[SPEAKER_08]: Hello, and welcome to Useful Idiots.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm Katie Helper.

[SPEAKER_13]: I'm Aromatte.

[SPEAKER_13]: Thank you so much for being here.

[SPEAKER_13]: Our website as always is usefulidotspodcast.com.

[SPEAKER_13]: Go there to support the show and get bonus content.

[SPEAKER_13]: This week we're bringing you two interviews.

[SPEAKER_13]: We'll be talking about the [SPEAKER_13]: medical situation and Gaza, the Trump administration's decision to now ban wounded Palestinian children from coming to the U.S.

[SPEAKER_13]: for medical treatment.

[SPEAKER_13]: And we'll be talking about the latest in the proxy war and Ukraine in the aftermath of talks between Trump and Putin and Slonsky and European leaders.

[SPEAKER_13]: A whole lot to discuss in today's show.

[SPEAKER_08]: So let's kick it off with four basic food groups and for Democrats suck, boy, boy, do I have a Democrat sucking?

[SPEAKER_08]: So on Tuesday night, Representative Wesley Bell, who represents Missouri and is a Democrat, obviously, and also defeated [SPEAKER_08]: very pro-Palestine Cory Bush held a town hall and let's listen to some of the critiques made by his constituents and then let's see how he and the police responded to them expressing their first amendment right [SPEAKER_03]: There are a lot of complicated issues about this.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're such a...

[SPEAKER_08]: So that was how protesters responded to Bell's unconditional support for Israel.

[SPEAKER_08]: And let's take a look at how police and Bell responded to these protesters.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is democracy according to Wesley Bell.

[SPEAKER_08]: Democracy is APAC spending millions to help you win a seat and unseat someone who's very good on Palestine, Cory Bush.

[SPEAKER_08]: Democracy looks like Wesley Bell then voting to support Israel unwaveringly provided with unconditional support.

[SPEAKER_08]: And democracy looks like when your constituents protest this, they get beaten up.

[SPEAKER_13]: You can't say APAC didn't get their money's worth.

[SPEAKER_13]: They spent millions and millions of dollars and it wasn't just them.

[SPEAKER_13]: It was also the Democratic majority for Israel related groups kicked in.

[SPEAKER_13]: I think half a million.

[SPEAKER_13]: So they definitely got some paying for their buck.

[SPEAKER_08]: They're paying, paying off, paying you people up.

[SPEAKER_13]: buying off a candidate can do you wonders if you can afford it.

[SPEAKER_13]: So all right, let's turn to Republican suck.

[SPEAKER_13]: If you're talking about the Trump administration every week, there's a new outrage when it comes to their support for Israeli mass murder.

[SPEAKER_13]: Last week, we had the Trump administration announcing that they are banning medical visas for wounded Palestinian children.

[SPEAKER_13]: That was at the behest of [SPEAKER_13]: far-right influencer, lower loomer.

[SPEAKER_13]: Now comes a new headline.

[SPEAKER_13]: This is from the Washington Post.

[SPEAKER_13]: State Department fires official after internal debates over Israel.

[SPEAKER_13]: And what were those debates?

[SPEAKER_13]: It was somebody in the State Department wanting to express condolences for Israel murdering Palestinian journalists and also opposing ethnic cleansing.

[SPEAKER_13]: This is from the Washington Post.

[SPEAKER_13]: Shahed Goreshi recommended expressing condolences for slain journalists in Gaza and opposing the forced displacement of Palestinians.

[SPEAKER_13]: he was fired days later.

[SPEAKER_13]: So under America first, aka Israel first, if you want to say, hey, we express condolences for the murder of Palestinian journalists by Israel and Gaza, and also we oppose Israel's plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza because, you know, there's new reports about Israel talking to South Sudan about ethnically cleansing Palestinians to South Sudan.

[SPEAKER_13]: If you say you're against that, that's a fireable offense now under America aka Israel first.

[SPEAKER_08]: That is so disgusting.

[SPEAKER_08]: You almost can't make it up.

[SPEAKER_13]: You also can't make up how JD Vance, who painted himself as a populous champion, covers up for the Trump administration's policies favoring the oligarchy, including throwing millions of people off of Medicaid and pushing through tax policies that benefit the ultra wealthy.

[SPEAKER_13]: And JD Vance was asked about this during a recent trip to Georgia.

[SPEAKER_06]: I know you're here to talk about business and manufacturing.

[SPEAKER_06]: I wanted to ask you about the spending bills impact on individuals.

[SPEAKER_06]: There was a non-portisan congressional budget office report that came out last week showing that the bottom ten percent, the poorest Americans, would lose about twelve thousand dollars.

[SPEAKER_06]: At twelve hundred dollars, if she's made a year on their income while the top ten percent, they would add about thirteen thousand dollars and you'll lead to their income.

[SPEAKER_06]: Can you justify for those poorest Americans those differences?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, first of all, the congressional budget office, sometimes they put out reports that are absolutely atrocious.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I think this is a good example of a very atrocious report.

[SPEAKER_04]: The most important thing for people who are living at the bottom of the income ladder is that they not pay taxes on their income sources.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if you're working hard and you're working overtime, you're going to get a big fat tax cut.

[SPEAKER_04]: If you're working at a restaurant, [SPEAKER_04]: or some other business where you're earning your wages primarily through tips.

[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to get a big fat tax cut.

[SPEAKER_04]: And most importantly, the President's Economic Policy is going to prevent your job from being shipped off to Asia or to Mexico.

[SPEAKER_04]: That is the very best thing for people at the bottom of the income ladder.

[SPEAKER_04]: And that's why we have the Economic policies that we do.

[SPEAKER_13]: Okay, so notice how he doesn't actually dispute the figures that were put out by the CBO.

[SPEAKER_13]: He just calls it a trotace as if it's like a bad meal.

[SPEAKER_13]: Like this meal is a trotace.

[SPEAKER_13]: Send it away.

[SPEAKER_13]: Send it away.

[SPEAKER_13]: Send this report away.

[SPEAKER_13]: And he doesn't address the issue.

[SPEAKER_13]: He talks about people earning tips.

[SPEAKER_13]: Okay, but that's not most low-income workers.

[SPEAKER_13]: And even there, the amount of savings they'll have is kept.

[SPEAKER_13]: So even they don't have [SPEAKER_13]: full exemptions from taxes on their tips.

[SPEAKER_13]: And yeah, the bottom line is these policies, according to all the figures favor the one percent and there's nothing that JD events has to offer that can refute that.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that is he really is so good at talking to talk and not at all walking in the walk when it comes to populism.

[SPEAKER_08]: He really has everyone fooled.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, I think in a way, he's a better con man, even than Donald Trump, because Donald Trump's con is kind of being a con man, whereas JD Vance's con is being the every man.

[SPEAKER_08]: Instead of a hillbilly energy, it should be hillbilly eulogy.

