Judging Freedom - [The GrayZone ] - Aaron Maté - Zelenskyy - and Long Range Missiles

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

[The GrayZone ] - Aaron Maté - Zelenskyy - and Long Range MissilesSee 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 Wednesday, September 4th, 2024. Aaron Maté will be here with us in just a minute. Are you ready for this? President Zelensky and long-range missiles. But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70%, And gold has increased by 60%. Do you own gold? I do.

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And because of Kevin's good work, the FBI caught these people before they could steal anymore. That's why I have been saying the people at Lear are good people. They believe in America. They believe in their product and they're honest to the core. So take action right now, my friends. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Aaron, my dear friend, welcome back to the show. Of course, your time and analysis is much appreciated, and I do want to spend a fair amount of time with you on what President Zelensky has been up to with respect to the shakeup of his cabinet and requesting of the

United States government long-range missiles. But before we do that, some of the more breaking news. This is a real odd one. I know over at the Gray Zone, your expert on Latin America is Anya. But what is this with the United States stealing a jet belonging to Venezuela in the Dominican Republic and flying it to Florida? This is a part of a longstanding effort, as Anya's latest book, Corporate Coup, documents by the U.S. to pillage and punish Venezuela for the crime of Venezuela being independent, of not being under the boot of the U.S. in what U.S. officials, U.S. presidents have long seen as a U.S. right to control Latin America. And Venezuela, one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, I believe the world's most valuable oil reserves, has refused to submit U.S. orders.

So there's been a longstanding effort going back more than two decades by the U.S. to overthrow Venezuela's government. And so they took an opportunity with Maduro in the Dominican Republic to seize his airplane for no other reason, but just to teach him a lesson because he's not obedient. This comes after they've already pillaged the U.S. wing of the Venezuelan state oil company, Citgo, as Anya's book documents. And what is the ostensible reason? It's because the U u.s doesn't recognize maduro as the winner of the recent venezuelan election i don't know what happened in that election i wasn't there on the ground you know this requires an independent audit what i do know

is that the u.s has no business weighing in on venezuela's democracy because they've been trying to subvert it for many years now first through coup attempts and then through crippling sanctions that destroy venezuela's economy when the coups failed. And so this is just the latest extension of that longstanding regime change effort. From my perspective, this is particularly repellent. The same FBI agents and U.S. marshals that would arrest and prosecute someone for stealing a jet stole Stole a jet. Got in it. Turned it on. Fueled it up.

Flew it back to the United States. Yeah. Again, breaking news, although it's now two days old. Israel erupting over the weekend. 250,000 people demonstrating against Prime Minister Netanyahu, another op-ed in Haaretz by General Bricks, another condemnation of the Netanyahu government by Ronan Barr, the head of Shin Bet. How unstable is the Netanyahu government? And doesn't the whole world know he has no interest in negotiating a ceasefire and couldn't care less about the hostages? The whole world does know that and Israeli society appears to be waking up to that reality as well. It's unfortunate though

that we couldn't see this upsurge and protest from the very start when Israeli officials made clear their plans to commit mass murder. And as that plan has unfolded, you have not seen any massive outrage in Israel at all. Now, though, because Netanyahu's policy of undermining negotiations, repeatedly adding new conditions that he knows Hamas cannot accept, and ensuring that the Biden administration will always cover for him, as the Biden administration has dutifully done. Now Israeli society finally is getting fed up and seeing through that he's, the fact that he's endangering the hostages,

that his policy of carrying out these rescue missions in which, by the way, dozens of Palestinians get slaughtered. People forget this, but the last successful Israeli mission that rescued a few hostages killed well over a hundred Palestinians. And no one cared because Israeli lives are just deemed to be the only ones that are valuable here. Palestinian lives don't matter. But now that one such rescue attempt resulted in apparently Hamas executing the Israeli captives, Israeli society is fed up and now you're seeing this huge protest

and you're seeing more and more Israeli officials speak out. People even from inside Netanyahu's coalition are acknowledging that he's undermining the ceasefire talks. So this will put pressure on him whether he falls or not. I don't know. He does have still the support of the extremist elements of Israeli society. It's already a really extreme society. So this is like the extreme of the extreme And that might be enough To keep him in power No matter how he lies And no matter how he deceives

