Shaun Newman Podcast - #764 - Alex Krainer

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Alex is a Croatian national who is a former hedge fund manager, author and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. We discuss Syria, the balkanizing of countries, and martial law in South Korea. Find Doug here: https://internationalman.com Cornerstone Forum ‘25 https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/ Clothing Link: ⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Brett Olin. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Prodnick. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Thursday. How's everybody doing today? Precious metals that can be thought of as the ultimate insurance policy against economic uncertainty and government incompetence. We certainly got a lot of incompetence in this country, don't we? And if you're looking for a stocking stuffer, I tell you, if I woke up and got precious metal sitting in my stocking, I'd be pretty happy. I think there'll be a lot of people pretty happy. You know, it's a form of money that has been recognized for thousands of years. Yes, I'm talking silver gold.

I'm talking silver gold bull. And they are my go-to-precious for precious metals with their complete in-house solutions, whether buying, selling, storing, writing precious metals to your retirement accounts. Text or email, Graham, down the show notes, for more details. If you're going to silvergoldbill.com, depending what side of the border you're on, just make sure whenever you're making a purchase to reference the Sean Newman podcast It helps me, it helps you, and it helps them realize that people are tuning in. And great news.

Silver Gold Bull is back for another year. So I'm honored to have them a part of the SMP community. And, well, they've signed on along with BVCU, Bull Valley Credit Union, with the Cornerstone Forum. So they're two of the main reasons it's heading to Calgary, which looks to be a lot of fun. I'll get to that in a second. McGowan, professional chartered accountants, well, The Christa McGowan, new board trustee for the Northwest School Division, she also, in her daytime, not her superhero hours,

offers accounting, bookkeeping, business consulting, and training, financial planning, and tax planning, and she is a sharp, sharp tack. Go to McGowan, CPA.coma.orgia for all your tax needs. Ooh, that's not my, yeah, I'm not a... don't like all that world. That's for Kristen and team. Subsdack, it's free to subscribe to the week in review Sunday nights at 5 p.m. We'll get you caught up on everything.

S&P. And if you're not subscribed, I don't know why. I actually kind of know why, because I was just cleaning up my mailbox. And I'm like, I thought, why the hell do I get 50 emails in a day over nothing, you know? And so I get it. But this one, you know, once a week right now. try to add a little value to your life. And when we're releasing as many podcasts as we do in a week

and, you know, to get caught up on some of the things across social media that's been happening on this side, you know, it's one place, one-stop shop, to get cut up on everything, S-N-P. And it's the one place that you can, if you want to become a paid subscriber, it's the one place right now that you can support this side of things. The Cornerstone Forum is,

heading to Calgary, Alberta, May 10th here in 2025. It's going to be live at the Winsport. We got Tom Luongo, Alex Criner, Chuck Proudnick, Kaelim Ford, Matt Erritt, Chase Barber. Ben Perrin was announced. We got two more speakers being announced Sunday. We got another speaker being announced before Christmas, before New Year's Eve. All I'm saying, Chris Sims, Tom Bodrovich is going to be guest host. All I'm saying is this year's looks to be, oh, yeah, it's going to be fun.

and early bird tickets on until December 31st. So if you're waiting for a better time to buy a ticket, don't wait. Buy your tickets now. They only go up after December 31st. If you're waiting by a speaker's table, I completely get it. Those will go on sale January 1st. And, man, I hope all of you find a way to Calgary, Alberta, May 10th. That is going to be a ton of fun.

We're working on a couple things for Friday as well. So stay tuned. We've got lots of great things coming. your way. If you're listening or watching on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Rumble, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, Facebook, X, if you're on either of those two right now, just share it. You know, appreciate all the shares because, you know, like, I wish I had the network of, you know, said to say, like the CBC and different mainstream media types where we can just, you know, blast it everywhere. It's not the way of the, of the, of the, of the,

things on this side. So if you like what's going on, if you like an interview, make sure to retweet, make sure to share. That's how we can break out of some of the echo chambers that we are most assured in. And some of the censorship we're most assuredly experiencing. All right, let's get on to that.

Tale of the tape. He's a Croatian National, former hedge fund manager, author, and contributing editor at Zero Hedge. I'm talking about Alex Craneer. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Neum of Podcast. Today. I'm joined by Alex Kraner. And, you know, we got told like five minutes before this that maybe

in fairness, it was probably an hour before this. I'm not giving you a hard time, Tom. But Tom might be rolling in at some point. He might not. I guess we'll find out here in due time. And when I release this, people will know one way or another. Either way, Alex, it's been a hot minute since you're on. Thanks for joining again. Always good to join you, John. And yes, it's been busy in the new cycle, hasn't it yes it's been um i don't even know i'm like do we talk about drones do we talk about syria do we talk about russia ukraine do we talk about you know last time you're on you were talking about cameras in britain london specifically um being off where do you want to start alex i'll let your capable hands decide where mr craner wants to lead people today

and right. Not the drums. I don't really have anything to say about the drones. I have no idea what's going on. It's weird, but I can't say anything better than what anybody else can say about it. So I just skip over this. My suspicions are that it might have some kind of a false flag effect, that it's, you know, that they're trying to generate hysteria. in the population for whatever reason. And I don't know who's doing it. I don't know what the objective is. And Paul's flag is about as far as my imagination allows me to go.

Yeah, that's that's basically where my, my brain goes, right? They're being seen worldwide now, if you didn't know. And there's crazy lights in the sky and on and on and on. and I just hear, I just hear three-letter agencies at work. That's, I could be wrong. Maybe there's something more nefarious there or more real there or whatever word you want to use there.

But from where I sit, that's, that's what I see. I'd go with three-letter agencies. I really don't think it's Santa Claus. Fair. Santa Claus isn't using drones this year. Curious then, did you watch the, did you watch the Tucker Carlson-Sax interview? I did, but I didn't see it all the way to the end. Because you know why?

