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{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@id":"https:\/\/theanalysis.news\/paul-jay-on-9-11-2\/#arve-youtube-zabw0wpxsje64ff3e2a8dcef206840641","type":"VideoObject","embedURL":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZaBW0wPXsJE?feature=oembed&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&autohide=1&playsinline=0&autoplay=1&enablejsapi=1","name":"Paul Jay on 9\/11","thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/theanalysis.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/pauljay.webp","uploadDate":"2023-09-11T12:18:14+00:00","author":"theAnalysis-news","description":"Jay discusses his interviews with Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the joint congressional investigation into the events of 9\/11 and was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Graham outright accused Bush and Cheney of facilitating the 9\/11 attacks. Jay also discusses his interviews with former"} Jay discusses his interviews with Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the joint congressional investigation into the events of 9/11 and was the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Graham outright accused Bush and Cheney of facilitating the 9/11 attacks. Jay also discusses his interviews with former NSA official Thomas Drake, who says intercepts that could have prevented 9/11 were never acted on. Paul Jay was a guest on Law and Disorder, hosted by Michael Smith. This interview was originally recorded on October 18, 2021. .kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kadence-post-image{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kt-post-grid-wrap{gap:30px 6px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kt-blocks-post-grid-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .kt-blocks-post-grid-item-inner{padding-top:10px;padding-right:25px;padding-bottom:25px;padding-left:9px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kt-blocks-post-grid-item header{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kt-blocks-post-grid-item .entry-title{padding-top:5px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;font-size:16px;line-height:17px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .entry-content{padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kt-blocks-post-footer{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .entry-content:after{height:0px;}.kt-post-loop_15d859-bf .kb-filter-item{border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:2px;border-left-width:0px;padding-top:5px;padding-right:8px;padding-bottom:5px;padding-left:8px;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;} Paul Jay on 9/11 9/11 Lies and the National Security State – Thomas Drake Intelligence on Bin Laden, 9/11 Targets Withheld from Congress’ Probe 9/11 Not an “Intelligence Failure” From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much – Thomas Drake on RAI Pt 6/6 From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much – Thomas Drake on RAI Pt 5/6 From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much – Thomas Drake on RAI Pt 4/6 From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much – Thomas Drake on RAI Pt 3/6 From 9/11 to Mass Surveillance, The Man Who Knew Too Much – Thomas Drake on RAI Pt 2/6 Sen. Graham: Bush/Cheney Misdirected Intel Prior to 9/11, Aggressively Deceived After – Pt 2/7 Sen. Bob Graham: FBI Deliberately Covered Up the Role of Saudis in 9/11 Attack – (pt 1/7) Sen. Graham: President Must Side with Openness About C.I.A. and 9/11 – Pt 3/7 Did Bush Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 7/7 Revealing 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo U.S. Saudi Alliance – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 5/7 Saudi Government’s 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disillusionment – Sen. Bob Graham on RAI Pt 4/7 9/11 Redux – Pt 3/3 9/11 Redux – Pt 2/3 9/11 Redux – Pt 1/3 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Music Michael Steven Smith  This is Law and Disorder. Heidi Boghosian Today on Law and Disorder, we interview Paul Jay for the full hour to discuss his investigative work about the attacks of September 11, 2001. Michael Steven Smith  Paul Jay has been following the 9/11 story for 20 years. He’s read the documents. He’s interviewed the key players in it. He tells a story that I think the listeners will be extremely interested in hearing. The events of 9/11 were a crushing blow to democracy and the rule of law in our country. The attacks paved the way for two illegal wars. First, the American war against Afghanistan and then Iraq. It opened the way for the national security state to develop expansively and implement a vast surveillance program on American citizens. The attack on the World Trade Center and then on the Pentagon happened 20 years ago and, in retrospect, was a turning point in American and world history.  Law and Disorder radio was launched three years after 9/11. Our mission was to defend both democracy and the rule of law. The 9/11 attacks were a crime against humanity, but instead of treating them as a crime, it was turned into an occasion to launch aggressive and illegal wars. The Nuremberg trials against the Nazis who started World War II defined aggressive war as the ultimate crime because it held within it all lesser crimes.  In our show today, we examine the new evidence on who is responsible for the attacks on 9/11. The new evidence is a six-year-old FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] report released on President [Joe] Biden’s order last month. Biden was told by the families of the victims of 9/11 that unless this report was released, he would not be welcomed at any of the memorial services.  The FBI report demonstrates the complicity of the government of Saudi Arabia in the attacks. It was two Saudi Arabian government officials who helped the first two hijackers when they came to America. They were given money and help to get into flight school. Then, they hijacked an American airline plane and flew it into the Pentagon. Senator Bob Graham was the Head of the Intelligence Committee that investigated 9/11. Whistleblower Thomas Drake was a top official at the National Security Agency [NSA]. Lawrence Wilkerson was the Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell. We speak today in a special one-hour show with journalist Paul Jay, who interviewed all three of them. Paul Jay is a journalist and a filmmaker. He’s the founder and host of theAnalysis.news, a video and audio current affairs interview and commentary show and website. Jay was the founder of the Real News Network and is currently working on a documentary series with Daniel Ellsberg based on Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine. Paul Jay, welcome to Law and Disorder. Paul Jay Thanks for inviting me. Heidi Boghosian We want to talk to you today about the continuing unravelling of the cover-up of the Saudi Arabian government’s involvement with the attacks of 9/11. President Biden was told by the families of the victims of 9/11 that he would be unwelcome at ceremonies honouring the 20th anniversary unless he released a six-year-old FBI investigative report. He did so. What did the report reveal? Paul Jay First of all, let me congratulate both of you because most journalists and other people in the media don’t want to even look into what happened on 9/11. Maybe we can talk about why that is. It’s a topic worth discussing in itself. Let me add one more thing for context here about why all this matters. Why are we revisiting the Saudi role, and why, 20 years later, is 9/11 significant? The answer is probably obvious, but let me state it anyway. I don’t know if there’s been an American war that didn’t begin with a bunch of big lies or to establish pretext for what was almost always, or perhaps always, wars of aggression. You can even go back to the beginnings of the Cold War and the lies that there was a missile gap and the Soviet Union was planning to attack the United States, which was all a fraud. The Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, and it goes on from there. More recently and obviously, the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. American wars begin based on lies. Now, the other thing, and this goes along with lying, has there ever been a war anybody or any country waged that wasn’t a conspiracy? Countries don’t come out and openly say everything they plan to do or how they plan to engage in the war. So, this idea that there’s something outlandish about conspiracy theories is the most ridiculous thing that’s been out there in politics and media. Of course, there are conspiracies attached to warfare and other things. There are also phony conspiracies. Yes, there are conspiracy theories that have no basis, but what’s a bigger conspiracy than lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when they knew there weren’t any? There were many people involved in that conspiracy, and it came out that it was a conspiracy. That’s the other side of all of this. There’s no accountability for what happened. Lying the United States into an illegal war, invasion of Iraq. Of course, there was a conspiracy to try to fake evidence and so on. Anywhere from the supposed yellowcake story and Niger trying to lean on the ambassador to lie about what he found. It goes on and on.  So the fact that there was, I think, a conspiracy in the surrounding and at the heart of the events of 9/11, it’s kind of ridiculous to say otherwise. You can’t get a bunch of hijackers coordinating their activities on airplanes without it being a conspiracy. Obviously, I think it goes much further than that, which means the involvement of the Saudi government and the involvement of the White House.  