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- [00:02]
A
All right. Good morning, Doug. Lots of news these days, as always, it seems the big thing in the news is this incredible peace deal that we hear between Iran and the U.S. now, we haven't actually seen an official release of what the MOU really is, and I don't think we will until it's officially signed, which should happen in the next couple of days. But what are your thoughts on the. On the whole situation?
- [00:31]
B
Well, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the exchange of missiles and drones and such is over for the time being, but I don't think it's going to last. I'm sorry, I hate to sound like a perma bear, but the Israelis hate the Iranians and the Iranians hate the Israelis, both at this point for very good reasons. And Trump, of course, has been drawn into this thing. There was absolutely no reason that I can think of for the Americans to come in and bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. Well, they, they captured the U. S. Embassy back in 1979 when they overthrew our, Our puppet, the. The Shah. Okay. That's how it all started. Well, it actually started before that, 1953, when we overthrew their elected president and replaced him with the Shah. So, yeah, there's. There's reasons on the part of the Iranians to dislike the Great Satan. Right? For sure. But we don't have any good reasons to dislike the. Dislike the Iranians, I mean, do we?
- [01:59]
A
I don't. I have no issues. I've never met an Iranian I didn't like a Persian.
- [02:04]
B
That's what I thought, too. I've met some Iranians. We got along just fine. So they've got. In every government, the scum rises to the top. I'm sure that's the case in Iran as well, just as it is here in England and France and Germany and practically everywhere. So this is the problem about being a little person. There's nothing we can do to influence these lunatics.
- [02:31]
A
No, there's nothing we can do. But it's really hard to just understand what's really going on because, you know, the. I'd say the dominant theme, the dominant narrative today is that the US Went into Iran on behalf of Israel for Israeli interests and that they had enough leverage with Trump and the administration to get them to go do it. And yet now whatever leverage they have is apparently gone. If that were the one reason, that leverage is gone because we're abandoning the Israelis and a deal that is. Looks really awful to the Israelis. I mean, it's not. Trump said his approval rating was so High, he could run for prime minister in Israel. And when that's no longer the case, I mean, this has been very damaging to him, his in Israel. And so either there, if that leverage was there, it's all of a sudden evaporated and Trump's, you know, now drawing a hard line. But I always thought that there must be some other motives, some other, even if the primary motive were Israeli, there must have been something the US Thought that they would get out of it. Maybe Trump, including Trump, thought he might get a quick victory like Venezuela. Just make him look good. That's one thing. And there were lots of other theories that this was part of the, a greater geopolitical game where, you know, Iran is this access between Russia and China and, you know, brics and that by attacking Iran and disrupting the trade networks there, potentially controlling the oil supply, you know, putting China in a bad position. You know, there were plausible explanations beyond just that Israel told us to, and we're Israelis, we're Israel's bitch. And so we did it. And if any of those other reasons were the motivation, those too have been completely cast aside at this point. And maybe that's because they realized it's possible, because they realized that, you know, China just simply removed themselves from the market completely for oil and demonstrated that they didn't need that oil, at least not urgently. And in fact, you could say that you could say that China has saved the world from a global recession by the fact that they stepped away from the oil market as they did at
- [04:56]
B
this stage, the Chinese, to any objective observer, the evil Red Chinese, the communists. But to any objective observer, they'd have to say, well, first of all, wait a minute, China is not a communist country. They have a stock market, they have billionaires. Hey, wait a minute, this isn't the same place that we were taught to hate, number one. Second thing somebody that's an objective observer might say is, wait a minute, the Chinese actually solved this oil crisis, that the Americans who have bases all over the world and bomb people and kill people with drones promiscuously whenever the Chinese solve this problem by cutting back on,
- [05:51]
A
on their oil, 3 to 4 million barrels a day, right?