Because X still hasn't figured out, like, YouTube, that, you know, when you watch the first hour, then when you come back in, it knows where you stopped, and it starts from there. And X, if you, you know, it remembers it a little while, then you go back to it, and it starts you from the beginning. So I got interrupted, and then it started from the beginning, and then I didn't restart again.

but I watched about a third of it. Okay. Well, in there, in there he talks about timber, I'm going to say this wrong, Timber Sycamore, a program by three-letter agency, CIA, that was to remove Syrian President Assad from power. It started back in like 2012 and different things there.

You've been watching Syria and all the things that have went on there. What do you see from where you sit? Yeah, well, You know, we know that they've been trying to get the Assad dynasty out for a very, very long time. And yes, this timber sycamore, I think that the war on the actual war on Syria started in 2011. It lasted. They lifted the siege of Aleppo in December, 2016. So that was fully eight years ago.

what I see now is that I think that between the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and possibly the Turks, I'm not clear about what the role of the Turks is, I think that either Erdogan was duped into launching into this thing or he's on board with

the Russians and the Iranians. And I think that they sprang a trap for the empire And when I say the empire, I mean, you know, the foreign policy establishments out of Washington and London. And I think that they drew them in in order to destroy them through attrition. And this is kind of consistent with the Russian way of war. You know, we in the West, we're obsessed with maps. We look at, you know, who controls what, and if we can paint it a certain color, then we say, like, hey, we're winning.

But, you know, we have to keep in mind that this whole invasion, incursion from Idlib, that started 27 November, so less than a month ago, was basically about 20 to 30,000 of these jihadi forces belonging to different factions. that are some of them are mutually hostile to each other. They drove in on pickup trucks, mostly armed with light weapons, you know, not with proper armored personnel carriers and tanks with air cover and artillery cover. This was basically like drug cartel raid. except somehow the Syrian military, which was almost 10 times the size of this incursion force, folded in 10, 11 days time.

Even though, you know, as I mentioned, they lifted the siege of Aleppo eight years ago. They had eight years to rearm and regroup and reinforce their, you know, strategic defensive positions. and the one coming from Idlib would have been glaringly obvious. So to me, the whole mystery is why did this Syrian army fold? And the information space was almost instantly saturated with stories about how poorly the Syrian army soldiers were paid, the conditions were bad, they didn't have adequate food, the commanders were corrupt, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of this stuff. But, you know, as somebody who has served as a soldier during wartime,

I absolutely cannot accept this explanation. You know, you're, when you're in the army, you've already accepted a terminally crap deal, because you've basically committed to potentially sacrificing yourself to defend, you know, the country. And I put it in air quotes because when I was 25 and I volunteered for that, I was fully convinced that I was there to defend the country. Today, I realize that we're all being manipulating and lied and duped into doing those things. So anyhow, when you're there, you're in a total institution, you're under orders.

If an attack comes, you don't start thinking, is my pay sufficient for me to justify fighting to defend my country? Where's my bonus and things like that? And, you know, as I wrote in my substack article, I do remember clearly that my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, pay as a soldier was exactly good enough to pay four beers out in the town and you know i remember that because i remember going with with with my friends out we got we got our pay and we went out and after we had four rounds of beers our money was gone was finished and then we got the first round on the bartender who took pity on us but that was really that except there never was the conversation about like, hey, you know, if they want to deploy us, are we going to go, you know, maybe they need to pay us more.

It doesn't have anything to do with money. And if it had anything to do with money, and if it had anything to do with the corruption of commanding officers, then I guarantee you that Ukraine wouldn't have any army today. But there they are, you know, they're still fighting and dying for not exactly sure what, because they already lost the war. But, you know, that's how it is. You know, you're a soldier, you're in the army. Everything sucks. You don't expect fancy food. You don't expect to make money off of it.

You kind of expect that you might not get out of their alive, but you still obey orders when you get them. And, you know, in the case of Theria, Maybe if the conditions were really poor, and maybe if some units in the military were so disgruntled that they were ready to mutiny and desert, and that happened sometimes, you know, sometimes soldiers even kill their commanders and then they desert. That would be happening sporadically here and there, you know. It would be some units, you know, because even your commanding officers are different. You know, some are corrupt. pieces of garbage. Some are honest, brave men with charisma and who command the loyalty of their troops. So it wouldn't be the whole entire 270,000 strong institution just simply vanishes in the space of 10 days. That can only happen if there were orders coming from the top, disband demobilized, go home or go somewhere else.

You know, that too is a mystery. Where did all those soldiers go? Where are they? Because I'm virtually certain that some of them, some of the troops remained, you know, the units remained intact and they went elsewhere. You know, maybe they decided to adopt the Hezbollah and Houthi strategy of going underground,

digging in, and going for ground. guerrilla attrition warfare. And I think that there's some evidence that that's exactly what's happening now, because I heard, you know, I think one or two. That is, you know, I heard various reports, but I think that they refer to more than one example where these jihadi forces were ambushed and killed. And, you know, this is the alternative to going to a frontal war. against them, you know, force against force. If the army falls and you let them in, Syria is a very large territory, and these forces are 30,000 strong.

