Guest: Dave DeCamp – Trump's Geopolitical Chess Moves & Being Anti-War in the Age of Empire

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Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast, a hub for free-thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty and the daunting task of government accountability. Here are your hosts, Jason Bassler, Matt Agorist, and Don Vyde Jr. Hello again, Freethinkers. Welcome back to the Freethought Project podcast. My name is Jason Bassler, and joining me is the Freethought Project editor-in-chief, Matt Agorist. And we also have TFTP editor and writer, Don Vyde Jr., also joining us today.

Well, as always, guys, we have another enlightening and thought-provoking episode lined up for you. Today, we'll be breaking down some of the most pressing topics regarding the U.S. geopolitical strategies. We'll likely touch on the first few weeks of Trump's presidency, and we'll be discussing all things anti-war related. So thank you once again for joining us, guys. So to start the show, we have both some bad news and some good news today. I'll go ahead and start with the good news.

The good news is that the Free Thought Project is getting back on our feet with funding and we're moving forward with some big plans. Can't get into all the details yet guys, but we are mounting up a new resurgence and looking to hire some writers and content creators, specifically video editors. So if you guys appreciate the work we do and have some skills in these areas, please reach out and message me or email us and we'll be sharing more about this as time goes on.

But we're feeling good about the future of the Freethought Project and hopefully with a little luck you'll start to see a lot more of our content moving forward. Okay, well, here is the bad news, guys. A couple weeks ago, our Facebook account was hacked. And even though we tried to reach out to Facebook for support, it didn't really materialize in much. But now, as of a few days ago, our Police the Police Facebook page with 900,000 followers was hijacked and taken by the hackers.

And we no longer have access to that page. And to make it worse, it appears the page is now deleted. And as of yesterday, our free thought project Facebook page is now also out of our control. But we have made some contact with Facebook reps and they appear to be helping. We're not feeling very optimistic about the pages being recovered. But hopefully next week when we do our podcast, we'll have some more positive updates about this.

But we did want to share the news with you guys so you know why we've been erased from Facebook.

And of course you know it's been bad enough experiencing the endless censorship on that site but now we're enduring hackers so i guess we could add that to the list of uh trials and tribulations and uh you know let's i guess hope that it all works out for the best so definitely keep your fingers crossed guys also i wanted to share with you that we had a great conversation with dan taxationist theft vermin last week so uh when this episode's over definitely download and listen to that one.

Not only did we touch on some thoughts about the new Trump administration's executive order spree, but we also got into the philosophical implications on how taxation is theft, what we can do to opt out of the tax system, and how the IRS enforcement mechanisms aren't really as aggressive as we think they are. Now, after all, Dan did write an entire book about this subject, so definitely check out that episode.

And one last thing, guys, please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast to help us get into more people's ears. All right. Well, enough of me blabbing here. Allow me to introduce our guest today. Our guest today is a journalist and editor for antiwar.com and has written for various publications, including Global Research, Veterans Today, and Activist Post. He also hosts a YouTube show entitled Anti-War News with Dave DeCamp.

So yeah, guys, our guest today is the brilliant and relentless newshound Dave DeCamp, a man with his finger on the pulse of foreign policy and geopolitics and a go-to source for virtually all the internet's anti-war insights. So Dave, thank you for joining us today and welcome to the Freethought Project podcast. Thanks for having me, Jason, Matt, and Don. I'm a big fan of all you guys and the Freethought project. So happy to be here. Oh yeah.

Thank you, brother. Yeah, I appreciate that. And as we're big fans of antiwar.com as well, and certainly thrilled to have you joining us. Big thanks to Don for arranging this conversation. And, you know, once again, we have plenty of news to discuss. And I kind of feel like a broken record saying that almost every week now.

But if nothing else, you know, the Trump presidency 2.0 has been exciting in the sheer volume of news produced in the past three weeks. But as journalists, it's definitely been challenging to keep up with all of it. And I kind of feel like that might be Trump's strategy in all this.

You know, it's kind of like the move fast break things kind of thought process, especially regarding the traditional media paradigm, because it does feel like this could be a deliberate tactic to keep the legacy media on its heels. If they keep moving at this breakneck speed, they could do more with less criticism. And, you know, let's face it, guys, like the American public only has so much bandwidth for all this information at once.

So, you know, the faster they sign these executive orders and make these game changing shifts, you know, that the less time the media really has to create their own narratives to kind of combat some of these moves by the Trump administration.

Now, there are several topics I did want to get into today, but one of those topics that doesn't seem to be getting as much airtime and attention is the fact that while everybody's kind of pointing and cheering with Elon and Doge, you know, cutting USAID and a bunch of these other, you know, nonsensical spending across the board in government, Trump and the House Republicans actually want to raise the military spending by another $100 billion. And the Senate wants to increase it by $150 billion.

So the bill also would raise the debt limit and include tax and government spending cuts. And Trump called it one big, beautiful bill. But I think here at the Free Thought Project, and I think most critical thinkers probably would suggest otherwise. Dave, I know you tweeted about this yesterday, but is Elon cutting government spending just for the military industrial complex to spend more? What are your thoughts on this seemingly problematic proposal?

Yeah, I mean, we've seen Trump say a few times that he's open to the idea of an audit of the Pentagon.

But on the other hand, he's going through with all these executive orders that are going to, if they're going to be carried out, they're going to really increase military spending, especially this thing he signed for what he calls an American Iron Dome, like a huge missile air defense program, which would just be a total boondoggle for the weapons makers and start a new arms race with Russia, basically.

And that's one of the things that the Republicans in the House are thinking for this $100 billion increase that they want, one of the potential things that it could fund. And you mentioned the Senate wants to increase this by $150 billion. And again, this is part of an overall budget package that they're trying to put together, and it will include some government spending cuts. But at the same time, it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, and it's going to increase military spending.