With all that being said, let me talk a bit about this recent reveal, or supposed reveal, in that declassified FBI document. I’m not completely in the weeds on this whole issue as much as I used to be. I’ve read through the recent FBI document, but I may have missed something. I don’t see anything in this FBI document that wasn’t already released by the Joint Congressional Investigation into the events of 9/11 that was released in 2002, Co-Chaired by Senator Bob Graham, who I interviewed. Almost everything that I saw in this recent FBI document, even though it’s dated and based on an interview with somebody who they don’t say, in 2015. When you read the 28 pages that were originally redacted by the White House of the Joint Congressional Investigation, the entire story that I see in this recent FBI release is all there in 2002, and it’s based on FBI documents, which means the FBI had all this stuff years ago. What sparked this release now is that the 9/11 families are suing the Saudi government. I can understand why they wanted this document declassified. It’s perhaps harder evidence than the conclusions of the Joint Congressional Investigation. Still, it actually doesn’t say anything new about the involvement of Saudi officials in the Saudi Embassy and the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. What’s missing? It is really critical what’s missing. In the media coverage of this recent FBI document, they don’t talk about the most important thing because it’s not in that FBI document, or it is, and it’s redacted. There are a lot of names redacted in this recent release, but the name is Bandar [bin Khalid Al Saud]. Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, whose nickname, if everybody remembers, was Bandar Bush. There’s this famous photograph of President Bush and Ambassador Bandar, Prince Bandar, sitting on the terrace of the White House just a few days after 9/11, smoking cigars and, frankly, looking very pleased with themselves. So, the media coverage of this recent release is ridiculous, at least in the mainstream media that I’ve seen. They don’t hearken back to the conclusions of the Joint Congressional Committee [JCC]. Most importantly is the activity of these couple of people in the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles that this recent release talks about. Clearly, you put that together with what the Joint Congressional Committee found, and it’s all done under the auspices of Bandar. This isn’t some rogue character. What the FBI found, it’s mentioned in this recent one, but it’s even more elaborated in the Joint Congressional Committee. These two guys, in particular [Omar al-]Bayoumi, I believe, is one, and the other one is [Osama] Bassan. In all likelihood, according to the FBI and many sources of theirs, they’re agents of the Saudi Intelligence Services, and they’re directly connected with facilitating the 9/11 hijackers, particularly, or specifically, in San Diego. There’s lots of evidence of a direct involvement, but it goes further.  If you go back to the Joint Congressional Committee, there are direct links between Prince Bandar and these guys. One of their wives was receiving, I think, it was two or $3,000 a month from Bandar’s wife. There’s a direct payment in the redacted 28 pages. A direct payment between Bandar’s bank account and one of the two people mentioned in this recent report. I think it was Bassan who got some money directly and then Bassan’s wife. Why the mainstream media isn’t using this as an opportunity to really, not just go after the Saudis, which is honestly so obvious that the Saudis were involved— I guess we’ll get into this, but clearly a direct line of connection to [Dick] Cheney and Bush. Michael Steven Smith  Paul, you interviewed Senator Bob Graham some years ago. He was in an important position to learn about the Saudi Arabian involvement. Who’s Bob Graham, and what did he tell you? Paul Jay Yeah, the real significance of Graham’s interview is less about the Saudis and more about the role of Bush and Cheney. First of all, Senator Bob Graham was the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee [SSCI] for many years. He previously was governor of Florida. He’s the Co-Chair of the Joint Congressional investigation into 9/11, the one I was mentioning. They were at this for close to a year. They had millions of dollars and a team of investigators. So, what I’m about to tell you is what Graham told me. It is not a view of some crackpot individual or even a rational individual. This is a guy who had a whole team of investigators looking into this stuff. He told me what went far beyond what’s in the 28 pages and the official report. I’m not sure why. There are other people who had to sign onto that report, including Nancy Pelosi, by the way, who signed that Joint Congressional Report. People were aware. Now, the report does not talk about the role of Bush and Cheney. It talks about the Saudis, so there’s nothing new. Pelosi and others in leadership, both on the Republican and Democratic sides, all know this stuff. But what he told me isn’t in the report and was an answer to my question. I said to him in the first series of interviews. I’ve interviewed him about seven or eight times now altogether. The first series of interviews took place in 2010 if my memory serves me right. I said, “Do you think there was a deliberate attempt by President Bush and Vice President Cheney to create a culture within the intelligence agencies of not wanting to know?” I explained to him several examples of intelligence that had been generated prior to 9/11 that, if acted on, could have prevented 9/11.  In fact, Graham actually wrote a book about this, and he had a list of 10 reasons to impeach President Bush. Number one is failing to prevent 9/11. Anyway, his first answer to me was if all the players on a football team are running in the same direction, there’s got to be a coach. Well, the first time I interviewed him, he was a little bit restrained with how far he would go. But after the declassification of the famous 28 pages— for people that don’t know this story, this congressional report, there were 28 pages the White House insisted on being redacted. It’s in those pages that you get very specific information about the Saudis and the role of Prince Bandar. Well, after a lot of pressure from the 9/11 families— again, they’re the ones that have forced this question out into the open or as open as it is. These 28 pages were declassified by [Barack] Obama, but still with a lot of redactions. Once they were released, Graham felt a lot freer to talk, and I said to him— I actually played back that part of the interview where we talked about a football team and a coach. I said, “Listen, who’s the coach?” And he says, “President Bush and Vice President Cheney.” Then I said, “You’re saying they deliberately disorganized the intelligence committee?” I may not have used exactly those words, but more or less. He said, “Yes, but it goes further than that.” He said, “They did some acts that directly facilitated the 9/11 attacks, not just suppressed intelligence.” I’ll get into my interview with Thomas Drake about how intelligence got suppressed. Although I asked Graham about this, too. Listen to these examples; they’re outstanding. Outstanding. Outrageous, I guess, is the word. He gave me two or three examples of facilitating. Number one, this famous memo, [Osama] Bin Laden plans to attack America. That is all that was talked about at the 9/11 hearings. It was read out on television during those hearings. Condoleezza Rice claims they’re a historical document. Ridiculous, after [George] Tenet and Richard Clarke: Tenet, Head of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and Clarke, the anti-terrorism czar. They’re saying their hair was on fire all summer, telling Condoleezza Rice something’s coming. Then she thinks this is a historical document, which is a joke.  Anyway, the document goes to Rice and Bush. Well, Graham tells me that the normal protocol is after the presidential briefing; there’s another briefing that goes out. It’s called the principal’s briefing. It goes to heads of agencies and undersecretaries of certain departments. Any information that’s in the presidential briefing that might require action by any agency shows up in the principal’s briefing. Well, if Bin Laden plans to attack America, you would think it might require some action. So, in the next principals briefing, Graham tells me, it’s omitted. He took this, and he believes that this was a conscious effort to stop, for example, the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] putting the airports on heightened alert or immigration on higher alert. Number two, never mind putting immigration on higher alert. Now, by the way, I have all this on camera. You can go to theAnalysis.news. I have all the Graham interviews up there. Graham tells me that far from putting immigration on alert about potential terrorists coming in and potential Saudis, it’s the opposite. Graham tells me that the White House issued orders to immigration not to stop any Saudi citizen from entering the United States. Any! They get in without questioning. One guy, according to Graham, one immigration officer in Miami, stopped the Saudi, which Graham’s investigators concluded was actually meant to be one of the hijackers. He did stop him because he hadn’t read the memo and was actually disciplined for not reading the memo. It goes on. Number three, people that followed this story— it’s 20 years now, so people probably forget that within just a few days of 9/11, when the airspace of the United States, if memory serves me right, is still closed to at least commercial aircraft, a whole plane-load of Saudis is allowed to leave including many members of the bin Laden family. Graham told me there were many people on that plane that his committee would have wanted to interview as part of their investigation into 9/11 and couldn’t. When they asked the Saudi government to allow them to be interviewed, they were told no. There are other examples Graham told me about, so it wasn’t just a suppression. Heidi Boghosian Paul, you interviewed a top official in the National Security Administration, the NSA, and I’m talking about the whistleblower, Tom Drake. What did you learn from him? Paul Jay Well, this is the key that unlocks the dynamic of how all this worked. Graham essentially confirmed what Drake told me. Let me put this into a little context because people are sitting here listening to all this. Why would they do all of this? Well, the why is obvious. It was all about preparing American public opinion for the invasion of Iraq. If you go back to the document, the Project for the New American Century [PNAC], which a bunch of neo-cons wrote as a letter to [Bill] Clinton. That group of neo-cons who wrote that document, including [Donald] Rumsfeld and [Paul] Wolfowitz, formed the whole team around the Secretary of Defense. Cheney was a signatory to that document.  In that document, it says two things. This is the key to the why, and then I’ll get to Drake. Number one, the American people, I should say, will not support another major military intervention. Number two, they will not support a massive build-up of the American military, which means a large amount of money increase in the Pentagon budget without— and I’m quoting here, “another Pearl Harbor.”  