- [05:56]
B
So they, you know, they're the good guys in this situation and we're the bad guys. And I would think that a lot of observers would say that's kind of interesting. And there was something else too, the Chinese have done recently that puts them in a very good light. I'm trying to think what that was. This is, this is dangerous saying that the Chinese are acting like the good guys, and the US Is acting like the bad guy. Things go bad. I mean, I could be. I could be called. Look what Trump did with Massie. I mean, you know, a decent, philosophically sound guy who. And, and he's called him every name in the book because he doesn't do as he's told. These are dangerous times that we're navigating into with.
- [06:56]
A
No. No doubt about that.
- [06:59]
B
I, I'm. I'm increasingly of the belief that I've always said, since I wrote my first essay about Trump in 2012, that he's a man without any philosophical or moral center. And that's more and more true, because the power has really gone to his head, and it's made him worse than he ever was in, in the past.
- [07:24]
A
Yeah. You know, like, I, in, in a. In a way, I'm really. If this peace deal follows through, I'm impressed that he would actually walk away from it, because that was the best option compared to continuing to press in any way. So if he does do that, because, you know, I was very critical about him getting into this, if he does just walk away, even though what he's doing is essentially this MOU is a surrender document, which is a stack of wins for Iran and a bunch of maybe ties, best case for the United States. So it's embarrassing and humiliating, and it certainly degraded the credibility the US has on the national stage. And yet, if he does, if it does follow through with it, if it can be followed through with, yeah, it's a good thing.
- [08:24]
B
Everybody knows that Trump is a chronic, pathological and enthusiastic liar. I mean, it's just amazing. He says anything that he wants. And the people that love Trump say, hey, this is clever negotiating. It's just trolling. No, it's not, Trouble. It's not clever negotiating to have everybody recognize you as somebody that absolutely can't be believed on whatever he says. I mean, remember when he said we aren't going to stop until it's unconditional surrender and threatening to bomb them into the.
- [09:07]
A
That was the thing, though. He did. He didn't clarify which party would be surrendering.
- [09:13]
B
Oh, yeah. And he'll find some way to spin it because, you know, listen, I, I can't. You can't help but love Trump because he's got such a crazy sense of humor. And I appreciate his sense of humor. It's funny, and he's a charming guy. But as you pointed out, the fact is, is that most sociopaths and many genuine criminal personalities are really Charming. That's why they're so effective.
- [09:48]
A
Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see. I think the reason they haven't released the MoU official text yet is because they're expecting a lot of backlash on it and it's going to be difficult for Trump to spin it as a victory of any kind.
- [10:03]
B
Well, the big thing, and I've said this early on, the Iranians were attacked was unprovoked surprise attack. And the guesstimate is the $300 billion of damage has been done. Blowing, blowing stuff up and whatnot, whatever the number is. And the Iranians righteously want that back. Well, okay, you break it, you bought it. So who's going to come up with the $300 billion? Well, I don't think it can be the US for all kinds of reasons. So it sounds like the UAE the going to have to pay for.
- [10:44]
A
They say it's all going to be private entities. Private entities that are looking at it as an investment opportunity.
- [10:53]
B
Well, it's, it's a lot of money. So I'd like to know who they are and what they're going to come up with and are the Iranians going to charge tolls in the future?
- [11:04]
A
And yes, the official, the deal as, the deal as it's been articulated so far is they will not charge tolls for the days, but after that they will collect a service fee.
- [11:18]
B
And what are the Israelis going to get out of all this? I mean, they want to destroy Iran so that they are the hegemons in the Middle east and they really are the hegemons at this point. I mean, Syria's gone. I mean, Lebanon's, nobody's going to attack them anymore because all of the major nation states with their armies, they, they've ceased to exist except for Egypt and Egypt is on the American payroll. That was part of the deal.
- [11:48]
A
Well, this is probably the stickiest point of the deal is that supposedly, according to the Iranian side, this involves Israel getting out of Lebanon and certainly ceasing their attacks there. And I think this is the stickiest point for Israel because they, while they, you know, hate the Iranians, you know, they see Hezbollah as a, you know, more clear and present danger to them. And it's very unpopular to not go after Hezbollah.
- [12:21]
B
Maybe, maybe we should make the, maybe we should make Israel the 51st state. I mean, is that completely off the wall?
