The Duran Podcast - Peace And Security In A World At War w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Peace And Security In A World At War w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Okay, we are live with Alexander McCurris and the one and only Professor Jeffrey Sacks. Guys, we have 30 minutes with the great Professor Sacks. So, Alexander, let's get to it. We have a lot to discuss today. We have a lot to discuss and we've got 30 minutes. So let's go straight in. Professor Sacks, you did an exceptional presentation to the UN Security Council. You discussed the fact that we are in a world at war.

in many places, you itemized four wars. You gave a thread that unites all of these wars. That thread, it seemed to me, was Western, ultimately American policy and a propensity to seek military solutions and forcible solutions rather than diplomatic ones. Is that a fair view? Well, it was a happy occasion. for me to be able to meet directly with the 15 members of the UN Security Council and lay out a proposition, which was a pretty basic one, which is that if the Security Council uses the powers

that it has under the UN Charter, Article 7, and the powers to enforce UN Security Council resolutions, even the ones that have been adopted to date, it can. end the raging wars around the world. I talked about four. I talked about, of course, the war in Ukraine. I talked, of course, about the war in Gaza. I talked about the war in Syria. And I talked about the war in Libya. And yes, at the core of all of these has been U.S. meddling in contradiction in direct violation of the UN Charter. At the core of the UN Charter is the doctrine of non-intervention. Leave others alone, a kind of golden rule between nations. And it's at the core of the UN Charter and it's at the core of several resolutions of the General Assembly. It's the overwhelming weight of global

opinion, don't meddle in our internal affairs. Don't threaten other countries. Live alongside other countries. And I went through, of course, the causes of these four conflicts, one after another. They're pretty straightforward. No one contradicted me in the chamber, not the American ambassador or anybody else. Of course, in Ukraine, the basic truth. The basic truth. which you have been describing and we have been discussing together from the start is that this is a push by NATO for enlargement. And we had this remarkable interview by the Ukrainian senior politician laying it all out. It wasn't news except that it came from a senior Ukrainian politician.

So that was the first war. Stop the NATO enlargement. stop the threats to other countries. The Israel-Ghasa conflict could be stopped today immediately if the UN Security Council would enforce its many resolutions, probably in the dozens by now, calling for a two-state solution on 1967 borders. That is a state of Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem and its control. over the Islamic holy sites.

But that's not a notion to introduce now. That is a decision taken by the United Nations repeatedly and in the Security Council. The third war that I discussed is the ongoing war in Syria. Now, that has a simple origin. An incredible one, but a simple one. And that is that probably it was Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State. Maybe it was the bright idea of Barack Obama's president, but it got into the heads of some American leaders, hey, why don't we overthrow the government of Syria? And in late 2011, they decided,

Ah, Assad must go. And President Obama signed a presidential finding ordering the CIA, to work with regional governments to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Simple as that. Mind-boggling. Completely illegal. Did anyone refer the U.S. leaders to the international criminal court? No. This is how this system misfires.

And the arrogance of all of this, of course, is shocking because that was a dozen years ago. All it did was lead to mass bloodshed, destruction of, places like Palmyra that had survived for 2,000 years and then we have to destroy it because the CIA is given an order to overthrow a government. Well, if the UN Security Council enforced its non-intervention policies, that war too would stop. And the fourth war that I discussed was the war that has been raging in the Sahel since 2012. That's a war that started in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, it's spread throughout this impoverished region. Why? Well, because in 2011,

again, against the U.N. charter, against the decisions of the UN Security Council, the United States, UK, and France took it into their heads to overthrow Moimar Qadhafi in Libya. and under the ruse of protecting civilian populations with, again, false exaggerated threats about the civilian populations, NATO bombed Libya throughout 2011 until Gaddafi was killed. Chaos ensued in Libya and armaments and militias and others spilled over. into the impoverished region of the Sahel. Four out of four, my message was rather straightforward. Some would say naive, but I'm going to argue not naive.

My message was stop the illegalities, enforce the UN Security Council resolutions, and end the wars. These are not primordial struggles that don't have an understanding or ancient battles that go forever. These are actually conflicts with identifiable causes, identifiable solutions, indeed solutions that have already been voted. But in general, the United States has pushed regime change or pushed its way to enable Israel to absolutely ignore or block the UN Security Council for decades and therefore, even when decisions are taken, they're not enforced. Now, people will say, well, that's fine and good, Professor Sachs, you're not telling us anything we don't know.

