Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/22/24 Kyle Anzalone on Gaza, Venezuela and Foreign Policy at the DNC

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

Kyle Anzalone was back on Antiwar Radio this week to talk about the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, the contested election in Venezuela and the protests and promises at the Democratic National Convention. They run through a number of stories related to each and then finish with a discussion about the promised Iranian retaliation against Israel.  Discussed on the show: Sharp as a tack video Russia stole the election video Biden brain fry video Orfalea’s thread on Rob Flaherty Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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

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Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And thanks, y'all. For Pacifica Radio, August 22nd, 2024, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. all right y'all welcome the show it is anti-war radio i'm your host scott horton i'm editorial director of anti-war dot com and i'm the author of the book enough already time to end the war on terrorism you can find my full interview archive more than six thousand of them now going back to 2003 at scott horton dot org and at youtube dot com slash scott horton show and all your friends

favorite podcatchers and video sites and so forth slash Scott Horton show. And today's guest on anti-war radio is anti-war.com's opinion editor, Kyle Anzalone. He's also the host of his own podcast, Conflicts of Interest. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Kyle? Doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me back on. Ah, very happy to have you on the show here.

Bad news. The war in Gaza is still on. But let's start with potential positivity, something about negotiations toward a ceasefire. Do tell. Well, yeah, I'm not so sure there's any good news here, Scott. What happened was, as Biden said, Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin to Israel, and he had a three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu. And what came out of that meeting was essentially the Americans adopting Netanyahu's positions, not the other way around, which needs to happen. And it seems that the big barriers to gain the deal.

deal done now, are Israel's occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border, so that little strip of land, which Israel has now taken over and wants to indefinitely occupy, as well as what they call the Nazareem corridor, which is about a one-kilometer-wide strip of land that separates northern Gaza from the rest of the strip. And Israel has built some military bases in this area. the U.S. pier was located along the shore in this area. And so this is an area that Israel is, again, looking to indefinitely occupy. And so it seems that Netanyahu throwing these conditions in, even the Israeli negotiating team amids are meant to disrupt,

if not outright, destroy the ongoing ceasefire negotiations. And so why I think is happening here, Scott, is the Americans basically want to be able to regurgitate the same propaganda that they have been for three or four or five months now, which is we're waiting on Hamas to say yes to the ceasefire deal. So now the Americans and the Israel, Israelis once again, have a deal that they are proposing the Hamas is going to say no to, even though Hamas has agreed to deal such as the one proposed by Biden at the end of May.

Isn't that easy? It's amazing, but it works every time, doesn't it? Well, staying on the politics here in the United States for a minute, what is going on at the DNC and the protests there? And is it making any difference that you can tell? Yeah, it doesn't seem to be making too much of a difference, Scott. The Democrats seem to have pretty good control of what's going on inside the hall. There have been a few isolated protests. I think Medea Benjamin was on the floor protesting at one point in time. There were some other people who are actually delegates to the Democratic Party who had smuggled in a free Palestine banner

and they held that up. So there has been some activism and some protesters inside. There's a lot of protesters outside. And, you know, at times the crowd seems pretty rowdy. And I'm not necessarily sure how affected the message is, say, burning American floods on the streets. But there are a lot of people out there who are taking a far more rational approach to the issue and really just trying to stand against genocide. Now, inside the hall, once you look at the politicians, the message is the Democrats support a ceasefire and Kamala Harris is working tirelessly to get one done. Now, this is being presented in the media as a new position for the White House, but that really isn't the case, Scott.

This is what the Biden administration has been saying for about seven, eight months now, essentially through all of 2024, is that we're working to get a ceasefire done. We're working with the Israelis, when really what they're doing is they're working with the Israelis to give Netanyahu cover to continue to drive this conflict. out, conflict out for months and months and months. Yeah. It's just crazy to think they can get away with that, but it's that easy. Now, let me ask you this.

