Ron Unz Transcript

00:05.15

cactus chu

So I think you've been involved in politics for a very long time and something that's a thread throughout your experience is I think a type of anti-establishment or anti legacy institution kind of. Kind of worldview so is there a moment where you initially had a much more pro legacy institution worldview and then you changed or was this kind of always how you looked at the world.

00:35.18

Ron Unz

Well I don't know if I'd really put myself in that category very much. In other words, there are a number of different issues I felt very strongly about and in many cases if those issues are in conformity with the establishment perspective. Obviously there's much less need for me to do anything about them in other words, you know if there are 23 issues in which I tend to feel that the country's moving in the right direction or where I agree with you know the tide of establishment opinion i. You know would be less likely to concentrate on those because you know there's not really as much to do so. In other words, there's a selection bias in that those issues in which I've become personally most involved have obviously been those that you know would go against the tide rather than with the tide. And you know I mean basically on you know I've always been very interested in political issues. But you know it's been a mix in other words probably until the um probably until about. Thirty years ago in the fall of the Soviet Union I was actually probably much more interested in foreign policy than domestic policy and then you know once in the 1990 s ah you know the foreign policy issue in a sense went away or you know became less relevant. Began focusing much more on some of the trends in the United States which you know I might have found very disturbing and those are the things that I really got involved with.

04:13.27

cactus chu

I Think I think you're right to take issue with my framing because in a lot of cases you would argue that um like you said that you go towards what is correct and sometimes that comes into conflict with the legacy establishment. And of course we can litigate whether I agree with that opinion or not on each individual issue. I'm sure we'll have a lot of time to do that. But I Guess let's try to flip the framing of the question and say ah or let's actually see if you agree with the statement None Would you agree that most people are. Insufficiently skeptical of legacy institutions that there are a lot of issues that those institutions get wrong and that people accept too easily.

05:15.88

Ron Unz

Why I probably say that's true. But also it's that you know obviously many people are obviously very unhappy with certain things in society. In other words, they may be in agreement with some of them but in disagreement with others. But. You know they tend not to really be as actively involved in promoting those issues in which they strongly disagree with the existing establishment opinion. In other words, you know obviously people complain about all sorts of things all the time and you know going back to when I was in college sitting at the dinner table and talking with my friends. You know. All of us had a wide range of different views on different issues. But you know many times there's a great deal of difference between sort of complaining or disagreeing with certain things happening and really deciding to sort of get actively involved to try to oppose them. Or change something and so that's probably None area where I've been you know somewhat different and that I really have I mean to take for example, one of the things that probably I was most african involved in over the last you know, 20 or 25 years and that was the push to get rid of bilingual education and to ensure the children are all taught english in the public schools I mean for decades that had been something. People had been complaining about it and not just me I mean it was overwhelmingly unpopular. It was widely discussed. It was part of, you know, various politics. Ah. Political rhetoric or public statements. But you know there were very few people who really took an active role in the whole thing and so you know the difference was that for various reasons I saw an opportunity at certain points in time to become very actively involved in certain issues and to try to sort of shift the debate on them. And so it's not so much a question of I think legacy institutions but simply disagreeing with certain policies in our existing society and feeling that under the right circumstances. There might be a way to change those policies. Obviously you know very many people. You know, complain about things or even sometimes try to organize to change policies but you know the truth is it's very difficult to achieve anything in those lines so you know under certain circumstances I really saw an opportunity to make a difference and in some cases i. Sort of took that opportunity and sometimes was successful.

10:45.81

cactus chu

Right? I think you're right in that a lot of the issues that you kind of weigh in on or that you do work in are pretty normal standard issue things. But. I do think that there is this kind of tendency and like I said I want to frame this to you properly I want to kind of to frame this from your perspective where I do think a lot of people are very hesitant or very ah or very socially influenced. Taking strong political stances and I'll just I'll just read kind of like the headline I put this in my notes from the website that you published the unz review which is a ah collection of interesting important and controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American Mainstream Media and I think that certainly is a description of ah of your publishing and so maybe this is a better way to get at it right? What is the uns review supposed to do? What is the purpose of the unz review? Why does it exist?

12:19.62

Ron Unz

Oh sure. Well, that's actually a fairly recent development in other words basically um, I was for about twenty years. Twenty five years I'd been doing quite a lot of public policy writing and you know writing of articles for. Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, a lot of other publications and then probably about fifteen or twenty years ago I started really writing much longer articles, sometimes very detailed things especially focusing on issues of race, ethnicity and social policy. For example, during the 1990 s I was writing a lot of articles about affirmative action bilingual education multiculturalism immigration those sorts of things then um, after the um after basically the nine eleven attacks. And as we started moving towards the iraq war I became very concerned about the foreign policy issues and so ah, probably I guess it was 2007 2006 2007 I ended up becoming actually publisher of the american conservative I supported them financially. And I was officially listed as their publisher. Even though I wasn't really that actively involved in the magazine and they took a number of very strong stances on public policy issues with the ones on foreign policy in other words opposition to the Iraq war being the ones really I was most interested in after about. Six or seven years you know as many times happens with smaller by the way. The other thing I should say is that during most of that time I really did very little writing for the American conservative because I was mostly busy with some software development projects of my own. But then around 14011 and 2012 I started doing a lot more writing and really writing some very long detailed articles which was convenient since a hat was the publisher of the magazine I could publish in you know my own magazine and then it sometimes happens. There are certain small ideological organizations. There are sometimes you know conflicts to develop so I ended up being purged as publisher in 2013 and once that happened I really thought to myself. Well you know if I wanted to really continue doing writing it would be nice if I had a venue. For my own material and at that point I really got the idea of setting up a web scene because you know given the changes in technology. It had become much easier to launch a publication than it would have been ten or fifteen years before and so I pretty much launched the unz review.

17:47.82

Ron Unz

Primarily well with one of the main reasons being as a sort of potential venue for my own writings if I wanted to do them down the road and also I thought to myself there really would be nice to have a sort of None ne-stop shop for the sort of controversial material that you see scattered across the internet in a lot of different websites but usually not found together. You know material on the right wing on the left wing and the libertarian side all of those different sorts of very controversial things and provide you know? ah. Convenient home for them. So ah, basically at that point I started building up the publication gradually over time though. It took me really a couple of years before I could get actively involved because I ended up being involved in some political projects and also software development things. So the whole thing about it is. The idea was sort of to provide a convenient outlet for the sort of articles that you normally see many times in very fringe publications but are not. You know, sometimes as conveniently located for people to find. And so that's pretty much what it's probably the last five or six years that I've really started putting in a good deal of time to the publication so that it could really become you know a much more sizable entity and bringing in other writers and that sort of thing a lot of what we do in the publication is actually just um, ah. Publishing articles that are um, you know written by other people from other websites and we've simply made arrangements to republish it and then we do have some in-house bloggers and I've also in the last four years started doing quite a lot of writing of my own, especially the American Pravda series covering a lot of you know, very controversial historical issues and that sort of thing but in a sense. Ah, it's exactly what you know you mentioned in the sort of description. It's designed to be a sort of convenient site for controversial material and important controversial material. Normally is excluded from the mainstream media and what's actually happened in the last few years is the mainstream media has tended to become more and more strict about excluding more and more controversial things so that a lot of writers who for example, used to be widely published in the mainstream media. Have gradually been pushed away and in some cases they've come to my publication instead.