Now, people who follow this story are well aware of this document, but a lot of people are not. Especially younger people. Well, it’s kind of obvious that 9/11 became Pearl Harbor, and it was the invasion of Iraq. It wasn’t just about Iraq. I think this is the critical issue to understand the Saudi interest here and the American interest. The ultimate prize was regime change in Iran.  In this document and other things that were written by these neo-cons, the agenda was to overthrow Saddam [Hussein] in Iraq and overthrow [Bashar] Assad in Syria. That’s to prepare the conditions for regime change in Iran plus a massive build-up, meaning a massive expenditure on the military-industrial complex.  Alright, so that’s the motivation here, and, of course, the Saudis are as interested in regime change in Iran, or even more than the Americans are or at least may still be, but certainly back then. Alright, Drake. Drake was one of the American global leading minds in cybersecurity and dealing with digital data. He was hired by the NSA, and ironically, coincidentally, his first day of work was 9/11. In the morning, he goes there, and the attacks take place later that day. Within a week or two, a couple of analysts come to see him. Now, he’s very senior. He’s a Senior Executive who reports directly to the number three person in the leadership of the NSA. So, that’s a very senior position. A couple of analysts came to see him a couple of weeks after the attack. They show him, and they say— this is Drake telling me and again this on camera. We had the whole thing. According to Drake, the NSA had intercepted phone calls between all but three of the hijackers and an Al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The entire plot was known. They had recorded and intercepted telephone conversations and knew the whole thing. The analyst came to Drake and said, “This is crazy. We told the leadership of the NSA, and nothing was done with it.” Drake has told me this on camera.  He had actually seen the documentation of the intercept, and then I said to him, “Well, this doesn’t make any sense— the leadership of the NSA. Even if Bush-Cheney had created this culture the way Graham talked about, of not prioritizing terrorism, there’s no way they sit on something like this. They couldn’t take the responsibility.” He said, “Of course not.” He says there was a back channel to Cheney. This is the other kind of secret to understanding how they did this. George Tenet testified at the 9/11 Commission Hearings that in his first presidential briefing, he told Bush the number one threat to national security was bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Now, let’s remember on the FBI’s most-wanted list, bin Laden had been number one for the previous five years. He was not some unknown quantity that just showed up on 9/11. The FBI already knew he was involved in the attacks on the Cole Navy ship. Whatever they knew about him was enough to say he was number one on the FBI’s most-wanted list. Tenet confirms he and Al-Qaeda are the number one threat to national security. So, what is one of Bush’s first moves dealing with national security? He demotes the anti-terrorism czar, Richard Clarke. Richard Clarke, under Clinton, was in a cabinet-level position. He could call the principal— remember the principals. He could call a meeting of the principals on his own. He didn’t have to go through Condoleezza Rice. He gets demoted by Bush, now reports to Condoleezza Rice, and testifies at the 9/11 hearings that he couldn’t get a meeting of the principals called. Even though the quote from him and others, I think it was Clarke’s quote, “My hair was on fire.” There was so much intelligence coming in.  Now, there was a lot of intelligence coming in that Clarke was aware of, but some of the most critical intelligence he wasn’t aware of, for example— and this is a little piece of video, which I keep playing every time I do a report on this. I have to say here that I’ve offered everything I’ve got to mainstream media over and over again with no interest whatsoever, including my interviews with Clarke and Drake. I’m not like an unknown quantity here, even if they think I’ve been working in more independent, marginalized media. I come from CBC in Canada. I was the Executive Producer of the main political affairs debate show daily for 10 years. I’ve made documentary films for all the major broadcasters in the world, so I’m not a completely marginal character. Although I think they have tried to make me so. Anyway, nobody’s been interested in all this stuff I’ve got. There’s a critical piece of video with Richard Clarke. I don’t know if he was drinking or what. He was interviewed by two University students, and he said the San Diego cell in California the FBI knew about and never told the CIA, and the CIA knew about and never told the FBI. The 9/11 Commission depicted that as if it was like Keystone Cops. They wouldn’t even talk to each other. Clarke says, “I was deliberately bypassed. Neither the CIA nor the FBI told me about the San Diego cell.” He says, “There’s absolutely no way that happens,” and I have him saying this on camera, “without a deliberate, conscious decision not to tell me, the anti-terrorism czar, who’s supposed to be the central repository for all of this information.”  What Drake adds to this is that they did report it to Cheney. What Cheney did was he got all the intelligence agencies to report to him, including military intelligence that also had pre-9/11 intelligence that could have prevented the attacks, and he just sat on it. He would let the information flow in, and he would give no instructions to any of the agencies to act. Quite the contrary, as I said earlier, he actually helped facilitate it, in other words. Michael Steven Smith  What do you think was known by the intelligence community, specifically that part of the community that reported to Vice President Dick Cheney before the events of 9/11? Is there evidence that he manipulated the intelligence and set up a backchannel? Paul Jay Let me answer, first of all, by saying what I know. I know from the people I’ve interviewed, most importantly, Graham and Thomas Drake, and to some extent also John Kiriakou and some others, but those two are the key. They’re awfully credible sources. As I said earlier, Graham was the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Drake a Senior Executive at the NSA. So, I don’t have any ability to have my own investigators. I can’t subpoena anybody. What I can say is what I’ve been told by them, and they say, without doubt, that’s what happened.  As I said earlier, Richard Clarke is on the record saying that he was bypassed on critical intelligence, and Drake says it’s reported to Cheney. The inference from Clarke is that it was reported to Cheney. One of the arguments that’s given about why the administration didn’t focus on terrorism and why, even after being told by George Tenet that terrorism was the number one threat to national security, and it’s this de-prioritization, is the reason that there was such chaos amongst the intelligence agencies. For example, there’s this Coleen Rowley story. If people remember, she’s an FBI agent, I think, in Minnesota. She gets a phone call from a flight school, and the guy who teaches says, “I’ve got this guy from the Middle East, and he wants to learn how to take off, but he doesn’t want to know how to land.” So, she finds this suspicious. She sends this to FBI headquarters. Then she asks for a warrant to go into the guy’s computer, and it’s denied. She later became one of Time Magazine’s People of the Year as a whistleblower. She’s completely credible. This is what had been explained as this is part of the FBI and others taking the lead from Bush-Cheney in deprioritizing terrorism and prioritizing big state actors, meaning Russia and China. There’s always this talk that Condoleezza Rice didn’t focus on this because her background was about the Soviet Union and Russia, and that’s what they were concerned about. They just didn’t think terrorism was a big deal and all this. It’s such obvious B.S., because we know now from many sources, including Richard Clarke’s book, [Robert] Gates book and others, that their priority wasn’t Russia and China. Their priority was Iraq from day one. Within days of the attack of 9/11, Bush is telling both the CIA and the Pentagon, “Get ready for Iraq. Focus on Iraq.” It was never even about Afghanistan. That became a requirement to attack and invade Afghanistan when it became obvious to everybody that bin Laden had operated out of Afghanistan. That’s a whole other story, which I can get into. As you know, I made a film about Afghanistan because there’s all this talk about how the Taliban wouldn’t hand over bin Laden, and that’s the reason for invading Afghanistan, which is actually not true. If you want to know more, I’ve actually interviewed a member of the Central Council of Taliban; they were ready to hand over bin Laden. So, the evidence of the backchannel is based on Drake, Graham. It’s based on Richard Clarke saying it was bypassed on critical intelligence, and there’s a certain logic. I mean, is it really possible?  