Shaun Newman Podcast - #938 - Karen Kwiatkowski

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Karen Kwiatkowski is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, whistleblower, libertarian activist, and author. With over 20 years of military service, including roles at the Pentagon and NSA, she gained prominence in 2003 for exposing neoconservative manipulation of intelligence to justify the Iraq War. A vocal critic of U.S. interventionism, she has written extensively on military strategy and foreign policy, contributing to outlets like LewRockwell.com and appearing in documentaries like Why We Fight (2005). Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday. How's everybody doing today? Well, shall we check out the charts?

Maybe a little precious metals charts. I should point this out. You can go to Silvergoldbull.com. dot CA and see the charts for yourself. That's where I'm heading. So today it's at 5669 gold has fallen. That's Canadian dollars. It's dropped a bit a year ago is what we've been pointing out. It was 379846 and silver has also dropped down to 6745 a year ago. It was 4816. And once again, you can go to silvergoldevovall.com. They got all the charts up there. That's where I'm always You know, I'm checking on daily here on the podcast.

It's been something we've doing for the last couple weeks because, you know, when we're talking about precious metals and whether or not to get involved with it, I mean, the chart is something to pay attention to. That's what all the guys I listen to are looking at, and you can do it for gold, silver, platinum, palladium. Of course, there's other things they have there. But if you're looking for charts,

go right to silver gold bull. And if you're interested in any precious metals, down on the show notes, you can text your email, Graham, for details about, or if you have any questions around buying, selling, storing, or using your retirement accounts to invest in precious metals, he'll help you out with that. Of course, silvergoldbould.ca.com, depending on the side of the border yard, any purchases you're making, just make sure to reference the Sean Newman podcast.

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You can get a hold of him. 780842-3433. All right, the weekend is almost upon us. October 25th, so Saturday, all day long at Proffer River. They have their customer appreciation day. Rodgill Taka will be in store that day. October 26 from 1 to 4.30 p.m. We've added a half an hour on.

Giltaka, Pradnick, and Sinclair are going to be at the Lloyd Minster and District Fishing Game Association Indoor Range. Profit River supplying the ammo. I've had a bunch of different questions come in. I need to have you text me so I know that you're going to be there just so we can have proper numbers. So if you're interested, text me. But Profit River is supplying the ammo.

You don't need to have your pal. They have the right people there to make sure it's safe and everything like that. But you don't need your pal. That's one of the cool things about it. You don't need to have a handgun. They're going to supply some of the guns so that we can shoot properly. You can also bring your own if you have it. Once again, make sure you have all the legal things documented and all the good stuff that way.

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If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, X, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review, Make sure to share with a friend. And let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is an American retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, author and commentator. I'm talking about Karen Katowski. So buckle up. Here we go.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Karen Katowski. Ma'am, thanks for hopping on. Well, thanks for having me. I have to give a shout out to Matt because he's the guy who connected us. And, well, I'm very appreciative of him doing that. Now, it's your first time on the show. What I get guests to do the first time they ever come on

is just tell us a little bit about yourself. Give the audience a little bit of your background, and we'll go from there. Okay. Well, I spent 20 years in the Air Force. I grew up in North Carolina in the mountains. I went to college on a Air Force RTC scholarship. So I went in the Air Force.

And I spent the first 10 years as a Cold War. Cold War was going on. So I was a cold warrior, you could say. We all, you know, anybody in the military at that time. And then, you know, 89 or 91, I mean, the Cold War suddenly ended. And it didn't end like many of us in the military had predicted or had planned for, but it ended. And I hadn't paid a lot of attention to a lot of things. But I expected that we in the military and our policy or foreign policy in the United States would change,

that the world's foreign policy would change because, you know, in a sense, we had quote unquote won the Cold War and we would now have, well, I think people talked about a so-called peace dividend. And I just expected change to happen. And the change that happened, of course, the Warsaw Pact went away,

and NATO, instead of following suit, expanded, and immediately, immediately expanded. And then immediately started the world's first humanitarian war in the former Yugoslavia. And, of course, I was stationed in Aviano, Italy at that time. So I got to see how that was. And I got to work with some NATO people. And everything that I expected to have happened logically in my worldview did not happen.

It was the opposite of that. So then I said, well, wait a minute. What was wrong with my assumptions? And so the second 10 years of my 20-year career, I started paying closer attention to what was really going on. and I started expanding my consumption of information more broadly than mainstream media. I started looking at history with a critical eye. I think many people have the same story, right? And anyway, then towards the end of my career, the last few years,

I worked for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in a couple of regional planning offices, initially North Africa, I mean initially, Central Africa. Then I moved into the North Africa near East Middle East area. And that's where I got to witness in my own experience. I mean, I witness the misuse of intelligence, the evolution of the Office of Special Plans, which is quite infamous at the time 20-something years ago, which basically fed propaganda to justify this second invasion of Iraq, which went on. And of course, I was also in the Pentagon during 9-1-1, and those attacks. And again, by that time, I was prepared to question whatever the government told me,

but I actually also witnessed things that did not only not explain how the government was not lying to me, but it illustrated that we the people in the United States are very separate from our government. We have very separate agendas. And the government's agenda, which continues to this day, seems to be to fight wars abroad. and to distract people with all kinds of stupid things so that we don't question the fact that our tax dollars are being totally wasted to make certain cronies rich and to fight these wars. And of course, the latest thing, which has been something who isn't concerned about Gaza. But, you know, the United States pays for Gaza. We pay for the destruction.

We have paid for it prior to October 7th. and we've certainly funded and enabled it. So this isn't, this actually now confirms what I learned in the last 10 years of my military career. And that is that the government doesn't work for us. It works for itself. And it's a mystery as to what its objectives are,

but if you watch closely, you'll see. And war is a big one. So any type of war. And it's so funny, it's not funny. I shouldn't say it's funny. But as we see a coming possible end to the US provoked, NATO provoked war in Ukraine, as we see a possible slowdown, maybe a piece of some sort in Gaza, which I'm not hopeful about.

We say, oh, great, great. But why? Because we have new wars in the northern hemisphere with Nicaragua. I'm not Nicaragua, Venezuela. It doesn't matter. But we want Maduro's oil. We want Maduro gone. We want a puppet there.

So we have something new. The state has shifted its gaze to another war. which means nothing's changed and you know we think of trump as a president who uh stirs up trouble and does things differently and pushes back but he doesn't uh he's he is riding a ship that has not changed its direction at all anyway but um so anyway after i retired i moved out to the country in the western part of virginia raised cattle sheep horses um all kinds of poultry and you may hear some of them out the window at times um and i have four kids they're all adults now The oldest one is I just turned 40 and the youngest is like 32.

So that's their generation. I can't remember if it's millennials or what they call them. But anyway, you know, they're doing fine. I discourage them from joining the military. My husband didn't agree with me on that. But I basically just told them what I felt was the truth. And none of them did join the military, which I'm glad about even to this day. two of them work for state government.

We can't escape working for government. That's where the money is. If I go back in your story, so the first 10 years, I forget how you put it, but Cold War was very, that was what we were staring at. That's what you were staring at.

That's what you were a part of. Then you talk about, you know, I had all these assumptions, the war is over, we're going to move on with life. NATO is going to be slowly, You know, I guess in my lifetime, Karen, I've never heard of NATO being distracted or pulled apart and just walk away. It's always been there. It's always been this

peaceful entity is how it's it's kind of we're going to keep the world at peace. But then the longer you stare, you're like, but wait, we're not at peace. There's wars happening everywhere. And with Russia, Ukraine in particular, it looks like they're instigators, not, not ones bringing down the temperature. That's right. In the 10 years, after. So you watch the Cold War happening and you're part of it. In the 10 years after you start looking at things. What did you start looking at in particular that started to make you go? That doesn't make any sense. Well, in part, you know, I was brought up as an American conservative, right? Republican Party. I think most of my relatives were in that party or if they voted. That's the way

they voted. And my dad had served in the Navy just enlisted a lot of his brothers who did that. So they were the people, kind of working class people that believed in the Constitution to the extent that anybody read it. They thought this was a law-driven country and that we actually stood for what the propaganda tells us we stand for, which is liberty for all freedom, good things, right? The America stands for good things. And all people in all countries want to believe that their country stands for good things. And they all believe that, I think. But I did get a little bit of prep as a child because my people on both my mother's side and my father's side did not like FDR. And it's, but when I went to school, FDR was like up with Lincoln, right? I mean, we were taught FDR

as a great president. That's why he was elected eight times, I mean, four times, four elections, you know. And I only learned good things in school about FDR, but at home I learned the other side of FDR, some of the things that, and this is also, I think, you know, Ron Paul is a big influence and certainly influenced me. But, and I became a libertarian around that same time at the end of the Cold War. But, you know, Ron Paul's childhood was also impacted by direct, you know, loss of income. I mean, his uncles were dairy farmers. and they had to deal with FDR's police state, basically. You know, we talk about ICE today. Ice comes in and grabs your workers.

Well, that's not a new concept. You know, government coming in and interfering with free economic activities, I learned about that as a child, and I didn't understand it very well. But I think the fact that I was predisposed, and this is very important, I was predisposed, even from childhood, to question the story. that came out of government, whatever it was. Now, in the military, the first 10 years, Cold War made sense to me.

