Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/3/23 Connor Freeman on the Antiwar Protests in Europe

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Connor Freeman joins Scott to talk about the antiwar protests in Europe and how the demeanor of western governments is evolving. They discuss protests in Germany, France and Italy where people called on their governments to solve the conflict over Ukraine with diplomats, not weapons. They also talk about the conflicting statements the Biden Administration has made about a Ukrainian assault on Crimea, China’s proposed peace plan and Blinken’s quick meeting with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov.  Discussed on the show: “‘Stop the Killing,’ Major Antiwar Protests Held in Germany, France, and Italy” (Libertarian Institute) “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” (Substack) Parody video of Maddow’s 2003 Iraq War Protest coverage Connor Freeman is the Assistant Editor of the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96 This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scott horton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right to you guys on the line i've got connor freeman he's assistant editor at the institute and at antiwar dot com as well welcome back to show connor how you do i'm doing great scott

Thanks for having me on. Hell yeah. Man, you got good stuff on both sites this morning. First of all, let's start with this great anti-war protest or two or three going on in Europe. You got a piece with our buddy Will Porter here. What do we call him? Research assistant, something like that. He's got a job.

Yeah, Will's one of our news editors. News editor. That's right. News editor, Will Porter, the great Will Porter. All right. So tell me what we got here. So over the weekend, there were these massive protests, particularly in Germany, in West Berlin, there were, well, reportedly, I've seen various numbers on this, but the organizers of

this particular March said that 50,000 people came out. And the whole thing was demanding an end to the military aid for Ukraine and that these people want negotiations right now. And it was people from across the political spectrum. I think the only people that were disinvited officially were like neo-Nazis. And it was organized by, let me see if I get, by a lady named Sark. Sara Wagenek, who's a member of the left party in Germany and this feminist author and campaigner named Alice Schwarzer. Before the, it was called the Uprising for Peace Demonstrations, before they, before they actually carried out the protest, I think two weeks before, they had launched what they called

a manifest for peace, this petition, demanding a end to, an end to the weapons deliveries, and that they wanted to see talks as soon as possible, and for Germany to lead negotiations. And at that time that we had written the article, it had 650,000 signatures, including from some prominent intellectuals and political figures. But since then, I've seen some other reporting that says it's over 700,000 now. And so they came out, they gave a bunch of speeches. I believe Jeffrey Sachs actually spoke, maybe he zoomed in, but at this protest as well. But there were banners, you know, saying stop the killing, not my war, not my government, diplomats instead of grenades. And the whole thing was just a massive vote of no confidence for German Chancellor Olaf Schultz

and his foreign minister, Annalina Baerbach, who, you know, she infamously said recently, we were at war with Russia when Germany was feeling the pressure from all these demands from the Americans and the British and the polls for them to green light the transfer of their leopard two tanks that were held by these other countries as well as from their own stocks. and so the Germans are just expressing that, hey, we don't want another war with Russia, given our history, and they're furious about this. And there were other protests going on in Paris, the right wingers. Wait, stick with the Germans for a second there, because you make reference to that quote. But can you elaborate a little bit about that?

I mean, people know the history, World War I and World War II, the worst things that ever happened, that centrally they were worse between Germany and Russia at their worst parts. way but so what was it that these protesters were saying about that let's see the i'm going to get some of the quotes here in a sec so they were saying if so in nuremberg this was a separate protest they were expressing their concerns that we're being that the german people are being dragged into a war and so one of the demonstrators who has interviewed said if we germans get involved in a war and i personally do not have a war with russia then for us germans based on history it's the worst sign that we can send. No war must go through Germany, neither with arms deliveries nor anything else, because otherwise Germany will be in the middle of it again. And this guy said, this is just what