So now it means they're dispersed all over everywhere. They're probably fighting between each other over the loot and control of the territory and women and who knows what, you know. And so now they become easy picking. So that's what I think. happened now why did they do it this way and risk completely losing the country that's you know a whole different kind of worms and i i think that i the explanation that makes sense to me is that between the russians and the iranians they decided to fight it this way to maybe draw the empire into a Guagmire in the same way that the CIA and Bigny Berzizinski drew the Soviet Union in a similar

Guagmire in Afghanistan. And that war led to the collapse of the Soviet Union ultimately. And so, you know, we've seen now everybody's piling in, you know, the British Foreign Office sent a delegation to, you know, kiss the feet of the Al-Kulani guy, there's Zelensky 2.0 and the Americans and everybody's in touch with them, everybody's talking to them, everybody's asking this and that, and making future arrangements. And I think that they will be eventually trying to secure the price, the unexpected price that brilliantly fell into their lap. And they're going to be allocating more and more resources to defending it because one of the one of the things that they want to do is they want to pull a

gas pipeline from Qatar through Syria over towards Turkey and Israel. And so, you know, that's an enticing lure there that they will try to secure. Israel, I think, went headfirst into the, into the Syrian Golan Heights, came almost to the suburbs of of Damascus. and everybody in Israel is busy celebrating like this is a big win for them but you know I would you know if I were then I'd be very worried

you know this is this was too easy and you know we all remember how brilliant it was when the US Army triumphantly walked into Kabul and then two years later they brilliantly and triumphantly walked into Baghdad and took Iraq and then the regime changed and assassinated Gaddafi in Libya and then they staged a coup in Ukraine and took control of Ukraine and so you had all these you know over this last 20 years you You had all these little victories through these dirty wars and cunning tricks.

But every single one of them blew back. Every single one of them over time turned out to be a nightmare. So, you know, in Afghanistan, after 20 years and $4 trillion, they handed Afghanistan right back to the same Taliban from which they took it. And Iraq, they basically handed it. over to their arch enemy Iran there. It's the Iranians who are dominating Iraq today. And so I think that in the same way, and then, you know, Ukraine, they took it over,

their regime changed it, and now they're losing it completely there. And so I think that these precedents are almost completely, that there's a complete consistency, that a pyric victory is followed by a strategic defeat. I see no reason to believe that the Pyrrhic victory in Syria will not be followed by a strategic defeat. And this is then maybe the obvious strategy for the other side to draw the empire into its probably last Guagmire in the Middle East, which means that the days of Western hegemony over the Middle East and by extension over the Eurasian continent are coming. your clothes. You know, what you're talking about was a conversation I was having this morning about, I don't know, 3D chess, essentially playing multiple moves ahead and trying to understand,

you know, one of the things I really enjoy about having yourself and Tom on is that's what you're trying to decipher essentially is what does this mean move, move mean and then like where are they trying to lead all of us? And when you, when you, when you, you know when when you sit back and you watch Putin you know I've had you guys on among other people on here who have shown you know he he started preparing for the ukrainian war well before just the war right like it was years in the making so then you see Syria go like as you pointed out 100 thousands of hundreds of thousands of troops disappear not overnight but over the course of a very short period of time and they walk in and everybody's celebrating and you're like wait a second this

doesn't match up with what that side of the world's been doing we're talking russia we're talking china we're talking iran we're talking all of that and so you go so why why would they do that and when you point out that it could be another quagmire i find that interesting alks because um you know like i think a lot of us are staring at it from way afar trying to be like what's going on over there and what would be the move? What would be the thought process of Putin and others going, let's just let them walk in. Let's let them do this because they're going to celebrate.

They're going to spin this story. They're going to think they've got us or they want us. Meanwhile, we're playing a game that nobody can see because it might take 20 years. Might take 20 years or it might be way shorter. Well, the fact that they're spinning the story is a certainty. You know, we had a, you know, there was a, there was a gray zone. story that pretty much unveiled the way British PR agencies, several of them, descended on Syria, and they are choreographing everything, the messaging, the outfits, the stories that are getting

published all over the Western medias, everything that's going into the social media networks. So they are the source of many, many of those stories. They are the, you know, they have kind of tried to influence HTS, you know, the new and improved Alushra Front to soften their image. They pretty much saturated the information space in the West with stories that are trying to cast these. quote unquote rebels in the positive light. And at the same time, you have a flood of very negative stories of Bashar al-Assad who suddenly seems like the cartoon villain, you know, doesn't care about the nation, fled, has a collection of fancy cars,

and so on and so forth. I don't know what part of all that is true, but I think that part of that same news front is, where we got all those stories about the badly paid soldiers and the corrupt commanders and, you know, a lot of this. So, you know, to me it makes much, much better sense to try to interpret these events so that the story is consistent with the pattern of history, which goes back actually quite a long way. And, you know, the Russian and Iranian and Chinese stance is consistent with their own approach, which they pretty much explicitly explain, is that they're not looking for this or that territorial gain. They're not looking for shoring up this or that regime, you know, necessarily. I mean, Iran is important.

The regime in Kremlin is important. Xi Jinping is important in China. But you know, Bashar al-Assad, not so much. Who runs Lebanon? You know, maybe that's negotiable. Whether Turkey controls just the current territory of Turkey or whether they reconstitute some chunk of the former Ottoman Empire and reintegrate some of their former territories,

that's probably negotiable. Now, what I mean by that 100-year or 200-year agenda is that the Russians have been explicit that they're looking to overhaul the security architecture on the Eurasian continent. And I think that what that means is to undo the century. or two of British geopolitics. And British geopolitics has pretty much been balkanizing everywhere and controlling the situation through divide and rule. So you know, you split up countries and you pit them one against the other, and you're constantly fomenting these wars on the whole, you know,

there's a whole arc of crises in the, on the southern crisis, present of the Eurasian continent, you know, stretching from the Mediterranean. And even up north to, from Finland, down to the Mediterranean, and then across, you know, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, all the way to the Koreas. And so all of this is chock full of these potential crisis points, where the The West has proxy militias, terrorist organizations or separatist organizations and governments, which are constantly under pressure from these non-governmental organizations that are funded

by agencies like USAID or National Endowment for Democracies, who are always kind of on a standby to participate in color revolutions. And we just had recently a color revolution in Bangladesh, which now instilled a government that hostile both to India and to Myanmar. So they can become a destabilization element for both countries, Myanmar and India. And then, you know, you have constant tensions between India and Pakistan. Within Pakistan, you have Balochistan, which is threatening to destabilize both Pakistan and Iran. You have, well, you had before tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Then you have Azerbaijan and Armenia. then you have well you know in the past Iran and Iraq were adversaries that changed and so on and so on and you know all the way up to you know now Finland which

you know once and what was was hostile to Russia the Baltic states Ukraine obviously became an independent nation that the West weaponized as a bludgeon to use against Russia, and so on and so forth.

