Welcome to Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone, any
libertarian institute. Today I'm joined by Jeremy R
Hammond, my colleague at the Libertarian Institute.
He is a research fellow and author of a number of books
which we will go through today, starting off with Ron Paul
versus Paul Krugman, Austrian versus Keynesian economics in
the financial crisis. Before we get into this, where
is the best place for people to find your collection of research
articles and books? On my website,
jeremyrhammond.com. And don't forget my middle
initial there. I'm not the hacker, not that
other Jeremy Hammond. So jeremyrhammond.com.
And then you'll see I got my web shop there and actually you can
buy all my books. Well, not all of them, but some
of my print books you can get signed copies of directly from
me. So cut up the middle man and and
get them from me. Otherwise, yeah, you can can use
my affiliate links to Amazon and then still help support my work
better than just going straight to the the retailer.
Sounds good. What is the Federal Reserve and
how do these two world views differentiate in their analysis
of the Federal Reserve? So the Federal Reserve is a
government legislated private monopoly on the control of
currency, the currency supply. And so its purpose is to engage
in legalized counterfeiting, which effects an upward transfer
of wealth from the poor and middle class.
And also wealthy people can also be punished by the Federal
Reserve's policies. So it affects this upward
transfer of wealth from the masses to the politically
connected financial elites who are close to politics and close
to the the money power and who receive the newly created
dollars first and then they're able to spend it to purchase
assets. And then later on, as the money
flows through the economy, of course, we get price inflation.
So the monetary inflation is the cause primarily of price
inflation. And so apart from affecting this
upward transfer of wealth, the book Paul Krugman, Ron Paul
versus Paul Krugman kind of compares and contrasts the, the
Austrian, the Austrian school theory of the business cycle
with mainstream Keynesian economics, which of course
represented by Paul Krugman. And so Ron Paul back in 2001 was
warning how the Federal Reserve's policy of pushing
interest rates artificially low. So interest rates are a price
and of course prices are incredibly important in an
economy because prices are how, you know, investors and
entrepreneurs determine how to utilize scarce assets.
How should scarce assets be distributed and and utilized and
directed? And prices are the mechanism by
which they make good determinations about that.
So when you have when you have this central planning agency
essentially fixing prices, which is what the Federal Reserve does
with the interest rate, it it causes all kinds of distortions
and malinvestments and creates all kinds of problems.
And so Ron Paul was saying that this the policy of pushing
interest rates artificially low, meaning below where they would
be if they were determined by the free market and supply and
demand, the supply of capital and demand for capital.
Then, you know, he was sent, he was warning that this policy was
going to create a housing bubble.
Contrast that with Paul Krugman, who was saying at the same time
that we need the Federal Reserve to push interest rates low
precisely to fuel this boom in housing.
And so that was his specific aim.
And so of course, that blew up in his face.
And of course, the Federal Reserve policy created the
housing bubble. And so is it instructive how
Paul Krugman then tried to blame the free market for the housing
bubble in the financial crisis that it precipitated and trying
to deflect attention away from the role of the Federal Reserve,
even though he specifically advocated that same policy
specifically to create that that boom in in the in the housing
market. And so that's what the book is
about. It really just it's, it's, it's
not a very long book. It got a a great review from
Barron's, incidentally, who our friend Gene Epstein over at
Barron's described it as a as a must read that conveys more
insights into the causes and cures of the business cycle than
most economic textbooks. But it's just, it's a pretty,
pretty short read. And what I really did is I just
kind of went through and I said, well, here is their record.
Here are their records. Here's what Ron Paul was saying
from like, you know, 2000 onward.
And here's what Paul Krugman was writing in his columns and
saying in various forms. And I just contrast their
statements like like quote after quote from these two people
showing how Ron Paul predicted it.
He had it right. Paul Krugman was literally
advocating the very policy that caused the housing bubble and,
and, and the financial crisis that the bursting of the housing
housing bubble precipitated. And so that's, that's what the
Fed does. That's what it is.
And and that's how those two individuals views differed.
So what is the interest rate that the Federal Reserve
chooses? Because different banks and
different credit unions have different interest rates that
they advertise, What is the interest rate that the Federal
Reserve actually controls? Oh, now you're getting into
details that it's been a while since I I reviewed, but there's
the Fed funds rate that the, the Federal Reserve essentially
fixes, you know, by through its purse purchases of government
debt, essentially, which it doesn't, you know, that they
have that what's called the open market operations, which you
know that the people will say, well, the Federal Reserve
doesn't monetize the debt because it doesn't buy the IT
doesn't buy the the bonds from from the US Treasury, but the,
the treasury issues IO us and they're sold on the market.
And then the, the Fed is the this buyer that will go and then
on the market purchase the government debt that way.
So it's kind of just, you know, that there's a, there's a
sleight of hand there 'cause it's, it's and effectively the,
the effect of the same. And so the, by purchasing the
government that it pushes down the interest rates.
And so, and then by pushing down the interest rates, it's
affecting, it's, it's affecting investors and entrepreneurs
decisions. And so, you know, if you, if we,
if interest rates were determined by the free market,
you would have a situation where people will accumulate capital,
People would have savings. And then banks lend based on,
you know, that this, the savings rates.
If saving rates are high and there's a large pool of capital
that banks have on hand to, to, to lend out, then they'll,
they'll lower interest rates. And it's an incentive to, to, to
get more lenders. If, if capital rates of savings
are low and they want to attract more depositors, then they'll,
interest rates will go up and, and to attract depositors.
And so if prices were determined by the market, that's supply and
demand. And, and so interest rates would
be determined through that mechanism.
What the Fed does is it pushes, pushes rates artificially low.
And then, you know, based on what the, the Fed does with the
Fed funds rate, you know, then the, all the banks in the system
in, in the, the, you know, the fractional reserve banking
system then kind of go off of the back of that and in
determining their own rates. But that kind of influences the
whole banking system and what the rates are.
And it's so by pushing the rates artificially low, it's creating
an illusion of this large pool of capital that's available for
for borrowing and investing and spending and in in building
projects with, you know, for example, housing projects.
But really that capital isn't there.
It's an illusion. And so if inevitably you're
going to have this upward pressure on interest rates
because the market is still functioning, right, you can't
like legislate away the law of supply and demand.
And so eventually you're going to have, you know, this upward
pressure on interest rates or, or there's going to be price
inflation will start showing up. And then the Fed has to kind of
do something to control the price inflation and allow rates
to rise. And eventually going to have a
situation where there are certain projects that just
aren't going to be able to be finished because that capital
was never there in the 1st place and they're not able to afford
to continue keeping up the projects.
You're not able to afford the debt on it.
And so you have all of this Mal investment.
And that's what that's what happens with the bust.
And so the, the Austrian theory of the business cycle basically
explains how the the Federal Reserve's inflationary monetary
policy and the policy of pushing interest rates artificially low,
inflating the money supply causes not only price inflation,
but it causes the, the boom bust cycle.
And Ron Paul explained that very well over the years in in
leading up to the housing bubble and repeatedly was trying to
warn people about that. And he was dismissed as a kook.
But of course, he had it exactly right.
And are the Austrians in general today saying that Sallie Mae,
the government sponsored enterprise, is basically doing
the same thing with college loans today?
We need to get everyone a home in 2005.
Today we need to get everyone into college and they need to
take out $100,000 loans they'll pay for themselves once they
work at HR departments. Calling everyone racist with no
verifiable evidence isn't the same thing happening with
college loans today. Yeah, I mean, when you have the
government essentially trying to create incentives for various
purchases, it's it's interfering in the market and it's it's
distorting the market. And So what happened with the,
you know, the government sponsored enterprises, Was it
that that was in conjunction with the Federal Reserve's
policy? There were two major causes of
the housing bubble. One was, as I just explained,
the Federal Reserve's policy, but coupled with that,
compounding that problem was the government's policies of trying
to incentivize home ownership, which created these distortions
in the market 'cause, you know, looking at the, you know, the
problem of the mortgage-backed securities and the junk
mortgages that were bundled together and packaged.
And in that the government sponsored enterprises were right
in the middle of that. In fact, they, they literally
invented the, the bundling of the mortgage-backed securities.
And so that of course, blew up into the financial crisis.
So those were the two policies essentially that caused the
problem to begin with. And yeah, if the government's
doing the same thing with with student loans, it's creating all
kinds of problems there. You know, I haven't researched
and studied that particular aspect of of economics as much.
But essentially, you know, why do you think college prices are
so unaffordable? You know, why are, why are
college, the tuition's so high? I mean, you have your, the
government is essentially bidding up demand for, for
college education with these cheap loans.
And then and then students can't pay them off and then they want
to forgive all the debt. And it's just, it was just, it's
just a really a big scam like so many other scams that the
government has where it's interfering in the market in
ways that cause distortions and malinvestment and unsustainable,
unsustainable spending. When we ought to, we ought to
allow the market to function, because things run pretty
smoothly when the market is allowed to do what it does.
So and not only that they have completely had they brought so
many kids into universities who otherwise wouldn't have gone
that they're professors are not going to fail half their class.
So they lower the standards for everyone and then society as a
whole is worse off because the people coming into the labor
force are less qualified than they otherwise would have been.
So it's a complete disaster. So you're differentiating two
types of inflation. When people say inflation, they
mean a rise in prices. You're referring to an increase
in the money supply that results in higher prices for all goods
in the economy. So what do you say to Vice
President Harris on Howard Stern's show?
She said, yeah, we're going to tackle inflation.
We're going to go after the price gougers.
Why is her definition wrong and the Austrian definition right?
Yeah, I mean, when I when I generally, when I say inflation,
like you said, most people think of inflation as a rise in prices
for consumer goods, but that's not necessarily the case.
Well, it's not the case in in my definition.
I mean, and in classically, inflation referred to an
increase in the supply of money, the money supply.
And so it's the monetary inflation that causes price
inflation. And kind of an instructive
example of how people kind of misunderstand that that
relationship is Paul Krugman. You know, before the housing
bubble burst in 2000 and seven, 2008, you know, Paul Krugman was
saying, oh, you know, people are complaining about the inflation.
They're saying that the Federal Reserve's policy is creating all
this inflation. But look at the CPI.
I don't see any inflation. And of course, it's not the case
that the money just, you know, flows evenly throughout the
economy and and immediately results in and an increase in
the prices of consumer goods. So where it was going, it was
going into the asset classes, you know, that it will first go
into capital goods or housing or various asset classes.
And so there was the inflation that Paul Krugman couldn't see.
Look, it was in the housing in the housing bubble.
It was in the stock market. And so that's also inflation.
You know, when, when the in fact, Krugman wrote an article
advocating, again, advocating the Federal Reserve's policy of
pushing interest rates artificially low and, and
inflating the money supply to boost the, the stock market.
I mean, he understands how it works.
It's just that essentially the entire school of Keynesian
economics in my, in my analysis is, is basically existing for
the purpose of manufacturing consent for the existence of
central banks. That's what Keynesian economics
is. And modern monetary theory is
essentially Keynesianism. 2 point O it's the same thing that
they're just advocating central banking.
And so of course they have to, they have all kinds of
deceptions and they might understand how things work.
But then you have, you know, again, you have Paul Krugman
advocating these, these policies.
But then when the I won't, I won't, I won't swear.
But when the stuff hits the fan, you know, then suddenly it's the
free market that caused all the problems.
And the solution is we need even more government intervention.
We need more, we need the Federal Reserve to, to lower
interest rates and inflate the money supply.
And that's the, that's the solution to the problem.
I mean, after the housing bubble burst, what was the, what was
the Fed's solution? Well, they started buying up
mortgage-backed securities and inflating the money supply and
they quadrupled the money supply beyond where it had been when
the bubble burst. And then, of course, with COVID
hit again, massive, massive inflation.
And here's where Kamala Harris just doesn't seem to get it that
that she's looking at the problem of price inflation.
Well, what caused the price inflation?
Well, it wasn't, you know, what did they call it?
They when that when the inflation started with price
inflation started appearing and like the consumer goods area,
you know, they called it transitory.
It's just transitory. Paul Krugman is transitory, the
Federal Reserve Chairman. It's transitory inflation.
Well, it turned out not to be transitory because you, you
can't expect to just inflate the money supply by trillions of
dollars and not expect an increase in prices.
And so people really need to understand the relationship
between the monetary inflation and the price inflation.
And typically they'll talk about inflation is only meaning price
inflation and and they completely ignore the role of
the Federal Reserve in causing it.
Oh, yeah, The problem is always too many voluntary exchanges
between consenting adults. It's never the mass murdering
government monopolizing the money supply, regulating every
aspect of our commercial interactions.
When it comes to the response to OK, so we're in a recession.
Some say, you know, low interest rates that were artificially
pushed down caused it. Others say it was deregulation.
Of course, there's already like hundreds of regulatory agencies,
10s of thousands of bureaucrats, which they spend billions of
dollars regulating whatever, OK, you're in the recession.
How do these world views differentiate in their response
to recessions? Yeah.
So again, I kind of just touched on what Paul Krugman's response
was, which which was, you know, Oh well, we need to lower the
interest. We need to push interest rates
down and incentivize spending because in his view of the
problem is, well, there's not enough spending.
We need people to get out and spend more.
But you know what? People are already up to the
debt over their heads, you know, and debt over their heads, you
know, encouraging them, incentivizing them to borrow and
spend even more is really not helpful.
It's not doing anything to increase savings rates and build
up another, you know, to to accumulate capital that can then
be borrowed and spent. And so it's just, it's just,
it's compounding the problems, whereas, you know, the, the kind
of the Austrian economics view of things would be, well, you
need to allow the market correction to occur.
And of course, the Federal Reserve does everything it can
to prevent the market correction, which is, you know,
looking back at the Great Depression, What, what made it
great? Well, the government, you know,
the, the Hoover in FDR policies of, of the spending programs in
the New Deal, which started under Hoover and continued under
FDR and, and the Federal Reserve's, the Federal Reserve's
policy and inflationary policy is what made the Great
Depression great and but before that in 1921.
I was just going to say for for people not familiar with this
cause, Krugman likes to say 50 Herbert Hoover's.
