The Duran Podcast - Collective West panic and delusion w/ Larry Johnson (Live)

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Collective West panic and delusion w/ Larry Johnson (Live)

All right, we are live with Alexander Mercuris in London. And we have with us once again on the Duran, the one and only Mr. Larry Johnson. Larry, great to have you back. How are you doing? Hey, great. Listen, this saves me an hour today because I have to watch you guys every day. So that's why I get it out of the way earlier. Very true.

And if there's one publication that I read and Alexander goes to every day, it is Sonar 21. It is Larry's publication as well as his substack. So I will put a link to those two platforms in the description box down below. Actually, that link is already in the description box down below. And I will add it as a pin comment when the live stream ends. So we encourage everyone to go to Sonar 21. Alexander Larry, before we get started, let's just say a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on Odyssey,

on Rock Finn, on Rumble and YouTube, and our locals community, the durand.locals.com. And a quick shout out to our moderators as well. Zareel is helping to moderate today. And I think that's it for now. So it'll be Zariol and myself moderating and hopefully more moderators join the chat. So Alexander, Larry, quite a busy couple of days in the world of geopolitics.

So let's get started. Well, indeed. And the title of our program is about collective panic and illusion amongst the leaders of the West. And I think that is absolutely right. And if you want to go and see this charted and discussed on an enormous day-to-day basis, You can do very well by going to Sownar 21 because Larry does, look, does a good job of covering both the panic and the illusion. Now, on this topic of panic, the kind of work that I used to do meant that I came across panic very, very often. It was something that I had to handle and, you know, hold people's hands and try and get them through moments of panic.

So I'm very familiar with it. And I can say absolutely that we have all of the symptoms of panic there. There's panic and the level of it has been rising. I mean, it goes up and down, but gradually, steadily you can see the panic levels go up. We've not yet, I think, reached anywhere close to the high point there. But the other thing about panic is, of course, that when people are in a state of panic, they tend to clutch at straws. They tend to engage in an awful lot of wishful thinking.

They imagine all kinds of magical events that will somehow turn things round. And I think we see that too. And of course they reinforced that. They found all of that. They build on all of that with very selective examinations, examination of the facts. And that's what we have also seen.

And that's, I think, where the illusions come. Panic and illusion are very, very close friends. So I just wanted to make those points because obviously there are two principal causes of the panic at the moment. One, I think, is the war in Ukraine, the progress of the war in Ukraine. The other is the various events, the wider events that are taking place in the world, the development, multipolarity. So I just wanted to make this introductory points and I'm getting now go over directly to Larry and let's talk about these in detail. And let's start by asking Larry about Ukraine, about the panic there, about to be precise, the latest meeting of the coalition of the

willing, which is taking place at the moment here. Well, in Paris, our Prime Minister, Kirstama, is involved in all of those discussions, perhaps you could tell us a few things about that. So over to you, Larry. Larry? Sure. You know, I saw that he talked about, yeah, we're going to give long-range missiles now to Ukraine. This is a recipe for setting up the United Kingdom to get hit by a missile from Russia. I mean, it's just insane. You know, when you talk about panic,

It is people are reacting then emotionally. They're not guided by reason or logic. And that's what's so striking and watching the actions of, you know, Starmer, Macron, Meritz in particular, but also Maloney to a lesser extent, the complete absence of reason without looking at. you know, the actual situation that's taking place. You know, what I was, you know, I'm older than you two boys. By a far stretch.

But, you know, growing up, I always wondered what it was like to have lived at the end of World War II and to have been watching, you know, the news day to day is the emergence of this new, of what was then a new world order with the end of. International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations, as this Western-dominated system came into place that then provided really the structure for events over my lifetime. Well, we're now witnessing the end of that. It's coming to an end, and we're witnessing the birth of this new thing

that's coming out of the east with Russia, China, India, Brazil in the lead. And it's something very different. It's something that we really don't, we're not accustomed to. And boy, I can tell you, here in the United States, people have not wrapped, you know, let's call it the leaders, the people who are influential in industry and in law and in financial matters. They don't even see it coming.

No. Yeah. So it is, the, the, this. this, I guess, a belief that somehow they can prevail over Russia and with respect to what's going on in Ukraine is one of the most delusionary things I've seen. You know, you guys talked about it the other day with respect to, you know, the oil market and the, but the story that's, you know, been playing through the ranks over here is that, Oh, Russia's in a desperate situation.

They're running out of oil and all the oil refineries have been destroyed. And people are queuing up to buy gas. And so I'm in touch with several people in Russia. And I'll just, you know, say, hey, you guys having trouble getting any gas for your cars? They go, what are you talking about? You know? So the disconnect between reality and this other is just phenomenal. I'd like to just talk about this, and I want to focus initially on the specific,

which is the coalition of the willing meeting, because it's based on two ideas. One is, well, three ideas, actually. One is that there are European troops, that there are enough European troops to send to Ukraine who are going to make a difference. That is one. The second is that the Russians are going to agree to this. And the third is that the United States is going to provide secure guarantees to the Europeans to enable this to happen. None of those is true.

Even Reuters today, I notice, is admitting that the Americans are not giving any concrete guarantees. So that's one of the Russians, as you've been making the point here in Article, article that you have been writing on Sonar 21 on your blog, have repeatedly said that for them European NATO deployments in Ukraine are out of the question. And the European troops, you only have to spend a short amount of time reading the European media to know that those troops in the necessary quantities don't exist. So why are we having these discussions? We've been having these discussions continuously since February, and we're still having them. But none of the conditions that would make this happen exist or will ever exist. What's remarkable is the failure

or the West to just simply listen to the Russians. So, you know, my first contact was in December of 2023, where I was in Moscow. And that's where I first met Pepe Escobar. And so Pepe and I are chatting with Sergei Rybkov. We had this, it was like a small, you know, I didn't appreciate what I was involved with back then. But, you know, here were where was Sergei Rybkov, the deputy foreign member. minister. And he starts by saying, he says, look, we don't have anybody to talk to. There's, you know, nobody's listening to us. So jump ahead to March of this year.

I'm in Moscow with Judge Napolitano and Marianne de Fall. And we're sitting, you know, in an intimate setting with Sergei Lovroff. And, you know, Lovroff is, you know, he's so down to earth. I mean, it really just, you know, there's no pretense, no error of, you know, I'm a really important guy, you know, none of that. And he says, look,

he said, we agreed with, he said the draft agreement we had in Istanbul, the Ukrainians brought that to the table, not us, and we were willing to sign off on that. But he made very clear what Russia's positions are. And then I watched

the reaction and listen to the people, you know, Donald Trump and his crew and the Europeans, they're not listening. And it's like gentlemen and ladies recognize that what you're dealing with here is Russia's finally reacting to a 30-year war by NATO. But 30 years in which the United States and the Europeans, have done everything in their power to try to subvert and attack Russia. And Russia, you know, you can fault the Russians for being pretty naive and trusting, you know, for so many years that they thought, well, I'm sure we can get along with the West. We just, you know, we'll try to try to adjust. And, you know, what I see now is Russia's finally sort of awakened and said, you know, this is an impossible.

relationship. We'd like to have it, but instead, you know, we're going to turn east. But meanwhile, the West refuses to accept that. And, you know, it's one thing to look in the mirror in the morning to say, you know what, I'm the strong, I'm the strongest guy in the world. I can run a marathon with no problems. And then the reality is you're, 200, you know, let's call it a 50 kilos overweight. And, you know, you spend all your time on the couch eating potato chips. So there's no way you're going to do that. It's such a disconnect from reality that the West has no military depth.

It's been proven over and over. They don't have troops to deploy. And yet despite that, they continue to believe that somehow they can intimidate Russia and compel Russia to bend to the will of the West. You're absolutely I mean you talked about missiles

and long-range missiles that Kirstarmer is talking about. We've already provided Ukraine with the long-range missiles that we have. It didn't make any difference. I mean, what were the storm shadows then? What were the scouts? What were the attackers? And here

again, there is still an enormous amount of discussion in the West about the military situation and you know this is ukraine is holding its own it's inflicting enormous casualties on the other side one ukrainian soldier is worth 10 russians i've actually read somebody who actually said that that you know because of the superior level of training and motivation the ukrainians have so much better than the russians all they need to do is to adopt our wonderful combined arms tactics. There are still people who talk in this way.

And it is not true that the Russians are winning. Now, that has become, by the way, the latest orthodoxy. There's a grudging acceptance now, at least in Europe, that they are not losing. Back in 2023, 2024, we were saying that they weren't losing. But now we accept that they are not losing. but it's untrue. It's false to say that they are actually winning.

