Judging Freedom - NO NUCLEAR WAR: A Call for Reason [Live Event] - National Press Club (Part 3 of 3)

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

NO NUCLEAR WAR: A Call for Reason [Live Event] - National Press Club (Part 3 of 3)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. I think we have Max Blumenthal. And Margaret Kimberly is coming up. I'll let her some other all seated. Well, and then Dan Kovalec is also.

So I'll start. I'm probably fumbling this, but we do the introductions. We have, we have a wonderful panel here. The purpose of this panel is to inject hope or at least try to inject hope into the situation we face today, which is left to its own devices, there will be a nuclear war. The one thing that we're looking at right now, and this is something that came out when I roamed the congressional office buildings, is that Congress is not very well positioned today to do anything.

We're just in one of those unique time periods where an election took place. We have a Congress leaving in two weeks. It's hard to get legislation going. But it is, I believe, through the tool of Congress is our only chance to get the Biden administration to change tax. So that's why we've ascended this panel. We have Dennis Kucinich. He's a former mayor of Cleveland, former congressman, all-around good guy. He just ran an unsuccessful campaign for office, but a noble campaign nonetheless. We have Dan Kovalec. He is a civil rights attorney, a very experienced activist. We have Margaret Kimberly, who is a journalist, a writer of some note, also a social

activist. And we have Max Blumenthal. He is the editor of the Gray Zone and an important part of the alternative media today. Dennis, I'd like to start with you, if I can. You've been in Congress. You've operated there. You know the realities of Congress. Here we are, December 7th. What can be done? How can we get Congress activated? What can Congress do? What are the tools available to congress to get the biden administration to change course and specifically what i'm talking about is to get the biden administration to stop allowing ukraine to fire attack them's missiles against russia yeah uh first of all scott um i think on behalf of everyone, we want to thank you for your leadership and bringing us together. And for your personal courage and being willing to step forward to challenge this establishment, which would destroy this country if it's left unchecked. Today, I published on Substack a piece called Biden's nuclear going

out of business sale. And I would urge you to check it out because it bears on the discussion that this panel will have, but also on the remarks of Colonel Wilkerson and Dr. Postel. I want to thank my wife, Elizabeth Kucinich, for her help in editing that article and putting it in shape for publication, as well as all the other sub-stack posts that I've done, and I would urge you to go to it when you get a chance. Scott, as you know, I've been in the House of Representatives for 16 years.

I ran twice for the Democratic nomination for president, challenging these wars. to court uh bill clinton to court obama court over this issue of uh of the executive power versus the power of the presidency i just want to create a quick context here and that is uh so much of our our international policy is generated by aggression. You know, if you look at Bohmian physics, which I would urge you to study, even though, you know, you think, what does that have to do with what's going on right now? Well, there's this idea that, you know, the world is a hologram of the brain, which is a hologram of the world.

In a sense, you know, we're creating this world with our consciousness. It's not just, you know, who are they? It's who are we? It's the responsibility that we have for being able to even monitor our own thoughts, which could, you know, impel aggression. Thoughts are real. Consciousness is real. And when we think of aggression of any kind, even in our interpersonal relationships, we create the pretext for the wars outside because what is innermost becomes outermost.

And so, you know, thought thoughts are real. Consciousness is real. Words create worlds and aggression and deception. And we're now at a point where in this magical thinking that is disguised as U.S. statecraft, we're thinking we're going to suspend the laws of cause and effect as we keep launching offensive missiles into Russia. This whole approach that we're taking towards international relations is an exercise in human destructiveness years ago a philosopher by the name and a social psychologist by the name of eric from wrote a book called the anatomy of human destructiveness which reads like a textbook for this time which talks about the impulses that that cause people to want to destroy each other uh and the and the necessity of human unity.

Now, you said it's a backdrop to talk about what we can do. I know as a member of Congress how groupthink is one of the most powerful functions within a political party. And right now, the Democrats have not been and will not necessarily challenge the Biden administration. This is one of the reasons why I had to step away from the party during the last election, because, hey, it's for war. I'm not. But what's happened and what's happened with all political parties, political parties are essentially a reflection of dichotomized thinking, of us versus them, whoever they are. And with that comes into the mob, black versus white,

rich versus poor, up versus down, you know, inevitably destroying what threatens. Us. And, you know, the if reality is indeed socially constructed and culturally confirmed, we've created a violent society which we're projecting worldwide and as a result, put ourselves in a world in jeopardy, which Ted Postol and Larry Wilkerson have described. What has to be done right now? Well, the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden, and not only Biden, but the head of the UK, the prime minister, and the head of France, have all violated their own nation's constitutions, which would do not allow executives

to be able to take action absent approval of a legislative body. So, I mean, right now, you know, as soon as you say, well, this is an impeachable offense, people start clutching their pearls or they run to their computers and send out a message. Kucinich says Biden ought to be impeached. Well, you know, we're past that right now. It's too late. Congress must act. Now, let me explain.