That's his case against austerity.
Hoover increased government spending by 48% over his
administration and enacted to smooth Hawley tariffs.
This was not a free market isolationist, even though that
myth persists to this day. Krugman even mentioned that in
front of Ron Paul and he just didn't have the numbers on him
at the time. You were the depression of
19/20/21. Yeah, it which the government
basically sat back and did nothing and it was short.
It was, it was severe, but it was, it was short and it and the
correct, the correction was rapid and things were soon
rolling along again and the economy got back on its feet.
And so that's what needs to happen is they need to allow the
market correction to occur. They need to allow the
malinvestment, you know, to, to essentially to, for resources to
be reallocated efficiently a lot.
But you know which again, the role of market prices.
People don't understand the, the function of market prices and
the importance of prices to enable the efficient allocation
of scarce resources. And so when the government
interferes, it'd take the heart healthcare mark, you know,
healthcare industry, the so-called healthcare system
where there is no, there's no such thing as market prices
because the government is so heavily intervened into that
market that prices don't exist. And so why do, why do people
think that Healthcare is so unaffordable?
Well, it's precisely because we have the government intervening
so deeply in every single aspect of our lives and our, our
health. And so it's caused this huge
problem where essentially you have this government enforced
medical cartel. And that's what that's what
passes for a healthcare system in the United States.
It's amazing. That is the problem is just all
the government interference into the market just creates all
these problems, causes price increases, inefficient use of of
resources. And the solution is to just
allow the market to correct itself and then, and then then
stop doing what's causing the problems in the 1st place.
We need to end the Federal Reserve.
We need to end the the the legalized system of
counterfeiting. Exactly.
Oppose both foreign and domestic imperialism.
It's amazing that they will say things like, well, to grow the
economy, we need to stimulate demand, we need to increase the
money supply, we need to spend. Krugman went as far as to say if
we thought there was going to be an alien invasion and the
government mobilized against the alien invasion, the recession
would be over in 18 months. That's an actual quote.
So he doesn't differentiate spending.
That's the result of revealed choice preference in people's
voluntary exchanges versus the state printing money or
confiscating money, spending it on behalf of involuntary
investors. That should just be basic for
anyone who's trying to say well there's two schools of thought,
Keynes and the Austrian. To even equate these two with
that Santa Claus logic. Do they have a do they?
How would you summarize the disagreement they have on the
origin of what creates wealth? Austrians versus Keynesian?
How is wealth created in the 1st place?
How did Singapore go from impoverished to wealthy?
Yeah, well, Krugman has this idea that that economic growth
comes from spending. And so we just need to, if
people are spending, you know, hey, if I buy something from you
and then you've got money in your pocket and you go buy
something from someone else and it's hey, great.
Every time money exchanges hands, that's like, that's
economic growth. But that's not actually the
case. It it depends how the money is
spent. It depends on is it, is it, is
it debt being spent? You know, is it, are you
borrowing and spending? Is that capital actually there?
And also there's the the broken window fallacy that they rely on
all the time. So you have to look at the
opportunity costs so that you know.
So walk me through the broken window fallacy using this
example. There were terrible hurricanes
recently in North Carolina and Florida.
And the good thing is it caused a lot of destruction, which is
going to create a lot of jobs. And they'll those people who get
the jobs are going to spend that money, and that's going to
stimulate growth. What, if anything, is wrong with
that understanding of how wealth is created?
Yeah, sure. Well, let me just first explain,
you know, the the broken window fallacy kind of where I'm
getting that from, which is Frederick Bastia in in his
eighteen, forget what year it was.
But in the 1800s he wrote an essay that which is seen and
that which is not seen, I think was the title of the whole, the
kind of the mini book he wrote a pamphlet or a book in.
In that book, there was a section on on the fallacy of not
considering opportunity costs. So which is the reason it's
called a broken window fallacy is because he gave this parable,
the story use the example of a of a shopkeeper who gets his
window broken. And so then he has to pay the
glazier to come and fix his window.
And so the mainstream economists of Bastiat stay would say, oh,
look, there's economic growth, that the job was created.
And so Bastiat pointed out that that's a fallacy.
That's not correct. In fact, there was an economic
loss because had the window not been broken, the shopkeeper
would have had both that money that he had spent on, on fixing
the window and he would have had his window.
And so the destruction doesn't, isn't a means of growing the
economy because the shopkeeper could have otherwise spent that
money in a more efficient way. If the, if he would have still
had the window, he could have, then maybe he needed a helper in
his shop and he could have created a job by using that
money to, to hire a helper, you know, to sweep a shop or
something. And so it's, and then he would
have had both. And so you would have had the
great job created and the window with it, without it, without the
destruction. You know, Krogen literally
argued that the the 9/11 attacks could be good for the economy
because, you know, people are going to go out and buy bottled
waters and stuff and they had to rebuild the towers.
But you know, that again, the problem in this situation of the
Hurricanes, Yeah, well, if the destruction didn't occur in the
1st place, you wouldn't have to spend so much money to rebuild
it. So you're just, you're just
getting back to where you started.
And you know, in terms of having stuff like houses, you know,
that are destroyed. And so if the hurricane didn't
cause all this destruction, then you that all those resources
would be available to, to, to spend in more efficient ways, in
more productive ways. And instead of just rebuilding
what you already had. So you get back to like where
you were when you started and you haven't created anything.
And so it's just not the case. It's it's it's the broken window
fallacy, which is just incessantly repeated by
mainstream economists in the mainstream media.
They don't seem to understand the importance of considering
opportunity cost. Yes, I would love to just speak
with the average person in Malawi and try to sell them on
this. I'd say look what you guys need
in Malawi. You need a war to break out
because that's going to grow the economy and you need to increase
the money supply to maybe threefold and then increase your
minimum wage. I wonder if even the average
person would be like, well, how is that going to increase our
productivity levels if there's, you know, no private property,
if there's no free trade, there's no protection of
investments? I wonder if the average person
who's actually in poverty, rather than the Krugman's and
the Keynesians who are so far removed from it that they can
just advocate it without ever having to bear the cost of the
inevitable downsides. Anything more we should know
about the Austrian versus Keynesian school before moving
on? Yeah, just to come back to that
question, I didn't fully answer it.
So that's kind of the difference between the, the, the Keynesian
Krugman view. Where is it?
Where does it come from? And you know, it's, it's like
they just think it's just spending.
And I'm saying, well, no, it matters what type of spending.
And so to come back to that point, you know, economic growth
really comes from savings. It's not spending, it's the
savings. And so when you save and you
accumulate capital and then you're able to, which sometimes
requires, you know, you sometimes you have to sacrifice
to be able to save and you can't go out and buy those things that
you, that you want. So it's, it's, but you're, but
you're saving it for a purpose. And so, and then you're able to
invest it. And that's really where the
economic growth comes from. And so that's that's kind of the
other point to just kind of wrap up that question is it, it
matters where, how, where the spending comes from and and what
this spent on. And so it really comes from from
investment of savings as opposed to just any spending whatsoever.
Next we have a book from you titled The War on Informed
Consent, The Persecution of Doctor Paul Thomas by the Oregon
Medical Board. This is published by the
Children's Health Defense and RFK Junior wrote the foreword.
Is that correct? Yep, that's correct.
Sky Horse Publishing is is the the publishing company, but
Children's Health Defense has a has an imprint with them.
So it was kind of published through Children's Health
Defense with Sky Horse. Got it.
So I would never have questioned this something maybe like two or
three years ago. But after realizing there was no
difference in states that had mask mandates and states that
didn't when it came to COVID deaths.
After realizing the lockdowns actually showed no effect.
If you compare comparable populations with the amount of
time they locked down, Florida did not have more access deaths
even accounting for Florida's older population than
California. And then the nail in the coffin
for me was this food pyramid from the USDA that since 1992
has and telling people the main thing you should get at least 11
servings a day of bread and pasta.
And now people are shocked at the obesity epidemic.
So when it comes to vaccines, by the way, do you have the numbers
on how many people a year die as a causal result of prescribed
medications or doctors not performing well on the job?
I hear it's like one of the highest causes of death outside
of. Yeah, there was a study, it's
been a number of years since that study came out, but there
was a study I think was published in the BMJ, if memory
serves, that found it that that was the third leading cause of
death in the United States. And I doubt that that's changed,
if anything is probably gotten worse.
I mean, you have the opioid epidemic, so.
Medical malpractice. Is that the term?
Actually, I think it was prescription drugs.
Prescription. Drugs, it might have been
coupled with medical malpractice, but I think those
were actually 2 separate categories.
And so when you when you combine all of the all of the ways in
which the medical system itself kills people, I would be
completely unsurprised if it was the leading cause of death.
And there's also historical examples I believe.
Tell me if this is a myth or not.
I'm not married to this idea, but my understanding was that
originally at home births were safer for the mother and the
child than hospital births because before the germ theory
was understood, doctors were not washing their hands.
Is that accurate? Yeah, yeah.
In fact, when people there was a particular individual, I don't
remember the person's name, but I think it, I think it was maybe
a midwife. I don't, I don't recall that the
history there. But there's somebody like
publicly speaking out and just saying like these doctors need
to wash their hands. And the mainstream medical
system was just like dismissive of that, like how ridiculous.
But of course that was a big problem and that that was
causing a lot of of, of infant deaths and infant infant
mortality rate was, was very high.
So just that one simple thing of washing hands caused quite a
reduction in infant mortality. That's true.
Now, what is a vaccine? We couldn't really even agree on
this when it came to the mRNA vaccine.
Some say, well, it's mRNA technology.
What a vaccine does is it gives you a small dose of an illness
in order to increase, in order to decrease the likelihood that
a larger exposure to this will actually make you I'll, you
know, like give you a small portion of the virus to protect
you from something that's more deadly.
Some say, well, it's about the goal of the vaccine is so you
never get sick or well, actually the goal is to decrease your
symptoms if you do catch it. What is a vaccine?
Well, the traditional vaccine is as you described, you know, they
would, they would inject you with the antigen.
So, you know, maybe I killed a virus or what they call a live
virus, which is attenuated or weakened.
So there's those two types of viral vaccines, the live and the
killed, although viruses aren't technically alive, they're not
technically living things, but for the sake of just using the,
the language that everyone's familiar with.
But then or bacterial vaccines, you know, the, the pertussis
vaccine is an example. So, you know, they had, they
have, you know, either a weekend or a part of the, the antigen is
a component of the vaccine. But of course there's all kinds
of other ingredients. Some vaccines, well in the past,
many childhood vaccines contain mercury.
They phase that out around the turn of the century.
Flu shots, multi dose vials of flu shots still contain mercury.
And many vaccines contain aluminum, another known
neurotoxin. And when you say aluminum are
I'm picturing the can that Diet Coke comes in.
Is that what you're literally referring to?
Yeah, aluminum. Well, they, they use a form of
aluminum in the vaccines. I mean, and there's different
compounds of of the aluminum that they use, but they use it
as a so the mercury they use as a preservative.
So it's to preserve, you know, because the multi those vials,
so you, you have multiple doses out of a single vial.
And so there's the preservative to avoid contamination.
So that's what mercury is used for.
Aluminum is used as what they call an adjuvant, which is
essentially the purpose is to cause a more inflammatory
reaction. So it's in the downstream.
You'll have a higher level of antibodies by including the
aluminum in there. And so the pharmaceutical
companies require the adjuvant in many of their vaccines
because without it, just the antigen component alone doesn't
cause enough of a reaction to induce the level of antibodies
required to gain FDA licensure. So that's just kind of some
background on on aluminum and vaccines.
So, you know, you have to be careful about what the
ingredients are. But of course, you know, then as
you mentioned, so that that's kind of the traditional vaccine
and that's what it is. And the purpose being, you know,
as they used to define a vaccine was to confer immunity.
Well, what is immunity? So immunity being, well, you,
you can be exposed to a pathogen and yet either not become
infected or suffer only mild symptoms because your immune
system effectively fights it off.
And then of course, the mRNA vaccines came along, which are
built on gene therapy technology.
And there was this whole debate about what's the definition of a
vaccine. The CDC literally changed the
death, its definition of a vaccine.
And so again, yeah, go ahead. And gain of function research.
They explicitly gain tattoo PPP. Fauci tried to play word games
with the definition of gain of function.
But so you had that whole debate about what what is a vaccine?
But essentially, you know, they basically claim, well, it's a
vaccine because the design is to give you immunity.
Of course, when the vaccines first rolled out, they were
claiming number one, that all summer long in 2020, all through
that summer and fall, there was all kinds of propaganda claiming
that natural immunity is weak and short lived and we need the
vaccines because that's going to be what's going to give us good
immunity. That was all a bunch of BS as I
was writing all summer long and all through the fall, that the
the claim that they were making that that natural immunity is
weak and short lived was all a bunch of BS as I was exposing at
the time. And then when the shots rolled
around before, before they were even authorized for emergency
use, which was in December 2020, they were already claiming that
they were going to confer herd immunity.
This was going to be the path out of the pandemic because the
mRNA shots were going to confer herd immunity, which means that
they would stop infection and transmission.
And so 2 doses was the claim. They, they claim that two doses
of the mRNA shots would confer durable sterilizing immunity,
sterilizing immunity being stopping, stopping infection and
transmission, which and, and again at the time, this isn't
hindsight. At the time I was pointing out
that there was no scientific evidence to support that claim
because of course, the clinical trials weren't designed to
determine effectiveness against infection and and transmission.
And so anyhow, So what is a vaccine that those are they,
they from their point of view, it's supposed to confer
immunity. And then when the vaccines
essentially were proven not to stop infection and transmission,
suddenly it became, Oh, well, it's to reduce the severity of
symptoms, which is also ironic because it's, it's, it started
out, you need the vaccine to get high level of antibodies, right?
This was the whole, the whole argument, the whole framework.
So you want to get your antibody levels up really high.
And which was also ironic because when you looked at cases
of infection, high levels of antibodies were actually
associated with severe disease, whereas people who had lower
levels of antibodies tended to be have lesser symptoms or
completely asymptomatic. They never developed the disease
because they had superior cellular immune function.