I didn't like communism. They were communist, right? Now, I did take some schooling. I mean, have a PhD now, but I did, I was in school and I remember, here's the other thing, which I think, it impacted me certainly, but I think people have a similar story. But I was taking classes at Harvard, government classes,

and my specialty or my interest area was Russia and Eastern Europe. Now, Eastern Europe was, of course, communist at that time. And one of our teachers, one of our professors had a little project, and he said, okay, you're going to write a paper and you're going to predict which of the satellite states of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, which of these will become free first, you know, have their own elections, have their own elections, do all that. And, of course, we know it was Poland, right? We know it was Poland. But my summary at that time, based on what I thought, had them exactly backwards. I said, no, no, Romania will be first. Romania was last, okay? And every one of my order, because my assumption was that the worst situations,

where people were most abused by their state, most controlled, most impoverished, most silenced by their state, that these people would have this powerful urge. Uprising. Yes. But that's not how it works. It's where the most freedom is, where people can speak freely, where people can talk to other people and draw new conclusions. So in Poland, of course, obviously they had a very strong labor movement, right?

And it came from labor. In fact, a lot of change comes from labor, but why? because when you're working with people and you're part of a group and you trust them, you're speaking freely. You're learning freely and you're learning not the message that your owners or the government wants to give you, but you're learning the message that people around you, people like you also have drawn, have come to, have been led to. So anyway, I had it backwards. And that made a big impression on me because, like, you know, I'm like a good student, right? I like to make A's.

And I don't know what I made on that, but I was totally wrong, right? That's an interesting. Okay, so here in Canada, going through COVID, in Alberta, we had probably the most raucous group of people like upset was being pushed on them through, you know, lockdowns and the COVID pass and all these different things. And in Alberta, the premier got ousted and then Premier Daniel Smith got eventually elected. And, you know, so sitting in Alberta, we go, so that should happen all across Canada. Canada, right? And now, certainly there's been new premieres come in, nothing similar to how Alberta did it. But Quebec was a place that had a curfew and might argue had the strictest of strict lockdowns. And they reelected their leader. And we all sat out here and went, that makes no sense.

Why would you do that? But what you just said would actually agree with that thought that the most depressed population actually doesn't get out of it first. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't because we have to imagine it first. And if we're not talking about it and if we lock down, if we're living in 1984 and certain words can't be said, you know,

and certain ideas are not allowed to be thought, then you can't get out of your, you know, you've got to visualize the future. And of course, Ron Paul is huge with this, but he always talks about how ideas are bullies. You know, you can't, nothing can stop the power of a good idea. But we have to imagine what freedom may look like to us. We have to feel that it's not just us. Because think about it. If you're an isolated person who fights with everyone and you have no friends, well, you do have freedom. You have a kind of freedom, right? But but you're alone in your freedom. And so what we need is we need communities that have freedom to confirm what we think. think is right. Now, obviously, some people are in groups that think things that are very hateful and wrong. I mean, I would put Zionist Israelis in a group of people who are not allowed to think

things that might be positive for their own country, right? They have got a storyline that they accept and embrace, and you cannot change their minds. There's no changing of their minds. They're hard not to crack. And that's not healthy for Israel. they're not free. You know, what happens when an Israeli or an American Jew, we have many examples of that, stands up against Gaza. What happens in Israel when you stand up for Gaza and you're Jewish? You're silenced, right? You're ridiculed. You are harmed. You will lose your job. Okay? They don't have freedom. Now, I know Israel likes to say we're the freest country in the Middle East. We're a big democracy. But that's just words. you have to have a kind of liberty.

And that also comes from personality. Like you think, you know, Alberta, right? Well, we were talking before this about Montana, and there's a kind of an image of a Montana attitude, the American Great West, you know, people that stand up for themselves and have community and fight for their family versus fighting for the government. I don't know if you ever saw this movie,

something, what was it? something of the fall. Do you remember that? It took place out west in Montana. Legends of the Fall. Yeah, yeah. Old movie. Have you ever seen that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, so the old man, the father, the patriarch, had some great lines. Anthony Hopkins, he had some great lines about how he would not support the state government, you know, the senators. The things that he said about the federal government that was attempting to basically change his life, you know, very bold statements. He was almost a conicalastic in that movie.

But in fact, he was the one telling the truth in that movie. And many people who see that, they go, oh, my gosh, you know, 30-year-old movie, but you hear these words and you realize, wait a minute, it's ours. We own this. It has to be what we want, what we will fight for. And very often that's not the federal state. And if we have the ability to imagine that, we become more dangerous to whatever government is wanting us to do what it does.

us to do. So yeah, but we have to imagine it. We have to, and we have to think it's okay because I'm not going to get rejected from my church or rejected from my family. You know, I don't want, and this is a terrible thing with COVID, which was calculated, the COVID policies that were put on in the United States, everywhere around the world. But in the United States, I mean, they've released talking points that they used at the time. And dividing people familially, like saying, you're going to kill grandma. If you don't get the shot, you're going to be responsible for grandma and grandpa dying. And so me, so brothers and sisters would fight. And in our family, we saw it. I don't know if you had this in yours, but in my family, we had just a terrible

falling apart. And you know how it got healed five years or six years after COVID? The people that were right, which was us, people opposed to these government lockdowns, this insane lies we were told about this, both the disease and the vaccines, the people who are correct about that, we pretty much just said, I guess we've got to take them back. It wasn't the people that were wrong about it, who accused us of being murderers and destroying the planet. It wasn't those people who said, oh, you know what, I was wrong. I take that back what I said, I'm really sorry. They didn't say sorry. They are not sorry, but we're bigger people. And we have, I think, a bigger imagination about what freedom looks like. And it does include tolerance. And so I struggled for a while because I

swore at one time I would never speak to my brother again. But of course I do. I just speak to him. And I don't know. I don't know of a single family that wasn't impacted by COVID. Full stop. I don't know. You know, and in fairness, I might have some listeners text me saying there's weren't. And I might, but I think then if it wasn't in their immediate family, I think they can all agree somewhere along the way they ran into opposition and have lost friends or or contact with a lot of people. It was a very difficult time. This idea of vision being able to imagine at first, that is a very profound thought for me. I don't know why it seems so shocking to me.

I just assume, you know, these conversations are starting to brew up everywhere, right? which it is in a sense, but also, you know, like it isn't, right? There's certain areas where the conversation is more raucous. Here in Alberta, there's a lot of conversations going on. And the further you get out, maybe they just aren't happening near as much. And I guess that is probably true. I remember having a conversation with Uncle Bob. He was a man who had traveled, you know, I forget how many, over 100 countries back in the 60s and 70s.

And I'd asked him, you know, way before. before COVID or maybe at the beginning of COVID. Why are politicians way they are? And he said they lack vision. And I do, you know, as a younger man, I was like, I don't even know what that means.

What do you mean black vision? But you just maybe put in the frame what he was trying to say. You have to imagine it first and, and where you want to go. And if you don't have that, well, then you get what Canada is doing on the federal stage right now, where it is,

they have a vision of where they want to take us. It ain't my vision. I don't want anything that they're doing for the most part. I'm sure there's little pieces that are fine, but overall, the direction that Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney are taking us aren't where I want to go. Yeah. I remember the guy that ran against Carney. I don't know how he didn't win because he was. Yeah, I mean, I remember he did an interview.

He was eating an apple while he. Yes. I mean, the guy was totally there. I mean, I love that. But, yeah, it's not that government, I think, government. don't have visions and politicians don't have visions, although most politicians don't have visions. They are very short-sighted. I mean, look at our Congress. They go up there and get rich, right? They go up there and trade stocks on secret information that they have. They don't, nobody reads

the Constitution in our country, whether it's the people or the government. Trump has never read the Constitution. You know, so their vision is about power. And sometimes it's about some utopian. I mean, there's very often utopian visions. But that's not the kind of visions I'm talking about. I think we need to, you know, spend time thinking about what's real, which I think is very much easier to do in rural areas than it is in urban areas. You know, there's just, you know, there's something bigger than human beings and bigger than governments that, and I think nature helps us understand this.

And I think anybody that travels recognizes this, and many people like to travel. travel to nature because they get something special, but we need to build on that. And we also need to not trust what governments are doing and saying, because my experience is they never tell the truth. I don't remember a single time when they tell the actual truth about anything. And they also are not moral in the sense that an individual can be moral. Governments are not moral like that. They don't have an institutional morality. And I think oftentimes we assume that. And the other thing about imagining what life can be like, it requires a little bit of quiet time, downtime in some ways, time to learn, time to read.

But think about our modern society, certainly in the United States. I don't know how Canada is. Very similar. Is it similar? Okay. So we have people, we have the vast majority of the people in this country are poor or middle class, working class. and most of them, if they have families, they're depending on two incomes to make a living.

