Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Russia/China United On Ukraine.

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Ray McGovern: Russia/China United On Ukraine.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 Monday, April 8th, 2024. Ray McGovern is with us now on the dangerous new alliance, or maybe not so dangerous, the interesting new alliance between Russia and China, and the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury trying to intimidate China. But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver, and I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why? Because throughout times of economic uncertainty, gold and silver have rightly earned

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and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Ray McGovern, welcome back to the show, my dear friend. Your time, of course, is much appreciated by the viewers and by me. Has the war in Ukraine produced a new alliance between Russia and China? And is that alliance beginning to manifest itself today? The answer is yes. It was coming. The Russians and the Chinese realized that they were both targets of U.S. expansion, so to speak, or U.S. expansion at least as far as NATO is concerned. And in the Far East as well, Taiwan was not really an issue until these guys came in. So, yeah, there's a new alliance. What's the word? The naivete on the part of our policymakers,

they were still reading out of textbooks from four decades ago when they told Biden, you know, the Russians and the Chinese, they hate each other. They could drive a wedge in between them. And Biden tried that at the first and only personal in-person summit that they had in Geneva. How did he try and drive a wedge between Russia and China, Ray? All we have is the readout from Joe Biden himself. They couldn't get him on a plane quick enough. And he said, he had no way to want to tell the press this, you know. It's not right for me to tell exactly what

I said, Putin. But, you know, I reminded him that he has this really long multi-mile border with China and that their relationship has never been very good, and that they don't mean that they can't really get along very well, and they're a threat. They're a threat to Russia. Sorry, reminded him of that, okay? And what did he say? Well, he took it on board. Well, nothing could have been farther from the truth. Now, that was June 16, 2021. Fast forward to February 4, 2022, a couple of weeks before Putin sent his forces into Ukraine. What happened? Putin was up in Beijing.

This is really important, okay? They signed an agreement that is very, very close to a mutual defense treaty saying there's no end to our cooperation. And that was on the 4th of February. The Winter Olympics had started. That's ostensibly why Putin went. And he, I'm sure, told Xi Jinping, look, this is what's happening in Europe. I'm going to have to invade Ukraine for the following reasons. What do you think? And Xi Jinping, in my view, said, not before the Winter Olympics are over. No, no, no, no, no. The Winter Olympics were over the 20th. Mutual defense treaties were signed with Donetsk and Lugansk on the 21st. And, you know, the invasion happened on the 24th.

Now, it's not a post-Hoc, ergo procto-Hoc fallacy here. What it is is that the alliance became solidified by that. Everyone, including me, was surprised that the Chinese would verse their entire Westphalia concept of no interference in foreign affairs, no aggression. So, you know, this is what happened. It was clear in April of 2022, the invasion happened, and then our policy policymakers and intelligence officials couldn't deal with it. They said, oh no, they're still at Lagerhans, and then when Ukraine seemed to be winning, right, in 2022, we never thought they were winning, but the intelligence officials did. That's what they told Biden. When we got that, then we had the head of national intelligence

saying, you know, telling Andrea Mitchell it was. It's still on their website. Look it up. The director of national intelligence. You know, about China, well, they still have meetings from time to time.

They still have meetings, right? And besides, we don't see any, it was a lawyerly word here, we don't see anything that is determinative of military assistance from China to Russia. Well, now that all's changed. Now they're blaming the defeat of Ukraine and NATO in Ukraine on China's buttressing the economy in Russia. It's really quite strange. What is the nature of the assistance that China has provided? Is it just trading with the economy and a rising tide lift all ships, or is China actually supplying military equipment to the Russian military? You could be sure, Judge, if there was any evidence of that, the latter, it would be adduced.

It would be hung out to dry. Russia doesn't need Chinese support other than shrinking up all its oil and everything else. And it's just a matter of China being seen now as giving the kind of support to the Russian economy writ large that can only enable it to continue its aggression in Ukraine. And of course, to try to help them win, but it's not going real well. They have to find some other excuses and there are other others that are being adduced right now. Do the Western elites, particularly the Americans, still think that they can drive a wedge between Russia and China, and do they still think such a wedge somehow benefits the West? Well, apparently they do, and they still think they can dictate to China.

Here's Secretary Yellen. She's been there four days, and she comes out and she says, you know, we urge the Chinese to change their policy. I mean, they're producing too much. It's just that it's flooding the market, and we need them to stop that because it's hurting us. So I told them that. Now, that's it's hurting us. So I told them that. Now, that's yelling this week.