So there's the antibody immunity or humoral immunity, which is
the antibodies in your blood, but there's also cellular
immunity and T cells that serve different functions.
And so with with COVID-19 in particular, cellular immunity is
very, very important. And it's not so much about the
antibodies. And so they're, they're saying,
well, you need a high level of antibodies, which was already
ironic to begin with, because it just, that's not the correlation
when you look at infections and severity of disease.
And then suddenly, suddenly when they, when it was proven that
the shots don't stop infection and transmission and they
started calling for boosters, suddenly they discovered
cellular immunity. And they say, oh, well, don't
worry, your antibodies wane but, and you lose your antibodies,
but there's cellular immunity. And so, you know, the irony of
that, it's like, well, how come they weren't educating people
about cellular immunity when they were claiming that
antibodies from infection were insufficient, right.
When they were claiming that natural immunity was weak and
short lived. And about the basis for that
claim was that after the peak phase of infection, after the
acute phase of infection, they were looking at people who
recovered from COVID and, and, and measuring the antibodies and
there was a rapid decline of antibodies.
They were claiming they were, they were saying like, oh, look,
people's people are losing their antibodies are losing their
immunity, which every immunology, I mean, this is a
basic immunology. Every immunologist who like
supported that propaganda claim was complicit in, in an absolute
intentional, deliberate deception because they all know
that that's completely normal. That's what happens after the
acute phase of infection. But looking longer term at the
antibodies of people who recovered from infection,
antibodies persisted at a lower level.
They plateau, they after the initial rapid drop, they, they
plateau at A at a lower level. Plus this completely overlooked
the role of immune memory. So you have immunological memory
where your body learns how to fight off a pathogen and it
develops effective antibodies. And then if you encounter that
pathogen again, you can wrap it. You don't need the body doesn't
have to go through that relearning process all over
again. You can rapidly turn out
antibodies as needed to fight off an infection, which again,
this is immunology one O 1 stuff.
And yet this was the basis for the whole lie that natural
immunity is weak and short lived and people who were recovering
from people who recovered from COVID were losing their
immunity. That was literally the claim in
in the headlines. And it was all a bunch of it was
all a deception for the specific aim of because if we go back to
March of of 2020, the end, the explicitly stated end game of
the lockdowns was coerced mass vaccination and, and, and my
source for that is the the. Imperial College London paper
that was put out, if you remember the lockdowns, the
claim for the lockdowns was that we need to flatten the curve.
Yes. Right.
They never even claimed that it would save lives.
It originally they had said this will stop the overflow of
hospitalizations. The only lives it would save
would be excess deaths due to lack of care because hospitals
were overflowing. It wasn't to stop deaths from
from COVID per SE, OK, because the area under the curve was the
same. So instead of a short sharp
peak, it's a flatter, a flatter wave.
I know it's supposed to be, you know, 14 days to flatten the
curve or something like that. And so they cited this Imperial
College paper that was put out. But what the media didn't talk
about was how actually that paper that the authors of that
Neil Ferguson and colleagues had claimed that, well, we need to
keep things under lockdown until a vaccine is developed and then
only once everyone is vaccinated can can we stop doing these
lockdowns. And so again, the explicitly
stated end game of the lockdowns from the start was always
coerced mass vaccination. And that would have been so
important because then there never could have been the
counterfactual of like right when a judge repealed the mask
mandate on airplanes, they were in big trouble because we'd
expect there to be mass deaths, massive increase in COVID cases
and all these symptoms, hospitals overrun.
But you saw no significant change.
So you could compare the before and afterwards.
Whereas if everyone had gotten vaccine, no matter what
happened, they could just say over there a million deaths,
you're welcome. There would have been 30 million
had everyone not been vax. But now we can actually compare
the vax population versus the unvax.
Of course, there's a selection process.
So even know, there was a time where it's like more people are
dying with the vaccine than without.
Well, you're more likely to get the vax if you're old.
You're more likely to die if you're old and if you get COVID
and you're old. So how can we verify whether
these vaccines actually did help the people who got them?
Well, unfortunately because as soon as the FDA issued emergency
use authorization which is a status for experimental
investigational drugs, the they effectively ended the trials
because they vaccinated away the placebo control groups.
And so we never, we don't have any long term data any good, you
know, from, from like randomized trials.
We have no good data from randomized trials on the long
term effects of these vaccines. So we have no way to compare
with really good data the the health outcomes of vaccinated
versus unvaccinated people, which is really important that
you have to look at #1 long term outcomes and #2 you can't narrow
your focus to just COVID outcomes.
So for example, they'll say that, well, you need, you need
the COVID vaccine to reduce your risk of death from COVID.
But let's just stipulate that the, the vaccines reduce your
risk of dying from COVID. It doesn't mean that reduces
your risk of dying because it might simultaneously increase
your risk of dying from other causes.
In fact, there's a there's a term for this in the literature.
It's non specific effects. So vaccines can have non
specific effects. And the best, probably best
known example of this is the diphtheria, tetanus and
wholesale pertussis vaccine, which is not used in developed
countries anymore, but it's still the most widely used
vaccine around the world in the developing world.
And the studies show that that vaccine is actually associated
with an increased rate of childhood mortality because even
though it seems to offer protection against the three
target diseases, it detrimentally effects children's
immune systems in a way that makes them more vulnerable to
other diseases. And so they're dying at a higher
rate from other causes than they otherwise would have from the
three target diseases. And so This is why a vaccine can
appear to be effective against the target diseases and yet
increase your risk of dying. And so it's really important to
look at all 'cause mortality and all health outcomes.
There's also health outcomes, autoimmune diseases, asthma,
allergies, all sorts of chronic, you know, neuro,
neurodevelopmental diseases, autism, might as well bring that
up. There are all kinds of other
possible outcomes, health outcomes that need to be
compared. And the CDC has been really
adamant about not doing those types of studies that they, they
won't do studies comparing, you know, the childhood population,
which is incredibly sick. It's frighteningly sick, the
childhood population in the US with epidemic rates of chronic
illnesses and diseases and disorders.
So one thing I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead.
When I originally thought of autism I thought of literally a
Down syndrome child. However, if you look at how they
define it, 1 alternative could be they've changed the
definition of autism because I work with a lot of kids and
while a lot of them are listed as autist, as autistic, they
don't come off as like, you know, visibly having a mental
disorder. What do you mean when you say
autism? And is there a causal connection
between getting a vaccine and a child who did not have autism
having autism in the future? Yeah.
So I mean, the technical name for it is autism spectrum
disorder. So there's a spectrum which is
diagnosed based on symptoms. And so yeah, there there could
be mild cases of autism or severe.
I mean, some children are non completely non verbal, for
example, whereas others, you know, they they, they do OK.
You know, they can be sociable, they're they're commutative,
they can, they can verbalize ideas and things.
And, you know, they're just a milder case.
And so it is a spectrum. And so as far as the question,
you know, of course, we're all supposed to believe that the,
the idea that vaccines can cause autism has been debunked.
Well, there's that, that claim is disinformation.
And we're supposed to believe it as a matter of faith because
we're told there's been study after study after study looking
at that question. Well, but first of all, you
have, you have the situation where the government itself has
acknowledged that vaccines can cause autism.
And so in 1986, the government passed a, a, a law called the
National Vaccine Childhood Injury Act, which essentially
granted broad legal immunity to the, the vaccine, the
Pharmaceutical industry, the manufacturers against injury
lawsuits because they were literally going out of business
because their vaccines were damaging people and people were
suing. And so the government stepped in
to preserve public policy. And it's it's it's policy of
advocating mass vaccination and also to save the Pharmaceutical
industry to by granting them legal immunity.
And part of that was they also established the vaccine injury
compensation program, the VICP, which is funded by an excise tax
on every dose of vaccine administered.
So effectively, the law shifted the financial burden for vaccine
injuries away from the Pharmaceutical industry and on
to the tax paying consumer. And so under the VICP, there was
a case of a young girl named Hannah Polling who received, I
think it was 9 doses at once at 19 months of age and regressed
into autism, diagnosed autism And her father happened to be a
neurologist and WHO recognize that it was the vaccine that
caused her regression into autism.
And this is really interesting to her.
Her doctor happened to be a doctor named Andrew Zimmerman,
who is an expert in autism, a renowned expert in autism and
someone who the government had used as a witness during these
the ICP cases. And so he had testified on
behalf of the government in in cases before the vaccine was
sometimes called the vaccine court.
So he was an expert witness for the government.
Problem is that he turned around and agreed that yes, the
receipt, the receipt of those 9 doses at once caused Hannah's
autism. And in fact, the government
itself acknowledged this in the case that it was that the the
receipt of those vaccines because Hannah had a
mitochondrial disorder, mitochondrial dysfunction.
And so I mean, if you don't, if you're, if you have a
mitochondria dysfunction that can cause all kinds of problem
with your cellular metabolism, including, for example, like a
lesser ability to detox. Not everyone is at the same risk
of having adverse events or negative impact of vaccinations.
But essentially what what the vaccines caused with kind of
pulling was they cause a high fever, brain inflammation, which
led to brain injury, which manifested as symptoms of
autism. And the government acknowledged
this in the case. And the CDC director at the time
and Julia Gerberting or Julie Gerberting went on CNN and said,
yeah, we all know sometimes vaccines can cause fever and
then fever can cause other problems.
And sometimes that can manifest as autism, like symptoms.
And she was saying, like, symptoms similar to autism, but
she really meant autism because autism is diagnosed again, based
on its symptoms. So she was effectively
acknowledging that, yeah, it was the vaccines that caused Hannah
Polling's autism. So just so people know, this is
actually something that is well known, but it's one of those
open secrets, shall we say, much like Zelensky not holding his
elections and conscripting men. We all know it, but we just
don't talk about it. Here's CBS News, September 10th
of 2010. CBS News has learned the family
of Hannah Polling will receive more than $1.5 million for her
life, care, lost earnings, and pain and suffering for the first
year alone. In addition to the first year,
the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay
for Hannah's care. Those familiar with the case
believe the compensation could easily amount to $20 million
over the child's lifetime. CBS News So realize we're not
just quoting Alex Jones here. Other things that I actually
want to share. Robert F Kennedy Junior has
promoted the Children's Health defense and he collects peer
reviewed published research showing adverse effects of
mercury. And what he's done is he's
collected the abstracts from hundreds of papers over the
year. I actually had to upload them
into two sections, the World Mercury Project as well.
I will keep these links in the description below.
But it's just incredible to know that there is actually there are
mainstream scientists who are actually going after this.
It's just such a well kept secret.
I'm sorry to interrupt you. It's just hard to structure this
conversation, so I want to make sure I get that.
Again, that's a great point. We should come back to that.
So I'm glad you brought that up. We should, we should come back
to the point of mercury. But just to kind of wrap up, I
want to also make a point. So that was a case of the
government admitting that, yes, vaccines can and do cause autism
in, in this case with a child who had a mitochondrial
disorder. So coming back to the studies,
because of course, we're all told, oh, study after study
after study has proven that that vaccines do not cause autism.
There is no association. But here's the problem with
those studies. None of them were designed to
consider a subpopulation of genetically or in, in children
with a genetic or environmentally cause
susceptibility. So it's not the case that every
child would have like an equal risk of, of, of having an
adverse reaction to vaccination manifesting as symptoms of
autism. And so you really have to design
a study specifically to test the hypothesis that vaccines
administered according to the CDC's routine childhood schedule
can can increase the risk of developing autism among
genetically susceptible children.
Or, or again, it could be an environmental environmentally
caused susceptibility. And they haven't done that.
They didn't design the studies to do that.
And you look at the CD, you go to the CDCS web page where it
says vaccines do not cause autism.
And interestingly, it they'll cite the Institute of Medicine,
which didn't draw that conclusion.
They did did conclude that that the evidence favors rejection of
the hypothesis, but they also pointed out that the studies
hadn't been done to test the hypothesis that vaccines could
increase the risk of autism among genetically susceptible
children. So the studies hadn't been done.
That's what the IOM really said, the Institute of Medicine, and
but that's what the CDC quotes to support its claim that
vaccines do not cause autism. So you see this sleight of hand
here. You see the problem with this?
And then of course, if you look at every single one of the CDC
studies that it did itself purporting to prove that that
vaccines do not cause autism, again, these are not, again,
they're not randomized controlled trials of any kind,
that they're observational studies that are essentially
designed. The CDC had designed the studies
to find no association, and you can design a study to find no
association. Here's one really good way to do
it. There's something called a
healthy user bias or healthy vaccinee bias in this case,
which is there was a 2015 study actually that of course then all
the media headlines reported on this study as once again that
once again a study finding that there's no association between
MMR vaccine and autism even among genetically susceptible
children. But again, that was just a major
deception because what that study actually found was not
that children who who received the vaccine were at no more risk
for autism than children who didn't.
Rather, what they found that children who were at higher risk
of autism, there was a lower vaccination rate among that
subpopulation of children. So what happens is you have
parents who are who, for example, they might have an
older sibling. And then, and this is
specifically what they looked at in this study, they were looking
at children. They defined genetic
susceptibility as a child who had an older sibling with
autism. And So what would happen is
parents would have a first child who probably was vaccinated,
developed autism, and then with a second child or younger
sibling, they, because of the experience with the first child,
they would skip the MMR shot. And So what happens is you have,
you have this pooling of genetically susceptible
individuals into the unvaccinated cohort.
And so the, the, the logical conclusion from that study
should have been, well, we've discovered that there's a,
there's a healthy user bias. And so studies that examine the
studies need to be designed to test the hypothesis that
vaccines can contribute to the development of autism and
genetically susceptible children.
And those studies need to be able to control for this healthy
user bias. But of course, that's not what
they do. They just throw up their hands
and say, oh, another study that proves that vaccines don't cause
autism. You see the deception here,
they're, they're, and then they can literally design studies not
to find an association because now they're aware of, of these
types of biases in the study. And so they, they design more
and more studies that, that don't control for this type of
problem. And they, they produce the
results that they want. And then they, they, they say
that, well, oh, look, we, we, we've proven that vaccines don't
cause autism. And of course, observational
studies, they talk about observational studies.