So, you know, I mean, they're not tackling the real sources of inflation and, you know, with the money supply and everything. So while I think the cuts, some of these cuts are good, especially the fact, really, I think the best good that's come out of this is that it's got people talking about the real nefarious things that USAID is up to with regime change operations around the world.

And now there's a tension on the National Endowment for Democracy, which is, they call it an NGO, but it's funded by the US government. It's essentially a front for the CIA. It's good that we're talking about this. It's good that they don't have funding right now because they're usually up to no good somewhere else around the world. But, you know, in the grand scheme of things, these cuts that we're seeing are not really significant if they're going to be increasing the military spending.

And I've even seen Trump say, and with Trump, it is really hard to know what he's really planning. And I think it is part of his strategy to kind of get people distracted. You know, like the whole Greenland thing, you know, is he that serious about it? But, you know, he talks about it so much that he makes it this big news, but I, you know, there's other things kind of going on behind the scenes.

And if they're going to increase military spending and basically maintain the empire as it is, then, you know, government spending and inflation, you know, those things aren't really going to be going to be fixed. Again, I still, I think it's good to cut a lot of this stuff that Doge is focusing on, but I hope they get more into the meat of the thing, which is the Pentagon.

Right. Yeah. You know, I feel like there's a couple of things that just probably won't be acknowledged or cut, you know, and I feel like the military spending is one of those. And boy, yeah, maintaining the empire is absolutely correct. And maybe this is shifting gears just slightly here. But, you know, I was kind of going through here and looking at a few of the things that are currently happening.

And, you know, we all know that Trump is a dealmaker and, you know, his constituency loves to remind us that of that. And in many ways, I guess it seems more advantageous to America's health, you know, for him to be this dealmaker than being a pushover or an empty vessel, kind of like Biden was.

But with that said, you know, recently Trump demanded that Ukraine actually hands over 500 billion in rare earth minerals for all the support and funding and weapons and equipment and everything that we sent over there and for continued support. And oddly, that's kind of a very specific figure, which just so happens to be the same exact amount that Trump boasted will be allocated to his new Stargate project with Sam Altman and Larry Ellison. But Max Blumenthal mentioned, he had a great point.

It might be increasingly difficult to find Ukrainians who are willing to die to secure their country's mineral wealth for Donald Trump. And I know they're already forcing people into conscription. But in some ways, I kind of get where Trump's coming from, especially because nobody really knows how many billions of dollars the Biden administration funneled to Ukraine. But in other ways, like the implication of this seems vast and very problematic.

It's almost like saying the quiet part out loud, right? Like the American conquest has long been associated with like, you know, resources such as oil, gold, minerals and stuff. But it seems now that it's front and center, it's definitely an interesting strategy. So like, what's your take on all this?

Yeah. So this is one thing I appreciate about Trump is that he kind of takes the mask off of the whole thing. Especially after coming from the Biden administration with guys like Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, they're preaching all this human rights stuff. And at the same time, they're helping Israel just slaughter all these women and children in Gaza. But Trump just comes out and says, oh yeah, we want minerals. We put a lot of money into it and basically we want our investment to pay off.

And this is something he said in his first administration when he said, oh, I'm going to stay in Syria to secure the oil. But there's kind of contradicting things going on here. So something very good happened yesterday that Trump did was he got on the phone with Putin. And it was actually, I just looked it up earlier, when was the last time the leaders of the US and Russia spoke, or at least the last publicly known phone call.

And it was exactly three years before that was the last time that Biden spoke with Putin. And Biden himself even acknowledged a few times over the past couple of years that the US and Russia were at the closest point of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And even acknowledging that, he couldn't bother to get on the phone with the leader of Russia.

So I think when it comes to the risk of World War III, nuclear war, I think just the fact that they're talking is good and they're setting up a summit, so that is all good. At the same time, another thing happened yesterday. The US Treasury Secretary was in Ukraine presenting this potential deal for rare earth and oil and gas that the US wants to extract from Ukraine. And they're saying this is going to provide Ukraine with a long-term security shield with long-term military aid.

So if they're going to try to make a deal with Russia that involves the US continuing to give Ukraine all these weapons, I don't see Russia going for that at the moment. Right now, Russia has pretty much all the leverage.

Time is on Russia's side here so the two things kind of don't really jive trying to reach a deal to end the war but also reach trying to reach another deal to make to ensure that you get all these resources and that the u.s continues to ship weapons over there yeah i think that was the plan all along right these rare minerals that they've been plotting to get for a long time this goes back to the 90s.

With milosevich i think that this this has been like a a long play to to get possession of all those minerals in that area. But yeah, man, back to Trump's call to Putin, that was a, that was pretty big deal. I like to applaud him for that. You know, he, we, we give credit where credit is due and trying to end that brutal bloody war is, is, is a good move, you know, but Zelensky was kind of butthurt, right? Because he didn't, because Trump didn't call him first, he called Putin first.

But I mean, if you want to end that war, that's who you call. You don't call the puppet guy who just wants all this money being flown into their country. And apparently he still wants that. He wants the U.S. to prioritize Ukraine and.

But if Trump is serious about reaching a peace deal with Putin, how much leverage does Ukraine even have in that? Just these minerals? Do you think Ukraine will be forced into a deal they don't want? How do you see this playing out in the long haul? Yeah, I mean, well, Zelensky particularly is going to be forced into a deal he doesn't want because one another thing that the U.S. is saying, you know, we don't know much about what the U.S. is going to offer Russia.