I think it was back in, what, 2012 when they had the convention in L.A. And they had a resolution that was about supporting Israel. And then Nays had it by a lot. And then I think it was the mayor of L.A. was up there chairing the thing. And you could see, like somebody came up. whispered to him or at least he was like taking direction from off stage and then he just lied and said the eyes have it and the whole place went nuts like come on man the nays had won by like two-thirds to one-third in a super majority and he just lied because those are the rules you know i wonder is there anything like that that's even up for debate this time or never even mind debate but it's up for a vote where dissidents would be allowed to make their voice heard at all yeah i believe most of the the debate around the Democratic Party platform actually occurred behind the scenes and virtually before the convention even began. Now, at the convention, they did adopt was a 95-page packet

of party platform planes that they have. And so I doubt that people, you know, read through the whole 95 pages and really knew what was in there. But it is extremely hawkish. In fact, it goes after Trump for not being enough of a hawk on Iran. They condemn him for not. carrying out a bigger reprisal attack on Iran after Iran launched missiles at an American base in Iraq when Trump assassinated Qasem Soleimani. It also says that the American support for Israel is ironclad and chastises strum for not being enough of a huck on Ukraine as well. So, you know, they did adopt language that is very pro-Israel and, you know, just warlike across the board. Although I'm not sure how many actual delegates at the convention really realized even, you know, all that was in

the party platform. Yeah. And you know, party platforms kind of don't matter, but gee, at least as a symbol of where they're coming from now, they're just so confident the center left American liberal Democrats are so confident to attack the major party Republican candidate from the right on foreign policy and call him a wimp who should have bombed Iran more? Holy crap. And there's a message there to the anti-war left that might need to focus your efforts a little bit better on these Democrats. I see that there's a great headline on anti-war.com from Wednesday. DNC protesters to Harris. Israel arms embargo or no vote. That should be exactly really the one and only message of the anti-war left in all their protests.

Their protests should really be at Democratic Party official offices, congressmen and senators and even local officials or local party offices. All of their pressure should be on the Democratic Party and its officials. And to know that all of these protesters are potential Democrat votes that might just stay home and don't you threaten me with Trump and that kind of thing and be real serious about it. That's your leverage is against the Democrats. And if they're attacking Trump for not bombing Iran enough, then the job's not getting done. And I know that it's the war party's fault. It's not the anti-war left's fault, but I'm just saying we all got to do our part

to be more effective on this where, you know, Trump at least half the time is afraid to sound like a hawk. The Democrats aren't even afraid to sound like hawks. That's really bad. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right about that, Scott. It's, you know, kind of crazy how the political dynamics have shift in the U.S., really in the Trump era, I guess, starting with 2015, 2016, when you really had the neocons flocked back into the Democrat Party preferring Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. And then once again, preferring Joe Biden to Donald Trump, who really has been the most hawkish and least diplomatic president that we have ever had. You know, when it came to the Iran nuclear deal, he couldn't negotiate, couldn't negotiate with Russia,

has escalated tensions with China, and hasn't even been able to negotiate with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. And all of his diplomacy with Venezuela has fallen apart now and we're now backing another regime change effort in Venezuela. So, yeah, it's extremely bad, the state of the Democrat Party at this, point. There's almost less debate on, you know, preferring peace to war in the Democratic Party than there is in the Republican Party. Yeah. And when Donald Trump might as well be running under the Lakud instead of the Republican Party right now. He says America first and doesn't mean it. He means Israel first. And everyone knows that he's completely sold out to whatever Miriam Edelson wants. And what does she want? She wants whatever the Lakud party wants. And Trump has already sold his soul.

It's the only position he believes in. Israel can do whatever they want. And Biden isn't bad enough on it. He's certainly, you know, staking out the worst position on at least Palestine, if not Iran. And even on Iran, I bet they're, you know, both sides are really just having a contest for who's tougher on the Ayatollah. You know, Trump's not really threatening to bomb him, but he's threatening to put full-scale sanctions back on. And as though, I don't know, they didn't get lifted very much anyway. I don't know. Did Biden lift any Iran sanctions?

No. No. So he's just going to make it even worse. It was, you know, it's Trump's mythology that somehow Iran bankrolled the Hamas attack of October 7th last year with money that they got from Biden or something. But that's nonsense. But it's just, I mean, imagine having a guy who's that much of a hawk, especially on Israel and Iran issue. and then running against even him. It's like running to the right of Dick Cheney

on Israel, Palestine, on Iran. It's just crazy. But here we are. It's still Nancy Pelosi's party, ain't it? And now, so tell me a little bit more about what's going on in Venezuela there. I have not been reading. I've got other projects going on,

but I saw some headlines that reminded me of some color-coded revolutions in the past. Yeah, so there was an election in the country at the end of July, and I'm not going to weigh in on who won that election or not. I really have no idea. The U.S. is claiming that based on a study from the Carter Center that the opposition candidate defeated Maduro by a pretty heavy margin. I think they claim the opposition got upwards of 60%.