So this has been the security architecture arranged by the British Empire, or I should say insecurity architecture, and this same approach has been adopted by the United States, and it has been maintained ever since. And I think that now among the emerging powers on the Eurasian continent being primarily Russia, China and Iran, there's an awareness that this is how they're being kept constantly at risk of being destabilized and overthrown and weakened by being constantly dragged into these Guagmire wars all over the place. You know, it's not stop. It's like all our lives we've seen. Iran versus Iraq, Azerbaijan versus Armenia,

Turks versus the Kurds, Saudi Arabia versus Iran, Pakistan versus India, North Korea, South Korea, India versus China. And so this is constantly being detonated here and there to achieve this goal of maintaining Western legamy across this whole land and always pitting neighbor against neighbor. And then, you know, giving them loans and aid and installing them weapons. And I think that the emerging powers now want this to end. So that's a very, very long game.

That's a very long perspective on history. So I think that from that point of view, what happened in Syria now, might make sense, you know, and maybe Syria was too vulnerable. You know, maybe the, you know, like as a construction metaphor, you know, if you have, if you have an old construction that's rickety and that's difficult to keep in repair and stable, you know, at some point maybe you decide we demolish it and we build a new one rather than trying to keep it, keep the old one standing up. Yeah, like, I mean, there's just so much going on there.

And when you talk about all the different destabilizing things, the empire has done over the course of time, right? It's like, take this part, put it against there. Then they have this conflict. They can never get stable to where they start to, you know, I don't know, better themselves, Alex, and move up. They're constantly stuck in this world of, honestly probably fear and bloodshed and and all these different things, anger, hatred.

And when you get in those, you know, I'm sure at times, it's got to feel like you have a real strong purpose in life. But other times, you're not moving forward and they're just laughing on the other. Well, I don't know. I assume they're laughing on the other side as they fund it in aid and all the different things you've said. But it's interesting to me because as, you know, time goes on here, I just keep hearing, you know, whether it's Tucker Carlson or others that, you know, the only grownups in the room right now,

you know, and Donald Trump's coming back in here as long as he makes it to January 20th, you know, has been Biden, not Biden, sorry, Putin. I mean, Biden is Biden on life support right now? I don't even know. Like, has anybody seen the President of the United States in the last like three months? Like, what a wild time to be alive. regardless, I just, you know, you fast forward it. And right now, it seems like the only grownups in the room are Putin and a few people on the far side of the world from us.

And, you know, they're playing a different game. And I guess we're all trying to figure out what game they're playing because we watch that and we go, you don't love or hate Putin. Just like, man, I'd love to have a leader who is composed and has a plan and knows where we're heading. And I'm speaking from Canada where Justin Trudeau is an absolute. tail fire right now in honestly the best possible way i mean i can't yeah i'm waiting for him to get out in a new prime prime minister in and everything else but i mean like i just look at the two men and it's like mike tyson and his prime versus um i don't know take your take your pick of people you would not want to see or you would want to see in that rank with zero boxing ability

yeah yeah um i i see what you're saying and uh it makes It makes sense that way, and I think that people in the West should understand that we've been lied about Russia and about Putin for pretty much the last 24 years, ever since he's been in power. Or at the very least, he slammed one of his oligarchs, Igor Kodorkovsky, into – no, sorry, Mikhail Kodorkovsky, into jail. because these oligarchs always and everywhere are trustees of the Western financiers, Western investors who go to places like Saudi Arabia and Russia and Ukraine and everywhere else to plunder their wealth. That's why they're there. They don't give a crap about civilizing the savages or bringing the word of Christ to the savages

or bringing freedom and democracy, human rights, LGBT. All of those are just fancy rappers on the same old same old, which is plunder of resources. And, you know, what they are desperate to achieve before Donald Trump takes, before his inauguration, is they want to escalate this to a total war between Russia and the West. So they want to be able to evoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and to launch a collective war against Russia.

They want to get everybody mobilized. The Poles, the Germans, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the French, the Swedes, the Finns, and then go everybody all out against Russia. They're desperate to do that, which is why after Kamala Harris lost her election to Donald Trump, they finally authorized Ukrainians to launch long-range missiles into Russia. I mean, you know, not long-range missiles, but, you know, longer. And to strike at Russia proper, in spite of the fact that it's absolutely, clear that this will do nothing other than maybe blow up a few things in Russia.

It cannot change the strategic balance. It cannot turn around the war. It cannot reverse the defeat of Ukraine. There's only the downside, the very, very large risk of triggering World War III and next to nothing to gain. So why would anybody sober and sane make that move if it's only downside? And the real reason is because they want so badly to get Russia to overreact and to give them the pretext to activate, to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. And so, you know.

Do you think that's out of fear, sorry Alex, do you think that's out of fear for Donald Trump coming in? Or do you think that's the other side of it that they think Russia is going to take over all Europe and they need to be stopped at any in all causes? They know that Russia is not going to overtake Europe. Why would Russia's do that? For what reason? It doesn't make any sense. For the same reason you've told us that for the last 24 years, we've been sold a story on Russia that isn't true or on Putin. Right?