America wants. And so actually, there were protests around the Ramstein Air Base as well. Hundreds of people came out there and saying to the Americans, go home. And that, you know, this is where Lloyd Austin has led many of these Ukraine defense contact group meetings. It really should be called the Ukraine defense contract group, but it's where they, you know, talk about arming Ukraine and all the different advancements in the weapons transfers. And so these people are saying that they're sick of this. And there were signs out there as well demanding that Julian Assange be freed. It was really inspiring to see. And of course, this all takes place in the backdrop of the recent report from Seymour Hirsch about how the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, which it's an act of

war against Russia. But, I mean, of course, just completely cutting off the ability for the Germans to, you know, go back, basically to agree to, you know, they put the pipeline in this sort of in this regulatory limbo after, just before the war was, just before the invasion took place. But they always had the option to, they wanted to keep their people warm and keep the cheap gas coming through to, the Russians always had the option to turn the pipeline back on. But, of course, Biden took that option away because I think they were concerned, as Hirsch was saying on your show last week, that if things got worse in the winter, if it had been colder than was expected, and the way it probably will be next year, that the Germans would have agreed to some concessions

and maybe stopped supplying. Maybe they wouldn't have sent the tanks, you know, maybe they would have pursued some negotiations and tried to lead that. But Biden, of course, in Newland and Blinken and Sullivan wanted to make sure that that doesn't happen. But there are tens of thousands of people in Germany and apparently hundreds of thousands based on this petition that are just furious with the status quo and they don't feel they're being represented at all by the current coalition government yeah it's amazing 650,000 signatures on something like that and you know anyway um i guess well let me ask you this before you switch to france what about the reaction from the government to this because this is pretty big especially compared to what we were able to pull off

Yeah, exactly. Well, I haven't seen too much on the reaction yet. But in many of these cases, like particularly in the Czech Republic, when these protests get launched. Because last year, last fall, there was a similar march in Prague with 70,000 people. And the whole complaint was that they wanted, again, they wanted to end support for sanctions and for the proxy war. They no longer wanted to support Ukraine militarily. And to try to bring the war to an end. And of course, they were saying, you know, you're just beholden to American and NATO and EU interests and you don't care about us at all in our standard of living. And the criticism from the government at that time was that, well, you're just all a bunch of Russian, basically you're a bunch of Russian propagandists or you're pro-Moscow is the argument. So just completely disconnected, not dissimilar from the way, actually the way Rachel Maddow covered the rage against the war machine rally in D.C. by just saying that it's a bunch of, I mean, communists and pro-Russia people.

And so it's so small. And the only person she mentioned that was there was Tulsi Gabbard. She didn't even mention her by name, just tried to, you know, do a guilt by association thing. Did you see the satire of that where it's the gay guy goes, oh, look, I found video of Maddow covering the Iraq protest of 2003. and then he just puts on his gayest accent that he can doing his Mado impression.

Yeah, it's so funny. Look at all these Iraqi flags. Yeah, yeah. It's so funny. I don't know. I retweeted it, but it's a week ago now. If you want to go dig for that, I wish I knew some good keywords for it.

I mean, yeah, just Google that. I found footage of Maddow covering an Iraq protest in 2003. I bet if you Google that, you can find it, everybody. It's funny as hell. They're like, that's his Madao impression. It's just talking like a very gay guy. Yeah, it was the worst. kind of delivery. I mean, I never watch her show, but when you hear her voice and the way she

speaks to her audience, it's kind of mind-boggling that people still eat that up. Man. But in Paris, just the kids say these days. Now, France, go ahead, France, Italy, Europe, and then let's talk about the war some more. Yeah, for sure. So in Paris, he had 10,000 people gathering to protest against the, not only the, provide the military aid provisions, but actually membership in NATO and the EU. And this was. was called the National March for Peace. It was organized by the right-wing La Patriots Party, and the group's leader of Florian Philippa, who joined the rally himself, said that there were smaller protests held at 30 other locations throughout the country on Sunday. And on Saturday,