But one thing that we've seen them say is that after there's a ceasefire, there's got to be elections in Ukraine. And Zelensky canceled the elections saying, you know, because they're in martial law, they can't have elections. So, you know, his term in office expired last year, but he's still in power. And he knows if he signs a deal with Russia that cedes territory to Russia, which is going to have to happen, he's not going to win an election after that.

After all this, you know, death, the Ukraine losing so much and just not getting anything out of this. And I know some of the opposition in the country, this guy, Arostovich is his last name that used to work for Zelensky. He's been going around saying, you know, Zelensky should have signed a deal with Russia back in 2022, right after the initial invasion. They could have presented it as a victory. Oh, we stopped them from getting Kiev. And then we signed a deal. And that was that.

But he chose to fight the war because he had the US and NATO whispering in his ear saying that they're going to fund the whole thing. But he had these unrealistic war goals the whole time, saying that they were going to take back Crimea. That was another thing that happened yesterday. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, said that that's unrealistic and that there will be no NATO membership.

I mean, these are things that Biden could have said three years ago to prevent the invasion or to stop the war in its first days, in its first weeks. That's just the tragedy of all this. So Zelensky, he's not going to do good in any election. So he might be desperate to make sure a deal doesn't happen, which there's always the risk of, because Ukraine's been gotten pretty good at carrying out attacks inside Russia.

They're always flying these drones in, which they developed thanks to help from the CIA, which we just recently learned. And they're also really good at killing people and doing these assassinations inside Russia, which is another thing that the intelligence got good at doing thanks to support from the CIA that started going back to 2014. So there's always the risk of him trying to do something big.

But it's good that Russia knows that the US now at least is saying that they want the war to end that they want to make a deal.

Yeah, you know, most certainly, you know, that's one of the things that, you know, again, as much as I rag on Trump, very much deservedly so that I was at least glad to see when I was scrolling through some of the headlines last night, ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine, ruling out giving nukes to Ukraine, which, as you said, you know, could have easily prevented this entire conflict. I remember just probably about a year, a little under a year before the war in Ukraine broke out.

I was watching the Ron Paul Liberty Report, and they were talking about escalations that were happening in Ukraine and all this sort of stuff. And I remember very clearly, I posted to my Facebook page, and I said, people need to watch what's happening here because they're about to do the same thing in Ukraine that they did to Syria. I said that a little under a year before the war even started.

And then shortly after it started, I was making the point, along with many others, I'm not taking 100% of the credit, obviously, many other people were saying this as well, but it seems like, obviously, because essentially the entirety of the conflict is based on the fact that the U.S.

Backed a coup in Kiev in 2014 with the CIA, with John McCain, with Victoria Nuland backing these neo-fascist militants, taking over the government, ousting Yanukovych, that they were using this, one, as a proxy, obviously. To, you know, hamper Russia, try to destabilize the region.

You know, sort of this geopolitical, jingoistic jockeying for power, but also because Ukraine is sitting on so many rare earth minerals, as we mentioned earlier, that it seemed to me and many others, I remember hearing Ron and Daniel McAdams mentioned this on the Liberty Report as well, that a very realistic reason as to potentially why the US government was just completely neglecting these very simple solutions.

Okay, we're going to rule out NATO membership, we're going to rule out nukes, and that would pretty much keep Russia at bay. The reason why they were continuing to prolong this conflict and the saber rattling was because to destabilize Ukraine, to put them in enough of a situation to where they can get these rare earth minerals. Because of course, as we know, the US empire has two primary goals. One, to expand its unipolar hegemony with global destabilization and proxy regimes and endless wars.

But also through that, the colonialism of seizing all of the wealth and the resources necessary for maintaining said empire. And it's just such an awful thing for the people of Ukraine who don't deserve the crap from either direction. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's the real tragedy again, is just all the death and suffering for all of this. And, you know, for something that could have been, I think, very easily avoided.

And you mentioned how the war was provoked and Scott Horton just wrote a textbook on that. So people cannot deny it. And you just see the way that the language has changed.

If you remember in 2022, it was an unprovoked invasion and anybody who brought up the context, the history of it was smeared as on the payroll of Russia. And that's kind of gone away a lot more now. People are acknowledging the reality of the situation. And, you know, this this is what tends to happen, you know, a few years into these wars. At first, everybody's on board, but then people lose interest and then realize, oh, actually, we were just lied to about the whole thing.

And what do you make of, you remember back in March of 2022, when Dmitry Peskov came out on the, on Russian press and said that Russia would halt the military operations in a moment. And he, our officials and NATO told, told Ukraine to deny that deal. Do you think any of those people that actually egged this on and told Ukraine to deny that peace deal that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars, do you think any of those people will ever be held to account?

I mean, not looking at our track record here in the U.S., considering the rehabilitation of all the people from the Bush administration. But yeah, I mean, that really should be, I think, the biggest scandal of the Biden administration, the fact that there was a deal on the table and they told him not to sign it. And they've admitted this. Victoria Nuland's admitted this.

That's one reason why I'm very happy about the National Endowment for Democracy losing its funding, because that's where Nuland went after leaving the Biden administration. So she, she has lost her paycheck from that, at least I'm sure she's got a few other paychecks though, but yeah, no, I mean, these people are, it's so shameful, like what they have done here.

And yeah, I, you know, I just can't imagine that there'll be held to count unless, you know, Trump goes for some type of retribution over, you know, some Russiagate stuff that's happened to him. You know, they, some of them could get caught up into that, but you know, they're just going to go on speaking and getting these think tank jobs and all things like that. Yeah, it's a shame, man. I was listening to Rogan the other day, and they were talking about how Rogan was at the Trump inauguration.

And everybody saw that viral video of George Bush, George W. Bush there, like, looked like he was fucking high on something, man, like, like fucking laughing gas or something. But Rogan said, man, if you are actually was Kurt Metzger that was his guest on there. Kurt Mesker said, I guess if you kill a fucking five million people, I guess the only way you can live with yourself is to stay fucked up on drugs all the time.