If it produces the desired result somehow, that's proof.
It's scientific proof. But any time an observational
study finds an association between vaccination and harm,
then they always focus on the methodological flaws because of
course, every study is imperfect.
And so they always focus on, oh, that study was flawed.
But anytime the study produces the result they want, do you
ever hear them talking about all the flaws in the study?
Of course not. And so there's just this
institutionalized bias and institutionalized fraud
essentially in the, in the, in the public messaging, it's, it's
fraudulent. And so there's a lot of problems
there. And this goes back to Mercury.
So let's let's, that's a good segue there.
So to come back to the point of Mercury, because what happened
with the mercury, the reason why they removed the mercury around
the turn of the century is because the CDC had been
continually adding throughout the late 80s and 90s,
continually adding more vaccines to the schedule that contain
mercury without anyone in government.
Considering that the potential health harms arising from the
cumulative doses of mercury that children were receiving from the
CDC schedule. And when they finally got around
to doing the calculation, which happened by accident because
Congress had just tasked the FDA with, with querying the industry
to determine because of the concerns about mercury toxicity
and, and the problems, the health harms on the population
from, from mercury exposure. They, the FDA was tasked with
querying the industry about like what are all the mercury
containing products on the market?
And so that the lists they got back from the manufacturers in,
in the industry included vaccines.
And so they finally got around, this was like 19 to 98, I think
they finally got around to doing the calculations with the, with
the childhood schedule and they determined that the the CDC
schedule was exposing infants, you know, six months and under
to cumulative levels of mercury in excess of the government's
own safety guidelines. So you don't hear that.
You don't hear that that's the reason why mercury was removed
from the vaccines. In fact, if you go to the CD CS
website again and they say, well, you know, mercury was
removed and they don't talk about that whole history, you
completely whitewash it and they just say that it was done not
because there was any evidence of harm, but simply out of an
abundance of caution. That's what the CDC says.
And of course, the mainstream media run with that that whole
propaganda narrative which completely whitewashes how the
the CDC was responsible for for. Massively overdosing children
with mercury, which is of course a known neurotoxin.
In fact, again, you can return to the CDCS own own sources and
they'll say that, you know, the mercury in vaccines is safe and
they'll cite like the Institute of Medicine.
And you go to the Institute of Medicine report and you read the
hundreds of pages for yourself and you find out that the
Institute of Medicine acknowledges that yeah, mercury
is a quote known neurotoxin. That quote accumulates in the
brain and quote can cause neurological harm.
Just. Such a huge deception.
But I had always heard, I don't know if this is like real advice
that's given to pregnant women, but the whole thing was no
drinking alcohol, no smoking crack, no drinking coffee, and
no eating fish. The reason fish is on there as
somewhat of an outlier is there's a large amount of
mercury, which is OK for adults, but children are especially
susceptible. Is this literally the same type
of mercury or is it like just the same word that has different
meanings? Like fat in foods does not
correlate to fat on your body? Are they literally referring to
mercury That's both in fish and in these vaccines?
The mercury, the form of mercury in fish is called methyl
mercury. The form of mercury in vaccines
is called ethyl mercury. So they're two different forms.
They're both known neurotoxins. But this is this is another,
another, another deception of the of the CDC is because the
CDC will say, Oh, well, yeah, the mercury that you get exposed
to from fish is that's toxic. But the, the mercury in vaccines
is, is safe and non-toxic. Why?
Well, they say that, well, because the, the body rapidly
eliminates ethyl mercury, unlike methyl mercury, which will
accumulate. And so let's say, well, yeah,
you get a, you get a, a small dose of the, the ethyl mercury
in, in the, in the vaccine, but it's harmless because the body
just rapidly eliminates it. But that, that's again, that's
just a fraudulent claim. And there was a study in 2005
showing that comparing it that actually criticized the, the,
the regulatory establishment, the FDA, because when they're,
they're talking about the safety levels and risk with vaccines,
they actually use the safety guidelines for methyl mercury.
Why? Because they've never
established safety guidelines for exposure to ethyl mercury.
And so the authors of the study in 2005 were, were criticizing
the FDA for that. And incidentally, the study that
I'm referring to, the 2005 study, FDA researchers
themselves have described as the best study for a comparison of
toxicology between methyl mercury and ethyl mercury.
So this is this is a very well done study.
And what the study actually found was that yes, ethyl
mercury is more readily eliminated from the blood than
methyl mercury, but it it's more cumulative in the brain, it
accumulates in the brain at a higher rate than methyl mercury.
It does and. So.
The claim that, well, ethyl mercury is safe because it's
rapidly eliminated from the, from the body.
This the main study that they, they look at to support that
claim. Just looked at blood levels and
they didn't ask, they didn't ask the question, well, where did
the mercury go? Where did it go?
Well, guess what? It accumulates in tissues and
organs, including the brain. And so it's just not the case
that the, the mercury is rapidly eliminated from the body.
Some of it remains in the body and it become, it becomes part
of the, the, the body burden of toxicity.
And of course, and it's the same study, the 2005 study I'm
talking about that did this comparison of methyl mercury and
ethyl mercury and accumulation. They also expressed great
concern about this accumulation of ethyl mercury in the brain.
And it breaks down from an organic form of mercury to
inorganic form, which is one of the reasons why ethyl mercury
accumulates more than methyl mercury, because it breaks down
into inorganic mercury faster or more readily.
And so they expressed concern about this mercury accumulating
in the brain of children precisely because it's it's
known to cause an active inflammation state like this
chronic inflammation in the brain, which is known to be
associated with autism and. You know, intriguingly, this
this is this. Is one of the studies that the
CDC cites. Believe this or not, this is one
of the studies that the CDC site sites to support its claim that
vaccines do not cause autism. So.
It is really difficult for me. To, you know, even start on this
path of understanding the terms, understanding what they mean.
What I just went by when I decided not to get the vaccine
is I look at the people promoting it and they have the
worst reputations known to medicine.
Anyone advocating mask mandates, lockdowns, it was very clear
that there was no correlation between states that lock down
and had mask mandates versus states that didn't.
They had the companies had complete liability.
You couldn't sue them, so they had no incentive to provide a
good quality product. You had the state engage in a
mass media propaganda campaign, you had a lot of employers
mandating it. So again, they know our products
going to be consumed whether people really want it or not.
Very little incentive for them to provide a good quality
product or service. You also had them saying there
are no long term side effects when this thing is like six
months or a year old. They then announced that we
actually have the vaccine like 24 to 48 hours after it's
announced that Biden actually won.
Whereas if they would have, you know, kept you up to date and
said we're getting really close, then Trump, of course, would
have claimed that Operation Warp Speed did this correctly.
And then finally, the blatant lack of focusing on any
alternatives. It was locked down.
Wear a mask until the vaccine comes out.
It's like, is there nothing I can do in the meantime?
Is there any correlation between people that are obese and people
who die from COVID? Could have maybe that?
How about the ketogenic diet which like 10s of thousands of
people have lost more than £100 on?
Or the carnivore diet? Is there anything we can do?
Is there any credence to the hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin
or going outside or walking? Is there anything we can do in
the meantime? Nope.
Lock down and wait for Pfizer to tell you that it's OK to come
out. We have one more topic.
So anything else we should know about vaccines?
I'm happy to hear if you want to mention measles, polio, or just
any false narratives in general that people have about vaccines
or the medical industrial complex.
Yeah, sure. We can talk about each of those
at. Great length, but that would
just kind of take a broader view here and and just point out how
you know, what parents have really been demanding is a study
comparing long term health outcomes between children who
follow the CDC schedule and completely unvaccinated
children. And of course, the CDC has
refused to do this type of study.
But independent researchers? Have forged ahead in that.
Area and I cover this in my book The War on Informed Consent.
And the best of those studies is 1 by Doctor Paul Thomas, who,
who I wrote the book about because the book is about his
persecution by the Oregon Medical Board.
But of course it, it provides all the context and the
historical context of the vaccine program and the, you
know, it gets into the legal immunity and, and, and the
history with the, the mercury and it provides all that
context. But it, it really is a story of
how the, the government has been #1 going after parents and
trying to eliminate their ability to exercise informed
consent by eliminating, you know, like what they call, you
know, philosophical or religious exemptions and allowing medical
exemptions, but only medical exemptions like in the state of
California determined, you know, that are essentially once
determined by the CDC, if the CDC has a, has a
contraindication to a vaccine. In other words, if you're a
certain person who has a certain condition or something, and
they, they actually advise, well, you shouldn't get this
vaccine. But it's, it's almost as though
you practically have to have already, you know, had a very
severe injury from a vaccine to be able to get a medical
exemption in some states. And so they go after the parents
to try to eliminate their ability to, to exercise choice.
You couple this with the, you know, the, the, the mandates in
the, in the school system, but then they're also going after
doctors because there would be doctors who would essentially
facilitate people's ability to exercise informed consent by
writing medical exemptions for them.
And so in numerous states, they threaten doctors with de
licensure. And that's what happened to
Doctor Paul Thomas. And so I explained his story in
there because it's just it's, it's a really it's it really
epitomizes the title of the book, the war on informed
consent and how the government is really trying to eliminate
people's ability to exercise free will and choice when it
comes to this pharmaceutical products.
And so the big picture view is this, it's that the government
won't do a study of comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated
children. But Doctor Paul Thomas did that.
In fact, he did it because the the Oregon Medical Board, which
was persecuting him, demanded that he produce peer reviewed
evidence to support his alternative approach.
His alternative approach being to respect parents informed
consent and provide them with the information that they needed
to be able to make their own choice as opposed to.
Just pushing them. To do what the CDC recommends.
So that's his alternative approach, right?
And so this threatened the public health establishment in
in Oregon. And so the Oregon Medical Board
demanded that he produce peer reviewed evidence to support his
approach, which, which was ironic because of course the CDC
couldn't be, couldn't do that. The CDC could not produce a
study comparing, you know, health outcomes between
vaccinated and unvaccinated children because it doesn't do
that. And so Doctor Paul Thomas teamed
up with Doctor James Lyons Weiler and they did that study
losing his patients data and they compared his completely
unvaccinated patients with the variably vaccinated patients.
And I say variably vaccinated because this wasn't the CDC
versus unvaccinated study, because the patients in in his
practice, they they all had their own schedules.
The parents would make their own choices.
Sometimes they would skip a shot, sometimes they would delay
it, you know, So it was an totally individualized approach.
And so they did the unvaccinated versus variably vaccinated study
and the outcome showed very clearly and just unambiguously
that the his completely unvaccinated patients were the
by far the healthiest children in his practice and that.
Study was. Actually retracted later, which
isn't in my book because it didn't happen at the time, but
it was later retracted. But the reason for the
retraction was completely political.
They did not identify any flaws or problems with the study that
would have legitimized the retraction.
It was it was. It was actually retracted based
on an anonymously written letter that complained about the
methodology on the grounds that the, the, the claim was that,
well, the study's not showing that unvaccinated children are
really healthy or really they're just as sick as all the
vaccinated kids. It's just that their parents
don't care about their health enough to go in and, and see the
doctors. And so they're just not getting
diagnosed. That's the, that's the argument,
which of course, that's not a reason to retract a study.
You could express a concern about a methodology from that,
but that's not like that's not a reason to, it was not a
legitimate reason to eat a hypothetical selection bias,
basically. Well, there's a hypothetical
selection biases in, in any observational study.
That's not a reason for retraction.
Right. And so the irony of that was
that actually in the study, they actually did a test to kind of
rule that out because they looked at, well, child visits
and incidents of fever. And so they, they and they
compared the two and they showed that.
Yeah. Among, among children, among the
vaccinated children, Yeah. The office visits for fever was
much was much higher, which is expected because of course
vaccines can cause fevers, whereas the incidence of well
child visits was the same between the two groups.
So it wasn't the case that the the parents of unvaccinated
children were not bringing them in to see the doctor.
They were just as just as routinely for routine visits.
They just weren't coming in for sicknesses and illnesses and
disorders. And then and then James Lyons.
Weiler. After that, published a second
study. After the retraction, published
a second study doing more detailed analysis using Doctor
Thomas's patient data, showing clearly that it was not a
selection bias, where it's just that that they unvaccinated kids
were just as sick and had just as many illnesses and chronic
diseases and things, but they just weren't being diagnosed.
That wasn't the case at all. If anything, they were actually
going in in for routine visits more consistently than the
vaccinated kids were. And so it's just it, it just
wasn't the case at all. And so the study was wrongly
retracted is, is my point. And I just want to bring that up
because, you know, if you go and you read my book and you look at
the study now, it'll say no, that that, that it's been
retracted. So it's really important, I
think to, to kind of follow up on that and explain that to
people about how that's, and, and this is another example of
just the bias. And there's, there's bias even
getting anything critical of vaccines published in the 1st
place. And then even if it does manage
to get published, you know, if you, if it's, you just got a
much higher chance of, of being attacked and criticized.
Again, there's this, there's this institutionalized bias
where if it produces the right findings, it's, it's scientific
proof. But if it, if it calls into
question CDC's practices, oh, then it's a flawed study.
And, and so this is what happened with with that case.
So the point being that the scientific evidence indicates
that completely unvaccinated children are healthier.
And the government and industry do not want you to know this.
And they want you to go on vaccinating children according
to the CDC schedule. They want you to get your COVID
shot. They want you to get your flu
shot every year, but that the science does not support these
practices. In fact, you'd look into the flu
shot, for example, Here's an example.
New York Times will say, oh, a 2010 Cochrane review, which is a
systematic review and meta analysis looking at a broad body
of, of studies on on the flu shots.
New York Times saying, you know, the the the systematic review
found that flu shots confer a great public health benefit.
So go out and get your flu shot when you go up and go and look
up the study. And actually what the the
Cochrane review authors found was that the fundamental
assumptions underlying the CD CS flu shot recommendation are
unsupported by scientific evidence.
The findings of their, of their review call into question the CD
CS recommendation for everyone to get a flu shot every year.
Oh, and by the way, the CDC is more interested in sustaining
and, and supporting its policy than it is in the science which
is, which is demonstrated by the fact that it, it systematically
mischaracterizes the science. That's what the review actually
said. And here it is.