in Italy, these protests were carried out in the cities of Genoa and Milan, and their slogan was lower weapons, raised wages. So there were 4,000 people from across Italy, along with some people from France and Switzerland as well, according to the local media reports. It was the collective autonomous port workers group, which helped organize the rally with the Italian Communist Party. They were demanding that Genoa's, the port of Genoa's facilities no longer be used to facilitate armed shipments to Ukraine. And one of the representatives from the port workers group was saying, hey, look, also the war in Ukraine didn't just start last year. It started in 2014 with the massacre of the Russian-speaking populations in the Dombas, of course, where thousands of civilians were

killed over that eight-year war, you know, over 14,000 people killed. And so as much as the mainstream media wants people to forget about all that, I think it's getting out more and more and people find it, you know, that just, you obviously people sympathize with the civilians of Ukraine, but the government is very unsympathetic and was acting on behalf of NATO and was turned into a de facto NATO. the state and this, we all know from looking at just the way the U.S. has handled the situation in the lead up to the war. And since the war started, that they've been thwarting peace talks and sabotaging any attempts at negotiations and that they've seen this as an opportunity to weaken

Russia, to bleed Russia all over Ukraine. And they don't seem to care that more than 100,000 people have been killed. And it's incredible when you get these reports out of back moot, for instance, where there was a retired Marine recently. It was speaking to ABC News, who's there with the International Legion fighting on the front lines. And he says, the artillery is nonstop from the Russians, day and night.

And he says the average lifespan of a soldier on the front lines in the Ukrainian military right now is four hours. And they're already saying, the Germans are already saying the hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers were dying every day in Bakhmu, but after hearing that,

we don't even know. It could be thousands. He called it a meat grinder. And so, yeah, of course, I mean, the Americans are now saying up, and, well, American officials are telling them that you need to pull back from Bakhmut and focus on this coming offensive that they're encouraging Ukraine to do in the coming during the next few months. But, and I think Zelensky is starting to warm to that idea, but God knows how many people have died in that, just in that, in the battle for that one eastern Donesque city. Yeah. Well, and so talk about the discrepancy. see between Blinken and Newland on Crimea here. And you might as well, you know, build in a side soliloquy

about Blinken finally talking to Lavrov, too, if you got one. Yeah, sure. So, well, Blinken recently said in a private, it was reported in Politico, is a private Zoom call with some experts about, he was talking about the war. And the question came up about the U.S. whether or not the U.S. would support an assault on Crimea, which it was reported in January. throughout the war, the various departments, the state department, the Pentagon, the White House Congress, they've all been, you know, encouraging attacks on Crimea. But it was done in this kind of way when you got right down to it in the official statements as sort of, as Blinken would say, well, we're not encouraging them to, but it's up to them

what they want to do with these weapons. But, you know, the State Department's official position, just like the Pentagon's is that Crimea is Ukraine, full stop. and Victoria Newland said recently when she was speaking to the Carnegie Endowment that they view all the military installations in Crimea as legitimate targets that the policy is to demilitarize Crimea

you know steal it or take it from Russia and conquer it and that basically she's saying that they're hitting Crimea now we're encouraging and supporting that but Blinken in this call wait a minute is that even true like that they're launching, what, long-range artillery rockets over Russian positions all the way to Crimea? That's how she phrased it. They're hitting it and we are supporting that. Do we know that that's true already from different sources?

Well, I'm not exactly sure about that, but I don't believe so yet. Yeah, I hadn't heard that, I don't think, but you guys I know are keeping closer track than me. I'm sitting here writing about Bill Clinton and W. Bush screwing us all up 20 years ago while you guys are doing this week. So, yeah, I heard her say that, and I thought, well, wait a minute, that would have probably come to my attention if they were, if there were massive explosions on the Crimean Peninsula and somebody needed to account for them. Yeah, I think, I think Newland was just trying to be, you know, ultra hawkish in her statement there.