Three years ago, almost exactly, you had Jacob Sullivan and Tony Blinking telling their counterparts who journeyed all the way to Anchorage. Okay, look, we mean to put you in your place. We have this new rules-based international system. Listen to this little lecture. Now, the Chinese still say, we're not going to listen to any lecture that we're not going to respond to. Things went really bad in Anchorage. That was the end of March of 2021, if memory serves, and things have gone down since then.

The thing is that the U.S. illusionary, delusionary people still think they can use China to put the brakes on Russia in Ukraine. It's just impossible for these people, these exceptional people who run our policy, to acknowledge the fact that China and Russia now joined at the hip, okay, and won't be separated by any ruse, however clever. As we speak, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is in Beijing. What do you think he's talking about?

I think he and Lavrov and his counterparts are having a big joke about Yellen. She came in like gunboat diplomacy on the Yantze, for God's sake, two centuries ago. They're probably laughing a little bit. And then more seriously, this is the denouement in Ukraine, okay? Now, I mentioned February 4 when Putin was with Xi Jinping. He hasn't been with him personally since then, but he will be in May, so next month now. Okay. That's going to be big because Xi Jinping and Putin will be preparing for what happens next in place long enough to make sure that the war is lost not before the election. They have to make their contingency plans. China will be full bore in favor. Well, I mean, China knows it's next, for God's sake.

China actually ranks number one over Russia and main enemy for the Pentagon in their documents. So it's not a science. It's not a great big conclusion. I don't get Yellen. I mean, other than her ideological biases and her wish to have her boss reelected. I mean, capitalism, you compete with another producer for who can produce the best product at the lowest cost, at the easiest accessibility for the consumer. Pretty basic. What does she want China to do?

Stop competing with us? If I can buy a microwave made in China for 50 bucks and the same microwave made in Detroit costs 150 bucks. It's kind of obvious which one I'm going to buy, right? Yeah, Judge, but that's unfair. That's unfair because it doesn't matter what Clinton and the rest of them did in de-industrializing our country. It's unfair business practices now. And Yellen's counterpart finished off by saying, you know, we favor the principles of a market economy. And communists, though we are, that's what we're going to do. And that's what we're going to continue to do. Thank you very much, Janet Yellen.

I mean, here's Yellen at the Chinese. The Chinese are kind of smirking. But more important, she doesn't get it. It's the same attitude that Joe Biden has, an antiquated attitude for 60 minutes. You remember him saying, we're the United States of America, the most powerful country in the history of the world. Well, he actually believes that, and apparently Yellen does, whether Jacob Sullivan and Tony Blinken continue to believe that. I don't know, but they continue to act as though they believe that, and it's going to come to what the Chinese have always called a no good end for us. I want to transition to Israel and play for you a piece from ABC News yesterday.

Martha Raddatz interviewing Admiral Kirby. Kirby is really outdoing himself as the Baghdad Bob of our era. However, the producers at ABC, my hat is off to them. They produced, you'll see this in a moment, they prepared and produced a timeline of events in Gaza and comments by the American government. Don't look for any gratification or any intellectual honesty from Kirby, but it's the timeline that is fascinating here. Cut number three, Chris. I want to show you a timeline, Admiral Kirby,

and wonder why things might change this time. November 6th, death toll in Gaza passes 10,000. November 10th, Secretary Blinken, far too many Palestinians have been killed. December 12th, Biden says Israel is losing support to indiscriminate bombing. December 22nd, death toll in Gaza passes 20,000. February 8th, President Biden calls a response in Gaza over the top. February 29th, death toll in Gaza passes 30,000. March 2nd, Vice President Harris said there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks.

April 1st, IDF strike kills seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. So why do you think anything will change? I'm glad you brought that timeline up because it shows the degree, the growing degree of frustration that we've had with the way these operations are being prosecuted and the way that the Israelis are acting on the ground in terms of civilian casualties. So we have been increasingly frustrated. And again, that was a core message that the president delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu in their phone call this week, this past week, that if they've got to do more, they've got to make changes. Now, the prime minister assured the president that he would do that. We've seen some announcements in those early hours. That's

welcome. We've got to see more. We've got to see it over time. You really believe that Admiral Kirby, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to stop the slaughter because you've asked him to cut off the 2,000 pound bombs and the spare parts for the jets. I'll let you take it, sorry, getting angry when he takes the American public and those of us in this business for fools. Well, Judge, even Biden has said indiscriminate. Okay. That's a war crime. Even Biden has said this over the top. You know, it should be, it's laughable, but it is very, very dead serious. Now, we have about 33,000 Palestinians killed. What's the situation with those who were just wounded?