- [12:32]
A
Well, we're getting there, Doug. We're getting there. And this gets us to our next topic, and that is people probably heard a little bit about this National Defense Authorization act, which had a provision formerly called section 224, now it's 219 where there will be a melding of the US military and the Israeli military and will have many consequences. And I'll go through a few real world practical examples. What's been less publicized though, is at the same. So that was done in the House, it was added in the House. Now there's a, the Intelligence Authorization act going through at the same time. And that's starting off in the Senate. And Senator Tom Cotton added a provision to it which does the exact same thing on the intelligence side of things, using Israel and US Intelligence programs. So if we have our, a fusion of the military and we have a fusion of intelligence with the Israelis, I think we're, we're getting, I mean these are privileges, these are relationships not offered to any of our other allies anywhere else in the world. And so I think this does in fact get them a hell of a lot closer to being the 51st state.
- [13:57]
B
What's in it? What's in it for the average American doing this with the Israelis?
- [14:03]
A
There's nothing it tries to, it's been tried to spin it as, you know, the Israelis have this great tech and you know, lots of great R D and that will benefit from that technology and R D and that's as far as it gets on the upside.
- [14:20]
B
Well, I have no doubt there are a lot of smart Israelis, but frankly, the country is not a. What does it produce? It's a net recipient of billions of dollars a year, including from the U.S. i think 16 billion is the total number I heard this year. And it's 4 billion a year as a regular line item. So that like paying the Israelis to develop technology than we say we need. I mean, it really doesn't make a
- [14:57]
A
lot of sense and it's set to get a lot worse. So I have here six concrete real world examples of how this arrangement hurts America. And I should say that, you know, the, the committee and the House voted for this additional provision. It has to still pass the, the full House. And on the Senate side, it has not yet come to a code of any kind. But all indications are that these are going to pass, that these are going to be reality. And as a 50 fiscal year 2027, which I think happens in October, this will be a reality. So here, here's these six examples. Number one, the US Cannot stop a war it doesn't want. So Israel used the Iran conflict to pursue objectives the US opposed. Strikes in Beirut, assassinations that torpedoed ceasefire talks well, under Section 622, this is the Senate provision, the US would be legally required to keep feeding Israel the intelligence it uses to carry out these strikes. If a future President wants to cut off the intel pipeline to stop Israel from dragging the US into another regional war, he'd have to formally justify it to Congress within 15 days. Turning a routine intelligence decision into a political firestorm. The practical result is that no President will likely ever do that. So you know how the US is supplying ISR to Ukraine right now so that they can target, you know, targets deep within Russian territory right now? Couldn't do it without the support of US isr? Well, the Israelis would have unfettered access to that same type of intelligence for any party in the world. And so you could see how that could go wrong. So number two, Israel gets access to US AI and quantum research, then sells it to China. Well, Israel has a documented track record of transferring US military tech to China. Radar systems, missile tech, drone components. Under section 219, this is the House bill, Israel would gain access to the most sensitive US research in AI, quantum computing and autonomous systems. Currently only the UK and Australia have this level of access under this Aukus framework. But within that framework there's legislation that prevents what they can really do with it. But for Israel, there is nothing in the legislation preventing Israel from incorporating what it learns into products that it then exports to Beijing. The US spends billions developing next generation capabilities and a third party hands the blueprints to its primary strategic competitor. That's a possibility. The third one, American defense contractors lose business to Israeli competitors subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. So Section 219 establishes licensing agreements and co production facilities for Israeli defense companies on U.S. soil. This lets Israeli firms sidestep buy American provisions and compete directly against American companies for Pentagon contracts using technology that was partially developed with US funding in the first place. Jobs and intellectual property flow to Israeli firms like Rafael and Elbit, while American companies like Raytheon and Lockheed lose market share in their own country. Two more number four AI systems used to kill civilians in Gaza got integrated into the US military. Israelis Lavender and Gospel AI systems generated kill lists of tens of thousands of people in Gaza with minimal human oversight, resulting in massive civilian casualties. Section 