If they're depending on one income, they're probably cohabitating, they have to be, because you can't really make it in the modern way the world is, the way we're expected to live on anything less than two incomes or three. So we are struggling and spending all of our time working. Now, it's not productive working, but it's survival, spending time on survival. So that's not much better than slaves in my book. And I think we're slaves to a system that we've been born into in many ways. But also a system the government has

created and not just created but done it on purpose. Because what is the thing governments can't stand? They can't stand ideas that are generated by the people. If something like, let's say an idea like, how about we get less government? How about the government follow the constitution and only deal with things. How about, here's a simple one. How about the United States government never enters into war unless the Congress debates

and then declares that war, right? We haven't done that since 1941. So why? That's a simple request, right? That's coming from the people. That's coming from the people that will serve in the military. They don't want to fight wars

because a politician wants to get rich or wants to get reelected or wants to keep his office or wants to raise taxes or do a special project of some sort that we don't really like. No, the state wants war. War is the health of the state. So the people's mess, a people's idea, an idea that might be coming from actual people if they had time to think about it, talk about it with other people, you know, develop this sense that, you know what, we are right. We are the majority. And not only that, we are correct in this matter. So governments hate that. So what do they do? Well, they make sure we don't get together and talk about ideas they don't want us to talk about. And they all governments do this. It's not

just the United States government. It's not just a republic or a democracy that does this. It's all government. Look at Germany. I mean, they're to the point of banning parties. Okay. Actually, Canada, Canada might be doing that too. I don't know. I can't say I don't study that. I as far as I know at this point in time we have not banned any power. I think that would come across my desk awfully quick. Yes. If anything, we, we have, we have every party you could imagine. Yeah.

And that's actually healthy. See, we don't get that in this country. We have a two-party system, basically. And the two main parties are really a uniparty. And if any good ideas come from Greens or libertarians or communists or any of the number, you know, a natural law party, Constitution Party. If these guys ever come up with a good idea that starts to take fire, then one of the two main parties will quickly grab it away from them to suck that energy out and to basically dilute the message and then tell us they're doing it when

they're really not. Because if there was a peace party in this country, everybody would be a part of it. I don't know. It would certainly be the majority. I think 80% of Americans would say, yeah, I don't want to fight wars. I don't want to spend for them. I don't want to do them. I don't want to contribute to them. I don't want to stir them up and I don't want to fight them. 80% of the population would say that. Both parties say, oh, we love peace. And both parties pursue war incessantly, as we're seeing the history of the modern United States has been that way. Because we're, because we can. I mean, we're big enough and they take enough money and we have enough residual power with our dollar that we can do whatever we want, but it's not we. It's the

government does whatever it wants. So, you know, my thing, like, and you do the podcast, you're talking to people, this is what it's about. You know, I write articles, you know, not, I mean, once a week or so, you know, I like to write. But the things that I write about, oftentimes I don't really want to slap people in the face with my articles. I want to tease them a little bit. You know, I want to talk about what's important to me, like the things we're talking about here. I am very anti-government, okay? I'm probably a radical, I mean, in many ways. But I don't want to write radical articles. I'm going to write articles that cause people to see what we agree on and then throw them a bone or two about some ideas that they might not have thought about. That's what I try to do. And I don't know if I

do that. But I think a lot of people try to do that. And I think that's the best way. What I don't want to ever do, I would never, I would never write government. talking points. I think we exist to counter government talking points. And there's plenty of them. With COVID, of course, we saw the power that government has to. But of course, they used shame, guilt, and fear, you know, to do that. And I'm not big on to like psychological stuff, you know, like social. And, you know, I don't have an online counselor that can help me work through my problems or anything. But I think that's kind of important that we do learn about ourselves so we know what our weak points are. Because we got to, American people certainly, probably Canadians too.

You know, when the government tried to scare them, the government succeeded. And we need to assess why we were so scared. Because for me in COVID, when a COVID thing kicked off, of course, I was already skeptical of everything, the government said. but I looked at the death rates, the actual, if you got COVID, were you going to die? And what the data was, and it never changed. In fact, it actually got better over time as the virus dissipated and morphed into other things. But even from the very beginning, if you were 85 or 90 and you were living in a communal nursing home, meaning your health was already impaired, yeah, you need to watch out.

because there was a significant death right there in those environments. Now, how many old people live in nursing homes? Well, a number of them do, but many don't, right? So it was specific to how they were cohabiting, how they were living, the state of their health, that kind of thing. Then later in COVID, of course, we saw what the government was recommending and not recommending. No, actually, what they were recommending, which were very dangerous treatments, you know, the, the, uh, putting people on, on, uh, there's forced air machines.

I forget what the name of them is in the hospitals. And then we're getting rewarded for many. Ventilators. Ventilators, yeah. I mean, prior to COVID, any person who had a relative that was in the hospital on a ventilator, um, you're, you've already been given the risk briefing on that as a family member. You know how dangerous it was, but all of a sudden, ventilators were like the kiss of life from heaven.

Well, I can, I can. If I may, Karen, you know, like on my own side here. And obviously we are just getting no one another. And at the start of COVID, my show was almost predominantly sports, athletes, that type of thing. And when COVID was hitting, I had reached out to multiple people in the health organization to come on. And my idea was, you can come on and say whatever you want. just want to give some people somewhere to turn so you can reduce the fear. And they all told me no.

Really? Yeah. And I remember thinking that is strange, right? We're talking the health authority in her area. They wanted to have, they wanted one voice and they weren't allowed to come out and say anything. They wanted all from one voice. So you go, how did the fear start? I don't know about the United States, but for here, when you had basically a daily meeting of the politicians and health authorities, to say this is what you have to do. But we weren't allowed to have any conversation around it. We weren't allowed to have our local health authorities come on and say,

hey, if you're sick, just come down here. This is where you've got to go and reduce some of the fear. It's like, no. And then when I started, so if I fast forward, you know, then there was a point where I started bringing on some people who were outspoken about it. And what happened? They reached out to me. He said, oh, we'd like to come on now.

And I said, I thought, oh, that's interesting timing. because now that there's conversation being had, you want to interject on the conversation and reaffirm that, no, this is the right way. We're here. This is what's going on. And I found that very, the timing of that, not a coincidence. Almost like, no, you can't, you can't change now. I tried doing this right at the start, not allowed to do it. And as soon as we interjected with some things that were controversial for sure they came on and they wanted to have their voice heard and and then what changed even further along is okay so then I started having more people all right well let's you know people are interested let's get to the bottom of this then they stopped coming on no we can't go on

you guys because you're too I don't know too controversial to whatever you're messing up our talking points you're messing up our talking points and and for me I've never forgotten that it's like it's just sitting right there. I'm like, how that's interesting. And so now what's what's so at the start, they wouldn't come on because in my opinion, they wanted one voice talking. Don't confuse the message. Then when you started to confuse the message, then they came on. And then the next stage is where we're at right now. Most people, if they think differently than me, they assume I won't have a conversation, which is, that's all I want to do. I just want to have a conversation. And I've had reached out

to people on the other side, and I'll put it in parentheses. And they see your guest list. And they're like, I don't think we're a fit. I'm like, not a fit. I talk to people. I want to talk to you. I'm okay to have you come on and disagree with me. And now we're in that stage where we going off into our silos and nobody comes in because, you know, you can't talk to that person.

That person's too extreme. And I'm like, I don't know. I talk to extreme people all the time, as people would say. And I'm like, all it is is a conversation. I think it'd be very healthy if we started doing that. But they don't, it doesn't seem that they want to do that. No. And they also, well, when you talk about talking points,

of course, I recall back in the war with Iraq that we had a set of talking points. So we sent directly to the New York Times and the Washington Post, you know, and these were the accepted language that you could use. And there's a lot of words and things you could not say. That would have been true. That would have allowed for debate. But there was no debate because the government was intent on generating fear and anxiety and hatred in order to support what they were going to do.

in switching from Afghanistan and going into Iraq that second time. And also the whole Afghanistan thing. I mean, how many Afghans were on those 9-11 airplanes? That's kind of strange. None. How many Saudis? Oh, no, I don't know. We give them special treatment, but it was filled with salt.

So anyway, the story is the stories that the government comes together with. And I think of, of course, the 9-11 story and then the invasion of Iraq story. none of them making it very much sense. The COVID story, many years later, two decades later, also, it's not a defensible story. It's not a good story. It's a story that if you start to ask questions, your people don't want to be embarrassed. You know, these people from government who have been saying what they want to say. And here's the other thing that I think speaks to how they could do that with the health industry.

Because you have a different health industry than we need a little bit. But ours is also very dependent on government grants, dollars, payments, the various government health care systems, whether it's the ACA, you know, Obamacare or whatever. But it's really not just that. It's insurance companies that are in bed with the government, you know, what they'll pay for, what they won't. And the people that work in health care, they need their jobs. Most people who work in the health care industry, they're not like rich doctors. They are working class people in this day and age, and they need their incomes. they like the incomes that they have,

but they also don't want to be blackballed in their industry, if that's what they do. And these are the threats that government has for anybody that wants to go off the reservation and actually ask a real question or provide a real answer. And that answer could be as simple as I don't know, right? You could have had these guys on your government,

healthcare spokespeople, and they check their talking points, and they say, well, I'll take a chance. I'll go on to Sean's show, and I'll see what. what he has to say and you're talking and you're asking him questions and there's going to be a lot of silences and a lot of I don't knows if they stick to the talking points because the government stories and this is the other thing about great stories they don't come from government government is the worst for putting for putting together stories their stories always fall apart and again we can

talk about any story you want to JFKSSH all the interesting stories that people just eat up you know well the government story is so stupid it's so easy to pick apart 9-11 easy to to pick apart. COVID, easy to pick apart. Government is not very imaginative. And this is why all we the people need to do is just develop our ability to talk, communicate, to ask questions, to listen, to listen, because you'd learn from everybody. And to listen in a manner that I think is understanding. Because so many of these healthcare professionals and people that were bound, their jobs were on the line. if they did not, if they went off the talking points, they would get fired. And they wouldn't get fired for going off the talking points because you can get fired for

anything. They'd get fired because they showed up five minutes late the next day or whatever it was, you know, or they'd get fired because, well, we're having a round of layoff. Sorry, we're changing that, the night shift and you're no longer on it, whatever. So people were vulnerable because we have to work so hard to make a living. And we have so little time to reflect and think. and develop our ability to ask questions to explore the unknown. We don't have time for that. So very hard.