[SPEAKER_13]: Coming soon, come again.

[SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, come on soon.

[SPEAKER_13]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, for isn't that weird, let's take a look at what Donald Trump said during a call into Fox and friends on Tuesday morning.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if I can say, [SPEAKER_02]: Seven thousand people a week from being killed.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a pretty I want to try and get to have an impossible.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm hearing I'm not doing well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can't really get the bottom of the totem pole.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think I saved a lot of lives with India.

[SPEAKER_02]: practice that they were going at it there was the planes were being shot down that was going to be a maybe a nuclear war by let that go and I did that to trade I was all right so that that's I like this trump this like theological reflective trump wondering if he's going to get into heaven [SPEAKER_08]: You know, I think maybe you want to show some more humility if you're trying to get into heaven.

[SPEAKER_08]: I like have self critical he says he's at the bottom of the totem pole.

[SPEAKER_08]: I would say though that if he thinks that saving lives is part of getting into heaven and I would argue that according to Jesus Christ is teachings that is an important thing to do.

[SPEAKER_08]: It certainly is not a good thing to kill people.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so Trump may want to revisit his Gaza policy.

[SPEAKER_08]: because that leaves a lot of blood on his hands.

[SPEAKER_08]: And Jesus himself was Palestinian, so I'm sure he doesn't like that.

[SPEAKER_13]: They're all thing was when they campaigned like Americans are tired of these foreign wars and we're gonna get the U.S.

[SPEAKER_13]: out of them and now it's like Americans are tired of certain foreign wars and we're gonna stop some of them and they're but either killing we're not gonna stop in fact we're going to accelerate because Trump has given his full blessing to Israel starvation siege of Gaza and also newly announcing more settlement construction is we're gonna talk about in today's interview that are cutting the West Bank in half further [SPEAKER_13]: displacing Palestinians in the West Bank and making a Palestinian state absolutely impossible on top of all the already existing obstacles.

[SPEAKER_13]: So that's Trump.

[SPEAKER_13]: It's like a, yeah, heaven, as far as I understand, heaven is not selective about whose lives you say.

[SPEAKER_13]: And if you want to get to heaven, you're not going to get there by feeling a genocide.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: I think that gets you to hell, honestly, if we're talking about directions.

[SPEAKER_08]: And also, the Bible does say that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the gates of heaven.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I'm just suggesting that perhaps Trump start giving away some of his money.

[SPEAKER_13]: First, that terrible.

[SPEAKER_13]: Let's turn to MSNBC.

[SPEAKER_13]: They had on Axios co-founder Jim Van Dyke.

[SPEAKER_13]: who was offering his suggestions for the Democratic Party, how do they combat the populist appeal of the market movement?

[SPEAKER_12]: Jim Vandai, so Jim, we kind of walked right into your column.

[SPEAKER_12]: Let's read from it.

[SPEAKER_12]: It's titled the rising Democratic Naga movement.

[SPEAKER_12]: You write Democrats needing, quote, their own version of a populist anti-establishment, Naga like makeover.

[SPEAKER_12]: So what does that look like, Jim?

[SPEAKER_11]: It looks like what you're just talking about with Gavin Newsom, right?

[SPEAKER_11]: Trying to adopt a lot of the techniques that you saw from Trump that you've seen from mag.

[SPEAKER_11]: Again, on social media, be a warrior.

[SPEAKER_11]: Curse a lot.

[SPEAKER_11]: Try to have a lot of edge and start yourself into the into the news cycle.

[SPEAKER_11]: I think that the bigger part though is what you're seeing happening in New York.

[SPEAKER_11]: What you've seen happen in many, many atlas.

[SPEAKER_11]: the popularity of Bernie Sanders, a number of people turning out for AOC events that right now the momentum in the party is very much for the very progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which is not that much of a shock, but I think it's probably problematic in the off-year elections for Democrats.

[SPEAKER_11]: It's just not where the vast majority of the country seems to be.

[SPEAKER_11]: I think it's one of the reasons that the Democratic brand overall is low.

[SPEAKER_13]: This is like the most liberal argument I've ever heard, okay?

[SPEAKER_13]: So, progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC, they're popular.

[SPEAKER_13]: They're drawing big crowds.

[SPEAKER_13]: And this comes at a time when the Democratic Party needs to rebrand and offer a populist message.

[SPEAKER_13]: And so therefore, the popularity Bernie Sanders and AOC who are progressive populists is a bad thing because it is not really what America wants.

[SPEAKER_13]: They want something else.

[SPEAKER_13]: Even though these are the only democratic politicians that are reaching people, the democratic parties to turn away from them even more.

[SPEAKER_13]: And what?

[SPEAKER_13]: Like, get on social media more and curse more.

[SPEAKER_13]: That's what he has to offer.

[SPEAKER_13]: I just don't think it's a winner.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, how about healthcare?

[SPEAKER_08]: So does he think that that's popular perhaps?

[SPEAKER_13]: Well, I'm sure he knows that this popular, but he can't bring himself to offer that because that would then undermine the corporate Democrat agenda.

[SPEAKER_13]: So look, it's like, the holes he's, people keep digging for themselves.

[SPEAKER_13]: It just never ends.

[SPEAKER_13]: It's like, lib cope is just, it's bottomless.

[SPEAKER_13]: It's just, it's just bottomless.

[SPEAKER_13]: All right, well, speaking of coping, let's turn to this bonus clip for isn't it terrible?

[SPEAKER_13]: The journalist Hind Hassan recently did a documentary for Al Jazeera about the role of the weapons industry and think tanks and profiting off of the Gaza genocide.

[SPEAKER_13]: And as part of reporting, she interviewed a fellow with the Atlantic Council, which is a weapons industry funded think tank in Washington, D.C.

[SPEAKER_13]: And watch this exchange.

[SPEAKER_00]: How can you unravel from the interests of weapons companies when there's money coming in from them?

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just trying to understand what the reasoning is behind that.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think you're right that it's something that a lot of people have commented on their relationship.

[SPEAKER_07]: the relationship between the interest.

[SPEAKER_07]: And we see this often.

[SPEAKER_07]: But I would say that if you're interested in learning more about the Atlantic Council's intellectual independence policy, I can connect you with people at my company who can talk.

[SPEAKER_13]: That pause was so long in between her question and his answer that you really started to feel bad for him, almost.

[SPEAKER_13]: And it gets worse, we start to talk again.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then you miss the pause.

[SPEAKER_13]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_13]: And then exactly.

[SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_13]: The pause is better than the answer, because as he says, he like, I can refer you to our independence policy.

[SPEAKER_13]: Yes, I'd love to hear more about your independence policy.

[SPEAKER_13]: If you cannot answer, [SPEAKER_13]: Her very obvious question.

[SPEAKER_13]: That's a great clip.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: And there has been your four basic food groups.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're so excited to be speaking to Dr.