219 specifically targets AI and autonomous systems for integration. Once these tools are embedded in US military programs of record, the same targeting logic designated for population level surveillance and automated kill decisions could be turned on domestic threats or deployed in future US conflicts with the same disregard for human life. Can you imagine that applied to the rise in anti Semitism in the U.S. you know, and all the comments people make on Twitter. So, you know, you find yourself on a kill list pretty easily. Number five, the Pentagon can't protect its own secrets from Israeli spies. Now just recently the DIA raised Israel's espionage threat level to critical, which is the highest possible rating because Israeli intelligence operations against senior US Officials became so aggressive that they were described as unhinged. And yet at the exact same moment, Congress is mandating deeper intelligence sharing and technology integration with the very country the Pentagon is right now saying is aggressively spying on it. It's the equivalent of discovering your business partner is stealing from you and responding by giving him the keys to the safe. Number six, the last one I have for you here. A future president who wanted to change course literally cannot. Once Israeli technology is embedded in US Weapon systems, procurement pipelines and supply chains, it becomes structurally impossible to disentangle without degrading US Military readiness program. Managers inside the Pentagon become advocates for continuing the relationship because their systems depend on it. Israeli defense firms with co production plants and key congressional districts create jobs that make the relationship politically untouchable. And the entire point is to make the integration irreversible regardless of what the American public wants, regardless of what Israel does, regardless of whether US And Israeli interests diverge further.
- [20:57]
B
Well, this is really, really disturbing stuff. And the fact that it's in Congress and seems like it'll be passed, I guess should be a major scandal on all the media and on everybody's lips. I mean this is astounding to me, quite frankly.
- [21:18]
A
It's shocking, it's unprecedented.
- [21:21]
B
Yeah. And it's I, I guess in the universities and so forth. I don't know if they're still protesting about Israel. Maybe that's blown over, but that doesn't have anything to do with this. The fact is, is that Israel is not our friend and therefore in country with its own interests. That's been. This goes back actually to the 1967 incident with the USS Liberty, which still is rarely talked about and I presume everybody that's listening to us is, knows about what happened there where the Israelis attempted to sink a ship, U. S ship, and it was basically covered up a couple hundred casualties, American sailors and so forth.
- [22:24]
A
Yeah, actually Thomas Massey on the anniversary of it, which was just maybe two weeks ago, took time to get written into the Congressional record an explanation of what happened. So he brought some attention to it,
- [22:38]
B
the Congressional Record before because back then Lyndon Johnson, one of the worst presidents this country's ever Had. Which is saying a lot. Said it was clearly an accident and drive on, don't want to hear any more about it. And all the sailors on the ship who wanted to talk about it were put under practical death threats to be quiet.
- [23:03]
A
Right. And they've been coming out in recent years because I think that, you know, NDA that they had to sign has expired. So they've been talking about it publicly and it's pretty. We hear the accounts of the sailors who were there. It's pretty shocking.
- [23:20]
B
Yeah, well. And of course, the fact that a majority of all the congressmen take funds from apac, the American, Israeli. What the rest of that acronym stands for.
- [23:35]
A
Yeah. Political committee, I think.
- [23:36]
B
Yeah. Which is not registered as a foreign lobbying group, oddly enough.
- [23:45]
A
Right. As I understand it. I think that was something that JFK was trying to change at the time.
- [23:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. Well, all part of the ongoing and accelerating decline of the American empire.
- [24:01]
A
Well, and I think that with, if this passes, I think you could say certainly the decline of the sovereign status of the United States in very formal terms.
- [24:13]
B
Yeah, yeah. Really disturbing stuff. And Trump is. Well, he's. Well, I don't know what goes on in Trump's mind, but I love listening to the things that the guy says. Like one thing, like recently amid this AI brouhaha where thousands of data centers are being built all over the country. Some of them, I understand, I haven't physically seen one, but I understand that they have score of acres undercover, full of electronic equipment to record everything they possibly can. So in light of that, the fact that it's such a big deal and big tech companies are putting not just billions, not tens of billions, but hundreds of billions or trillions into these data centers. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are two senators that have said that maybe the US should own half of these data centers or something.