It's hard for them. And the government makes it hard on purpose. And they want you scared. They want you nervous. They want you economically vulnerable. So, you know, what was that old rock and roll song? Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. I never understood that until I was 40 years old.

I got, what is that about freedom? Nothing less blue? I don't get that. freedom is having your own land you know freedom is is having a car you can drive somewhere you know i didn't get it i did not understand as a child of this i was born in 1960 so you know i'm listening that but then when i'm about 40 late 30s early 40s then i started to understand freedom you have freedom if you don't need anything from them and uh we need to develop our ability to not need as much from government as we currently do uh which is also why i told i wanted my kids not

to go in the military because military in the United States, I don't have it is in Canada. It's pretty good deal. I mean, their sign-on bonuses for kids out of high school, $40,000. I mean, if you're in high school, you can buy a good car with that. I mean, maybe not completely with car prices, but anyway, it's a lot of money for a kid. Looks good. And we have an all-volunteer force, which I think is another thing that has, and I oppose conscription. I oppose it on principle. I think that slavery, I think it is illegal. But the all-volunteer force has compromised so many people because we are offered a good living in the military, and that includes contractors who make things for the military. You know, we have a huge military-industrial complex, a huge industry

of manufacturing weapons that we don't need and nobody else needs, but this is where the money is. And if you accept the money from that sector of government or health care, same thing, thing, you are bound. They own you and they own what you say. And if they give you a set of talking points, that's part of your job, which is why we don't see as many whistleblowers. It's one reason. We don't see as many whistleblowers as we really should. The other reason is they will get killed. I mean, a serious whistleblower is going to get wiped out. I'm sorry. It's, we've, you know, I think of that Rolling Stone reporter, Michael, what was his name? He was writing. He had written a really interesting story on one of the generals in Afghanistan.

It was a fascinating piece. He traveled with this guy for like three or four weeks, and the Scottish guy, only eats one meal a day. It was a fascinating Rolling Stone article on this general. And that went out, and it made a lot of ways. Of course, the general didn't like it. He resigned right after that. I think it was one that said something bad publicly about Obama or whatever.

And then Hastings, Michael Hastings is this reporter's name. Rolling Stone. You ever heard of him? Yes. Sorry. Yeah. Well, anyway, so Hastings next big story that was supposed to come out but never did was a similar expassee about the CIA and what was going on in part of the CIA, not just the torture and the stuff the CIA does that we all like to, you know, point our fingers at, but actually some serious issues. And of course, he died in a spectacular car crash in a tree-lined street in San Francisco, I guess it was. was. I'm not sure somewhere in California. And his car suddenly sped up to like 120 miles an hour

in a 35 mile hour zone, ran through a bunch of lights and hit something and then blew up. It blew up so massively that the engine was found, the engine of the car, wasn't an electric car. The engine of the car was found like 100 feet away blown from the point of the impact. So this is a major, a major, your explosion. Of course, Michael Hastings was dead. And I didn't follow Hastings. I had read the article he had written that summer, but I didn't know what he was working on, but I was reading about this. And they interviewed his wife and his friends and talked about, you know, as they remembered him, because he was a real nice guy, I guess. And, you know, his articles were hard hitting, but he was like a nice guy. He was like kind of, and one of the things they said about him,

one of his friends said this, they said, I don't understand this wreck. Because for all the crazy things Michael Hastings did as a journalist, he drove like a grandma. They said he would never exceed the speed limit. He usually drove 10 miles below it and we always get so frustrated if he was driving because, you know, I don't know any American likes to go 10 miles. I don't like to go 10 miles under. And I certainly don't like to be behind somebody or with somebody who's going 10 miles on the speed limit. So one of his, one of his friends had said that and it stuck with me because of course, of course, you know, this was and of course, we also, we also, This was what, under Obama, so it was so many years ago.

And we know, and since then, of course, we say, oh, can the CIA take over the controls of a vehicle of any type, of any type? I don't care if it's a drone, an airplane, a car, you name it, you know, a nuclear reactor. That's what they specialize in, right? I mean, this is part of what our government spends our money more, the black money that we don't know about. That's what they spend it on. So, and of course, the good thing is for the CIA is that article he was working on never came out. Right. So when we get whistleblowers, when we get people that really threaten the system, and this is not new news, this is, they don't last very long.

Of course, we had Snowden. Of course, he lives in Russia. He's got his Russian passport. I think he's Russian citizenship now. But if he sets foot in America, he'll get, he'll get wiped out. I mean, that's, you know. Yeah, full stop. Talking about Russia. I'm curious because, you know, like, you grew up Russia bad, communism. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And now that's roughly been 30 plus years since the fall of the Soviet Union.

When you look at Russia now and, you know, you had your last 10 years of military service where you start staring at things a little differently. And, you know, you fast forward to now, when you're looking at Russia now, when you're looking at Russia, Russia, I'm curious. You, like, in your early time, you saw Russia, this is bad. This is the enemy. We defeat the enemy. Things don't go the right. You know, that doesn't make any sense.

You start paying attention to things. And then you start watching to foreign policy and what's happening to different countries. What do you see now with Russia? Like, and Putin and this entire Russia-Ukraine conflict. Yeah. Well, with Russia-Ukraine conflict. conflict. I mean, by this time, by 2014, in the Minsk Accords and the things that our neocon State Department was doing and our government was doing to encourage, to try to get Ukraine to join NATO,

to expand NATO into Ukraine, to encourage the Ukrainian continuation of the Civil War, you know, the idea that Minsk was just words, not really a treaty, even though it was signed by a bunch of people, they had no intention. Well, I was up on that in that time frame for the most part. I mean, And I could see that we were manipulating something to expand NATO. And my focus would be on NATO expansion being so illogical, given what, I mean, this is just a continuation. Not just did they not do the right thing in 1991? They've expanded massively since then, and they're still doing it. So there was that.

So it was easy for me to find fault with the NATO governments with this. But the other thing is, with the fall of the Soviet Union, I was very like so many people, certainly military people, anti-communists, right? Communist government. But then I found out, well, the Soviet Union doesn't really run by communist rules, right? It actually runs a lot like a lot of other governments, right? It was an extractive government. It told a lot of lies, oppressed a lot of people, and took the resources and enriched itself

on the backs of that. And the people finally got fed up. And there was a joke long before the, so it fell apart. And they used to say the government pretends to pay us and we pretend to work. So the we that who pretend to work is we, the people, the Russian people, who I'm sure were way smarter about what their government was really about than most Americans were. You know, we thought, oh, the communist threat. They're going to extend to global communism under a, you know, under the Russian banner or the Soviet banner. But the Russian people were, you know, that's not, they knew what the problem was.

The problem was their government. And it had accumulated so much power and limited freedom so much that it was hard for them. And they impoverished the people so much that really they were in a tough place. What do we do? What do we do? And honestly, where the most freedom was in Poland in some of these in Czechoslovakia, this is where you saw the change happen. And finally, the Eastern Europe folds away.

And then we get Boris Yeltsin. What a guy, you know. And I remember even at the time that Boris Yeltsin was in charge and succeeded. I guess he was after Gorbachev. But Gorbachev was a good, he actually wanted to restore it. He didn't want to have happen what happened. He thought we'll have more opening. We'll have Glasnost, we'll have restructions.

so that our government is more efficient and stops wasting the resources of the Russian people, the Soviet people. But that was allowing more freedom. And as soon as you allow more freedom, people can talk, whether it's over vodka or not over vodka, then people imagine something different and they would accept it. It's like the Overton window. Do you ever talk about the Overton window? What's acceptable? You know, it takes sometimes before we, and it takes a lot of talk.

It takes a lot of discussion to shift that window. what we're used to, what we will accept. And it moved for the Russians. But again, my fault with Soviet Union was their government, an extractive corrupt government, which I actually see our government in the United States very similarly today, which I honestly didn't blame. I didn't see our government that harshly back 30 years ago,

but I do today. Today I do. I mean, you can spend two minutes on the Internet and get three or four different examples. of how government cronies are enriching themselves. You know, you've heard about our aid to Argentina, right? To Malay? Yeah. Well, you know, Malay is having some trouble.