First, I think it's often helpful to have what's called common knowledge in my profession in economics, which means even if everyone knows it, it's important that everyone know, that everyone else knows it so that everyone knows everyone's faking it a bit because you have to get it out on the table. Here's the straightforward understanding of these conflicts. Here's the straightforward understanding of how they can be ended. And it's up to you, the members of the UN Security Council. Now, the reason people will say it's naive is, well, that's the U.S. They have a veto. They can do whatever they want. But as you have been saying, and I have been repeating, the world is changing. This unipolarity claimed by the United States has been exposed for the fraud that it is.

The U.S. is neither unipolar, nor is the rule-based system anything to do with rules. It's quite the contrary. And as the world comes to know this as common knowledge, we have the capacity. actually to stop the abuses. Of course, the U.S. does it secretly, quote, unquote. And because of the complicity of the mainstream media, a lot of people don't know the facts. And when you tell them the facts, such as NATO caused the war in Ukraine, oh, no, that's not true.

But the facts do come out. David Aracamiah, the lead of some, Polensky's party in the Ukrainian parliament said it was all NATO, all the rest. And I'll quote him was, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, if you didn't want to wait for David Arkhamia to say it, we heard it from Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO in his little gaffe, meaning he told the truth by accident, when he spoke to the European Parliament recently. So when the truth comes out, and then you have one country that really abuses the international system by breaking the rules of non-intervention on a daily basis,

I believe that it's not naive to think that this behavior can be brought under control in the interests of peace. And just to finalize this main point, another reason. reason why it is not naive is that the Americans are sick of this. The American people aren't saying, shut up, Jeff. You know, let us do our thing. Every one of these is a complete debacle. Is the U.S. benefiting from Ukraine, from the 100 billion plus that it has put in from the disasters on the battlefield? Is that really helping the U.S.? No. the American people have said, stop this, is the ongoing war in the Middle East really helping the United States? The U.S. standing back while Israel commits massive war crimes in Gaza, is that really strengthening the position of the United States?

No. And the American people have turned on that, which is rather amazing, given the amount of sentiment on this over the years. there's a complete change of view, which has stopped this war. Did the Americans benefit from this completely absurd war in Syria, which was somebody's idea out of thin air? Why don't we overthrow that government? Did that really help the United States? Is the United States really helped by having instability across western and central Africa? Of course not. So even the American people who don't exactly hear much of the truth from the mainstream media figured out, this foreign policy doesn't work. And when Biden looks at his, I think, rapidly falling prospects of re-election,

one of the things that's stark about American public opinion is they're, actually looking at foreign policy. And they're saying, we don't approve of what you're doing. So all of this is to say, for me, it was, of course, an honor and an incredible opportunity to lay out in a few minutes. What I think is not naive, what I think is really the hope for the world. let's live up to a charter that we have said, a charter of peace and non-intervention, it would do the world a lot of good. Absolutely. Can I just quickly go back to the Libyan affair?

Because I remember that very, very well. The United States and Britain lobbied for two resolutions, two resolutions by the Security Council. And those resolutions are actually quite clear, and they were intended to facilitate. negotiate negotiations for a settlement of the conflict that was taking place in the internal conflict in Libya. And the United States and Britain, in order to get those resolutions, made all sorts of assurances to the members of the Security Council, the other members of the Security Council, that they would be implementing those resolutions in good faith. And then, of course, what they did is they used the fact that the Security Council had passed those resolutions to carry out a bombing

a campaign in Libya, which was not in any conceivable way what the Security Council had authorized. And it disregarded the fact that the Security Council resolutions also said that the Security Council remained seized, in other words, responsible for the matter. They arrogated the authority of the Security Council to themselves. They usurped it. And that destroyed trust within the Security Council. So when the Syrian crisis came along, it proved impossible for the Security Council to reach a consensus. This is an absolutely misuse of the mechanisms of the Council.

and you mentioned that very well in your presentation. You touch on it very well in your presentation. And one cannot disregard the damage, it seems to me, that that episode has done, and which continues to this day. Now, the other thing you mentioned is that these are absolutely resolvable problems. I agree. I think each and every one of these conflicts can be resolved very fast. Ukraine can be resolved. Even the Gaza situation.

the Israel-Palestine situation can be resolved. But you also touched on something which you are perhaps better, you know, a better position to discuss than anyone else, which is the economic aspect. And can you just enlarge on that a little? Because these, we have to go back to the charter. I agree completely to the United Nations, to international law. But you talked about, for example, how the Middle East, Palestine, those territories will need a program for economic reconstruction. You could say the same about the Sahel, about all of these places.