Here's the New York Times saying, well, this study show
that the flu shot converts a really great public health
benefit, so go get your flu shot.
I mean, it's like literally like what the media and the
government say that science says about vaccines and what science
actually tells us are two completely different
irreconcilable things. And so that is the key final
point I just want to make there on that topic and I think one of
the. Great lessons.
We can learn from, I sort of learned this from Thomas Sowell.
A lot of people in response to Thomas Sowell said, well, you
can look at the income of minorities after the Civil
Rights Act and they increased, so therefore the Civil Rights
Act was a good thing, Sowell said.
The goal when you're trying to find the effects of a policy,
you don't look at when the policy was enacted and what
happened afterwards. You also have to look at what
was happening previously, what was the previous trend before
the policy. They do not do this when it
comes to polio. They don't do it with measles,
nor do they ever look for alternative explanations As for
example, increase in access to Purell or other ways that the
human beings are using products and services in a more clean
manner that could make society healthier overall.
They just assume it was introduced.
We got this result. Therefore there's a causal
connection between the two. So keep that methodology in mind
whenever on that point and I'm going to give you the.
Last word on this because I. On that point, again with the
vaccines. We're, we're supposed to believe
this myth that the reason for, you know, the, the dramatic
decline of infectious disease mortality that we saw in the
20th century was because of vaccines.
Actually 90% of the decline in infectious disease mortality
occurred before there were any vaccines that could possibly
help to explain it. And that's straight out of the
journal Pediatrics, which is the AA PS journal, the American
Academy of Pediatrics. So just looking at the
historical data, 90% of the decline occurred was not due to
vaccines. And So what was it due to?
It was due to an it's factors related to an increasing
standard of liver living, better nutrition, refrigeration, better
sanitation, less crowding, etcetera, etcetera.
And so there's just this myth about the the effects of
vaccination on our health. And I'm absolutely convinced
that that one of one of the factors, of course, there's many
factors. There's all kinds of
environmental toxins and pollutants and things that are
affecting people's health. Diet is a big problem.
All the chemicals in our foods is a big problem.
But there's no doubt in my mind that vaccinations are greatly
contributing to the epic epidemics of chronic diseases in
this country. There's no doubt whatsoever.
The sciences, it's just there. I mean, it's really clear and
the mechanisms are there. They're known.
And yet you're not allowed to talk about it.
You're not allowed to think it. You're not allowed to question
it. So it's, it's a really, we're
supposed to believe in the myth, just like we're supposed to
believe that the World War 2 ended the Great Depression and
so on and so forth. There's all these myths and it,
it, it's true with vaccines too. We're supposed to believe all
these myths and not look at the science and not do our own
research and not think for ourselves.
But I really encourage people to, to do what I did, which I,
you know, just for my story and why I got into the vaccines in
the 1st place when my son, when my wife became pregnant and my
son was born in 2012, you know, prior to his birth and after his
birth, I was just, I wanted to be able to make decisions
reasonably about vaccinations. And so I started digging into
the literature. And so that's kind of how I came
by my knowledge. And then after a while I
realized, like, man, I've got this knowledge.
Like, I can't keep it to myself. I have to, I have to share what
I know because it's so alarming, it's so shocking, it's so
frightening and it's and it's people need to know.
This information, and so that's kind of why I shifted my focus
from foreign policy to the vaccine issue for many years,
and which of course put me in a really good place to be able to
start, you know, from like from the beginning, I was speaking
out against the lockdowns. I was speaking out against the
coerced mass vaccination, mass vaccination end game.
I was speaking out against the lies about the inadequacy of
natural immunity, the CDC's lie. I debunked the CDC's lie that
the vaccines conferred superior immunity.
And so I was kind of on top of that right from the start
because I, I was already so familiar and used to digging
into the scientific literature on these types of issues that I
was able to kind of jump right onto that and, and hopefully be
effective in in conveying a counter message to all the
mainstream propaganda. You wrote a book titled Obstacle
to. Peace, the US role in the
Israeli Palestinian conflict, published in 2016.
I'd like to go in reverse chronological order.
Let's look at this document, our narrative Operation Al Aqsa
Flood, published by the Hamas media office.
What can we learn from this document with regard to what
happened on October 7th and what the motive was?
Was it anti-Semitism and hatred for the Jewish race or religion?
Or was this in response to something else?
Please let us know. Yeah.
Al Aqsa Flood. The operation was.
Aimed, it had a limited aim to essentially shatter the status
quo, the status quo of occupation and oppression.
The status quo where the Palestinians living in Gaza,
we're living under conditions that even before the the
blockade of 2006 that the national security of those
Israeli National Security Council had your island had
described in 2004 as a giant or a huge concentration camp.
So that was Gaza. Gaza was a huge concentration
camp. And then in 2006, of course, you
had Hamas winning elections and coming to power in the
Palestinian Authority, in the Palestinian government and and
it you had a coup. This is getting into the past
history, but this is just to understand what the context is
for for October 7th. Can can we break that down?
You said there's. A blockade now?
A blockade. From what I understand, if China
blockades Taiwan, that's an act of war.
So you're saying there's been a 20 year declaration of war
against the people of Gaza with this blockade?
Walk us through what this blockade is.
Yeah. So it was a, it was an act of.
Punishment. After Hamas won elections, the
parliamentary elections in 2006. And so you had a Hamas LED
government in power in the occupied territories.
And so the US government colluded with Israel and Fatah,
the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas, to essentially try to overthrow the Hamas LED
government. Hamas, there was a counter coup,
which of course is, is what you always hear of the media will
always say that Hamas came to power in a violent coup.
Well, actually, no, it was, it was a counter coup to try to
stop the, the, the violence coup against it.
And the result of that was Fatah was expelled from Gaza.
And so This is why you have this division between the West Bank
and Gaza where the PA rules in, in the West Bank still under
Mahmoud Abbas, whose term ended in like 2009.
He's not a legitimate leader by any means.
And then you have the the Hamas as the governing authority in in
Gaza. And so Israel's further response
to that that outcome was to place to escalate the blockade
of Gaza because Gaza has been under a blockade since 1967.
But they escalated the blockade into a state of pretty much
total siege where, you know, they're blocking very, it was
very limited goods and services allowed into Gaza, extreme
limitations on the movement of people in and out of Gaza.
This included controlling Gaza's land crossings, its airspace and
its territorial waters. You saw in 2010, there was the
Freedom Flotilla trying to get aid into Gaza and break the
blockade. And it was attacked by Israeli
forces and international waters. And I think it was 9 peace
activists were killed. So you have incidents like this.
So that this is what I mean by by a blockade.
So it, the blockade has been in place.
I mean, Israel has controlled Gaza's land, crossings, airspace
and territorial waters since 1967, since the occupation
began. However, in 2006, in 2007, it
escalated that blockade into a state of siege.
And the purpose of the siege was explained by Dove Weisglass, who
is Ariel Sharon senior advisor, who described it as he said,
it's it's like an appointment with a dietitian.
Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won't die.
And this was confirmed. The purpose was confirmed by the
US State Department and embassy cables explaining that, yeah,
Israeli economic officers have confirmed to embassy officials
on numerous occasions that the purpose is to keep Gaza on the
edge of humanitarian catastrophe without quite pushing it over
the edge. So that was Gaza before 10/7.
So that's how we can verify whether or.
Not look, we have to reluctantly have this blockade or else
they're going to ship in rockets from Iran and Hezbollah and
they're going to kill Israeli civilians.
That's your way of verifying whether their actions are
consistent with their alleged intentions is because of those
quotes. Are there any goods that are not
allowed into Gaza that we can say?
How can you possibly explain that this is protecting Israelis
from rockets? Any specific goods?
Back then, yes, I think. Like pre, pre 10/7, you mean?
Yes. Yeah.
So yeah. At one point, the Israeli human
rights organization Geisha had published a list of prohibited
items, and it included things like A4 paper, pencils,
chocolate. You know, of course concrete.
Concrete is a dual use item, right?
Hamas could use concrete to build tunnels, but of course
Palestinians also needed concrete to rebuild from
Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defense and,
and all these Israeli operations that were characterized by what
the Israeli military establishment described as the
Dahia doctrine, which was a policy and an explicit policy of
using deliberate, this deliberately disproportionate
force, disproportionate force being a subcategory of
indiscriminate attacks under international law.
It's a war crime. And so each of those operations
was was characterized by deliberate war crimes by the
Israeli Defense Forces. So I met an.
IDF soldier. On an airplane and I asked him,
is the term mowing the lawn or mowing the grass?
Is that something you guys really say?
And he had a smile on his face. He goes, it is weird to hear
someone say that in English in America.
But yeah, more or less that's that's what we call it.
He had said that the reason we have to mow the lawn in Gaza and
not in the West Bank is Gaza's where the Rockets are coming
from. So walk us through Operation
Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense. Is this Israel defending itself
from Hamas unprovoked attacks? What's the real story?
No, in fact, you. Know well even before.
That So going back to 2005, you have this, this myth this, this
and this ties right into your question, but it's important
context for your question. You have this Zionist propaganda
claim that, well, look what happened in 2005.
Israel withdrew from Gaza. It ended the occupation of Gaza
and all we got in return was thousands of rockets.
Well, that's that's just entirely untrue, starting with
the claim that Israel ended its occupation in 2005.
It's true that it did withdraw settlers and military forces
from Gaza, but of course, its occupation continued it under
international law. It remained the occupying power
by virtue of its control over the territory, including its
land crossings. You know, the Armistice line,
fence crossings. People call it a border.
It's not a border. The control over its territorial
waters, its airspace and, and, and continued administrative
functions that Israel performs in in the Gaza Strip.
So the occupation was never ended.
In fact, it was escalated into a state of total siege as I've
already explained. And, and repeatedly it was
Israel that violated ceasefires, including before Operation Cast
Lead, which was from December, December 28th, memory serves,
December 27th, 2008 to January 18th, 2009.
And before that, there had been a ceasefire in place starting
from June 16th or June 19th, forget the exact dates.
There was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was
honored uncontroversially, it was honored by Hamas.
It was violated by Israel. And this is completely
uncontroversial. It's just, that's just the
documentary record. It's just one of those clear cut
instances where sometimes violence begins and it's kind of
like, well, all right, there's always a tit to tit for tat
somewhere. And you can kind of just keep
going back And it's like, well, Israel did this, but no, Hamas
did that and then Israel did that.
And you know, you can kind of keep going back with these back
and forth kind of tit for tat responses.
But in this case, it was absolutely clear cut and
unambiguous. There was a ceasefire.
Hamas honored it. Israel violated it.
It was very, and, and that's admitted by even the Israeli,
Israeli military establishment. And so Israel was the one who
violated that ceasefire. And of course, of course, we're
always supposed to believe that, that it's always Hamas violating
ceasefires and, and, and unprovoked ways of launching
rockets. And you look at the new, the
mainstream media reporting on that in New York Times, of
course, the New York Times reported Israel's violation of
the ceasefire on the day it happened, which was November
4th. And actually there had been
violations before November 4th in 2008, but the major one
occurred on November 4th with an Israeli incursion into Gaza that
killed, I think, 4 Hamas members.
And that's when the ceasefire basically ended.
And from that point on, from from November 4th until December
27th in 2008, you had this tit, tit for tat violence, the return
to rocket fire from Hamas and other armed groups and Israeli
airstrikes in the Gaza. But Israel had been threatening
an invasion before the the ceasefire was implemented.
And I actually predicted that the the ceasefire would end with
Israeli provocations to create a pretext for its plan, its pre
planned operation in Gaza, which is exactly what happened.
So actually had called that. Correctly.
And so that that was the situation with Operation cast
LED and then you had of course, again, as I mentioned, it was
characterized by indiscriminate attacks.
One more thing on cast. LED Before we move to Pillar of
Defense, Norman Finkelstein has theorized that it is not a
coincidence that November 4th of 2008 happened to be the day of
the US presidential election. Do you think that this was
actually provoked by the IDF knowing that world attention was
on whether or not America's going to get its first black
president or are the dates just a coincidence?
I I don't think it's coincidence that.
Israel launched that strike in Gaza on November 4th.
No, I don't think that was. I think that was deliberate.
And then also launching the operation right around Christmas
time and when, when people's attention, nobody was paying
attention. And, and then you had, you know,
the New York Times facilitating it and the US government
facilitating it. For example, as I was saying,
the New York Times reported Israel's violation on November
4th, but then subsequently it would report that the ceasefire
broke down without specifying. That it Well, it broke down
because Israel. Violated it, right.
And then after a couple weeks, I think it was within three weeks
of the, of that ceasefire violation, The New York Times
would just characterize the violence as that Israel, when
Israel began its operation, The New York Times would
characterize the violence as well.
Israel began its operation after Hamas had been incessantly
firing rockets into Israel without even a mention of the
ceasefire. Like the ceasefire was just
wiped from history entirely. Well, why?
Well, because it was Israel that had violated it.
So that's the nature of the US media reporting, facilitating
this operation by manufacturing consent for it.
So either people weren't paying attention because of the
election or Christmas. And then even when people were
paying attention, they're getting a completely false
narrative by the government and the and the media that served to
manufacture consent for it. So Operation Pillar.
Of defense, this is 2014. Pillar defense was.
Was that 2014? There's two operations.
I confuse their names. One was in Israel.
They called it pillar of cloud, like the cloud that Moses, but
but for Western audiences they called it.
Yeah, Pillar of defense, Right. And then and then protective
edge was 20. I think protective edge was
2014, correct me if I'm wrong. So pillar.
Pillar of Defense was the 2012 war if I'm not mistaken.
Pillar of cloud. It says 2012, so I think defense
would have been 2014. Yeah, yeah.
I tend to get those confused sometimes, but that one was it
was a lesser operation then then operation cast LED was.
It didn't involve such a full scale like ground invasion, but
but again, you know, we had the the way it was characterized in
Western media was again, Israel is just responding to rocket
attacks. But of course you can go back
into the history and this one is a bit more muddied because it
wasn't such a clear cut. It wasn't the case where you had
just a ceasefire and then it was just violated by one party.