He's trying to do what he's trying to do and put some people out of work. Economy is hurting a little bit. He wanted $20 billion to cover some debts or something. And Trump said, yeah, sure, let's do it. And also, let's buy Argentinian beef while we're at it, you know. So that, is like, oh, okay, a political thing. And then I read, then I come to find out

that there's two investment firm type people, a guy named one of them was a Drucken, Druckham Miller or something, they're best friends with the Treasury Secretary Bessent, you know, our Treasury secretary, they're best buds with him. I mean, they, you know, see him once a week or whatever. Turns out they were in a short position of some sort, needed, they needed a cash infusion. So this cash infusion to Argentina, it's not super, it's not like, oh, we care about the Argentinian people.

No, we care about Scott Besant's best buddies who are in a financial pinch and they needed an infusion of vapor money. Of money. Yeah. So, and that's what that's all about. So, I mean, I don't care. It doesn't take a minute. Everything you think is, we're doing something good for the, you know, for America or for other countries because we're just good people. No.

We weren't just like so old Soviet Union before it fell. If you go back to, you said in 1991, they should have done the right thing or something along that lines. What was the right thing in 1991? Oh, there should be no, there should be no NATO. NATO should have stood down. And that was prior to the EU, but of course the EU was hardly put together to make sure NATO wouldn't stand down. Because, you know, NATO prior to the EU was an alliance, a defensive, well, they said it was a defensive alliance against Soviet Union. Soviet Union fell down, more so packed.

disintegrated. New countries came to Europe, poor countries trying to integrate with Europe. And the first thing that Europe did instead of not just not getting rid of NATO, but they said, well, wait a minute, what's the justification for NATO? Well, we need an EU. And then the EU needs a military arm, right? Because it's kind of like emulating what they, I guess how the Europeans view American power, which is a bunch of states that are joined at the hip under a federal government which then requires a federal defense force or military which feeds a whole system of kickbacks and corruption and industries and that kind of thing so what they did is they and and we helped them do that i mean americans there was some debate you know the who's the guy canon

jrgna or canaan i'm not sure but he was a russia expert and uh he did not like what he was seeing with this this should have not have happened but it happened because There's so much money in American and European weapons production. And there's so much political joy that they find in controlling the world, in running this government, forcing this government to do so. And, you know, we see this with Trump. You know, Trump's not a typical Republican or Democrat, but he loves to exercise power.

Right. He enjoys that if he says something, somebody halfway around the world will jump, right? And he plays this game with his tariffs and his wars and his promises to hurt somebody. You know, we're going to unleash hell. How many people has he said that to? So there is a certain evil joy that politicians take in the power that they have.

And that's part of the problem, too, in Europe. And that's why, you know, NATO, the EU. And we think about Bondurland. I mean, I don't think about it very often, but my God, she's in charge of the EU. basically, you know, effectively in charge of NATO above the NATO guy. And she's not got a single vote from anybody in Europe. They don't vote for her.

She's elected by, you know, by parliamentarians who are designated to vote for EU leadership. And that's how, so it's a scam, okay? Government is a scam. And we can learn a lot by looking at how Europe has run themselves into the ground. So, 1991. I'm working out this thought. No, no, no. I'm working out this thought.

I'm curious because you're a lady who's spent a lot of time looking at foreign policy and paying attention to the ways of the world, if I would, put it simply. So 1991, they don't do the right thing. NATO continues on. And we see this across lots of different places, I might add, not just with military, but lots of different things where they finish, they accomplish their goal. Our enemy or our goal is accomplished, we should just disembark. But now you have a whole structure there, and the structure is jobs and people, and they want to keep the machine going.

So NATO doesn't do the right thing. They don't shut down. And they continue on, and that plays out in a bunch of different ways. One of the ways that I would think they, I don't know, underestimated or they created their own boogeyman, if you would, was Putin gets elected in 2000. And I assume he gets elected because of what NATO is doing. I assume that, am I wrong in thinking that? Well, after the Soviet Union fell, of course, you know Jeffrey Sachs. I mean, yes.

Yes, I don't know him, but yes, I've listened to a lot of what Jeffrey Sachs is saying. Jeffrey's very outspoken now. But back in 91 and when Poland fell, particularly Poland brought Jeffrey Sachs in as a Harvard economist to help them transition from a state-run economy to a private. economy. And that's where he made his bones in many ways. And so when a few years later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Sacks was advising what to do. And he tells a story. And I knew him that way. And I thought, oh, he's bringing free market concepts to a former communist country. So this is great. I didn't pay too close of attention. But

But Sax has talked about this a number of times on how what he was advising opened the door for, of course, the oligarchs consuming things, and also the Western buyers scooping out the heart and the value of what was left in the Soviet Union, in every single industry, scooping it out, taking it and exporting it, extracting it in a very colonial sense, America and Europe being those colonial actors. And he talks about how his advice in the most critical ways was not taken. And it was not free market that was brought. It was an extraction. Really, like in the old time wars where somebody loses, the winner, the victor goes in and takes the spoils. And it was kind of like that. And that's why Putin was elected because the Russian people, and a reduced Russian Federation saw this, knew this, and they despised Yeltsin, and they despised,

and Yeltsin was a drunk, I mean, an actual, like he would be drunk on duty, like, you know, we wouldn't tolerate that here. Well, maybe we do. But, but no, Yeltsin, Yeltsin was a puppet. He was used, he was manipulated by both Russian oligarchs and Western oligarchs to extract and waste what was left of the Soviet Union. It was not a powerful country. It was, as we know. It was a weak state. Yes. And it was a broken state in many ways. Anyway, Putin came to power having witnessed that because he worked for Yeltsin and he worked for, he was, as they never stopped him reminding us, you know, he was a GRU agent. He was an intelligence guy. So, so he knew and he understood what was happening and he's a patriot. He's still a patriot.

But he was elected on that. Let's make Russia for Russians. Kind of like the let's make Russia great again. Except it was much more harsh situation. I mean, you know, after the Soviet Union fell, you know, the lifespan dropped 10 to 15 years for men in Russia. 10 years for women. Birth rate dropped. You know, it was a suffering country, a weak country that was also suffering.

So he's brought forward to fix all that. He's the guy that's going to fix that. How was he going to do it? Well, he actually, I haven't studied his entire 20-year career as the president, but he apparently did have a plan. And I know initially what I have come to understand, and this is something useful, we didn't do this when NATO should have fallen. What Putin did initially, he was sponsored by one of the oligarchs, right? I mean, that's how you get power, right? Look at Zelensky. He's following that exact same power. Zelensky is sponsored by Ukrainian oligarchs. And it's very dangerous to be sponsored by somebody who can, you know, I mean, Trump is in the same situation being sponsored by Zionist donors.

He is afraid he is afraid of those very donors and he should be as anyone who sells their political decision making for money. So Putin was involved and supported by some of these and not others and he carefully picked him off. He very carefully and very brutally in the mode of a. GRU agent under the Cold War, eliminated the threats to him. But he kept enough support so that, like, you know, he did it in a way like the mafia does it, right? And the mafia, if they got to get rid of somebody, first they say, well, what's going to happen? Where's the vacuum going to be? How am I going to fill that vacuum? Right? You can't just go whackin people. You need to know, do I control what comes next? Okay. And Putin has Putin did that. And when he finally had

consolidated his political power, that's not elected power. That's not elected power. or like, oh, the Democratic people voted. They're going to support and they'll rally for him. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about where the money is. When he finally had control of that, then the rebuilding of a new Russia, I guess you could say, happened. And it's been a very long and difficult, you know, process.

But Putin has been hated by us. Why? Why would we hate Putin from 20 years ago? Because our oligarchs are the ones that got cut, off first. Our ability to rape and pillage inside of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union was ended. It was limited at first and then it was cut. And so, oh, now they're isolationists. Oh, no, they're not isolationists. Now they're expansionists. They can be both at the same time as we know from the COVID people, right? You can have two opposites in your head at the same time and both

can be equally true. But yeah, for us, Putin was the terrible guy, you know, isolating Russia. you know, doing all this stuff. And then also not isolating. He's trying to take over Europe. And that's what we hear a lot today from NATO. Of course, he's not. He's not doing any of those things. So, but I think you have to look a little bit more deeply

at the motivations of the Western governments and how they have evolved. And it's not good. So if you, I think you have to be critical. We have to be critical. We should be of our own governments first. Before we start pointing fingers around the world, oh, well, that's terrible. That's a terrible thing.

They shouldn't do that. They shouldn't do that over there. We need to look at our own governments because we're most likely to be able to impact them, even though we have very little impact. But this is where our reputation lies. And this is why what's going on in Gaza is such a tragedy, not just for the Gazans, but for Americans, because we paid for it. We've made it happen. I know we had a time set.