But there have been attacks in Crimea throughout the war, especially starting last summer. You know, of course, the bombing of the Kerch Bridge. but there were also these sabotage attacks on ammunition depots and airfields and things like this. In fact, the defense ministry of Ukraine last summer was threatening to basically to kill Russian tourists vacationing in Crimea. They said, you know, get ready for a very hot summer and then she put up videos of explosions going off in Crimea with beachgoers nearby. So, but her point is, you know, because there was this report in the Times that said

the White House is warming to the idea of supporting. an assault on Crimea and giving Ukraine the capability to do that. Zelensky has repeatedly said that they're going to launch an offensive for the de-occupation of Crimea. And it's been this long-standing policy that Ukraine, excuse me, that Crimea will be taken back by Kiev. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee hot sauce company. Man, this stuff is so good. They get all different flavors. Garlic habanero, honey habanero, pineapple habanero, pineapple habanero, Hano Halapeno and the Blood Orange Ghost. They're all so good, I swear.

And for a limited time, Tennessee hot sauce company is featuring official Scott Horton hotter than the Sun thermonuclear hot sauce. It's full of Carolina Reapers, Scorpion Peppers, Dr. Pepper, hydrogen isotopes, and all kinds of things that'll burn your tongue clean off. Seriously, it's really good. Get yourself a hot sauce subscription. Spend $40 or more and use promo code Scott to get a free bottle of hotter than the sun, hot sauce. That's tnhot sauceco.com.

Hey, y'all got to check out these awesome busts of our hero, the great Ron Paul. They're made by the renowned sculptor Rick Casale, the 13 inches tall hand-painted bronze resin based on Casale's brilliant original. You may have seen mine in the background on my bookshelf in some recent interviews. The thing is unbelievable. Check out this incredible piece of art at Rick Casale.com slash Ron Paul, and you'll see what I mean. use promo code Horton and you'll save 25 bucks and this show will get a little kickback too

that's Rick Casali.com slash Ron Paul Casali is C-A-S-A-L-I Rick Casali dot com slash Ron Paul and there's free shipping too and it is the case isn't it Connor that I mean both the Russians and the Ukrainians have their forces divided this is how the Russians lost Carson City

back in the fall was in this faint that ended up costing them all the area around Harkiv as well. Right. And yeah, and then when they pulled out of Kersan City in these areas on the west bank of the Neeper River at that time, I know that it was celebrated as this major victory because the Russians had said that they had annexed Zaffir, in addition to Lujansk and Donask,

the Zafarisia and Kerasan, when Putin had held those referendums. But I remember when they pulled back, they said that it was essentially, I think was Demetri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, I wrote up a piece for this in December when they did it for anti-war.com. And if I remember correctly, Peskov said, but listen, the status quote, like the status of Kerasan is fixed. And they still control the vast majority of that oblast. And so, you know, I mean, I'm sure that that's, they're not, I don't believe that they're going to give that up. I know that there's this sort of fantasy that if Ukraine launches this offensive here and retakes as much territory as possible, as they keep saying, even though, you know, the Undersecretary of Defense and,

or excuse me, Colin Calva, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and Wendy Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State, and John Feiner, the Deputy National Security Advisor, they say in the, you know, in the Post in the Times that they've bluntly told Ukraine that these next months are very pivotal. You're going to take as much territory as possible, and then we're going to start looking at negotiations. But I don't think, you know, I don't think this idea that they're going to retake that territory that Russia will agree to go back to the territory that it held before the 24th of February last year is just, you know, very fanciful. So, but yeah, they are talking about launching this offensive on Crimea because in the times they were saying that the White

House was warming to this idea of supporting an assault. But Blinken said when he was asked about this by this Zoom call with these experts that was reported in Politico, he's He said that's a red line that could, for Russia, that could spark a major response from Putin, and it would not be a wise idea, I think is the way he said it. But he also said, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth where he said, so we're not encouraging Kiev to attack Crimea, but if they do, that's their decision to do so. If they launch, if they attempt to retake the peninsula. And then Blinken, he spoke to Lavrov, Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart.