- [25:44]
A
I mean, these AI companies.
- [25:46]
B
Yeah, exactly. And I have a. There's an article that I read. This is from Reuters, June 10. I'll just read it because it's, it's, it's so astounding. So the article says, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he expects top artificial intelligence companies to agree to quote, unquote, giving back. That's a phrase I really don't like under any circumstances. To the public, it implies that they've stolen something from them. If you're giving back to the public an apparent reference to a possible government stake in the firms, referring back to what Bernie and Pocahontas were advocating, here's the quote from Trump. I'm going to have meetings with the top 10 or 12 executives very shortly. And we're talking about giving back something to the public. And if we do that, the public will become very rich. The fuck is going on. The public will become very rich. They'll give it back to the public. The government will take it over. Trump told reporters in the White House his Oval Office. I think they'll do that, and I think it'll make it very popular. So he's talking about the public will become very rich.
- [27:09]
A
Well, first of all, these companies are losing money hand over fist.
- [27:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, this is a bubble. I'm convinced. This is. This is a. Isn't just a bubble, it's a super bubble in AI building all these things, whatever trillions and trillions of dollars flows into one place, which has never happened before, incidentally, all of a sudden there's going to be gigantic misallocations of capital, and it won't be used properly or efficiently or even constructively. Because the argument that I've made in the past is that, yeah, I can understand data centers because you can use these computers and artificial intelligence to improve science, calculations, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine, biotech, great. But as far as I can determine, very little of these data centers is going to be devoted towards constructive things like that. And it's unclear what it is being devoted towards basically accumulating data about people, and that's really pretty dangerous.
- [28:25]
A
Well, if you think of the way this thing has been framed for well over a year now that we're in this existential race with China and AI, now that framing implies that this is a strategic weapon that we must have in our contest with China. And so in that light, it doesn't surprise me that the US would want to get way more involved and take way more ownership over this strategic weapon as it's being produced. We know, as we talked about just before, these AI systems being used and tested on the battlefield in Gaza in particular. So they see the merits to it. And recently the government, the State Department, issued a. A statement forbidding Claude's most recent model from being used by foreign nationals of any kind, including employees of the company and of course, externally, outside of the US and what Claude did in response to that is they turned off access to this latest model that was supposedly, you know, far and away better than their last model. It was out for a few days and then taken offline completely. And so you could see the State's involvement more and more with these. With these technologies, because I do think they see them as weapons and ultimately I can see them having the most advanced models available only for state selected entities. And that we plebs will have access to lesser models, if models at all. And that the billions and billions and trillions of dollars of investment going into these things right now, which is going to run into a brick wall of financing at some point in the private sector will be picked up by the public sector, push these weapons systems forward.
- [30:24]
B
Not to mention that a large data center, I'm told, will take a gigawatt of electricity. How much is a gigawatt? Well, that's what, that's what a large nuclear plant produces. And it takes a decade and $10 billion to build a large nuclear plant. So how is that going to happen with hundreds of these?
- [30:48]
A
Well, if you got the government involved with them, with these companies where there's alignment between the state and these private entities, and especially under war powers, you could certainly see them being able to take actions they wouldn't that are otherwise not on the table, like certainly dramatically pushing forward the use of these SMRs, you know, among many other things. So I, I think that, I think that only with the melding of the state and these corporations does the realization of these data centers become a possibility.
- [31:27]
B
Well, Mussolini would prove totally. But it's interesting that you were saying when we were talking earlier that the Chinese are, for their AI, are using open source, which means that it's available to everybody in the world. Meanwhile the US is restricting arbitrarily anybody that's using. So once again, the Chinese come off as the good guys.
- [31:58]
A
They do come off as the good guys. I mean open source is supposed to be one of these good for humanity concepts. And they're doing it. And you know, I think that they're, they just adopted a totally different strategy where they want AI that is utilized by countries and so they, they create allies and commerce and you know, and trade and things like that simply because their models are cheaper and are good and getting better all the time. Just like the US models are.