I'm just wondering. I have to, no, I actually have two. I have two other things that you've said. I would love to, if you've got a few extra minutes, I would just love to make sure I ask about them before I let you out. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, because I'm not coughing. If I start coughing, then you have to quit. Well, okay, you've brought up, you've brought up two different places on the planet, one being Gaza. So I wanted to start there and your thought on, I don't know, Israel, Palestine and what's happening there. It's been a topic I've been wary to go into just because I don't, it comes with a ton of emotion wrapped around.

it. Yeah. And then, but then again, so did Russia, Ukraine at one point. And by having conversations open up around it, people start to listen. And it goes back to what we talked about, honestly, right at the start is, you know, if there's no conversation around it, then how can you possibly imagine something different? So, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, your thoughts there. Okay. It's a colonialist project, but it's not the Israeli colonial project. It is the European colonial project in the Middle East. So, you know, it has the baggage and it has the trappings of all of the colonial mistakes that are made. It's not like, you know, we got better at being colonialist or, you know,

we got better at extracting wealth and territory and leverage from people less well armed in us or people that we didn't like, you know, substandard humans, which is how that's the colonialist attitude, right? I mean, they went to Africa. Why? Because if Africans don't know what to do with all their wealth, we can figure that out. They go to the oil and the Iranians and the Saudis, they don't know how to get their oil out. We will help them because we can do that. Kind of hiding the greed motive, which is a big part of it. So anyway, you have a colonialist project in Israel, which has been defended since the very beginning by, of course, Europe,

for a number of different reasons. Certainly Germany, Germany, huge psychological study, you know, about how Germany thinks about and deals with this. Very, very difficult. England, of course, as the dying, as the dying empire. And then the Americans as the rising empire,

the 20th century. So we all, all three of those, European leadership and America, American leadership. This is our colonialism. This is a way, and this is a way, And this is the way what they thought, I think, that we could be colonial without really being colonial, right? Because Israel would do it. And I know when I was in the military, Israel was viewed not so much trusted even years ago, but they were viewed as an asset. And I was very surprised 30 years ago in the late 90s, early 2000s.

I was very surprised at that time to know, to find out that we did not have a mutual defense treaty with Israel, that they were not a part of a name. that we subsidized Israel to the extent that we do subsidize their military and their economy. I didn't know all those things. I also was surprised that we didn't have a base there because, you know, we had bases in places like Saudi Arabia where this actually was a big sticking point for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the early days. You know, it was like we have the American infidels have tainted a religious, location, right? And this is something I can't stand. This was

Obama, this was Osama bin Laden's kind of a story, which of course brought to him many, many followers in that time frame. So having bases in Saudi Arabia, having bases in Kuwait and some of these other places was an insult to the region. So why didn't we have bases in Israel, which was our friend ally and dependent? Why wouldn't we do that? I thought it was interesting. And of course, the fact that they have, have had nuclear weapons for decades that have never been declared so they don't have to abide by

the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. I was surprised to find these things out because they were our ally. They were our partner and they were our sharp end of the spear in many ways to maintain a strong military presence to coerce the rest of the Middle East to do whatever we wanted them to do, which of course mainly has to do with oil. Very interesting to see how differently we did that. So I see modern Israel and the formation of it, 1947, 1948. I see this as a twist on Western colonialism,

which was failing in the 40s and 50s and 60s. And of course the great, you know, 60s and 70s was a whole repudiation of European colonization around the world. But it was like the people there said, you know what? We can do colonialism without the worst parts of it because Israel will do it for us. And they have this biblical thing going on. They have the Zionist mission and they're able to enrich their country,

bring people in and manipulate the world to be a Western, you know, to support them. So and that's a very bad thinking. Okay, the people who studied Zionism, even Zionists at the time of the development of really hardcore Zionism is a place for Israel, a place for Jewish people to be safe to live in the Holy Land. Even many of those people saw big problems with what they were doing, right? They understood that this was not going to be like some sort of clean, modern, fresh take on colonialism. This was going to have every bit of the ugliness that we had in this country when we killed all the buffalo. Why did we kill all the buffalo? Like, I don't know.

We killed them because that's what the Indians ate in the plains, right? So this was a mass war. This was when we think of our civil war in the march from Sherman's march. And Sherman, of course, was a big Indian killer, but he took time off before and after the civil war to kill people in the south. You know, this deadly march from Atlanta to the sea, right? The swath of burning destruction, rape, pillage, just terrible behavior by Americans working for the Union against Americans who didn't like the Union. And really, this was at the end of the Civil War. So it was, you know, pretty broke, pretty not a lot of ability to fight back, right?

This is Gaza. This is our little Gaza in this country. But it was very short-lived, this thing, what Israel is doing. and this is not just Gaza. It's every part of Israel that they claim. And I would say even pre-67 borders, but we could just say, okay, well, Israel 48 to 67 when we had another war, let's go with those 67 borders.

Let's say that's okay. In my mind, it's not because it hides the real problem, right? But anyway, it's got every ugly taint of colonialism, and it has every ugly taint of everything that empires have ever done, except it's doing it and we're watching it on TikTok. We're watching it every day in media and yet we're helpless to stop it. So it's terrible crime. When you say 1967 borders, but it actually hides the real problem, what is the real problem?

The real problem is when you go and take people's property through, it's one thing to go buy property. And prior to the 1948, there was a lot of purchases of property. But eventually when the Israeli state then was asserted itself as a legitimate state, if you can say that, but at least the world recognized it, right? Truman recognized Israel. He didn't want to, but he did it. So, and they were assisted and supported by Europeans and Americans. Even then, you know, they had prior to that, they had fought a little bit, prior to the 48 Nopqa, they had they had purchased mainly property. But then it was just like, you know, that's too slow.

Isn't that kind of like what we thought when we went west? You know, that's a little too slow to buy it from the Indians. We bought Manhattan. We bought Manhattan from the Indians. We bought all kinds of various treaties. Yes, we broke most of the treaties. But there was kind of a diplomacy going on prior to Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana purchase and then the various movements west.

prior to that, we negotiated. We bought, we traded. Yeah, they weren't good trades, but for the Native American population, but we did that. And then later, that was too slow. That was too expensive. Let's just slaughter them. Let's just make it uninhabitable for them. We will destroy their food stocks. We will set them, set diseases upon them, right? Like so-called poison blanket, you know, the typhoid or whatever. Anyway, governments get greedy, okay? And the Zionist is no different than any other government. I don't pick on them as being more or less greedy as a government than any other government. But they get greedy and they say, you know what, we've got the strength. Let's take what we want and damn the consequences. And of course, there's lots of psychological ways you can justify this. Americans, the Europeans in the North America justified it in a certain way. They weren't Christian, right?

these we were spreading Christianity. These Native Americans weren't Christian. If they were going to live, they needed to convert, right? To Christianity. We've done that in a lot of places. We make reasons and excuses for how we're going to speed this up and force the issue. And that's what Israel has done. So they are a colonial power, but they are the last colonial power.

And they're the one, everybody else has kind of said, you know what, that's kind of bad. I kind of don't like that. But Israel's like, we don't care because we can do this. this power makes right might makes right and uh the other thing is of course there is a there is a religious problem and it's not you know Judaism is kind of like Protestantism I don't know I'm not I'm a Protestant I'm not a Catholic but at least with Catholicism there's really one main you know if you're it's under the Pope right the Pope what the Pope says that's pretty much what there's a few variations but in Protestant in the Protestant world there's got to be what a thousand different

variants right and they're all similar but they're everybody has their differences and that's Protestant and Judaism is like that. You know, this idea like, you know, oh, Jews, well, which ones, right? Which branch? Which, which kind of, if you're talking religion, there's many different ones, but there's only one political Zionism. And that's very, very, their imagination is quite limited, right? And all you have to do to see how limited it is, is listen to Bezomil Smotrich or Ben-Gavir or Netanyahu. Listen to what they say in English and in Hebrew, if you can get it translated. They have no imagination. Their vision, their governmental vision, their Zionist vision is the elimination of all Palestinian life from not just 67 borders and beyond,

but from the Euphrates to the sea, right? Greater Israel. And they will tell you this. So there's not a lot of imagination there. The Palestinians must be destroyed. Okay. And that's their overarching political goal. And unfortunately, 80%, they say, of Israelis, of Jewish Israelis anyway,

support the same vision. So it's a narrow, terrible, colonial, hateful. So do you think, do you think there will be peace there, right? Trump? Trump saying there's going to be peace. Well, you know, I'm paraphrasing. Trump has some power, but he doesn't exercise the real power that he has. And he hasn't done that in Ukraine either. He said, I'm going to stop you.

I'm going to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Well, maybe not 24, but how about a week or two by cutting off the aid and not supporting the NATO countries that are pouring in aid, not backfilling them, not giving them, UN top cover. He could have done that on day one. He did other crazy things on day one. He could have done that, but he did it. With his support of Israel has not just been sustained, it's been increased massively in terms of weapons and support and everything else. We provide 100% top cover at the UN for whatever Israel wants to do. So he's joined at the hip there. When you say top cover, what do you mean? A political top cover. Basically,

It's not a genocide and Israel's only defending themselves. Contrary to the fact that the occupiers can't, you know, don't, the occupied people have a right to self-defense. And that's beside the point because they have, like I said, limited imagination. There's a single recurring message. It's like COVID, really. There is a set of talking points, and we don't go over that. Now, why that is in America, are we controlled by Zionists? Well, no, we're not, but our government is beholden.

to them in many ways. I think there's a lot of blackmail that goes on. It happens everywhere. I think there's money to be made or the vision of money. And honestly, if you look at Wittkoff and Jared Kushner, because you know, Trump technically cannot make money, right, by expanding his businesses as president, even though he seems to be doing that. He likes to do that. But I think legally he's constrained. But Wittkoff's family is not constrained. And Jared Kushner's business is is almost a billion dollar capital firm. And what they're looking for is like all colonials, right? They're looking to make money off of this resource that they're going to be able to take over.