Because I've had the rare opportunity to sue one president after another over this question of Article I, Section 8. The responsibilities of members of Congress include whether or not to declare war. We are in a state of war right now with Russia. We're in a state of war that we have created by emplacing these offensive missiles and launching them with our personnel and data into Russia. Now, executives don't have the ability to do that. Only Congress does. People say, well, what can Congress do? The reason why impeachment in this case is ineffective and the reason why even court

action is ineffective, previous courts have ruled that Congress's essential power is the power of the purse. And so we need to be calling members of Congress now saying to cut off funds, freeze the funds. And they need to take action to do that now. Congress must freeze the funding, cut off the funding, and at least go out there and make it an effort to say, in doing that, it sends a signal to Russia that there are cooler heads that are ready to prevail in the United States, because if we don't do that, Scott, and this is why you brought us all together, we are looking at the potential of the unthinkable.

And, you know, we all look around and we think this reality that we have is guaranteed. No, it's not. People throughout the 20th century thought that. There was 100 million people who died in wars in the 20th century. We all, you know, and they were very modern at their time it's all modern then it's modern now well we we have to shift the consciousness of this country it's not going to be it's not going to happen overnight but it needs to start happening that's one of the reasons i proposed the department of peace when 20 years ago that you know we we need to start looking at the violence in our society and ourselves and looking at grabbing up to that transformational impulse

that instinct within us that the poet described it that reaches in towers thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. One of the big aspects of this panel is to talk about constitutional issues. And that term is thrown around a lot. I throw it around a lot. I took an oath upon

to defend the Constitution, as anybody who has served in this government has. And Dennis, of course, carries the Constitution in his pocket, because this is the essence of who we are and what we are. There's one thing and one thing alone that defines the United States of America, and that's this document. Without this document, there is no constitutional republic. Without this document, this country doesn't exist. And yet, we tend to function without anybody referring to this document and acting in a manner which says, if it does exist, it's an impediment, not an obligation. Well, this is like, you hold this up to the people in D.C. on Capitol Hill, and it's like holding up a crucifix to a werewolf. So, Dan, I want to turn to you. And you're a lawyer. You've dealt with human rights, civil rights.

You know the Constitution. Can you – the way Dennis was talking, it was about the duties and responsibilities of Congress to take action. What are the duties and responsibilities of we, the people of the United States of America, when it comes to turning that document into something that's living, breathing, and viable when it comes to stopping a nuclear war? Well, I think first and foremost, our duty is to put pressure on our congresspeople to act right now. And I do think that articles of impeachment would be appropriate, not just to try to stop the Biden administration from doing what they're doing in leading us to nuclear war, but it would send a message to the incoming Trump administration as well, that this would not be tolerated. And so the Constitution allows for the impeachment charges to be brought against federal officials. So that could also, by the way, include Lincoln and Jake Sullivan, who I think would have to be included in this, as part of Congress's oversight and investigatory responsibilities.

And it can be – the impeachment can be started by a lawmaker introducing an impeachment resolution or the House initiating proceedings by passing a resolution authorizing an inquiry. So we need to get a few sympathetic Congress people to start this procedure. And then a committee on the judiciary would generally have jurisdiction over the impeachments, although a special committee could be set up. And if a simple majority of the House votes for an impeachment hearing to be convened, the House would appoint members by resolution to manage an ensuing Senate trial on its behalf. So, I mean, this is obviously something that could be done. Recall that Trump was successfully at least impeached twice. He was not removed from office, but impeachment hearings were convened. And by the way, one of them was brought – one of the impeachments was brought because he was threatening to end armed shipments to Ukraine, if you recall, kind of ironically. Well, and as former Congressman Kucinich just pointed out, there's a number of the United States Constitution itself, which only allows Congress to declare war.

We have not declared war on Russia. I think that people need to understand that. While the former UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, just admitted we're in a proxy war with Russia, right? And while everyone knows that, we haven't declared war on Russia. And so what Biden is doing by authorizing these attackums to be sent deep into Russian territory, and by the way, these attackums, as I understand it, have to be programmed by personnel from either the United States or Britain, from the countries that have provided these missiles.

And that is why, of course, Putin has said if those attackams are delivered from Ukraine into Russia, he will perceive that as those being directly launched by the United States or the United Kingdom. And by the way, when he says that, he's mirroring almost the precise language that John F. Kennedy said during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He said if the Soviet missiles were launched from Cuba on any country in the Western Hemisphere, he would consider it missiles launched by the Soviet Union, and he would respond in kind. So these acts, again, are violative of the War Powers Clause as well as the forgotten War Powers Resolution of 1973, which, again, is rarely invoked, but also makes it clear that the power to declare war is

within that of Congress, not in the executive branch. Meanwhile, the other thing that is being violated here is the United States neutrality legislation, which actually makes it a crime to, again, for anyone to start a war with another country that we're at peace with. And again, technically, we're at peace with Russia. We have not declared war on Russia. The last article or the last basis would be the 1907 Hague Convention, also respecting the rights and duties of neutral power. So in any case, I think it would be significant at least to start the process, to send a message that Congress that represents the will of the people wants to avert nuclear war. And as Scott said at the beginning of this event, I think if anything we know from what happened in the elections for president,