I believe yesterday in New Delhi on the sidelines of the G20. They spoke for 10 minutes. So collectively, you know, he hasn't spoken until the very end of July, I believe. He hadn't spoken to Lavrov since February 15th, more than a week before the war started. And so now they've spoken for a collective 30 minutes for the entire war. So he spoke to Lavrov for 10 minutes yesterday. And he told him he should, the Russians should end the war in Ukraine. They should

you know, reenter continue their restart their participation in New Start which was suspended recently by Putin and they also discussed this Marine

who's been locked up in Moscow over charges of spying in and they want to make some sort of a deal to get him out of there some kind of a prisoner swap and Blinken said

that he should accept that and so I don't know what else. I mean that's the fact that Blinken approached him at the G-2, I think that's a good sign. You know, who knows what actual progress will be made based off of that, but that's certainly a big shift from the previous refusal to discuss the war at all.

I mean, even just the fact that he, who knows how he approached him by saying you need to end the war, the fact they were even talking about it. I mean, when they made that call before, he was very proud of the fact that they did not discuss any ceasefires or discuss the war at all. Yeah, I wonder about that. You know, 10 minutes could be an eternity or it could be a very short time, you know, depending on the circumstance. If you want to just read him the riot act, you could have done that in half a minute. So I wonder really what all was said there.

If they made any progress at all, they even came to an understanding that, geez, we'd kind of like to wrap this thing up sooner than later or anything. I wouldn't expect them to say that if they did talk that way. But I guess, you know, just the fact that that's the first time they spoke and, about this subject the whole time would probably indicate that they barely mentioned it at all, if anything, and didn't get any further than they say. So I don't know. I'll try to look at it as half full there because what the hell else we got.

That's just incredible. So now talk about this back and forth because, you know, in the narrative, because there's a lot of, geez, I don't know if we're going to be able to do this combined with a lot of, yeah, we can do whatever we want. And the Russians are getting good and defeated now. And it's just a matter of time before we win. And so I just wonder, I guess, how you measure the cognitive dissonance on behalf of the decision makers here. Because I know both of those narratives are powerful. One of them seems to be more plausible than the other to me. But I guess I'm more interested in the debate in D.C.

Like, what does the Washington Post say, they say about? what they're going to do here, you know? Well, I think it's becoming more and more clear that they, the public perception, and Ted Snyder has been the best on this, covering it for us at the Institute and at anti-war.com, but just covering what's being said in the Post and the Times and the Wall Street Journal. And it's looking more and more like the American officials that are speaking to, to officials in Kiev, as well as when, in privately, when Olaf Schultz and Emmanuel Macron speak to Zelensky, they're telling him that, look, you need to start thinking about negotiations that this is not,

basically, they're publicly saying, you know, we're going to defeat Russia and there's no reason to talk with Putin. But that is not privately what's being told to Zelensky. What's being told to Zelensky, including when William Burns traveled to Kiev in January, is that, look, these next months that are coming are going to be very critical for you. You should try and retake as much territories you can, but then you're going to have to to go to the negotiation table. And as Sullivan told Zelensky last fall, you're going to have to come up with some realistic demands. And now he may have, this may have been, because it was later on reported that this was more about PR for the Western Europeans, mostly, that they wanted to make

it look like Kiev wasn't just outright. Because previously, you know, Zelensky had issued this presidential decree that they would not entertain talks unless there was regime change in Moscow. And so this looked horrible to the European, especially to the populace. in these countries in Europe, but also to their heads of state, presumably. So Sullivan wanted to make sure that at least the optics were not that bad, because the whole time the Russians kept saying we were open to negotiations and constantly reaffirming that. They don't do that as much anymore. I think that they've given up on trying to negotiate with the West or with this Zelensky government. But Sullivan did tell him at that time, you need to reevaluate things, come up with

some realistic demands and reconsider this idea that you're going to retake Crimea. And it's being told to, you know, several congressional committees now. U.S. intelligence has repeatedly told them that the Ukrainian military does not have the capability to retake the Crimean Peninsula. Yeah, I was going to say, that's the whole thing here's either momentum is with him or it ain't. Right. And sticking with the program is either going to win in more and more territory and put him in a stronger position of strength for negotiation or the opposite.

