Welcome to Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone in the Libertarian Institute. Constantine Kissen has responded to Dave Smith. Let's check out the video. Kill us We're. Going to go kill a whole bunch of you. And then you kind of realize it's like, yeah, that's exactly how those people who flew the buildings into the tower stops. Exactly the same way you feel right now. This is a cognitive era called mirror image bias, well known to analysts who study other
cultures. They spend years training precisely to understand that not all people are the same, nor do they act for the same reasons. As it happens, jihadis like bin Laden have. So since not all people think the same, not all people act the same, what we can do is look at the actual words of the Hamas media office when it comes to October 7th specifically, according to the Jewish Chronicle, Hamas releases new document explaining motives for October 7th. Realized the goal of terrorism
is to amplify a certain message. It's a shortcut to freedom, so to speak. The Jewish Chronicle says the 18 page document entitled Our Narrative Operation Al Aqsa Flood, released on Sunday in both Arabic and English, reveals the motives for Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. So let's go through this document.
According to Constantine's thesis, what we're going to find are things like, well, we really hate that people don't read the Quran, that they don't pray to the East number of times a day, that they don't believe in an afterlife with 72 virgins. And this is the primary motivating factor which gets people like Hamas, people like Al Qaeda. Apparently he doesn't differentiate between Sunni and Shia motives. This is the primary motivating factor when it comes to why people in Muslim countries
commit acts of terrorism. So now that all the spotlights on them, this was published by the Hamas media office, let's see what they have to say. Our steadfast Palestinian people, the Arab and Islamic nations, the free peoples worldwide and those who advocate for freedom, justice and human dignity. Immediately, we would expect to see for those who advocate Islam instead, the document says.
In light of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and as our people continue their battle for independence, dignity and breaking free from the longest ever occupation, during which they have drawn the finest displays of bravery and heroism in confronting the Israeli murder machine and aggression. Constantine wants us to believe that the actual occupation, the actual murder of civilians, these people are more or less neutral towards.
They don't really have an opinion. What really motivates them to put their lives on the line is Islam. Let's go through the document #1 the This section is titled Why Operation Al Aqsa Flood? The battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on October 7th but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation. Realize it's very common for people to put their lives on the line for independence.
In America. There was a revolution against the British Empire for a 3% tax. Now the domestic imperialists like taking 40% of our income every single year even though we get horrible products and services in exchange for it. The purpose is our independence was being violated. Same with the Algerians who felt that their independence was being violated by the French. It's almost never a cost benefit analysis like Americans today would not say.
If our independence is violated, we will weigh the costs and benefits of having a new foreign regime rule over us and then determine whether or not we should go to war. What they say is if our independence is violated, we're going to war. I don't care what the benefits are. I will not be ruled by a foreign
group, the document continues. At that time, the Palestinian people were denied from the right of self determination and the Zionist gangs engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people aimed at expelling them from
their lands and areas. As a result, the Zionist gangs here, they're referring to Ergon, Stern and Hagana, controlled by 477% of the land of Palestine, where they expelled 57% of the people of Palestine and destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and towns and committed dozens of massacres against the Palestinians, which all culminated in the establishment of the Zionist entity in 1948. For example, the Der Yasin massacre.
Second, note, the Gaza Strip, for example, suffered as of 2007 from a suffocating blockade over 17 years, which turned it to be the largest open air prison in the world. Realize that it's well known in American establishment circles. Anyone at the Council on Foreign Relations will tell you if China forms a blockade around Taiwan, that's a declaration of war and
we might have to go nuclear. But Israel gets a near 20 year blockade on Gaza #3 According to official figures, in the period between January 2000 and September 2023, the Israeli occupation killed 11,299 Palestinians and injured 156,768 others. The great majority of them were civilians, according to status to. These numbers basically match up with what the Hamas media office is saying. Maybe they're just getting their
numbers from Hamas. the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has been tracking deaths in the conflict since 2008. This is before October 7th. The status to document goes from 2008 to 2020. It's data shows that 5600 Palestinians died up to 2020 while 115 thousand were injured. 250 Israelis died during the same period while 5600 were injured again, Hamas knows that they have world attention with documents like this.
This is their time to shine. This is their time to start quoting Allah, quoting the Quran, quoting Muhammad, and instead they are talking about the occupation. Point #4 The Israeli violations and brutality were documented by many UN organizations and international human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and even documented by Israeli human rights groups, most likely referring to Beth Salem.