The Ukrainians are holding their own positions. Can you comment on this? And where does this come from? They can't keep their narrative straight. So on the one hand we hear, boy, Russia's failing. They've only got like 19% of Ukraine. Well, and no offense, Alexander. This is a lawyer's trick.

because they say take all of Ukraine, particularly the part that's west of the Nipar River, yeah, Russia's only got 19%. Well, Russia has no intention of taking the 60% that's west of the NEPA. But, oh, they've only got 19%. Then we get down to the exchange of dead soldiers. And in the last exchange, Russia was given 19 dead. Russians and the Ukrainians were given a thousand dead Ukrainians. And one of the people in the West say, well, see, that's because the Ukrainians haven't

been able to recover the bodies that they've lost as the Russians are advancing. But wait a second, you're telling me on the one hand that the Russians aren't advancing. They've only got 19%. Now you're telling me that the Russians are advancing so fast you can't recover the bodies. Which is it? Just pick one. I don't care. Give me one story. Stick with it. So, you know, I've had a chance to interview General Evgeny Buzinski, who, you know,

he's incredible. Actually, you guys ought to consider getting him on your show at some point in the future. Funny guy, but, you know, very experienced. And he was directly involved with all of the negotiations. with the West over you know or trying to negotiate with the West with respect to NATO and other things and and we got talking about the right I asked him directly about the Russian strategy I said you know why why hasn't Russia taken out all the bridges over the neighbor why haven't they completely cut off the logistics and and trapped the Ukrainian forces on the east side of the river and he laughed he goes I've been asking that myself. But then as we got talking about it, he explained, you know, he says, I think the real reason is that Russia didn't want in the beginning to cut off

and leave the bulk of the Ukrainian forces on the east-west side of the river because he says the goal is to demilitarize Ukraine so that they can't pose a threat in the future. And so when you look at what the Russian general staff, is doing. To me now, you know, and I miss this in the early days, they've embarked on this genuine war of attrition.

They're going to destroy the offensive capability of the Ukrainian military. I think the one thing they didn't anticipate in all of this was that they were going to end up also destroying NATO or exposing NATO's. lack of depth. And so even though that that's taking place, when you go to, I can list a host of Western,

you know, former generals, Petraeus, Hodges, Kemic, Jack King, boy, I have never seen so many people in denial and just completely divorced from reality, not able to recognize, you know, I'm not some reincarnation of Klauswitz.

You know, I'm not some genius. But, you know, I can add and subtract, okay? I can do some basic things. And what we're seeing take place is Russia's military capability is growing. And they are, despite the Western stereotype, that it is a rigid Soviet system incapable of adaptation, it turns out they're they're flexible like some

some old style Soviet gymnast who can bend in every direction and jump across the floor so they're they are they're surpassing the West and the West has not come to grips with it it's I mean it's one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen

can we just perhaps talk about the economics now because again you've been writing a lot about this and i think very correctly because friedrich merth who's the chancellor of germany he's just made a speech he says that well maybe maybe we can't defeat the russians on the battlefield i mean i'm summarizing but the right way to do this is to exhaust them and to do that by imposing more sanctions on them and tightening sanctions on them again isn't that what we have already been doing. I mean, what have we been doing for three and a half years? I mean, I well remember because I remember, I read what are these things that I read the White

House website at the time. I remember the senior administration official who was probably Jake Southern explaining back in February 22 that the United States, if the Russians marched into Ukraine would impose on Russia the strongest possible imaginable sanctions that they would go right up to the ceiling so that there was no further place to go. I mean, that was his language. That was the official's language. And they did it. They imposed, they threw Russia out of, they're not Russia, most of Russia out of Swift. They seized the central bank's assets. They did everything you could possibly imagine at that time, we didn't work. So we're going to do more. And we're not just going to sanction and tariff Russia. We're going to sanction most of the

world as well. China, India, Brazil, everybody. And that's how we're going to win. Now, isn't this illusion, this is delusional on an epic level? Because that's how it looks to me. Oh, no, yeah, absolutely great. You know, look, When the special military operation started, I really had not paid much attention to what was going on in Ukraine up to that point, or in Russia for that back. But I started just doing some basic research. And I was, you know, early on, I was like, wow, I didn't realize that Russia probably of every country in the world is the only one that is self-sufficient in all natural resources. They can feed themselves, they can produce whatever they need for industry, that they don't have to go outside and trade with anyone in order to survive.

So I was able to figure out that, gee, if you're in that situation, you're not vulnerable to sanctions. And I started writing about that early in 2022, and I actually got into a bit of a debate. with some, you know, one of these Harvard-based economists who was insisting, oh, yeah, Russia's on the ropes. And I said, well, what are you talking about? They don't need the West. And so that's the first point that I think has been missed over time. Then we turn to this notion of Donald Trump's tariff war against the world. And it's one thing when you,

are in a, if you will, a dominant position that people need what you produce, that you don't necessarily need what they have, but they, you know, their economic growth or economic success is somehow dependent upon having a relationship with you. Well, sorry, that, that world doesn't exist as far as the United States is concerned, that, you know, we like to pretend it, but as we've seen in the case of India, you know, oh, yeah, India, is Trump's says, you know, they, it is true. India is in the top 10 of countries that trade with the United States. But the amount that they're trading is like $85 billion.

Well, in a $4 trillion economy, you know, that's, that's jump change. And yet Trump and his team persisted in believing that somehow that would intimidate India. And the Indians, you know, with both Modi and Jay Chankar. He's going, wait a second. You know, we like to have a relationship with you, but we're not going to be bullied. We're not going to be threatened.

And instead, you know, I think what we've seen now with respect to India is they've await, you know, they were not a, I wouldn't have called them a BRICS enthusiast a year ago or at least prior to Kazan. And Kazan was helpful because it got him started the opening up the relationship with China. But now, after they've seen what the, you know,

this turn as the United States has come after them, that they say, okay, look, we've got some other alternatives on the trade front. So in the West, there's this persistent belief, or particularly in the United States, this persistent belief that we are the dominant economic power in the world, and that whatever we say goes and other countries have to submit. And this is why Bricks has become this new reality,

this donning of the New World Order that we talked about earlier. They recognize we can no longer be in a position where we can be held hostage by the United States. We're not going to have a conference. We don't want to be in a confrontational stance with the United States. but we're going to set up another path where we can do something that is, you know, really sort of unique in history. Because as President Putin noted, I think his comments yesterday, we're not looking for one hegemon, you know, the new boss, same as the old boss kind of thing. We're looking for actually a system of mutual respect and which countries are enabled to not be held hostage to the, dollar where they can't be crippled and I tell you in this side of the ocean people don't

understand what's taken place they do not they still dismiss it as all those crazy those crazy Chinese and Russians and Indians they you know bricks that's nothing no it's it's it's for real and it's it's going to continue to grow to the point that one of these days the United States is going to we're no longer in control. What is very strange about the Indian business, the Indian affair, which is, I think, I think it's becoming increasingly acknowledged, even in Washington, that this is a debacle, that this has turned into a debacle.

What is extraordinary about it, is that it was utterly predictable. You tell India, first of all, you tell India, you know, we don't, you know, we got all this problem with oil because, you know, we're sanctioning Russian oil, and the result is that oil is going through the roof, the price of it is going through the roof. So can you go buy some of their oil to stabilize the market? So the Indians, at our encouragement, go out and buy oil to stabilize the market. Then we come along, we tell them, no, no, no, you must stop doing that. You mustn't buy any more oil from the Russians. That was before. Now what you need to do in a time of higher inflation and economic stress,

you must stop buying oil from the Russians, the oil which we encouraged you to buy. And then if you don't, we're going to impose tariffs on you. And then when they don't, and we do impose tariffs on them, we are surprised and angry that they're annoyed with us. And they're going to meet Chinese, who we have always said are our great adversaries. Wasn't this inevitably going to happen? What kind of statesmen do this? It seems very strange.

I mean, the United States, as I've been reading in many places, spent decades trying to build a good, strong relationship with India. but he doesn't seem to have understood India at all. Yeah. Well, first, I suggested, you know, sarcastically tongue-in-cheek that this was a diabolical plot by Donald Trump to actually win the Nobel Peace Prize by in terms of bringing India and China together.

That, you know, maybe he deserves it because of that. But, you know, the animosity or let's call it, let's say, It was much of a rancorous relationship between Beijing and Delhi over the last 20, 25 years. But now we're seeing something that, again, it gives me hope for the future that instead of China and Russia, I mean, China and India is squaring off and hurling insults at each other. Their leaders are now, they're talking. they are you know that that picture the other day of the opening of the Shanghai cooperation organization with Putin Modi and she standing there and they're all laughing I mean and these were not forced laughs or you know oh yeah that's pretty fun no these were genuine

there was real mirth reflected in what they were saying and it's it's all off topic but that has created some hysterical memes going around, you know, what they were actually laughing about. But the point is now that in this growing tie between India and China, and India has always been the red-headed stepchild as far as Washington, D.C. is concerned because our big ally in that region has been Pakistan because, you know, going back, what was it, in 1960 when we put the U2, so Pakistan hosted the U2, which was flying over Russia, whereas India was buying weapons from Russia 60 years ago. So India has always had a much closer relationship with Russia.

