Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal: The Pro-War Bias of Traditional Media.

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Max Blumenthal: The Pro-War Bias of Traditional Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 15th, 2024. My dear friend Max Blumenthal joins us now max a pleasure thank you so much i i want to talk to you about the wall street journal uh piece on the explosion of the nordstrom pipeline but before we get there a couple of other issues to raise with you because i know you've been speaking about them on your own venues is aipac crowing about the $9 million it spent to defeat Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri? Well, you can just hear from the reaction of progressives in Congress from the

squad or Bernie Sanders himself that they're up in arms about this, but they do not know what to do. They have no idea how to counter AIPAC. And understandably, since the Citizens United decision and just the general power that the Israel lobby enjoys over U.S. government, where it simply sets U.S. Middle East policy, erases all red lines, there's very little that they can do, except be progressives, except for Palestine, and reject the appeals of their base. AIPAC is running untrammeled over the Democratic Party, and it's playing a seminal role in shifting that in making sure that the Democratic Party remains a right of center party and just widening the conflict within the Democratic Party base. You saw,

I think it was last night in Harlem, a Kamala Harris after party get invaded, basically stormed by Palestine solidarity protesters. They are not letting up. And this is a preview of what we're going to see at the Democratic Convention. And AIPAC is fueling this conflict. So Cori Bush is going to tear AIPAC's house down. That's what she pledged to do. She was condemned by the Biden White House because they're afraid of the Zionist billionaire class that pumps so much money into their campaign coffers. What can Cori Bush plausibly do? There's very little that any American can do to stop this gigantic assault. Not assault. Let me put it another way. This is the most malicious and explicit and obvious foreign meddling operation in U.S. history and possibly in the history of any major superpower. And there's nothing any American can do until AIPAC is registered as a foreign agent. And once that happens, we're going to see that AIPAC operatives have been spiriting classified and private data

out of congressional offices and out of government offices and showing them to the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence services. I guarantee it. Are you and Aaron and John Mearsheimer and I, just a handful of us, the only ones who say publicly that the Zionists are in control of the United States government? Well, they're in control of the parts that matter to them. And we're not the only ones. Everyone knows it. They just have different language for understanding it or for explaining it. But it's pretty obvious that the Zionist billionaire class has veto power over any policy vis-a-vis the U.S. in the Middle East, and it's not serving American interests. It's not serving American interests when you have Harrison Mann, who was a Pentagon intelligence officer, one of the few higher level officers to resign over the Gaza genocide, writing in The Guardian, why are we putting American troops in harm's way for Israel? And bringing up

the example of three Black American service members who were just career soldiers who were obviously trying to advance in life by joining the military, as so many Black Americans did, and they were sent to a secret base on the Syrian border in Jordan, which was clearly put there to defend Israel's strategic depth, has nothing to do with actual American national security. And they were killed in a drone strike. Or it was put there as a tripwire. Exactly. I mean, a lot of these bases are, yeah, you're right. They're tripwires. The Al-Tanf base, for example, in Eastern Syria is a clear tripwire for Iran and the popular mobilization units backed by Iran.

And so they were killed. They were sacrificed for apartheid Israel. And Harrison Mann's raising this question. Well, everybody can see it now. You can see it in the over 70 standing ovations Netanyahu got as he denied that any civilians were killed in the Gaza Strip and just a complete lie fest. You can see it in all the laws being passed to criminalize dissent on Palestine, to criminalize and jail American citizens for protesting genocide.

You can see it in the resignation of Manoush Shafiq, the pathetic dean of Columbia University who called the NYPD on student protesters, but is really being forced to resign because she didn't go in hard enough. You can see it in the fact that the U.S. is mobilizing nuclear class submarines to defend Israel once again after Israel's insane assassination spree last week, that this government is occupied. And it's not anti-Semitic to say it when the majority of those who are clapping for Netanyahu like a pack of seals as if you were the real leader of the United States are Christian Zionists. Right, right. I don't know how bad this is going to get. I thought of you when I read that the president of Columbia University resigned two weeks before classes are about to start. She obviously had had enough and was forced out. But what you just told me is terrifying. Your belief that AIPAC members who