For example, on October 29th, 2021, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gilad Aaron insulted the UN system by tearing up a report for the UN Human Rights Council during an address at the General Assembly and threw it in the dustbin before leaving the
podium. Point #5 the US administration and its Western allies have always been treating Israel as a state above the law they provided with the needed cover to maintain prolonging the occupation and cracking down the Palestinian people, and also allowing Israel to exploit such situation to expropriate further Palestinian lands and to Judaize their sanctuaries and holy sites.
Point number six, we're we're still waiting to hear quotes from the Quran. Despite the fact that the Oslo Accord signed in 1993 with the PLO Palestinian Liberation Organization, stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel systematically destroyed every possibility to establish the Palestinian state through a wide campaign of settlements, construction and Judaization of the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. So apparently when we see footage like this, we're supposed to believe that the Palestinians are more or less indifferent. This actually makes no difference with how they view America or Israel.
So Palestinians apparently look at this, say people are on fire and doesn't really move the needle. It has no effect on how they view Israel, Zionism, Judaism, America, this apparently they are just totally indifferent to and it's all about wanting us to follow the Quran. We look at this one by Max Blumenthal of The Gray Zone. Let's listen to the audio. It's titled Mother cries for burning daughter after IDF strike.
You can see it on the screen. So apparently this woman is just acting or pretending to care like the daughter she gave birth to, the daughter she raised, the daughter she fed, the daughter she had all this time with. She doesn't really care about that. She's really crying about the fact that we read the Bible and not the Quran, that we pray him standing up and they do it bowing and facing the East. We like Jesus, they like Muhammad. That's what she's really crying about.
This is all just an act. Max Blumenthal actually wrote a book titled The 51 Day War. On Page 1 you can see that this was in 2014 during Operation Pillar of Defense. Not to be confused with Operation Pillar of Cloud or Operation Cast Lead. There was an Israeli remote controlled machine gun pointed in to Gaza in it's 2 by 25 mile landmass. Here's a book titled A History of Zionism from the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel by Walter Lacour, published in 1974.
On page 451 he says the Balfour Declaration had not provided a clear answer with regard to the identity of a protecting power. The American King Crane Commission in 1919 reported that the Arab Muslims, the great majority of the population, were in favor of Syrian independence and that a mandate over a united Syria, including Palestine, should be assigned to the Americans or as a second choice, to Britain.
You would think that word would have gotten out that America and Britain were not Muslim countries to the people in Syria, yet they saw out of all their available options. If I had to be ruled over someone, it would be these infidels, cause all else equal, it's better to be ruled over by them than anyone else. If there was such hostility innate to Islam, you would not have gotten that result.
This goes to show that the issue did not start in 600 AD when Muhammad was calling the shots for Islam. There were very reasonable American Arab relations. President George W Bush wrote a book titled Decision Points and on page 186 he says the roots of the terrorist presence in Afghanistan trace back to. I'll pause and see if he could guess what year he says. Surely he Muhammad was 600 AD. Maybe it took a little while to expand.
He might, he might say 700 AD or maybe 800 AD took him a while to get to the areas of Afghanistan from Mecca and Medina. Let's read the whole quote. The roots of the terrorist presence in Afghanistan trace back to 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded and installed a communist puppet regime. The Afghan tribes, along with a band of hardcore Islamic fighters known as the Mujahideen, rose up against the
foreign occupation. Tribal warriors who had defeated the Soviets turned their guns on one another. Ultimately, the Taliban, a group of Islamic fundamentalist, seized power. According to President Bush, no anarcho capitalist himself says that the origins of terrorism in the country which we just had a 20 year war against actually were the result of people fighting against foreign military occupation. Mr. Kissen goes on to use a specific example of where we can look.
So let's look at what example he uses, and then extrapolate empirical evidence from that. All people are the same, nor do they act for the same reasons, as it happens, jihadis like Bin Laden have. Been So let's look at the words of bin Laden. He mentioned bin Laden. Let's look at bin Laden. This is bin Laden recounting his time talking to Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan in 2003.