There was all kinds of provocations and and acts of
violence in both sides that led up to that.
But they tended, the media tended to pick a specific
incident, right. It's like, Oh, well, Hamas
attacked a Jeep and blew up a Jeep with mines and killed a
couple of Israeli soldiers or something.
And so they would pick a specific instance of Hamas, you
know, perpetrating some act of violence, you know, against
Israeli soldiers or something. But then you can go back and
it's like, well, wait a minute. Right before that incident with
the Jeep, there was an Israeli incursion, a strike that killed
children playing soccer in Gaza. So why why isn't that the start
of it, right? And so it was this was the
situation in in 2012 where you had, you know, this violence
back and forth and but of course, it was always just
landed on Hamas rocket, rocket attacks.
And so that one also involved, you know, was also characterized
by war crimes and air strikes targeting the civilian
infrastructure. But then again, it in 2014 was
kind of them again, the more major operation where the the
level of destruction and the deaths exceeded operation cast
LED even where it was just massive destruction and
targeting of civilian infrastructure.
And again, just implementation of the Dahi adoption, which is
so-called because in the 2006 Lebanon war, Israel had
flattened the district of Beirut known as the Dahiya district.
And so that's where they get the name of the Dahia doctrine that
they implemented in 2008, cast lead, which again was the policy
of deliberate use of disproportionate force, in other
words, deliberate war crimes. And so, and this ties into the
whole, you know, that the propaganda claim that was
Palestinian civilians only ever died in these operations because
Hamas was using them as human Shields.
But this depends on a use of the term human Shields that bears no
relationship to its definition under international law, which
can be found in the Protocol, one additional to the Geneva
Conventions, and instead. It's a euphemism.
Meaning any Palestinians killed in Gaza by virtue of their being
in Gaza. That's what a human shield is,
because they've designated Gaza. As a military zone, essentially.
Essentially Gaza. Is Gaza is a military target And
so anyone in Gaza is a military target by virtue of being there.
And so that's what that's what a human shield is, which of course
that's not the meaning of a human shield on international
law. And not only that, but but in
case after case, you had Israel deliberately targeting
hospitals, ambulances, UN schools being used as shelters
to shelter civilians who had been told to flee their homes
without any possible military justification as confirmed by
numerous international investigations.
You had Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, numerous
UN bodies doing investigations. You had the, the UN fact finding
mission headed up by Richard Goldstone in the case of
Operation Cast Lead, you just all these investigations coming
back with nothing in terms of, you know, Israel claiming that
they had military justification for these attacks.
And you're looking at at specific attacks and just
finding absolutely no military justification whatsoever.
And this includes looking at Israel's own evidence.
Of course, you know, here's what Israel claimed and here's the
supposed evidence for it. And yet Israel's Israel's claims
were completely baseless in in every case.
In fact, there wasn't an Operation Cast Lead, which is
the one I've investigated most deeply and closely.
Like reading every single. One of those.
Reports on it and just consuming everything I could read about
it. There wasn't a single documented
instance of a Palestinian civilian being killed and
Operation Cast Lead because they were being used by Hamas as a
human shield. Not a single documented
instance, whereas there were documented instances of Israeli
soldiers be using Palestinian civilians as human Shields and
the. Israelis have like.
An explicit policy, according to Haaretz, of killing Israelis if
they get captured so they can't be used as leverage, called the
Hannibal Doctrine. This was fascinating to read
about. You mentioned the UN building
that was even in Lebanon in 2006.
The second Khana massacre, if I'm not mistaken, was at a
United Nations shelter. Possibly.
I don't. I don't recall.
Exactly on that one, but Israel targets UN shelters routinely in
its operation. So it's it's not only since 10/7
that it's been doing that. So, so is the goal to get.
This population so terrified that they just leave, Is that
the goal of targeting, you know, what could appear to be just
random acts of terrorism in prior operations like.
Cast lead and and protective edge.
The the goal was to punish the civilian population essentially
for having Hamas as its as its leadership.
The goal in Israel's current military operation in Gaza is
different. The goal with its current
operation is to eliminate the Palestinians in Gaza as a
people. So the goal in this case is
genocide. And this was this is.
More common than people understand, Winston Churchill
wrote a book titled The World Crisis, 1911 to 1918, where he
was First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War.
And he said the policy of the British blockade was to starve
all men, women and children wounded and sound into
submission. That is literally a quote from
his own book. That's the policy.
They never worried about getting Kaiser Wilhelm, who was in the
Netherlands and living in a mansion.
It was the civilian population. So the statist hero Winston
Churchill engaged in this. It looks like this is what we're
seeing in Gaza today. When it comes to the rise of
Hamas in Gaza, Connor Freeman and Scott Horton have published
a number of quotes which indicate that there was a policy
of both parties in Israel supporting Hamas.
What can we learn from this? And is there an innocent
explanation that they were allowing money to come in so
they could have a Singapore on the Mediterranean Sea?
What? What is this?
Is it true? What was the goal?
Yeah, it's absolutely true and completely uncontroversial.
I mean, if you if you read the Israeli media, well, the Israeli
media after 10/7 were themselves routinely pointing out the fact
that Netanyahu had maintained a policy of utilizing Hamas as a
strategic ally for the purpose of blocking any movement toward
peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
There's no question about that. That was his policy.
It's just open and acknowledge that that's the case.
And so that that Netanyahu had maintained that policy ever
since he came into office. But it actually predates
Netanyahu. I mean, if you go back to
Hamas's origin, it was founded in 1987, published its charter
in 1988, which happens to be the year that the PLO issued its
declaration of Palestinian statehood, while also
officially. Accepting.
The two state solution, the PLO had it had had been accepting
the two state solution since really the mid 70s, but
officially accepted it in 1988. And so the PLO was a threat to
Hamas. I'm sorry to to Israel it, it
posed a threat of peace because if you know, up until then,
Israel had been able to use Palestinian terrorism as as a
means of saying, look, we don't have a peace partner.
And and so Israel really needed terrorism to be able to maintain
his policy because without the terrorism, you know, it, it, it
couldn't say, Oh well, because that was a justification for his
continued occupation for, you know, for his policy positions
in terms of negotiations. And so when the PLO, when Yasser
Arafat officially accepted the the two state solution, meaning
officially accepting a resolution 242 which called on
Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories to withdraw
to the Armistice lines in 1949 or sometimes called the 1967
lines or the green line. These are all synonymous.
And that's what 242 called on Israel to do to withdraw to to
the positions that held pre June 5th, 1967.
And by so I could by accepting that, by accepting the by
accepting of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and just 22% of
the Palestinians former homeland from which they were ethnically
cleansed for the Jewish state to come into existence, which was
already a major concession on the part of the Palestinian
leadership. But by doing that, they were
threatening the occupation regime because of course, Israel
wants the land it doesn't want to withdraw from from that
territory. And so from the beginning,
Israel utilized Hamas as a counterforce to undermine the
PLO. And, and this included at at
least tacitly, if not actually directly supporting Hamas
against the against the Arafat's PLO.
So that policy was there kind of from the start.
And of course, it wasn't always a situation where Hamas was like
a clearly some kind of asset of Israel, any or anything like
that. That's not what I'm claiming.
But under Netanyahu, it was just absolutely explicit and went
right back to we're going to use Hamas deliberately,
strategically. As long as Hamas is in power,
the the leadership is divided between the West Bank and Gaza.
They have no united leadership. That's good for us because how
can we have negotiations when they don't even have a united
leadership to negotiate with? How can we negotiate with a
terrorist organization that fires rockets at Israel?
So Netanyahu needed Hamas in in Gaza and so he he maintained
that policy. And and so this and this LED
into the the intelligence failures that led Hamas to be so
successful, you know, in its narrow definition of success on
10/7, because Hamas didn't expect to be able to so easily
cross through the the border fence and raid, you know, Cuba
seem in Israel, Israeli towns and military bases in Israel.
They didn't expect to to to achieve that to the extent that
they did. And, and the reason, one of the
reasons why that they were the Israel military just was so slow
to respond on that day was they did have foreknowledge of
Hamas's operation. There's no question about that.
And I have a lot of readers who who are convinced that Israel
deliberately let it happen and I keep trying to explain it.
I don't accept that because actually I'm absolutely
convinced that Netanyahu this is it was absolutely a blowback for
Netanyahu himself, which again, he was roundly criticized in
Israel after 10 seven precisely because of having maintained
this policy of using Hamas as a strategic ally.
And so it was part of that they, they had really just, you know,
blinded themselves as far as Netanyahu is concerned, the the
Palestinians were contained, the Palestinians were were kept in
the the concentration camp. They were locked up there and
Hamas was contained in the concentration camp.
And they have their useful tool, Abbas.
And in the West Bank, you know who who's doing what the is
enforcing the P as role of essentially serving the P as
role under the Oslo Accords of essentially serving as Israel's
collaborator and enforcing its occupation regime.
They're continuing their land grabbing and settlement
construction in the illegal wall in the West Bank.
Things are going great there. So everything's going well.
And so Netanyahu had shifted resources, moving soldiers away
from the Gaza fence into the West Bank to protect radical,
violent settlers and expand settlements.
And it really was just a focus on the West Bank, which really
was a continuation of Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan,
which, by the way, that's where the 2005 withdrawal came in.
It was part of Ariel Sharon's, what he called the disengagement
plan, which was basically kind of, there were a couple purposes
there. One was to create the political
cover to be able to carry out this expansion of settlements in
the West Bank. It's saying, oh, look out of the
goodness of our hearts, we're just going to withdraw from Gaza
while at the same time, you know, escalating the illegal
settlement activities in in the West Bank.
So that that was the disengagement plan plan.
And the other purpose of the the so-called disengagement plan, as
again explained by Errol Sharon's top advisor, Dov
Weisglass was as he described at the formaldehyde to essentially
to, you know, so that the peace process, describing the the
peace process, it was the formaldehyde necessary to, you
know, keep the peace process dead essentially is what he was
trying to say. He described it as formaldehyde.
So it was the means by which they could make sure that there
was going to be no peace negotiations with the
Palestinians. So that was area of Sharon's
policy. And Netanyahu basically just
continued that and then escalated it and increased it.
And so he had the shifting away of resources and they just
refused. You know, you had you had lower
level intelligence analysts in the, in the Israeli armed forces
who were warning about activities of Hamas in Gaza and,
and, you know, exercises that Hamas was doing, for example, I
think it was called. Operation Jericho Wall comes to
mind, and that was reported by the New York Times.
They basically had this information beforehand.
Yeah, they did. So they knew about it.
And you? Had intelligence analysts like
reporting these activities and saying, I think something's
coming, this is not normal. Or the chatter that they were
receiving, like there's something coming and there's
something big coming. And they were trying to warn
higher level officials. But the top leadership in the
military intelligence establishment, you know, in
accordance with Netanyahu's policy, were just blinding
themselves to it. And they just refused to listen
to it because they, they had convinced themselves that Hamas
was contained in the concentration camp and they,
they were able to focus without worry on, on, on land grabbing
in the West Bank and essentially annexing more West Bank
territory. And that was really just their,
their worldview. And so when the status quo was
shattered on 10/7, which was the aim of Al Aqsa Flood, as I
mentioned, I really think they had deliberately blinded
themselves to the threat as opposed to, you know, people
again, have a lot of readers who who are convinced that they
deliberately allowed it to happen.
But that doesn't actually make any sense at all for Israel to
have done that well when you look.
At Ring doorbell cameras or SimpliSafe home security
systems, before a person is able to ring the doorbell, the camera
turns on when someone's 10 feet away, starts recording, and
alerts the homeowner on their phone immediately.
So the fact that the IDF with all its billions of dollars,
with its Iron Dome had such a slow response time and when they
did respond, they enacted the Hannibal Doctrine.
I I'm open to the idea that it was just incompetence to the
level of the focus was on expanding settlements in the
West Bank. I I just don't have of again,
there was the Jericho wall warnings.
James Corbett has made the case that is Egyptian intelligence
warned Israel ahead of time. Now for people who are having
trouble saying why would some regime go through all this
effort to just block the existence of a state?
Are they just pure evil? Realize President Abraham
Lincoln was willing to have 600 thousand Americans killed to
make sure the South didn't have its own country.
So it's very plausible that they don't want another rival state
on their border. This is actually very common.
Just imagine if test Texas wanted to secede today.
Would Joe Biden just be like, I'm sorry I didn't do a good
enough job running the government?
You guys are afraid to go. They would send in the tanks.
Eric Swalwell likes to threaten us with nuclear weapons every
few months already if we dare to say that we'd like to secede.
So this is very common. And one note on concentration
camps that term. The earliest example I could
find of concentration camp is with regard to the Bohr War of
1899 to 19 O2 in South Africa, where the British Empire is
refusing for the South African Republic and the Free Orange
State to secede from the British Empire and they basically
established concentration camps. The Spanish also did this in
Cuba. People think that what Guerra
Island was referring to was he was admitting that it's just
like Auschwitz and Tri Blanca and Sobibor and Belzec.
Those are death camps. What this is, is what are you
meaning when you say concentration camp?
Well, you know, you've, you've heard guys that.
Described as the the world. 'S largest open air prison but
account concentration camp is basically just meaning a an area
where people are rounded up and locked in and not allowed to
leave and whatever gets in or out is restricted and dependent
on the occupying power to determine.
And so, yeah, it wasn't a death camp.
And, and that's the thing when I describe it as a concentration
camp and, and again, not my words, I'm I'm quoting Gira
Island's description of it when I use that term.
What was his title in the. Israel.
He was the head of the national security.
Council in Israel, Yeah, at the time he's quoting a position, a
man in a position. Not to know what he's actually
talking about, not just some rando.
You've referred to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
According to Doctor Walter Block, these Palestinians who
emigrate, who emigrated during the Nakba in 1948, we're told by
surrounding Arab nations for those Palestinians to evacuate
because we're going to push the Jews into the ocean, bomb them
out of existence and then you can come back.
So he says that this was an emigration.
A lot of people say this, whereas you say it was an ethnic
cleansing. You mentioned Ergon, Stern and
Hagana gangs previously. Walk us through who these groups
are and what the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was.