work on Capitol Hill have spirited out classified U.S. documents and brought them to Israel. That's 20 years in a federal prison if they were ever to be caught and prosecuted and convicted. I'm sure that's happening. And, you know, the precedent would be the prosecution of Larry Franklin, by the way, not Jewish, AIPAC operative who did just that. There was once an Espionage Act investigation of AIPAC during the Bush era. And you look at the figures who've been involved with the Bush administration, the Bush neocons, whose views are strongly represented within the Biden administration now, Doug Fyfe, Richard Perle. Richard Perle was instrumental in the U.S. military operation to take out the Osirak reactor in Iraq, providing Israel with classified intelligence. And this is someone who's dedicated

his life to supporting Israel. Douglas Fythe as well has a picture, not of any U.S. president on the wall of his office, but of Theodor Herzl, the godfather of Zionism. These are effectively Israel firsters who have access to classified intelligence, and it's people like Julian Assange who get punished. The United Kingdom has passed a new law, the National Security Act, to punish any journalist or citizen who reveals information that could be deemed harmful to national security, and they decide what national security is. But the Israel lobby there, what have they done? They took out the leader of the Labor Party with payoffs, as revealed in the Al Jazeera undercover hidden camera investigation, the lobby UK, payoffs from the Israeli embassy to leaders of Labor Friends of Israel in order to go after

Corbyn. So it's all staring us right in the face, and we need to call this what it is, the largest foreign meddling operation, possibly in U.S. history, using Jews as human shields and spreading anti-Semitism in the process. Before we get to the Wall Street Journal, the intelligence officer whose name you mentioned before you mentioned Larry Franklin, I forget the name. Um, is he talking about American boots on the ground in Israel or in Gaza presently or in the future? Uh, not quite sure what you're referring to, but, um, person that you said resigned the highest ranking intelligence officer to resign from the Harrison man. You Mann. He's talking about the presence of a new naval battle group

in the Eastern Mediterranean to send a message to Iran that the U.S. is going to defend Israel after the Israelis assassinated the chief Hamas negotiator right before this upcoming round of talks in Doha. Ismail Haniyeh, who also happens to be the head of Hamas's palapio, in the middle of Tehran at the inauguration of Iran's new reformist president, something that I am sure did not please the Americans. And now they're sending nuclear class subs. I mean, these are attack submarines.

They are there to send the message that the U.S. can fire missiles into Iranian cities on behalf of Israel. And that's what Harrison Mann's referring to because there are all these other U.S. troops, Judge, at these tripwire bases. It's not being reported in U.S. media, but around the Canoco oil fields in northeastern Syria, the U.S. maintains several thousand soldiers. They are there to occupy one third of Syria's land where most of the oil and the wheat fields are. And they're working with the Kurdish SDF, the U.S. stooges to deny that territory to Syria and therefore deny Syria access to its own natural resources to provoke starvation and poverty all across Syria and to steal that oil and ship it out

through the Kurdish mafia in Iraq, in Kurdistan. And it's a criminal operation. And the Syrian Arab Army has trained and worked with local Arab tribes who are now beginning to attack those U.S. bases and fight to have that land back. There's a few English-language outlets reporting this, like The Cradle. It's really significant because you can see this as part of the wider trend of regional forces trying to push the U.S. out. And most Americans don't even know how deeply entrenched they are or how criminal their involvement is in the region. So that's what Harrison Mann's referring to. And it just shocks me that more people haven't resigned from the State Department or the Pentagon over the complete abuse of the U.S US military and just all Americans birthright to defend Israel and its genocide, which has now killed over 2500 children under the age of two in Gaza.

Wow. With US supplied baby buster bombs. Chris, put up cut number 10. You'll know who this is, you'll know what he's doing, and you'll know of the thousands he's leading. We are at the Temple Mount on Tisha B'Av. Today, we commemorate the destruction of the Temple, but we must also honestly acknowledge that there is significant progress here regarding the governance and sovereignty. The sight of Jews praying, as I said, our policy is to permit prayer. But I'll say something else. We must win this war. We must win.

Not go to summits in Doha or in Cairo. But defeat them. Bring them to their knees. That's the message. We can defeat Hamas, bring them to their knees. That's the message. We can defeat Hamas, bring it to its knees. Will Netanyahu defy him? No. I mean, if he had been interested in defying Ben-Gavir,

he would have done so back in May when the terms were on the table for a ceasefire deal and people in Gaza were actually celebrating what they thought would be the ceasefire, the U.S. thought they to leave the coalition, which would then force Netanyahu to form a new coalition or go back to trial for corruption. It's Netanyahu hiding behind Ben-Gavir. There's this interplay between the two of them. Netanyahu needs him in order to prolong the war, to continue the escalation, and to keep the US involved in the region. And to stay in office. The state, well, of course.