Omar Abdel Manan.

[SPEAKER_08]: He is a pediatric neurologist and founder and president of Health Workers for Palestine.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you so much, Dr.

Omar.

[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you so much, Kevin.

[SPEAKER_08]: Saturday the State Department announced it was stopping all visitor visas for people from Gaza pending for the review.

[SPEAKER_08]: And as if that's not disgusting enough, this was done in response to Laura Lumer, who is a Jewish supremacist right when conspiracy theorists and self-described, proud Islamophobic.

[SPEAKER_08]: She was scandalized and upset by the fact that there were children coming from Gaza [SPEAKER_08]: to get medical treatment in the United States.

[SPEAKER_08]: She tweeted about how upset she was and then the State Department announced this new policy.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, Dr.

Omar, you are someone who has also worked on bringing children from Gaza to the U.K., where you live and practice medicine.

[SPEAKER_08]: Tell us about this process and why it's so important.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, thanks so much, Kay.

[SPEAKER_09]: We, as you said, we've been working since pretty much November of twenty twenty three lobbying and advocating for children to be evacuated from Gaza to the UK for specialist medical treatment and just for some context.

[SPEAKER_09]: If we rewind back to when the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened [SPEAKER_09]: We had hundreds, dozens, if not hundreds of children come across to the UK within weeks of Russian invasion of Ukraine that came for specialists medical treatment in the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: So this was a model that was already set up.

[SPEAKER_09]: I'm a pediatric neurologist, so I work in a hospital, one of the largest children's hospitals in the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I can tell you that from day one, when we met the leadership of the hospital and other hospitals in London and the UK, they were very much sympathetic and ready to help bring children across and do what is needed to provide care to these kids within our national health service.

[SPEAKER_09]: what transpired very quickly was that the block which is led to only three children thus far coming to the UK from Gaza for treatment was the government, the UK government essentially the home office which is the responsible body for granting visas or permits for thousands residents to come to the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: use the number of excuses including the lack of biometrics that could be done within Gaza because of biometric sensors it will be important and the safety and security to actually bring these children out and transport them to the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: So a chartical project bureau hope was set up to basically help fund raise enough money from private donors to cover any costs that would be incurred by these children coming across because the UK government itself is not planning to pay for these children.

[SPEAKER_09]: So as you said, you know, thus far we've had two children, the congenital conditions that came across about three months ago, both of undergoing treatment here in the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: And then the third child who came across, I flew across from Egypt to London with him and his family.

[SPEAKER_09]: He's a fifteen-year-old boy whose name is measured.

[SPEAKER_09]: his left jaw was shattered and broken and destroyed by an Israeli air strike on his family tent that they had been displaced from and he came with two siblings his mother with leaving behind two siblings and his father and the rest of the family backing Gaza.

[SPEAKER_09]: and he's the first injured child that's made it to the UK so far and just again for context.

[SPEAKER_09]: Over seven thousand children have been evacuated for medical treatment outside of Gaza and many of them have gone to local countries like Jordan, Egypt, the UAE.

[SPEAKER_09]: But in fact, over three hundred children have come across to Europe, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium of all taking children, the US, Canada, have also contributed to that support.

[SPEAKER_09]: So the UK has been really a pariah state in this compared to relative to other countries.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I mean, in some ways, it's kind of ironic because I think that these governments that enable Israel actually should be providing medical care.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, they shouldn't be allowing the genocide that's happening in the first place, which would of course prevent the need for all this medical care.

[SPEAKER_08]: But what is so infuriating is that in the case of [SPEAKER_08]: Rubio, the State Department here, they blocked just the visas that gave them permission.

[SPEAKER_08]: It wasn't like they were giving them the surgery, which I think was what they're actually owed.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_09]: So I think this has been exactly, as you said, these governments, the U.K.

[SPEAKER_09]: government, the U.S.

[SPEAKER_09]: government, the U.K.

[SPEAKER_09]: government, Germany, these countries have hated and abetted and armed, these ready-state to commit genocide in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_09]: And the U.K.

[SPEAKER_09]: has a historical link with a baffled declaration.

[SPEAKER_09]: So historically, very much as a state responsible for the tragedies that have happened ever since to Palestinians in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_09]: You know, for me, I find it very difficult to understand why the UK would not bring these children across for help.

[SPEAKER_09]: The only thing I can think of is that seeing these kids with the injuries, the level of injuries that they have been subjected to by copper bombing, by also some munitions that have been used by, you know, [SPEAKER_09]: tense being on fire with the extent of the injuries would be an obvious statement and an obvious affront to the British public of what their tax money has led to.

[SPEAKER_09]: The tax money has been used to make sure an exterminate Palestinians in mass in the first genocide of the twenty-first century in the largest extermination of Palestinians since the [SPEAKER_09]: So, you know, there's many parallels between what's happening in the U.S.

[SPEAKER_09]: and the U.K.

[SPEAKER_09]: on that note.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I think it is high time for the government to be bringing these children across.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I just, you know, after measured came across two days later, the U.K.

[SPEAKER_09]: government actually announced that they would be bringing three hundred children across within weeks for treatment under national health service treatment.

[SPEAKER_09]: as anyone here would be treated so publicly funded hospitals with no private donations.

[SPEAKER_09]: What's interesting is I found out just twenty-four hours ago that in fact that number had been leaked by the government to the media there has been no commitment to that number and in fact what they are now saying is that they will bring at most thirty children so the largest number that they can bring now is thirty.

[SPEAKER_09]: And just for context, the WHO has looked at the numbers and crunches and said that there are fifteen thousand children in Gaza awaiting medical evacuation and urgent treatment abroad.

[SPEAKER_09]: It would take five to ten years to clear that backlog.

[SPEAKER_09]: If you are working at a pace and scale to evacuate these children and get them treated for the injuries that they need management for abroad.

[SPEAKER_13]: As we're recording this, uh, nine seven two magazine has just published a chart that it says comes from Israeli military database of the death toll in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_13]: And according to this Israeli military database, eighty three percent of the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel are civilian, which [SPEAKER_13]: is not a surprise to anybody observing this, but a completely contradicts the propaganda that Israel has put out that they are going after Hamas.

[SPEAKER_13]: So according to Israeli military figures, eighty three percent of their victims are [SPEAKER_13]: civilian and I suspect the numbers even higher, but what do you make of this figure being disclosed?

[SPEAKER_09]: Well, it's completely in keeping, as you said, with what we've been seeing since day one.

[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I was in touch with, so I've been going to Gaza in the West Bank since twenty eleven.

[SPEAKER_09]: My last trip there was twenty twenty, but I'm in constant communication with doctors, medics, health workers on the ground.

[SPEAKER_09]: And from day one from October the ninth or October the eighth, when the bombing and the shunning started, the [SPEAKER_09]: casualties that were coming into the emergency departments were women, children, and young men, and elderly people, and it was, you know, sixty to seventy percent children and women.