Can you touch on that and explain that this is not actually going to be the impossibly costly thing that people imagine? Yeah, just before I touch on the economics, just to come back to Libya for one moment, the cynicism of it and the fact that these wars are created by a small group of people is really something. The Libyan conflict came out of the imagination, I think probably of Sarkozy, who had personal issues with Gaddafi. It said, well, maybe Gaddafi funded a campaign, maybe there was a personal rift. It doesn't necessarily go beyond this craziness because it was three governments, as you said, UK, US, and France. And when I say governments, it was a small group within the governments. Reportedly, Hillary had to convince Barack. Come on, Barack,

we can do this. This is easy. No problem. It's a walkover. I wondered because Gaddafi in the year before that had rather abused his time at the podium of the General Assembly when he spoke in retrospect. It's a little sad, but he spoke for almost an hour. And they were trying to him off the stage. I thought, okay, that's the retribution. We're going to overthrow you. You spoke too long. Whatever it is, this was a personalized thing. This was the same as overthrowing Assad. You know, Assad was viewed even friendly to the U.S. Hillary had chatted them up, talked him up in U.S. circles a couple of years before. Then they decided, yeah, we can take this guy out. And what's important to understand is how addicted the U.S. is to these regime changes.

One excellent book, which I like to refer to, is a book by an associate professor at Boston College, Lindsay O'Rourke, who just counted and studied carefully the secret regime change operations. The book is called covert regime change during the Cold War period by the United States. 64 attempts to overthrow foreign governments secretly, illegally. It's an addiction. And this is what destabilizes the world. And it's completely against the UN charter. So in any event, this Libya thing was just another of these other debacles.

But the point about the economics is twofold, actually. One is that, of course, lurking among the incentives, the military, industrial complex, the NATO enlargement, selling more weapon systems, the lobbying effort, which no doubt is a piece of this. There's also typically games being played very often about who's going to control Libya's hydrocarbons or who's going to control the offshore Mediterranean gas deposits because actually Palestine has a claim to these gas deposits, which are in Palestinian waters if there were a state of Palestine. And the United States and Israel are just claiming this stuff. And so the Syrian disaster, at least arguably, had to do with where pipelines would go from the Caspian and the Black Sea through to the Mediterranean.

So there are all sorts of games. Now, whether they are the central motivators or not, it depends on the circumstances. It depends on the point of view. but there's usually some motive and amazingly often it's oil and gas because that is like the mightest curse of our time, even until today. Then there's the second point, which is, my God, the Sahel is the poorest place on the planet. Not surprisingly, it's hyper arid in much of the Sahel, it's landlocked in much of the Sahel, it lacks infrastructure. So you need an economic way out also. Israel has destroyed northern Gaza.

It's unbelievable what's happened in recent weeks. Now, is there going to be a donor conference to pick up the pieces that Israel has just smashed to smithereens? Or is Israel going to pay for much of this? Well, time is going to tell. But in any event, there needs to be some. economic development. Look what's happened to Syria the same way, not to mention Ukraine. Now, the basic point of economic development is actually straightforward and generally ignored

or the opposite pursued by the United States. Economic development is be nice to your neighbors because you trade with them. You have land routes with them. You have pipelines with them. You share renewable energy resources, you share river sheds, you share biomes. If as an economist, I would say the first rule of development is be nice to your neighbors. As an empire, the first rule is divide et impera, divide and conquer. And so the idea of the United States always is your next door neighbors, your enemy. Remember that. Your next door neighbors, your enemy.

Orwell, and it has to be repeated over and over again because you say, my next door neighbor is my trading partner. No, your next door neighbor is your enemy. So if we get past imperial mentality and get to economic development mentality, your neighbor is your trading partner. Your neighbor shares riversheds. Your neighbor shares biomes. Your neighbor shares a power grid with you. cooperate. So the point I was making was we need regional programs of cooperation. The idea that has gotten into the heads of the Ukrainian leaders, these particular leaders that we look west, we never look east. This is insane. You're going to develop that way? Where is Ukraine? Ukraine is a

bridge. It's a bridge between east and west. Are you kidding? That's a wonderful vocation for economic development. It, by the way, goes back to even the absurdities of 2013 before the U.S. engaged in the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Europe was saying to Ukraine, just us. You trade just with us. No trade agreements with Russia. Russia was saying, wait a minute, we are deeply integrated. If you just have one side trade agreement, That just diverts the economic flows. So let's have a three-way understanding, Russia, EU, Ukraine. That was viewed as a terrible, terrible heresy.

That's Putin recreating the Russian Empire. This absurdity. Of course Ukraine needs trade with Russia. Of course Ukraine needs trade with Central Asia. Of course Ukraine needs trade with Europe. It's a bridge. It's a great vocation to be a bridge, by the way. You get to charge for traffic in both directions.