They're dying from cuts to their feet. Watch Mikko Pellet's interview of an American nurse who served some time in Rafa, in southern Gaza. It's on his website right now. It was incredibly moving to me. Just watched that last night. It talks about little cuts on the feet of Palestinians because they have no shoes, having been driven out of their houses with one minute or two minute notice. And they die of that because there's no interceptor, there's no bandages, and there are no sandals, okay? So put that against Baghdad, Bob Kirby. And you know, if you're angry, I'm Irish. We Irish get even more angry than Italians on occasion. But you know, Thomas Aquinas said, there's the virtue of anger. And if you're not

angry amid this kind of injustice, you're sinning. He did say that. And I agree with you that we should be angry at profound, profound injustice. Alistair Crook reports this morning from sources in Israel that the IDF has been using an algorithm called Lavender. It's just the name of the software. It's an AI, artificial intelligence algorithm. And it has actually taken Palestinians and put numbers on their images from 100 to zero. 100 is must kill, zero is we can leave alone. So the Netanyahu government will say, well, we didn't kill these people, the algorithm did. Now, we haven't heard that argument from him yet. They're probably not pleased with the revelation of all this.

The revelation was made by an Israeli journalist, and Alistair picked up on it last night and this morning. But as the IDF going to say, we just followed what the computers told us. The computer said to drop a 2000 pound bomb. By the way, this algorithm also includes numbers saying, depending upon how evil the Hamas leader is, it justifies a greater number, killing a greater number of civilians in order to get to the Hamas leader. These people really make up their own rules as they go along,

irrespective of traditional notions of morality and irrespective of international law, to both of which they are sworn to comply. Yeah, swearing to comply, that's one thing. We was only following orders, this time from Herr Algorithm. My God, you know? You know, here's a little bit of information I picked up from Mikko Pellet's thing last night, okay?

This nurse had to go through eight checkpoints between Egypt into Rafah, okay? In each of those checkpoints, it was checked that the seven convoy of military, of this medicine help coming in from nonprofits, had exactly the same people in exactly the same vehicle. The third vehicle could not get in front of the second vehicle, they had to go in a line. Everyone knew, the Israelis knew, who was in each vehicle, and they had descriptions of their background. That's how detailed these algorithms permit the Israelis to be. Now, you tell me that they didn't know about that central

kitchen, that world central kitchen thing. They had chapter and verse. If these guys, these medical people, were subjected to that kind of scrutiny, so too were all relief efforts that came in, like the World Central Kitchen. And, you know, my friends waiting in Turkey with 5,500 tons of medical and other foods and food supplies to get it to Gaza. We'll see how, we'll have to wait and see how that comes out. But will Biden act in any more courageous way than Obama did back in 2011, when he interceded with the Greeks and didn't let us go

on our U.S. boat to Gaza? I don't know. It may be even worse than that. But I dare say that some people are trying. And I think everybody has to, you know, this Aaron Bushnell, the fellow who self-immolated before the Israeli embassy here or in Washington. What did he say? He said, you know, this is an extreme action. People say, well, what are you doing amid the genocide? And he says, well, this is what I am compelled to do. What you're doing is what you're doing now.

And for most of us, of course, that's nothing. We're trying. We're trying to send information out. But I admire those people that get on that flotilla. We're doing something. And I dare say, I pray that nothing happens to them such as happened to those other aid workers. Did you report earlier that the flotilla has been delayed by a week or so? It seems to be. Matt Ho, who is going to support them, tells me that his departure has been delayed a week.

And that tells me that they're still waiting for things to sort out in Israel. And if they can have a better chance of doing this in a peaceful way, they'll wait for weeks and weeks on end. Not weeks on end. People are starving, right? They'll wait for a while, but they're going to do it. And, you know, a lot of those people were on the boat that I was on in 2011.