Now, the State Department is claiming that this assessment from the Carter Center is an independent study when the Carter Center is funded by USAID and the State Department. So that claim is absolutely laughable. And Maduro's claim are the government's claim, which, of course, is the Maduro controlled government, right, that he won the election by, I think, like, 52% in the vote where the opposition got in the low 40% may be equally laughable. I really don't know. The Venezuelan government, I believe, is still yet to actually release, like, the vote

totals from the individual precincts and things like that. So it's a question of who actually won the election, but the U.S. has, at least parts of the U.S. government have come out and actually bat the opposition's claim to power once again. The State Department came out and released a statement to that effect, but it's unclear if the whole U.S. government, if this is actually a Washington-wide policy at this point, we had a fairly good article on this by Ted Snyder at anti-war.com that we ran a few weeks ago, where he even breaks down the little nuances in the American government,

where Kamala Harris gave a statement that wasn't backing the regime change when the State Department did, and the Defense Department was a little bit colder on it as well. So it's unclear of who America is actually backing in Venezuela, but they seem to once again just be rolling out the same old regime change policy where anytime there's an election anywhere in the world that doesn't go the way the American one, we turn into the world's largest election deniers and claim that was all rid and that our preferred candidate is the true leader of whatever country we're trying to regime change yep all in the name of democracy of course democracy defined as when Washington gets what they want then that's it all right it's anti-war

radio so back to gaza here uh Kyle anzalone from antiwar dot com tell us about some horrific war crimes lately because I think people just forget what we're talking about it's far away from here you can't hear you know wailing women uh over the dead bodies of their ken but it's happening every day over there it's like the waco massacre every day for almost a year straight now and um so but i was just wondering if you can maybe cite some anecdotes to bring that reality home to the listeners here yeah i'll just maybe run through a couple from the past week uh this is one i covered for the Institute, this would be Tuesday, August 20th, Scott. There was 12 people who were sheltering at a school in Gaza City.

There were about 700 people staying at that school. One of the, Israel dropped a bomb. One of the killed was a journalist who was actually the 170th journalist, killed in Gaza over the past 10 months. And, of course, that really suggests that Israel is in part targeting the journalists. to cover up the war crimes and the genocide ongoing in gaza the video are the images and videos from that scene are absolutely horrific you essentially have the rescue workers there scooping up body parts into i mean what we would call in america trash beds and you know giving just body

parts lumps of body parts to families to then go and bury there were also people still trapped under the rubble when i covered that and so the death toll from that was likely to go up there was was a case earlier this week where quintuplets were all killed in an Israeli air strike, along with a few other members of their family. There's a really just sad story last week where there were three-day-old newborn twins. The father goes out to get their birth certificate at the local documentation office or whatever. And as he's out picking up their birth certificates, Israel drops a bomb on his home. And he comes home to find his grandmother, his wife, and his newborn born babies dead.

You know, this is just happening day after day after day in Gaza. And there's a new video, Scott, circulating on social media where there's a young boy, his father is holding up his lifeless body. And the bad part of his head has been completely blown off by one of these Israeli strides. I mean, the images coming out are just horrific. And I'm sure, you know, of course, it's horrible what happened to all these people who are being killed. But there's survivors who have to, you know, go and literally scoop the body parts into beds. And then the family members who go and tape the beds of body parts. And they're probably

not even 100% sure. They're members of their family are really the person they say they are. And bury that. I mean, you know, the trauma and the rage created from that has to be absolutely massive. Yeah. Hang on just one second for me here. You guys, I'm so proud to announce the publication of the Libertarian Institute's 14th book. It's Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War, Undue influence, Deceptions, and the Neocon Energy Agenda by Gary Vogler, former senior oil consultant and deputy senior oil advisor for U.S. forces during Iraq War II. Remember how I wrote and enough already about how Ahmed Chalabi sold the neoconservatives on a plan to rebuild the old British oil pipeline for Mosul and Kirkuk, Iraq.

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Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. look up Roberts and Roberts at rrbi.co that's rrbi.co and you know i don't know i can hear people in the audience just kind of clucking their tongue and saying yeah war is hell it said that it's not a war between two nations and these people are caught in the middle Israel already beat the Palestinians in a fight which they were already under the control not of their own destiny but under the control of the egyptians and the jordanians back in the 67 war, and the Israelis conquered them and de facto annexed them back in 67. Shift your point of view just a tad, and Gaza is part of Israel.