And, you know, the United States has never really taken the time to try to, you know, forge those ties with Russia or with India. At the same time with Pakistan, you know, we used Pakistan as well as sort of the aircraft carrier to launch attacks inside of Afghanistan against the Soviets when they were there in the 80s. And then, you know, again, when we got into the, after 9-11 going into Afghanistan, we used Pakistan again as a major logistics hub. So the United States, I don't think, has ever really had a genuine respect for India. But now they're discovering that, you know, the Indians are not a bunch of colonial slaves that we can boss around.

And I love the fact that Modi's not returning Trump's phone calls, you know, reportedly four or five of them. And Modi's not picking up the phone. It's like, yeah, we've got other things to do. AJP Taylor, the British historian, once wrote, and I heard him say he came up with this, metaphor. He repeated it again and again, that the Western powers like to use Russia like a tap that they can turn on and off whenever they want. And it seems to me it was exactly the same with India.

They thought they could use India like a tap. They could turn it on when they needed it to buy Russian oil and they could turn it off when they didn't want it to. But of course, the reason is because they didn't believe this would ever happen. They didn't believe that India and China would, ever become would ever reconcile and they didn't believe that china and russia would ever reconcile either i continued to read people and say this relationship between china and russia isn't for real there's been articles i remember when they first started to sort of move towards each have edged towards each other. Well, about 10, 15 years ago, people said this isn't going out work. There's too deep suspicion for two. The one, the two countries are too suspicious.

They've got too much history of hostility. I know some people, I mean, Ray McGovern, we both know obviously know well, you know very well. He always said, this is absolutely for real. But others were saying, all kinds of people were saying, received opinion, conventional opinion, was that this was not real that they were the best of frenemies. Spigney of Prasinski said it is inconceivable that Russia will ever become friends of China. Joe Biden said exactly the same thing.

And lo and behold, they're now friends. They have a strategic partnership. They are at the core of Bricks. And why do people think the same is not going to happen between China and India too? China and Russia had a border dispute, but they sorted it.

India and China can settle their border dispute as well if they choose to. Yeah, this conventional wisdom, and that's an oxymoron right there to apply that it's a wisdom. I can't emphasize enough how deep-seated and genuine is the belief here within the, let's call it the circles of punditry and policymaking in the United States. States, that they just can't wrap their minds around that Russia really has a deep relationship with China. They really assume that this is something superficial that can easily be broken and that all we've got to do is peel off Russia away from China. Now, I saw firsthand, you know, the first morning I went down for breakfast at the

Intercontinental Hotel in Moscow. out. And I walked into the breakfast room. I thought I was in Beijing. I was the only, you know, westerner in the room. Everybody else was Chinese, you know, happily eating breakfast and talking. So this relationship between China and Russia, apart from just the political, it's economic, it's diplomatic but it's also it's cultural with them sharing and you know one thing i didn't appreciate until i started i looked it up in the wake of donald trump's crazy remarks and insulting remarks with respect to china on the 80th anniversary or commemoration of the end of world war two of how important the soviet union aka russia was to china

during World War II. You know, that war for the Chinese started in 1937. And here's Trump saying, oh, look at all the blood we shed. Newsflash, the United States lost a grand total of 110,000 Marines, soldiers, and sailors in World War II. I'm not going to minimize that loss. But the Chinese Army lost three and a half million men. They fought during World War II 70% of the Japanese army was in China.

It wasn't out in the Pacific. You know, the way the story's told in the West is that, oh, the West, man, we beat those Japanese. We were fighting, you know, a third of the Japanese army. And during that entire period, starting in 1938, the Soviets, now the Russians, supplied critical weapons and advice and other things to the Chinese. You know, the reality is China kept two-thirds of the Japanese army

pinned down so the United States could beat it. But that's not the story that's told. In fact, the way the story is told, China was a nothing burger on that front. I mean, it is, you know, the way our history has been twisted in this regard is, quite striking. But now, both Russia and China, despite, yes, the Chinese are, you know, communists, I'm not sure what that means anymore,

because, you know, I have never seen such a capitalist society. And what they've done in terms of their transportation systems, what they've done in terms of building up these cities that are incredible, and they're leading a variety of technology, they're leaving the West in the dust. And yet, Russia is this deeply orthodox Christian nation. You have to go there to really get a sense of how, you know, this is not something put on. They are men and women of deep faith.

And yet, they see in the Chinese a partner. And it's not, it's nothing that's very, it's deep and it's getting more integrated, I think, with each passing day. And the West, again, the West has refused to accept that reality or even to acknowledge it. It's part of the problem that we have become so used since the time of the colonial empires and our own dominance of thinking that in one, we are militarily superior. We're so superior over every thought that nobody really else counts. That includes the Russians, by the way.

And we've had all those histories of the Second World War that many of us read when we were young, which again implied that the Germans during the Second World War on the Eastern Front were much, much better than the Russians were. So we have that assumption of our own enormous superiority. And of course, the belief, too, that somehow we can rearrange countries and play them off against each other.

I'm sure you remember back in the 70s and 80s how people used to talk about how we would play the China card against the Soviet Union, which even at the time I thought was extraordinary, by the way, but it was an absolute commonplace. You saw it all over the media nowadays. And we can't really get used to the fact that both the cards have a will of their own

and play themselves and can actually bite back if we try and push them, which is exactly what they're doing, what the Russians are doing in Ukraine, and what the Chinese and the Indians are doing with each other. Yeah, well, I heard this retired General Kimick the other day. I think he was on Piers Morgan. And, I mean, he said something so incredibly stupid with respect to Russia and China. He intimated that the Russian and Chinese have all. always been, you know, fast friends working together.

And I'm going, where were you in the 50s? I mean, you know, he's my age. So I said, were you not paying attention in the 50s and 60s? You know, during the Vietnam War, it wasn't the Chinese who were providing active support to the Vietnamese. It was the Russians or the Soviets at the time. So this, and the entire reason that Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, was from a strategic standpoint to make sure that China was split away from Russia and to try to, you know, create tension there.

But now the situation that we're confronting is the, particularly in the United States, we are pushing this narrative that China is the real threat we've got to deal with. and I wish I had the video capabilities of being able. I'd like to put together a film contrasting the U.S. military parade that took place on July 4th with Donald Trump. You got a bunch of overweight out-of-shaped soldiers not marching in unison, no precision with what we witnessed yesterday in Beijing. And what we witnessed on May 9th in Moscow, the precision, the, and why is this important? It simply reflects how the people that were tasked with putting this on cared. They gave a dam.

And they made sure that everybody who was involved in this, and when you look at what the Chinese said, thousands of soldiers, men and women. But they were trained in what they needed to do and they were able to execute it. Where what was going on in the United States was this slovenly, disorderly appearance. And again, it's reflective of leadership. So this failure to. appreciate that now China and Russia, they are, I think they are genuinely interested in creating, if you will, a new political order, a new international political order.

I mean, you know, no offense to the United Kingdom or to France, but there's, why should they, they're no longer relevant countries. Why should they have a veto on the UN Security Council? Whereas India with 1.5 billion people and one of the top five economies in the world, excuse me, they definitely should have a say and those kinds of things. So what we're witnessing in the West is this old colonial order is collapsing. We're having trouble coming to grips with this emergence of this New World Order. I'd just like to finish with economics again, because, of course, we're talking about, we're talking about maths, as I said, we're talking about exhausting the Russians economically, about more sanctions and tariffs, expanding the tariff war and the economic war, if you'd like, to more and more of the world in order to try to achieve this wonderful objective of exhausting the Russians. The reality is the people who are becoming exhausted economically is as us ourselves.

Now, I don't know how real, how obvious that is in the United States. I think that to some extent your economy is in still much better shape than ours in Europe is. But anywhere in Europe, go anywhere in Europe, certainly in Britain now. And we have a government crisis in Britain, where the deputy prime minister looks likely to resign today, a government crisis in France, higher bond prices across the West, explosion, explosive increases of the price of gold, stagflation, budgetary problems, symptoms of economic decline. They are everywhere.

And anybody who tells you that this is unconnected to the sanctions war is simply not looking at the reality. of this. So again, why do people like maths and Macra and all those people in the United States who advocate intensifying the economic war? Why can they not see that? Yeah, it is, the disconnect from reality is remarkable. In the United States, for example, we're being told that, oh yeah, we got inflation under control. I was with a friend over the weekend who's involved with construction of homes. And he was telling me that, you know, he said a year ago, when I went out to buy, you know, a roll of copper wire that's used to run, you know,

that you wire a house up connect electrical outlets and lights, he said, I was paying $50 a year, $50 a year ago. He says today that role costs $165. That's inflation. Now, as those impacts start to, you know, work their way through the system, we've got this really disconnect of we got the United States is printing so much money, so many dollars. And in the past, it's been able to get away with all.

printing all of this cash because foreign governments were buying up the we're buying up us treasury bills in other words they were they're basically uh let's put into terms of the audience who understand it's like you go to college and your parents give you a credit card but they're going to pay the bill hey anything better than that man i can go i could go eat i I could buy whatever I want. That's essentially what the United States was doing. The parents were all these other countries that were buying up U.S. Treasury bills. The United States had a credit card.