[SPEAKER_09]: So just from the, from speaking and anecdotally from speaking to health workers on the ground, that has always been the case.

[SPEAKER_09]: So I'm not surprised by that.

[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it's interesting that he's already got these are any military has released these figures now.

[SPEAKER_09]: Am I?

[SPEAKER_09]: watching the narrative, watching some of the change, watching some of the political change within Israel, the strikes, the call for the end of the war, and you know, to bring back their hostages.

[SPEAKER_09]: I do wonder whether this is a reflection of, you know, a wider shift within these really population that they can see what is happening now, or is genocide and war crimes that will hold them for decades to come.

[SPEAKER_09]: We saw Yvara Hariri, the Israeli author recently, say that this, the conflation between what is happening by this really state with the religion of Judaism is potentially, you know, is potentially, potentially, hugely detrimental to the religion itself for decades and centuries to come.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I think [SPEAKER_09]: I think the Israeli public is seeing now that what is happening is unconscionable, cannot continue.

[SPEAKER_09]: They've lost the support of the majority of people around the world, maybe not the government's large but the general population around the world in both the global south and the global north.

[SPEAKER_13]: What do you want to tell us about the conditions right now for medical workers inside Gaza?

[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, thank you.

[SPEAKER_09]: So the conditions are absolutely apocalyptic and horrific and [SPEAKER_09]: It's the biggest belief that we're still two years in, and often when I'm having to describe what I'm hearing on the ground, I often think it can't get worse.

[SPEAKER_09]: These medics are describing, but it is worse every other day.

[SPEAKER_09]: We have only one remaining functioning semi-functioning hospital, which is an ulcer hospital.

[SPEAKER_09]: Every other hospital in Gaza or clinic has been destroyed, bombed, put out of service by these really attacks, which is systematic targeting.

[SPEAKER_09]: On top of that, you've had sixteen hundred health workers have been killed, medics, nurses, paramedics, four hundred plus that have been illegally detained or disappeared.

[SPEAKER_09]: And what is happening now is you've had [SPEAKER_09]: mass death and casualties from bombings and from, you know, from, from, from direct attacks, but you have a collapse of a health care system whereby diseases rampant.

[SPEAKER_09]: So I'm a pediatric neuron just and what I'm hearing from cases from people in the ground is that cases of Guillem Barry syndrome.

[SPEAKER_09]: which is a neurological condition that often is precipitated by infectious disease is rampant rates that we've never seen kind of before.

[SPEAKER_09]: You had a case of color being declared back on this kind of sewage plans.

[SPEAKER_09]: We're hit, you have four starvation, you have children who are literally dying of hunger and children who are as presynic maynard and many of the medics who have gone in, surgeons and come out and described their wounds are not healing.

[SPEAKER_09]: So these children that I have [SPEAKER_09]: conditions or wounds that should heal in a normal setting, they are unable to because they are immune systems are so decimated.

[SPEAKER_09]: So these health workers are working in horrific conditions with minimal supplies.

[SPEAKER_09]: They are seeing their own colleagues exterminated their own family members are being killed and what people that realize is in the last, I think, seven to eight days, there's been [SPEAKER_09]: at least fifty of sixty health workers that have been killed many of whom are senior members within the hospital leadership structure in the north of Gaza so hospital directors, the heads of departments with the off ptic departments.

[SPEAKER_09]: So these are these are leaders within the health care setting and [SPEAKER_09]: There is no better way to destroy health care system by then by targeting the leadership and destroying the hospitals and killing whole specialties of medicine and surgery.

[SPEAKER_09]: You have no plastic surgeons left in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_09]: In one of the areas in the world that requires the most intensive amount of operations and plastic surgery.

[SPEAKER_09]: And this is an absolute catastrophe.

[SPEAKER_09]: It is apocalyptic and [SPEAKER_09]: Frankly, I've been saying this since very early on, these conditions are allowed to continue.

[SPEAKER_09]: Sadly, I think the reality is, people in Gaza are going to start dying in droves.

[SPEAKER_09]: There'll be mass death because the conditions are right for infectious diseases to spread it right that we've never seen before.

[SPEAKER_09]: And people are, and being forcibly stopped.

[SPEAKER_09]: So their bodies are unable to cope with simple coughs and colds or chest infections or you're only trapped infections.

[SPEAKER_09]: And that's just one aspect.

[SPEAKER_09]: You have the whole area of chronic disease, no chemotherapy in the whole of Gaza, no hemadialysis for renal patients.

[SPEAKER_09]: So these health conditions, chronic health conditions are now completely unmanaged.

[SPEAKER_09]: It is absolutely hell on Earth.

[SPEAKER_09]: Every health worker who's been in their every medical surgeon has come out and told me that they've never seen anything like it.

[SPEAKER_09]: And some of them have been in the field for decades of work and many, many war zones.

[SPEAKER_09]: I know, you know, this is not a woes and this is a killing field, a mass killing field of massive concentration camp that is examination of Palestinians is the agenda here.

[SPEAKER_08]: Can you tell us about your personal and professional relationship to Palestine when you first went there and also why you founded health workers for Palestine and what you do there?

[SPEAKER_09]: course.

[SPEAKER_09]: So I was a medical student in Oxford University when Operation Castled happened.

[SPEAKER_09]: I became very involved in the student activism at that time and just for context we, within a week of Operation Castled, we had occupied one of the University building, similar to the encampments that we saw all over the world recently.

[SPEAKER_09]: So this is nothing new.

[SPEAKER_09]: And in twenty eleven I was very fortunate to be invited by Professor Nick Maynard and [SPEAKER_09]: his colleagues to travel to the West Bank to teach medical students on medical delegations in the main university there.

[SPEAKER_09]: I instantly fell in love with the country and the people and the culture.

[SPEAKER_09]: was fortunate to then go every year.

[SPEAKER_09]: And in twenty fourteen, guys in medical schools reached out to us and actually said, why are you guys going to the West Bank?

[SPEAKER_09]: We need you more.

[SPEAKER_09]: You know, these guys in the West Bank have at least some sort of decent external kind of communication with the outside world.

[SPEAKER_09]: They have, you know, they're a lever and the occupation, but at least they have the ability to see people from the outside.

[SPEAKER_09]: We are completely in a mass presenter.

[SPEAKER_09]: So we [SPEAKER_09]: We took the call and we traveled to Gaza from twenty-fourteen to twenty-twenty hours traveling in for two weeks at a time on these missions.

[SPEAKER_09]: Mainly teaching and training junior doctors, resident doctors, medical students to help them with their bedside clinical teaching skills, but to be honest, [SPEAKER_09]: the level of knowledge, the scale set of these medics and junior doctors was incredible.

[SPEAKER_09]: I was learning more than they were learning from me to be honest.

[SPEAKER_09]: And this is something that's been consistent every health worker that you speak to, there's been inside.