23:14.69

cactus chu

Right? And what? What do you expect someone to gain from coming on or from loading the unz review so you have these controversial ideas. What can we do? What can we do with the controversial ideas? What? What can we learn about the world? What can we change about our behaviors and so on?

23:27.96

Ron Unz

Well again, there are lots of different types of controversial ideas. For example, ideas that are sometimes considered and that's actually None interesting development that I've pointed out in some of our articles when you look at. For example, the broader perspective of. American intellectual thought ideas which were considered very mainstream and very typical and very widespread forty years ago or sixty years ago or one hundred years ago today are considered so extreme that they're virtually censored almost everywhere on the internet. And you know would never appear in a mainstream publication. Well on the other hand ideas that 40 or sixty years ago would have been considered so extreme and so you know bizarre that they would never have appeared in a mainstream media outlet today constitute much of the mainstream. So what's considered. Controversial or extremely controversial drastically changes over time and you could for example, take articles that appeared in The New York Times forty years ago which now would appear nowhere except in the most extreme fringes of the internet and the other way around articles. That never would have remotely appeared in The New York Times forty years ago are now headline stories in the New York Times and so you know it's interesting sometimes when you compare you know the way ideas which are considered you know so reasonable and you know are widely accepted in one period of time suddenly. Switched to another period of time and that actually relates to another thing that also shifted my perspective on some of these issues. Ah, the main software project I really spent my time working on during most of the 2000 and the but.

27:35.43

cactus chu

Or before we move on I do want to talk about that as well. But can you give some examples of the articles that would have been published in the New York Times forty years ago and are now considered fringe or vice versa.

27:29.70

Ron Unz

Oh sure, sure well I mean for example, take for example issues dealing with race and ethnicity I mean views that were considered absolutely means or for another example, sexuality views that were considered absolutely mainstream standard and you know. Universally accepted by virtually everybody in the New York Times forty or fifty years ago these days would be the sort of thing that would get you canceled from any respectable publication and you know the trends have continued for example, as of a few years ago the notion that only women can give birth would have been considered. Universally accepted by none of the population. But these days you know if you make that sort of remark I've heard on Twitter at least until recently there was a chance you could get kicked off Twitter I mean you know basically saying that there are only 2 sexes that there are only None genders you know would have been. Universally accepted everywhere by virtually every prominent person until really just a few years ago and nowadays it's considered, you know, a very controversial perspective . For example, the woman who wrote um, all the Harry Potter books supposedly got into quite a bit of trouble on Twitter. Making some remarks saying that you know there are males and females and there are not. You know all these other categories. So you know it's this sort of thing these trends really are almost all these ideological trends in many cases almost become matters of fashion or um. And you know the views change very very rapidly I mean ah, another example in that regard when Obama was running for president. He actually publicly denounced the notion of gay marriage and said he could not possibly support gay marriage and that was you know the most liberal candidate running for. Presidency of the United States in many years and you know he was elected. He would receive total support from all the liberals for taking that position and nowadays you have a very sizable fraction of the conservative republicans who would be shocked at anyone opposing gay marriage and you know we're talking about a period of about None ears I mean doubt such sweeping changes in a period of None ears on major ideological issues really demonstrates that you know things can sometimes change very rapidly over time. In fact, I remember back about ten years ago when the whole gay marriage thing. Got to be very hot I think um, the conservative leader of the anti-gay marriage movement over a period of just a few months or a year completely reverse position on it and so you know I mean the whole until about twenty five years ago as far as I can tell.

33:09.88

Ron Unz

No one in the entire history of the world had ever advocated gay marriage I mean the entire history of the human species. It was basically ah it was Andrew Sullivan who had a cover story in The New Republic probably by now. Maybe it's more like thirty years ago but he had a cover story in The New Republic advocating the notion of gay marriage and generated quite a stir nobody took it seriously at the time and in roughly one generation an idea which was considered not only fringe but totally unheard of in the entire history of the human species has suddenly become. Absolutely mainstream and conventional not just in the United States but in many other countries around the world that are under sort of America's media umbrella so I mean that that just would be None example but I mean there are many many others of that sort of thing I mean things you would find None or forty years ago the most liberal individuals in the United States saying things on racial matters that nowadays the most right-wing extreme fringe people would probably be reluctant to say.

35:58.49

cactus chu

I didn't know about that the most rightwing extreme fringe people are ah they're pretty out there but I do agree that there are certainly these shifts where I would say like 80% of the population would agree with ah would agree with the topic and then. A few decades later 80% of the population would be horrified at it. I do think that's true, especially like the case of Andrew Sullivan. It's very striking because especially if you're someone like me who hasn't paid attention to politics. In any serious way until the last five years Andrew Sullivan is this kind of intellectual dark web figure, this kind of classical liberal or center right figure and. Looking back at his kind of perception has been a very very interesting trip through history.

37:10.86

Ron Unz

To be honest I hadn't even realized Andrew Sullivan was a guy . I've always thought of Andrew Sullivan. I mean maybe he's gotten a little bit more conservative but I've always thought of him as basically just sort of a mainstream conservative-leaning individual and he's now considered. Part of the dark web was astonishing. I hadn't been. I hadn't been aware of that at all I guess when I think of there's that guy from Moldberg or something like that mold book who you know talked about like um.

38:17.83

cactus chu

Yeah, this is kind of a recent phenomenon of the.

38:41.10

cactus chu

Mold bug courtesy. Arvin.

38:19.64

Ron Unz

Divine monarchy setting up a divine monarchy in the United States I mean that's I guess what I think of when I think of the dark web I mean until what was until about a year ago Andrew Sullivan was a columnist at New York Magazine

39:11.77

cactus chu

Oh this is generally considered like a different group yarvin his types are usually called I think neo-reactionaries or sometimes the dark enlightenment while the intellectual dark web is kind of a different thing. It's more the center kind of former liberals the left left me types. I think the coining article I think was coined informally a bit before that but the coining article was by Barry Weiss in The New York Times and I think it's generally describing that kind of archetype right? so.

39:47.34

Ron Unz

Oh no.

40:22.55

cactus chu

Ah, Barry Weiss um Eric Weinstein Sam Harris those kinds of figures people who I think would have traditionally been associated with the left wing and now have rebelled against it for. These types of social issue reasons.