Then the fighters realized that the gang in the White House could not see things clearly and that their leader, that idiot they obey, was claiming that we envied their lifestyle. When the truth, which this Pharaoh would like to hide is that we are attacking them because of their injustice toward the Muslim world and especially Palestine and Iraq, as well as their occupation of the land of the two sanctuaries.
When the fighters saw this, they decided to come out of the shadows and take the fight into their territory, into their homes. Other quotes from bin Laden by Harvard University Press in bin Laden's declaration titled Declaration of Jihad against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy sanctuaries. Bin Laden says, again, I'm not picking bin Laden. Kissin did. Their blood is flowing in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. The awful images of the Khana massacre are still present in
everyone's mind. Not to mention the massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, Philippines, Pattini, Ogadon, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, Bosnia Herzegovia where Muslims have been the victims of atrocious acts of butchery. Again mentioning acts of mass murder, this Khana massacre he's referring to is the Khana massacre of 1996, not to be confused with Israel's Khana massacre in Lebanon of 2006. Bin Laden goes on. When duties accumulate, it is necessary to begin with the most
important one. What's he going to say? Promote Islam? Make sure everyone's reading the Quran to push back this enemy, the Americans who are occupying our territory. Referring to the occupation of Mecca and Medina. One of bin Laden's first letters was to King Fad in 1995 where he explicitly called the King of Saudi Arabia a Co conspirator with the Americans and a complete sell out. Here is bin Laden's interview with CNNCNN interviewer. Mr. Bin Laden.
Could you give us your main criticism of the Saudi royal family? That is a ruling Saudi Arabia today. Bin Laden, regarding the criticisms of the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula. The first one is their subordination to the US. So our main problem is the US government, while the Saudi regime is but a branch or an agent of the US. Interviewer, if you had an opportunity to give a message to President Clinton, what would
that message be? Bin Laden mentioning the name of Clinton or that of any American government provokes discuss and revulsion. This is because the name of the American government and the names of Clinton and Bush directly bring to our minds the pictures of one year old children with their heads cut off. It reflects the picture of children whose members have been amputated, the picture of the children who died in Iraq, the hands of the Israelis carrying weapons that destroy our
children. The former secretary to the United Nations actually had a clarifying moment discussing what bin Laden's referring to. This was the occupation bombing and sanctions that were imposed on Iraq in the 90s after the first Gulf War. We have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children then died when when in Hiroshima and and you know, is the price worth it? I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.
Next, we have bin Laden's message to the American people. Again, this is all in Harvard University Press's publication Al Qaeda in Its Own Words. Bin Laden titled this message to the American people. American People, My speech to you is about the best way of avoiding a repeat performance of Manhattan as well as the causes and consequences of the war.
By way of introduction, let me say that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If that were true, let him explain to us why we do not attack Sweden, for example. Freedom haters do not possess defiant spirits like those of the 19. May God have mercy on them now. I hate Al Qaeda as much as anyone else. They violate the non aggression principle.
I absolutely hate them. Bin Laden's point is that while we'd hate, dislike, maybe even hate the fact that you aren't Muslim and that you're blaspheming the true God on earth, it's not motivating enough to get people to risk their lives to commit acts of terrorism. What does motivate them, in the case of Muhammad Atta was Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996. This was Israel's invasion of Lebanon, where the first kind of massacre took place. Bin Laden continues.
No, we fight because we are free men who do not slumber under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, and just as you lay waste to our nation, we shall lay waste to yours. Only a witless wrongdoer plays with the security of others and then fools himself into thinking he will be secure. Whereas rational people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for causes. Maybe that's a bad source on al Qaeda.
Let's go to the Al Qaeda reader with introduction by Victor Davis Hanson quoting Bin Laden. Why we are fighting you, Osama bin Laden's letter to Americans while seeking all his help. We form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans Why are we fighting and opposing you? What are we calling you to and what do we want from you? As for the first question, why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple. Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
You attacked us in Palestine. Palestine which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine with your help and support to the Jews who have occupied it for more than 50 years. Years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, murders, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally avenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone. Their women are not widowed alone.
Their sons are not orphaned alone. One of the best ways to understand the current situation in Palestine is to look at the origins. Let's look at a 1923 document written by Zivyabatensky, the founder of the Argon Zionist militia. He also founded the Jewish Defense League in Odessa some years previously. He was a soldier for the British Empire in the First World War. This document is titled the Iron Wall. Constantine, I know what you're thinking. Argon.