This is where you get a need for an inquiry because what I’m about to say is not hard evidence, but, God, a lot of people have been convicted of murder on a lot less circumstantial evidence than what I’m about to say. Is it possible that all the intelligence agencies that had so much pre-9/11 intelligence that could have stopped the attacks and they just sat on it? I mean, is that possible? If it didn’t go to Richard Clarke, and he claims it didn’t, all of them decided, oh, I’m not going to tell. There’s one of the military intelligence— this is a report Jason Leopold worked on. I released on video a lot of his reports. The Joint Military Intelligence [JMI] was asked to model in early 2001, late 2000, what might another terrorist attack look like? They modelled— get this. They modelled: planes get hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center, and the buildings fall down. They modelled this before 9/11, did a PowerPoint explaining their modelling, and they gave that up the chain of command. Now, when the leadership of the military intelligence was called before the Joint Congressional Committee and asked, “Did you have anything that indicated that these attacks might take place?” They said, “No.” So, the guy who led the military intelligence team was furious, and he made a report to the Inspector General of the Army saying, “It’s not true. We modelled what happened, and we had a PowerPoint.” He sent the PowerPoint to the Inspector General. Well, the Inspector General comes back and says, “Oh, the leadership of intelligence did nothing inappropriate.” So, this guy is furious, and he leaked the stuff to Jason Leopold, and I think the other guy’s name was Jeffrey Kaye. The guy from military intelligence makes a FOIA [Freedom of Information] request to the Inspector General to get his PowerPoint, and he gets it. You can go to my site. I have it there. Jason had the actual Inspector General’s report with a stamp on his PowerPoint explaining how planes were going to hit the buildings and the buildings fall down. So, is it really possible that so many intelligence agencies just sit on this information without passing it up somewhere? It’s just impossible. So, yeah, it’s kind of a supposition, but I think it’s enough of a supposition that there still needs to be an independent inquiry into what really happened because the truth of this has not come out. As I say, this isn’t just a problem of some history; this is a problem of such deliberate lying about 9/11 and deliberate lying about the Iraq war. Are we going to see it again? This time, if Trump had had his way, in fact, if Bush-Cheney hadn’t been blocked by the Pentagon, in all likelihood, we would have seen another example, except this time they’ll try to pin it on the Iranians. Heidi Boghosian You interviewed retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff prior to 9/11. What did you learn from Wilkerson? How does he feel about the speech Powell gave at the United Nations promoting the attack on Iraq? Paul Jay Well, first of all, he feels culpability himself. He went along with what he had, by then, come to know wasn’t true: Powell’s thing about Scud missiles surrounding Beirut [ED: Baghdad] armed with biological weapons pointed at Israel. He knew that a lot of what Powell said was being manufactured. And it’s not one of, but the greatest regret of his life that he didn’t quit before that speech.  Let me add a little note of my own. It’s my belief that if they actually believed any of what they said at the U.N., they wouldn’t have invaded. You don’t invade a country that has Scud missiles with biological weapons aimed at Israel. That’s a pretty good deterrent. You don’t risk it. Also, you look at the pictures of American soldiers driving across Iraq towards Baghdad; almost none are wearing masks. Anyway, we know the whole thing was a big lie. Wilkerson, he once said, and he said it to me, and I think he said it elsewhere, “The people who work for Powell, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are war criminals.” He said, “If they go to jail, I probably need to go with them.” I’ve interviewed him many times now, and I believe he’s sincere in this. The other most important thing about how sincere he is, he’s almost the only one and maybe the only one, but certainly one of the only ones who didn’t cash in on all this. All the other people are millionaires, multi-millionaires. They all got jobs in the military-industrial complex. They’re fabulously wealthy, and he certainly could have been. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. He could have even just resigned and not said anything, but instead, he’s become one of the harshest critics of U.S. foreign policy and of the military-industrial complex. I know he lives quite modestly at a professor’s salary. He got a job teaching afterwards, but nothing compared to what he could have been, I’m sure. He’s very smart and understands geopolitics. He easily could have been on the board of some big arms manufacturer. Basically, what he said, the essence of it, is how banal the whole motivation was. There was even less about the geopolitics of regime change in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, which it was, but it was more about money-making. We know about Dick Cheney and his ties to Halliburton. He was the CEO of Halliburton. He still owns stock in a Blind Trust, supposedly after he became Vice President, but Halliburton got a no-bid $7 billion contract days prior to the invasion of Iraq. In fact, there’s a woman named [Bunnatine] Bunny Greenhouse who oversaw contracts for the Pentagon. A civilian looking for things that were wrong, and she actually reported to the Inspector General. Why was this in a no-bid contract? Because there are at least three or four other companies that could have done the same work, which is restructuring the Iraqi oil industry after the invasion. I mean, that’s what they were focused on, grabbing the oil. She also reported that this contract was being directly steered and navigated by Rumsfeld’s office, which was completely out of the norm. Normally, it would come out of some normal Pentagon acquisition office. She was demoted. She was put into some job where she had absolutely nothing to do. She never got promoted again and never got a wage increase. She sued the Pentagon later and won. She actually won almost a million dollars in a lawsuit over the Cheney-Halliburton contract. It was about money, and it’s always about more than one thing. It’s not like geopolitics doesn’t matter, but even geopolitics is mostly about money-making, and that’s Wilkerson’s main theme. Of course, in talking to him and [Daniel] Ellsberg, who I’ve been talking to, we also learn about the whole nuclear weapons plan, which is mostly about money too, except there they can end life on earth. Heidi Boghosian Do you believe the 9/11 attack was a pivotal point in U.S. and world history? Paul Jay Yes. In one obvious way, it was. As I said, it became the rationale for a massive expenditure in the Pentagon and massive growth in the National Security State. From the Patriot Act to the NSA spying on everyone, it became a justification for unmitigated spying on Americans, and certainly everyone else in the world too. The kind of safeguards that had existed, everything gets thrown out. Torture is allowable, and, of course, the most important thing is the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Millions of people were displaced. So, one of the great war crimes since World War II, maybe the greatest war crime since World War II— well, I don’t know. The Vietnam War, I guess, is the biggest war crime, but after Vietnam, you’ve got Iraq. It created, and not just in the United States, it created a rationale for this great strengthening of the National Security States in most states, if not all.  But the other thing it did, which doesn’t get talked about enough, is that the media was intimidated. I think it’s one of the most important points of 9/11. The media has been intimidated in looking into what really happened on 9/11. The media was intimidated in playing ball in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.  A quote from Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor— unfortunately, he said this to the BBC, and he didn’t say it in the U.S.. But he said, “After 9/11, if you critique the White House, it was like,” and I’m quoting him, I think, pretty directly, “It’s like having a flaming tire of patriotism put around your neck.” This is using an example of what happened in the South African townships. If they thought somebody was working with the police, they would set a flaming tire around somebody’s neck. That was the ability of the White House. Now, President Bush, prior to 9/11, there was a television show on ABC Network T.V. called That’s My Bush. It was a parody of the Bush family directly. He was held in such contempt that you could actually have a mainstream T.V. show ridiculing the Bush family. Well, after 9/11, all of a sudden, he’s a hero. That show goes off the air, and the media plays ball. Now, I’m not saying there’s no media that wasn’t critical. I would give McClatchy some props— is that the word? They didn’t buy the whole weapons of mass destruction argument, but we know the New York Times did, and almost the entire network television did. It hasn’t changed that much. 9/11 changed the media culture to a large extent. It’s not that they were always fantastic. Look at how much trouble and difficulty it was to get the Pentagon Papers out, but it did get out. The Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg’s thing. Finally, the newspapers had the guts to do it, but it took a hell of a long time for the mainstream media to deal with the lies about the Iraq war, and they still haven’t dealt with the lies of 9/11. So, yeah, it’s a very pivotal event in many ways. But let me focus on that, is that all the wars, every one of them, the whole history of the national security state, of U.S. militarism, is mostly a fabric of lies. People just don’t get it. In the schools, of course, it’s never really exposed, and the media that does it like yours, mine, or some others that do get at this stuff, we get so marginalized that they don’t really care that we can poke through the fabric of Americanism. Once in a while, events tear the shredding of Americanism, but it doesn’t take long for the media to close ranks again. Michael Steven Smith  Paul Jay, thank you very much. We truly appreciate your fine investigative reporting. This is what’s probably the biggest story of the last part of our lifetime. Paul Jay Thanks, Michael. Yeah, you can find me at theAnalysis.news, and it needs the, as in theAnalysis.news. Michael Steven Smith  People will go to theAnalysis.news to fill in what you haven’t had a chance to tell us. Thank you so much, Paul Jay, for your extremely important work. We truly appreciate you being on Law and Disorder. Heidi Boghosian Thank you, Paul. Paul Jay Thanks very much. Michael Steven Smith  If you have any comments or questions about this segment or any others, please visit us at lawanddisorder.org. 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Dr. Asoka Bandarage is an adjunct professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies and the author of a new book, Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World. Sri Lanka has had a minuscule carbon footprint, and yet the country is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, coastal erosion, and flooding. She discusses the convergence of existential climate and debt crises in Sri Lanka, the latter resulting from IMF debt restructuring and the lack of a globally coordinated multilateral sovereign debt mechanism that places traditional and private lenders on an equal footing.