And then he has his own personal narcissistic reason for having Ben-Gavir there. And the longer Ben-Gavir is in the cabinet, although he's not in the kind of war room discussions, the longer he's in the cabinet, the more power he has to inflame the situation on the ground, which is what he's doing by leading these provocations negotiations at Doha, to provoke Palestinians, while Netanyahu creates provocations across the region. There's also another significant development which points to how pathetic the administration in Washington is to challenge the Jewish ISIS in the Netanyahu administration, or Netanyahu himself, who is incredibly unpopular now. Okay. Most Israelis, according to a new Israel Democratic Institute

poll, want a ceasefire. It's now over 60%. The majority of those Israelis, however, do not support Netanyahu and don't support the Likud party members around him, but they think getting the hostages out is the most important thing right now. The Biden administration and their good cop, bad cop routine have leaked to one of their key stenographers in Washington, the Israeli reporter Barak Ravid for Axios, that they are going to consider calling out Netanyahu for not wanting the hostages out and sabotaging all of the ceasefire talks in Doha by constantly adding new, impossible to fulfill terms. And instead of doing that, if you look at the New York Times from yesterday, cover story, what they did, this is citing senior

administration officials or documents that only Biden officials would have access to. Then Netanyahu adding impossible new terms to ceasefire deal to sabotage it. So basically, the Biden administration, instead of calling out Netanyahu publicly, using the bully pulpit of the president of the most powerful country in history, has gone and leaked another story also to an Israeli reporter at an American publication. What is that going to do? That's all they've been doing for 10 months. So they're not actually undermining Netanyahu like they think. It really requires real action. And what Kamala refuses to do is an arms embargo which would immediately force the Israelis to the table. Now they've put new terms and new conditions into the ceasefire negotiations like the residents of northern Gaza will not

actually be able to return to their destroyed homes because Israel wants to start seizing that land, including for settlers. The Israeli military will be able to maintain permanent or indefinite control over the Rafah border crossing in the south, which means humanitarian aid won't get in, continued starvation and typhus, diphtheria, all these preventable diseases. that's what they're adding and the and the best of biden administration can do is leak all that comes back to what you said on this program about 10 months ago joe biden could stop all of this with one phone call kamala harris could probably stop all of this with one. And the phone call would be to Lloyd Austin in the Pentagon. Correct.

No more weapons. No more exit. Correct. Correct. But instead, on the day after Israel struck the Tabin school in Khan Yunus, killing 100 people, mostly children, while they were praying at dawn prayers, and then leaked a fake list of Hamas operatives they claimed were there, most of whom were dead, already confirmed dead from months before. On that day of horror, when parents were forced to pick up the body parts of their children or locate their children through body parts in plastic bags. The Biden administration,

and specifically Tony Blinken, authorized an $18.5 billion sale of weapons to Israel, including 30 F-15 attack jets, AMRAAM missiles, 120,000 155 millimeter howitzer shells, 120,000, 120 millimeter tank shells. I mean, this is insane. There are no tanks in Gaza. There's no air force. What do they need aircraft to aircraft missiles for? They're arming them up for war. Chris, the full screen on Geneva Convention.

Geneva Convention. Geneva Convention. Here's do the same. Anthony Blinken, August 12, 2024. He should be fired just for that, for the deception that he issues in an official capacity. Let's switch gears. Just quickly, it's a deception, but he's also saying we call on you to do, you don't call on, it's all carrot and no stick. Yes. Yeah. What did the Wall Street Journal recently report about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. Well, the Nord Stream pipeline's destruction was the worst act of industrial sabotage ever. And you would think there'd be actually more interest in knowing who was behind it, but there's this kind of studious lack of interest and ignorance,

particularly in Berlin and in Washington. So the Wall Street Journal comes out with its latest and its saga of stories claiming they've identified the perps. First, it was six Ukrainians on a boat called the Andromeda that they rented. Six private ultra-nationalists who managed to blow up this gigantic pipeline that's reinforced with rebar at the bottom of the ocean. Now it's the Ukrainian military itself, and we've heard from the Washington Post, and they're reporting that Zelensky, who was the chief of staff, who's been removed, oversaw this operation and kept it from Zelensky. But now, according to the Wall Street Journal, Zelensky is being identified as not necessarily

orchestrator of the operation, but someone who greenlit it at first, then tried to stop it and was powerless to do so after the CIA told him you can't do this. So Zelensky is now in one of the newspapers that serves as one of the most reliable bulletin boards for the CIA and for the U.S. administration is being identified as one of the perps. And this is really significant. It's significant because I guess it's time for Zelensky to go if the CIA is doing this about him, Max. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the two key takeaways from this story, whether it's true or not, is why is this story out there and why is it out there now? Russia's SVR intelligence services, maybe 48 hours before this story came out, issued a report stating that the