the people made it clear they want to end the war in Ukraine. And I think they made it clear they want to end all wars. At least that's what they were promised. Now, I also agree. I believe it was Lawrence Wilkerson who says, I don't expect that Trump will follow through with those promises, but I do believe that's what people want. And now I guess he's also considering sending nuclear weapons to Ukraine. I don't know if that's still on the table, but that had been mentioned. For him to do that right after the election and to greenlight these attackants to be sent into Russia is an obvious breach of the will of the people. I just want to say a couple things, and this actually builds upon what you said, Dennis. You know, you were talking about this, you know, how people have the will to destroy others. You know, I think it's really important, you know, to see how things relate.

I mean, I think, honestly, what's happening in Gaza at the moment, you know, when people wonder, oh, come on, the U.S. wouldn't start a nuclear war. They're not, you know, they're not, you know, have no desire to do that. When you look at what the U.S. is supporting in Gaza, where Israel has used, and they're all U.S. bombs, by the way, they've used more tonnage of bombs by many multiples than were used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They're not nuclear weapons, but the tonnage is much greater over the time that it's been bombing Gaza into oblivion. 90% of the people of Gaza now live in tents.

And just today, if you've been following the news, Israel's been attacking a hospital in northern gaza that killed four doctors again if the u.s is and the u.s is supplying israel with weapons every 16 hours so they can do that the u.s is willing to do that to engage in what is an abomination happening in gaza the same leaders are willing to start a nuclear war. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll just give you my takeaway real quick.

Being a citizen is hard work. It's not easy work. Learning the Constitution and learning the things that dan and dennis are talking about doesn't happen uh just by breathing air you have a duty and responsibility as a citizen you have to learn this stuff you have to breathe it bring it into your body and you have to live it otherwise this thing we call a constitutional republic is not going to survive very long. Margaret, I want to ask you a question. We speak of the will of the people manifested in November. But you know, that's only the will of the people who voted for

the guy who won. There's a whole bunch of people who voted for the other person. And they're not necessarily happy with the outcome of this election. And yet here we are, where we're trying to put pressure on the losing side to do something that if they take that action, would maybe make the winning side look successful. Politically, it's a difficult call, but it's one that if we don't do, we can all die, including those people who voted for the losing side. How do we collectively engage the demographic that lost the election and get them on our side, not the side of the Republicans, on the American side to stop this mad rush to nuclear war. Well, thank you, Scott. Ever since you invited me,

I've been pondering this very difficult question of popular action and the movement that we need. And I'll tell you a little story that happened to me just yesterday. I was talking to a relative and telling her that I was going to be in Washington today. And she says, oh, what are you doing? I said, I've been asked to speak. And she said, about what? About the risk of nuclear war. And I went on to say that, you know, Biden has authorized missile strikes deep into Russia. And this puts us at risk of hot war with Russia. And she said, well, I don't see anything wrong with that, because what's

Putin doing over there anyway? Now, this person is an intelligent person, reads the paper, but what did Mark Twain say? What did Mark Twain say? If you don't read the paper, you're uninformed. If you do, you're misinformed. But I tried to explain that, you know, she says, well, how did this start? What was Putin doing? And I said, well, I tried to explain, you know, in 30 seconds, the last 30 years of history and that, uh, the, um, oh, and, uh, uh, that, uh, uh, this conflict did not just begin in 2022 and the role the U S played. played. Thank you. But still, there was this lack of understanding.

Now, this person grew up the way I did when we were kids. The Vietnam War was wrong. It was fundamentally racist. And that kind of thinking has disappeared over time. And so that now there are very few people in this country who are not war hawks. And I actually think liberals are the worst. who voted for Kamala Harris are more likely to disregard what we're talking about, to be in favor of some kind of military action. And this didn't happen overnight. We used to have, and I'm not going to say the media always did its job, But I'm convinced today, would the Pentagon paper story be in the paper? I don't think so. Would the Washington Post print the activists who broke into an FBI office and the Washington Post printed the materials? Would that happen now? It would not. So we have people who are thoroughly indoctrinated. Yesterday, I was listening to the story about TikTok, the court case that has gone against TikTok. Every story

said TikTok, the Chinese company. It's not. I know Tom Cotton tried to say, you're from China, aren't you? You're from, and the guy's like, no, I'm from Singapore. It doesn't matter. Everybody over and over again, the Chinese company that actually isn't. And this is why people are are so confused. And, you know, the person I was speaking to, there's there's something that's very sad that has happened to Black people over the years. There's been this terrible political regression. If there was one group of people who were anti-war, if there was one group of people who were skeptical about anything that Congress or President said, it was Black people. 28 years ago, in the run-up to the Iraq war, we at Black Agenda Report, the late Glenn Ford, may he rest in peace, wrote an article about the difference in support for