Isn't that the Zionist terrorist organization that? On the King David Hotel, while having Menachem Begum, future Israeli Prime Minister, as one of its members. Yes, it is. Sir Yabatinsky says voluntary agreement not possible. There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestinian Arabs. My readers have a general idea of the history of colonization
in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the presidents which which with which they are acquainted and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonization being carried out on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent. The native populations, civilized or uncivilized, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilized or savage. So again, Americans will proudly take 40% of their income and
give it to the psychopathic U.S. government. But if China so much has a little influence in an app called TikTok that people can voluntarily put on their phones and use, that's a violation of our independence and we need to stand up against it. Every native population, civilized or not, regards its land as its national home of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain the mastery always. It will refuse to admit not only new masters, but even new partners or collaborators.
Yabatinsky is explaining the mindset of Palestinians today, back in 1923, a 101 years ago, referring to the Palestinian Arabs. They feel at least the same instinctive jealous love of Palestine as the old Aztecs felt for ancient Mexico and their Sioux for their rolling prairies. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.
The current problem today is the blockade and the occupation, Yabatinsky goes on. There is only one thing the Zionists want, and it is that one thing that the Arabs do not want, for that is the only way by which the Jews would gradually become the majority. The Zionists want only one thing, Jewish immigration, and this Jewish immigration is what
the Arabs do not want. So This is why the Zionist Federation of Germany created in 1897, one year after Theodore Herzl wrote and published The Jewish State. The Zionist Federation of Germany was willing to ally with the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1933 with the Havara agreement to migrate Jews from Europe to Palestine.
Yabatinsky says Zionist colonization must either stop or else proceed regardless of the native population, which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent from the native population behind an iron wall which the native population cannot breach. You think this picture from 2014 is the iron wall that Xavia Patinsky was talking about? Yeah, Patinsky continues. Eventual agreement. What is impossible is a
voluntary agreement. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character, it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us because they can make no breach in the iron wall. And look, this is the same mindset that Abraham Lincoln had. You will not have your own state. You will not have your own Union Confederacy. You are going to be part of us or you're going to have to emigrate. That is the same mindset.
It's not too crazy. Just as if Texas tried to secede today. Eric Swalwell already threatens us with nukes every couple of weeks. If, you know, we dare to say the state shouldn't have a monopoly on guns. This is the same concept. So it's not like I'm saying there's a unique thing about the Zionist The problem is states that have a monopoly on violence and a recognized right to initiate unilateral obligations on people as opposed to everyone else who has to contract
voluntarily. And states are constantly provoking these wars because they have the moral hazard of having an involuntary income called taxation. They have access to a central bank. They have a monopoly on compulsory education. They have a right to conscript soldier. So of course, in this, but with this set of incentives, states are going to be much more likely to engage in mass murder and warfare than they otherwise would be.
That's why it's profitable for them to engage in such atrocities such as mass murder of innocent civilians. Now let's look at some empirical data. This was collected by Robert A Pape and James K Feldman in their book Cutting the Fuse, The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It from page 8. This is the first complete data set of all suicide terrorist attacks around the world. From 1980 to 2009. Nearly all emerge from communities resisting foreign
military occupation. From 1980 to 2003, there were 345 completed suicide terrorist attacks by 524 suicide terrorists who actually killed themselves on a mission to kill others, half of whom were secular. The world leader was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Hindu group who carried out more attacks than Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad PIJ during this period.
Further, at least a third of the suicide attacks in predominantly Muslim countries were carried out by secular terrorist groups such as PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey, instead of religion. What over 95% of all suicide terrorist attacks before 2004 had in common was a strategic goal to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces that are threatening territory that the terrorist prize.
From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to the West Bank to Chechnya, the central goal of every suicide terrorist campaign has been to resist military occupation by a democracy, or, as President Bush would put it, to resist foreign military occupation, whether it's the Soviet empire, the American empire. So the world leaders in suicide terrorism were actually the secular Tamil Tigers, not Islamic fundamentalists. Pape actually quotes three of the Saudi hijackers on 9/11.