You get to trade in both directions. So this is true whether it's Israel and Palestine. This is true of the Sahel. This is true of Syria. All of it should be incorporated into a regional strategy. But the U.S. divide and conquer strategy has been the direct foe of this. And the whole U.S. strategy and geopolitics around the world is, your neighbor is your enemy, we protect you. You allow us to put a military base there. We protect you

against your worst enemy, which is your neighbor. And as long as that thinking goes on, it destroys economic logic. I think this is a topic we are going to return to March, actually, because the economics of reconstruction after wars, a subject that interests me a great deal, and I think are important to discuss. And just to say, you know, I mentioned at the end of my testimony that across the street on 1st Avenue, right across from the UN is what they call Isaiah's wall. Of course, Isaiah was the great Jewish prophet of the 8th century BCE, and he was the one who famously said they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And that's what's written on the wall. And the basic idea, which got paraphrased in the 20th

century by Paul Samuelson and others is guns versus butter. In an economy, you can produce for military and destruction or you can produce for human benefit. And so you have a tradeoff. And one of the ways to finance all of this development in the future is we're spending more than $2 trillion a year right now to destroy things. And yes, it's a business for a few companies in the United States, Boeing and Northrop Grumman and Lockheed and general dynamics and so on. But for the rest of us, it is an absolute drain and destruction on economic well-being. And look at Europe, how it's suffered in this war and continues to suffer. Of course, nothing like Ukraine is devastation.

But economics says not only be nice to your neighbor, but don't. waste all your money on wars, because you could use that for economic development. And that is Isaiah's idea. It goes back about 2,700 years or so. It's a very good idea. We're coming towards the end of our time. I just wanted to briefly touch on one other point that you made, which is about peacekeeping forces. And you mentioned a possible peacekeeping force in the palace, not just in Gaza, across the Yeah, because the West Bank needs it too, because Israeli settlers are rampaging in the West Bank.

But could you enlarge on this? Because peacekeeping, the idea of peacekeeping forces brought up, I think, firstly, in the 1950s, it's actually been effective in some places, but it's also been less used recently.

I think in the in the Gaza and West Bank context, the UN Security Council could create a peacekeeping force drawn largely from the Arab neighboring countries, which want peace. And this is yet another of the U.S. and Israel myths. There's no one to talk to. There's no partner to talk to. Quite the contrary. In 2002, in the Arab peace.

initiative, the Arab League and that is the Arab countries said, we will normalize relations with Israel. We will help with security arrangements for Israel in the context of a two-state solution spelled out so clearly. Of course, it's been the desire of Netanyahu and the United States to hide that obvious fact. But after the Gaza, Gaza, attacks after the Hamas attack followed by the Gaza attacks, the Arab and Islamic leaders, including, as you've been reporting and discussing, the president of Iran, together said, we want peace. And they referred to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which sits on the table. It could not be more explicit, which is we will normalize.

relations with Israel, we will work for the security of Israel as well as Palestine. It's not rejectionist language. It's not destruction language. It's peace. And so these countries want it. They say it repeatedly. That's a point obviously I made in the Security Council as well. but it means that a peacekeeping force of friendly Arab countries that normalize relations with Israel can also help to secure Gaza and the West Bank protecting the people there and also demobilizing and demilitarizing the militias there as part of a peace agreement. So if we think constructively, and by the way, not lead this conflict to Netanyahu and Hamas, because we know that hardliners on both sides have done everything, including killing the leadership,

when they felt they needed to to block agreements, whether it was Anwar Sadat, assassinated by Egyptian hardliners or whether it was Yitzhak Rabin assassinated by an Israeli right winger. They have gone to the extent of killing the leaders to block moderation. But the point of the UN and the point of the UN Security Council is that in the interest of the two peoples and the interest of world peace and security. the solution can be put into effect directly. I'm not waiting for Netanyahu on this one. We just need the UN Security Council to enforce its agreements and peacekeepers can be an important part of that.

Peacekeepers drawn in significant part from the cooperating Arab countries in the region. Professor Zaks, we're up to our time, and I know you're on a tight schedule. Thank you again for your generosity. And can I say that definitely people should go to the film of your presentation at the Security Council. The link is in the description box. Thanks a lot.

Great, great to be with you today. And we'll do it again soon. Thank you. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye. All right. So I have that link to that UN speech in the description box down below,

Alexander of Jeffrey Sachs at the UN Security Council. I'll also add it as a pinned comment as well. Fantastic, a fantastic. A fantastic program. Before we ask, answer questions, I got my little thing tinging in the back. Can I just switch it off? Go ahead, switch it off, and I'll queue up all the questions, and we'll continue this live stream.