Sure. Well, one claim that.
Bloch makes is that, which is again, just a common propaganda
claim that you hear from Israeli apologists is that the, the
Arabs only arrived in recent history.
And in fact, Palestine was essentially unpopulated until
the Jews arrived and they developed an economy there and
only then that Arabs en masse immigrate into Palestine, which
is a hoax claim. It's the same hoax claim that
Joan Peters wrote in her book from Time immemorial, which
Norman Finkelstein debunked. And, and I when, when block
makes this claim, I've debunked that myself.
I mean, you can go back and it's, it's just completely
untrue. Go back and read the, the, the
primary source materials from the Mandate era.
Arabs were the majority. They always were.
The Jews were a minority. Most of the increase in the
Jewish population throughout the Mandate era was from due to
immigration, whereas most of the increase in the Palestinian
population was natural increase. There's very little immigration
of Arabs into Palestine at the time.
There was some, but they claim that that that's how the the
Arab population arrived was through some.
The mass immigration is completely false.
It's totally a historical, it's a hoax claim.
So there's one hoax claim that Walter Block makes, which
incidentally, he makes in a paper that was peer reviewed in
some journal, which just goes to show how worthless, you know,
the idea of peer review is a lot of times.
But but so then, so that's as far as the population is
concerned. And so, and then he piggybacks
off of that whole Coke's claim to say that what happened in
1948 was not ethnic cleansing. You know, people just laughed.
They were told to leave. They were ordered to leave by
the Arab leadership. But you know, again, there's an
impeccable source debunking that claim, which is the IDF itself.
So after it was originally the, the, the Haganah was the the
Israeli military paramilitary organization that after May
14th, 1948, when the Zionists unilaterally declared the
existence of the State of Israel, it became the Israeli
Defense Forces, the IDF. And so the IDF had an
intelligence agency and they assessed the causes of the
flight of Arabs from the territory that they called
Israel because, you know, they had.
Again unilaterally declared. The existence of this Jewish
state and they detailed the causes of the flight and they
explained right in this document, in this intelligence
document that, yeah, it was mainly because of our military
operations coupled with the operations of the of the Zionist
terrorist organizations, which the first do is the dissenters.
So this would have been groups like.
Ergon with I know the bombing of King David was in 1936, but
Daryasin was in 1948. Around this time, April 1948,
yeah. Yeah, Daryasin was an example
where the Stern game, I I believe it was, was the the
leading group in that, in that operation where they invaded
this village. I think around 100 people were
killed in the village, mostly civilians.
It was, it was a massacre and that caused terror among
neighboring villages that had caused this flight.
The the IDF, you know, the Hagenaw was, was deliberately
using terror as a strategy to frighten people into fleeing the
villages, you know, with explosions, bombs.
They, I mean, they weren't necessarily doing what the Ergun
or Leahy were, were doing that the, the Zionist terrorist
organizations, you know, they weren't necessarily deliberately
attacking civilians and killing them, although that happened
too, but not to the extent, but, you know, just just the shell
shock they would use or they would plant rumors of, you know,
there's going to be another massacre in this in this
village. And so they would, they would
use fear as a means to drive Palestinians from their homes
and from their villages. And the the Palestinians have
been essentially disarmed during the the Arab revolt from the
from 1936 to 1939 under British guns because of course the whole
British the British occupation, the purpose of which was to deny
the Palestinians their exercise of the right to self
determination. And reneging on the British
promise to support Arab independence after the war,
after World War One. Promising getting Arab support
for World War One by promising to support their independence
from Ottoman rule and then reneging on that promise when it
came to the Palestinians in order to facilitate the Zionist
settler colonial project to reconstitute Palestine into a.
Demographically, Jewish state. And so British policy really
facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
And it was ethnic cleansing. They didn't just up and leave.
They weren't ordered to do so. And coming back to that
intelligence document, yeah, they, they, they said that,
yeah, there were some cases in which, you know, Arab leaders
would, would tell people to flee the village or something.
But this, this did this accounted for like 5% of, of the
flight or something like that. It was just a kind of a, a
marginal influence on, on the flight and, and, and more so
than that, Arab, the Arab leadership was actually trying
to persuade people to go back to their homes and back to their
village and trying to, to send, you know, male youths back to
the front lines. And, and this is again right in
that the IDF's own intelligence document saying that, you know,
the Arab leadership wasn't, wasn't telling people to flee
and get out of the way so we can commit mass genocide against the
Jews in, in the new state of Israel.
No, they were saying, no, you guys have to go back to your
villages, go back home, don't flee.
Like go back, go back. And that's actually what the
Arab leadership was doing at the time.
So this claim that they all fled because they were told to,
because the Arabs were launching a war, you know, genocidal war
to destroy the state of Israel. Well, that's also another myth.
It isn't true that the Arab states invaded Israel in 1948.
And the simple reason I can say that is because no state of
Israel legitimately existed, because there was no such thing
as a legally defined entity known as the State of Israel.
The idea that the UN created Israel ties into this.
That's a myth. The UN did not create Israel.
UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which is the infamous
Partition Plan resolution, neither Partition Palestine nor
conferred any legal authority to the Zionist leadership for their
unilateral declaration of May 14th.
At the time of that declaration, Jews owned about 7% of the land
in Palestine, Arabs owned more land in every single district,
and of course Arabs were the majority.
The Partition plan was wholly inequitable that the Arabs were
perfectly reasonable to reject it because it was an absolute.
It was absolutely prejudicial against their rights, so of
course they rejected it. They were right to do so.
And then? The Zionists unilaterally.
Declared their state. And by that time, by the time
that Israel did that, I'm sorry, by the time the Zionists
declared Israel in May 1948, already a quarter million Arabs
had already been ethnically counted from their homes.
And So what the Arab, the neighboring Arab states did,
they didn't launch a war against Israel to wipe it off the map.
No, they intervened into Palestine to try to prevent the
ethnic cleansing and try to at least to some extent stop it
from happening, which they did with very limited success.
It was mostly a failure. Jordan managed to hang on to the
West Bank and in Egypt hold on to the tiny Gaza Strip.
And so until 1967 the West Bank was administered by Jordan and
and Egypt administered Gaza. And it was until and then it was
after the 1967 war and occupation and passage of
Resolution 242 that this idea of the two state solution premise
on those what people call borders, you know, kind of was
developed where the idea was, well, there should be there
should be two states. But again, when the Palestinian
leadership accepted the two state solution and the idea of a
Palestinian state in just 22% of their former homeland, that was
that was a major concession on the part of the Palestinians.
And you hear about Israel making enormous concessions to the
Palestinians and the Palestinians have been offered a
state time and time again. And the Palestinians never miss
an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
This is all of this is just hoaxes, Zionist propaganda
narratives that bear no relationship to reality because
in every single instance, you know, Camp David is the example
that most often comes up. The supposedly generous offer
consisted of more ultimatums for the Palestinians to surrender
even more of their land and give up more of their own right of of
their rights. And the idea being that so this
gets into resolution 2 for two and what the two state solution
is. So the two state solution in
favor of in favor of which, you know, there is an international
consensus with, you know, Israel and the US mainly in a couple
of, you know, Pacific island countries.
Dissenting from the two state solution is premised on the
applicability of international law to the conflict, including
implementation of Resolution 242 calling in Israel to withdraw
from the occupied territories as the International Court of
Justice just affirmed a couple months ago.
Whereas the this is another big deception where the, the, the
peace process, the so-called peace process was premised on a
rejection of the applicability of international law to the
conflict. And so this is this is the
deception. Will they say that?
Well. Israel accepts the two state
solution. Well, no, it doesn't, because
Israel has always rejected resolution 242 and instead
Israel has its own unilateral interpretation of UN of
resolution 2242 whereby it doesn't have to withdraw from
the occupied territories. They can keep some of that
territory until there's a final peace agreement.
But that's completely incompatible with the principle
of international law emphasized in in the preambleer section of
242, that the the acquisition of territory by war is
inadmissible. And so there's no such thing
under international law as this idea that, well, that the
Palestinians are not allowed to exercise their right to self
determination until their occupier agrees to allow it.
It's completely incompatible with the requirements of
international law, as again, the ICJ just affirmed a few months
back where it ruled that Israel's occupation itself is
illegal. Not just that numerous aspects
of its occupation like the settlement regime and the wall
that it built there and, and the system, the systematic
discrimination against Palestinians and the, the limit
the, the, the limitations on Palestinians movement and
inhibition of their economy. Not just all of that is illegal,
but the occupation itself is fundamentally illegal because it
constitutes a violation of the Palestinians right to self
determination. But anyhow, this was always the
sleight of hand that they used to sustain this so-called peace
process, which was really always just the means by which Israel
and the US blocked implementation of the two state
solution. It was never aimed at
implementing the two state solution, just the opposite.
So that was the deception when you refer to.
Settlements in either the West Bank or Gaza pre 2005.
Let's keep it to the West Bank, please.
The word settlement settling doesn't doesn't sound bad at
all. What are these settlements and
what is the problem with them? Is it any different in principle
than me organizing a white only Country Club that doesn't
violate anyone's rights? What's it What's the principal
difference, if any? Well, back in the in the.
Mandate area. They they would have been called
colonies. You had the Jewish.
Colonization association and. So on back during the Mandate
era, so there it was. It's a settler.
Zionism was a settler colonial project.
And so the what people call settlements in the West Bank are
established illegally. So Israel is the occupying power
is prohibited from from treating that land as its own and, and
building, you know, moving its citizens into that territory and
essentially and applying its jurisdiction prejudicially, you
know, in favor of its own citizens in that territory while
treating the Palestinians, not just a second class citizens,
but is is just, is essentially well, as international human
rights organizations. And the ICJ pointed out it's
it's an apartheid regime because you, and so do you, have a
number of different crimes against humanity that Israel
perpetrates against the Palestinians.
You had the ethnic cleansing of 1948.
You had another ethnic cleansing in 1967 when another 300,000
Palestinians were expelled from the West Bank.
And since 1967, Israel has been perpetrating the crime of
apartheid with its systematic discrimination against
Palestinians in the West Bank. And so it's just it it the case
is the reality is that Israel controls all of the territory
between the river and the sea, so including Gaza in the West
Bank. And yet it applies 2 separate
sets of laws to to the depending on whether the person is a
Jewish, is Jewish or an Israeli citizen or is a Palestinian.
And so the the land that these settlements though that there
are. Like Jewish towns in Arizona and
New York where it's 100% Jewish and it's Orthodox so you can
immediately tell it. Is the claim that the
settlements are bad because they're Jewish only or are they
literally stealing houses and property?
Well they would. They're stealing the.
Land and if the. House is in, in the, the housing
developments are typically just built on top of the land.
But of course, the Palestinians are denied use of the land.
So Israel just goes and confiscates land and they build
settlements on the territory. And Palestinians are like,
they're required to get permission from Israel to, to
build water cisterns and sheds and, and, and often times Israel
will not allow them to do that or, and then if they build it,
the Israel, Israeli soldiers will come and destroy it.
And yet the Israeli settlers, they go and, and they just,
they, they build their housing developments and they build
little villages and, and, and even even to the extent that
there are certain settlements that are illegal even under
Israeli law, but it just happens with impunity.
And of course, there's violent settler attacks against
Palestinians in the vicinity of of Jewish settlements.
And it really is a policy of denying Palestinians the use of
their own land so that it can be confiscated by Israelis.
And then Israeli law is applied there in terms of jurisdiction
so that Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank are
treated as Israeli citizens and the law applies to them as
Israeli citizens, where again, it's a completely different
standard for the Palestinians living in the West Bank.
And so these are, you know, among the reasons why, you know,
over the years, increasingly it's become to be acknowledged
as an apartheid regime. Human Rights Watch, Beth Salem,
Israeli human rights organization as well Beth Salem,
Geisha Yechdin are are human rights groups in Israel that
have described it as an apartheid regime.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN bodies.
And then just again, just a few months ago, the International
Court of Justice weighed in on this ruling that not only in
2004 the ICJ had already ruled that Israel's settlement regime
and the wall it was building the West Bank were a violation of
international law. This time it went even further
and said that the the occupation itself is illegal and amounted
to the crime of sorry, not genocide, crime of apartheid
under international law. And this is a separate case, by
the way, at the ICJ from South Africa's accusation of genocide.
So there are two cases there. And so it's it's an apartheid
regime. The reason I asked about what
the settlements. Are if it's people voluntarily
just associating among themselves or if it's actual
theft of property? This video went viral.
I want to know if you could analyze it and walk us through.
It's only two minutes long. Thank you, Jacob.
You know this is not. Your house.
Yes, but if I go, you don't go back.
So what's the problem? Why are you yelling at me?
I didn't do this. I didn't do this, but you used
to yell at me, but I didn't do this.
You are stealing my house. And if I don't steal it, someone
else is going to steal it. So that was my.
Understanding of what the problem with the settlements was
because of its voluntary segregation.
I don't really have any problem with that in Arizona, New York
or Palestine. It doesn't look like that's
what's going on here. Is this common or is this some
anomaly that the anti semites are putting on Twitter?
No, I don't, I don't think. It's an anomaly.
This is, this is the situation. It's not voluntary as far as the
Palestinians are concerned. The Palestinians of course, have
been protesting this since the occupation began.
And of course that the settlement regime began as soon
as Israel had occupied the West Bank in 1967, began immediately
following that war. And again, it's, it's, you know,
it, libertarians can look at the issues of property rights.
And Walter Block has made this argument that you know, well
that the land all belonged to the Jews.
So he's using this collectivist notion.
He, he, he calls that a libertarian argument and the
libertarian position on, on Palestine.
But really it's it's completely anti libertarian on his face
because he's using a collectivist idea of land
ownership, which we reject. And so I don't want to make the
counter mistake of saying, well, it's Palestinian land by virtue
of being described as the West Bank and being described under
international law as occupied Palestinian territory, because
we don't deal with collective ideas of land ownership.