Well, he had to head. Do you guys remember this? I forget when exactly this was, but it was after the invasion of Russia and George W. Bush was like giving some speech somewhere. And he said, oh, all this is because of one man's unjust decision to invade Iraq. And he goes, oh, I mean, Ukraine. He laughed to himself. I'm sure he's got some guilt.

But then I see people like Newland. She did this interview recently where she's just smiling about everything, talking about all sorts of stuff she did in her career in the State Department, meddling in Russia's elections in Ukraine, before the coup, during the coup, after the coup. She seems just so pleased with herself. I mean, she, to me, seems like pure evil. George W. Bush might have at least a little bit, a little piece of a conscience somewhere in there.

Plenty of skeletons in the closet. And not to mention Newland's Nord Stream 2 pipeline cover up. I mean, she was complicit in that as well. Of course, I guess we don't have any confirmation that it was the US at this point, but I think most assumptions place the ball in their court. But there was a lot of talk about Ukraine before the election. And Trump mentioned having the unique ability to draw down the war between Russia and Ukraine.

And I don't know, since the inauguration, we didn't really hear much about that until the past few days or so. And just recently, I think it was maybe a day ago, Fox News claims that Trump said that Russia did agree to immediately begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. But.

Scott Horton recently said, if Trump can end this war and make peace with the Russians and the Chinese, and I guess he's even recently called for a summit with Chairman Xi in China and, you know, wind down some of these conflicts with Iran and North Korea, I mean, he could really cement his legacy as being an actual anti-war president. You know, we heard for years and years, you know, Trump is this anti-war president and the evidence just kind of, you know, was counter to that.

But do you agree with Scott, like this being like an optimal opportunity for Trump to like really cement this legacy? And I mean, because before we'd always hear about like Obama and even Biden, like not having the ability to wind down like the Iraq war, the war on terror and things like that, because there was just too much pressure from the military industrial complex. Do you think that, you know, that the military industrial complex will actually allow this to happen?

Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree that he has the opportunity to do it. I think the one big thing that might impede everything is if this Gaza ceasefire collapses, because if Israel restarts in Gaza and Trump has basically given them the green light. He said, if they, you know, if Hamas doesn't release all the hostages by Saturday, then they should let all hell break out. And Israel needs U.S. bombs, U.S. Political support, U.S. intelligence to do that. And then the region would explode again.

Yemen would start attacking again. Like it would just be a mess. So that's kind of the wild card factor here. The other thing is the China Hawks and his administration, a big part of this is that these guys want to wind down in Ukraine so they could escalate this military buildup in China and prepare for this future war over Taiwan that the US military has been openly preparing for in recent years, actually saying that they're planning to fight a direct war with China.

It's really an insane idea because China doesn't have all the nukes that Russia has, but they have enough that we can't go to war with them. So it also depends on how the administration is going to approach China, which again, it's kind of stacked with China hawks. We don't know, we haven't seen too much movement there yet, but Trump is saying all these things about, oh, how he likes Xi Jinping and wants to talk with them and get along with China.

But at the same time, if the policy actually turns out to be more of the same, giving more military aid to Taiwan, sending more warships through the Taiwan Strait, that's going to stoke the tension. But I think he has the opportunity because if he wants to do it, this is one thing where the executive, the president has a lot of power and can really do what he wants as the commander in chief. So the question is, will he really do it? And I do think Ukraine, I see this thing ending in some way.

But again, we have a lot of people in their minds are, okay, all these weapons were given to Ukraine, let's start shipping them to Taiwan. And then that's kind of another theater where things could ramp up.

And then the Middle East, I mean, this is one thing. Trump is so frustrating because he just says everything. On one issue, he'll say both sides of it basically. And with Iran, he's going around saying, oh, I want a deal. I don't want to bomb them. Let's do a deal. I want to talk with Iran. But then he starts sanctioning them again and reimposes what he calls his maximum pressure campaign. And there is a big shift in Iran's openness to talks with the US from the Ayatollah.

The new president basically ran a campaign on engaging with the West to get sanctions relief. And the Ayatollah gave him the green light for that. But now, since Trump's on this order of maximum pressure, now they're saying, no, all right, well, we're not going to talk to you. Then you're not serious about talks if you're just going to sanction us. And then there's these reports that Israel's planning to bomb Iran. And it's another thing.

I don't see the US or Israel bombing Iran anytime soon. But if everything explodes in Gaza again, the whole region could explode. Things could escalate in Lebanon and Iran, and it could just all be on the table again. War with Iran. We came really close under Biden to a full-blown war with Iran, with Israel bombed Iran several times. So that's a big factor. And Trump doesn't seem to really care if Israel restarts its bombing campaign in Gaza.

He's basically given them the green light. The thing is, is that the Israelis, they support this ethnic cleansing plan that Trump, this whole Trump, that's a whole nother thing to get into Trump's plan with Gaza. But the fact is that right now the Israelis want to get the hostages out and they know the only way is through this deal that's happening. But I'm afraid that once they get the hostages back, even if they withdraw from

Gaza, they're just going to restart the bombing campaign with Trump's support. Right. That's been one of my biggest concerns with the whole thing, simply because we look back at Trump's first administration, and it's a who's who of saying one thing and then quietly doing another. One of my first major articles for the Free Thought Project, I think it was the second article that we published that I actually wrote prior to the first one. It's the one that got my job here, essentially.

I sent it to Matt and Jason, and they're like, damn, this is really good. It was really elaborating out Trump's foreign policy. And one of the main points that I hit on was that, you know, all of this talk during his first term of, oh, you know, he's, you know, troop reductions, he's bringing the troops home, and it's always followed up by a very quiet story. Mentioned a headline somewhere in the news of, oh, by the way, now we're redeploying troops somewhere else.