the war. White people were generally in favor, Black people were opposed. And that was very typical. But then something happened a few years later, first Black president. And in 2013, when the issue of Syria first came up, most Americans were opposed to the U.S. being involved. I mean, they got proxies and got around it. But at any rate, most Americans did not want the U.S. to be directly involved. But Black people were more likely to be in favor than white people in just a few years. And I think Obama's ascension to the presidency didn't just impact Black people. I think liberals felt, ah, we have a Black president. Don't we have a wonderful system? The anti-war movement of 2003, where thousands, I think millions, I think it's accurate to say millions of people protested,

that would not happen now. Because that movement, it was more anti-Republican, anti-George Bush. They got this, what did somebody call Obama? Some guy called him clean cut and articulate and supposedly a progressive, supposedly anti-war. And the movement died. And so that's the other thing I want to point out. Electoral politics is not the way. Electoral politics kills movements. So I think we have to stop thinking about electoral politics resolving this issue of having a population that's ready for war. So the Kamala Harris, people, actually foreign policy didn't come up much in the election. In their one debate, they talked about who loved Israel more, but not much else. But there is a bright spot. We saw

protests, especially students, about Palestine, about the genocide, and we saw the hammer drop, kids suspended from school, professors fired, people threatening to never hire them again. Or even if you pass the bar exam, we're going to say you can't be a lawyer. But that does show us that people are ready to fight for for justice and to have a culture of peace. And people are angry. You know, it seems unrelated, but this incident a few days ago where the CEO of a health insurance company was shot and killed in Manhattan, and people are gleeful, sharing funny memes, telling horror stories. it tells you people are fed up. Now, how do we channel that energy, that energy about one particular injustice? That's the question. So we've seen the protests about Palestine. We've seen this kind of odd situation with the reaction to the killing of that healthcare CEO, but it tells us the people can be reached.

But it's got to be something new. And I was listening to what the congressman said. We have to change the culture of this country. The culture of this country, the founding of the country, its history, its militaristic, it encourages violence. It starts at the top. You can't be surprised that there are school shootings when the U.S. has the biggest military in the world and uses it so freely. So we have to find, talk about, and think about changing the culture of this country. Because those members of Congress, those who get it, I think it was last year that a few of them wrote a letter about a ceasefire in Ukraine. And they repudiated themselves a day later because somebody got to them and told them to.

And they said, oops, sorry. And there was some crazy story about everybody didn't get the draft or something like that. No, the hammer dropped on them and they and they went along. So it's got to be outside of electoral politics, outside of Congress. We have to talk about how to move the people because the people are ready. And if more people, not even most people, if a large enough minority of people knew what we were talking about today, I think we would see a movement to stop this madness. First of all, thank you very much for that answer. Believe it or not, I actually spent a lot of time trying to write these questions and to lead a discussion and a dialogue. But the thing about when you write a question, you don't know what answer you're going to get.

I sort of knew what Dennis was going to say. He's a congressman. We're talking about Congress. Okay, so we're comfortable with that set. I knew what Dan was going to say. He's a lawyer, constitutional lawyer. We can sort of predict what he's going to say. I can't predict what Max is going to say, but I think I have an idea.

We were talking about the media because we're comfortable with the media. Margaret, you just did something that is phenomenal. And I'm going to ask this of everybody who's watching this streaming. Everybody's here today. Take this clip and separate it and study it because that's the way forward. That's the way we're going to have to go to solve it. And I thank you for your answer. Thank you very much. Now, Max, Margaret's not going to get anywhere, however, her message can't be heard. And she brought up a couple challenges. Would the Washington Post today allow the Pentagon Papers to be published? The answer is no. Would mainstream media do?

I just want to, how many members of the mainstream media are here today? But you know what? It doesn't matter because we're streaming out to millions. We're getting an impact through this cooperation that CNN and MSNBC and the mainstream media can't get. So my question to you, Matt, is the mainstream media dead? Is there a role for alternative media? And how do we make alternative media the alternative to mainstream media? What are the checks and balances? What do we do about quality control? You're the editor of the Gray Zone. You've come under a lot of criticism for your approach, but you've also come under a lot

of praise for your success. So the floor is yours, sir. How does alternative media help us stop a nuclear war? Yeah, thank you. You said my remarks would be unpredictable, and I didn't really prepare, so I don't know exactly what I'm going to say. I'm going to kind of freestyle, but before I do, I think I came up with one solution where Margaret's asking about the way forward. I think if we could just appoint Benjamin Netanyahu as CEO of Kaiser Permanente. We might start seeing some progress in the world. Certainly celebrations would go global. Well this video just got kicked off of YouTube but that's okay. Yeah you just got demonetized.