40:26.80

Ron Unz

Well I mean to be honest I mean Barry Weiss is just a neocon I mean I think most of the people you're talking about are basically just neocons aren't they I mean you know it's the sort of thing since the New York Times I mean for example, Barry Weiss had always been at the wall street journal then she moved over to The New York Times and I mean the New York Times is traditionally a very liberal publication. So you know as the New York Times moved somewhat to the left I think it got to be hot for her so she was sort of pushed out of the times and now I think she writes on substack. But as far as I know Barry Weiss is just a typical sort of wall street journal. Ed Page neocon

42:11.21

cactus chu

Yeah, the the intellectual dark web is not really kind of a very right wing group necessarily some people try to portray them as that of course typically like this the same but really the same extremists and of course there is some kind of There is some kind of high variance within within that group I think Brett Weinstein has taken a very interesting, very interesting path. Let's just say that um, but. In general, they're a kind of center. They're a kind of very quote unquote anti woke group. They typically focus on critiquing and quoting unquote wokeness this kind of identity politics from a left liberal or. Ah, or humanist universalist lens and that's generally been the point of the group. The name is a bit of a misnomer.

43:32.90

Ron Unz

Yeah I mean the impression I had sort of had. In fact I remember that you're talking about didn't Barry Weiss do a cover story on that group in New York Times magazine yes

44:25.57

cactus chu

Right? Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly what I'm talking about.

44:01.80

Ron Unz

Ah, exactly that's sort of that's the none time I'd ever heard of them the impression I sort of had of that to be honest and maybe it's a mistaken impression but that was sort of like the impression I had and what a few other people had that was around the time that the alt right was gaining traction and gaining attention and there was a widespread impression that. Since Barry Weiss was a neocon and most of the other people she was talking about were also neocons she was promoting them as sort of being the extreme right? wings. So as to try to draw attention away from the actual right-wingers who were the all right people. For example, ah None of the people in that group isn't that that Canadian ah psychology professor who became a drug addict. Do you know who I'm talking about, yeah Jordan Peters well when he was a drug addict for a while or something I mean it was the sort of thing that was funny I'd never heard of him.

46:02.19

cactus chu

Yeah, yeah, Jordan Peterson I don't think he's a dry addict anymore, but he was in therapy or something.

45:55.28

Ron Unz

And then I read a column by David Brooks describing Jordan Peterson as like the world's most important public intellectual. I was right around the same time that the Barry Weiss um cover story came out and you know it was the sort of thing. It was strange because I'd never heard of that guy and when I looked at some of this stuff. It was all a chunk.

46:39.90

cactus chu

Care.

46:32.66

Ron Unz

I mean basically he was mostly prominent for the fact that he was denouncing the most extreme gender fanaticism or something like that. It was something like he refused to use um, different pronouns and he called women. She or something like it was just the most ridiculous sort of thing you can imagine and I read actually some of his stuff and it was mostly just nonsense I mean he seemed to me a very very none or none d-rate intellectual figure and it was just strange that he was suddenly being promoted in The New York Times this you know towering intellect I actually watch one of his lectures and it seemed very mediocre stuff and so you know that sometimes has happened in the past where for example groups that control the media like the neocons many times then use the media to promote certain groups. Greater prominence. So as to divert attention from other groups and since the neocons I think at that time were very worried about the growth of the alt-right? I think they promoted that dark enlightenment stuff just to sort of divert popular attention away from people that they. Whose views. They were concerned about 2 you know people basically just said that there are 2 genders and that was like their main point I mean I did was Jordan Peterson ever really said or down anything as far as you know, ah you.

49:54.11

cactus chu

I mean I do think his points are kind of traditionally like center right stuff I don't think it's that particularly extreme. I think his presentation is interesting, like he has a kind of way of speaking that's interesting. But yeah I don't see him as any kind of. Ah, novel novel political theorist or anything like that and a quick correction mostly just for the audience the the dark enlightenment is like the the yarvin stuff not the not the Barry Weis Jordandan Peterson stuff um I do want to push back a little bit on the. On the idea that Barry Weiss is just putting this up as a kind of diversion because I don't know Barry Weiss doesn't really so cast that group as an enemy right? I think of anything she casts or ah after that article. Especially after she left the New York Times she kind of considers herself to be part of that group of people who are in their view standing up against wokeness standing up against this kind of far left identity politics. That's the whole That's the whole frame that they have and I don't think. Barry Weiss is necessarily trying to distract from something but that she is just sympathetic to these kinds of political views.

51:50.22

Ron Unz

Oh I agree with you 100% in other words, what she was doing was boosting her own group as sort of the opposite. Ah, in other words, you had the rise of this wokeness movement and all of these you know black riots and everything like that you know going back to the trayvon martin thing.

52:30.59

cactus chu

Yes.

52:27.38

Ron Unz

In 2012 and so you know normally if you have a lot of opposition to this extreme wokeness people who don't like it would be looking for some other rival group. You know, somebody stands against it and if the other group that had sort of been. Growing to stand against him were the alt-right? people who Barry Weis strongly disliked and possibly even feared that would be a problem because then you would have all the anti-woke people moving in the direction of the alt-right? which you know. Would make the movement much more powerful. So I think what she probably was doing or at least that's what a lot of people speculated at the time when they saw that article in the David Brooks column where they were trying to build up a different opposition group that would then capture the anti-woke support. Rather than it going to the alt-right? people or Donald Trump or anything like that. So. In other words, you know it's a very classic political strategy, in other words basically you know if you have a movement that you know is generating a lot of controversy and a lot of opposition.

54:49.87

cactus chu

That's very interesting.

54:47.22

Ron Unz

You want to be able to capture the opposition rather than have that opposition go to people you don't like and so you know that's in a sense where Donald Trump came from in other words as far as I know Barry Weiss and all those people you're talking about hated Donald Trump didn't they.

55:36.27

cactus chu

Um I don't know about her in specific. But yeah, generally that group does not is not a fan of Trump.

55:19.42

Ron Unz

but I mean that yeah and so the whole thing is about whether Trump was considered the pole or opposite to this woke movement. You would have a lot of people moving in the trumpian direction and that obviously and and you're right I mean I don't I guess what we're talking about happened a little bit before the trump phenomenon but None reason for the rise of Donald Trump was the tremendous dislike people in the republican party had towards the republican party leadership which they thought which they felt was sort of soft and sellouts and mediocre and so that's sort of where Trump came from and so you know when when you were looking at.

56:53.85

cactus chu

Certainly I think that's undeniable.