- [32:31]
B
Yeah, yeah. The Chinese go around the world and they build ports and roads and airports for backward countries and the US builds military bases for them. I mean it's another area frankly.
- [32:48]
A
And this is the whole thing. You have to look at the US's actions. If viewed through a strategic dominance lens, a military lens, a lot of it makes a lot more sense about what they do. Even this idea of re industrializing America, that, you know, it sounds nice, but the re industrialization is oriented toward military related applications first and foremost. You know, that's the goal is military advancement. And so yeah, I, I just, I, I think it was an inevitability that the US Will get involved in these AI companies that they'll kind of co opt them for their defense purposes, which is their priority. And you know that these companies who are going to run into a funding wall at some point are going to need the benefit of the U. S. Taxpayer to make him go.
- [33:42]
B
Excellent chance. It's going to wind up in a gigantic stock market and general financial collapse. And this is a very bad time for that to happen. When the US Is looking to up its military budget. I hesitate to say defense budget because it's got nothing to do with defense. And it's pushing all of the European countries to double their military budgets at the same time as they're probing. And the Russians, I mean, I think we're heading towards World War iii. This is, this is going to be most unpleasant and inconvenient.
- [34:26]
A
Yeah. And I think totally unavoidable. And yeah, like as I said before, I think we're already in World War iii. It's just not recognized as such. I mean, I don't know how long before World War I did they start to think of it as a, I mean they called it the Great War, but at what point do they start to consider it a world war? You know, probably quite a ways into it.
- [34:49]
B
And World War II, every Americans think it started on December 7, 1941, or in Europeans think it started, what was it, September 1, 1939 when they. With Poland and Germany. But it really started earlier. It started in 1937 or 36 with the Spanish Civil War. That's when it really started. And for that matter in 1937 in the Orient when the Japanese attacked the Chinese. So World War II actually started several years before the widely publicized dates.
- [35:29]
A
And that's just what we're living that right now, Doug. That's, that's my position.
- [35:34]
B
Yeah. As we are. And, and meanwhile Trump, genius that he is, is pushing his Trump battleship, which is, talk about, talk about a white elephant or a dead duck. Of all the stupid things that I've heard of at the very time when technology is making for smaller things like swarms of drones and he's building a gigantic high priced target. I mean, it's actually crazy. Well, this is what, this is what happens when you have a bankrupt empire thrashing a lot, thrashing around like a stricken dinosaur. It's very dangerous. You know, when you have a stricken dinosaur that's thrashing around, it's actually more Dangerous than a dinosaur that's young and healthy.
- [36:30]
A
Dangerous indeed. And meanwhile, the, the basic moves in globalism continue on. I mean, you brought to my attention this IMF sustainability work in Papua New Guinea.
- [36:43]
B
All the crazy places. There's a country that not too long ago, most of the people still, most of the people actually, in point of fact, do run around still with, with grass, grass skirts and spears and, and walk through the jungle and Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New guinea, little known fact, most dangerous city in the world. I mean, it's a perfectly horrible backward place that imports vastly more than it exports. So they import all these gadgets from the white man and the yellow man, Chinese. And what do they export? Well, nothing, but I guess some coconuts. They do that. So what's happening with aimf? They're arranging to lend them another. How much was it? 80 or $90 million, something like that. Yeah, which is never coming home. Never. Anyway.
- [37:51]
A
Yeah, in exchange they're doing the standard IMF thing. They want them to make some budget changes, some fiscal changes, adopt some low carbon, you know, policies. I mean, just the standard fare. Like the same thing that they've been pushing around the world for the last 15 years.
- [38:09]
B
I mean, we're talking about a place that's in competition for being the most primitive country in the world and they want them to do low carbon stuff. What's that mean? The natives in the bush are not supposed to have campfires anymore. I don't know what else they could contribute to that.
- [38:30]
A
I don't know, this might just be like one of these box checking items at the IMF. You know, they got to make some CO2 commitment in order to qualify for the loans.