And no matter how he tricks the US government Do you think American Military support for him is Unconditional No matter what he does or says He can slaughter innocents. He can lie and cheat. He can condemn you and Max in the street right outside the Capitol building. Gets whatever he wants. That's been the case so far. There's no indication yet that the Biden

administration is willing to drop its unconditional support. They've been willing to be humiliated by Netanyahu multiple times. Remember a while ago, Biden talked about there has to be a Palestinian state. What does Netanyahu do? Rather than even pay lip service to a Palestinian state that he knows he'll never allow, he went and said publicly there'll never be a Palestinian state. Recently, Blinken said that Netanyahu had accepted the ceasefire proposal. And Netanyahu, in his latest effort to undermine the ceasefire proposal, he cited Blinken and said, well, even Blinken said that I'm being generous here and I've accepted the ceasefire proposals, which Blinken knows Netanyahu actually didn't, because what all Netanyahu did was add new conditions that he knew were non-starters for Hamas, namely that Israel

would maintain a permanent presence in the Philadelphia corridor between Gaza and Egypt, which even Israeli officials said was not necessary for Israel's security. That is a very well-policed tunnel that does not pose a threat to Israel. The only threat to Israel is itself. It's insistence on continuing its decades-long occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. And Netanyahu, luckily for him, has a Biden administration and is firmly committed to that. Here's what Netanyahu said earlier today, defending his record on the ceasefire talks cut number five I was asked whether Israel is not I'm not doing enough to the release of hostages well I want to set the record straight on April 27th Secretary of State Blinken said that Israel made an extraordinarily generous offer for a hostage deal.

On May 31st, Israel agreed to a U.S.-backed proposal. Hamas refused. On August 16th, Israel agreed to what the United States defined as a final bridging proposal. Hamas refused again. On August 19th, Secretary Blinken said Israel accepted the U.S. proposal. Now Hamas must do the same. On August 28th, that's five days ago, five days ago, Deputy CIA Director said that Israel shows seriousness in the negotiations, now Hamas must show the same seriousness. I want to ask you something. What has changed in the last five days? What has changed?

One thing. These murderers executed six of our hostages. They shot them in the back of the head. That's what's changed. And now after this, we're asked to show seriousness? We're asked to make concessions? What message does this send Hamas? It says, kill more hostages, murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions. The pressure internationally must be directed at these killers, at Hamas, not at Israel.

We say yes, they say no all the time, but they also murdered these people. And now we need maximum pressure on Hamas. I don't believe that either President Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace and achieving the release would seriously ask Israel to make these concessions. We've already made them. Hamas has to make the concessions. We've already made them. Hamas has to make the concessions. Yes, he forgot about all the times Hamas agreed to something and he added conditions that he knew Hamas would never accept. Yeah, and he benefits from having Antony Blinken

being so dishonest and so subservient to Netanyahu that Blinken's been willing to go before the world and lie and basically say that it's Israel that's accepted the proposals Hamas hasn't when he knows that the reason why Israel is accepting his proposals because he keeps bending his proposals to meet Israel's demands. That's why the Philadelphia corridor issue was added in after that was a settled issue before Netanyahu added that because he knew that Hamas could not accept it. Netanyahu, with Blinken's support, also added a condition that would have a permanent Israeli presence, basically harassing any Palestinian who wants to return to their home in the north. Another permanent Israeli presence in Gaza. So that's the U.S. acceding to Netanyahu's demands that there be two separate Israeli permanent positions in Gaza to basically make life for Palestinians even more miserable. And of course, no Palestinian faction could agree to that. But Netanyahu can get before the world and say that it's Hamas' fault because Blinken

has been covering for him. And it makes Blinken look even more stupid because now when the Biden administration goes before the world and complains about Netanyahu because he's just so intransigent, Netanyahu can understandably go and say, well, listen, hey, these people said I was being generous. So it's the Biden administration that's put itself in such a corner because it refuses to apply any pressure on Israel. And again, it could have had a hostage deal a long time ago. Before even Israeli any troops entered into Gaza, Hamas offered to free all of the captives,

all of them, all of them, if Israel agreed not to invade Gaza. Israel refused to even discuss that. There's been multiple opportunities that have been thwarted. And Netanyahu's sanctimoniousness, it reminds me a bit, I mean, Israeli leaders are, this is a long tradition of acting as if they're the victims and acting so indignant that anybody would dare ask them to stop brutalizing palestinians during the first antifab which was a largely uh non-violent uprising with the exception of you know palestinian kids throwing some rocks at israeli soldiers if you want to call that violence okay and utah rabin then the defense minister who ordered his soldiers to break the bones of palestinians literally their bones. That was his order and went on to become, well, he had multiple stints as really prime minister, but during the first inter-fighter, he was defense minister.