Widespread corruption in Lebanon is fostered by the country's ruling class, whose business interests are enmeshed with those of international finance. Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, explains how Lebanon's culture of political impunity is tied to the reconstruction agreements put in place in 1990, at the end of the 15-year civil war. The ongoing political deadlock shields the authorities from scrutiny and allows for vulture capitalists such as the former governor of Lebanon's Central Bank, Riad Salameh, to embezzle the country's resources. At the same time, ordinary people are faced with crushing inflation.

Justin Joque, visualization librarian at the University of Michigan and author of Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, and the Logic of Capitalism, explores the impact of algorithms on financial systems and discusses the consequences of relying on digital systems for decision-making. He delves into the differences between frequentist and Bayesian statistical models, examines capitalist realism and its limitations, and highlights the history and use of statistical models in relation to capital.

Matin Qaim, Director of the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn, discusses the challenges of achieving food security amidst disruptions caused by the pandemic, rising inflation, and failed grain deals. He highlights the importance of small-scale farming, agroecological approaches, and appropriate technology for supporting smallholder farmers.

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The Fed Attacks the Working Class – Robert Pollin Capitalism’s Structural Crisis and the Global Revolt Biden’s Bill has Significant Funding for Climate but 10% of What’s Needed – Bob Pollin No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (pt 1/3) No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (pt 2/3) No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (pt 3/3) Progressive Running Against a Corp Dem in Boeing Country Organizing in West Virginia  Get Organized to Win! – Jane McAlevey pt 1/8 25,000 Gather for Moral March on Washington Rising Interest Rates Intended to Create Unemployment – Bob Pollin The Story Behind “The Con” The Power of the Strike – Jane McAlevey pt 8/8 Power Analysis and Whole-Worker Charting – Jane McAlevey pt 7/8 To Win We Need Strong Militant Unions – Jane McAlevey pt 6/8 Is China’s Trade Predatory or for Mutual Benefit? – Hudson and Bond pt 2/2 Mobilizing is Not Organizing – Jane McAlevey pt 5/8 Nationalize Fossil Fuel to Fight Climate Change and Inflation – Bob Pollin In 2020, Trump Propped Up His Rural Vote with Massive Subsidies to Agribusiness – Tom Ferguson Pt 4/4 Fossil Fuel and Private Equity Love Trump – Thomas Ferguson Pt 3/4 theAnalysis.news in 2022 – Paul Jay In 2020, Elites Bailed on Trump, Not on Republican Party – Tom Ferguson Pt 2/4 The Making of Global Capitalism with Leo Panitch Risking Apocalypse for the Spoils of War – Andrew Cockburn pt 1/2 Is the U$A a Democracy? with Tom Ferguson Hard Bargaining in Las Vegas Hospitals – Jane McAlevey pt 4/8 Organizing for Power – Jane McAlevey pt 3/8 Respecting the Genius of Ordinary People – Jane McAlevey pt 2/8 Get Organized to Win! – Jane McAlevey pt 1/8 Stop Subsidizing Wall St., Start Subsidizing Workers for High Energy Costs – Bob Pollin Why the Media Doesn’t Understand Control Fraud Biden Heads to COP 26 Throttled by Manchin and Trumpists – with Bob Pollin Michael Hudson: Biden Between BlackRock and a Hard Place Imperialism Then and Now: Wealth, Unemployment, and Insufficient Demand- Pt 1/3 Prabhat Patnaik Imperialism Then and Now: Capital Relocation, Inequality, Encroachment and Protracted Crisis -Pt 3/3 Imperialism Then and Now: Drain of Wealth, Depression, Role of the State and Globalization-Pt 2/3 Bill Black pt 9/9 — The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One To Get Us Out of Poverty, We Need a Massive Infrastructure Plan – Ann Morrison / Wisconsin How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions – Chuck Collins Bill Black pt 8/9 — The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 7/9 -The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 6/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 5/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 4/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is To Own One Bill Black pt 3/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Modest Inflation is Good for Workers – Bob Pollin Why Biden Won’t Cancel Student Debt – Michael Hudson E.U. is Split Over “Strategic Autonomy,” China and U.S. Hegemony – with Mark Blyth Mark Blyth – An Inflated Fear of Inflation? Bill Black pt 2/9 – Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One Bill Black pt 1/9 – The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One Can You Destroy $20 Billion in Wealth Without Committing a Crime? – Bill Black Workers and Communities vs Amazon Polarization, Then a Crash: Michael Hudson on the Rentier Economy Democrats Stuck Between “BlackRock and a Hard Place” – Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth Peoples’ Lives vs. Profits of Pharmaceutical Monopolies – GPE Newsdocs What is to be Done to Save the Planet – Robert Pollin Financialization and Deindustrialization – Michael Hudson Is Trump the Tip of a More Coherent Fascist Spear? How Deep Will the Depression Get? – Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth Regenerative Agriculture and Massive Planting of Trees is Our Only Hope – Earl Katz Stabilizing an Unstable Economy – Jan Kregel on Hyman Minsky Will Unions Respond to the Pandemic Moment? Bill Black: Cities Face Catastrophe; Finance a Cancer on Real Economy FED’s $10 Trillion Defends Assets of the Rich – Michael Hudson The Irrationality of the System Has Been Fully Revealed – Leo Panitch Thomas Ferguson: Big Business Takes Cash as Workers Laid Off, States and Cities Go Bust Artificial Intelligence in Whose Interests? – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 6/6 The Rich Have an Escape Plan – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 5/6 Sociopaths Rise to the Top RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 4/6 Clinton’s ‘Committee to Save the World’ Unleashes Wall Street – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 3/6 Apple, Market Manipulation and the Cult of Personal Finance – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 2/6 The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – RAI with Rana Foroohar Pt 1/6 Capitalism Will Hit the Wall Again, Hard – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 5/5 The Necessity for Higher Wages – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 4/5 The U.S. Dollar and the Search for a Reasonable Capitalist – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 3/5 Racing to a Dead End – Heiner Flassbeck on Reality Asserts Itself Pt 2/5 Reaganism and Thatcherism were Intellectually Dishonest – Heiner Flassbeck on RAI Pt 1/5 Transcript Listen Donate Subscribe Guest Music LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. In this segment, guest Jomo K.S. will be sharing his views on some economic policy and development issues. Jomo K.S. is a prominent Malaysian economist and senior adviser at the Khazanah Research Institute. He is a distinguished academic and a veteran diplomat who has held high level positions at the United Nations Rome and the UN New York headquarters. Notably as Assistant Director General for Economic and Social Development of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome and as Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development of UNDESA in New York. Among numerous other distinctions, he was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Welcome Jomo JOMO K.S.: Thank you very much, Lynn FRIES: At an International Development Economics Associates event, you recently spoke on the topic of US policies that as you framed it are driving the world to war and depression. What are some of the key points that you wanted to get across in that public lecture? JOMO K.S.: I think it’s in the interest of all people, in the rich countries as well as developing countries, to recognize the really existential threats which we face in the world today. And these are threefold. We have the long term problem of sustainability. Which, you know, there’s much more attention to especially because of the growing recognition of the challenges posed by global warming. But we have to recognize these two additional problems.  