So rather than actually bringing troops home, it's just pivoting them from one place on the chessboard to another, you know, in addition to a whole lot of this stuff. And it sort of seems that, you know, similar to what's currently happening, because, you know, if the U.S. Goes in full with the, oh, we're going to own Gaza, we're going to go in and bulldoze everything down. We're going to create, as Trump says, great oceanside real estate.

That's going to require troops on the ground at the same time where they're talking about pulling troops out of Syria. So it seems like a repeat of that whole process. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but that's always been one of my biggest concerns with this is because we have the historical context of the flip-flopping.

And so, like you mentioned, I was going to bring up the The headline, because I was checking through antiwar.com just a little earlier, the headline that Israel could easily bomb Iran. And that's probably going to be one of the, in my opinion, probably one of the biggest pitfalls of his foreign policy is the fact that we know with the funding from Miriam Adelson and so many of the other people, Trump is bought and owned by the Zionists, just like Biden was, just like Harris was.

Because, you know, IPAC is, you know, the most pervasive foreign influence on the U.S. Government to the point where we still we have current sitting politicians like in Congress that will have an Israeli flag beside an American flag outside of their office.

So the idea that he's more than likely to just give carte blanche to Israel to do whatever the hell they want in the region and the potentialities of what that could provoke with Iran, Syria, specifically with the occupation of the Golan Heights and all of that is just it does not bode well for things to or if things were to kick off in that regard. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. You can't end the wars in the Middle East.

You can't end US involvement in the Middle East if you're going to continue supporting Israel, especially the way that Trump is supporting Israel, basically supporting the most extreme elements. He put Mike Huckabee, he nominated to be the ambassador to Israel. And he's one of these guys who thinks Israel has the right over all this land that occupied Palestinian territories. And he's emboldening those types of the Israelis that want the greater Israel project.

They just want to keep expanding territory by saying, oh yeah, all the Palestinians got to leave permanently. That's it. So right now, Trump is being basically more of a hawk than Netanyahu is right now on Gaza. And so Netanyahu is under even more pressure now from these people, these psychos who just openly want ethnic cleansing, genocide.

For years, they've been on the record that that's what they want, so they could build Jewish settlements in these places. It's just not a good sign for the future. I was hopeful for a minute, foolishly probably, that he might be better on Israel than I thought because they did get Netanyahu to sign the deal, which was amazing because it just showed how Biden really was not putting any pressure on Israel. He was just letting them do whatever they want.

And despite all the rhetoric, but then now the question is, oh, is this what they've been telling them the whole time? Like, look, if you sign this deal, we'll support you get, you know, kicking all the Palestinians out of there and just taking over the territory. I mean, this idea of the U.S. actually owning it, like I find it hard to believe that that's actually what they're going to pursue. I think they're just going to let Israel take it over.

So that's just what I'm worried about. And then this is, you know, Trump has a whole complete fundamental misunderstanding of the region. This whole, the Abraham's Accords, like Israel normalizing with the Gulf Arab countries before settling the problem of the occupation of the Palestinian territory was never going to bring peace. Israel wasn't at war with the UAE. They weren't at war with Bahrain.

They're in a state of war with the Palestinians because they occupy their land or in Gaza, they kept it under blockade. And October 7th, Trump always says, oh, this never would have happened, but it's a direct result of these policies that Trump pursued in his first administration. And he thinks, and this is what Biden thought that, oh, if we get the Saudis and the Israelis to have diplomatic relations, this is going to solve everything.

But the Palestinians, they have to figure out that issue to actually bring peace to the region.

Right. It's an incredibly tone deaf sort of position that our government really has, not just with October 7th, but just the way they view Palestinians as almost less than people, honestly not even taking into account you know they've been under direct siege since 2006 they've been under apartheid since you know was it especially after the war in 1967 the nakba in 1948 i mean this is something that's been going on for and even prior to that you know going back to the belfar agreement you know

it's been going on for a century and uh. The refusal to just acknowledge that basic fact is like one of the most blatant blind spots of any sort of logical foreign policy. Now, I did see recently this really good piece by Robert Inlakesh in The Last American Vagabond where he was talking about a lot of the crackdowns in the West Bank have started to get really bad just as the so-called ceasefire. Because we know there's still bombing residential neighborhoods in southern

Lebanon. So it's not really even a ceasefire. But since this so-called ceasefire, the raids and mass arrests and crackdowns in the West Bank have really started to kick up. So what are your thoughts on that? Is Israel just sort of pivoting from Gaza to the West Bank now? Yeah, well, two days after the Gaza ceasefire started, Israel announced this new big operation in the West Bank.

And some of them even said, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, who's the most extreme in the cabinet, said that this was part of the deal, that the Gaza ceasefire deal was, okay, we'll do that and then we'll escalate in the West Bank. And we've seen them expand these open fire orders, basically giving them free reign to shoot unarmed civilians under certain circumstances. And we've seen the result of that. They just killed a pregnant woman the other day and children.

And, you know, it almost seems like it's only a matter of time before there's like a mass uprising, kind of like another intifada in the West Bank. You know, you have the resistance groups, but I mean, just in general, kind of an overall uprising, I think is possible, especially if things restart in Gaza. But, you know, I think that was probably part of the deal too. And this is a whole nother thing, you know, Trump.

He says, you know, the settlers, Miriam Adelson, you know, there are these reports that she gave him the $100 million basically on the condition that he'll support the Israeli annexation of the West Bank. And I mean, if that happens, if they really try to expel Palestinians from the West Bank, you know, there's just so many things at play here. But one thing is Jordan. You know, people always think of Jordan as a puppet of the U.S., King Abdullah as a puppet of the U.S., which is true.