56:50.84

Ron Unz

Where people who were anti-woke would go. You know it would be for people like Barry Weiss. It would be very bad if the anti-woke people moved towards the alt-right? All the activists on the alt-right? and the websites on the alt-right? So it was sort of a 2 two-phase operation on one hand. All of the alt-right? websites or most of them were heavily censored into platforms they were driven off the internet so that they weren't out there. You know, building up steam and on the other hand Barry Weiss and people like that were trying to build up sort of their own anti-woke group that could capture. Ah, populist anti-woke support. So you know it comes down to I mean as far as I know my impressions Barry Weiss is just sort of standard plain vanilla neocon I mean she'd I'd never seen her always on the wall street journal op-ed page which is sort of None of the neocon home basis. And I was actually surprised when she moved over to The New York Times because The New York Times had traditionally been much more liberal though. The New York Times had gradually become more neocon. What happened in the last ten years or so or fifteen years was that the neocons and the neoliberals almost merged together and so.

59:41.13

cactus chu

Yes, that was very interesting.

59:16.62

Ron Unz

For example, you don't see as much difference between the wall street journal and The New York Times as you might have seen fifteen or twenty years ago. In fact I remember I think it was right after 2001 maybe 2002 2003 The New York Times gave a lot. To bill k crystal and that was shocking I mean I and everybody else was just utterly shocked by it because I mean bill crystal Bill K Crystal was exactly the opposite of the New York Times The New York Times was a traditionally liberal op ed page and then they brought in Bill Kristol and then they actually brought in some more people like um.

01:00:23.21

cactus chu

Um, really.

01:00:30.64

Ron Unz

I think Brett Stevens who's another neocon from the wall street journal has come over to The New York Times so these days the New York Times op-ed page is a mixture of woke liberalism with an admixture of neocon sentiments especially on the foreign policy side though. Whole New York Times is basically neocon these days on the foreign policy side while on the domestic side. It's gotten extremely woke so you know the things you see on the New York Times op-ed page now would have shocked almost anybody 15 or 20 or twenty five years ago on the None hand It's gotten much much much much more wokeen left on domestic issues. But on the other hand it's gotten almost entirely neocon on foreign policy issues I mean take for example, their coverage of the you know Russia situation with Ukraine if anything. The New York Times coverage of the rush-ukraine war is more neocon than the Wall Street Journal's coverage, which is just shocking.

01:02:58.10

cactus chu

Yes, it's very interesting and actually this wasn't something that I viewed as that impressive because once again I haven't been. I've been looking at this stuff for a long time. So it's great to hear that kind of long long term perspective.

01:02:55.92

Ron Unz

Again.

01:03:30.17

cactus chu

I'm I'm sure this will actually give you a this will give you a laugh for sure have you heard of ah the the current thing meme the current thing. Yeah.

01:03:11.66

Ron Unz

The what? oh right? Um, I vaguely heard about it. It's basically yeah, why don't you explain it to me since it's pretty vague in my mind.

01:04:01.77

cactus chu

Right? I'll actually just look it up right now. So I can send a photo but.

01:04:33.25

cactus chu

I will just put in the chat. But the key observation is essentially that the same people who are supporting liberal activism and supporting covid lockdowns ended up supporting going right to supporting. Ukraine and then later onwards to supporting abortion very very reflexively and without much sort of public debate and that this was something that was considered to be very interesting in a lot of I think anti-establishment circles as I was saying before. Those kind of or just in right wing circles in general to be honest and then I don't know the exact history of it but that this meme kind of emerged from that conversation that kind of discussion on Twitter and on other social media and. So I think, what is this? what? This really marks the shift of politics from being about something that is very permanent or that is about and something that's very ideological and fixed. To bring something that as you said is much more like fashion, much more about updates. This is something that I've spoken with ah with b j campbell I think that episode will be released before this one about essentially this pattern of people getting as he phrases it updates from social media. Updates about what to think, updates about what processes to apply and what decisions to make in everyday life.

01:07:20.68

Ron Unz

That's a very good point and I think you're probably right in that it's become much more prevalent due to social media. In other words to the extent that a lot of people get their knowledge of the world and their information from social media and you know if social media. Overwhelmingly switches in a particular direction or to a particular issue then you know probably a large majority of the people who swim in that sea would flow along with it and so you know I do think this sort of thing has happened in the past with top-down media. But I do think it's probably more prevalent with social media. Because instead of getting your view of the world by watching the Cbs News every night and having Walter Cronkite sort of explain what the world was. You're getting it constantly during the entire day. So it's both the media and also your active peer group. Combination of the 2 things and since it's constant during the day it has more impact than something that you're only hit with you know once each evening or a near morning newspaper or something like that. So yeah I mean I have noticed that the degree to which views change and rapidly change is really. More prevalent today even than it was in the past and I mean I'd always you know, been aware of how quickly things can change but you know I do think it's probably much more today than in the past and ah.

01:10:36.50

cactus chu

Right? And I would actually take it up to one level and look at the ideas themselves because in the past of course it took a lot of institutional effort or a lot of organizational effort to actually take a radical idea and propel it into the mainstream that was not an easy thing to do. And any sense and now it's at least relatively much easier. This can trend as a topic on Twitter and then ideas that were considered obscure or abhorrent one day can become this kind of default much much quicker.

01:11:15.66

Ron Unz

exactly exactly that's a very good point and I mean the whole thing. An interesting aspect of that is that until a few months ago generally ah take for example, the situation with Russia and Ukraine until a few months ago a very substantial fraction. American right-wingers and conservatives had a good opinion of Vladimir Putin and Russia. In other words, typically the impression I had was that Democrats over the last few years, especially with Russia gate, know that the Russiagate Hoax had become extremely hostile towards Russia. While republicans and conservatives were much more hostile towards China and were friendly towards Russia and but.

01:13:10.43

cactus chu

I would push back on that I think I think both the kind of elected republicans and also the voters themselves are are still like they they don't like Russia they were most of them were alive during the cold war they have these kind of memories and they just don't like these kind of especially Russia which is. Still seen as an enemy I think there's there's pure research polling that I've definitely seen where yeah even as the republican I think sort of media, especially the kind of Fox News tucker crowd have been much more I think at least relatively pro-russia I'm not sure if they would use that words themselves. But at least not as against Russia. Ah that you have this scenario where there is a kind of perceived shift because of the media coverage but in actual public opinion. That's not the case and if you look at voting patterns. Of course there is still a lot of support. Um, for Ukraine there was a lot of support for measures against Russia even before Ukraine in both the house and the senate. So I don't know if I don't. I don't think I would agree with that characterization of the republican party in general but I would say that it's correct when applied to say like republican media on average at least.