They already annexed it. So now you're talking about a country bombing part of its own population. It would be like if Joe Biden started bombing South L.A., south of the tent, and just started slaughtering people. with 2,000 pound bombs and said, well, some of them committed some crimes or something. The Crips and the Bloods are, you know, equivalent to Hamas. And so this is how we're going to deal with them. We're just going to carpet bomb them and kill tens of thousands of people of land that, you know, South L.A. is conquered by the USA back in the 19th century.

Same thing, you know, it really is. It's just, it's a ghetto region, an Indian reservation. already totally conquered and under the control of the Israeli government. So it's just shooting fish in a barrel, carpet bombing, part of town, basically, just one small region. And so, I don't know, I emphasize that because I think there's always what they call Hasbara, Israeli public relations, to try to always come up with some kind of rationalization for how this is anything but the most. barbarian campaign of ethnic cleansing, that if the shoe was on the other foot would be the absolute highest level emergency and the United States would be invading right now.

Yeah, that's right, Scott. And just to go back to that first story, I mentioned the journalists and the 11 others who were killed at the school in Gaza, Israel claimed that, you know, with the 700 people, civilians that were sheltering there, that it had turned into a Hamas command and control center. And this is a narrative we've seen them roll out time and time again throughout the war. They claimed it about the Shifa Hospital, other hospitals throughout Gaza. And more recently, they've been claiming it at the schools throughout Gaza, which are some of the only facilities left on hit in the strip.

And more importantly, they are sheltering upwards of millions of people in the upper hundreds of thousands, if not over a million people, are now living at these schools. They're crammed in there. There was, I believe this was last month, Scott, Israel bombed one of these schools as children were playing a soccer game, you know, on the little pitch courtyard inside the school. And we've just seen this time and time again that Israel always says, well, it's Hamas that's causing this by because they're using the Palestinians as human shields. And then this is going to be repeated by the White House and the U.S. State Department when, you know, an important thing to mention here is there, this is never proven. But one thing that is proven, and this is by the statements of several Israeli soldiers who spoke with the Israeli outlet herets, that they are using Palestinians, including children, minors under the age of 18 years old and the elderly, they strap cameras on them and handcuffed them, and they send them into buildings or tunnels. That way, if they're booby-trapped in any way, it's them that get killed and not the soldiers.

And the reason Israel has started to pick up this practice is because they ran out of military dogs. So this was the job that they were using for dogs and either from trauma or death or injury. Israel has run out of dogs. And so now they're just using Palestinians. Yeah. And, you know, I read that report and they have pictures too. And they say, you know, oftentimes as pictured, they're wearing Israeli military uniforms. But then the tell is, oh, they got sneakers on and they're young and small and are not actually IDF.

at all on closer inspection, no, they're kidnapped Palestinian, literal human shields, not like in the hyperbolic figure of speech that, as you correctly point out, Israel uses every time they murder an innocent civilian ever that, well, they were near Hamas, I pretend to claim to know and believe. And so therefore, they're fair game, which is an absolute rape of that term, a complete misuse of that term when it already has a literal definition, it's exactly what the Israelis do to people who, as you say, as minors, you know, can't be that guilty anyway, even if they're caught helping the insurgency. Who are they helping? Their dad, you know, he wasn't already killed. So, yeah, it's just crazy. And look, I got to bring this up

every time. L.A., listen up. Israel is a threat to American national security. You know, that September 11th plan originally included the library tower in downtown L.A. And if you think that five guys can't take over a plane and do something like that, again, you're wrong. And it wouldn't have to be that. And the motive for September 11th was never freedom. The motive was first and foremost, Bill Clinton bombing Iraq from bases in Saudi, but tied for first place, really, or in a close second, Israel's ultraviolence against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. That's what it was. Operation Grapes of Wrath is what kicked off the real al-Qaeda war against the United States

of America. And as Ron Paul warned, if our government thinks that they can just go around the world bombing people and treating people this way, and without paying a price, and they do that at our own peril, at we, the people's peril. And it's really treason against the American people, against this country to support Israel in their merciless aggression against these innocents and vastly raising the danger of terrorist attacks

against American civilians in this country. Again, just a couple of weeks ago, a guy stabbed a Jew in Brooklyn and said, free Palestine. I think he survived. But, you know, I'm not saying, Obviously, this is no justification for some sicko, but it's a motivation for some sicko. That's the point.