U.S. would like to remove Zelensky and is preparing a massive information operation to undermine him across the West. And it wants to replace him with the interior minister, Arsene Avakov, who is someone who has been the sponsor of the Azov Battalion, who I don't know if I'm allowed to call them neo-Nazi on certain social media and video platforms, but Arsene Vakov is basically one of the key patrons, political patrons of the neo-Nazi inspired forces across Ukraine and funds the National Corps, which is the civilian wing of Azov. And the U.S. wants someone in, according to the SVR report, who's closer to the nationalist

forces than Zelensky is to keep this war going. So that's the first takeaway. The second takeaway is let's assume this story is true. I mean, it all seems kind of silly to me that the US is not involved, given all the celebrations from officials. I can't wait to hear Cy Hersh's response to this nonsense. Yeah. But let's say it's true. What does that say about Germany and the German leadership? I mean, how many times has Olaf Scholz posted Zelensky, hyped up Zelensky? It was actually Zelensky in Germany at the Munich Security Conference in 2022 that helped provoke the Russian invasion of Ukraine when he called for Ukraine not only to be a part of NATO, but condemned the Bucharest memorandum that gave up Ukraine's nuclear weapons, basically calling for Ukraine to be nuclearized.

Let me just stop you for a second. Do you remember this, Joe Biden being asked by a German journalist about the Nord Stream pipeline? If Russia invades uh that means tanks or troops crossing the uh the border of ukraine again then uh there will be uh we there will be no longer a north stream too we we will bring it into it but how will you how will you do that? Exactly. Since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control. We will. I promise you we'll be able to do it. Now, the screen didn't show it, but Chancellor Schulz is standing right next to him. Yeah, standing right next to him while Biden threatens Germany's critical infrastructure, its most critical infrastructure, which it needed to get

through the winter. German energy security is much more precarious than America's. And of course, Biden has the whole liquid natural gas industry behind him, praying that that pipeline gets blown up. So it's just another insult to the German leadership. But Olaf Scholz has revealed himself as one of the weakest German leaders. That's why I call him the kuckmeister. story's true, he's still working to authorize billions and billions of dollars more in aid to Ukraine and to Zelensky, rewarding them for helping destroy Germany's economy and its critical infrastructure. And this could play out over a generation. I don't think we've seen the full impact of the weakening of Germany's energy. I wonder why his party, I don't know German

politics that well, I wonder why his party hasn't just collapsed, why he hasn't been removed from office. Well, it is collapsing. It is collapsing. Just like Emmanuel Macron's party, they had to call snap elections to prevent a deeper collapse. Although they fared much better than expected. The SPD is collapsing and the AFD, the right wing or whatever you want to call it, the far right nationalist party, the AFD is gaining enormous strength because they've condemned Germany's involvement in Ukraine and how it's weakened the German economy. The US just continues to rub it in Germany's face and they're just powerless to do anything about it. They continue to send more weapons, more Leopard tanks that are getting burned on the Ukrainian battlefield. And it's so ironic. It's so ironic to see German military

hardware in Kursk, inside Russia, on the side of the country that collaborated with Nazi Germany in Kursk, the site of the largest tank battle in World War II. And they're on the side of those who wave the image of Stepan Bandera, the Nazi collaborator. I mean, we're in World War III on so many levels. And who are the Nazis? Where's the Fourth Reich here? Yeah. Back to the Wall Street Journal. Are they now the CIA's favorite outlet over the Washington Post? I don't know. There's always a competition there. And the CIA believes in diversity now. I guess that includes diversity of stenographers. Well, Max, thank you very much for your time.

These are not always happy topics, but you bring cheerfulness as well as your intellect to all this. Thank you, my dear friend. Thanks. It's always fun watching the fall of the West with you. It is. It is. We'll see you next week. My regards to Anya and Aaron.

Thank you. Take care, Judge. Okay. Bye-bye. Okay, my friends, tomorrow, Friday, 4 o'clock p.m., the Intelligence Community Roundtable, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out.