He gets a ton of aid from the US. He was just here and basically had this humiliation ritual. And his meeting with Trump, Trump's talking about owning Gaza and sending all the Palestinians to Jordan. And King Abdullah had to just sit there and he didn't even really object to it. He said afterwards that he told Trump he was against the plan. But if they try to amass exodus from the West Bank into Jordan, this is an existential threat for King Abdullah.

The thing he's always tried to prevent is a Palestinian uprising, in his country, because about half his population is Palestinian, and they're not happy about his relationship with the US and Israel. So this could turn into like a real, you know, who knows what could happen then if Jordan could go to war with Israel, not that they would really have much of a chance because all their weapons are American. But, you know, it's just, there's just all these factors here.

You know, if he's going to try to support the annexation of the West Bank, this is another thing that it's just, there's not going to be peace. You know, there's no chance of it. But he was asked about it the other day. He said, you know, are you going to support the annexation of the West Bank? He didn't answer, but he said, oh, that's all going to work out really great. It's like to know anything about the situation and just say, oh, yeah, soon. Don't worry. It'll all be it'll all work out.

I mean, again, it just shows that he really doesn't understand the situation at all. No, no. And those all those countries surrounding it where these refugees would be pushed into or some of them are US allies like Jordan, especially, but others would be running into the arms of bricks. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Like, what do you think would happen? And like, I mean, this was, this is my worst case scenario here.

I would, I would think that this would push all these countries, including Saudi Arabia, right into the, not the arms, I guess, but into like the accepted by BRICS where they would maybe even plan a war against the United States because they would have like a majority of allies now in that region. And we would have no chance to fight back about them or against them. What are your thoughts on BRICS's role in this potential fucking bomb that could go off in Gaza?

Yeah, well, I think this definitely, because we've already seen some of the Arab countries move toward China, including Saudi Arabia and stuff. The thing about China and Russia is that I don't think they're dumb enough to get involved in any kind of war over Israel, over the Palestinian territories.

But do you think that they could see that as an opportunity to strike at the u.s though like and not in a means of like doing it over gaza but doing it when the u.s is weakened, yeah yeah you know if if they're going to provide kind of economic support to these countries that the u.s you know might not anymore i think that that's possible a lot of the arab countries you know i think even if things got really bad probably wouldn't actually go to war but the ones you know right on the

borders where the refugees will go there, they would do something, you know, it's not like they're just going to sit back and let that happen. And then there's, you know, the chance of Iran getting involved. They're really the big threat to Israel, you know, that their missiles can get past Israeli air defenses.

They did show that at the same time, their ally in Lebanon has basically been neutered Hezbollah because as Don mentioned, there's been the ceasefire in Lebanon, but is one side has not ceased fire. Israel has continued to bomb Lebanon and they're still occupying Southern Gaza and they keep pushing back the deadline to withdraw and Hezbollah still hasn't done anything. So it goes to show that they they really are hurting but yeah i mean there's just a chance of.

Of things really blowing up here and yeah i'm sure china and russia because of the just situation they would definitely take advantage of it to work it to their advantage against the u.s, now i wanted to to back up just a hair and dig into this but we have we did discuss it pretty extensively on our previous podcast last week so we don't have to spend too much more time on it but But, you know, I want to get your perspective on this scene. You have much more nuanced view than most.

When Trump announced the whole Gaza, the U.S. Taking over the Gaza Strip, there was footage of Netanyahu seemingly kind of caught off guard by it and kind of dismayed about, you know, Trump's statement about building beautiful homes for the Palestinians. And obviously, people are kind of concerned about the feasibility and the implications of the plan. But do you think like, well, two things. Do you think Trump was just being flamboyant?

Like how realistic is this proposal? Is it just like more political posturing? And like, do you also, do you think Netanyahu was like on board with this or like, you know, the way he looked on the video, it seemed like he was completely caught off guard. Yeah. So I watched both those because they did like the little short press conference before their meeting and then they did that one. And during the one before the meeting, Trump was just going off about how,

oh yeah, all the Palestinians, they got to go. They can't return. It's got to be permanent. And Netanyahu is just beaming, just sitting there with this huge smile on his face. Because this is Netanyahu's plan. This has been the Israeli government's policy. This is what they want ultimately is to kick ethnic cleansing of Gaza, get them all out. Sure. But it hasn't been their kind of official thing. Netanyahu hasn't said it outright. Some elements of the government have called for it.

So to have the president of the United States sitting next to him and saying and declaring that the Palestinians got to go, Netanyahu looked very happy. But then at this other press conference, Trump starts going off on this plan about owning Gaza. And based on the reports, it's tough to really know, but, based on the behind the scenes reporting, Trump apparently told Netanyahu about the idea like right before they went out there.

And so I think he just didn't say all the details. And I think Netanyahu was just like, wow, like, I don't know if he, I think he was just, I think he was caught off guard, but I don't think he's against this idea. And again, the idea of the US actually taking it over is just hard to fathom how that would actually happen.

But, you know, so I think ultimately, the way he views it and the way kind of the Israeli right wing view it is as Trump, is Trump giving them green light and the support to really genocide the Palestinians in Gaza, you know, force them all to leave. And I fear what this is going to turn into is basically Israel's going to restart the bombing campaign and they're going to cut off all the aid completely.

And Trump's just going to be shrugging his shoulders like, eh, they can leave, you know, if Egypt lets him in, and that'll just be that, and it'll just be a slow grind. This, I think, kind of the worst case of what this could turn into. And then realistically after that, because now Trump's saying, oh, Israel's going to hand it to us after the fighting's over. Is that really going to happen? I just don't know. And is that what he has in mind? Or is it art of the deal? Is it a negotiation tactic?