As long as they can get rid of the Palestinians and the way they tried to do it, not just bombing, but by destroying all of this, making it uninhabitable, much as we tried to do the planes for the Native Americans. Kill all the buffalo. They won't have any food, no culture associated with the buffalo. they'll disappear. I may sound, forgive my ignorance. That is the first time I've heard the Buffalo. You know, like, I guess it makes sense.

I just don't know if I were. I didn't know it for a long time. I always thought, because we, you know, we are, our mythology is that buffalo hunting was very popular. Yes. Because people would take trips out to hunt, like much as they do other big game out west. And we would slaughter the buffalo.

because the tongue was so important to us. The tongue, it was in delicacy. And I've eaten beef tongue. It's not all that's wrapped up to it. I don't get why buffalo tongue would be so. But that was the storyline. That was what we learned in our history books in school. See, and I guess on this side, I was always told it was the, not the pelt,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, was being sent back. That's what I did. I feel like that's how movies even portray it. Sure. Then the movies are a big part of it. what is a huge part of limiting our imagination about what the government does. But I remember seeing, and I've taught this in school in our history books, but they'd show great pictures of whole slaughtered acres and acres,

square miles even of dead buffalo. And they weren't skinned. And you've ever skinned an animal. I've on a farm. I've skinned an animal, okay, multiple times. I've butchered an animal multiple times. It's not fast and easy. It is a labor, okay?

And, you know, these guys that were, hunting weren't also saying, oh, let's put down our weapons. Now we'll skin and pack the meat out. It's not like, it's not like that. So these fields of dead buffalo, they said, oh, they had to kill them all for their tongues. It didn't, it doesn't make sense. They weren't killing for their tongues. And then later, later, as an adult, they said, why, why do we have to kill all the buffalo? And I'll tell you why I know this. Of course, Buffalo are coming back as a farmed item, as a park herds, you know, the Yellowstone herd and some of these other birds. And, and, of course, people grow buffalo you can you can eat buffalo meat now it and market it so it's becoming a thing and the

people who explain why they're in the buffalo business they know why all the buffaloes were killed and it wasn't for their tongues or their hides it was and and the history bears this out there are documents that i don't have in front of me but um this was part of an assault on the plains indians because they followed the herds if the herds were gone they would not be there anywhere there'd be no food source. That's right. And so this is kind of a, uh, what they're doing in Gaza, but we did this in the 1850s and we didn't have TikTok and we didn't have government media and we had stories, but the stories didn't tell people the truth. They told people the adventure part, not the actual fundamentals. And so in theory, we've gotten smarter, but that's what Israel is doing. They are,

they have always controlled food in Gaza, you know, they count the calories and only let the certain amount And this is long before October 7th. But yeah, this is a planned government slaughter. And it's being allowed, I don't know why, other than we're controlled by them and there's money to be made. But what's really alarming is the way they do talk about the post-Gaza future. Okay, first off, no Gossans are allowed to say anything about their future, right? Let's talk to the leading Gazaan. Let's talk to a Hamas guy.

What do you see happening in the next five years? How are you going to rebuild Gaza? We're not even asking that question because that's not going to be allowed. What we are talking about is, well, it's uninhabitable. It's construction ready in many ways. In fact, this is what Smotrich actually stated. He said, we've done the demolition of Gaza. We're ready to build. Okay. So that's colonialism. And we don't like to think. We think it's over.

we think in the 60s and 70s, everybody pushed off the, uh, the colonials, but we didn't. And we had, we still have it. And it's ugly. It's all, it was always ugly. And it's, it's, uh, that's what we're seeing in Gaza. So I'm, I mean, obviously I oppose it on moral reasons, but politically I oppose it because I, I don't stand. I don't support colonialism. I appreciate. You, you said the word I was trying to spit out. Hides. Hides was the word I was looking for with with Buffalo. I can, or Bison, I can, I can, I can't spit it out. When you talk about Hamas. I don't know how to ask the question, but I guess in my brain, Hamas is a terrorist organization. That is how they position it. When you say about talking to somebody from Hamas to say,

what do you want to do? They position that. Why would we talk to Hamas when they're the ones who are killing people and they, you know, and I can't even think, I don't know, can you go, oh, here's the leader of Hamas. I actually don't know. When you talk about Hamas, I guess, could you give me a bit more on that? Well, I just know what everybody knows about Hamas. And that is that it was funded and started by Netanyahu,

okay, as a counter to other Palestinian political groups. So, and a lot of the funding, they say, oh, Qatar, Qatar funds Hamas. And we thought we bombed Qatar because they're always funding Hamas. They're not an even player. But that money that much of the money that Qatar gives to Hamas in the past came from Israel. It was part of a divide and conquer political strategy to divide Palestinians who are physically separated by the apartheid in Israel. You know, Gaza is in one place, and then there's a land gap to where West Bank people are. And of course, they're being destroyed now too.

But over the past, what, 30, 40 years, the West Bank has, been, you know, turned into a really a rat maze of Palestinian roads that connect different Palestinian settlements that are closed periodically and, you know, checkpoints. It's an apartheid state. And the West Bank Palestinians are, they have a whole, how do we keep these people divided just for them? But Hamas was a way to divide the Palestinian authority and other popular Palestinian groups, which there's more than just, you know, these two, to allow them to be separate, you know, to compete with,

to fight with each other. And so, yeah, so Netanyahu funded Hamas. That's, you can check that out. It's very valid. It happened. Everybody knows it. It's the way it is. Then Hamas as a political organization, which it really is. There's Hamas, the political organization. Then there's Hamas, the military arm. Kind of like you think about Ireland, right? Ireland had a, I forget the name of the, you know what they were, the political group. But then they had military arm, which were to the Brits, complete terrorists, right? And they certainly conducted terror. There's no doubt.

So Hamas then as being funded in part by Israel, and a big part by Israel, and kind of supported won elections in 2006. And as soon as they won those. The IRA. That's what you're talking about. That was going to bug me as you were talking. I should know this off the top of my head, but I can't think of it. Yeah, so the idea that you would have a political movement with a military arm is this is part of the anti-colonialist fight.

This is what we saw. This is how colonialism was pushed back in many ways. Very often it was not a voluntary relinquishing of power. Think about Algeria, right, which is the model in the Middle East, unfortunately. That's the model that I think Hamas and Nassan. many other Palestinians would like to see, which is this tough, tough military battle that really gets the occupier out. Anyway, that's a long time ago. We don't have good, you know, Americans, we have no memory of that. But so once Hamas was elected and they ran the government,

they were blackballed. And then a number of, you know, Israel didn't like that. Well, that was also part of Israel's plan, right? You need to create enemies and you need people dividing. division. And I'll tell you this. So it goes on, you know, mowing the grass, Israel periodic bombings, the control of construction materials, concrete food calories, baby formula, whatever. All that's been embargoed and carefully managed at the border by Israel, right? Transit of people from here to there, carefully managed by Israel. It's a, it was an open air concentration camp. I mean, is how they they call it. And even with that, if you look at pictures, even prior to pictures of the cities in Gaza, even prior to October 7th, not even that much. These cities are not, they look good. They look like

Mediterranean old cities, right? I mean, people built that with the limited economic ability and power that they had under Israel controlling all their trade, controlling everything that they do. And supposedly Israel pays a certain subsidy to Gaza. But if they're in a war condition, what do we have wars for? So we don't have to pay our debts, right? So, you know, what the Gazans had done in surviving and building a society. You know, 99% of Gazans had education, serious education, literate. That's almost unheard of.

You can't say that in this country. We don't have 99% literacy rate. But the Gazans did. So they took the limited things that they had and they built a society and, you know, this is not what Israel wants. They want to destroy them. I'll tell you what was interesting to me. And I didn't think this way because with the Gaza, we think Hamas, Gaza, Hamas is fighting. Gazans are suffering, whatever.

As soon as this peace treaty, not a treaty, Trump's big peace plan, 20-point plan gets put in. One of the first things that happened, and I actually was surprised by this, I guess other people would be too. Maybe not. Hamas went on a housekeeping rampage and they started rounding up all the Israeli-funded gangs of people that live in Gaza. These are Gazans who had been doing a whole bunch of things that were being blamed on Hamas, you know, blocking aid, stealing aid, you know, black marketing aid, telling you know, helping target Hamas, helping the Israelis target it, things like that. And I said, oh my gosh, I didn't realize.

I thought Hamas had complete political control in Gaza, that that was just a one-party state. And, of course, it's not. But most of the opposing parties are funded by Israel also, kind of in the line with why Hamas was set up to begin with, as a counter to the Palestinian authority and the party of Abbas. So, yeah, this is very ugly. It's all very ugly and we shouldn't be involved in it at all.

I'll tell you, without the United States paying for Israel, defending Israel, spending our great resources to fight Israel's enemies, whether it's the Houdis, it's Yemen, it's Iran. You know, the 12-day war, there's a reason that we rushed in to drop those bunker busters, you know, and then immediately as soon as the bunker busters had fallen from the airplanes, Trump says, okay, peace, we have peace, the end of the war. Why? Because Iran's capability to really decimate Israel proper had been demonstrated, right? The Iron Dome was not able to keep up with the capabilities of Israel's enemies.