Give me one sec, everybody. And I'll find the first question. I thought I had done, but it turns out it didn't. Yeah, no worries. Apologies to everyone for that, by the way. All right, I've got the questions lined up. All right, are you ready, Alexander? Absolutely.

First question is from R.W. Isaac. Is it feasible for Argentina's Malay to accept Brick's invitation while at the same time moving to the West? And if so, would any of the other members be uncomfortable with it? Would Lula breathe a sigh of relief or be concerned? I think that most of the Brick states would not be here. happy if Millet simultaneously wanted to join Bricks and pursued an economic policy, which makes the dollar Argentina's currency. To my mind, those are incompatible, inconsistent things. Now, what is

coming out of Argentina at the moment is that apparently they're saying, there's some people who are pushing back and saying to Millet, look, this isn't a good idea, just quitting the bricks. Why don't we sort of involve ourselves at some sort of political level, but not really pursue the more economic aspects of this project. Now, the BRICS at the moment remains a fairly loose association. So I can imagine that some of the BRICS states, including Brazil, by the way, which is very keen to get Argentina into the BRICs, might say, well, look, let's do that. Let's go along with what these people in Argentina are saying, if that is indeed what they ask us to do, so that Argentina has its foot inside the brakes, but we don't actually have to press forward with the Argentinians

becoming involved in, you know, the setting up of our global currency system and all of that. So if, or rather when, there is a swing back in Argentina, which eventually, the will be, then at that point we can accelerate these integration processes more. But as things stand, the two are completely incompatible. And I would have thought that even if the Brazilians did lobby for that, there would still be some people within the brakes who would be skeptical. Tyler Durden says keep up. Good work, gentlemen.

Valies. Thank you for that. Valies. Thank you to all our moderators as well. Eleanor says the West has broken up with Russia. It's obvious we need their resources but don't want to pay. How can it end in another way than war? Well, we have a war now.

The war which the Russians are winning, the war that has been fought in Ukraine. I personally believe, and I say this, you know, with some, you know, I'm confident about what I'm going to say. The Russians will win the war. The relations, the economic relations, will not be restored. We will not get access to Russia's resources, precisely because we always wanted to trade with them, exactly, as you say, on terms which were massively disproportionately favorable to us and not favorable to them.

I mean, we wanted, for example, in Europe, to expand the third energy package. to Russia to break up gas prop and break up Rosneft and allow European companies to develop gas fields in Russia by themselves, like they do in places like Nigeria or wherever. And, you know, the Russians said no, and we weren't prepared to take no for an answer. And way back in the early 2000s, that was where the relationship between Europe and the Russians began to turn south. So I don't. So I don't think we're going to go back there. I don't think the Russians will want to trade with us anyway to the same way that we did they did before. So the Russians will develop their partnerships with the Far Eastern countries, with China, with India, with conceivably the careers, other places

as well, abundant markets for them. They have no incentive to come back to Europe. And I don't that we're going to get a war beyond the war in Ukraine because we are losing the war in Ukraine and we cannot realistically fight the Russians. In fact, we're becoming frightened about what we have created. What we, I mean, people in Europe and in the West have created. But I don't think that we're going to see a war. What we're going to see is that we are going to lose access to those Russian resources. Odemira Libre podcast. Returned from

Dombas and saw civilian targets hit by High Mars. The constant rumble is background music. I've been interviewed by Mike Jones in Moscow. I hope one day interview you guys on my channel. We're delighted to, and thank you for telling us about this. I mean, people ignore the fact

that Donbass gets repeatedly shelled and has been coming under attacks ever since 2014. As I can remember, I can remember Ukrainian aircraft launching airstrikes on Lugansa City back in 2014.

456T 1,23G says non-interference is the basis of the worldwide treaty needed to get us to an enlightened world. Thank you for your efforts, the Prophet's wife. That is absolutely right. And what Professor Sacks, by the way, said is completely

true and it is the core principle of of the United Nations. I mean, it was how the United Nations was originally set up and envisaged. What's happened over the last 20 plus years, 30 years, is that there's this terrible doctrine that has appeared. And it was really first floated by Tony Blair

at a speech which I think he made in Chicago during the Yugoslav bombing war, and which has been taken much further with Tony Blinken, in which they say that international law, the charter, all of that, is subordinate to protection of human rights as they define them. And they say that human rights law, humanitarian law, takes precedence over all other law. And that somehow entitles certain countries, it's completely arbitration, It's entirely self-appointed which countries, but obviously Blinken, for example, means the United States and its friends.