It could just spend to its heart's content. Then comes the day when the parents say, you know what? You're on your own. We're not writing that bill anymore. Oh, boy. Then we have a problem. And when you start looking at, you know,

debt to GDP ratio and to sort of simplify it for people. It's like if your income every month is $100 or every day, you get $100 a day, but you're spending $125 a day, that's your debt to GDP ratio, you're spending more than you're bringing in. And when you look at the United States and NATO, every single country, the major economy in NATO and Europe, along with the United States, are in excess of 100 plus debt to GDP. You know, Germany, yeah, Germany right now is like at 70, but three years ago, it was a 50. So it's now rapidly accumulating debt. and at the very time when its industries are contracting.

So there's not a single country in Europe that you can point to that is growing and expanding because they've got a dominant market. Whereas you look at the BRICS countries, every single one of them is growing. Even, you know, Russia is like 1.5% projected for this year. But that was not because there are, economy was, quote, in trouble because Nabilina, the central banker, she took action to quiet inflation.

So this was a direct consequence of Russia saying, yeah, we've got an inflation problem. We're going to deal with it. But the other countries in the BRICs, they're growing. And they actually have real economies. And they don't have that debt to GDP ratio. I mean, there's Russia, 19% debt to GDP. It's just, it's unheard of. So it's not just that on the military front,

the Russia, let's call it the east and the west are, the west is at a disadvantage. It's also on the economic front. And that's why, you know, Bricks now has surpassed the G7 in terms of having economic power. Bricks represents 50% of the world population or more. And as well, when you look at the GDP in terms of purchasing power parity, 50%, essentially. So it's no longer a world where the Western economies dominate.

And, you know, we haven't come to grips with that yet. We're in complete denial about this transformation, at least on this side of the ocean. I don't think it's any different here. I think it's probably even worse here. We continue to believe in London and Paris and Berlin that we are important and great states, great powers. I mean, we're still great nations. We could be, but we're not great powers.

And that is perhaps the greatest and most foolish illusion of all. Larry Johnson, thank you very much for answering my question. So thoroughly and fully. If you just stay there If you don't mind, I know Alex, my friend and colleague will have some questions from the VEOs to put to you.

You have time for some questions? Oh, absolutely, guys. I make time for the Duran. You know, you guys like a daily ritual. Got to watch the Duran folks. Agreed. All right. From Nico.

So let's start it off. It's a two-part question, Larry. Mr. Johnson and Duran, Germany smuggled more tourist missiles. Ukraine has the flamingo, and the U.S. has given 100 ERMs. They are preparing to strike. If they strike at Russia, what happens when Russia doesn't strike at Germany or the U.S.? The Russian people are angry. Finland is also itching for war.

Well, I think let's start with the e-ram that what is that the enhanced range attack missile, whatever it's called. That appears to be a fabrication. And I don't mean fabrication in terms of they built it. I think it doesn't exist. So it's been trotted out there as something that they're likely to, you know, trying to deploy. But there's no there there. the German attempt to sort of smuggle the Taurus missile in to Ukraine, rebranded as something else and allow the Ukrainians to launch, I think the Russians were on top of that, and they've destroyed the factories that were trying to manufacture that. So they've taken those out.

So the West, you know, we've got to, I guess, recognize that there's a real disconnect between what it's. said in the West and what they can actually do. And so I think while, again, they're talking about, quote, long-range missiles, I don't even sure what that entails. Up to this point, Russia's been content to take out what's inside of Ukraine. But I, you know, I can't rule out the possibility that one of these days, Germany or the UK will cross a line and then Russia will feel, compelled to hit back.

I really, I hope it doesn't come to that because that's where, you know, that's where this conflict will spin out of control. And I, you know, watching Putin, he understands that. You know, this is the thing that we don't get into West. United States really

suffered very, very little damage out of World War II in terms of loss of human life. Britain did have, Britain, you know, on a per capita basis, did experience more casualties than the United States. But neither Britain nor the United States experienced what Russia experienced.

And that losing 27 million of your citizens, your fathers, your mothers, your brothers, your uncles, boy, I mean, it has left an indelible mark on the consciousness of the Russian people. One that it lingers, you know, 80 years after the war, they still remember today. in a way that the average American remembers nothing about World War II. You're going to add anything, Alexander, to that? No, I think Alex, I think I think Larry's unanswered it perfectly clearly. I mean, if you want, I mean, the flamingo, which looks to me. And I've said this already, and I've been told this is probably, I mean, it looks like a

a V1 German wheel V1 knockoff from the size of it. I don't think the Russians are scared of this missile either. I gather it's big, it's slow, it's not stealthy, it doesn't maneuver very well, it can in theory go long distances. But, I mean, it looks to me like the Russians will be able to deal with it without any problems, assuming it's used in any quantities at all. There's always the risk. I mean, there is always the risk.

There is always the risk. Yes, but bear in mind that the Ukrainians have been able to do sabotage and various things inside Russia, as we know, drone attacks on the airfields, the attacks on the refineries and things of that kind. Some of the things they've done have been pretty dramatic, but they've not changed anything. They've not changed Russia's strategic calculus in any way. They've not created massive feelings of anger amongst the Russian people

that have compelled the Kremlin to do things that would be reckless and counterproductive. And I can't imagine that the Flamingians. or any of these missiles that we've been hearing about is going to change that overall situation in any way for the very reasons that Larry was saying. Hey, who names the missile of the flamingo? Look, I'm in Florida. A pink bird with skinny legs?

Really? That's your threatening weapon? It's different. Yeah, I'll give you that. It's actually pretty pretty, Good branding, I guess. You remember it. Sparky says Larry,

does President Trump know Javier Millay smuggled Argentina's gold reserves to the UK, so globalists would have even more leverage over them? Is Malay parting out Argentina like a corporate raider? Yeah, you know, it's been, oh, good Lord. 42 years since I lived in Argentina. I lived in Cordoba back in 1984, 41 years ago.

So, you know, I think Malay, his, you know, he's starting to run into some trouble. I mean, Argentina has been a perpetual basket case since, you know, 1982 in the wake of, you know, they're sort of an example of where I think the United States is headed because in the in the in the 1970s during the dirty war they also they had an enormously strong peso. It was the kind of thing that you know in the city I lived in Cordoba people would get on a flight. They'd bored like midnight 11 o'clock at night. They'd fly.

it's like a seven, eight hour flight up to Miami. So they'd arrive in Miami at like eight o'clock in the morning. They'd go shopping and then load up with goods. Then go back to the airport and fly back. I mean, it was like day trips from Argentina to the United States because their currency was so strong. When I lived there in 84, it was the era of hyperinflation. and it was a thousand percent annual inflation.

The prices were lit. You'd go to the grocery store in the morning to buy, you know, fruit or meat. And then if you went back in the afternoon, the prices were literally changing between morning and afternoon. So, you know, Argentina is sort of recovered from that, but it never really has. So, you know, if Malay really is shipping gold to the UK, okay. I'm sort of surprised by that, but I, you know, I think he's, you know, he's facing some

political headwinds down there that, you know, Argentina's essentially, it's, it's drama all the time. You know, Peron, Peron coined the term, Panis Circo, you know, bread and circus. And, you know, Argentina seems sort of committed to that. Mitch Switch says, Very disappointing show today. No shirt wars. Of course, just kidding. You are all three a great source of information.

Thank you for that, Nitz Switch. Sparky says... Let me just suggest. Maybe that's another thing you can add to the Duran line of clothing, you know, sort of the tropical, the tropical Duran look. I think it would be a big hit. It just might appear on the shop one day, Larry.

It just might appear. Larry from Sparky, if President Trump is awarded the Nobel Prize for bringing Russia, China, and India together, then people say it wasn't his intention. Will Trump answer, yes, it was. I was playing 70 chess. Absolutely. You know, Trump admit that he was wrong. Are you kidding? Heavens, no.

This is my plan all along. I was so clever. You know, I wish that was the case. you know it is the behavior of Trump is in my view it's become increasingly erratic now there's still some who believe that he's he's playing a sophisticated game but

as we saw just it was it two days ago this this militarization of a drug war I mean look you know when I set up with my other partners Berg Associates back and

1998. One of my other two partners, one was, had been the former chief of international ops for DEA. The other had set up the all of the undercover operations for money laundering in New York City. So we've, you know, what we did with Berg Associates for much of our time together was do money laundering investigations that involved drug trafficking. The notion that this, that Maduro had come. commissioned a speedboat carrying narcotics to go from Venezuela to the United States? I mean, it's so ridiculous, and yet it gets reported on this side of the ocean is, oh, yeah, yeah, they destroyed it.