That of an induced deep stagnation and depression which would set back even further the regression which has already begun. As you know from all the data which has been reported on the so called sustainable development goals, there has been minimal progress on the sustainable development goals and considerable regression. Okay. Now, this has been variously blamed primarily on the pandemic. But I would insist on emphasizing the effects of the withdrawal from quantitative easing. I would insist on the role of the Cold War which began at least almost a decade ago. And I would also insist on recognizing how the sanctions, which are all illegal under the UN Charter, all these sanctions have basically reversed much of the more benign consequences of globalization. I mean, basically, developing countries have been doubly short-changed. They were forced into globalization. They were forced into trade liberalization. They were forced into financial liberalization. And precisely after doing so – this very act of opening up on the trade front, on the financial front, and so on which has resulted in de industrialization in many countries, which has resulted in lack of food security in many countries – all this has turned against them at a time precisely when those things are most needed. So we have a very, very difficult situation, particularly for developing countries. But as we can see, things are not really all that much better in the rich countries themselves. So there has to be an increased sense of how this system works. And how it works and affects different people differently but how this whole system is really interconnected. FRIES: To deal then with the existential threats we face in the world today, your say we all need to be aware of how the whole system is interconnected and the effects US policies are having in this system. You have given us a picture of how the workings of this interconnected system has left developing countries in a vulnerable and very difficult situation. Expand more on your point that things are not really all that much better in the rich countries. JOMO K.S.: Let me suggest that the various developments of the last few decades have been problematic not only for the rest of the world; they have been hugely problematic for the U. S. And we all know about the concentration of power in the U. S. And we also know that, for example, the dozen years or so of what is referred to as unconventional policies, most easily associated with something called quantitative easing or QE, largely did not enhance US productive capacities. Did not enhance US ability to lead, to enhance its leadership in a variety of areas of technology. And so what it allowed was for others to catch up. Not only China which is the obsession of the US right now, but also other countries. So what we have right now is that this illusion of prosperity fostered by what is called financialization has created the impression of wealth but it is not wealth based on a real economy. And so increasingly what we see is a fight to secure much more wealth through other means. So not through the real economy in the usual sense conceived but through things like intellectual property rights and so on. Who does such income such income accrue to? It mainly accrues to those who control those rights, those intellectual property rights which are the corporations. And the corporations are extremely powerful. So I think one has to really think about what has happened to American capitalism itself. American industrial capitalism. Look at what happened with General Electric. General Electric was once known as a consumer appliance manufacturing company, arguably the largest in the world. Today, it’s essentially a financial conglomerate with a historical background in consumer electrical products. If we look at, for example, what happened during the last decade with QE and shareholder buybacks and so on and so forth. All this, certainly undoubtedly, enriched a great number of people. But I think it would be a stretch to suggest that the real economy and American technological leadership has been strengthened during this period. In fact, the converse has happened. And this is precisely the crisis which it faces right now. So American capitalism is on the decline not so much because others have overtaken it or are in the process of overtaking it but because it deteriorated. And for this, I think one has to look at national leadership over recent decades. And who spoke for business, who spoke for capital has increasingly moved from the real economy to the world of finance. FRIES: Moving from the problems of induced deep stagnation and depression and long term sustainability issues, talk now about how US policy is driving the world to war JOMO K.S.: I think as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and many others who watch this much more closely than most of us, the threat of war is very, very real. For a whole variety of reasons, many people are increasingly familiar with. But the kind of rhetoric, the kind of behavior which passes for diplomatic behavior, it almost seems as if diplomacy has taken a back seat. There’s no more room for diplomacy. Very often it’s not necessarily the generals who are pushing for war. It is what some people in America might refer to as the chicken hawks. But whatever the case might be we see huge possibilities, for example, for the strengthening of what President Eisenhower warned about, the military industrial complex. So the possibility of war is very real on the Western side, on the American side. But it’s also very real on the part of Russia. One has to remember that in the three years after the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy collapsed by half. Collapsed by half, I have to emphasize. I don’t want to finger point and say who was to blame for all this, but it collapsed by half. And it took more than a couple of decades for the Russians to rebuild the economy. So they are now back at where they were then. Okay. And they have not been in a position to acquire a very new military arsenal appropriate for this age. They are in a situation where they have the leftovers from the late Soviet period. And that’s all they have. And what was that? That was essentially a period of which there was a nuclear race going on towards what was called MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. That was the kind of situation. So right now, I mean, look at what happens in Ukraine. When Russia wants to get drones, it has to turn to Iran of all countries to get drones. You know, this is the Russia we’re talking about today. The Russian economy is less than 10% of the size of the US economy. So it’s nowhere near parity. But it did come close to parity during the Soviet period. And that’s the arsenal it has. So when you push Russia and it doesn’t have anything else to count on, it can’t even count on China as far as some of these things are concerned, what will it do? It will resort to what it has which is the nuclear arsenal. And this, I think, is a very, very grave danger. And that’s why pushing and threatening Russia over the last three decades or so was a very, very dangerous game. And I suspect, I have no proof of this, that Putin does not believe that any successor of his will be able to deal with this issue. And he felt obliged to. But one should also remember it wasn’t Putin who wanted to go into the eastern part of Ukraine. It was the Russian Duma, the Russian Parliament which passed the resolution demanding that Putin do so.   So, it’s a very complex situation, which we have been oversimplified into, you know, into the ogre of Vladimir Putin. But it’s a very, very complex and very dangerous situation precisely because we are dealing with caricatures rather than trying to understand how dangerous and vulnerable the present situation is. So I’m very concerned about war. And that’s why I insist on pacifism. And developing countries in general and non-aligned countries in general know that they are not going to be a third force by any stretch of the imagination on the military front. So they have a strong interest in finding diplomatic and other peaceful means to resolve international differences. So they have a very strong stake in this. And the developing countries have have been in a very vulnerable situation. Especially at the end of the Cold War where there was no longer any incentive to try to entice friends in the developing countries by providing aid and so on. So aid has gone down to developing countries. And even the new commitments, for example, relating to climate finance have not have not been met. There was a promise of a significant increase in climate finance from the year 2020. Nobody even talks about it these days in Europe. And then what do we see? Almost two years ago, there was a promise to get rid of coal. And right after the Ukraine war begins; Germany is going back to coal. I mean, this is a world where developing countries feel that they have very little voice. Nobody’s paying much attention. And that they are

The Australien Government made an ad about its bid to host the 2026 UN Climate Summit (COP31) with the Pacific, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. This video was originally published by The Juice Media on August 1, 2023.