If you think that Putin is billed as Hitler or whatever word you want to use, whatever leader you want to use, and this is the start of something way bigger, which is part of the story that gets told, that's certainly out there in the world. Now, intelligence, the further you go into it, in the government, maybe they don't believe that, but I certainly know a ton of people. that that's where their thoughts go. Well, people believe that because that's what the media is serving them up. Yes. Nonstop. You know, it's completely unjustified. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

But this is what, you know, with the technique of big lie, you keep repeating, repeating, repeating, until, you know, it's repeated so much that everybody says like, well, you know, not everybody cannot be wrong, except you cannot find a single state. from any official, anywhere in Russia, particularly not Putin and his cabinet, anybody who says that they have any territorial pretensions against any other European country. And even with this war in Ukraine, they didn't go in there with territorial demands. And until Boris Johnson blew up the peace negotiations in March and April of 2022, so practically three years ago, the Russians were going to completely withdraw from Ukraine. The only thing they were

keeping was Crimea. And in that peace treaty that was already initial ready to be signed, Crimea is the only thing that remained an open question. And they agreed to resolve that question over the ensuing 10 years. But everything else was settled. And what the Russians were demanding is that Ukraine become a neutral country and that they commit to never joining NATO. Okay? And if Ukrainians accepted that, Russians were completely pulling out of Ukraine.

That's on record. they were not going there for territorial gains. They were going there to remove an existential threat that the West has placed there by turning Ukraine into this proxy force that they were going to then integrate into NATO. And Russia were saying, no, you're going to be neutral and you're going to not join NATO.

And then we withdraw. So if, you know, like if Putin was interested in conquering Europe, why would he withdraw from there? You know, in 2008, when Mikhail Saakashvili, you know, the Georgia Zelensky, Zelensky from Georgia back 20 years ago, launched a military attack on South Ossedia that was in August 2008, Russian military went in Georgia And in the space of five days They occupied Four of the five largest cities in Georgia

Okay And guess what A couple of weeks later they packed up and left They didn't stay there and say like Hey I guess we conquered this place So now this becomes Russia Putin has been in power for 24 years He hasn't been particularly

particularly keen on conquering anywhere, or he's been extremely lousy at it. And then, you know, let's also appreciate, you know, I started talking about authorizing the launching of attackams and storm shadows and so forth into Russia, which is basically an underhanded declaration of war by the West against Russia. The Russians didn't respond. That is, they didn't respond against France, against Germany, no, sorry, against France, against the UK and against the United States. They didn't because they don't want to escalate the war, because there's a risk of it going nuclear. So the fact that we are still not in a World War III, that we didn't get incinerated in a nuclear Holocaust,

we get to thank the one person there who is consistently exercising restraint, and that's Vladimir Putin, because the West keeps provoking and escalating. And the Russians keep exercising restraint and trying to keep the situation from escalating. So that, you know, evil demonized KGB thug, Vladimir Putin is who we have to think that we're not in World War III yet and that the nuclear missiles are not being exchanged. Listen, I agree with you. Once again, I don't know Putin from a hole in the ground, folks. I look at it and I'm like, you know, you can love or hate the guy. But I go back to my earlier thought, which is, you know, the, well, I'll go back to a few earlier thoughts.

One is, is the fact that Putin to this point has been like, the amount of restraint is insane. Just flip the, flip it the other way. And imagine Cuba shot a missile that hit the United States of America. It doesn't have to kill a bunch of people. It just hits the United States of America. and we know for a fact that Russia helped it. Like, I mean, when you put it that way, it's like, well, what do you think the United States is going to do?

It's going to go in full scorched earth on Cuba and make sure it never happens again. At least that's been my view of the United States of America. When it comes to trying to get NATO to invoke an Article 5, I don't know why I'm always reminded of the Lusitania, because obviously I wasn't around for that, Alex, right? I just read the story and I'm like, this is fascinating right you go back to this you know they want the americans to come into world war one

and you know the american people don't want to go into world war one you know it's like why the heck we go fight that war and then they sink the lucitania which has american passengers on it but of course it's filled with ammo and the germans are warning the american people nobody's listening and the only thing that i think is is unique to this go around is people are listening and and things like this are happening, and I'm just a small little piece of the puzzle, are happening over and over again. It goes back to the drones, right?

The drones happen. You know, some people lose their mind, but there's way too many of us now going, that's, it just smells. I'm not saying there isn't drones up in the sky. I'm sure there are.

But it's like, but do we really think it's aliens? And do we think they picked, of all places, New Jersey, you know, to like roll into? Is that what they're going to do?

And they're just going to, you know like something stinks especially we know how close we are to january 20th and i just find these forums where we keep talking about it reminds me to lucetania and if you go back and read the stories on it they were warning in newspapers right like don't get on the ship don't go here what happens they bomb it and you know you wonder how it could have changed if germany wouldn't know you know maybe would have shown some putin like restraint and realized if they do that this is what's going to happen, right? I mean, Putin seems to be a student of history, because once again, his restraint is almost second to none. I don't know if I'm right or wrong on that, Alex.

No, you are right about that. And then, you know, we also have to appreciate that this war, if you wanted to flip the script, imagine if Mexico was waging war on the United States, or that Mexico provoked the United States into attacking it because they're setting up this military bases on its border, 28 biological weapons labs along the American border with Mexico, how many KGB spy stations along the borders with the United States and Mexico, And then they're training these troops for war against the United States. And then they're planning to put in missile launchers aimed at the United States.

And then there's all these Russian weapons supplies and Russian trainers and Russian instructors who are there for no other reason than to train. up the Mexicans for a war on the United States. That's what is going on in Ukraine. Not to mention if all of a sudden, and I don't know the number, you'd know the number probably better than I. I'm going to say 100,000, you can tell me how far I am off. But imagine 100,000 Americans are dead from fighting in said war.