The thing is, is that I think in his mind, this is a negotiation tactic to get Egypt and Jordan to take in all the Palestinians. Like, I think that's the thing that he wants. And that's the thing that's going to destabilize the region even more. Again, I want to shift gears here just a little bit. I do appreciate all your insight on all this, though, Dave. It's amazing, your wealth of knowledge.

But yeah, moving maybe away from the perpetual war state here, the war machine, I tweeted this morning about a recent Intercept article highlighting how the new Trump administration is seeking to hire contractors to monitor social media posts that speak negatively about ICE. And they're even requiring the contractors have the ability to administer facial recognition, to track down, I guess, additional information about people online, about anybody who's speaking out about ICE.

And this almost seems similar to the role that Peter Thiel and Palantir would be contracted for, maybe even Larry Ellison, the founder of the CIA-tied Oracle Company, who has touted his views for the AI-driven surveillance state. I think it was in September of last year, he basically said that citizens will be on their best behavior because we'll be constantly recording and reporting

everything that's going on. And so Trump did also mention that ICE is running out of money when talking about the budget concerns. And it's obviously no secret that Trump is friendly with these technocrat oligarchs who have the means to implement this technology. This is also a direct assault on the First Amendment and freedom of speech, along with Trump's recent executive order to remove the non-citizen students who are criticizing Israel, which obviously is completely unconstitutional.

Journalists like Whitney Webb and Derek Brose believe that there is a significant shift towards this AI driven biometric surveillance state that's currently underway.

And what, you know, the intercept recently reported on, it seems to be pointing in that direction. So I know this isn't quite like anti-war stuff, but like, are you seeing this as well? Do you kind of have like similar concerns about this new surveillance state on steroids? Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned Peter Thiel and Palantir, and this is kind of like their whole thing, I think, right? Like kind of biometric stuff coupled with AI.

And I mean, you mentioned, you know, because one thing we have been covering is the anti-Semitism order and like the crackdown on the protests. And it's like that that's very concerning, too. You know, there's legislation basically in a lot of states that targets the basically criticism of Israel and smears it as being anti-Semitic. And that's one thing that I feared with this administration when it comes to the domestic front, that there would be a crackdown on that.

This ICE thing I haven't seen, that's interesting, though. Is it like they're trying to track people's online criticism of what ICE is doing? Yeah, I mean, they're, you know, obviously, they're using the veneer of, you know, being a safety concern for ICE agency and any anybody who's, you know, working under that agency to kind of protect their well being. But it seems very much like what Whitney Webb has been kind of warning about.

And this is kind of the first thing that I've seen right off the bat here, you know, just what, three weeks into Trump's presidency, that it indicates that it could be potentially, yeah, really shifting more in this direction. And we've seen Argentina with, you know, President Javier Malay kind of doing the same thing with some of the AI within law enforcement, some of the pre-crime stuff.

So I was just curious if you're kind of seeing the same thing as far as just the shift that's happening across the board, kind of maybe moving away from more of the overt censorship into more of like the AI driven biometric stuff. Yeah, no, I definitely see that. This is something that is definitely... I mean, this is a whole can of worms, but that was kind of my theory for the drones that everybody was seeing in Jersey.

And people are still seeing all over in other places is that there's some kind of new surveillance drone and they wanted to test it over a populated area. Again, that gets into a whole nother thing. But I think, yeah, like the surveillance stuff, and this is, you know, they're testing this on Gaza too. I mean, this is in Gaza, it was an AI-driven war, an AI-driven genocide, basically. We've seen all this reporting from Israeli media that they have these AI programs to track people.

And one of them specifically called Where's Daddy tracked Hamas guys, like low-level guys. So they could bomb them when they were in their homes, when they were with their families. They would wait for them to get home and then bomb them. And this is all stuff that can get turned in on us, of course. And I really think that Gaza, you have Google, Microsoft, Palantir, all these companies are involved with the Israeli military with AI.

So and it's a it's a total testing ground i mean same thing with ukraine we've seen it's testing for a lot of these kind of new especially drones you know the new type of drone weapons this is all testing grounds and and things that they'll be able to turn in on the american population for sure yeah i i actually just now saw a post from wikileaks reposting uh an article from i think it's yes cnbc google removes pledge to not use ai for weapons and surveillance uh one of

the one of the key points being google has removed a pledge to abstain from using ai for potentially harmful applications such as weapons and surveillance according to the company's updated ai principles so you know in that same vein it's sort of you know we are without a doubt witnessing this very full speed ahead sort of agenda very much like you know whitney webb and So many of the other fantastic reporters over at Unlimited Hangout have

been reporting on that the Trump administration is going all in on this AI, digital surveillance, biometric grid, even with, you know, in regards to what's happening with the border and ICE, you know, he's been calling for since... This is like 2016 on the campaign trail, or maybe not 2016, but there's this video of him during the trail with him and Pence where he's talking about creating a biometric entry exit tracking system on the border.

And shortly after he got into office, the whole, we're going to build a big, beautiful wall turned into, oh, it's actually going to be a virtual wall with biometrics and surveillance and AI and all this sort of crap. And, you know, so we're definitely seeing them go full speed ahead on all of this. And yeah, quite concerning for sure.

And just to sort of pivot from that, you know, back into sort of the foreign policy aspect of things, what do you make of Trump's designation or I don't even know if it's happened yet, but his calls to attempt to designate cartels as terrorist organizations? Because I can definitely see the potentiality of conflict that that could cause.

We even with, you know, some have some representatives have called for boots on the ground in Mexico, if that were to be the case, which which obviously the president of Mexico would be completely against. It would create an entire shit show. I personally think it's probably more along the lines of just political, you know, movements being made, a whole lot of posturing.