He held up a rock at a press conference, a rock, okay, a stone. He said, this rock, this rock was thrown at our soldiers, like the entitlement they have that they can go and just brutalize and occupy people, and that the other side can dare to fight back. And in this case of Hamas, dare to have some demands that include not having this repressive genocidal force, having a permanent presence in their territory. To Israeli leaders, that's just a non-starter. And they're so indignant the world would dare question their determination to keep on occupying and killing Palestinians. And keeping 10,000 Palestinians in administrative detention under horrific conditions without charges or trial. Before we transition over to the latest in Ukraine, Hamas has denied

executing these six hostages. Have there been any independent forensics? There haven't. But the one statement that I saw from Hamas mentioned that because of the last rescue operation in which Israel slaughtered over 100 Palestinians, I believe is the number, at least dozens of Palestinians, to rescue a few hostages. After that, Hamas said that they changed their rules. And the thrust of that statement, I think, was that basically now they're allowed to kill hostages if Israel is close to coming in and rescuing them by military force. So I took from that that in this case, Hamas did kill them. But yeah, no, there'll be no forensics as far as I've seen in them so i don't know what the exact story was but the implication to me of that hamas statement was that they're responsible for those deaths but really the ultimate responsibility i think lies with netanyahu

who could have freed all these people uh had he just been willing to accept a ceasefire and been willing to not willing to accept a ceasefire because ben gevir and smotrich will leave the government and he won't be prime minister anymore. And he gets prosecuted for the, what is being prosecuted before, before he was elected prime minister. That's right. And also that would, uh, you know, uh, end early the Israeli attempt to ethnically cleanse as much of Gaza as possible or destroy as much of it as possible so that people don't want to live there anymore, which is the major goal of this military assault on Gaza. Transitioning over to Ukraine, what happened over the weekend?

Is Zelensky so desperate that he somehow thinks that he, who has no legal authority whatsoever, can ask for and receive the resignation of senior members of his cabinet and actually purport to replace them at this desperate moment in the war? Well, you know, listen, the argument is made that Zelensky has no more authority because his term lapsed and there were no new elections. You know, that's not for me. That's for Ukrainians to decide. I don't weigh in on that because I'm not Ukrainian. He does still seem to have some popular support. So that's for them to decide. But the shakeup in the cabinet and the resignation of his foreign minister, Kuleba, is a really big deal.

What I don't know is whether this means they're going to bring in people who are even more extreme, which is hard to imagine. Because Kuleba is supposed to be the foreign minister, the chief diplomat. But his role from the start has been to undermine diplomacy. Before Russia invaded in February 2022, right before, the same month, Kuleba basically declared that Ukraine will never implement the Minsk Accords, which was the peace deal that could have prevented Russia's invasion. It was the peace deal reached in 2015 to end the war that began after the U.S.-backed coup the previous year in 2014. And the premise of Minsk was that

basically Kiev would recognize the autonomous rights of millions of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who revolted after their government was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. And simply, it would let them elect their own officials, their own judges. It would let them speak Russian without facing discrimination, which is what they faced immediately after the U.S.-backed coup, because the U.S.-backed Maidan coup was driven by fanatical ultra-nationalists. And rather than implement the Minsk Accords, the Ukrainian government stalled and basically refused to do it, which was a major factor in Russia's invasion, because Ukraine at that point was not only saying it wouldn't implement the Minsk Accords, but it was threatening to retake

the Donbass by force. And so Russia paid attention to that. And Kuleba, I think, helped ensure that Russia would invade when the same month that Russia invaded, he said, we will never grant special status to the Donbass, which was the whole premise of Minsk. Is this him, Aaron? That is him, yes. That is him, yes. That is him.

That is him. And since then, he basically, he has attempted to downplay the very real progress that was made in Istanbul right after Russia invaded, when Ukrainian and Russian officials met and hammered out a really detailed peace deal. He was not, I think, a major player in those talks. That was a different faction of the Ukrainian government.

And he undermined them by basically embracing Zelensky's decision to walk away from the deal under U.S. and U.K. pressure. Why did he leave? Did he jump or was he pushed? That's a great question. Things are not going well for Ukraine. And when things are not going well for Ukraine, like for example, after the counteroffensive last year, they need scapegoats. And there's been this decision, as you've covered extensively, for Ukraine to invade Kursk, a completely militarily insignificant region of Russia. There was a play, I think, to try to take control of Russia's nuclear plant there that's failed so now Ukraine is left in holding Russian territory that is like you know it's like

a it's just a tiny speck of dust comparatively to how big Russia is and it's not militarily significant and to do that they had to divert forces from the Donbass and this is going to be I think a real disaster for them in the long run and so perhaps Zelensky's looking for scapegoats. Perhaps, I mean, I'm being hopeful here, perhaps maybe Zelensky will replace him with a foreign minister who's actually interested in negotiating and diplomacy. But I fear actually that the people replacing him will be even more extreme, which is hard to fathom. And while this is going on, is it true that Zelensky has been lobbying Blinken, Sullivan, and through them, Biden, for long-range missiles, which after Americans fire them, would reach deep into Russia,

even to Moscow itself? Correct. And this appears actually to be the main goal of the Kursk operation. Ukraine is so desperate. They know they're losing Donbass. By the way, they don't really want a lot of the people who live in the Donbass anyway. Part of the reason why people like Koleba didn't like the Minsk Accords is because it would have forced Ukraine to reintegrate millions of ethnic Russians who actually they didn't want inside their country anymore because these people are not Ukrainian internationalists. They want to speak Russian and they want friendly ties with Russia. And for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, that's a non-starter. So