[SPEAKER_09]: We'll tell you, these are some of the best surgeons in the world because they have to operate in conditions that are unimaginable to the average surgeon in a US hospital or UK hospital.

[SPEAKER_09]: So that's been my relationship and I've obviously formed friendships with many of the health workers that have been killed, detained, disappeared.

[SPEAKER_09]: So it is a very deep personal collection connection.

[SPEAKER_09]: Health workers for Palestine was started really in November, twenty-three as a protest movement.

[SPEAKER_09]: Grassroots movement of health workers that were censored, essentially we tried to hold a humanitarian fundraiser for Gaza at the Royal College of Physicians, which is on a ban made prestigious medical institutions in the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: They cancelled two days before the event where we had international speakers on security grounds.

[SPEAKER_09]: Because obviously, they didn't want us to talk about Gaza in their building.

[SPEAKER_09]: So we took the protest to Tendang Street.

[SPEAKER_09]: The residents, the UK Prime Minister, we stood outside, four hundred health workers holding the signs of at the time, ninety health workers had been killed, reading their names, grieving for them, remembering the mission and solidarity.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's spread very quickly across the UK and worldwide we had chapters in Australian South Africa and Toronto.

[SPEAKER_09]: So, Kelly, it struck a note with other health workers who were feeling what was happening was horrific to their colleagues and needed speak out.

[SPEAKER_09]: And we've really since then moved from a protest movement to an organisational non-profit organisation that is [SPEAKER_09]: helping to work in many ways, mainly to advocate and amplify the voice of Palestinians.

[SPEAKER_09]: We believe in Palestinian-led leadership in the healthcare sphere, Palestinian-led rebuilding of the healthcare system in Gaza and the West Bank.

[SPEAKER_09]: And we are very much working both externally with [SPEAKER_09]: You know, many of our coalition partners, but also to support health workers in the UK, we're being censored, doxed, threatened, work for the social media activity, for their activism for speaking out against genocide, which is rampant, frankly, in our healthcare institutions.

[SPEAKER_13]: I don't like playing clips of Netanyahu just because I find them to so evil.

[SPEAKER_13]: And I just don't want to hear his voice.

[SPEAKER_13]: But one of the arguments he's been making recently is that the US media and global media has been spreading a lie about starvation of people in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_13]: And the way they [SPEAKER_13]: The way Netanyahu and Israel Apollo just make the argument is that some of the children who are featured in photographs of, of, to illustrate starvation at Gaza were suffering from other conditions beforehand.

[SPEAKER_13]: So let me just show for people.

[SPEAKER_13]: This is a headline from the so-called free press.

[SPEAKER_13]: It's an outlet in the U.S.

[SPEAKER_13]: And the headline is, they became symbols for Gaza and starvation, but all twelve suffer from other health problems.

[SPEAKER_13]: So, like, I'm sorry to even engage with this, but I think we should, because this is the narrative being put out there.

[SPEAKER_13]: So the argument is that because these infants, these children, had other health problems, that somehow that exonerates Israel for starvation.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's almost, it's disgusting frankly and it makes me rage.

[SPEAKER_09]: It really does because the conditions that he was naming, I watched the press conference live actually, I don't know why I did, but I think it just was on TV.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I saw him name conditions like spinal muscular atrophy, medical condition neurological conditions that I'm treating and also in the UK.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it was just pure propaganda and it was in a similar way to how [SPEAKER_09]: these ready to use the excuse of tunnels underneath hostels to allow them to bomb hostels, which on the international humanitarian law, you cannot do even in a context of there.

[SPEAKER_09]: And we know there are no tunnels underneath these hostels.

[SPEAKER_09]: I've been there myself.

[SPEAKER_09]: The evidence has been refuted.

[SPEAKER_09]: Except the ones that Israel built decades ago.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_09]: Don't erase Israel as well.

[SPEAKER_08]: Israel's role on this.

[SPEAKER_09]: But what I would say, I mean, the first count to start to begin, this is the UN, the WHO, UNICEF, save the children.

[SPEAKER_09]: All these organizations, international NGOs are coming out and saying that the data is showing that there is mass salvation, full salvation happening, Gaza that [SPEAKER_09]: There is famine that people are dying literally to try and find scraps of food.

[SPEAKER_09]: Then you have medical evidence.

[SPEAKER_09]: You have testimony from people like Professor Nick Maynard, Dr Victoria Rose, the surgeon's British white doctors who have come out and given testimony and talked about the starvation they've seen on the United States.

[SPEAKER_09]: Being denied taking in baby formula at the borders, literally baby formula that they're carrying to take in, being told that you're not allowed to take that in.

[SPEAKER_09]: So that tells me again that there is a clear deliberate strategy to waste these children away.

[SPEAKER_09]: We know that Israel has blocked food convoy's bomb, bakeries, bomb warehouses, there's been a total siege.

[SPEAKER_09]: So the reality is, you know, everyone else in the world is saying there is a famine.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I think it's important to count to these narratives because I think [SPEAKER_09]: The more these narratives are repeated, then we saw that with the tunnels under the hospitals, the more it's repeated, it permeates into the conscious of people that are watching TV or watching this news.

[SPEAKER_09]: And it has to be counted because it is dangerous and it justifies war crimes.

[SPEAKER_09]: And even if these children had other health care problems, even if they had other medical conditions, the reality is they are being stopped.

[SPEAKER_09]: So their medical conditions are [SPEAKER_09]: being accelerated in terms of the deterioration, because of the starvation.

[SPEAKER_09]: So it does not excuse them from saying that, well, these conditions make them look thin.

[SPEAKER_09]: And we've seen this narrative.

[SPEAKER_09]: You've seen people like UK laws, Israel, here in the UK, come out and say that there is obesity, crisis in Gaza, and they should be on a Zempik.

[SPEAKER_09]: that sort of narrative has been used on British TV.

[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, these people are just deplorable.

[SPEAKER_09]: There's no other word, but the devils, the human devils, as you kind of describe Netanyahu, Aaron.

[SPEAKER_13]: Like Nazi Holocaust deniers, they're on the French.

[SPEAKER_13]: I mean, they're a boring, but they're on the French.

[SPEAKER_13]: Like you don't come across Nazi Holocaust deniers on.

[SPEAKER_13]: corporate TV, but yet, you know, in the US, this outlet I mentioned, that's so called free press.

[SPEAKER_13]: There's talks now about a major media giant buying them for something like two hundred million dollars, and then them having a possible role in CBS news.

[SPEAKER_13]: So it would be like giving Holocaust deniers, not to Holocaust deniers, control of a major news outlet.

[SPEAKER_13]: But that's what looks like what we happening now with Gaza Holocaust deniers.

[SPEAKER_13]: It's just dumb.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's supposed to be fair.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, the Nazis had a lot of media legitimacy during the Nazi Holocaust, so maybe it's only fair.