Yeah, for example, for example. So I think that there's restraint on the Russian side because, again, I believe that they take a long-term view on history. And so they don't want to take the bait to escalate the conflict in a way that could spin out of control. The West, on the other hand, has already been strategically defeated, both in Ukraine and in the middle. Middle East. So now it's the kitchen sink moment. You know, they're there all out trying to reverse the situation somehow. And to me, the, the incident that indicates the level of desperation is what would just happen in South Korea, where we had, you know, the president of South Korea attempt to install a basically a military dictatorship.

He wanted to, he declared already a martial law. They were going to assassinate and imprison the opposition leaders of the opposition Democratic Party. And they were going to, how do you call it, impose a blanket censorship on the on the on the on the on the on on all the media in in south korea and now why did this happen okay the west has pretty much disarmed itself in their attempts to beat russia in ukraine so you know massive arsenals were transferred to ukraine and then later to israel as well and now the west is largely disarmed they cannot you know they don't have enough 1055mm shells, they don't have enough anti-aircraft missiles, they don't have enough of

anything pretty much. The only Western ally that has these same NATO-compatible weapons and ammunition in large stockpiles is South Korea. The problem is that South Korean law prohibits such transfers of weapons, and South Korean political opposition and the public are overwhelmingly opposed to getting involved in Ukraine in any way, shape, or form. 82% of South Korean people are dead against getting involved in Ukraine. So, what do you do?

you want those arsenals transferred to Ukraine what do you do how do you overcome the legal restrictions and public opinion opposition well you stage a coup right and you impose blanket censorship

so that nobody can talk about this anymore and so they've been planning this coup I think since April March or April of this year and their brilliant idea was to get North Korea to provoke North Korea into striking them.

So in early October of this year, South Koreans went and flew drones over North Korean capital, Pyongyang, to drop propaganda leaflets, obvious South Korean propaganda leaflets, because they thought that the stupid, you know, troglodytes from North Korea were just going to launch some kind of a missile or artillery attack against South Korea.

And then the president would declare martial law. We're at war now, you know, emergency powers, and we're introducing a military-style dictatorship. The problem is that the North Koreans didn't react. They didn't take debate. So nothing happened. So finally, President Yun declared martial law on the night of the third of December

for no discernible reason at all without a pretext and people were like, huh? What's going on? And so the parliamentarians pushed back vehemently and they voted to

how do you call it to lift the martial law and so under South Korean constitution if the majority in parliament votes for the martial law to be lifted, the president has to do it. So he had to do it. And the whole thing fell apart. This is, this apologies. I'm sure that I'm annoying somebody because they want to hear your final thoughts. I do too. But you know, it's funny. I remember Alex seeing the videos of this

and hearing all about it and being, holy crap, what the heck is it going on in South Korea. But you're the first person and forgive me if I have missed something. Because of fairness, you know, on this side, I certainly have missed lots. But I don't remember hearing anyone talk about it in a discernible fashion that made it make any sense. And Doug Casey was just on and he talked about it briefly. And I didn't know what he was talking about. Or at least I didn't catch on what he's talking about.

And I'm having one of those moments where I'm like, oh, my God, you're just shedding like one of those pieces of information that just fits in. You're like, that's what it was about. That's, I find what you're talking about, I guess, fascinating. because I didn't understand what South Korea was doing. And in fairness, probably a lot of people didn't understand what was going on in South Korea. They'd built in, built in the echo chamber or the news cycle or whatever we're going to call it, of North Korea bombing the bridge and aggression and into the public sphere

so that when they took the military control of it, martial law, the people would be like, oh, that makes sense. But you know what's funny? I've been staring at 12 other problems, and I hadn't really much thought about it. Here we are like two weeks past. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, and you know, the reason why I brought that up, it's because this plan had a snowball's chance in hell to work.

Because North Koreans didn't provide them the pretext. So you declared martial law with no pretext for no reason. So you immediately, you know, like you turn the country against yourself so rapidly and so radically that they shot down your whole plan. And so, you know, if and, you know, the majority, large majority of North Korea, of South Koreans believe as I do that this was a U.S. orchestrated plan, that the U.S. was the U.S. was the, you know, the invisible hand guiding these events and directing them. Because, you know, one of the things that happen is that the United States, which is, you know, so hung up on democracy everywhere around the world, nothing to say about President of South Korea declaring martial law

and canceling democracy in South Korea. You know, nothing to say. No, you know, like, oh, we know, we call for calm and we call for president. and you to lift the martial law. There's no reason for this. You know, South Korean people should have democracy and human rights and freedom, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of that. So, you know, anyway, the angle that explains this is the weapons and also possibly troops because, you know, as I told you, these preparations were going on for several months. And the overlapping narrative over those several months has been, all of a sudden,

Out of nowhere, we have North Korean troops in Ukraine fighting alongside Russians. That came out of nowhere, and there's not a shred of evidence of this. And the evidence that they put out was found to be forgeries, right? So there's zero evidence that there's any North Koreans anywhere near Ukraine, not in Ukraine, not in Korsk. And so what did happen is that the president of South Korea used this narrative about North Korean troops in Ukraine to stay like, oh, look, our arch enemy, North Korea is fighting alongside with Russians in Ukraine. we should be sending weapons and troops to South Korea to confront them there. You know, beat them there so that you don't have to beat them over here, that kind of thing. So that whole narrative was going on in South Korea, except that the people in South Korea weren't buying it.

And so, you know, what's significant about all this to me is not that the United States tried to stage a regime change in an allied country. You know, that kind of happens. But that it was so desperate that it was so unlikely to succeed, yet they played that card anyway. So to me, that is the indicator of the level of hysterical panic that's gripped them. they're in an agony. They don't know what to do anymore.