And then I also factor in that my experience of 23 years scripting military exercises for U.S. Military Special Operations Forces. I never saw a single, and those exercises. You would always have a portion of what's called the execute order and in that execute order would be listed what are called Rules of Engagement, R.O.E. And the rules of engagement would dictate under what circumstances U.S. military could use violence forced to kill other people. There is absolutely no evidence that that boat was firing on U.S. naval personnel or U.S. military. You don't see any visible flashes from muzzles. Even if they were shooting, it would have been small arms.

And yet, without that boat posing a physical threat to the United States military, we blew it up. This was nothing. From my view, this was an act of murder. This is a criminal act. And yet, here in the United States, we've become. I'm so accustomed to killing other people with drones and with remote bombs and such. The average people are, yeah, this is great, man, we're teaching those drug traffickers. What I saw as we investigated narcotics trafficking and money laundering over, you know, starting in 1998.

And the very first case we worked on was the Bank of New York Russian money laundering case is the drug cartels. Don't load up these speedboats with drugs to send to the United States. That was 1980s Miami Vice territory. They don't do that anymore. Far more sophisticated, far more organized. It's a business for God's sake. And yet this lie is being sold because we're trying to claim that this is some narco-terrorist empire in Venezuela. when, you know, what's really going on is Trump,

Trump's trying to finish up what he tried to do in his first term, take out Maduro and cause regime change. And again, this is another symptom of the sickness that afflicts the United States, in my view. Yeah. Step by step, they're building the narrative for conflict with Venezuela. Yeah, Masuel. It's obvious.

Let's see here. From Lisa Henderson, Larry, what are the odds that India returns to the arms of the West or claims neutrality? Slim and none. The Indians have too much self-respect. And, you know, they've been trying, they've tried to get along with Donald Trump,

but I think there comes a level of insult. And look, I can't rule out. that the attack that took place in Kashmir was three months ago, that I can't say definitively, the CIA had no role in that. I personally believe that Western intelligence agencies at least helped encourage that kind of attack for the very purpose of trying to create conflict between India and Pakistan and indirectly between India and China.

split India and China. It's that bad. And just as a side note, check out the size of the U.S. embassy in Armenia. It is one of the largest embassies in the world. Armenia is what, 2.8 million people? And we've got one of our largest embassies there. Huh, I wonder what's going on there.

Could it be that the CIA has a station that one is devoted to seeing what they can do to subvert Russia and the other devoted to subverting Iran, nah, that wouldn't happen. But, you know, I think we need to step back and look at all of this with Trump's not in control of the agenda. If anybody thinks that Trump's in control and directing this, forget about it.

Because with that meeting where he brokered the peace, ended the war between Armenian and Azerbaijan, John, where did that come from? I guarantee you that came out of the intelligence community. That was not an initiative to Trump. Sparky says, Larry, what will the world do without the West to save them? Hey, we got to, listen, we got to keep India and China, or Russian China in particular, as enemies. Otherwise, what are Raytheon, general dynamics, Boeing going to do?

Lockheed Martin, we've got to have that external threat in order to justify a trillion dollar defense budget. Come on, get with a program. All right. This is for Larry Ed, for Alexander. It's coming from Nicos. I wanted to ask this for a long time, which is your three most evil people in the U.S. for you? Mine are Hillary Clinton, Lindsay Graham, and Victoria Newland.

The good list. Larry and then Alexander, the three most evil people in the U.S. Okay, I guess I'll go first. I put John Bolton on the list. Hillary definitely belongs there, Hillary and Bill together. And you know, you can't, you know, Lindsay Graham, he's a natural. He's replaced McCain. But tell you what, there's a long, we could come up with probably a good 50 or 60 names.

And what qualifies as evil? People who are encouraging and supporting and creating conditions to use military force against others. You know, the one that really, you know, is it haunts me every day. This genocide that's underway in Gaza and the complicity of the United States in enabling that. It is, you know, it's horrific. And yet the United States willingly is supporting it, encouraging it, and enabling it. I would endorse every comment made, both by Nikos and Larry there and about the list. The person who I confess I get very, very angry with is Barack Obama.

I have to say this. I mean, I'm not sure. I avoid using the word evil to describe people. But Barack Obama, in my opinion, set, created the conditions for an awful lot of what we see. And as somebody who, you know, has some overlap in terms of my career with his career, he was a lawyer, I was a lawyer. The manipulative way in which he uses language always appalls me. And beyond that, also, the way in which he gets other people to do things and hides behind them. Like, just to give one example, the UN Security Council.

resolution that led to the attack on Libya. Everybody was led to think that it was Hillary Clinton's work, that she was the person and that Barack Obama was trying to hold things back. I know from British government sources, and this was made public, by the way, over the course of a British public inquiry into that war, that the person who actually wrote that resolution, which included the words, all available means to protect civilians,

which was then used as the typical Obamaism was, in fact, Obama. He actually wrote the text of the resolution in order to make possible the war in Libya. So all of the people you mentioned, the Clintons, absolutely. Victorian Newland, definitely. Bolton, of course, others to Lindsay Graham. But Obama, for me, is the person who offends and exasperates me most.

Yeah, and actually in relationship to that, just to reinforce what Alexander saying, the situation in Benghazi took place when that CIA base was attacked. that was a culmination of a week before that took place. Obama had sent David Petraeus to Turkey to tell the Turks we're turning off the flow of weapons from Libya to Turkey that were then going into Syria. We're turning that off because Obama is concerned that it could affect his re-election.

So this was in 2012. And, you know, so he was, you know, up to his eyebrows in all of that madness. And both Foma, as well as the war in Syria, launching the Civil War in Syria. Obama was, that was Obama, not Hillary. No, exactly. Elsa says, Larry, it was Abidajan. Abidjan. Okay.

Let's see. Moon Dragon says it seems to me that Macron-Paris meeting was a nothing burger, your take. It was worse than a nothing burger. It was the same people do the same thing again and again, which they've been doing since February. And everything else in Europe is falling apart around them. But what it is doing, and I'm sorry, I'm just, because I get, I'm angry about this, because my prime minister is involved in all of this. What it also does is it prolongs a sense of tension.

It makes people think about these things instead of the realities that Larry was talking about, about the actual situation in the war and where the war is really going. So we're talking about things which will never happen, troops to Ukraine, security guarantees, all of that. And we're not paying attention to the actual. things that really matter. Sorry, I interrupted. No, no, no, I agree. You listen. What, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the point where, you know, Macron was at least talking to Putin, but I think Putin finally

became just fed up with him. But for God's sake, folks, talk. Don't fight. But, uh, there seems to be no, no desire at all on the part of anyone in Europe, apart from, say, Orban and, and feet so to talk to Putin. Sparky says Larry, Mark Twain said it's easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled. When President Trump be convinced he's continually fooled by his own people? Yeah. He's a, boy, he's a puzzlement.

He has, you know, I do have, I'm friends with somebody who's actually had some, six different meetings, five different meetings with him over the last 18 months. And the person you, the Trump is on those one-on-one meetings is quite different from the public persona that shows up. But he's also, he's an extremely insecure individual. And then you couple that with, you know, he's now 80 years. old or soon to be 80 and uh he's starting to show he's showing his age so uh this is trump is not driving the train i guess is the best way to put it just in the same way that

biden wasn't and uh trump is playing a role and he is surrounded by these sycophants there's no other way to describe it they keep you know boss you're the greatest you're the uh you know What Trump has proven is he's terrible at selecting people. I mean, when it comes to hiring people, he's awful. I mean, this is the guy that hired John Bolton, that hired Christopher Ray, that hired Gina Hespole at the CIA. You know, Trump did that. That wasn't forced upon him. He made those choices.

And so he continues to choose and select some people that are. you know really not qualified for the job take pete higgseth at department of defense pam bondi at department of justice she's been awful uh so uh you know trump he has this marketing image that he projects but it has nothing to do with the actual reality all right one more for for you larry from ralph how long can the world allow the situation in gaza to continue this is becoming a very sick of the world. Look, I maintain that the BRICS countries alone could bring a halt to this. All you've got to do is stop all trade with Israel.

Cut them off, embargo them, no more exports, no more imports. They still have, they actually have some pretty important trade relations with both Russia, China, and India. So, I don't want to leave those countries off the list of folks who can. actually do more. This, you know, it's sad, but the only country of the world, which is on a daily basis, trying to fight on behalf of the people of Gaza, has been the Yemen, the Houthis. This, you know, this period of history will go down as one of the darkest chapters, in my view.

All right, on that note, that's a sure note. such a positive note on that note, we will end. And can I just a powerful comment, by the way, and thank you, Larry. Yeah. Alexander will answer the rest of the questions. Larry, thank you so much for joining us on this live stream. Larry Johnson, Sonar 21 is the blog. I will have that as a link in the comments, as well as Larry's substack.