But but you know what what do you make of how that's you know sort of playing out with regard to what's happening at the southern border yeah i mean it's definitely concerning because you see there is actually a lot of support among republicans for the idea of like sending the special forces into mexico to fight the cartels or like bombing the cartels and we've actually seen an increase in surveillance u.s military surveillance

flights along the border targeting the cartels in the last few weeks so since trump came in and the designation of them as a terrorist organization You know, as terrorist organizations, that could definitely be the first step towards some kind of war. And this is how people kind of envision it is as like a counterterrorism thing.

But it seems like people really have a misunderstanding of what the cartels are and the fact that they control lots of territory in Mexico, that they're intertwined kind of with the society and that they have a lot of weapons, a lot of advanced weapons. You know, it's not like these are just guys with AK-47s or something. And look how the U.S. has done against those kind of guys, you know, in the Middle East. But it's, you know, it's something if the U.S.

Starts a war with the cartels, I mean, it would be turning the drug war into a hot war and it would just be a disaster. I mean, it could bring a real war to American soil, too, because they'll be able to launch rocket strikes and things across the border. And they got all sorts of people across the U.S. that might carry out bombing attacks and things. You know, as a libertarian, it's like our answer, especially fentanyl, like how are you going to stop fentanyl from getting in?

It's so tiny, you know, so, you know, the answer is to end the drug war and this would just be ramping it up into like a whole nother level. And it's definitely a concerning thing. You know, I don't see it happening soon that they go to like overt military action. But this is something a lot of people support. Even a lot of people that like read antiwar.com that are like, you know, on the right Republicans, they'll say, well, we got to do something about the cartels.

And it's like, well, this is not, this is not the answer. True. Yeah, I've been seeing a lot of support. I've been talking about that pretty fervently over the past week or so. I mean, I'm seeing a complete entire rebranding of not only the war on drugs, which we're just talking about, but the whole war on terror. I mean, we just started bombing Somalia again last week. And then of course, this trade tariff war that he's also starting here.

So I mean, we might be in these three kind of proxy wars, I guess, to a certain extent. I mean, they're not overt wars with boots on the ground, but they're certainly going to ramp it up. And I'm right there with you, Dave. The idea that the cartels are just going to back down and acquiesce seems unrealistic.

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely something to keep an eye on. Hey, Freethinkers. This is Matt Agorist, and I'm going to take a quick pause to remind you of something really important. First off, apologies for the interruption. But if you're still here, that means you're resonating with what we're doing, and we need your help to keep it alive.

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So thank you for being part of this journey, for sharing these ideas, and for standing with us. We always like to end our podcast with like a white pill question, you know, because we've talked about some pretty bleak shit over the last hour here, man. But before I do that, man, Dave, I just want to thank you for, you know, for coming on. This is this is like been a super pleasure. I know like Jason and I and I don't know about Don because he knows you, but like this is a big geek out moment

for us. Pretty awesome to have you on the podcast.

But yeah man your analysis on like global war and u.s foreign policy even the domestic shit that we jumped into today dude it's it's pretty pretty impressive man what you've been doing over there at antiwar.com exposing all these real agendas behind these conflicts man it's it's second to none dude and i know our audience appreciates you coming on today but before we go we got one last question man so like with with the tensions escalating across the globe whether ukraine Middle East, Gaza,

the increasing militarization at home, you know, it's fucking can get overwhelming. I'm sure many people, including myself, feel like we're being led into a massive, inevitable global conflict with like no off ramp, you know, but you've been studying this for years and I try to remain optimistic. So I have to ask, man, is there a solution or any real way out of this perpetual war machine that you may see?

Do you see like any viable solutions to breaking the cycle before we fucking spiral into something catastrophic? But before you answer that, I also want to ask where you can let people follow your work and support you and keep up with all this incredible reporting that you do, man, besides antiwar.com. So I'd love to hear your thoughts, man. Let's see how we get out of this mess. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for that. That really means a lot for me because

I was reading you before I even started writing, I think. So that's awesome. So anyway, my work, it's all at antiwar.com. For the most part, I write in the news section and I do my daily podcast called Anti-War News, which is on YouTube or you rumble Odyssey, or you could listen to the podcast version. And basically it's five days a week. It's kind of just the news stories that I write that day. You kind of got to be a foreign policy nerd to...

To like it, but it's, you know, basically foreign policy news from our anti-war non-interventionist perspective. And I mean, the way to get out of all this, you know, that's a tough question because I follow this stuff every day. So I have a really, very realistic view on, you know, the state of things, which is just not very good.

But, you know, I think overall there's been a good movement in this country away from supporting war, especially with my generation, like millennials that saw the invasion of Iraq and everything. And the thing that's hopeful is that we see it more kind of on the right.

There's all these veterans that are leading, if you guys are familiar with the Defend the Guard movement, which is basically state-level legislation that would stop, prohibit the federal government from deploying the state's National Guard to a combat zone where they haven't declared war. And this is legislation that could bring back states' rights and has teeth because if it gets passed, then they can't send that National Guard to Somalia or Syria where they send the National Guard today.

And I think things like that, decentralization, which I think people are realizing is more important now, really is the way to the future and not a change in the federal government. Although it does almost seem like we're seeing some kind of coup within the federal government right now.

But ultimately, there's while some good is going to come out of it it seems like this is one kind of faction, of the of the government that wants to make it a more efficient kind of empire you know it's not like they're trying to end it but i still think a lot of the sentiment in this is good and just seeing how people are getting excited about these cuts in the government and everything just try to channel that energy and inform

people and try to get the message out there and hope and pray for peace. Really appreciate your insights and your time today, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks again for having me. It was fun. Music.