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Joe Emersberger, a long-time an"} Fernando Villavicencio, who was running for president of Ecuador on an anti-corruption platform, was assassinated in broad daylight on August 9th. Who stands to benefit from the assassination, and what does this mean for the upcoming August 20th presidential election? 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I’m your host, Greg Wilpert. A prominent candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, Fernando Villavicencio, was assassinated on Wednesday, August 9, as he was leaving a campaign rally. The assassination shocked Ecuador, which has already been reeling from sky-high crime rates and the assassination of the mayor of the Ecuadorian town of Manta just a month ago. On Thursday, government representatives stated that eight Colombians had been arrested for organizing the assassination and that the person who shot Villavicencio was killed in the shootout following the assassination. The government further stated that the suspects had ties with organized crime in Ecuador. Ecuador is in the midst of a presidential campaign to complete the term of President Guillermo Lasso, who dissolved the legislature shortly before he was scheduled to be impeached on corruption charges. The move also triggered a new presidential election in which Lasso is not running for re-election. Joining me now to discuss the latest developments in Ecuador is Joe Emersberger. Joe is a Canadian engineer with Ecuadorian roots, who has often written for FAIR and Znet, among other publications, and also has a new Substack page. Thanks, Joe, for joining me today. Joe Emersberger Thank you for inviting me. Greg Wilpert Let’s start with Fernando Villavicencio. Who was he, and whose interests in politics did he represent? What was his presidential campaign about? Joe Emersberger He’s a right-wing candidate. He’s a long-time enemy of [Rafael] Correa’s government, which was the left-wing government in power from 2007 to 2017. He always had a little bit of a flirtation with left-ish movements. He was a former trade union person, and he was apparently one of the founders of the political wing of CONAIE, the indigenous movement’s political wing, which is called Pachakutik. That party has always been to the Right of CONAIE. For whatever reason, there has always been a disconnect between CONAIE’s discourse and Pachakutik’s. In office, their politicians have always swung to the Right. Villavicencio was involved with that. Recently, he got elected to Congress in 2021. He was basically allied with Guillermo Lasso, the right-wing President. Now, in fact, he made maneuvers to try to obstruct the impeachment of Lasso, which was underway shortly before the elections were called. So he’s basically a right-wing actor, although he’s flirted with leftist rhetoric and organization in the past. His other claim to fame is that he was briefly an author of a hit piece that The Guardian put out against Julian Assange, claiming that he had met with Paul Manafort, [Donald] Trump’s campaign manager, that he had met with him in the Ecuador Embassy, which was an absolutely outrageous story. The Guardian ended up peppering it with weasel words, editing it after the fact to protect themselves from lawsuits. His name appeared on the byline of that article for a while, and then he was removed. That was before he got into politics again. He declared himself a journalist, and he was actually convicted, under Ecuadorian law, of libel as a criminal offence. So while Correa was in office, he actually got convicted of libel because he and a few other guys, well, they made some outrageous allegations saying that Correa had ordered police to shoot at a hospital. It was outrageous, and he was convicted for that. That became another reason he got some attention internationally because people rallied and they objected to the fact that libel was part of the criminal code in Ecuador. So that gained him some notoriety. He was polling like fourth or fifth, very low. He was not a threat to do very well in the election. The election actually, according to the average of the latest polls before this incident, who knows how this will affect things, but it looked like Luisa González, the Correa-ist candidate, was poised to, based on an average of polls, very close to winning outright in the first round. We’ll see what happens and how the vote actually takes place now. With his assassination, Lasso immediately announced a 60-day state of exception. That’s of concern to me because although they said, yeah, there is no way the elections are going forward, then how are they going to take advantage of the state of exception to perhaps suppress the vote in certain areas where they think Correa has a large number of supporters? How could they use these extra powers to tamper with the electoral process? That’s a concern I have. Greg Wilpert Yeah, that’s what I want to get into next. Basically, whose interests do you think Villavicencio’s assassination serves? Surely there are those who would like to pin the assassination on the Correa movement or on Correa himself, I imagine, because of the animosity that existed between Villavicencio and Correa. I also find it interesting, and this may be a bit of a tangent, but I just saw an article that I think might have been from The New York Times that claimed that Villavicencio was charged for insulting the president, not liable, as you point out. So that’s a huge difference. Anyway, there was a pretty big animosity in any case, and he was, as you said, in prison briefly. Who do you think might have been behind it, and whose interest does this assassination serve? Joe Emersberger One thing to mention is that the people in charge of Villavicencio’s security is the Lasso government. He was one of the candidates who had protection provided by the government. As a presidential candidate, it is common sense; they get official protection from the government. There was a horrendous error. His own family has been absolutely, as you can imagine, livid, denouncing Lasso’s government. These errors in the security and the handling of his security were just inexcusable and multiple: where they let him leave the building, the fact that the car wasn’t bulletproof, and all sorts of basic errors in security. The family is livid. They wouldn’t let him see the body right away. They were denouncing that. The family’s been pointing the finger directly at Lasso, and he’s responsible for the security. Immediately as soon as this happened, you see right-wing actors, including my own family, who support the Right, immediately calling for a military government. Those reflexive forces are unleashed by something like this. There’s no advantage to Correa. First of all, they’re not in power. They don’t have control. Nobody has control of the police, apparently. It’s just a total free for all right now. Violent crime has gone up and quadrupled since 2017 when the right wing took power with their Trojan horse, [Lenín] Moreno. It’s been a catastrophe. Who benefits? The chaos really tends to empower those forces who want to use this as a pretext to seize power. It’s what Lasso already tried to do with his referendum. He wanted to roll back. He wanted to try to have a referendum in February that was focused on crime. The typical solutions the right wing proposed, they created this problem of violent crime, and then their solutions were to give people guns and let the government extradite people. That seems to be the direction that the Right is trying to take. Trying to blame Correa, it’s outrageous, but they’ve made outrageous allegations against him before. That discourse will be out there. For me, honestly, it’s hard to say. My concern is that the powers that they’ve given themselves now, with the state of exception, I worry about what they could try to pull with that in terms of voter suppression or a similar maneuver. That’s my concern. As I said, Villavicencio was a minor candidate, so if anything, his votes will probably get transferred to other right-wing candidates. Greg Wilpert Actually, that would probably benefit the Right then. One of the main issues, as you mentioned, is the skyrocketing crime rate, specifically the homicide rate. You wrote about this last February for an article in MintPress, how the international media keeps focusing on this issue. It’s been related also, I’ve seen, to the assassination, somehow that because of the high crime rate, that has something to do with Villavicencio’s assassination. Talk a little bit about that record you just mentioned. Crime was actually lower during Correa, and why has it become such an issue, and how serious is it at the moment? Joe Emersberger Yeah, it’s an absolute catastrophe. When Correa left office, Ecuador was basically about the second most safe country in Latin America. It had a homicide rate of 5.8, or something like that, homicides per 100,000 people, which is about the level of the U.S. and Canada, more or less. Now it’s important because this also gets distorted in the media. They always say Ecuador was once safe. That’s very misleading. In the late ’70s, early ’80s, yeah, it was very safe, but then you’re talking 40 years ago. From 1980 all the way right through to 2011, to the early years of Correa’s presidency, the homicide rate is constantly on an upswing. It was maybe about 5-6 in 1980, but by 2011, it had reached 17-18. Under Correa’s 10 years in office, it had gone all the way back down to under, as I say, about 5.8, under six. There was a reduction of two-thirds, a massive reduction. That’s unprecedented. The whole trajectory over those decades was upward. It was an upward trajectory in the homicide rate. Correa had this remarkable achievement of bringing it down by two-thirds, and he did it without all the things that the right-wing always wants to suggest, without mass incarceration, without guns proliferating, without the death penalty, all the things that the right-wing people like to propose as solutions. He achieved that. Then as soon as Moreno took over and betrayed the movement that got him elected and he became basically a right-wing government, immediately you see that the upward trend in homicide starts very, very soon. Pretty much in 2018-2019, you already see an alarming upward trend, but then under Lasso, it’s just gone through the roof. Now, as I mentioned, if it was 17 or 18 around 2011, in the early years of Correa’s office, when it peaked after a steady climb from 1980, by 2021, 2022, and 2023, now we’re up way beyond that. Now we’re up 25-26. Now it’s the highest it’s been in decades, a quadrupling of what it was since 2017. The corporate media tends to distort this history. The record of the right-wing in Ecuador with homicide rate for the last 40 years has always been terrible. It’s always been an upward trend when they’re in office. They lack understanding. They don’t believe in a strong state. They don’t believe in funding things properly. They believe in letting things slide and letting rich people try to pay for their own security. It doesn’t even work for rich people. It hasn’t worked for anybody. Literally, nobody is safe in Ecuador. The Correa’s themselves have had candidates assassinated in recent months