- [38:39]
B
Yeah, but the guys, the guys that run the country in Port Moresby, they're really happy because they get to play big shot and be treated like equals and, you know, skim off a whole bunch of money off the top. So if they ever wanted to leave their benighted country, they'll be able to buy a chateau in France. So will it ever come to an end? I think it will as the greater depression gets really serious. But I don't want to see that happen because it's going to be so weird, I mean, and destructive. I, listen, I, I'd rather live in a fool's paradise than a real unpleasant disaster,
- [39:26]
A
but me too, but I, I, I'm not, I think that's, that choice is going to be out of our hands too. So we're fool's paradise now. But I think the other is coming.
- [39:35]
B
All we can attempt to do is feather our own nests, insulate ourselves from the stupidity as individuals as best we can.
- [39:48]
A
Yeah. We're in time of such radical change and one of the things, one of the things that's been happening a lot recently is a lot of Latin American right wing candidates are coming to power. And you know, like I'm not a fan of the leftists obviously, but these right wing candidates are coming to power and they're, you know, looking to really ratchet things up like Bukele style. I mean one we talked about before we started is in Peru with Fuji Mari Fujimori being the president elect now.
- [40:23]
B
Yeah. She's the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, previous president, who was jailed for corruption. And being jailed for corruption in a third world country is not too hard. But on the other hand. Yeah, interesting that. I mean they're actually their families, they're recent immigrants from Peru. I mean from Japan actually. They actually are Japanese.
- [40:50]
A
Yeah, no, I saw her, I'm like, she looks Japanese for sure. Yeah, yeah, well, and it's, and so you know, a whole set of policies that they have, like some good ones you look at, it's like making mining easier, things like that, you know. Yeah, yeah. And probably good all around.
- [41:11]
B
Yes, for sure.
- [41:12]
A
But, but you know, but then there's this whole, these whole things that have to do with internal security which really make me nervous. And admittedly what Kelly has done in El Salvador has been very good for the average person there. Reducing this terribly crime infested place into a place of relative tranquility. Everything I've heard coming out of there has been really great. But among the things she specific explicitly promised have been temporary militarization of prisons and borders. Build a mega prison modeled explicitly on El Salvador's C cot. Withdraw Peru from the inter American Court of Human Rights to enable harsher sentencing. The same move, Bukele effectively sidestepped a 60 day emergency security plan at the start of a term with military police joint deployment, reinstate faceless judges, anonymous magistrates used by her father in the 1990s against the Shining Path.
- [42:17]
B
There's an argument for that because if you know who the judge is, it can be intimidated or assassinated. So bad news.
- [42:26]
A
Yeah, no, I mean like you look at a lot of these and you could say that you can understand especially with the state, most Peruvians are really worried about basic crime. You know, that's so I like you can understand like I can understand a lot of this but also of course is the, is the technocracy that comes Part of it, AI driven crime mapping, surveillance drones and real time heat maps. Intelligence agreements with El Salvador and US for extradition and gang targeting, forcing prisoners to work for their own costs and immediate deportation of criminal migrants. So anyway, this like right wing militant move, taking the power of the state and focusing it internally on enemies, it just makes me uncomfortable. I don't.
- [43:14]
B
Well, and some of it sounds pretty, pretty good because things are out of control. What are you going to do? You got to solve the problem. But just because Fujimori is, you know, not a communist and better than most, she'll be replaced by a hardcore leftist or a communist and the infrastructure that she's setting up now is going to be turned around and used by the really bad guys. Right.
- [43:48]
A
It's just this, we're in a, you know, there's the, what Bill Bonner often refers to as the primary trend, you know, and it's usually talking about within investing in markets. But you know, there is a primary trend right now which is a move toward authoritarianism or everywhere.
- [44:07]
B
Everywhere. Everywhere, yeah. Goodness. Well, what to do? What we should do is keep a low profile and we shouldn't be saying these things because undoubtedly Palantir or Palantir look alike is recording and cataloging our conversations and we are going to be selected as being part of the problem in the future.
- [44:37]
A
Yeah, there, there, there will be the next time there's a major event in the US or an attack on the U. S of some kind that'll really get the American people fired up about getting those bad guys. I think we will quietly disappear after that event.