01:15:07.64

Ron Unz

That's interesting. I haven't really looked at the numbers carefully but I had the impression that for example, in the last few months there'd been a fairly dramatic shift in a republican or conservative political opinion towards Russia, but it might have been much less dramatic again. You might be right in that I'm probably focusing more on activist republicans activist conservatives opinion leaders that sort of thing and it could be that a lot of the sort of conservative republican rank and file still regard Russia as the communist threat. Because they'd never really paid attention to you know they still regarded you know Russia as the Soviet Union and in fact you know you sometimes see misstatements like that saying oh yes, we're fighting soviet communism or russian communism. Even though that hasn't been the case for 30 years so it could be the sort of silent majority of republicans. Still vaguely thought that they were in an arms race with the Soviet Union or Soviet Russia but it's still I mean the whole notion of how quickly positions have changed. You know I think it gets back to the point you were making about social media. You know makes that sort of thing happen much more rapidly and to be honest I don't use social media much myself. In fact, verrely at all. So that's probably the reason I really, you know, have been so much more surprised by these drastic changes than probably I would have been if I actually spent much time on Twitter.

01:18:43.19

cactus chu

I Think you're just right to be surprised by them. I don't think that this is a very intuitive thing to happen whatsoever. We kind of imagine people I don't know if this is cultural or this is a thing that is just common to humans across society but we kind of.

01:18:16.26

Ron Unz

Or or anything like that.

01:19:18.55

cactus chu

Imagine people as being quite stable in their beliefs and as it turns out at least in hyper connected environments. This is not true and I think that the point holds that people flip opinions quite quickly on some issues. Although I would say that Ukraine is probably or Russia especially is one that. That doesn't that doesn't fit that because you just have such a strong historical narrative that people really live through. I think if you look at a lot of the other stuff, especially social issues in particular, what most people are like what many people describe as quote unquote culture war issues. This is completely true. And it's just abundantly obvious.

01:20:04.40

Ron Unz

I wonder though if I mean take take for example, Ukraine what percentage of americans barely even knew where Ukraine was until a few months ago

01:20:56.81

cactus chu

I still think most Americans probably wouldn't be able to find Ukraine on the map. They probably know it borders Russia now. Hopefully.

01:20:34.12

Ron Unz

Yeah, and so yeah, so it's that sort of thing I mean you know. For example, let me put it this way as far as I can tell the media coverage following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And the None ne-sidedness of the media coverage is probably more extreme than anything I've seen in my entire life with the None possible exception being the aftermath of the None attacks over twenty years ago. I mean it's the sort of thing where the facts are so totally different. From the way the media presents them and that's actually why ah you probably are familiar with John Mearersheimer you know, really one of America's leading political scientists and oh sure, sorry John Meers um very so very distinguished eminent.

01:22:25.89

cactus chu

Yes, ah, can you explain who he is for the audience though.

01:22:19.52

Ron Unz

Political scientist at the University Of Chicago he was actually best known for about fifteen years ago writing that book the Israel lobby which generated quite a lot of controversy and you know he was sort of pushed out of the mainstream media because of all the people being angry at his having written that book about the Israel Ralph lobby but then in the last few months he suddenly returned to the absolute center of the media landscape because of his realist view on Ukraine and Russia it's really a fascinating story back about six years ago he gave a major public lecture. How America's policy with Ukraine was disastrous was heading towards disaster and would you know quite possibly lead to a russian war with Ukraine because we were basically pushing Ukraine to get into a conflict. Position with Russia. You know we were trying to bring them into Nato. We were doing all these things that were, you know from his point of view, utterly disastrous for you know the peace and stability in Europe and his lecture was an hour long lecture. A very solid lecture. It was sitting on the internet on Youtube. For 6 years getting very very little attention and then once the lead up to the Ukraine war developed and then obviously once the war broke out suddenly people discovered the lecture and discovered some of Zoli lectures but that None in particular and. Suddenly I had no views, no views. It's not the last time I saw it was up to 25000000 views on Youtube. As far as I can tell, no academic lecture in the history of the internet has probably been viewed as many times. 25000000 is his lecture For example, you know if you look at the big lectures by Steve Pinker or Richard Dawkins they're generally around None and you know so far I mean mearsheimer. Plus a number of other electors. He's done up to like 40 or None right now. So you know we're talking about the fact that the mainstream media was so unbelievably 1 one-sided and so absurdly ridiculous and in ways presenting Iran I mean basically what had happened was. America had spent the last fourteen years provoking Russia with regard to Ukraine and doing everything we could basically to bring these countries into Nato when the Russians repeatedly said it was totally unacceptable from 2008 onwards.

01:27:21.98

Ron Unz

Then in 2014 America organized a coup to overthrow the democratically elected pro-russian government in Ukraine and replaced it by an extremely strongly anti-russian government and you know it got into a civil conflict. There was a breakaway region the Russians then ah. You know, gaining control of ah Crimea which had always been part of Russia was the leading warmwater Russian naval base and so you know all of those facts are totally unknown to virtually anybody in America. Society who gets their information from the media whether it's the liberal media or the conservative media. We're talking about an unbelievably 1 one-sided view of all that or take another example which is even more shocking or sure. But oh sure. Absolutely absolutely.

01:29:17.70

cactus chu

Just just pause for a little bit because I want to do a little bit of pushback I think on some of those points. Yeah I think the evidence for the coup is like the quote unquote coup in Ukraine. It's basically like this memo from. Oh man I I actually didn't I wasn't thinking about talking about Russia Ukraine in particular but I have I have looked at this a bit um that the evidence for the coup is essentially this memo that that said it would be basically like something something along the lines of it would be nice if we did regime change here right? and then and then regime change happened.

01:29:28.28

Ron Unz

Um, oh sure.

01:29:56.44

Ron Unz

Um, and then and then they also have the recorded conversation with the Victorian Newland discussing who should be running the Ukrainian government. Yeah, exactly.

01:30:30.99

cactus chu

Ah.

01:30:41.57

cactus chu

Right? Yeah, that was the name Victoria Newland yeah

01:30:21.28

Ron Unz

I mean we're talking about I mean she's basically the head of Ukraine policy and you know she and her husband I mean to show you the convergence of the neoliberals and neoconservatives her husband had been one of the leading neocons in the Bush administration. 1 of the leading Iraq war neocons. Then when Obama came in. She basically became a top foreign policy figure in the Obama administration. She would have been secretary under the state secretary of state probably under the Hillary Clinton administration we're talking about basically her and her husband being 2 of the leading neocons in both Bush Obama and now Biden.

01:31:47.67

cactus chu

You.

01:31:35.26

Ron Unz

And an administration which is ridiculous. I mean we have a None ne-party system on that sort of thing, a complete convergence of the democratic and republican parties and so and anyway she basically there seems overwhelming evidence I mean there was a coup that overthrew the democratically elected. Pro-russian government in Ukraine and Ukraine was evenly divided between pro-western pro-russian populations it had oscillated back and forth sometimes the pro-russian side won the election sometimes the pro-western side won the election and the russians were perfectly happy with it being a neutral state. You know. A buffer state between Nato and Russia and then we staged there seems overwhelming evidence. We orchestrated a coup and including there seems to be strong very strong evidence that for example that what happened was there were protests naep the eu.

01:33:47.85

cactus chu

Yeah, let's just talk about what let's just kind of lay out a chronology of this essentially? Um, yeah, we didn't know this at the time but there was this memo that was put out and this conversation right.