They're courageous people. I feel for them. I have a touch of what we call premature guilt syndrome, okay? I should be with them. Family circumstances do not permit it. I know how you feel. Here's a cut from yesterday from one of the news shows on CNN of the former director of the CIA and former secretary of defense, Leon Panetta,

basically saying Netanyahu should realize he's not going to destroy Hamas. Cut number five. Netanyahu keeps saying we're going to destroy Hamas. Look, you're not going to destroy Hamas. Hamas is going to be around. What you can destroy is the leadership that was involved by Hamas in the attack on October 7th. And I don't think he's made that clear, that ultimately this is about killing the leadership of Hamas, not just wiping out Hamas. If we had a better sense of mission here, I think we'd have a better sense of how this war could come to an end. I've known Leon Panetta for years. We don't agree on a lot of things.

I like him. He's a character. He's fun to be with. He's intelligent. He's a historic figure. Do you think he's speaking for the administration when he's sending this kind of a message to Netanyahu? He's speaking PR, Judge. I had high hopes for Panetta, like you, I guess.

You know, this is a guy that bragged before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the U.S. could make war irrespective of Congress. He had been in Congress for years. Section 1, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution didn't mean anything to him. More particularly in this case, where was Panetta when this thing started? Okay. It's only after the Israelis are taking a really bloody nose in Gaza, okay? It's only then that he's, oh, well, we should just go after the leadership. Well, that's not the name of the game. The Israelis are out to exterminate the Palestinians. Panetta should know that. Maybe he doesn't know that. He's getting pretty old. He's a year older than I am, for God's sake. Mark that down, okay? Let me go back to the murder of the aid workers. What's the reaction of the intelligence

community? What's the reaction of CIA on the ground when something like that happens? Do they admonish Mossad? Do they look the other way? What do you think? Well, Judge, the agency now is sort of all smooshed together where the operations people really rule the roost. So the idea would be liaison with Mossad, well, you got to do what you got to do, guys. Just got to do what you got to do. You know, there's not going to be any recrimination. That's verboten.

You don't recriminate, if that's the word. You don't recriminate Mossad. You just say, well, okay, if you think you need to do that, go ahead and do it. So there's no break by any conscious stricken people in the CIA on any of this. They're all in the game, full support for the administration policy. And that, I regret to say, is what the CIA has become, not only operationally, but substantively in saying the war is won by Ukraine back in July, and by saying, yeah, if we give just another 60 billion, it's going to be just fine.

That's bollocks, as the British say. That doesn't make any sense at all. All it does is make people who are already rich still richer. One last subject matter going back to uh ukraine do you fear as an act of desperation given that uh most observers recognize that ukraine has lost this war a false flag i do and there are certain snippets out there indicating what direction it might take. The Guardian, the Guardian newspaper, which used to be a pretty good newspaper, published an item just yesterday talking about how the Ukrainian soldiers are complaining about the Russian use of gas.

And the implication is only because the Russians are using gas now are they winning on various parts of the front. So gas is one thing. Nukes? Well, the nuclear power station in Zaporizhia has been hit three times by Ukrainian shelling over the past weekend. Now, that's really serious. That's the largest nuclear power station in the area, I think maybe in all of Europe. It's hardened, so it's unlikely that a drone strike can hit it, but the pool of that reflecting, the pool that has all that junk in it, it could be breached. So that's another thing.

The thing that worries me more is you get people like David Sanger, who advertised the availability and the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq up to a fairly well. Okay, he's now been employed to talk about possible Russian use of low-yield nuclear weapons in Ukraine. So he's the intelligence community mouthpiece at the New York Times. Correct, yeah. Now, his record is, I can, it's pretty sorted. WMD was one thing. Now it's, two years ago he wrote this piece that, you know,

it looks like the Russians might resort to weapons, nuclear weapons. Now, two years ago, that's okay, because the Russians look like, to some people, they might lose. Why did they reprint it two weeks ago? Why? Well, I don't know, but it scares the hell out of me, because usually when you're going to, when you want to prepare the American people for the use of something like a tactical loop or a low-yield nuclear weapon, you say first that the Russians, they threaten it to you. Oh, well, here it is again. So that's what worries me. where Ukraine is going, other than some deus ex machina, God forbid to use deus, in the form of something really extracurricular, whether it's chemical weapons, whether it's nuclear weapons. I don't know if these are going to fool around with very scary, very scary, Ray, but you are

wise and generous to read between the lines for us like this. Thank you very much for joining us. The roundtable, I believe, is on Thursday this week, but I look forward to seeing you with Larry when we're together next. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Of course. And the aforementioned Larry is Larry Johnson coming up at 11 o'clock this morning Eastern, at 2 o'clock this afternoon, antiwar.com's Kyle Anzalone.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.