Right. And you would think it's going to be especially worse with this worse, Scott, just because of the high-quality video and the proliferation of it on social media. I mean, I've seen some videos from the Kwanam Massacre and other things that Israel has done to the Palestinians over the years. And they're horrific, but I don't think most of my friends have or have any idea. that those massacres occurred, right? But everybody is aware that Israel has blown the heads off of children in Gaza. And most people, I think most Americans have probably seen pictures of it. And I'm sure that, you know, around the Middle East that, you know, the proliferation of

these photographs are even more rampant than in America. Everybody is probably sharing them and saying, like, can you believe, you know, what is happening to our brothers and sisters in Palestine right now. And that is going to drive some of the crazies, absolutely crazy. and America may pay a very high price for Biden's support for Israel through all of this. And his predecessors and his successors, too, we'll see how it goes. Now, I want to ask you about the massive retaliation that so far has not happened from Iran over the hit on the Hamas leader, Hanya, who was in town for the presidential inauguration there in Tehran a few weeks ago.

What's the scuttle butt? Does anybody know? Are there any leaks? Is anybody saying what they think is happening, is going to happen? Have plans changed? Or no one knows? Or they just dropped it? You're right. I think no one knows is a big portion of this. And I don't think they dropped it. Now, the official statement we have from Iran, an IRGC spokesman this week, said that Iran could wait a long time before exacting their revenge. And some analysts have speculated that, because Iran is in a little bit of a pickle here, where they probably have to escalate beyond what they did in April, so that would mean a much larger attack or an un-telegraphed attack on Israel, but that could bring about major retaliation. The Ayatollah isn't crazy, and Iran is a somewhat modern country. They have a lot of infrastructure, and Israel has nuclear weapons, and I think the Ayatollah knows that Israel could effectively destroy Iran in the society that they've built there, and he does doesn't want that to happen. So he doesn't want a direct war between Israel and Iran, in part

because he knows that it's going to bring in the U.S. And so, you know, people have speculated that Iran may pursue other actions, such as attacking Israeli shipping, as the Houthis are doing, or maybe carrying out assassinations of Israeli military or political leaders, because that would be seen maybe more as an equivalent response for what was done in Tehran. So that's been brought up. It's also possible that Iran is simply waiting. They're bringing more air defenses in from Russia, so maybe they're waiting to get those systems in place, or they could be waiting for the Americans to redeploy military assets out of the Middle East, because right after this happened, America started rushing aircraft carriers,

submarines, F-22s into the region. And so I'm sure the Ayatollah is able to calculate that America can't maintain the increased military presence in the Middle East for an extended piece. period of time, and eventually they're going to withdraw some of those military assets out of the Middle East, and maybe that'll make the Iranian attack more effective or whatever they plan to do work out just a little bit better. And I guess Iran, I think, may be waiting for two reasons dealing with Gaza, one being that Israel is likely, you know, redeploying some of its military assets from looking at Gaza towards, you know, once again, looking east towards Iran. And so maybe

they feel like they're helping the Palestinians out by just distracting the Israeli military a little bit. But also, I don't think Tehran wants to give Tel Aviv an excuse to abandon the ceasefire discussions, where if Iran attacked Israel, then Nanyahu would throw his hands in the air and go, oh, we almost had a deal done, but these Iranians attacked us, and they're just allies of Hamas. So how can we possibly negotiate with the little devil when the big devil's attacking us? I think what the, you know, language we're going to see from Tel Aviv and Washington if Iran carries out the attack while these negotiations are ongoing. So Tehran could just be waiting for these negotiations to fizzle out and die, and then they'll carry out their attack that way they don't give Net Yahoo that excuse. Yeah.

Well, let's hope I told us willing this time to just settle for some backroom political deals and enhancing his power that way, making sure the guy he. favors wins in Iraq next time or whatever, something minor. And the war doesn't escalate internationally in that sense. I mean, it's already sort of kind of a minor regional war, but not really, but it sure could become a worse one. And he has his role to play in that or not. Anyway, we're all out of time. But thank you so much for coming back on the show, Kyle.

It's always great to talk to you about this stuff. Thank you, Scott. All right, you guys, that is Kyle Anzalone. he's opinion editor at anti-war.com and I am Scott Horton. This is anti-war radio. Check on my website, Scott Horton.org for all the archives.

I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. And we'll see you guys back here next Thursday at 2.30. Thank you.