They therefore have a sort of right to interfere and meddle in disregard of what the charter and international law say, because they are protecting their values and protecting human rights. and it started with Blair and it's been developed by Blinken and it was Blair all said this we're going against the Treaty of Vestfalia of 1648 which is a very cunning thing that Blair did

because of course he made it look like it was a sort of old obsolete forgotten document treaty all the way back in the 17th century it's not really adapted to the conditions of the modern world. Whereas what he was actually doing is he was attacking the root of the United Nations Charter and the US system and the modern system of international relations. He will always forget that Blair is a lawyer and he knew exactly what he was doing in that speech and it was a

terribly pernicious speech. As I said, it was a bait and switch. He talks about Vist failure, whereas what he really ought to have been speaking, what he was really talking about was undermining the United Nations. And since then, he's made millions upon millions of them. Billions, maybe. Badiya, thank you for that. Elena says if the USA is interested in keeping the UN, it gives sometimes they are not what can make them throw the UN out of New York.

York. Well, the United States very much likes the UN when the UN does what the United States wants. So we had this period, this brief period in the 1990s, and it was a relatively short period, started under whilst Gorbachev was still Soviet leader, but it started in about 1990. And it went on until 1998, just a period of eight years, when if the United States proposed something to the Security Council. The Security Council voted for it. And at that time, the U.N. was, the U.S. was reasonably happy with the UN, as I remember. They weren't completely happy because even then, given what the UN was and is,

it was not an entirely malleable instrument in their hands, but they could say, well, look, we are, we've got the UN behind us. So whatever we do, it's Iraq or wherever. It's backed by the authority of the United Nations and therefore of international law. And then what happened in 1998 was that there was a political crisis in Moscow around that time, following upon an economic crisis. And this is the time when the US launched a series of airstrikes against Iraq, operation Desert Fox and for the first time they came up against opposition and the Security Council, the Chinese and the Russians, for the first time, made common cause against the Americans. And gradually, steadily, what's happened is that opposition that began in 1998 has developed and grown and

it now probably includes most of the countries in the General Assembly. And so the United States has one again become very negative towards the United Nations altogether and to the Security Council. And you get all these people who talk about the United States would like to see the UN leave the United States and relocate somewhere else. The United States does not want the UN to leave the United States. It wants to keep them in New York. They're able to control access. they're able to spy on people. There is some rhetoric that you hear about that from time to time. But don't take it too seriously.

From we, can neocons be voted out at next year's election? If so, it will make a huge difference in the world. It will. We'll just have to wait and see. You're asking the $64 billion question, if I can put it like that. Absolutely. Thank you, Zeshon. Thank you, Danielle.

Rice says Mr. Sacks, next please mention Gonzalo Lira at the UN. No, I'm sure he'd be absolutely well. Yeah. Yeah, we don't have any info on Gonzalo at all. Nothing at all. Nothing. We hear rumors and we get sometimes emails, which, to be honest, I'm not always, well, I'm not always confident about what their source is.

So that's another thing. But it's, it's, the whole business of Gonzalo is very troubling. and that's putting it mildly. That the U.S. doesn't even look after their own citizen. Yes. Yes. So here, thank you for that. Super sticker.

And B. Middow says, would Bricks invite Australia to join? Why would they? I mean, it's a complete ally in the United States. I mean, Australia joining would just be introduced into the Briggs, a disruptive party. I mean, that's, by the way, some people are going to say that about our own. Argentina as well under Millie that they don't want it there because Millie will simply be the spy of the United States inside the camp. I should have said that before.

But, you know, they might just be persuaded to let the Argentinians in. I can't imagine they will do the same with the Australians. Should we welcome the demise of the Democrat Party in the U.S., which has become, in reality, the Neocon Party and has it become unreformable? I'm beginning to wonder about the second, actually. I mean, it is a very different Democratic Party to the one of FDR and JFK. Just saying, if you look at the kind of speeches

that JFK made, you can find them. They're all on YouTube, by the way, including his speeches about domestic policy. You would see the extent to which the Democratic Party has changed since his time. But I'm getting a lot. to say this, I'm going to be straightforward, but of course here I'm bringing my experience of British politics. I think the present party system in Britain, and I suspect even more so, the present party

system in the United States, is so broken and corrupted that perhaps it would be no bad thing if these parties that we have today basically departed the scene, discredited. It's not a bad thing. as they are so that we have openings to someone else for someone else. Whether that will happen and whether what would come would be better than what we've had is another question. But I do wonder now whether the Democratic Party is reformable at all. Jeffrey, thank you for that super sticker. Eric says the Arab world now knows how weak and gervisie Israel is. the only thing keeping them out is the nuclear threat?