We're streaming, we just got demonetized. What I'm just you know thinking of career possible opportunities for him after his coalition with various Nazis collapses. So the media, yes, mainstream media is collapsing before our eyes. Look at the view counts that they get on MSNBC's YouTube channel or their Nielsen ratings. Just how many people are watching Ari Melber, my former colleague at The Nation magazine. It's about 30 to 40,000 people who have the TV on in the background who are 75 and older. No offense, I mean, I see most of the people here older. That's the way it always is at dissident events i say never trust anyone under 30. um but we are actually at the gray zone our live streams get more viewers than msnbc

on on like daytime and msnbc you know where they're like and it's just a it's a sign of the time scott Ritter kills us. I mean, when Scott speaks, people listen. People want to hear us and Scott more than they want to see four woke pro-war professors with funny glasses on an MSNBC panel. I mean, it's just the way it is. And it was not always this way. I mean, it's technology, but it's also because of the nature of the empire today, the nature of corporate mainstream media, where we are at this point in history and the rising consciousness in the public, especially since October 7th, which is really galvanized activism among younger people.

And just, you know, I have some reflections about that. You know, I wasn't setting out to be some alternative media guy. I wanted to be like maybe an MSNBC host, you know, with Chris Hayes. I used to work with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow impersonator at The Nation. I knew him, but he just kept on the straight path with the Democratic Party wherever they went. He wasn't seeking the truth. I started out just hitting the Republicans during the Bush era. And I was thinking, if we could just get the neocons out and get Bush out, then everything will be fine and the war will end and the wars will end. I wasn't really seeing things quite clearly enough during the Bush era, it took Obama to kind of wake me up. It also took Palestine to

wake me up. So after I wrote a bestselling book called Republican Gomorrah, which was about the political psychology of the Republican Party under Bush, which was really controlled by the Christian right, actually a different Republican Party than Trump's Republican Party. They weren't having as much sex as Trump's Republican Party is. I mean, they got some freaky characters in the MAGA base right now. They were pious. But I got on Terry Gross on NPR and she booked me. She was like, Max Blumenthal, you've been going to a lot of tea parties. And I just, you know, gave her the rap. Within like seconds, my book Israel is that Americans don't know. And they had to say yes, because they didn't expect me to do this well. That book was published by Nation Books through the Nation magazine. It was called Goliath, Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. I think that has stood the test of time. If anything, I went too soft on Israel with that one. That came out in 2013. And when that book came out, first of all, it was, you know, when many people who had supported Obama started to realize that they had been had potentially bamboozled, even hoodwinked. And so there was a good audience for it, but there was enormous resistance at the

Nation magazine and within the progressive media that I thought was going to be so supportive because the progressive media just supported the Democratic Party. And there was a guy who is completely irrelevant now, who had a lot of power at the nation magazine eric alterman who wrote 13 attack pieces on me inside the pages of the nation for besmirching the great reputation of israel by the end he was defending netanyahu as a liberal and you know i saw him at the airport a few years later like customs and i walked up to him i was like thank you for helping sell my book i couldn't have done it without you. He was shaking.

He didn't know what to say. Like two years ago or three years ago, Eric Alterman wrote a book about how fascist Israel is. It's like a boring version of my book. And that's what just keeps happening again and again. So I was pushed out of the nation though because of that. It just got too uncomfortable for them. Then the whole apparatus of progressive media that started during the Bush era, Truthdig, Alternet, all these publications that I was writing for started to collapse.

And I sort of was forced into alternative media simply because I wanted to tell the truth. And it wasn't going to be possible within the progressive base of the Democratic Party anymore. And so I started this thing called the Gray Zone. And really, like, forward the original investigative reporting that we think a decent media should do. We really found our voice, I think, when I published my investigative series on the Syrian White Helmets. It was one of the biggest... One of the biggest pro-war scams and psyops that I'd ever seen in my life were this group that was basically the MASH unit for the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, which was started by a British military intelligence agent named James Lemersurier,

who fell off a balcony after being exposed for stealing tons of donor money from Western governments funded by USAID, which was a total intelligence operation, cooking up chemical attack events and all sorts of atrocities to convince the Western public that we needed to support a regime change war on Syria and that the U.S. Air Force should be Al-Qaeda's Air Force. This group needed to be exposed, and no one had touched it except for journalists like Vanessa Bealey and others who are in alternative media, but were just constantly being denounced as Assadists. And I think we helped move the reality of the White Helmets. We forced more of the public to grapple with that reality. Then we started to find more of a voice, you know, joining forces with Aaron Maté to challenge the Russiagate deception,

which has been fully discredited because so many, so few people on the left understood that this was not just about humiliating Trump with PP tapes. It was about paving the path for the war that we've been discussing here today and grooming the Democratic Party's previously anti-war base as fanatical neocons who want to join forces with the Cheneys, which all happened. And, you know, so we, but Aaron became like the buzzsaw. I mean, like I couldn't keep track of all these characters. Portman and Bleeker had a meeting and like, no, they were actually Constantine Kalimnik was actually got a contract from USAID. He wasn't a Russian agent. Aaron kept track of it.