Hey, guys. Thank you so much for joining us. always a pleasure and an honor to be to be with you but i like to say that got to watch you every day you always learn something and we thank you lara and we follow you too with the same attention all right hey thanks so much bye bye bye take care of larry okay Alexander are you with us absolutely all right let's uh let's answer the remaining questions uh Joe Sunova thank you for that super chat One second. Elza says the military parade in China looked perfect

like it was AI generated, but it was very real. True. Very real. Nikos says Russia tried to repair the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov only to mothball it. Do you agree that China should make them a new aircraft carrier in exchange for submarine technologies? No, well, I think the Russians have already been provided. submarine technologies to China. My own view, and I've discussed this with Russians, is that

Russia at this particular moment in time really doesn't need aircraft carriers, not in the way that people imagine them. Aircraft carriers, like the Kuznetsov or like the ones that the Chinese are rigging. It's not just that they're very expensive to build, which they are, but they're massively expensive to maintain. They are a huge. drain of resources and given the realities of Russian geography it really doesn't make very much sense at this particular point in time for the Russians to have them. This has been an unending debate, by the way, about aircraft carriers that has been taking place in Russia since at least the 1940s. Do we have aircraft carriers or do we not? Sometimes the pendulum swings in one direction,

Sometimes the pendulum swings in the other direction. I think at the moment the view in Russia is that they don't need carriers. And that's why the Kuznetsov is, I suspect, going to end its days very soon. Submarines and Ereshniks. Erashniks, exactly. Niko says submarines are better than aircraft carriers, but I believe that a country the size of Russia should have at least three carriers like China. Carrier groups are also important, don't you agree?

You will find people in Russia who will agree, including within the Navy. Of course, there are naval officers who keep to have aircraft carriers, and that isn't surprising. But, as I said, the general view at the moment in Russia is that carriers are a massive expense, one which Russia does not need, and it needs to be more focused on other things, Oresniks and submarines and the things that Alex was talking about. Remember what Larry said about Russia having only 19% debt to GDP ratio? It's precisely because the Russians don't spend money on unnecessary things. And aircraft carriers at this time are an unnecessary thing.

Haroku, thank you for that super chat. Vincent says, saw a guy on StanBC the other day, making the argument that China wants the war in Ukraine to continue. as it weakens both the West and Russia. Do you think there is some truth to this argument? No, I don't. I don't think it's worked out like that. I think the Chinese are perfectly well aware that the war at the moment has worked to their advantage. But that isn't the same thing as saying that they wanted to continue,

because the Chinese also, I think, understand very well that wars are extremely dangerous and unpredictable. and that if they go on for too long, they can take unexpected directions, which could be to everybody's disadvantage. And a war between a proxy war between nuclear powers is especially dangerous. So I think this is wrong. I think this has an overcomplicated,

and if I have to say, assumes a rather malevolent attitude to this war on China's part. And I don't think that is correct. I think Chinese calculations are much more straightforward. Nico says, you know I watch nerd-rotic and critical drinker. They fight the culture war and the wokeness that has infested culture. They call it a new communism. I call it neo-Marxism because Karl Marx was as much of a weirdo as these pride supporters,

the Soviet Union, the pride flag supporters, Soviet Union was at least run by badass men. My point is Americans like them that are sick of this far-left ideology. I've poured their hatred of it towards communist China and Russia. Your thoughts? Well, yeah, Russia, which isn't communist. I mean, there may be some truth in that. I think, actually, there's quite a lot of proof, truth of that. I mean, notice in case of, in the case of Russia, what Larry was saying, that Russia is a Christianizing country, which is a is and it's a country with small sea social conservatism and a commitment to traditional lifestyles and of course that does undoubtedly make some people very angry and very hostile i noticed this

i mean this is i mean it's astonished me at the time of the sochi olympics for example how um strong that current defeat feeling turned out to be so yes i think there's something in what you say But I think this conflict that exists in the world now is mostly geopolitical. Tony, Wittcher says aircraft carriers are obsolete, they are sitting ducks for modern technology. I knew somebody would say that. I'm not an expert on aircraft carriers. But I mean, you get this view expressed in many places by many people.

And I'm not in any way saying, by the way, that it's wrong. I mean, it's just a topic outside my area, just to say. Matt Ward says, as President Nabraski voter, has this guy not figured out Trump is all about sizzle and no stake, would have been better if he took a plane ride with FISA to China instead of D.C. When will we polls wake up? I have to say so straight away that I agree with you. I think Trump should have gone to China with FISA. Well, not with FISA, but should have gone to China.

In an ideal, optimal world, that is what would have happened. And we would have had the big fall, China, Russia, India and the US meeting together. And it would have been a much, much more interesting and very, very forward-looking meeting in that case. But one can only wish. And of course, you know, it didn't happen. And perhaps it was unrealistic to expect as it would. That's what we've been saying for a while. Yeah, exactly.

But I think the question was actually asking about Nebraska, the Polish. President should have been. Well, I don't know much about him. I don't know much about him. What I think is very interesting is that he was elected. And he was elected, notwithstanding that he's been more critical at the war, as far as I can see, at least of Poland's involvement in it. But also, I mean, he's clearly more anti-EU in a kind of a way. Of course, none of this might come true. I mean, He may be exactly what you're saying. He might eventually turn out to be nothing, but it does point to a shift in Polish opinion.

And I've been reading articles in the Financial Times and other places, in fact, many other places, about the complete failure of Donald Tusk that his government has proved unpopular and ineffective and that polls are turning against it. Now, for me, and I have to say this, these are hopeful signs. Bernard says, with the upcoming UN General Assembly and the U.S. refusal to allow Abbas of Visa, is now the time for Bricks-Aligned nations to use this session to make the case for relocating the UN outside of the U.S.

You know, I do think they're going to do it, but I don't think they're going to do it this time, but if this continues for much longer, they might do. I mean, it may eventually happen. It's not the first time the US has done this. There have been other occasions when the US has denied visas to diplomats who were attending US sessions. I remember they did this to a Libyan representative due to the 2011 Libyan war, just to say. So it's quite likely that eventually this will come up, but at the moment it won't. Nico says, you know, I keep wondering lately what the world would look like if in 2000, Bill Clinton instead of no, when Putin asked him for Russia to join NATO, said, yes.

As a multiverse theory supporter, I want to see that timeline. Never would have happened. I mean, here again, I mean, what Larry was saying about the Russians being naive. I mean, they were incredibly naive to believe that they would ever be admitted to NATO. I mean, if they'd known anything about opinion about them in Europe and in the United States, they would have known that it was never going to happen. Here's a thing, Nikos, that you might not know. The Soviet Union applied to join NATO. It did.

It applied in 1954. Just to say. Elsa says, does Gilligan and his Andromeda crew operate on land? I'm just asking for Siberia pipelines on a serious note, how probable are attacks on the Russia pipeline to China? Well, they will quite possibly. I mean, by the time it builds, probably the war will be over. Of course, there's already power of Siberia, too.

Spire of Siberia, one, I'm sorry. But, I mean, if there is a war, then, of course, I mean, as far as the Ukrainians are concerned, it's a target. They could quite easily target it. And of course, they're already attacking the Russian pipeline network trying to. Sparky says, Larry,

our Western leaders smoking copious amounts of copium. Yes. Jungle Jin says, we need a collective noun to describe EU leaders. My candidates are

on hypocrisy of EU leaders and on abyss of EU leaders. Any other suggestions? Oh, well, where to stop? Where to start? I mean, I'm not going to,

because if I start on this, I will start, I will start to become extremely angry, and I will probably use words that I will later regret. Zareil says, why doesn't Don sanction himself? He's aggressive. Well, sorry, doesn't who sanction? Don, Donald Trump, I guess. Well, indeed, yeah, absolutely.

Sparky says, Brazil and Iran are similarly self-sufficient. Like with Russia, bricks can, at the very least, be considered icing on the cake for them. Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean, I certainly don't think Iran. In Iran's case, Bricks is icing on the case, because of course Iran is not just facing an economic challenge, an economic challenge, it also faces a military challenge as well.

I don't think that one can honestly say that Iran's economic position is as strong as Russia's. I mean, one is the biggest country in the world, the other is a big country, but it obviously is not. the Russian economy operates at a much, much bigger and more advanced level than Iran's does. And of course, China is another matter again. So I think that Iran definitely benefits from the Briggs. And I think Brazil does because Brazil has now been tariffed by the United States,

but they have a big, in their industries and they have a soybean industry that needs to export. So where are they exporting to their exporting? to China instead. Natish Kumar says Indians trust the West more than China. We don't want Russia in China's camp entirely as India is surrounded by China and Pakistan. We don't want Russia against us. This is a very important point,

which is that both the Russians and the Indians value their relationship with each other, partly because they like each other. And they do. I mean, if you go to Russia and you talk to Russians about India, there's always this tremendous sense of liking for India and the relationship is very old

and it's been very strong since the day when India gained independence basically but of course in BRICS in the SEO the fact that this India and Russia as partners gives each of these countries more confidence to interact with China and this is true This is absolutely true.