I do think the Arab states in general particularly have any desire at the moment to destroy Israel. I mean, I want to say that because I think that, well, in the 1960s, it was different, but in the 1960s Israel was a relatively new creation. And I think at that time, there was a general feeling, though not amongst all of the Arab states, even then. But there was a sense that Israel was an interloper in the scene and a threat to the stability. And there were all kinds of other feelings and strong feelings about the fact that Israel had been created in the way that it was. I think today most Arab states want above all stability in their region. They want stability so that they can maintain their own control.

And ultimately, and I think this is a growing view amongst most of them, they want peace in order to achieve development. So yes, I think that they do see how, you know, that Israel is not the enormous power that it once was. But I think they probably also calculate that any attempt to try to, you know, erase Israel from the scene, that sort of thinking, is not only problematic in a moral sense, but would create enormous instability in the Middle East

and lead to further war and chaos, and that is not what they want to see. So what I think they want to see is a peace agreement, one which integrates Israel into the region and provides for stability within the region and which will secure a sustainable peace. I think that is the Arab consensus. Claude says, good snow over 20 centimeters.

You are great reporters. Merci beaucoup. Thank you. Hi from Quebec. Oh, wow. Okay. We're not getting snow. The weather is quite cold here in London, though.

Yeah. Elliot says, what was the strategic reason behind Hamas' decision to carry out such an over-the-top, brutal attack, and to film the worst moments and put them online? Was it just sabotaged Abraham Accords? Or will we only know? know years from now? Well, we probably will only know years from now. I mean, it's a question that bear in mind, we cannot answer. I mean, Hamas does not share its plans or thinking with us. We're not

able to big up the phone to someone in Hamas and say, you know, why did you do what you did on the 7th of October and do it in that particular way? My own view, and I, you know, I'm going to say it straightforwardly, I think Hamas did want to get people, some of its people, many Palestinian people released from the Israeli prison. So they did want to take hostages. I think they also wanted to establish themselves further as the Premier Palestinian resistance movement. So, you know, carrying out an important and effective military operation like the one they carried out was, I think, absolutely part of. of their agenda they wanted to show to Palestinians that you know don't waste your time with the Palestinian Authority Mahmah Abath we are the real deal we are the real thing now the next

question is why did they do it in the way that they did I should say that that is now in itself becoming an increasingly contested issue I'm not going to debate all of that assuming that they did act as brutally as I personally believe they did. I can't help but think that they were intending to lure Israel into the conflict in Gaza that we are seeing now. Now, it could be that they miscalculated, that they were expecting that the Arab reaction, that the Muslim world's reaction would be different and more violent than has happened. But that is what I'm. I felt at the time that they were trying to bait Israel into a trap.

And I have to say this to some extent, if that is right, it seems to me that they succeeded. That's my view. By the way, when we did a program on X with David Sachs and Elon Musk, I hope I'm not misrepresenting it. But I got the impression that Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis was talking about the problems of conducting a military operation in Gaza, the problems which we've seen since then. I think he thought much the same thing. Okay, Elena says Milley believed in complete unregulated market where even humans are commodities, even children. Politically isn't that politically incompatible with Bricks?

Oh, absolutely. And I think many, well, first of all, I want to just say this. I think Millet is starting to look less radical, a lot less radical than he appeared at the beginning. I mean, he's now apparently working very closely with the former Argentinian president, Marizio Macri. And it's starting to look like not a new revolutionary libertarian government, but Macri government marked two. So it might not be quite as radical or as decisive as some people imagine. But that's a topic to discuss some other time. But one way or the other, given the political orientation that Milley has shown, given his economic ideas, even these more moderate economic ideas that he's speaking about now, I don't think that's really compatible with Bricks. And I think a lot of the Bricks leaders will say as much. Europe for European says using social engineering tricks on a population to prevent them breeding media siop, their women, disenfranchise their men and use mass immigration to diminish their living space is by the UN definition genocide.

Does Mr. Sachs condemn the recent comments of Bill Maher on the genocide of Londoners? This is from Odyssey. I'm not sure what a Bill Maher. No, I'm not familiar with that. I think I'd need to know an awful lot more about, you know, what Bill Mark, who he is and what he said, before I can answer that question, before I think Professor Sacks could answer it. Yeah. Okay. That is everything.