01:33:26.32

Ron Unz

Sure? ah, union ah maybe but more than not nothing the the eu the european economic union and Russia were it separately bidding for. Ah, trade up for an alignment of Ukraine. In other words, the ah guy running Ukraine was a protrusion democratic like figure but he was sort of playing the eu and Russia off against each other in other words, which one of them would make ah you know. Greater economic concessions would offer more in terms of trade in terms of investment in terms of subsidies and it turns out the russian offer since the russians felt much more strongly about Ukraine than the than the eu did Russia made Ukraine a much much better economic offer. And so he went with what was a much better offer in other words, the offer by the eu wasn't nearly as good by comparison and so that caused huge protests by the pro-western groups in Ukraine in The Capital City to try to sort of put pressure on the government and then the protests stayed there for a long period of time. And then finally towards the end there were deadly sniper attacks which killed I think about None people both demonstrators and members of the police. The riot police and it was portrayed as being a horrible crackdown, a bloodthirsty crackdown by the Ukrainian government. Against these unarmed protesters but later on evidence came out that both the protesters and the riot police were both killed by the same group of snipers basically snipers apparently were brought in to kill both sides to provide the spark to lunch. Ah, the coup attempt and basically the prime the president of hussain escaped with his life I mean basically might have been killed if he'd stayed since there was a coup attempt against it and there really. For example, there was another recorded phone call. In which one of the eu officials I can't remember I think she might have been from um Finland was talking with another eu official and they noted that the bullets that ah killed both the ah riot police and the protesters. Both apparently came from the same guns. It was None group of snipers that was brought in to kill both sides which provided the sort of you know the excuse for the coup. So I mean it really in fact um, there's that um what is the name of that organization ah is guy. Ah Friedman George Friedman he ran the sort of.

01:38:46.56

Ron Unz

Ah, consulting organization. He's a fairly prominent foreign policy figure. He actually was quoted as describing it as the most blatant coup he'd ever seen in history. Of course it was a coup. It was an American coup, a neocon coup to overthrow the democratically elected. Pro-russian government and replace it with a militantly violent anti-russian government which you know is where the whole problem came from and I mean you can listen to for example John Mearsheimer's lectures and that famous director. Um, oh what's his name. Ah. He did platoon um over stone exactly Oliver Stone produced a couple of films on Ukraine that go through a lot of the history of it. I mean he's basically had a series of interviews with Putin I mean the whole situation. Anybody who goes through and.

01:40:34.63

cactus chu

Oliver Stone

01:40:33.50

Ron Unz

Listening to these accounts by top foreign policy experts or top former US government officials like for example, another person who's taken a very clear stance on it is Ray Mcgovern he'd spent I think okay exactly exactly oh sorry sorry.

01:41:29.69

cactus chu

I'm not familiar with him. Can you just introduce him to the audience and to me as well. Actually.

01:41:10.00

Ron Unz

Ah, Ray Ray Mcgovern spent none working at the CIA at a senior level. He was the head of the soviet desk at the CIA and then he also spent a number of years as the presidential briefer. In other words he was the Cia officer tasked. Every morning to come in and brief the president of the United States on what was going on in the world. So we were talking about a very high-ranking highly credible senior individual who retired from the CIA after the nine eleven attacks around the time of the Nine live attacks. He was one of the leading opponents of the Iraq war. And he's been again entirely pushed out of the media because his views are contrary. I mean he was for example in ah ah he and he and Ray Mcgover um, he and John Meheimer and a number of other very senior former American national security officials. Ah, we're you know giving g lecturecturs on exactly the situation his views on Ukraine and Russia are exactly the same as those of mearsheimer exactly the same as those of Jack Matluk who'd been Reagan's ambassador to the Ussr I mean we're talking about basically all of the sort of. Mainstream establishment figures in the American national security foreign policy establishment who are not. You know, desperately reliant on keeping a job somewhere basically said the same thing because it's the truth and you know you can see some of their talks on Youtube. Gotten none of None or None of views but you never see a word about them in the mainstream media and here's another example that even is more oh there was coverage there was coverage of the might I mean the way I know it happened at the time is that that.

01:44:46.49

cactus chu

Um, wait, I think there was some coverage of my revolution . I will say I actually wasn't mentioned too much. Yeah.

01:44:38.44

Ron Unz

Time I mean some of it was at least hinted at in the pages of the New York Times but you'd never see it these days in the New York Times in other words at the time it was happening I mean you know a lot of the things I write about for example in my articles including my very controversial articles are things I discovered by reading the New York Times

01:45:18.17

cactus chu

Okay I see what you mean now. Yeah.

01:45:45.21

cactus chu

Interesting.

01:45:18.98

Ron Unz

Readinging the wascu journal or reading all these publications but remembering them two years later or three years later or five years later you would never see any of this discussed in the pages of the New York Times or even the wall street journal these days and here's another example that is even more extreme.

01:45:57.35

cactus chu

Oh I see.

01:45:56.10

Ron Unz

Then the ones I gave you are familiar with somebody named Stephen Cohen professor Stephen Cohen ah like okay sure push sure go go ready.

01:46:32.29

cactus chu

Stephen Cohen no I'm not or I'm just going to like to talk a little bit about my perspective on the midan revolution before we go to that because I have a sneaking suspicion that this is unrelated but okay, ah.

01:46:31.24

Ron Unz

Oh it. It is related but go ahead.

01:47:11.13

cactus chu

Maybe you'll find this kind of naivete and maybe this is just a sign of my kind of background in mathematics and computer science. But I'm kind of much more I'm I'm getting much more skeptical of just calling things a coup we can say like there's the possibility of a coup sure and that there and that we need to just. But I think that the problem is we need to distinguish between like what is what is for sure a coup what is for sure something that is actively organized by say the american government or some other kind of foreign government versus what is just a series of protests that were somewhat organic might have had some series of funding and you see this misused all of the time right? I live in Canada. Of course there was this recent trucker protest by people who were against a vaccine mandate and if you looked at canadian coverage. Well, of course this is going in the opposite direction but there was a lot of hand waving about oh is this an american funded coup. It's like this is very silly and of course you might say that there is more. And that there is more evidence. There's more. There's more of a fact pattern in the case of Mydon but I don't know I'm just a kind of person who doesn't doesn't like to assume things to be completely true. And not saying that they're completely false either. I'm just uncertain about these things until I have the kind of higher standard of evidence and I think I would get a critique or I have gotten a critique from a lot of people basically saying like. You really think you're going to get a smoking gun for someone who does a coup like no one, you're never going to get that type of evidence and maybe that person is maybe those types of people are correct but I'm just much more I'm just much more hesitant to kind of. Fully jump in and take that as an assumption particularly for drawing other conclusions from.