He was hammering it again and again and again and actually became the only journalist to interview Constantine Kalimnik within U.S. media about who he really was. This was the guy who was said to be like the final piece in the puzzle connecting Russia to Trump. Go on and on and on. But October 7th happened and everything felt like it was coming full circle from Goliath. And we had been challenging the proxy war in Ukraine, explaining why this really happened, how it was provoked, how it was actually, you know, we were being told Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. That was part of the talking points. And what we set ourselves to the task was to show how this was the most provoked invasion in history. Then October 7 hits and Palestine is suddenly at the center of history again, which was part of the purpose of the October 7 attack. The West and the most undemocratic countries on the planet, the Gulf monarchies, wanted to normalize with Israel and put the

Palestinians in the dustbin of history. October 7th shattered that, but it put another heavy burden on our backs, those of us in alternative media, which was to counter the mainstream media manufacturing consent for what has become the Holocaust of our time. And we are still living through a Holocaust over a year later. And I knew what happened. All of us who dealt with Israel in the past. Israel's, part of its national culture is to produce what they call Hasbara. That's the Hebrew word for explanation. And it basically means propaganda. And all of its citizens are told, you know, be ambassadors, learn Hasbara. So as soon as October 7th happened, Israel commenced with the Hasbara, pipelined through its assets in U.S. media, arch Zionists like Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, former AIPAC researcher Wolf Blitzer,

and they pumped out some of the most cynical propaganda I've ever seen, about 40 beheaded babies, about a baby being cut from a woman's fetus, and then about the mass rape by Hamas on October 7th, for which there was no forensic evidence, no survivor testimony. Fada for doing so much good work on this, to hit back and actually successfully cause a scandal at the New York Times, an internal scandal, when they started to try to push this atrocity propaganda specifically around sexual assault. They actually had to take down their podcast that was supposed to hype up this front page article and then make the case that it deserved a Pulitzer Prize. One of the co-authors has been fired. They're just mired in scandal at the New York Times. Every component of that piece, Screams Before Silence, has been dismantled by alternative media. And I think so many people

in the public who hadn't paid attention to what we were saying on Syria, which, by the way, the whole PSYOP was about delivering Syria to the West and Israel, who hadn't paid attention to what we were saying on Ukraine because they were inclined to hate Russia for whatever reason. It's conservative. It's anti-gay for whatever reason. So many people started to finally see it that the entire corporate media was not just fundamentally incapable of telling the truth, but was actually of a part with a system of genocide, a system of ethnic cleansing. They are stenographers for the perpetrators of a Holocaust. And so that's kind of where we've wound up today, where just the public, so many different sectors of the public, and we get them in our chat at the Gray Zone, and it's just people from all over the world, mostly the United States and the UK, the English-speaking world, from so many different perspectives and so many different backgrounds who are just fed up with the empire of lies. And they've turned to us and they're turning to so many Black Agenda Report,

everyone on this panel. And history is, everything we've been talking about since the Obama era, it's not only been proven, we've been proven correct. We've been proven correct about the OPCW deception, about all the chemical attacks. We've been proven correct about Russiagate. It's all gotten to the point where we are now, as Scott is pointing out again and again, on the precipice of nuclear or nuclear extermination. And we are in World War III. Look at what's happening in Syria. The overrunning of Syria by highly organized, well-armed al-Qaeda-aligned bandits with the backing of NATO and the Turkish government, and from the South, criminal mafias which have just taken over Daraa. None of this would have been possible without Ukraine, because it was Ukraine

that forced Russians to redirect a lot of their air power that was at the Hmeymim air base to the Ukrainian front. And it wouldn't have been possible without the Israeli blitzkrieg on Lebanon, which weakened Hezbollah, which had been defending Syrian territory. So this is not just a Syrian civil war. This is World War III already. And those of us in the media who just wanted to tell the truth, we've been forced into this space called the alternative media or independent media. But I think the rest of the people who have been paying attention in our societies, who want truth, who want peace, are along with us for the ride.

And so what do we do? Well, all we can do in the media is political education, which I think builds a healthier culture. And so I just wake up every morning. I normally wouldn't wake up in the morning, but I have a kid now, so I have to take her to school. I like to be creeping while everyone's sleeping. But I wake up in the morning and I just think maybe this won't work. Maybe Congress won't listen. They probably won't. But I'm just going to be the biggest bastard I can be today. And so should you. Okay. Well, thank you. Okay. First of all, Max, call me afterwards. I want you to promote my book.

Apparently you can make sales happen. We're in the lightning round, the fin, because we have a limited amount of time. But I'm going to break from it because we have a distinguished former congressman here with us today who's honored us with his presence. And so instead of asking you my trick question, I'm going to turn the floor over to you for you to reflect on what this panel has said, what your observations are about what's been said here today by this distinguished panel. Thanks very much, Scott.