- [44:59]
B
You, you don't want to be rounded up with the usual suspects, right?
- [45:05]
A
Yeah. But until then I feel like we're, you know, we aren't saying the most extreme things, we're just.
- [45:12]
B
Anyway, but it does, it does reinforce my, if not intensely pessimistic, at least highly cynical view of the way life on this planet works. You know, you go back to Leviticus, you know, with the bread goes not to the wise, nor the race to the swift or the battle to the strong. Kind of seems that way sometimes.
- [45:39]
A
I'd say that's the primary trend in action right now at the moment.
- [45:45]
B
But you know, we got to end this on a bright, happy note. And the ascent of man has started out 10,000 years ago and it's been going on. So maybe this is just a bump in the road that we're experiencing at the moment. Yeah.
- [46:01]
A
And, and again on a positive note, like if this peace deal holds out, like that's a Good thing.
- [46:07]
B
Yeah.
- [46:08]
A
Stopping a war, even if you're willing to walk away as a loser, that's okay.
- [46:13]
B
Yeah, it is. Even though it's not going to last, but still, hey, I'll take what I can get.
- [46:20]
A
Yeah, no, it's definitely not going to last because Israel's part of this agreement. They're, they've already said that they are not going to. I mean, they're not party. A party to the agreement, but they are a spoiler of the agreement because one of the, one of the line items points out specifically restricting their activity in Lebanon, which they've made clear in no uncertain terms that they are not going to be hamstrung in any way whatsoever by any agreement between the US And Iran.
- [46:48]
B
Yeah, and here's something I, I'll say that I shouldn't. It's that Israel is, I doubt that Israel as the state of Israel is going to survive another 50 years. And the reason is you've got 2 billion Mohammedans against a little state which is being very antagonistic and nasty, which has only got 6 million, 7 million real people. I'm not counting the Palestinians, because they're not, they're not really part of this, the Israeli Palestinians, so it can't end well for them.
- [47:27]
A
Yeah, I agree with you. But, you know, I heard Paul Craig Roberts say something of the day, which I think, I totally think he has a point, and that is that they're the only, I think Israel is arguably the only country in the world today that is taking things seriously. And what I mean by that is Putin has been playing this fitting footing game with Iran now, or, sorry, with Ukraine for five years, and, and he could have stepped it up and ended it. They can do things. But he's chosen to keep it as this police action, really, instead of a war, which it is, as hamstrung the military and has drawn it out. So he's, you know, and there have been, there's all these direct attacks in Russia now, which they just get away with and, you know, so they don't, they're not taking it seriously. Israel takes all of their matters seriously. And if you look at the last several years, they've done essentially a clean sweep now. Yeah, they run into this roadblock temporarily with Iran, but they've just, they've just done what they wanted to do, set aside their enemies. They've.
- [48:40]
B
Listen, you got to have a lot of respect for the Israelis. I mean, they're smart, they're tough, they're focused. Yeah, no question.
- [48:51]
A
And even the Iranians who have been, I think, you know, rational actors in this whole situation, and this is another thing Paul said, is that they're not recognizing reality, which is that Israel will not be satisfied until they no longer exist. If that's 10 years from now or 100 years from now. Like, they are gunning for them. They had. They had the US And Israel on the ropes, and they're giving them a pass. They're getting them. They're giving them the opportunity to walk away from it and recuperate, restock supplies and come back for more in the future. It's like they don't recognize that. That, you know, someone's got their number.
- [49:32]
B
Yeah.
- [49:33]
A
So Israelis never have that problem. Any potential enemy they define as an enemy, and they try to destroy them.
- [49:40]
B
They sure do. That's right. No, it's. It's fascinating to watch the soap opera. And we're still in the middle of the week, so we'll see what happens in the next couple of days before we get together again on Friday.
- [49:53]
A
Yeah, anything can happen. All right, Doug, we'll leave it there for now. Thank you very much. We'll see you on Friday.
- [49:58]
B
Thanks, Matt. Let me.