They are throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, but they're being nevertheless, they're being defeated. And so my personal fear is that before 20th of January, they might try a false flag attack. And my suspicion was that it might be London. We'll see. but it could be something related to these drones as well who knows well you just go their attempts at doing things seems to be getting worse right because when you lay out

south korea you're like well that was pretty that was not well thought out you know um uh and you go back to attempt on trump and you go back and you go back and now you look at even the war in ukraine russia and you see all these different things and how they're and it just seems like right now they're they're just they're staring at a whiteboard and throwing things and going with any of this stick and one of one of the ones that you know i think a ton of people fear about and i don't mean fear in the sense that are paralyzed just like the one that makes probably the most sense is a false flag right so when you when you when you when you hear the um alien drones you think oh man what are they planning like that's that's where my brain is just like um is why

to look at that way differently than aliens are here and they're just going to hover above us, you know, or an alien attack and all of humanities together. Okay. Yeah, and they didn't go to India. They didn't go to like Saudi Arabia or Chile. They went to New Jersey. Just in New Jersey. Exactly. And just now, you know, of all, you know, of all the time. Of all the eternity, of all the eternity they had available to them, it's just now that they decided to go. Yes, days before Donald Trump's elected, aliens are going to be here. Sure. I guess.

It just seems like, you know, it's like, okay, we have like how many days left, you know, a little over a month? It's like, okay, guys, we're running out of daylight. We're running out of runway. What else could we try? Well, we had this alien thing kind of in the thing. Okay, throw it out there and see what happens. Yeah. And, you know, and like, it just seems like they're throwing things out.

regime change in South Korea. It's like, you know, at the time, I didn't give it, but once again, I was caught up in so many things going on. I'm glad you brought it up because you're like, huh, yeah. Like when you frame it that way, you're like, yeah, that makes complete and utter sense. You know, when you come back to this false flag idea, have you followed up on any of the stuff in London? Or is that just kind of where it sits? You threw it out. Have you had any more thoughts on it, Alex?

Because, you know, after I had you and Tom on, then I had Martin Armstrong on. And Martin had said something along the lines. If his computer could hide between Christmas and New Year's, it would. And I'm like, okay, well, what the hell is that mean? And he's like, I don't know. It's just predicting lots of upheaval, you know, in Armstrong's way. And I'm like, okay, well, you tack on with, with Craneer. And you see what's going on.

You go, well, is it going to get crazier before January 20th or is it going to just calm down? Chances are, we're all saying a little bit crazier, except we're all talking about it as it happens, which defangs all these situations. Has you, have you unearthed anything else on, you know, between here and January 20th from your eyes? No, not really. I mean, you know, the thing with the false flag attack is that it's obviously going to be managed in utmost secrecy. So either it's going to happen or it's not going to happen.

So it's a, you know, conceptually a 50-50 thing. I don't have indications that it might have, you know, When I published the article about it on my substack, what usually happens is that you have very, very sharp people leaving some feedback in the comments. But again, you know, it's indicators that suggest that something's up, but you can't be certain that it's going to be done, that it's going to happen. And we also know that, you know, through history, there has been many of these covert agendas, these false flag attacks or assassinations attempts or provocations that were planned and that the plan was put into action, but then it failed for whatever reason. So I couldn't say that I know more now than I knew before. It's still only a suspicion. But, you know, I felt that it has to go out there.

People need to talk about it because if nothing happens, nothing happens. It doesn't matter. But if it does happen, you know, 100%, they have the narratives ready. You know, like the event happens and then they start flooding the zone with the narrative. It's the Russians. They struck us. They retaliated for our, you know, storm shadow and attack them attacks into Russia. Finally, they responded.

And, you know, Russians blew up enough Russian made missiles in Ukraine that by now, you know, the British intelligence could have created, could have collected content. cheners of fragments of these things, that they can explode somewhere in London, and to say, like, oh, look, we have evidence. These are all made in Russia. Look, all of these missile fragments. Obviously, the thing came out of Russia, but it could be, all of it could be a complete and total lie. And so I think that if people are mentally prepared that something like this might be happening, then when it happens, they might think like, okay, so either the Russians attacked us, maybe,

or maybe it was a false flag. And so maybe then we avoid that galvanizing moment when people are so emotionally shocked and so disoriented that they soak up the narrative instantly. And then you have, again, the mass formation psychosis. And everybody goes like, we must kill Russia, We must kill Russians, let go to war, you know, as they did to us with the COVID pandemic. Well, I think of 9-11, Alex.

And listen, to people, I'm certain there's all spectrums. 9-11 was an inside job. To 9-11 was a true terrorist attack, somewhere along the lines, you fall in the middle of it. It doesn't matter. One of the reason I bring it up is I interviewed a guy. Now, how many years ago is this? Is this two years ago? It doesn't matter.

I used to ask a question, you know, like, what was your red pill moment? Like, what really opened your eyes? And he said, 9-11. And I remember thinking, oh, he's going to talk about building whatever and these type of things. And that wasn't what he said. He said it was the way he made it feel. Like he was ready to go kill anyone. And I was like, oh.

And he goes, as soon as I had that feeling, I had to stop myself and be like, this is what they want. And so I think about that lots now. I go, okay, 2001, we're 20, almost 24 years past it. I guess 23 years. And I go, what is the biggest difference? These things right here, like the fact that CBC News in Canada has like a 1% of the population watches it. And nobody's paying attention. Like, don't get me wrong.

The narratives are constructed. The problem is, unless you're paying Joe Rogan to say it, Tucker Carlson to say it, Tucker Carlson to say it, Sean Ryan to say it, Sean Newman to say it in some little form and fashion. It doesn't hit the same way. And can you imagine going back to the Lusitania? Like you go way, way back. Like, you know, it would have been where are you getting your news from,

the newspaper? And probably in some radio form. And they tell it and everybody soaks it in, like you say, soak it in. And then we're galvanized and we got to go. We got to go move. Yeah. And right now I don't, I don't think that's a possibility.

I could be wrong. I mean, it's always a possibility. I don't want to underestimate anything. But like one of the things that helps where we're at and how I think is, has been the ability for information to permeate into the culture, into the populations to like get around some of the censorship or some of the narrative they're pushing. Yeah. And I think that it's. important not to underestimate it and to always be on our guard because they are good at what they do.