Poet says hope springs eternal, right? But we have to be aware and get what's going on in this moment. And if we fail to do that, the moment will be lost. We must understand that danger is at our door, and that the government, which is supposed to be a government of the people, has gotten away from us. That is turned a deaf ear to the concerns that we have. That people we directly elected which is what article one of the constitution is all about members of congress must return frequently for approval they don't believe in their own power this is part of the problem

they believe that they have to go along with leadership they believe that there's always going to be a tomorrow. Again, this idea of tomorrow's guaranteed has to be challenged. Scott, you know, this, every one of us, I would hope, with the life instinct that we're given, this blessed life that we're given also has to be aware that this gift is is not unlimited that we're here for a limited period of time but if we fail to challenge what's going on right now with our involvement with yes you know as hackneyed as it sounds challenging members of congress to step up to their constitutional responsibility to cut off the funds to freeze the funds to direct the president it's a co-equal branch of government they got to be informed of that again it's the first among

equals article one versus article two so you know do i have hope i always have hope you know hope is the next breath we take right but um max's analysis of what goes on in the media margaret's uh awareness of the social implication dad's understanding the history you know we have a convergence here of, and it's a chance to raise our consciousness. We are not victims here of the world we see. We become victims of the way we see the world. And if we believe we don't have power, we don't have power. And if we summon that inner instinct for life

and for liberty and pursuit of happiness, it isn't just taking back the country, which is a political slogan. It's about reclaiming the our own lives and reflecting that power back on those who we send to represent us and if they're not representing us and i will tell you they're not we have to demand now if it means going to congressional offices calling up i mean all these things we have to raise the temperature of this. Less we see the temperature raised in a way that Dr. Postal described, which is really about extinction. So, you know, yes, I'm hopeful, but it's the old question about faith and good works. Right. So let's let us be about good works. Let us be about a consciousness of life.

Let us be about rejecting this nihilistic, almost necrophiliac impulse that people have where they're in love with death. Well, we have to take a stand for life in all of its manifestations today. Now, challenge this established thinking. Don't let them get away with this. This is our world, too. It belongs to us as much as they think it, whoever they are, belongs to them. So thanks to all of my fellow panelists here, and thanks to all of you. this is the start of something new scott and

if we can get through this moment with our personal involvement and all those who are watching we're about to uh um fulfill the uh prophecy of one of my favorite english poets uh alfred favorite English poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson. He said, come, my friends, tis not too late to seek a newer world. Come, my friends, tis not too late to seek a newer world. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is why there's congressmen and then there's Marines. Beautiful words, inspiring words. And I think that presentation is going to be a standalone segment that people are going to look at for motivation going forward. Thank you very much. Now we come to the rapid fire part.

You probably understand the format. Dan, you're in an elevator. I thought an elevator. In Congress. I was waiting for that. Door opens, you enter, and the Speaker of the House steps in. Door shuts.

You got 30 seconds to tell him what the hell to do with the Constitution. Go. I would say that he should initiate articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, which should have been done a long time ago, by the way. I mean, can I just say he was pulled from running for president because everyone knew he did not have the mental capacity for it. How can he have the mental capacity to be president and to be in charge of the nuclear football? Everyone is, everyone, Congress, the Democratic Party,

have abdicated their duty to ensure that this country is being led by someone who can actually do the job, and everyone knows he can't. So now it's being led apparently by unelected officials like Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan who do seem willing to blow up the world before Trump gets into office. I mean, I guess that would be my spiel right there that I would think he would be sympathetic to. And I want to just say one thing, you know, Congressman Kucinich used the word necrophilia ism to describe our leaders. And I would use the word nihilism. There is a nihilistic tendency within our leadership. And again, when you look at what is happening in West Asia with the destruction of scores of UNESCO sites, churches, mosques,

ancient markets, ancient Roman ruins in Syria, in Gaza, in Lebanon, there is that the U.S. is responsible for and has been since 9-11, which, by the way, according to Brown University, the wars after 9-11 killed over 4.7 million people in the Arabic world. In addition to that, all the destruction of ancient antiquities and our own history, our own history. We are being led by mad people. And that has to be recognized and that has to be stopped.

Thank you. Thank you. Margaret, I've, I had an easy one for you, but in lieu of the fact that you knocked it out of the park with your response, you're in Philadelphia in a building, I don't know, going to the bank or something. And elevator opens up, you step in, and in steps Kamala Harris. And the door shuts. You have 30 seconds or however long your elevator pitch takes to get Kamala Harris to agree to put pressure on Joe Biden to stop a nuclear war before his term ends. Floor is yours.

You know, the first thing I'd say to her is, so where's that dustbin of history? But anyway, now she's a, well, you know, I would say to her, you are capable. We have seen you in moments. Get rid of the nervous laugh. Get rid of the word salad and speak up. And now's your time to do it. Stop fooling around. You thought you were going to be president. That was never going to happen. Now you're a human being who can stop World War III, who can stop a hot war, pull it together and go talk to Joe Biden and then tell the American people the truth. And if you can't, there's your dustbin of history. Just get in it.

Don't write your memoirs. Don't try to run for office again. You're a nobody, and you will never be unless you stand up as a human being. Thank you. I'm going to look into the camera and speak to Kamala Harris directly. What she said, this is your chance to be relevant. Do something for the good of the people. Do something to help save America. Do something to stop nuclear war. Max, you go on a vacation to Texas.