Now, as for India's relations with China, I think that India needs to, and China needs to, they both need to work to get those better. And there have been times in relatively recent history, in the 1950s, for example, when these two countries got on very well. And if we're talking about the history of their interactions, going back well to before,

you know, before birth of Christ. No two nations have interacted as much or in some ways as productively as with each other as India and China have done. Remember, in China, one of the most powerful and important religions is Buddhism. And where did the Chinese get Buddhism from? They got it from India.

Tony Witcher says, The summit between China, Russia, India, and the U.S. is what is needed for world peace. If only Trump had gone to China, we would be on that road. I agree. Let's see, where are we? Zaryl says, thanks to Biden and Trump for pushing China closer to Russia and vice versa, and then pushing India and Iran closer to each other and strengthening bricks. Yes.

Lee Levin says, got to love the shirt, Larry. Love those letters, thanks for that. Lee Levin. Red Panda Pi says, have Professor Sacks's words from yesterday's show in my head. If Russia is after root causes, shouldn't it go after the James Bond wannabes in England? Thanks. I might do. I hope not because I am British.

I think we have been playing a reckless and dangerous game. And I absolutely pray that it never bites us. Toy Chung, thank you for that super chat. Nikos says The images of Putin and Xi in both victory parades reminded me of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong

with their allies different men and situation but many parallels Well there are some similarities But the two are very very different I mean Stalin and Mao Completely different from Putin and C just to say

Jeff Pickert says Thank you Thank you Jeff Sparky We read the Mark Twain Post Thank you for that Sparky. Nico says,

Alexander, I think you should make a program about it, but can you please tell me what the hell is happening with Britain? Comedians arrested for tweets. Not, I mean, this particular incident, the people have been talking about, you know, the Father Ted creator.

It's attracted a lot of international attention, but in my opinion, there have been far worse things happen, people arrested, or detained as it is now sometimes. times called for far less important things. So, I mean, you know, the situation in Britain is very dark and very bad. And you're absolutely right. It does deserve a whole program. What I would say is that I think Britain is not an outlier. I've heard that in France,

the situation is as bad. And in Germany, it's actually worse. Yeah, I don't think they're an outlier. I think they're a trailblazer. Britain, Germany, Australia, France, Canada. Harvardian says 65 months of sanity. Thank you, Alec and Alexander. Member for 65 months of the grand community. Thank you. A lover of the Russian team.

Great show, guys. Thank you for that. Lover of the Russian team. Paul Walker says, The West was too reliant on its past victories, not seeing that the world was changing for the better without them. All their problems are self-made. Yes.

I agree with that completely. I think that's entirely right. Mycroft Menzkin says, I recently learned that the Dalai Lama's brother, Bialo Thundup, was a CIA operative. Is the recent Uyghur cause-seleb another such operation and how are Hollywood types marshalled into this effort? Well, I'm not a huge expert on the Dalai Lama in Tibet and the situation in Xinjiang.

What I will certainly say is that, yes, there may be actual problems in these places. And in the case of Tibet, there was certainly a history of complicated and very interesting history. And you can have great sympathy for people. But there was also undoubtedly, and this is beyond any doubt, extensive foreign interference, which I think created or played a big role in making the crisis and certainly made the worse. In the case of Tibet, I don't know about the Dalai Lam's brother. I never heard of that, but I'm not saying it's not true.

But certainly the CIA was operating and trying to support an insurgency in Tibet right into the early 1980s. Russell Hall says, what exactly qualifies modern Britain as a great nation apart from history? What can you point to about your country that others should aspire to match? Well, I could answer that question, frankly, but if I did, I would be upset because it's my country, so I'm going to give it a pass. Parke says Larry is the new large NATO base in Romania a good choice for a group of Rajneks. We're not here to choose tight targets for the Russian military.

I'm sure they can do their own targeting for themselves. Zareel says the Larry the shirt Johnson line, exclusive to the grant. I want to see that, Zareel. Let's see where are we? From Mark Hewitt, how much is Trump's antics destroying J.D. Vance's chances of becoming the president? I don't think it's done any. I don't think JD Vance has been damaged by anything that Trump has done up to now.

But what happens in the economy in the United States over the next few years, of course that is going to make a major difference. So provided we don't get sucked into wars, and of course there's always that risk, especially with the kind of erratic foreign policy that we've seen, I think that Vance can ride out the kind of ebbs and flows and policy that we have been seeing up to now. If there's a major war between the United States and Iran, or if there's a major economic crisis in the United States, then, of course, it's a different situation.

Lana A. Zankovar Garcia, thank you about Super Sticker. Martin MDL says, please provide analysis of the importance of the rise of Christianity in Russia. Oh, this is a huge subject, which we need to talk about much length in other places. I mean, what I would say is, of course, if you're talking about Russia, it's impossible to overstay the importance of Christianity in shaping Russia and making what it's, and making it what it is. I mean, Christian had an influence on some of the social policies

that the Soviet Union followed, for example, the educational policies and things of that kind. In my opinion, it was just suppressed during the Soviet time and then he came back because fundamentally deep down it was always there. But that's something, as I said,

that we need to talk about much, much more, much greater length in future, in a real dedicated program, perhaps as part of our history series. Viva Las Vegas, 1999. Thank you for that super sticker. Sparky says the U.S. 100% props up Israel with money, just like it does with Ukraine, so a brick's embargo of Israel might not help.

Well, yeah. My own view is that the thing that the Israelis are most worried about would be if countries started to recall their ambassadors, and start casting doubt on their recognition. I think that sense of political isolation might actually have an effect in Israel. But, you know, I'm not advising anybody in every country will make its own decisions.

Matthew says, can you see the UK being hit by Russia, even if they give long-range permissions, I doubt it? I think that the Russians eventually will take countermeasures. And I fear they have already. made the decision to do so and not about missiles but about other things, lesser things that we've already done. In my opinion, the missile strike in Kiev, which hit positions close to the British Council, was already a warning. Dirk Diggler says any plans on the table for a BRICS-based UN 2.0?

The bricks and made it absolutely clear as the SEO has done, that they want to keep the UN going because they see that as the centre of international law and they see themselves as the dark guardians of international law. The Palantir asks,

Alexander, what are your thoughts on Nigel Farage in Reform UK? Nigel Farage spoke in the US Congress regarding UK free speech suppression. Thank you. Yeah, I thought he did a good job, actually. I mean, I thought that it was as good to John this one can, bear in mind that he's not an American, and this is a venue unfamiliar to him.

And Farage has been the most consequential and successful political leader in Britain over the last 20 years. I mean, he has changed the entire political debate in Britain, and his party reform is far in away, the most successful party. And the reason it is, and he has been so consequential, is because more than any other political leader,

he has his finger on the pulse of Britain, of what the British people think and feel and worry about and believe. So while Kyr Starma spent the summer talking about Ukraine, for example, Farage gave, I think it was seven news conferences, press conferences, matters, the kind of matters that concern people in Britain.

So we're talking about an extraordinary political figure. Where I have my doubts, where I have my concerns, is that all of his successes up to now have been in opposition. We've discussed this in other programmes. I don't know how he would succeed in government, but he is not to be underestimated. And as I said, his political effectiveness over the course of the summer has caused anguish in the political class. And there have been very bitter articles about it in news outlets like The Guardian, for example. Sparky asks, President Trump would have consumed all the oxygen at China's World War II parade, as he would have at Russia's World War II parade.

he was more than welcome at both massive lost opportunities for Trump and the U.S. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. I mean, we've said this. I mean, this isn't the first program that we've said this. Apparently, the Chinese did float the possibility of an invitation. But, you know, I think the politics in the U.S. make it all but impossible, just saying. Just need strength.

Oh, no. Yeah, he just needed the strength to go. That's it. Petristic Pixel says, has the U.S. CIA influenced the ecumenical patriarch? I've read about the OCU seizing the U.O.C. parishes in Ukraine. Will the U.S. break anything to hurt Russia? The best person, I think, discussing this is Jim Jadrhus, actually, who knows all about this very, very well. John Kiryaku has also made certain comments about this.

and John John Kiriaka, who I know I should just disclose the fact that I do know him, he has claimed that unfortunately there were bribes now I don't know this and I very much hope that this is not true

but anyway, there we are double down says Turkey as a NATO member poses a threat to Eurasia does it pose a threat to Eurasia well I think that Erdogan is an incredibly complex politician and sometimes he facilitates the process and sometimes he disrupts it. I think because Turkey is so important, so big for one thing, the other big Eurasian powers feel that they just have to work with him and give him he's due. He knows how to play this game

better than anybody could ever have imagined. I mean, his success has astonished me. Elza asks, Alex, what are your top three evil U.S. officials? Lindsay Graham, definitely. Would Sotos be considered? I presume. Well, he's not an official now. I don't know about official, but okay. Soros, how about Bill Gates?