Names can be viewed on the screen. Here are the quotes from these three men What is happening in Muslim countries today blatant occupation about which there is no doubt there is no duty more obligatory after faith to repel
him. The occupation and deterioration in the land of the two sanctuaries is a plot by the Jews and Nazarenes, foremost among them America, may Allah destroy it, which has been among the chief causes of every misfortune suffered by Islam and the Muslims, thus repelling the Americans. Occupying the land of the two sanctuaries is the most obligatory of obligations.
And I say to America, if it wants its armies and people to be safe, then it must withdraw all its forces from the Muslim lands and depart from our countries. If not, then let it await the men, prepare its coffins and dig
graves for its citizens. Pape concludes the section by saying further notice that there are no suicide attackers from Iran, one of the largest Islamic fundamentalist populations in the world, with a population greater than Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Syria combined. Now what happens if we just say, you know what Kissen is, right?
It's all about Islam. They love it when you kill their kids and burn their cities to the ground, or they're indifferent to it. What really motivates them as Islam? It does not therefore follow that we should support the US and Israel going to war with these countries. The 20 year what NATO's first declaration of war was in 2001, which ended up in the Afghanistan operation after 20 years. 10s of thousands of civilian deaths, thousands of Americans killed, trillions of
dollars spent. The Taliban took Kabul in like 11 days. That's what you get with government. In the case of Iraq, yes, we got Saddam, even though he was somewhat of a secular socialist, we're we're still poking the Islamic bear getting back at them. Well, this led to Abu Musab al Zarqawi writing his allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
And I'm an al Zawahiri, also quoted in al Qaeda in its Own Words and al Qaeda taking over large portions of Iraq, later giving us the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In the case of Syria, take that Operation Timber Sycamore explicitly laid out the US support for rebel groups in Syria to fight against Bashar al Assad's regime. Obama comes out and says Assad is gassing his own people, so we're going to support rebel groups.
Well, it turns out that you can't just go knocking door to door on your average Syrian and say, could you get a few weeks off work and go to war with Assad? The average person doesn't do that. Only these Mujahideen radicals who are professional fighters
will do such a thing. So they end up arming and funding Jabat al Nusra, the AL Nusra Front in Syria, which was al Qaeda in Syria until 2016, when al Jaladi announced his breakaway from al Qaeda. In the case of Libya, let's go get Moammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi, in either 96 or 98, was one of the first people to put out a arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. He goes, this guy is too much of A liability for our lands. Please arrest this guy.
So what happened? You killed Gaddafi just like you got Saddam. And then Thomas Jefferson of Libya took control and they now have a democracy. No, what happened was they more or less had to fight on the side of Al Qaeda in Libya, known as the Islamic fighting group.
In the case of Yemen, fighting against the Houthis, the US and its allies, along with Saudi Arabia, allied with AQAP, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So even if I can see the problem is Islam, it does not therefore follow that a solution is to give the mass murdering U.S. government more money, more power to fight wars of aggression. Say that you say, you know what, I don't even care. I don't care if all those Muslims get blown to bits and
there's a complete genocide. I just care about Israel. OK. There was a book written titled Our Man in Damascus, the story of Ellie Cohen. This is a biography. Ellie Cohen is in Syria working for the Mossad, and he goes by the name Kamel. At the time, Pamel is having a discussion with a Syrian military general. Here's how the exchange goes. Pamel, Ellie Cohen says, With all the armaments we have and with this excellent position, why can't we drive them Israel
into the sea? The general responds. The trouble is that the Israelis have world sympathy and the big wheels are protecting this little bastard nation. Look, Kamal, we have better armaments than they do. We have several times more men. We have topographic superiority. But all this isn't enough in Modern Warfare. What we're lacking is the support of public opinion and the power to fight the entire W which is behind Israel. So he talks about the importance of public opinion and world
sympathy. Again, we're now in the mindset we only care about the chosen people. Let's look at what this conflict has done to public opinion, the very thing keeping Israel afloat. What has this war done to public opinion in general in the West? According to the Jerusalem Post, most Democrats believe Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a poll, this is from May of 2024. So are the Americans or just a bunch of people who only care
about spreading Islam? Maybe they see the videos of dead babies and cities getting blown to bits and say well this is completely unjustifiable, just as my grandma would always tell me. I never really considered the downsides of war until I saw the war in Vietnam on my TV and just how devastating it was. And I thought it was good to fight. But then I just thought, gosh, we got to get out of there. This is not just something that
the Democrats believe. This is something, according to Data for Progress, says voters support the US calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and conditioning military aid to
Israel around the world. 2/3 of voters, 67%, including 77% of Democrats, 69% of Independents and 56% of Republicans support the US calling for a permanent ceasefire and de escalation of violence in Gaza. This would have been unheard of in 2420. Years ago with George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz calling the shots in America would have been absolutely unheard of.