as well. It’s not something that’s just affected any particular side of the political spectrum. It’s a general free for all at the moment. You have gangs giving press conferences from jail. The jails are out of control. Prison massacres are taking place because criminals have taken over the prison system. Luisa González, Correa’s candidate, has been hammering at this constantly. Her point is constantly that the criminal elements in Ecuador have basically taken over the state. They’ve taken over the police, the prisons, and parts of the military. Even the U.S., who was very pro-Lasso, very supportive, there was a U.S. government official who made accusations from the embassy that drug dealers had infiltrated the police and stuff like that. There are a lot of problems that are just a total catastrophe. As I said, the history tends to get distorted because if you look at the history, the right-wing has always been terrible on crime in Ecuador for the past 40 years. Greg Wilpert Related to that is certainly also the issue of corruption, which was Villavicencio’s main issue. It’s also always been portrayed that corruption was particularly bad under Correa, with him being sentenced in absentia while he was living in exile in Belgium. Then also, his Vice President, Jorge Glas, was imprisoned for corruption under the previous president, Lenín Moreno. First of all, what’s the record there? As far as we can tell, of course, corruption is always more difficult to identify than homicide. What’s your sense of what’s happening? And then, of course, Lasso himself was also charged with corruption, which is one of the reasons we’re having this presidential election coming up. What’s your assessment there in terms of the record? Joe Emersberger Under Correa, there was a massive increase in public works. There were all sorts of projects for the huge improvement of roads, schools built, hospitals, and infrastructure like anti-flooding infrastructure. Eight hydroelectric plants were built. There was a huge, massive, really unprecedented investment in infrastructure and public works.  With that, it’s inevitable that there will be some shenanigans and things going on. Correa has never denied that there were some instances where things happened that this guy was pilfering and this guy was doing this. It was not at a level that actually impacted the macroeconomic benefits that the public received. It was inevitable as it was going to happen on some level, and that was going to be used later. It was blown up in a big show by the media, especially under Moreno, to use that as a basis for political persecution to say, aha, well, Correa’s sentence is that he had psychic influence. One of the things he’s been accused of is he had a psychic influence on any lower-level official who took a bribe. If you took that accusation seriously, there isn’t a single president anywhere in the world who couldn’t be sent to jail because corruption takes place. There are dirty cops. There are dirty officials under any government that ever existed. You could throw anybody in jail for that. That’s the approach they’ve taken. Correa actually has political asylum in Belgium. The cases against him are ridiculous. Interpol is not a leftist organization. They’ve rejected, on human rights grounds, Ecuador’s request to extradite him. It’s a joke. As I said, like any propaganda, there are some elements. Was there corruption? Yeah, there was some corruption because there was such a massive investment in public works, and with that comes opportunities for some people to get in there and do some things. As I said, corruption was at a low level, and it did not impact the benefits that people received from those projects. Also, it just doesn’t track with a corrupt government that has this unprecedented reduction in homicide rate, that cleaned up the police, that purged the police, that instituted polygraph tests for police to make sure that they weren’t compromised when they were hired. Would you commit a crime? Have you ever taken a bribe? Questions that put them on the spot right at the beginning before they could even be accepted. That’s not the thing that a corrupt government does. There could be corruption in the government, but it was not a government that tolerated it or tried it. Did they catch every single instance of corruption? No, because that doesn’t ever happen. I think the Right took advantage of that in the early years when Correa was laid off to generate. The fact that I think that Moreno betrayed Correa generated some confusion. That gave those allegations maybe a little bit of credibility early on. With the catastrophe that they’ve created, I think, for the most part, people realized that it was all a lot of smoke and mirrors meant to justify persecution and an excuse for the right-wing to explain away their own failure. They’re still trying to blame Correa. How can he be responsible for an assassination that takes place six years after he’s in power, where they have control over the police? These are the people in power for six years now. They have control over the police and the military. It’s their military. It’s their police. If candidates are being assassinated and they’re providing security, it’s pretty ridiculous to try to point the finger at a movement that’s been out of power for six years. Greg Wilpert Now, let’s turn to the current presidential election. This also, of course, again, ties into the corruption issue because, as I mentioned earlier, it was one of the reasons why the election was called. How does it look so far? Who are the front runners? Who is running, so to speak? Who are the main candidates, and what are their chances? Joe Emersberger Luisa González’s, according to the average of polls, is very close to the 40% point where she could win outright in the first round. She needs 40% plus a 10-point margin of victory over everyone else. Sometimes the second and third-place finishers can sometimes be unclear. The polls can be off. There’s one of the former vice presidents under Moreno, I’ll probably mispronounce his name, but everyone refers to him as Otto [Sonnenholzner]. Yaku Pérez [Guartambel] is in there, a right-wing indigenous leader. There are a few others, but they’re not very consequential. Villavicencio was one of the candidates who was not particularly consequential. A lot depends on if Luisa González can win in the first round; that would be great for Correismo. If it goes to a second round, things get more complicated for them because then people, instead of the wide dispersion of votes among all these inconsequential candidates, perhaps one candidate can emerge and become more prominent and become more of a threat to win electorally. That’s setting aside any shenanigans that they pull with the state of exception or with the electoral council that is very clearly biased against Correa. One of the outrageous rulings that they did in 2021 that they still have is that Correa’s image cannot appear in campaign ads. His image is not allowed to appear in campaign ads. It’s funny because you remember, under Correa’s government, all the fuss that was made about freedom of expression; that’s just an outrageous ruling. They’ve enforced that, and they’re doing that for this election as well. It looks good for Correa, but who knows what now, this chaos and the uncertainty of this assassination. We’ll have to see what impact that has. Greg Wilpert Well, it seems to me that, certainly, the assassination would make it less likely that Luisa González will be able to have that 10% margin because there are fewer anti-Correa candidates, basically. It makes it more difficult for her to have that 10% margin. The other thing, though, of course, is you mentioned Yaku Pérez, who is basically running as a leftist candidate, isn’t he? Even though you say that he’s a right-wing candidate, which has caused quite a bit of confusion, I think, particularly among progressives who want to support one side or the other. What do you make of Perez’s chances? Is he a spoiler? Why do you call him a right-wing candidate instead of a progressive, as he’s often made out to be? Joe Emersberger In 2021, I know what you mean, he wants to portray himself as an eco-socialist, and some people in North America were taken in by that marketing. I did a thread on Twitter illustrating just how reactionary he is. He was a strong, very vocal supporter of the 2019 coup in Bolivia. He welcomed that. He applauded that and said that was a great thing that happened. He was supportive of the efforts to remove it. He said hopefully that [Nicolás] Maduro would fall as well. He wants Maduro to fall. It is really reactionary stuff. [Andrés] Arauz has had a proposal in 2021 to stimulate the economy. Greg Wilpert Sorry, who is Arauz?  Joe Emersberger The vice-presidential candidate in this election. He was the presidential candidate in 2021. Now, Arauz has had a proposal to give a $1,000 bonus to all Ecuadoran citizens. I believe it was all directed to the female heads of households as a way to stimulate the economy during the pandemic. Yaku Pérez, in the debate, said that was a bad idea because the poor people had never seen that money before, and they would spend it on beer. It’s an ignorant statement that you get from a Trump supporter. When it came to criticizing Correa for years, he basically echoed the right-wing talking points. There’s too much public spending. This is all just a waste of money. There are too many taxes. He echoes the whole right-wing talking points, but then he adds some environmental rhetoric. He claims he’s against mining. He puts an environmental spin on some of his positions. He’s ultimately a very reactionary person. He openly relished the role he played in 2021 in the indigenous movement calling for a null vote, calling for abstention. He was on Twitter openly celebrating the fact that it cost Correa’s candidacy and put Lasso in office. In fact, in 2017, he openly endorsed Lasso, the very right-wing candidate. Over and over again, he’s shown what he’s about. Sometimes people believe his own spin or the spin that other people put on his views, and they try to project him as a left-wing candidate when he’s obviously not. Greg Wilpert Well, the election is coming up very soon, on August 20, and we’ll see then what happens. Hopefully, everything goes well, considering that we’ve got this state of emergency that Lasso just called. We’ll definitely check in again on the state of things, and we’ll leave it there for now. I was speaking to Joe Emersberger, a Canadian engineer who regularly writes on Latin American issues, particularly for his new website, a new Substack page. Thanks again, Joe, for having joined me today. Joe Emersberger Thanks, Greg. Greg Wilpert Thank you, our audience, for joining The World On Fire. Until next time. 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He is the co-author of Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media and 20 Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela,published by Monthly Review. theAnalysis.news theme music written by Slim Williams for Paul Jay’s documentary film “Never-Endum-Referendum“.   Never-Endum-Referendum Artist Website Paul Jay’s Documentaries

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