it and it sounds like we began this conversation about how the ukraine military is getting chewed up by russian artillery and tank fire in bachmute and how they've essentially thrown thousands of men at this thing and then lost it anyway at this point is i guess the reports this morning where they have the place nearly surrounded and it's the ukrainians are talking about what's wrong and all that right and and also uh there i think anthony blinkin pulled this stunt at the munich security conference where he accused China of preparing to arm or considering arming Russia for its war in Ukraine. There's been no evidence presented to that. In fact, a European official told Reuters recently that we've been given scant evidence of this so far from the Americans. But it was on the,

you know, it was announced at the Munich Security Conference that China was going to present a peace proposal to end the war. And Zelensky is actually, now that it's a 12 point peace plan, It doesn't talk about territory and which territory belongs to which side, but what they're saying is we want to respect the sovereignty of all countries, abandon this Cold War mentality, cease hostilities, resume peace talks, resolve the humanitarian crisis, protect civilians and prisoners of war, keep nuclear power plants safe, reduce strategic risks, facilitate the grain exports, stopping the unilateral sanctions and maintaining industrial and supply chains, keeping them stable and promoting reconstruction in Ukraine post-conflicts. conflict. And Biden came out and said, oh, this is, I've seen nothing in this plan that would indicate there's something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia if the Chinese plan were followed. And it's irrational that China is going to be negotiating the outcome of a war that's totally an unjust war for Ukraine. But Zelensky actually said that he doesn't think this is a bad thing and that he would actually like to talk to President Xi Jinping about this. And some Ukrainian

officials criticize the plan, but we know that Wang Yi spoke to his Ukraine. counterpart and then went to Moscow to discuss this. So, you know, that's one of the points I make in my recent column for the Institute is that the most important thing that the American people can do is demand an end to the military aid, but also even if we can't get Washington to support negotiations, we must insist that they do not interfere because they've done this repeatedly. And I don't know if that's still, if they're still looking at things the same way they did when they botched the talks that were being mediated by the former Israeli Prime Minister Nafali Bennett back in March or when the talks were held in Istanbul that were brokered by the Turks,

where both of which reportedly came very close to setting up a reasonable foundation that both sides agreed to to come up to some sort of a ceasefire and to the war where you had major concessions made on both sides with Kiev rescinding its pledge to join. You know, they were taking NATO membership off the table, and the Russians were saying they weren't seeking regime change or, you know, demilitarizing Ukraine, so to speak. And, and, but these things were repeatedly squashed by, uh, even though as Bennett said, you know, he was coordinating this with the French, the French, the Germans, uh, the Americans and the British. And Biden was sort of caught in the middle. Boris Johnson was totally against, uh, this. And, uh, they said Biden ultimately sided. Johnson. And so, you know, we have to make sure that they don't do that again. But it looks like more these private talks that the Americans know that the war is going really horribly for

Ukraine and it's going to have to wrap up soon. The worst part is now they're going to really focus on China. They've been ramping up aggressions against Beijing a lot in the last couple of months. Yeah, well, we're going to have to say that one. It's just like, yeah, I know, let's pivot out of Afghanistan to Ukraine. Now they want to give up on the Cold War or hot war with Russia. and switch to China instead when we could just have peace and not do this. But anyway, I got to go because I'm late.

But sorry, so short, we started late. But thank you for your time and great stuff. Always, thanks, Scott. Take care. Okay, guys, that's Connor Freeman. He's at the Institute and at anti-war.com. The Libertarian Institute, you know, libertarian Institute.org, that's our institute. The Institute.

The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM. in LA. APSradio.com, anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.