Even if you only care about Israel, which is psychopathic, only caring about one geographical area of people when most people everywhere are totally innocent and it's a psychopathic politicians in generals provoking these conflicts where the civilians have to pay the cost. If you only care about Israel, what this war is doing do Israeli public opinion just horrible.
Just horrible. Again, even if let's say I'm in the year 1914 and all I care about is the Austro Hungarian Empire, well, it doesn't make sense that I should necessarily go to war with Serbia, even though I have the backing of Kaiser Wilhelm in the entire German military. This could be very costly. Sure enough, that war ended with 1.1 million dead members of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the Austro Hungarian Empire now no longer exists.
Even if you just support American lives and only Israeli lives, it does not necessarily follow that you should support these conflicts. Now you might be saying, well, Israel and America are very civilized areas and why would these people be committing genocide? Why would they be engaged in an ethnic cleansing operation? Well, it's not. They're not. What happens is some psychopaths with political power conscript others into doing this work for them. The people then later rationalize it.
Here is what the great statesman of the 20th century, Winston Churchill, said in his book The World Crisis, 1911 to 1918, referring to the First World War against Germany when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. The vital need for Germany was to break the blockade. Its efficiency might be impaired by the devices of neutrals, but the vast process of starvation, not only in food but in materials indispensable to modern armies, was remorselessly and unceasingly at work.
Which I can hear Mr. Kissen in the distance saying, well, he was just trying to, you know, make sure the army didn't have enough supplies and, you know, you got to do what you got to do in a time of war. Well, Churchill continues on page 686, saying the British blockade treated the whole of Germany as if it were a beleaguered fortress and devoutly sought to starve the whole population, men, women and children, old and young, wounded and sound into submission.
So we have the greatest statesman of all time telling us that when he engages in warfare, he has the civilians in mind as those who deserve to be punished. They have to bear the cost of the crimes of the politicians. Again, even if Churchill had only been considering the well-being of the British people, it doesn't mean that well we still got to take out Kaiser Wilhelm. By the way, Germany lost 2.3 million soldiers and Kaiser Wilhelm retired to the Netherlands for the rest of his
life. Just because a bad guy is on the throne doesn't mean whoever replaces him will be better. I mean, I could see. I can see Churchill saying Kaiser Wilhelm's on the throne in Germany if we take him out. I cannot imagine anyone worse calling the shots in Germany. No one could be worse than this man. Let's just take him out and then figure things out after we imposed the Treaty of Versailles.
The Germans also did this when they funded revolutionaries to go overthrow Zar Nicholas's regime in 19 O 5 and in 1917. Yes it got the Russians out of the First World War and then gave us the Bolshevik regime which led to the biggest German and Russian death in recorded history. I mean blindly saying that I support country X therefore I support what the politicians and generals and country X are currently engaged in does not follow at all.
That would be like saying, but there's a conflict in Eastern Europe and I support the democratic country, even though the democratic country did not host the planned elections of 2024. Even though that democratic country is engaged in mass enslavement of conscripts, men ages 18 to 60, who have no right to leave under their regime, Even though they're confiscating property from the Orthodox Church, even though they bombed Poland on November 15th of 2022,
a NATO ally, and killed two Polish civilians, I'm still going to support them because I support Ukraine, Kissen. I support Ukraine. That's why I support them having a referendum in the Donbass to see where people actually which throne they actually want to worship. If your policy of support of a certain country leads to hundreds of thousands of civilians in that country getting killed and the city's being blown to bits, you're not
pro that country. When it comes to the causes of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, President Barack Obama has shined some light on the origins of this conflict. In his book A Promised Land. On page 464, Obama says the US decision seven years earlier to pull out of the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and its plans to house missile defense systems on Russia's border continue to be a source of strategic instability.
