they had it on landing craft. And I guess those were kind of just floating tethered to the pier. I have no idea where they're at right now since the pier is again in shambles. I assume it's probably in Cyprus or at some Israeli port, but at least for a short period of time, these were essentially on the ground. They're in a little bit of water in Gaza, and were stationed there to test their systems on shooting down low, slow-moving drones. Wow. You also wrote this morning, and Colonel McGregor agrees with you,

Israel is gearing up for a war in northern Lebanon and for a massive assault on Hezbollah. Is this true? And are they crazy if they think they can pull this off? Judge, we've had a couple of warnings like this in the past in December and March that the Israelis were gearing up to invade Lebanon. This time, it seems more significant as both the UK and the Qataris have warned the Lebanese that Israel is preparing for an attack. The Israelis have made some pretty bold statements on attacking Lebanon. Hezbollah has made some pretty significant hits on Israeli territory in recent days, started some forest fires fires or at least wildfires of some kind. And so I think it's possible the Israelis are gearing up here for a massive escalation

in Lebanon. And one member of our news team at Antiwar.com, Jason Ditz, wrote that article and has been covering Lebanon and the tit-for-tat kind of cycle of escalation between Hezbollah and Israel that's been going on on Israel's northern border for eight months here daily for us at antiwar.com. The subtitle, Chris, if you'll put that back up, please, the subtitle of Jason's column is Britain says to prepare for conflict by mid-June. Is Britain about to get involved in a land war in northern Israel against Hezbollah? I mean, their military would fit in MetLife Stadium, which is where the Giants and the Jets play here in northern New Jersey, and you wouldn't even fill half the seats. So London's role there was warning the Lebanese government that Israel was preparing for this

attack. Now, it could be a legitimate warning. It could also be a way to try to intimidate Lebanon and Hezbollah into backing down, saying that, oh, Israel's really coming, so you better not carry out any more attacks on Israel. But it may be a legitimate warning. And the UK may be concerned that this war breaks out. If you look at what's happening in the Red Sea, the UK is supposed to be the US's main partner in tackling the Houthi problem in Yemen. And the UK has been unable to participate a lot of the US operations simply because they don't have the missiles in the region to do so. And so the UK is in no position to get involved in an Israeli fight against Hezbollah.

Kyle, you study this stuff every day, five, six days a week, and you write about it every day. What is your gut as to where Ukraine is going? And then I'm going to ask you the same question after you answer this one about Israel and Gaza. Well, my gut tells me, and this is because I'm just kind of an optimistic looking guy, that Putin does understand the American political system is going to do what he can not to conduct a major escalation until the November elections. Now, the problem with this is, is the U.S. is going to continue to escalate during that time. And so I really just hope we get to November without any kind of direct NATO-Russia warfare going on. And then after that time, I guess, depending on how the election goes, we will actually see if that escalation is coming.

But it is extremely concerning what's going on there, Judge. All right. Before I ask you the question about Gaza, here's a statement from Itamar Ben-Gavir. You know who he is, but for the audience purpose, he's one of the extreme right-wing members in Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition, who, with his colleague Minister Smotrich, first name escaping me at the moment, Belizil Smotrich, control enough votes in the Knesset that if they withdraw from the coalition, the Netanyahu government collapses. Ben-Gavir is also the head of the rough equivalent in Israel of the FBI. Ben-Gavir has also threatened to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which of course would produce needless deaths. And he's going to bring 3,000 police with him when he brings them. That's not

even the worst that he said. The worst that he said is this. A deal, as its details were published, means giving up on destroying Hamas, renouncing the continuation of the war. It is a reckless deal. There is no total victory, but a total defeat to Hamas. I say that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to lead this deal, we will dismantle the government. This is the deal that Joe Biden says emanated from Israel, that Netanyahu is not sure it emanated from him, but he's reluctantly accepting it. Apparently his negotiators agreed to it.

The American negotiators want it. Hamas is looking at it with some optimism and Netanyahu can't make up his mind. And now he has this threat. All right. This is not an easy question to answer. Where's Gaza going? Well, Judge, unfortunately, I am not optimistic when it comes to really the whole cause of the Palestinian people. I think Israel is going to really the whole cause of the Palestinian people. I think Israel is going to continue the war in Gaza through at least the end of the year. At some point, the level of operations will probably slow down some. They're just simply going to run out of structures to bomb. And so the bombings will probably become more isolated.

But the Palestinian people in Gaza will continue to languish. I think a big part of what's happening in Gaza, though, is to distract what's happening in the West Bank, where Israel has expanded their settlements quite a bit over the past eight months. But more importantly, to the cause of Itmar Ben-Gavir and people in his ilk, is that they have expelled a lot of Palestinians and made a lot of gains in oppressing and their goal to annex the West Bank during this time. So I think as Gaza drives on and world attention is rightfully there, Israel is also making major gains on their plans to expel a lot of Palestinians from the West Bank, enough to annex the territory and then declare all of it just Israel.

Kyle Anselone, Libertarian Institute, antiwar.com, Conflicts of Interest podcast. Keep adding those credentials to your name, young man. Thank you very much for joining us, my friend. Thank you so much, Judge. Sure. Much appreciated. We have a very, very interesting day for you tomorrow with all of your favorites. Colonel Tony Schaefer, 8 o'clock in the morning, Old Times Eastern.

Professor Gilbert Doctorow from Brussels, 9 o'clock in the morning. Professor John Mearsheimer, 11 o'clock in the morning. Max Blumenthal under fire in the Washington Post here to defend himself as only Max can at two o'clock in the afternoon. Aaron Maté, Max's colleague, to continue the defense of their website, The Gray Zone, here at four o'clock in the afternoon. A great day. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you'll join us. We're hoping to reach 400,000 subscribers. We're up to about 367. Are we up to now, Chris?

Maybe a little bit more. We're hoping to reach 400,000 subscribers by the 4th of July and a half a million, 500,000 by Christmas. Help us get there. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.