If we had not done that, Israel would really be in an economic and military hard place, and they would have had to pull back from Gaza, stop what they're doing there, stop what they're doing in southern Lebanon, stop what they're doing in Syria, wherever else that they're bombing and really defend probably the 1967 borders. But Trump swooped in with billions and billions of dollars of American weapons to bail Israel out. And that's basically our policy. Our policy is to cover for Israel and bail them out when they get in trouble. Without that, and Trump could have ended this in his first day in office by suspending.

And he didn't have to eliminate it, but he had to suspend it. but he had to suspend the aid, the military aid and the financial aid going into Israel. But he wasn't willing to do that because he took several hundred million dollars from strong Zionist donors who said the only issue we care about is what Israel wants they get. And he accepted that. He took the money and he accepted the deal. So he's a sold off guy just like so many. There's been a lot of talk of APEC in its influence in the United States.

Your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, it's a very effective lobby, and it has a unique little setup on how it evades being registered as a foreign agent registration act. You know, it's not covered under Farah, so we don't recognize it as a foreign advocate. And the reason the way they do this is we have, I think there's nine million Jews living in Israel, and there's almost the same amount in our country. but they're not spread out everywhere. You know, they're concentrated in our East Coast urban areas and in Hollywood. So, you know, they're concentrated in places where business brings them, and that's fine. But they are American citizens.

And they all have the right to return, which is they can all, they all have Israeli passports effectively, whether they hold it in their hand or they could get it in five minutes. So, but when they donate to APEC as an American lobby, they donate as Americans. So they're just saying, this is my issue. My issue happens to be whatever my foreign country of loyalty, you know, I mean, they don't, they wouldn't say that. But, you know, their issue is Israel. Their issue is whatever Israel wants, Israel gets. That's their issue.

But they are Americans and they're donating to an American-based lobby. So that's how they have evaded registration and exposure under the foreign agent as a foreign agent. That needs to be fixed, obviously. But there's a lot of laws that are kind of there's loopholes, right? And that's a loophole. It's a smart loophole. Well, it's been smart. It's been smart up to a few years ago when people started to really get wise to, why are we constantly in the Middle East fighting these wars? And people said, well, it's because APEC encourages this. And if an APEC also would go after America First type congressman. And people started to notice this. And that actually has hurt APEC quite a bit. And the other thing, of course, is social media. younger Jewish Americans. Of course they love Israel. Of course they, well, not all of them. But of course, if they want to travel to Israel, it's nice to have a country that will welcome you. And this is kind of good. You know, community. I get it. If I was, if I was a Jewish in America,

I would have traveled to Israel many times. Honestly, I really would. But the younger people aren't, I think, well, they're not as Zionist. You know, political Zionism is, if you actually look into it, it's kind of a fascist type thing. You know, it's a natural. nationalist apartheid-based thing. It says a religious group deserves its own state. And anybody who's not part of that religion, they can either work peaceably and submissively for the people that are part of the chosen religion,

or they can leave and they have no value. They don't have the equal civil rights. Well, we spent in America at least 100 years, at least since FDR, certainly the 60s, teaching all of our children that civil rights are really, really important. And that race and religion should not be discriminated against. This is what we teach our kids. We talk this way.

This is part of what the government thought was important to inculcate in its population. And now it worked very well. So now the population says, wait a minute, we shouldn't be treating people like this. You know, people have rights. People have freedom is important. Apartite is wrong, right? So the younger people, whether they're Jewish or not Jewish in this country, are not favorable towards Zionism. And the more they find out about Zionism, if they want to look into it, then there's nothing, there's no cell points in there.

It's not really attractive for Americans. So this is what's hurting APEC, is the fact that they're losing the younger generations. And congressmen themselves, who in the past have been very fearful of APEC for blackmail, for running primaries, against people in both parties if they didn't do what APEC said, that kind of thing. They are starting to assert themselves, as we're seeing, because there was a guy just the other day, strong Israel supporter, wants to get reelected. His people in his district don't like Gaza war. They wanted to end.

They are not fans of Israel right now. And so what did he do? He said, I'm giving back all of the money that APEC gave me and other Israel lobbies gave me in this election year. and he's been taking money from APEC for a decade at least. He's giving back the first three quarters of 2025 because the people don't like it and he needs to be able to say,

I'm not in Israel, I'm not serving a foreign country. So it's almost like it's an evolution of what's, you know, a congressman wants to get reelected. And now it looks like sometimes you might be able to do that by rejecting APEC. But yeah, it should have always been a, it should have always been a foreign agent registry. It works for Israel. And it doesn't really work for Israel.

I mean, do you think the war and all the wars that Israel is fighting is actually helping Israelis, Jewish Israelis that live there? No, that's why they've emigrated in huge numbers. Many of them aren't going to come back. When Israelis travel to Europe, not so much the United States, but sometimes the United States, certainly in Asia, they are getting treated like scum. You know, not like tourists. People are saying, I don't want your money.

Get out of my store. So none of what the government of Israel is doing, the Zionist government, none of what they're doing is helping or improving life in Israel for Jewish Israelis, much less anybody else that lives there. So it's just a counterproductive thing. But again, governments don't have big imaginations. It's very difficult. They are very path dependent, right?

They go down a path. They do this. They do that. This is going to work. We'll just keep doing it. this is going to work. Well, don't take any questions from Sean or anybody else because you have stick to your talking points because that's the government solution. Instead of what it should be is, in theory, governments are brokers of information. We have our position, but we're always,

you know, we want to learn. We support science. What are our scientists saying? Well, what about the scientists that the government's not paying? What are they saying? Well, we all listen to them, right? I mean, if you take a dime from somebody, we hold our congressman responsible. We say if you take the money, we say Trump took Zionist money. So that predicts his behavior. We don't like it. We shouldn't be, if we're going to take government money, we need to remember that we're selling a little bit of our freedom of speech and our freedom of imagination and our freedom of thought. And be careful with that.

One final question for you. And I've been enjoying the conversation. I appreciate you giving me all the extra time. You mentioned Venezuela being one of the new wars. I think so. But why do you think that, walk me through this? Oh, well, oil, you know, and also our Secretary of State, what is that guy's name? Marco, little Marco, Marco Rubio.

He has had a bug under his saddle for a long time with a lot of Central American countries. And certainly, if you remember when Trump had his first term, you know, I think that was when we sent, didn't we send another so-called new president of Venezuela down there to go down and be the president? And we've been messing with Venezuela for quite a long time. And it's a large country population-wide, bigger than Ukraine was even at the beginning, population-wise. But it's also got incredible amounts of oil reserves, which is, for Venezuelans, that's their national property, right? Much as we would think of, well, I mean, you know, the people didn't want the wind, the rich people on up in Boston didn't want wind turbines where they could see them from their beach houses, right?

Because they consider that visual space to be owned by them. That's theirs. They're proud of that, right? Makes sense. And for Venezuelans, their natural resources are incredibly important. It doesn't matter that they're not getting them out of the ground fast enough or that maybe their government is mismanaged or not profiting the people with their oil. It doesn't matter. We've seen people since Trump has started to kill fishermen boats and whatever under the auspices of a drug war,

you know, the people have rallied behind Maduro, who is not really, honestly, super popular, right? He's been in charge for a long time. The quality of life in Venezuela is tough. Life in Venezuela is tough. The economy is not good. But what did they do as soon? as Trump decided to say, I'm going to take your oil and put a new leader in for you. What do they? They rallied behind because that's how people do. I mean, in most countries respond in a similar way. So, yeah, that's our next war.

And Trump is obsessed with wealth, which we know, right? I mean, his whole life. But he is obsessed with resource control and power. You know, his tariff approach is, he sees that as taking power and putting more power into the American government and the American economy. Whether it will work or not, it's hard to say. But he sees this as a consolidation of power. He sees taking over and controlling everything he can control in this hemisphere as worthwhile.

That's good. He wants to do that. Well, I mean, this is the guy who walked into office the second time. First thing out of his mouth was I'm taking over Greenland, right? Why? Rare Earths and access to the Arctic. Okay, seriously, he dropped that after a while, I mean, but this is how he thinks. So Venezuela is a prize, and he wants that prize.

And he's going to couch it in, I mean, I think of all the places that run drugs into the United States, and there are many, plus we make our own drugs. Venezuela is like number 17, right? So it's way down there. It's not a big drug place. And so it's funny that the government, again, governments don't have big imaginations, okay? They put some talking points out and then they stick to them. It's a drug war. Well, you know, it doesn't fly.

But yeah, I think he wants that oil. He wants that investment. And really honestly, Trump also wants the Trump-Riviera on Gaza, whether he's president when he gets it or afterwards. He wants to visit. He wants to play golf on the beaches of Gaza, on the graves of basically the unsanctified graves of the dead. So, you know, again, I don't, I don't call that a big imagination.

I think we the people can visualize a far better world than our governments can. I appreciate you hopping on and doing this, Karen. It's been a, you know, when you said we were joking before we started folks, that she's like, you know, how long do you got? You know, and she's like, I can go long. I'm like, well, that's what I do on this side, right? I like to explore a conversation and get to know, somebody and appreciate you giving me some time this morning some extended time i might at yeah and uh just

appreciate it very much yeah well i do too thanks for having me and i appreciate matt erritt you know hooking us up together because i really like some of the stuff he's doing and um yeah we're all a big community thanks again yes thank you thank you very much okay thanks