But at the same time, we recognize that states, even
though we might object to the existence of a state, it's good
that the states do have this thing called international law
where they engage, basically engage in contracts with each
other and say, well, listen, you know, we have wars with each
other sometimes. But let's, let's not be too hard
on our citizen populations. Let's agree to our civilian
populations, you know, let's, let's agree to, to tamp down,
you know, our activities in war and, and establish this thing
called international humanitarian law and, and try to
protect civilians during war time.
And let's punish war criminals who violate these types of
things. I mean, this is a good thing.
I mean, the international law is a good thing, even if you object
to the existence of states. And so Israel is a party to
international law. It's a party to the UN Charter,
Israeli Security Council resolutions aren't binding on
Israel. And so speaking in in, I'm
speaking in terms of this framework where you have a
situation where Israel has occupied the West Bank and since
the occupation began has been illegally building Israeli
settlements there, again, denying Palestinians the use of
that land. And so it yeah, this is not
something that is, that's anything to do with just
voluntary exchanges or, or just the implementation of property
rights. You know that they that the
Israeli Jews living in these settlements don't have legal
right to those homes. And those settlements?
We're not talking about voluntary exchanges.
And original appropriation, we're talking about state
sponsored theft and then a court system which has a a blatant
double standard for just acquisition of property.
That makes a lot of sense. We've gone over time.
Thank you so much for coming on. I just want to try and steal,
man, what someone in favor of Israel in general might say I'm
going to Gish gallop you, so get ready.
You might have to jot a couple of these down, but I want to
give you the answer, the claims, and I want to see how you
respond. All right, so let's start with
what would you do if rockets were raining down on Sydney, New
York, London and Paris, The attacks of October 7th totaling
1200 people in a small state of Israel.
The equivalent would be 36,000 Americans killed, say by Mexico.
What do we do? Sit back and do nothing?
After all, Israel is a microscopic state.
All we're asking for is one state for our people who, after
centuries of pogroms and expulsions and a near loss of
our entire population in Europe during the Second World War, we
just want one tiny state. The Arabs have 57 majority
states that they can all go to. I'm very sorry about the Nakba
and the mowings of the lawn. All states are started on
conquest, as was America, as was Pakistan in 1947 when the
British pulled out. A million people died.
We're very sorry about these Israeli atrocities.
All else equal, a Zionist monopoly on violence in this
area is preferable to a Hamas monopoly on violence or a
Palestinian Palestinian Authority monopoly on violence.
Freeing Palestine is not going to happen.
Just when Israel pulls out, they'll be under a different
tyranny of Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas, or the EA.
Therefore, all else equal, we should support Israel, who is,
by other standards in the Middle East, more democratic, more
free, respects, more property rights, as more civilized and
more technologically advanced. What, if anything, is wrong with
the flawless logic? I just gifted you you with
pretty much everything. Where to start?
So of course, the conflict didn't begin on October 7th.
There's context. To Operation AL.
Aqsa Flood and the, you know, the atrocious violence by Hamas,
which we can all agree to condemn.
But the problem is you have Israeli apologists trying to
justify Israeli crimes. I'm not sitting here trying to
defend Hamas crimes or Palestinian crimes against
Israelis. I condemn terrorism.
I condemn attacks on Israeli civilians.
And so it's it's these Israeli. Hypocrites, you know.
Or the Israeli apologists who are engaging in this hypocrisy
of condemning one side's crimes while trying to justify the
others. And so they'll they'll try to
portray Israel's actions in Gaza since October 7th as an act of
self-defense. Well, I'm sorry, the genocide is
not self-defense. Genocide is not self-defense by
definition. And so this is not an act of
Israel's operation. Operation Swords of Iron, as
it's called, is not an operation that is in in the legitimate
exercise of the right to self-defense.
It is deliberately targeting. The civilian population for
death and destruction and deliberately targeting the
civilian infrastructure of Gaza to render Gaza uninhabitable.
All right, so that's that's not self-defense, that's a crime
against humanity. As far as well that the Jews
only have this tiny little piece of land called Israel.
And it look at all the land that the Arabs have and, you know,
well, why can't the Palestinians just go live in some other Arab
country? Well, you know, as though
Palestinians shouldn't don't, you know, don't have any kind of
particular connection to their homes and their homeland.
Palestinians happen to be descended from Canaanites who,
of course, inhabited the land before there ever was an ancient
state, an ancient Kingdom of Israel or an ancient Kingdom of
Judah. So they have just as much
ancient historical connection to the land as the Jewish people
do. In fact, the Jewish, the Jewish
people are also descended from Canaanites.
They weren't, they weren't the biblical narrative is fictional.
They weren't, they weren't outsiders.
They were not foreigners to Canaan.
They, they're from Canaan. They're, they were Canaanite
tribes as well. And in fact, today the
distinction between Canaanite tribes and Israelis isn't based
on like genetic distance, but rather just the Israel
Israelites cultural identity being distinct from the of the
tribes surrounding them in that area.
But anyhow, the Palestinians, point being, Palestinians also
have an ancient historical connection to the land.
The idea that they should just up and leave, which is what
would be required of them if going again back to the mandate
era, because it was an era of Palestine, wasn't it was it was
characterized by its Arab population.
You know, it was in Arab territory.
Jews were a small minority there, you know, and there was
an indigenous Jewish population. But again, it's just a small
minority population. And Palestine was viewed as a as
a, you know, you have this claim that, well, you know, if, if
Israel were just to stop, end its occupation and allow the
Palestinians their freedom, well, the Palestinians was just
attack Israel and destroy Israel and fire rockets and commit all
this terrorism. And it would, you know, Israel
has to defend itself. And so Israel can't end its
occupation and that can't end its its oppression.
And so that attributes the cause of the conflict as being
inherent Arab hatred of Jews, inherent Arab anti-Semitism.
But in fact Arabs and Jews had friendly relations in Palestine
until the Zionist movement and the and until the the British
enforced settler colonial project to reconstitute Arab
Palestine into a demographically Jewish state.
In fact Palestine was seen as essentially as a refuge for Jews
relative a safe place for them to live.
Relative to many other places around the world, and
particularly Europe with its rampant anti-Semitism, Palestine
was a refuge. So it's just not the case that
the problem is inherent Arab hatred of Jews.
The problem is Zionism. Hamas in a 2017 policy document,
going back to the question you had asked earlier about what is,
what is Hamas's beef with with Israel?
Is that they just hate Jews or is there some other problem?
In a 2017 policy document, they explicitly stated that we, we do
not have a problem with Israelis because they're Jewish, because
of their race or their ethnicity or their religion.
The problem is Zionism. The problem is that you, you,
these foreigners, these European Jews, came into Palestine,
immigrated here, and kicked us out violently.
And so Israel was created through the use of force through
force of arms and mass expulsion of the Palestinians.
So this idea that, well, you know, why can't Israel, Israel's
just have this piece of land? You know, they look at it, it's
just this tiny little piece of land.
And look at all the other Arab states in the region.
So why do they, why do they need even more land?
Well, you know, again, property rights, individual rights,
there's homesteading. The, the Palestinians have a
right to, to live in, in their homeland.
They had a right to their their homes, if that's where they want
to be, they have that right. They have a right of return
under international law. The Palestinians who are
expelled in the ethnic cleansing.
So it's just a matter of fundamental human rights and
just respecting the human rights and the idea that the
Palestinians should just accept this idea that they're not
allowed to exercise their rights.
Of course, it's just fundamentally hypocritical.
And, and that is essentially what these arguments are saying,
these Zionist arguments that you're, you're still manning
here, you know, this idea that, and also the idea that Israel,
well, Israel is the Middle East only democracy.
So we have to support Israel because it's the Middle East
only democracy. Well, again, Israel is an
apartheid regime from the river to the sea.
And it's one thing looking at the occupied territories, but
there's this claim that well within Israel itself, within
Israel proper, even though Israel also doesn't have legally
recognized borders, it at least along the Armistice lines with
the West Bank and Gaza. But it all that also happens to
be untrue. It's not true that Arabs have
equal rights within Israel proper.
There's systematic discrimination of Arabs within
Israel. In fact, one of the most common
claims you hear is that, Oh, well, you know, Arab citizens of
Israel can vote, they can participate in the Knesset, you
know, they can participate in the, in the government, which is
true. But there's a precondition for
their their ability to run for office, which is that they have
to accept Israel's character. And this is under law.
This is under Israeli law, they have to accept Israel's
character as a quote, Jewish and democratic state.
But what does that mean? Well, that was the meaning of
that was really explicitly defined in the 2018 Jewish
nation state law, which explicitly defines the exercise
of self determination in the territory under Israel's control
as a right exclusive to Jews. So it's a Jewish supremacist
state both within Israel property proper and of course
it's an apartheid regime considering Israel's control of
all of the territory between the river and the sea.
So if I miss anything there, remind me.
But those would be my responses to all of those arguments.
Essentially trying to defend Israel's systematic violation of
the Palestinians fundamental human rights since before even
Israel existed with the the the the British belligerent
occupation that facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in
1948. The 1967 war in which there was
another the the Naxa in 1948 was the Nakba as it's described the
catastrophe. There was the Naxa in 1967,
which was the set back in which 300,000 additional Palestinians
were expelled. There's been an the ongoing
occupation, settlement regime, apartheid regime ongoing since
then. And now, since 10/10 seven, a
third crime against humanity has been occurring, which is the
crime of a genocide and how? Do you?
Differentiate a genocide from a war to eradicate Hamas that
inevitably involves civilians, giving the high concentration of
people in Gaza 2 miles wide, 25 miles long.
How can we differentiate that? Yeah, the the.
Distinction there would be what the target is.
So if Israel were targeting military targets, you know, be
military personnel or military locations, you know, you can
have international law doesn't prohibit civilian deaths.
There's what's called the principle of proportionality.
The the the civilian deaths cannot be in excess of what is
considered reasonable in terms of proportionality to the
military advantage gained. But but it's just not the case.
That Israel is. Targeting military targets.
It's it's systematically targeting the civilian
population and the civilian infrastructure.
And again, as I've described, while there are instances in
which, you know, like, for example, Operation Cast LED
Hamas by virtue of Palestine, of Gaza being so densely populated,
you know, there were times where Hamas would fire rockets, for
example, from nearby residential buildings or something like
this. So that that occurs.
But it's simply not the case that, you know, you have a
situation where Israel is systematically targeting the
school system, for example. And there's just no evidence
that that these schools at the time are being used for any
military purposes whatsoever. It it's just it under, by
definition, these are civilian targets.
And so Israel is targeting civilians and civilian
locations. It's not targeting military
targets. And so that's the distinction.
And of course, Israel did that as well during Operation Castle.
And it deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure and it
deliberately punished civilians with again, deliberately
disproportionate use of force or indiscriminate attacks.
The difference here is the scale.
And in that situation, you know, there were the, the goal was to
punish the civilian population, same as with the the siege, the
blockade of Gaza. The goal was to punish the
civilian population. As I described.
They wanted to keep Gaza on the edge of a humanitarian crisis
without quite pushing it over the edge.
Well, that's, that's changed now that the goal has been
starvation of the population. Now they're no longer counting
calories as Israel was doing at one point, counting the
calculating how many calories they needed to, you know, how
much food they needed to, to allow in to Gaza based on a
calculation of the number of calories that were required for
people to maintain sustenance. But now it's just out, it's an
outright policy of using, utilizing starvation as a method
of war. So there's a distinction in that
regard as well. So it has to do with the
targets, what is being targeted? Is it military that's being
targeted? Is it Hamas that's being
targeted? No, Look at the look at the
numbers people say, oh, well, Palestinian civilians only die
because they're being used by Hamas as a human shield.
Well, again, the entire population is a human shield by
virtue of this euphemistic definition whereby, you know, a
human shield is anyone who dies in Gaza by definition.
That's the the euphemism. And so you look at the
proportion if, if Israel were targeting Hamas, you, you might
expect a certain level of, you know, to, to use the military
euphemism, collateral damage from from those attacks, but
what you wouldn't expect. Is for the proportion.
Of women and children killed to be roughly equivalent to the
proportion of women and children in the Gaza population.
And that's what we see. You would expect to see that.
You would expect to see the. Proportion of women and children
killed to be roughly equivalent to the proportion of women and
children in the population if Israel were engaging in
indiscriminate attacks. And that's precisely what we
see. Why?
Because Israel is engaging in indiscriminate, disproportionate
warfare deliberately. And was this the evidence that
South Africa? Brought to the ICJ.
Or was it this and quotes from Israeli officials?
Yes, the the the case. That South Africa brought was
absolutely incredible and it was heroic really for South Africa
to do that, to take that action to, to bring that case to the
ICJ. And they wrote a very detailed
application to the ICJ accusing Israel of the crime of genocide.
And you're just going right down the list and including, I think
it was 8 pages of just quotes from Israeli policy makers and
officials and leaders where they were just openly expressing
genocidal intent, which of course, to prove the crime of
genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention requires intent.
And so the intent is was there from the beginning.
Their intentions have been absolutely clear to render Gaza
uninhabitable. They're destroying, just
systematically destroying, agricultural land, greenhouses,
water treatment facilities, targeting bakeries, you name it.
The hospital system, the medical system has been under target,
under attack systematically. The school, the education
system, cultural centers and locations.
It is. They're trying to destroy the
Palestinians as a people. That is the crime of genocide.
And so that that really is there's a distinction between
legitimate military targets and collateral, you know, quote UN
quote collateral damage happening and war crimes.
There's a distinction there. And there's a distinction
between war crimes and crimes against humanity, among which is
the crime of genocide, which has to do with the scale and the
intention. So war crimes can be committed,
you know, in individual actions that result in in civilians
being killed disproportionately or indiscriminately, that's one
thing. But when you have it on a
population level where they're targeting the entire population
this way, so it's not just this or that attack that that
constitutes a war crime, that the operation itself is
targeting the entire population of Gaza and that that.
So that's the distinction there between just regular war crimes
and the crime of genocide. Thank you to everyone for
watching Keith Knight. Don't.
Tread on anyone in the Libertarian Institute.
Thank you to my colleague at the Libertarian Institute, Jeremy R
Hammond, Research Fellow. Check us out at
libertarianinstitute.org. Jeremy, thanks so much for your
time, brother. Thanks, Keith.
Appreciate it.