I don't know why. And you're in Dallas at a big building. I still didn't know it was a good ranch there. Yeah, and the door opens up, you step in, and Elon Musk follows you, and the door shuts. Elon Musk has said that X is the number one news generator today. It's the most important, not just social media outlet, but the most important media thing out there.

You got 30 seconds. What are you going to do to fix Elon Musk's approach to media? Oh, I mean, if that wasn't for Elon Musk, the idiot king of Twitter, I'd probably, we'd all be banned from there. So I don't, it's just a fact. So I don't really, he's not someone I want to lobby. I would kind of ask him if, you know, if there was any worse torture than going to Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro, which he had to do after he made some anti-Semitic comments. And how does the quote-unquote richest man in the world get pushed around like that?

Is there some more powerful force lurking above him somehow? I don't know. That's what I'd want to know about. I'd want to pick his brain. And I would recommend some books to him. I don't know if he reads books. He names his children after quadratic formulas. They don't, yeah. He donates his sperm to employees. He's a transhumanist. He's coming up with a chip for our brains. So I don't know if he'd be interested in my book recommendations,

but maybe you all would. And this is relevant to comments here. First, of course, you know, Anya Parampil's Corporate Coup, if you haven't picked it up yet on Orr Books, she's coming up next. Dan Kowalik's The Case for Palestine. Dan's books are like the perfect books to distribute to people who are on the fence. They're educational tools. In the tradition of Chomsky, in in some cases more digestible or accessible. Scott Ritter's book is essential. All of his books are gripping. And there's a book I want to recognize,

someone who was murdered a year ago yesterday named Rifat Al-Arir, who has a book out now called If I Must Die, published by Or Books, Anya's publisher. And basically after Anya's book came out, I just approached her publisher, Colin Robinson, who's a fantastic person, but one of the few true anti-war publishers left in this country and connected him with a close friend of Rifat, and they just took it the rest of the way. And it's an important compendium of a book by someone who was really one of the most remarkable academics in the Gaza Strip. So many academics and nobles of the Gaza Strip have been murdered deliberately by Israel. He also was, I think,

the most influential, going back to Elon Musk's most influential Twitter X account in English from Gaza. And he was live tweeting his experience fleeing from the bombs, but also maintaining a really good sense of humor about all of the propaganda that was being deployed to justify the genocide. And at one point, this guy from one of these fake rescue groups in Israel called United Hatzalah, an ultra-Orthodox group, goes to Sheldon Adelson's casino in Las Vegas to the Republican Jewish Coalition event to raise money. And he claims that they found a baby who had been baked in an oven on October 7th. A complete lie. His own organization even rescinded it later. And Rifat made some joke about it, like did they salt the baby or something? Everyone was just mocking it.

And so Barry Weiss, who is one of the most astroturfed and therefore influential ultra-Zionist pundits in the country, who's just completely had her whole career propped up by Zionist billionaires, Bill Ackman and figures like that, basically puts a target on Rifat's back in a thread about the New York Times because they had published a piece by him at one point. And she said he actually celebrated the baking of a Jewish baby alive by Hamas. His direct messages start to fill up with death threats and promises of vengeance from active duty Israeli soldiers who are saying, I'm coming to Gaza to kill and rape your entire family. I'm coming to get you.

He received a phone call a few days later or weeks later he also he said on twitter if i am killed barry weiss is responsible he received a phone call a few weeks later while sheltering in a school and it was from the israeli army and they said we're coming for you now he left the school because he didn't want to put other people in peril went to his sister's house only place he could go in shijia east of gaza city under under attack by the Israeli military, and they killed him in a targeted strike. And they've assassinated many Twitter influencers and social media influencers in Gaza. It's never been explained why they targeted him for his assassination, but it seems pretty clear this was death by Zionist media. He was killed for his words.

The same way we hear about people who were killed by Pinochet for their Victor Hara for his songs and various dissidents throughout history who have been killed by Mussolini's men. This is what Israel is doing. They're killing people for their words. They're destroying culture, as Dan said, all across the Middle East, but they're destroying our contemporaries, our colleagues, our cultural pillars. So if there's one thing you can do, buy Rifat's book, If I Must Die. It's now in the top 100 books, I believe, on Amazon, all books. Get it on the bestse seller list. I think that's a form of resistance and it's something we can do.

Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to say that, go ahead, yes. Just kind of a buzzer shot here to use a basketball analogy. I'd like to direct everyone's attention to that amazing poster that was created, and no nuclear war with the President eating an ice cream cone. And imagine for a moment that it's not a mushroom cloud, but the Holy Spirit.

Imagine there's some religious, some prayer, some meditation that might create a whole new condition so i'm looking at that right now after all the discussions i've heard notwithstanding the religious views of anyone here i'm thinking maybe that could also be the holy spirit and maybe we could get joe biden to call upon his own uh uh upstated religious instincts to reflect upon uh the consequence of his decisions. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much for the panel.

Dennis Kucinich, Dan Kovalec, Margaret Kimberly, and Max Blumenthal. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. Thank you. Mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.