[SPEAKER_08]: that supporters of this Holocaust get a powerful voice in the media at the same time.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, I'm being sarcastic, obviously, but that parallel in some ways does work, Aaron.

[SPEAKER_08]: And you know, just to touch again on that disgusting, like defensive argument put out by Israel, which I actually think is almost useful because it's such a deplorable disgusting argument.

[SPEAKER_08]: that I think it opens some people's eyes who maybe don't already see it to the evil of what Israel is doing because they're basically saying don't get upset about these kids dying of starvation because they already had something wrong with them.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, it don't speak of the Holocaust.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, it has a eugenesis ring to it and also everyone knows that what happens in every circumstances is that every circumstance is that people who are vulnerable in some way [SPEAKER_08]: fall vulnerable to whatever is happening.

[SPEAKER_08]: First, so obviously, you're going to die if you already have medical complications.

[SPEAKER_08]: But again, I don't think that Israel wants to officially endorse the death penalty for people who have pre-existing conditions, death penalty by, by starvation.

[SPEAKER_09]: It is.

[SPEAKER_09]: And I think you previously were using the manufacturing consent in the medium in those right wing outlets for that.

[SPEAKER_09]: But it almost is an admission of guilt, right?

[SPEAKER_09]: These ratings are basically admitted that they're forced to be starving these people and saying, well, they also have health conditions.

[SPEAKER_09]: So it's, you know, we're seeing this kind of narrative repeats.

[SPEAKER_09]: And it's, yeah, it's important.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's disgusting.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's, there's no real words, it's described, but it's, [SPEAKER_09]: It's just another addition to their endless war crimes, you know, the rape.

[SPEAKER_09]: We have Dr.

Daniel Bourge, an orthopedic head of the public.

[SPEAKER_09]: We was raped to death in detention.

[SPEAKER_09]: Dr.

Samapo Sophia is being disappeared.

[SPEAKER_09]: We have countless stories of [SPEAKER_09]: We've seen the children that were literally beheaded in Gaza, the children that were set on fire in their tents.

[SPEAKER_09]: So every one of their lies is also a projection of their own guilt, what they inflicted on Palestinians for decades, not just for the last twenty-two months.

[SPEAKER_08]: For every accusation is a confession.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it's also, I mean, the media here, the Western media has literally reported on [SPEAKER_08]: lies about beheaded children saying that Israeli babies were beheaded lies about rape saying that there was mass rape of Israelis while ignoring totally ignoring.

[SPEAKER_08]: It would be one thing if they reported on that, but they also reported on the fact that I'd not offer, as you said, was rape to death, the documented rape of Palestinians.

[SPEAKER_08]: They don't even pretend to both size it.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's worse.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's literally covering a lie and ignoring a truth.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, look, I think I see that also reflected in the...

[SPEAKER_09]: Palestinian children versus non-Palestinian children.

[SPEAKER_09]: So the way the evacuations, for example, or the way they've been reported, the fact that Ukrainian children could be flown over within weeks, but Palestinian children.

[SPEAKER_09]: So this is part of the dehumanization where the Western world has allowed Israel to pass these lies that basically made Palestinian seem subhuman or not human enough to the West.

[SPEAKER_09]: I've reflected on it a lot and I do actually think it's inherent racism.

[SPEAKER_09]: I think it's these are brown children who for them are not important enough.

[SPEAKER_09]: They're not worthy enough of life as Israeli children are as UK children are as American children are and we've seen that play out with the language that they've used as well.

[SPEAKER_09]: this is kind of the end result of this dehumanization languages has been allowed to continue and propagate for decades again.

[SPEAKER_13]: Because there's a genocide going on in Gaza, we all overlook the West Bank.

[SPEAKER_13]: It's something I ask you about that quickly.

[SPEAKER_13]: As we're recording this, the latest news is that Israel has approved the E-ONE settlement that has been a long-term project that essentially [SPEAKER_13]: completes the cut off of the West Bank.

[SPEAKER_13]: It would cut off north from south and also cut off all Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_13]: Your thoughts on this and overall the the healthcare situation in the West Bank, which where there's overlooked, but routine is really terror from both soldiers and sellers against Palestinians.

[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I mean, you know, it's we've because Gaza is [SPEAKER_09]: where the genocide is in full view, what we forget is there is actually a slow genocide happening in the West Bank, which is also accelerating, you know, the largest number of killing of Palestinian children in the West Bank has happened in recent history, you know, since October of twenty twenty three.

[SPEAKER_09]: You've got health care facilities that have been attacked you.

[SPEAKER_09]: We remember in Genene, there were Israeli soldiers that went in pretending to be patients and literally shot dead.

[SPEAKER_09]: um, uh, Palestinians within, uh, hostile in, in the West Bank in Geneva.

[SPEAKER_09]: So this has been happening and completely under the radar because of the, you know, the, the reality of the forced salvation of the bombing of the killing on mass the Palestinians in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_09]: But I think what is happening in the West Bank is, is extremely worrying.

[SPEAKER_09]: I think, um, many of my Palestinian colleagues and health workers that I know that work in the West Bank have been saying that they are seeing signs of [SPEAKER_09]: you know, the complete annexation, their daily freedoms, circle freedoms that they have and the occupation of being restricted, the ability to travel between towns to go back to the home of the stranded, you know, and blockaded in and on top of that, you have [SPEAKER_09]: attacks by settlers in ways that, you know, we've seen, as you said, these settlements that are being built up, it's also rapidly expanding.

[SPEAKER_09]: And you've got Israeli fascists within the government, like Ben Gever and others who are, again, manufacturing consent for this to happen, because when people are seeing their leadership speak in that language and say it's okay to wipe out the idea of a Palestinian state, [SPEAKER_09]: why not, why wouldn't a settler go and take a piece of land that they feel is theirs?

[SPEAKER_09]: So this, yeah, this is just the next step and what's highly concerning is I think what's coming to the West Bank next is probably something we haven't seen in our lifetime and we mustn't as a, as a liberation movement, we must not take our eyes off what has happened in the West Bank as well.

[SPEAKER_08]: What is the relationship between Palantir and NHS or the National Health Service of England?

[SPEAKER_09]: This is highly sinister.

[SPEAKER_09]: And essentially, Palintur is, we all know, is a US spy tech firm tied to these ready military ice in the US and the UK Ministry of Defense.

[SPEAKER_09]: And essentially, the NHS signed a three hundred million pound sterling contract with Palintur for them to basically mine patient data and to [SPEAKER_09]: to basically provide our sort of data platforms and tech within our healthcare system.

[SPEAKER_09]: So the concern is obviously we know that Palinter is connected to Operation Lavender.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's connected to surveillance of Palestinians to AI technology that has been used in this genocide.

[SPEAKER_09]: So essentially, [SPEAKER_09]: We are working in healthcare institutions now that are rolling out palletia technology that is literally directly complicit in genocide.