Zelensky, in invading Kursk, I think was hoping he could show the U.S. that he can still fight Russia, which has been a theme throughout the war. Zelensky said before the NATO summit of last summer, not this recent summer, but last summer, he said, before the summit, we have to show results. And what did he mean by that? We have to show our NATO sponsors that we can fulfill their goal of bleeding Russia. So I think the aim here in Kursk was to go in, humiliate Putin, and hope that that would be enough for Biden to reward Zelensky with one more escalatory gift, which is now long-range strikes into Russia. And the question hanging over this, is Biden deranged enough to do this? And it's been a question that's hard to answer because Biden

has been so unhinged in his support for continuing this proxy war, for sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. And in Israel as well, we've seen what he's capable of. He's basically setting the whole region on fire, sentencing tens of thousands of Palestinians to death because of his commitment to U.S.-Israeli hegemony. So would Biden be so crazy and so deranged and so committed to his ultimate goal, his only goal, which is to bleed Russia, to let Ukraine use these long-range weapons to strike Russia?

So far, it appears he's holding his ground, but with him, you can never rule it out. They'll take a poll or they can ask Vice President Harris' pollsters to take a poll on this. Is it snarky or realistic to believe that Ukraine will last at least until November 6th of this year? That's a great question. If you look at the way Russia has thought this war, it seems like they've basically been willing to wait this out. They know they have the advantage in manpower, in weaponry,

and they've been willing to let the Ukrainians grind themselves. I think that's been the strategy. So if I'm making a prediction, and again, military analysis is not my forte, I think it's fair to say this will last beyond the election. But how much longer into this winter can Ukraine last? They recently pulled out of talks that would have called for a truce on bombing energy infrastructure, which was much more important to Ukraine because the winter is coming up and Ukraine is going to have a hard time heating itself and zelensky

sacrificed that just to keep um fulfilling his fantasy that he can land some kind of knockout punch to russia by invading kursk for example and they get biden's blessing for long-range strikes so it's not paying off so i do think this will go past the election but how much longer beyond that you know i wouldn't be betting on a very, very long year. All of our military guests are of the view that the use of these intercontinental ballistic missiles on the military school two days ago in Pultaba was a legitimate military target. These were officers being trained

to engage in offensive use, offensive weaponry against Russia. And they were being trained by Swedish and Polish officials, many of whom were killed in the bombing. You know, I can't share that assessment because I don't think actually Russia's assault on Ukraine is legal. I think it was provoked and I understand why Russia did it, but I don't think it's legal. And so whether or not that military facility is a legitimate target, that's not for me to say.

Admittedly, it's not my area of expertise. What I do know is that there's been a pattern in this war where Russia invaded initially with a force that was not enough to take over the country. The obvious goal was to compel Ukraine to enter into the negotiations that it was refusing to enter in before, namely to implement the Minsk Accords and to agree to neutrality, which its founding constitution called for. So that was not a radical demand. And rather than engage with that, rather than accept the peace deal that some Ukrainian officials negotiated in Istanbul, Ukraine chose war. And every time they've done that, every time they've escalated, Russia has made them pay for it. This is a longstanding pattern. So this attack on the facility, whether it was legal or not, it comes after Ukraine invades Russia, goes for this nuclear

power plant in Kursk. So it was predictable, as has always been the case throughout this war, that Russia was going to hit back. So this is the result. And this will keep happening to Ukraine until someone can finally have the courage to say, you know what, this has gone on for too long. We've sacrificed too many people. All for what? So we can have a theoretical right to join NATO, which the U.S. keeps dangling over us, but ultimately they're not even that serious about, which they're just using as a basically as bait to bleed Russia. And for so that we can keep fighting off our obligation to recognize that there are millions of ethnic Russians in Ukraine who haven't wanted to live under a coup government and we need to respect their rights. Until someone can say that we need to actually

stop all this, we need to stop being used by the U.S., these kinds of strikes will continue by Russia. Aaron Monta, thank you, my dear friend. I know we're all over the place from the Dominican Republic to Gaza to Pultaba, but we very much appreciate your analysis as always. All the best, my friend. Thank you, Judge. Of course. Coming up tomorrow, a busy and fulfilling day for you. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Schaefer at eight in the morning. Professor Gilbert Doctorow at nine in the morning, all times Eastern as usual. Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 2 in the afternoon. The great Professor John Mearsheimer at 3 in the afternoon. And the always worth waiting

for at 4 in the afternoon, Max Blumenthal, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.