Professor Daniel Kovalik, lecturer of International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Associate Professor Thomas Whalen, lecturer in law at Boston University, and Dr. Tara McCormack, lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Leicester, join the program.
Professor Whalen starts the program by saying that Trump upset a lot of people by bring into question article 5 of the NATO treaty, “this has caused a lot of head scratching amongst both democrats and republicans in the West.” Dr. McCormack says that there is a bit of political crisis going on within the US. “Well before the issue of NATO came up, the entire US establishment: media, political, etc, was against Trump… it seemed absolutely incredible that Hillary Clinton should lose, the reality was that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was terrible, she was an extremely unpopular candidate, even now; there was just a poll released, her ratings are below Trumps. At some point, after the results, the Hillary Clinton campaign made the choice to blame Russia, there is a new book ‘Shattered’ which covers the campaign in detail.” Professor Kovalik says that the current debate has not really got anything to do with the rivalry between democrats and republicans. “I just saw an interview with the founder of Pussy Riot, of all people, who is also ringing her hands at the scapegoating of Russia… what she said was that the Republicans are blaming the Muslims, the Democrats are blaming the Russians…. I think the economy is failing, the US’s empire is still huge but it is also waning, and I think that there are some who would like a confrontation with Russia…”
Professor Whalen says that every intelligence agency says that Russia influenced the US elections, which causes a sharp debate to ensue. Dr. McCormack says: “the fact is, that every major state, particularly the US intervenes in elections, America does, Britain has a terrible record. America has a dreadful record of intervening in elections, we know that for a fact…. There is something unhinged if we are calling answering a phishing email an act of war.” Professor Kovalik perhaps sums the debate up: “I think people are just out of their minds on this issue…”
In the second part of the program, Dr. McCormack makes the point that the accent on Russia is killing American democracy and explains how. Professor Whalen says that the problem is that the US has been at war really since 9/11, “America is overstretched, the problem is; we can’t pay for the empire. It’s the age-old problem and we see enemies everywhere, although we are retreating from the global stage because we have no choice, we don’t have the resources to maintain an empire anymore, and this is going to cause a geopolitical nightmare in the decades ahead.” Professor Kovalik agrees that empire overreach is killing this country “we have 64 major bridges in this country that have not been repaired, the infrastructure is falling apart. We have kids who are going hungry, this is the richest country on earth and we are blowing all the money on wars overseas, in fact, Congress just gave more money to the military than Trump even asked for… This whole Russian issue is a distraction from the real problem… the hatred of Russia is in the DNA of Americans; the demonization of Russia gives us the means to continue this ridiculous over-bloated war machine.”
Professor Whalen makes the point that the Russia card is used as a distraction to take people’s attention away from the main problem of today, which is climate change.
This program contains a lot of information and has to be listened to, so as to appreciate the full depth and implications of what is being discussed.
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