These are all of the questions and the super chats. One second, Alexander. We got one more here. And then we'll wrap it up. Seeing how Armenia is trying to destroy its relations with Russia, I'm starting to wonder what international politics looks like in the heads of people like Pashignan. Well, like, they look like very much the same as people in Ukraine and Moldova do. I think that they too, by the way, are out of date. They've been, you know, gone to all the schools that we know.

about. They've abibed all the, you know, the, the, the, the, the ideas and the doctrines that were very current in the 1990s and the early 2000s. There's an awful lot of money going into this as well, but never forget this. I mean, you know, if you go to Armenia today, apparently all the newspapers that you will see there, nearly all the media outlets, you know, follow the Pashinian line. And that is because they're all owned by people. who are obtaining their money from the usual sources, you know, in the United States, in Europe. And so it's not surprising that there's a financial incentive to take this line. And I think there's also an ideological one, because they still live in the world that existed sometime around 2000.

They haven't caught up with the fact that the world is changing. and to the extent that they sense that the world is changing, that makes them in an even greater hurry to rush into the West before the door closes. Yeah. The real power of the neocons and the neoliberals and the globalists, it's in the NGOs, think tanks, the universities, the media. That's the real power.

I can tell you in Greece or Cyprus, that is where the best job, are. That's where all the money is. Those are the positions that everyone covets. That's where the real power is. And that's how they influence a country. And that's why they freak out when people like Orban decide to kick out a Soros group or Soros NGO. And they absolutely lose their minds when that happens or when a country decides to shut down a U.S. sponsored university, if you want to call it that. They freak out at that because that's where their real power is. Exactly. Yeah, that's that's that's that's a situation.

Paschignan, Sandu, Sakazvili, they're all the same Zelensky, they're all the same person. Anyway, we'll end it there. Thank you to all our moderators. Thank you, Chris for that super sticker. Thank you, Nick for that super sticker. Thank you, Elliot for that super sticker. Valle yes, Peter. Who else was moderating, Alexander?

I think Valies and Peter. That's it. Thank you to everyone that joined us on Odyssey, Rockfin, Rumble, the durand.com. Thank you to everyone that is watching us from the durand.com. And to everyone that watched us on YouTube. And of course, a big thank you to Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Alexander, any final thoughts before we sign off? Great program.

Absolutely great program. I do want to discuss economics. the economics of reconstruction with Professor Sacks. I know he's got very interesting views about this. I'm going to quickly say, I think people get this very wrong. I think that reconstructing an economy after a war is not quite as complex and impossible the task as many people believe,

provided the correct conditions are created. After the Second World War, Europe was in ruins and what that led to because the correct economic conditions was created was a reconstruction boom that lasted for 30 years. So just saying, but it's a huge topic to discuss

and it's definitely one to take forward with it. So real quick, Alexander, what should the collective West do with the 300 billion in frozen Russian assets for Ukraine? What do you think? Oh, I know what's going to happen with the 300 billion they will give, I mean it would be like the money that went to rebuild, to refurbish the energy system. It went to, it was provided to refurbish the energy system.

And of course it ended up in all the usual islands that we find around the world. Beautiful yachts. I've seen some pictures of some of these yachts that are floating around, which, two of which apparently belong to someone whose first name, whose surname starts either with the letter Z or not, as the case may be. I'm careful what I say because, you know, these allegations are disputed. But anyway, that's what will happen with these $300 billion.

They will not reconstruct Ukraine. That's not the purpose of seizing this month. Go ahead. I just want to ask you a lot of question. The money that was, you know, Gaddafi's, you know, billions. Well, you know, it hasn't gone to Syria to Libya. Final question before we sign off. So how will this damage the European Union and the United States when they finally

pull the trigger to seize these foreign assets? These Russian foreign assets. It's going to create a huge crisis. I mean, bear in mind that the lawyers have repeatedly advised that this can, cannot be done. But of course, they're going to do it. It's going to be completely illegal. They're going to corrupt and distort their legal systems in order to get this thing ratified. And people around the world in China, in the Arab world, in India, they're all going to see that. And they're not going to put their money in the West anymore. It is one of the most

ill-conceived, misconceived, destructive, amoral and ethical things that we have seen. But it is, is literally a case of shooting yourself in the foot. But bear in mind, there are people who very much want that money. $300 billion. It'll buy some people lots of yachts, just saying. And the lawyers are warning them over and over again. Don't touch that money. Money, yeah.

But they're going to take it. It's too hard to resist. It's too hard to. 300 billion just sitting there. They're going to grab that money. Absolutely. All right. We will end it there.

Take care, everybody.