01:50:08.58

Ron Unz

Well I mean with regard to what happened to the midan I mean certainly it started off as probably at least a substantially organic protest. In other words, we're talking about a country. What we're talking about is a country that was evenly divided. For example, the Pro-russian President who'd been democratically acted.

01:50:53.81

cactus chu

Um, these things are blurry.

01:50:47.58

Ron Unz

I think he won with 51% of the vote or 52% of the vote and the previous president had been more on the pro-western side. So we're talking about a very evenly divided country and the capital city being in the pro-western part of the country. So in other words.

01:51:46.51

cactus chu

Oh I see.

01:51:21.52

Ron Unz

You know in that part of the country probably seventy or eighty percent were on the other side and so they were very very unhappy with the fact that he decided to go with the Russia agreement since the Russians made him but better offers so you know I don't doubt that there was some. Efforts on social media to encourage the protests and it could be for example that the US embassy or other American forces of the CIA you know, encouraged people they paid activists. They did what they could. But I mean certainly there was a large organic element. The protests and we're talking about very large protests that stayed around for I think probably two or three months and the capital city occupied all the space you know with the riot police keeping them back. So I mean at that stage we're not talking about a coup then what happened was suddenly none more than None people were shot dead. They were killed most of the people killed the overwhelming majority were protesters but riot police were also shot at and the claim was made then that. Dict you know that he was a foul dictator and he was using his forces to kill the peaceful protesters. However, when the evidence came out as I said there was a recorded tele ah phone conversation. Of a Eu official. They found out that the bullets that had killed the protesters came from apparently the same guns that killed the riot police now. There's no logical reason why the president of the country would deliberately. Cause mass killing of protesters and riot police in his own capital city you know, which naturally would cause revulsion against him. It's exactly the sort of approach typically taken if you want to provide a spark for a coup. Or an overthrow and that's exactly what happened so in other words, if those truckers had occupied Toronto or ah, ah like ah Ottawa but at Ottawa occupied Ottawa for three months and if they'd been kept back by the riot police and then suddenly at the end.

01:55:44.55

cactus chu

Ottawa.

01:55:32.30

Ron Unz

None of the people had been shot dead by snipers on both sides. Both the riot police and the truckers and that was used as the excuse to overthrow the Canadian government with Trudeau having to flee for his life. Yes, then under those circumstances I think it probably would be a coup. You know I don't know anything about the trucker protest probably I'd guess it was probably just the sort of thing that got on social media was purely organic because you know you have all these ant.

01:56:54.30

cactus chu

Yeah, I'm not saying they're similar at all . The point is that I think I think you're right that it's probably more likely or that every kind of coup would require some kind of similar circumstance or some kind of spark. But I don't think it's.. It's true in the opposite direction that every single time there's this kind of event that it's always a coup but yeah I think that there's a reasonable case. There. It's just it's just I'm not I'm not as I'm not as ah, kind of willing to to completely take that take that for certain.

01:57:07.30

Ron Unz

Um, oh I agree with you I agree with you a hundred percent I do know that.

01:57:35.38

Ron Unz

Um, yeah, that's an interesting point, were you aware of the fact that there was the recorded Eu conversation about the bullets having all come from the same guns.

01:58:09.81

cactus chu

I Think there's still a lot of uncertainty there.

01:58:29.25

cactus chu

I was not I was not familiar with that until here.

01:58:05.98

Ron Unz

That to me was that really in the minds of a lot of people was really the smoking gun that proved that it really was an organized coup attempt because I mean we're talking about well over one hundred people being killed by snipers and in fact, in one of the Oliver Stone films. There are some telling indications that.

01:58:49.45

cactus chu

M.

01:58:41.48

Ron Unz

Some members of the protest group were deliberately positioned in a location where they would then be shot. In other words, some of the leaders of the protest may have been sort of deliberately positioning other protesters in certain locations where they were, you know, 5 minutes later killed by the snipers.

01:59:29.61

cactus chu

Huh.

01:59:18.36

Ron Unz

I mean obviously I would guess ninety Five Ninety nine percent of the protesters had no idea what was going on. They were there because they were opposed to the government but a small element within the protest group probably the hardcore element was you know, basically manipulating it so that they would have enough dead bodies to you know. Be the excuse for overthrowing the government I mean um.

02:00:30.25

cactus chu

Yeah, at this point I'm sure that yeah this is I've never heard about any of this I'm sure that you're much more familiar about Midon than I am.

02:00:11.38

Ron Unz

And none of it just and none of it is none of it was ever covered in the american media and that gets to the point about Stephen Cohen I was going to make I mean professor Stephen Cohen ah he basically died about a year and a half I think two years ago something like that you know he was an old man he was in his 80's. But Stephen Cohen for decades had been the leading. Ah, none of all, he was a very prominent Russia scholar he was one of probably a handful of the most prominent mainstream Soviet Russia scholars in the United States professor emeritus of Princeton and New York University but for decades. He'd been the single most prominent left-wing Russia scholar with nobody else even remotely in the same category I mean going back. Are you familiar with the magazine? The nation. Okay, what nation?

02:02:28.35

cactus chu

I'm roughly aware of it. But I'm not aware of it in detail.

02:02:04.98

Ron Unz

For 100 years the nation has been America's flagship left-wing left liberal ideological publication I mean these days with the internet. It's not as powerful as it used to be but I mean for decades for the last hundred years it was like the number one left liberal magazine in America. It was sort of the po star if you want to know what left liberals were saying you would read the nation Stephen Cohen was writing columns on Russia in the nation going back to the 1970 s he was a columnist in the nation. He, you know, wrote articles all the time in the nation then he ended up getting. Mary. He had no marriage to the publisher of the nation. His wife was the publisher of the nation for the last thirty years so I mean we're talking about how he and his wife were at the absolute peak of left liberal. Ideological circles in the United States especially with regard to Russia I mean we're talking about None of America's leading Russia scholars whose wife was the longtime publisher of the nation and he was effectively purged from the nation because of his views on Russia virtually. The nation virtually never published any of his views on Russia because when they did they got so much you know, um hostility from you know all the people you know all the you know. Left-wingers who read the nation, especially with Russiagate and everything like that, it was like once every two or three years that he would be able to get something appearing in his wife's magazine and you know and so I mean we're talking and he said exactly. Ah again. Stephen Cohen is a very eminent scholar but very very clearly on the left wing you know going back decades and everything like that. In fact I think um I think he mentioned that Gorbachev was the godfather to his daughter when he had a young child when he had a. Child with his young with his none wife and so you were talking about somebody as plugged in as you could possibly get I mean emeritus professor of Princeton I mean None of the most eminent scholars of the United States and he was not able to get his views into the pages of the nation.

02:06:26.23

cactus chu

Oh my.