The admission of former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO during both the Clinton and Bush administrations had steadily encroached on Russia's sphere of influence, while US support for the color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan under the specious guise of democracy promotion had turned Russia's once friendly neighbors into governments hostile to Moscow. President Dwight Eisenhower
said. We will go to war in Guatemala if we so much as suspect the Soviets being behind Jacob Arnez and his government. We clearly saw it when the Soviets tried to put missiles in Cuba. Reagan saw the importance of making sure the Soviets don't have any influence in Nicaragua. Looks like the Russians have the same motive, to have their own sphere of influence. So notice how Kisin is completely wrong with the cause
of these conflicts. They hate us because we're not Muslim. It's blowback from the occupation and bombing campaigns and blockade. Putin hates Ukraine because it's democratic. It's not democratic. It engages in mass slavery, a form of slavery far worse than force. Cotton picking considering according to NBC, the average life expectancy in. But the battle of Bakmut for Ukrainian soldiers is 4 motherfucking hours. Of course it has nothing to do with well he just hates
democracy. It has everything to do with NATO expansion. Not my words. According to President Barack Obama, the war in Ukraine and Russia is over. NATO expansion, the US leaving the Open Skies treaty now along with the anti ballistic missile treaty and the color revolutions. Again. Even if you think I'm wrong about all this and I'm just making it up, I just completely fabricated that entire quote. Pretend you believe that.
Not true first of all. Second of all, it does not follow that you should then give the US government or the Israeli government or the United Kingdom's government more money and more power. They have no incentive to improve the well-being of the people and the situation at large, and they don't have the knowledge to do so. Mr. Kissen is so blatantly wrong about both of these issues. How could that be with all his research?
What's actually going on? Well, sometimes the motive for certain actions is not the truth. Let's look at what economist Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler say in their book The Elephant in the Brain, page 292. Our hypothesis is that political behavior of ordinary individual citizens is often better explained as an attempt to signal loyalty to our side, whatever side that happens to be in a particular situation, rather than as good faith
attempts to improve outcomes. We are wanting to appear loyal to the groups around us. It's also, in many ways, a performance. So how is it that Mister Kissen could say bin Laden has told us what he believes, but we didn't listen? And then he doesn't go on to quote bin Laden, he quotes a magazine that was published three years after bin Laden had allegedly been killed. The authors go on to understand the mindset of how someone like Kissen can be so unempirical in his analysis.
Voting as an act of consumption. It's something we do in order to feel good without concern for external benefits, and that would be like advocating a mass murder campaign and not caring about the downsides. Voting is seen as providing a psychological reward, like getting to a firm one's identity
or feel a sense of belonging. The real benefits not come not from voting per SE, but from all the activities surrounding the election, like attending rallies, discussing the issues, posting to social media, and watching election coverage with friends and family. It's during these social activities and not just the polls that it's important for us to express our political opinions. They refer to them as political badges.
So that is a psychological analysis of how someone like Kissen could say, well, we just got to look at bin Laden's words and then he doesn't look at bin Laden's words like this is a very, very intelligent man. He's excellent on the social justice questions of the day. For those of you who don't know, when it comes to things like the claim that America's inherently racist, the proof is that there's income differences and violence differences. The reality is in America,
Asians earn more than whites. And when it comes to black on white violence, blacks are much more are about 13 times more likely to initiate violence against whites than the other way around. So when you come across stats like that, you might say, well, I need to either become a social justice warrior or a white nationalist.
When I see a crime happen in the Middle East, I either have to support Hamas or Israel. This, Mr. Kissen, is the fake divide that people constantly try to get us in, politicians and the corporate press in particular. The good news is there are sides to take. You don't just have to be Robinson Caruso alone on the island. You can say I support the people in life who achieve their ends voluntarily through voluntary exchanges, original appropriation or persuasion.
And the people who I hate, those are the good guys, the people who I hate, the evil people who I'm against, or anyone who initiate violence against peaceful people. Violence when it comes to resisting aggressors, Totally legitimate. Initiating violence against peaceful people. This is what separates slavery from work, rape from lovemaking, trade from theft, kidnapping someone versus having a dinner party. All of these things are the root of civilization.
I asked Mr. Kissen to embrace civilization. I have no problem condemning Al Qaeda and Hamas as people who advocate violations of the non aggression principle and initiate violence against peaceful people. I'm willing to condemn Hamas. Mr. Kissen, are you willing to condemn the IDF? Really. Thank you to everyone for watching Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone. Mr. Kissen, you are welcome on the Libertarian Institute podcast anytime.