He's not an official either. No. But this is the thing about the United States today. These people, there are people in the United States who, without being officials wield extraordinary political power. And that wasn't true of the United States as it used to be, but it is absolutely true today. Yeah. Natalie Norskov says, do you think the U.S. has been deterred by China's military parade from starting a proxy war over Taiwan? Good question. That's an excellent question. No, I don't actually. I think I think some people,

in the U.S. might have been, but I don't think anywhere near enough. Sparky says, it's a shame President Trump doesn't see that both Xi and Putin want to help him make America great again, more than his own administration or golfing buddies. Excellent point. Very good point. I mean, I've got nothing to say to it other than that. He might see it. Maybe he does.

Maybe he doesn't, but it's the people around him that will not let it happen. Yes. A sophisticated caveman says, are the caucuses? is as important to Russia as Ukraine is, is large-scale war possible if Azerbaijan or others move too close to Turkey or the West? Well, about war in the Caucasus, if there was a war, it would be over very quickly because none of these countries remotely could stand up to Russia. None of them is anywhere near as big as Ukraine, and the West would not be able to intervene

to help them. So if we're talking about war, as I said, we over very quickly. No way is any one of these countries anywhere near as important to Russia as Ukraine is. I mean, Ukraine is far more important than these countries either taken individually or together. Sparky says, I'm sure privately both Xi and Putin lament the failure of their mutual friend Donald Trump to see they're trying to help them. Yeah, I'm sure they are. The Palantir asks, what are both of your thoughts? Russian geopolitical philosopher Alexander Dugan's views.

Thoughts on fourth political theory and Eurasianism. He is brilliant, but very flawed. I read the fourth political theory, and I was waiting to see what it was going to be. And it never appeared. I mean, he went through all the other political theories, the existing ones, and he was extremely acute and insightful very often in explaining them. But then I waited to see, interestingly, to see what exactly the fourth political theory was going to be,

or at least some indicators of what it might be. And I have to say, it just wasn't there. It was like going to a banquet. And suddenly you stand, you have to get up and I tell this all over before the main course appears. Alexander, can the UN Security Council veto anything? The UN Security Council doesn't veto anything. Member states the permanent members can veto resolutions on the UN Security Council. That's what the veto power is.

Tony Witcher asks, is Alex Kramer write about the undead British Empire, that's in quotes, being behind all the imperialist wars, or is Britain now only about? of the United States? I think more the second than the first. I mean, I have great respect for Alex Greiner. I think he's a very insightful person. But I think we should be wary of attributing more influence to Britain than it actually does have.

I think Professor Sacks got it right yesterday in our live stream that the British did a huge amount in the past. and what they did in the past shapes in many ways are present. So the crisis of the Middle East, the crisis in Cyprus, the crisis between Venezuela and Guyana that existed a short time ago, the situation in Tibet that Professor Sachs was talking about, all of these problems, some of the problems with Poland and Russia, they had their origins in British imperial policy. And because of that, the British still have some influence in some places.

But they are not the great power centre that they used to be. And the city of London, as I can say absolutely, is a much diminished force compared to what it used to be, even 10, 20 years ago. Bad Wolf, Texas says there are some things that I think operate independently, but very few meaningful UN activities are outside of the Security Council authority. Certainly admitting or kicking out countries are directly a Security Council control activity. Oh, absolutely. I mean, but the point is we're talking about V. If you're talking about what the powers of the Security Council are, they are immense. You only have to go to the UN.

chartered to see that. If you're talking about the veto power, then as I said, that is wielded by member states. There is a good legal argument that the only entity with power, for example, to actually impose sanctions

is the UN Security Council under Chapter 7, and that all sanctions imposed by the Western powers, because they have not been authorized by the Security Council, are technically illegal. I mean, just to give one example.

Klaus Clemenson says, is there any war where security guarantee is made afterwards? I've never heard of that. No, nor have I. It just goes to show again. The utterly, utterly surreal nature of all the discussions that are taking place. Distractions. Discussions. Zalin says, do you both hope for a future reunion between the Catholic and Orthodox?

churches in the future. Is it possible in this divide between East and West? No, I mean, I don't think about it. I mean, I can't imagine it. I mean, it's like mixing foreign water if I can put it like that. Yeah. Nabjati Bhadhajee says, please invite Dr. Ankhint Shah in your program. He has some interesting analysis on where Bricks is going. Okay. Absolutely. We will definitely give Dr. Shah a shout

out. Eric Husser says, is Macron, okay, is the bond, Macron gas. Well, okay, we won't go there. Josh Winston says, hey guys, the Duran was mentioned yesterday on the morning meeting two-way podcast with Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turentane at the 50-minute mark. You would be excellent guests to bring light to the subject of the U.S. and Russia. Oh, interesting. Josh. We'll check it out. We'll check out that podcast. Sparky says, if President Trump had indeed attended China's World War II parade,

he may have been, he may have even pulled off the impression that it was actually a parade. Well, indeed, yes. Anyway, I mean, we can talk about this, but unfortunately, the reality is it didn't happen. So, I mean, that's a huge a missed opportunity. missed opportunity and Trump realizes it. You can tell by the post. Yes, I do. I do. I know.

Social. I realized it. I agree. Dirk Diggler says, is UN veto power democratic? UN, yeah. Well, I think so, actually. I think a situation where there was no veto power in the Security Council would be a very, very dangerous one in international relations.

I mean, it would mean because the West has a structured majority on the Security Council that the UN system would become an instrument of Western policy very quickly. Okay, Alexander, that is everything. Well, that was a brilliant live stream. A quick check to see that we've got all the questions. Your final thoughts? Brilliant live stream. And there's been illusions and panic.

We didn't talk so much about the panic. But believe me, it is there. It is rising all the time. A lot of panic. What's going on with the IF debt pre-election debts? crazy story. That is very strange. I was reading an article

by a professor, Professor Rainsborough who was a professor, he was the head of war studies at King's College, London. And by the way, he was pushed out from that position some time ago. But he

wrote a piece about the Latin Americanization of Europe and the possibility of dirty wars here. And I must admit, it gave me a chill. Yeah. From Geepster, Alex, is it true, Israelis are steadily buying up properties in Cyprus and stepping up their presence and influence there?

Alex? I mean, this is all that. I mean, they've been there for a very, very long time. I mean, this isn't anything new, actually. This isn't anything new. And there's a lot of big, big communities, especially when it comes to real estate in Cyprus. I mean, you know, Alexander, the Russian, the Russian presence was huge up until the, the SMO when they started to, when they banned Russia from entering Cyprus. You have a huge Lebanese presence, a huge British, obviously.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's a yes and no answer. Yes, there is a lot of Israeli investment in Cyprus and buying a business. properties, yes. But there's a lot of Russian investment, a lot of British investment, a lot of German investment recently as well, and a lot of Lebanese investments. And you know what, Alexander, there is a ton of Ukrainian cash that is pouring into Cyprus. And I say the word cash. A lot. A lot. But, you know, these are things that you have to live in Cyprus to see all of this so you can understand what's going on.

It's not so simple as just one country investing in Cyprus. There's a lot of countries that are buying a property in Cyprus. You know, the point of the Cyprus thing I just want to say. There's one more question for you, Alexander, but the point of the property investment in Cyprus is not who is investing in the property. People are missing the point. The point is that they're pricing Cypriot people out of the market.

Yes. The same thing that's happening in Greece, and I'm sure it's happening in a lot of countries in Europe. Yes. cannot buy homes. Exactly. That's the problem. And that is a huge problem that is going to hurt Cyprus.

It's hurting Greece. And it makes it very difficult for the younger generation to purchase a freaking home. Yes. And the money doesn't stay in Cyprus. It's another problem. Money goes out of Cyprus. And that's another problem. That's the real story, guys.

Not who is buying the property, but the fact that Cypriots are being priced out of the market. One final question for you, Alexander. Alexander, you mentioned once a book that explained the West's hatred for Russia. What book was it? Yes, it's by a man called Professor Gleason and it's called Russophobia and it was published by Harvard. He was a Harvard professor and it was published in the early 1950s. It's very, very difficult to get hold off, by the way. And I am very, very grateful to the person, Gleason, sorry, Gleason.

at G-L-E-S-O-N. And I was very, very grateful to Professor Sacks, by the way, for directing me to it. What I would say is, I read it now, it's a very good explanation of Russophobia, British Russophobia. It is not a complete explanation. And I don't think there ever can be one. All right, we will end the live stream there. Thank you to Larry Johnson.

Thank you to everyone that joined us on Odyssey, Rockbin, Rumble, YouTube, and a big shout out to our locals community. Panos, thank you so much for an amazing super sticker. Blair Sorensen, thank you for that super sticker as well. And a big thank you to our moderators, Peter and Zaryl, and I think that is it for the moderators. For today, Alexander, we've got some videos to publish. We certainly do. We certainly do.

Yeah. All right, everybody. Take care. Bye-bye.