[SPEAKER_09]: So there's been an amazing group of health workers here in the UK called health workers for free Palestine.

[SPEAKER_09]: They have been lobbying and advocating for least the last two, three years since this contract was announced.

[SPEAKER_09]: They've been applying pressure at government level, at institutional level, trying to make sure that this rollout does not happen in the way intended.

[SPEAKER_09]: That is intended.

[SPEAKER_09]: It's just, you know, as a health worker who's looking after children, trying to save the lives of children in the UK, to think that you're working in the institution that potentially is directly linked to a complicit settlement of state that is exterminating Palestinians.

[SPEAKER_09]: is very difficult to deal with.

[SPEAKER_09]: And it's very difficult, it's health focused on to know that this is happening kind of our under our under our noses.

[SPEAKER_09]: So we as a community are trying our best to push back against that.

[SPEAKER_09]: But the reality, this is not just in the healthcare sector, this is across tech, across media, across all sectors, IT.

[SPEAKER_09]: There are, we have to be aware of these complicit organizations that are [SPEAKER_09]: Incidously infiltrating our society and potentially surveilling us and mining our data and providing support for a genocide of state.

[SPEAKER_08]: Amen to that.

[SPEAKER_08]: And Dr.

Omar, thank you so much for all the work that you do and thank you for talking to us today.

[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_13]: And thanks again to Dr.

Omar Abdalmanan.

[SPEAKER_13]: His group is health workers for Palestine.

[SPEAKER_13]: That's health workers the number four Palestine.com.

[SPEAKER_13]: Let's turn now to my interview with Richard Sakwa.

[SPEAKER_13]: He is a Meredith Professor of Politics at the University of Kent.

[SPEAKER_13]: His latest book is the Culture of the Second Cold War.

[SPEAKER_13]: And I talked to Richard Sokwell about the latest in the proxy war in Ukraine in the aftermath of Trump's meetings with Vladimir Putin and then Vladimir Zelensky and European leaders.

[SPEAKER_13]: Richard Sokwell, thanks so much for being here.

[SPEAKER_13]: I'm first curious about your overall impression of where things stand in the aftermath of the Trump [SPEAKER_13]: Putin summit in Alaska followed by the meeting between Trump and Zelensky and European leaders at the White House.

[SPEAKER_13]: It seems to be that basically only one thing has changed, which is that Trump has gone from demanding that Russia agreed to a ceasefire and threatening sanctions if Russia doesn't agree to that.

[SPEAKER_13]: To basically adopting the Russian position that forget the ceasefire, there needs to be talks on a comprehensive peace deal that would end the war for good.

[SPEAKER_13]: Other than that, I don't see [SPEAKER_13]: that much has changed in the Ukraine conflict.

[SPEAKER_13]: What does your take?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's things have moved very fast, of course, but go beyond encircles.

[SPEAKER_05]: But there has been some achievement.

[SPEAKER_05]: More has been achieved in, certainly, in terms of setting out the parameters of a possible deal in the last few days than they have been in the last four years.

[SPEAKER_05]: So that is some achievement.

[SPEAKER_05]: And it seems that two companies committed to this at this moment in time.

[SPEAKER_05]: and is devoting most of his time to getting some sort of a deal.

[SPEAKER_05]: And you absolutely right, the Europeans wanted a ceasefire, but of course a ceasefire became an instrument of war because the battlefield situation, much debated, is clearly in Russia's favor.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's moving forward, it's moving slowly, but nevertheless, it's moving and the move is accelerating.

[SPEAKER_05]: Pachrovsk is more or less surrounded, it will fall.

[SPEAKER_05]: And clearly, Ukraine is running out of troops to man the defensive formations in the thirty percent of the nets, which is still in Kiev's hands, with a big set of Slaviansk and Kermatowsk.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, starting from a battlefield situation, to the negotiations, clearly the outlines of a deal are evident.

[SPEAKER_05]: And as Macauius and others call it, it's Istanbul plus.

[SPEAKER_05]: In other words, some of the key elements, which sometimes are not emphasized enough.

[SPEAKER_05]: And there's been much talk about territorial swaps, as mentioned, Danetsk still has, in Kevsen, thirty percent.

[SPEAKER_05]: But near the hand, the tide of battle is slowly but shirling, shirling, turning to Russia's advantage.

[SPEAKER_05]: So it's, and that's one reason why the Europeans are [SPEAKER_05]: You know, trying to reinforce and to bolster Zelensky in the negotiations saying, you know, refusing a land swap, but it's not quite clear whether that position can be maintained.

[SPEAKER_05]: And of course, there's a big debate about security guarantees.

[SPEAKER_05]: So absolutely no clarity, what who and what would be their mission purpose.

[SPEAKER_05]: So everything is to play for.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yet, as I say, the fact that we're having this sort of discussion now is one which we couldn't have had since Istanbul in the early days of the war, March April, twenty-twenty-two.

[SPEAKER_13]: Let's go to the issue of security guarantees.

[SPEAKER_13]: Steve Wickoff, the Trump on-boy, he suggested one of his interviews post Alaska that [SPEAKER_13]: Russia has made a lot of movement on that front that Russia might be willing to agree to some sort of NATO-type article five arrangement where Western states would come to Ukraine's defense in the case of Russia attacking it again.

[SPEAKER_13]: And NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, he went on Fox News and he said something similar, at least the way I hear his comments.

[SPEAKER_13]: Let's listen to what he said.

[SPEAKER_08]: NATO membership for Ukraine is completely off the table, correct?

[SPEAKER_10]: The situation is this that the U.S.

[SPEAKER_10]: and some other countries have said that they are against NATO membership for Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_10]: The official NATO position since the summer of the twenty twenty four is that there is an irreversible path for Ukraine into NATO.

[SPEAKER_10]: But what we are discussing here is not NATO membership.

[SPEAKER_10]: What we are discussing here is article five type of security guarantees for Ukraine and what they exactly will and till will now be more specifically discussed.

[SPEAKER_13]: So do you buy that that Russia could possibly agree to NATO-like security guarantees, or even though Ukraine's not a member of NATO, Ukraine still gets a commitment from NATO members to go to war with Russia if Ukraine is attacked?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yes and no, yes to the degree that Russia has conceded the principle and that of course was in Istanbul as well way back at the beginning of war.

[SPEAKER_05]: That some sort of guarantees would be offered.

[SPEAKER_05]: And of course at that stage the United Kingdom absolutely refused to even contemplate the idea that they would act as guarantors.

[SPEAKER_05]: Of course, Russia was conceded.

[SPEAKER_05]: The idea at the early stage was that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council [SPEAKER_05]: which includes the Russia, of course, would be the guarantors, and that was unacceptable to Kiev.

[SPEAKER_05]: So now, no, and why?

[SPEAKER_05]: So yes, it's on the table.