You know, remember when 9-11 happened, they did plot the zone with the narrative immediately. And, you know, and that's where some of the mistakes were made because remember you had the BBC journalist saying that World Trade Center 7 collapsed 20 minutes before it collapsed. So, you know, that's when the narrative ran ahead of events because it was there. It was prepared and it was launched. And then, you know, there was a lot of questions. People had a lot of questions about what was going on. And then what happened?

They launched the anthrax letters to distract. You're like, stop asking questions about this. Look, there's anthrax. Who knows, it could be in any envelope. It could be all over the place. It might be arriving to you. So they scared the daylight out of everybody with the anthrax letters that happened just in the aftermath of 9-11. And so, you know, they're not naive. They know what they're doing. They're good at it.

We have to be prepared. and we have to be extra critical and extra rigorous in questioning, like, what the hell is going on? Because if something like this happens, then we are in danger of the critical mass of us going, must go kill Russians. And if you say, like, no, no, wait, this doesn't make sense. And they say, like, oh, you're a Putin puppet. I agree. You know, like with the pandemic, if you had any questions, you were.

anti-science, you were anti-vaxxer, right? Which I'm happy to confess, I am. I'm the Taliban of anti-vaxxers, but you couldn't say that because people went insane. You know, they, they turned, everything in their mind turned, you know, suddenly vaccine became a thing not to protect yourself, but to protect others. You know, like they inverted the whole thing and everybody accepted it. So there's no reason to think that they might not be able to invert everything now. And again, you know, majority of people just swallowing the whole thing. I agree. I just once again, even with the COVID thing, I think about from where I sit, just me alone sitting here in little old Alberta, you know, two hours east of the edge of the world. And I go, at the beginning of COVID,

I didn't say anything. A year into COVID, I still wasn't saying anything. It took well over a into COVID to finally start bringing people on and be like, we got to start talking about this. And I won't make that fatal mistake ever again, right? To me, I don't want to be, I don't want to, I don't want to, um, jump to too many conclusions before you talk things through. But at the same time, if you go back to COVID, you know, there, there was a three month gap where I kind of gave it as due. And then, you know, we started all looking at each other like, what the heck is going on? But nobody was talking. And one of the things for, the podcast was certainly there, started in 2019.

I was just talking sports. I certainly wasn't talking any of this. And I know a lot of other people that weren't around back then. So like, I just think the infrastructure on communications has completely changed. It's a huge game changer when it comes to trying to understand our world. And any false flag, I think that this is a huge win for humanity having the ability to chat with people. As soon as communications break down, I mean, we've all seen people's minds run away with them. Yeah, yeah. Well, if communications break down, then we're back to depending on the, on newspapers, radio, and television for what we know about the world.

And then controlling the narrative becomes exceedingly easy for them. But, you know, with regards to you, starting to speak late into the COVID pandemic, you know, to be fair to you, there's a time when a message can be received and digested, and then there's a time when you're just pissing against the wind, and it's going to get rejected. And not only that, you're going to get rejected, and they're going to shred your credibility. So, you know, what I did during the pandemic,

I started writing very early into it. But writing is very different, because, you know, people choose what they're going to read and they see the title and then they decide to read the rest of it. And so that's, you know, it's almost like you're, like you have a selection filter for extra open-minded inquisitive people. Whereas if you talk to a large audience, it's a lot more indiscriminate.

And then there's going to be a lot of people who might respond very negatively. and then reject your message and reject you. And then, you know, when you've been fooled, then it almost closes you off. You want to be proven right. So, yeah, it needs time. People need to digest the lie. People need to sober up.

there needs to be a period of sobering up for people to be able to process other kinds of information. You know, once that mass formation psychosis is there, once it's on already, then it's kind of entrenched. I think that now we have to try to front run it, you know, to all the people. I think you talking about soaking up the narrative. That to me makes so much sense. Yeah. Right?

It makes a ton of sense to at least my brain, Alex. I appreciate you coming on. And if we don't talk before Christmas, Merry Christmas to you. And thanks for coming on the show. You know, I do my top 25 episodes, switching to something a little lighter here as we end today's show because I'm the guy with a heart. out today. I got to go pick up kids. Sean, thank you for having me. Merry Christmas to you and the family as well, your

brothers and your parents, whom I had the pleasure to meet during the hockey game in Edmonton. Yay. Took Alex to his first Euler game. I was excited. It's like it took your first grader to the hockey game. And then we made television, too. We made the TV. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And anyway, also, Merry Christmas to all your viewers and listeners. And for everybody, a good start to 2021 for a more peaceful world. 2025.

What did I say? 2021. Oh. Well, I was going to say December 31st, I count down the top 25 episodes. Last year, you and Tom were number two in 2020. two, you guys were number one in my top 25 episodes of the year that you got beat last year by Martin Armstrong. I already know who number one is and well, I'm not going to spoil anything. So if people want to tune into that, that would be something cool on New Year's Eve.

And then of course, Alex, you're back for the next Cornerstone Forum, which is happening May 10th in Calgary. So that should be, well, I'm very excited to not only see you again, but to have the crew back together again. There's going to be some new faces there. a similar format, but it's going to be a fun day in Calgary. And I think back, I'm like, man, I brought Alex Cranner and Tom Luongo to Lloyd Minster in 23 to talk about Russia, Ukraine. I'm like, I must have looked insane to some people. But now, you know, it's funny, you fast forward a couple years.

And suddenly I'm like, no, I'm glad I trusted my gut on that. But it's pretty wild to think back. I did a Luongo Craner show in Lloyd Minster of all place. talking about Russia, Ukraine. You know, we've really fast forward from there, haven't we? But either way, looking forward to seeing you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Take care.