[SPEAKER_05]: No, nothing like NATO is going to be there, Maria.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's a hell of a, say, a lovely off the Russian Foreign Minister, all have said it.

[SPEAKER_05]: No Western powers that is NATO forces boots on the ground.

[SPEAKER_05]: But some sort of guarantees there's been much talk of some sort of UN broken framework, some sort of Chinese Indian involvement.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, all of this is speculative, because what would they be guaranteeing?

[SPEAKER_05]: So in a sense, all that discussion is a classic European Union detachment from a reality, because [SPEAKER_05]: In the first instance, when has to have a sort of a framework for the deal itself, and until we have that, what will they be acting as guarantors off?

[SPEAKER_05]: So that's the key point.

[SPEAKER_05]: And there's been much talk and in fact, that's come back now.

[SPEAKER_05]: The idea of some sort of Austrian state treaty equivalent, if you recall, in nineteen fifty-five, both the Soviet and US forces left Austria, it was not particularly strategically important to either, and it weren't going to fight over it.

[SPEAKER_05]: And there's that sort of talk.

[SPEAKER_05]: And Austria, of course, has arrived in that framework, and it remains outside of NATO to this day.

[SPEAKER_05]: So go and T.

[SPEAKER_05]: And of course the other side, which is often forgotten, there has to be guarantees for Russia as well in the sense that also its security has to be guaranteed.

[SPEAKER_05]: So everything's to play for.

[SPEAKER_05]: And so I think that the discussion of security guarantees at the centre of debate at Bourbon is slightly misleading and deliberately so it seems to be.

[SPEAKER_13]: Well, a few months ago, Victoria Nulland, who's a former senior State Department official under Obama and then under Biden, she laid out her vision of what security guarantees would look like for Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it has to have a very, very strong military going forward.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has to have air defenses.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it has to have international support.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Europeans have talked about a peacekeeping force.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's one way to do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Another way to do it would be to have Western forces or international forces offshore who could strike Russia if it broke the deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: you know, without those kinds of guarantees, why would Putin just not come back for more when he gets bored of this deal because he's paid very clear that he doesn't consider Ukraine a country and his aspiration is to control all of it.

[SPEAKER_13]: Okay, so that's the Tory Newland.

[SPEAKER_13]: So, I mean, two points there would Russia ever agree to the arrangement that she floats that basically there be Western forces position offshore that could strike Russia [SPEAKER_13]: if Russia violates a peace agreement.

[SPEAKER_13]: And then, second of all, if you could address the argument that, you know, Russia might violate any future peace deal because Putin doesn't consider Ukraine to be a country and wants to control all of it.

[SPEAKER_05]: Again, the answer is no to both of those.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, offshore Ukraine is a land power.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's got obviously a black sea coast, sea of as off as well.

[SPEAKER_05]: But it's a land power.

[SPEAKER_05]: So offshore, what does it mean?

[SPEAKER_05]: Big troops in Poland, Romania and other border countries.

[SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_05]: And no, Russia has been quite an equivocal about it.

[SPEAKER_05]: And that's what the war has been all about.

[SPEAKER_05]: And so Russia has hardly likely to agree to it.

[SPEAKER_05]: And so what we're basically saying there is that right from the beginning, Ukraine was not in NATO, but NATO was in Ukraine, and that was unacceptable all the way back to, by the way, in nineteen ninety-seven when the military exercise of CBU began around Crimea.

[SPEAKER_05]: So that's just simply not acceptable.

[SPEAKER_05]: As for the second point, it's this fantasy of [SPEAKER_05]: Victoria Newland, the Nealcons, about what has started this war.

[SPEAKER_05]: When Russia talks about Ukraine, the idea that it doesn't accept it as a Soviet state, you know, clearly is not the point.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's a misunderstanding, the causes of the war.

[SPEAKER_05]: And as I've been arguing and there's so many of us have been arguing for so long.

[SPEAKER_05]: It was all about security, all the way about NATO and large, but NATO and large were symbolic of the larger failure.

[SPEAKER_05]: of the European security order all the way back more lessons at the beginning of the post called World Yes.

[SPEAKER_05]: So the idea that it would give it up.

[SPEAKER_05]: But you know, what sort of Ukraine emerges out of this is again at the heart of it.

[SPEAKER_05]: And the, you know, as I've also, in fact, me, just say there's four levels to the war and the first one is absolutely crucial to this day in that is the [SPEAKER_05]: And some sort of compact within Ukraine itself, which would accept the recognition of a more pluralistic, tolerant, multilingual, multi-confessional state.

[SPEAKER_05]: So no one is talking about, I mean, [SPEAKER_05]: that Ukraine doesn't exist, there's nonsense.

[SPEAKER_05]: And so this sort of false idea that Russia doesn't accept the very existence of a Ukrainian state, it didn't like the way that Ukrainian state developed after twenty fourteen and earlier developments as well.

[SPEAKER_05]: The second level, of course, is Russia Ukrainian relations and if they have to come to terms and have some stable relationship.

[SPEAKER_05]: And so it isn't just a [SPEAKER_05]: threat of attack, we are going back to two again.

[SPEAKER_05]: It goes the other way as well.

[SPEAKER_05]: What can guarantee that they won't, you know, as per Minsk, Minsk one and Minsk two.

[SPEAKER_05]: If you're in conflict, which always has the potential to explode into war, [SPEAKER_05]: The third level is into a European, and that's catastrophic.

[SPEAKER_05]: Of course, we've seen the European Union leaders chasing off to Washington earlier this week after Alaska.

[SPEAKER_05]: And what were they doing there?

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you know, some very nasty words, being to mind about the circus, about a bunch of clowns completely detached from reality, even George and Maloney, you may have seen in one of their clips when Mertz was talking to German leader.

[SPEAKER_05]: She rolled her eyes just because the unreality of it, [SPEAKER_05]: And the fourth level, and this is where we have achieved a breakthrough, or the beginning of one, and that is the approach more between the United States and Russia.

[SPEAKER_05]: And that's why, say, we've seen greater developments in the last few days than in the last four years.

[SPEAKER_05]: Because of this, that finally, the log jam, the two leaders to put in Met in the last meeting, of course, was in June, twenty twenty one when Biden and put in Met.

[SPEAKER_05]: And in other words, a diplomatic process has begun.

[SPEAKER_05]: It hasn't gone very far, it's going beyond in circles, but it's some achievement.

[SPEAKER_13]: If I could ask you to speak more about this widespread belief in the US, like you'll hear this talking point across the spectrum, even from even in progressive media outlets, it's just taking a face value that Putin and Russia don't see Ukraine as a real country and that they want to take over.

[SPEAKER_13]: And to hear the rest of the interview, please go to useful idiotspodcast.com.

[SPEAKER_13]: And to hear the rest of my interview with Richard Sakwa, go to our website, useful idiotspodcast.com.

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