02:06:27.88

Ron Unz

And in fact, I ended up then republishing ah his only media outlet was that one of his former students had a talk radio show in New York city and so basically once a week he appeared on his former students show. You know a 2 hour session or an hour session once a week in fact it then got on the internet I ended up republishing it on my website and that sort of thing so that more people could hear it and again his views very mainstream sensible views about the maidan revolution about Putin about Russia were entirely excluded from. Mainstream liberal media circles in the United States even though he'd been far to the left for all those years while someone like Mearsheimer who's regarded as much more of a mainstream conservative or right-wing scholar was excluded in exactly the same way because they agreed on everything along with that.

02:08:40.15

cactus chu

This is interesting because.

02:08:18.40

Ron Unz

Ah, along with Jack Madlock who'd been Reagan's ambassador to the Ussr along with Ray Mcgovern who is the 30 or 25 or 30 year Cia guy who is personally responsible for briefing the president of the United States every morning. I mean we're talking about the most credible. Highly regarded foreign policy national security officials in the United States and they were entirely excluded from the media so that unless you went on Youtube nobody would even find out what they were saying now that slightly started to change. For example I remember John Miraheimer was telling me a few months ago he really was I mean he basically he had written. He'd written a major article in foreign policy in one of the main foreign policy journals on the Ukraine situation six or seven years ago; he then had been invited to give that hour-long academic talk on the Ukraine situation. Everything had happened exactly the way he'd feared and predicted it would happen and the media was totally ignoring him. He had no traction with the media. They were just refusing to give him any attention and you know he mentioned me then one of his videos was starting to take off and suddenly had gotten a few views but the media was still ignoring him. However, it grew from a none to None to None and around the time it got up I think to 15000000 suddenly the media decided maybe they should get mirzheimer's opinion and so he ended up ah being invited. They yeah interviewed him at ah, new yorker magazine at the yorker they gave him a long interview. And then the economist actually asked him to write an ah sort of guest in a guest column since his view was so different from theirs and I just saw him in a debate and he was on book notes again c-span not. But

02:12:13.23

cactus chu

Yeah, okay, this makes sense now because in my kind of memory I was pretty. I saw manheimer semi frequently while reading even kind of establishment places but this fact pattern matches up I think it was kind of later in the Ukraine conflict.

02:12:13.82

Ron Unz

It's just the last couple of months he'd been totally invisible until then along with all these other people and again Stephen Cohen was invisible Ray Mcgovern was invisible or take for example, someone like Scott Ritter who's gotten a lot of attention last. Couple of months on the military fighting I mean Scott Ritter was one of the most prominent voices against the Iraq war. He'd been the chief un ah weapons inspector in Iraq and he said yeah.

02:13:30.53

cactus chu

Yeah, but how much hold hold up hold up how much of this is just people not really paying attention to anything in particular because I mean I don't know what you mean by like aside from the past few months but I I mean I guess this is just sort of reflection of my kind of political interests or lack thereof. But. I was not particularly paying attention to Ukraine at all. If you asked me to name a scholar on Ukraine prior to 2022 I might not have been able to do it right? so.

02:13:59.20

Ron Unz

Oh I agree with you 100% I was in the same boat. In other words I was really I. I was very surprised when the invasion took place I certainly didn't expect anything like that. So I wasn't paying attention. I mean I did follow a little bit more simply because we published writers like the secr like ah Israel shair. Ah, like others who you know have written ah on exactly the Ukraine situation. The ruster situation. You know that's an area. We've been publishing for five or six years now so you know since we published those writers I you know sometimes read their works and so I'd been paying a little bit of attention but not much more than you to be honest, the last couple of months but the point is even once the situation developed all these people remained entirely invisible in the media they were getting no but ah.

02:16:00.29

cactus chu

Wait but they didn't write like Meer Sharimer became somewhat more popular.

02:15:41.84

Ron Unz

But that's after his Youtube video became the most popular Youtube academic lecture in the history of the internet. In other words, what happened was a 1 : 1 strip.

02:16:24.47

cactus chu

Okay I see what you mean? So there are like None None fact patterns that we can compare here. 1 is a fact pattern where the salience of the issue rises and then we get people from different perspectives onto the mainstream coverage and then we kind of have them hash it out and the fact pattern that we have now is that those ah outside of. That people with some opinions or some perspectives like those of Mearsheimer have to get popular before kind of breaching the gate is that the kind of difference that we're looking at here.

02:16:49.68

Ron Unz

Right though I mean even for example, in the case of mirhemer. There is not one word from anybody of Mearsheimer's camp in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or any of the print newspapers. The coverage is absolutely 100% lockstep in the case of mearsheimer. Basically because he's on up on Youtube and his Youtube video wasn't taken on I mean it was a top It was an academic lecture at the University Of Chicago so you know Youtube probably would have a hard time saying that it have to be you know deplatformed I mean he's one of the leading scholars in the United States in fact just ah, a year or two ago he ended up winning the. Every three years The American Political Science Association gives its top academic award and he got it. So I mean he's one of the top academic figures in the United States so you know under those circumstances. He was totally excluded from the media. But after. 24000000 people watched his video on Youtube he still was excluded from the New York Times he was excluded from the wall street journal he was excluded from virtually all of the media but he then was given a few bits and pieces an interview in the new yorker. Ah, column in the economist that sort of thing so you know basically before but it's 99%. In other words basically the way I've put it is until John Mearsheimer produced the most widely watched academic lecture probably in the history of the internet.

02:19:48.43

cactus chu

Yeah, so not 100% but there is kind of a bias right.

02:19:50.68

Ron Unz

Coverage was 100% on the other side now. It's probably 99.7 something like that. I mean again, you can't see that none of these other people are quoted at all in The New York Times or the wall street journal or any of these publications. I mean again, you'd never even heard of Ray Mcgovern or even Cohen or um.

02:20:57.35

cactus chu

I don't know, maybe this is just more of a political thing now like I've seen. I think of it from day one like there was a push. There was pushback from like Tucker Carlson from these kinds of right wing news sites and you can say like okay.

02:20:30.68

Ron Unz

Reject My wife.

02:21:25.75

cactus chu

It's politicized and you can say okay these people aren't as serious as say mearsheimer certainly? ah and maybe it's the case that mearsheimer just refused to appear on something like Tucker. But

02:21:17.84

Ron Unz

No, no, no, not at all, not at all I'm sure he would be I mean the whole thing is with it. Ah if you know, but if you're talking.

02:21:57.27

cactus chu

But yeah I don't think it's monolithic. There's still. There's still if you want to find out you can find out right? like.

02:21:44.70

Ron Unz

With the exception of Tucker Carson I mean Tucker Carlson as far as I know is the sole exception on electronic media I mean you have I actually I shouldn't say that Laura Inger Ingram I think in the last couple of weeks has seen Tucker Carlson's ratings. And it's now shifted somewhat in a similar direction but prior to that everybody agreed Tucker Carlson was the only voice on traditional basically electronic television media who was raising any doubts about Russia. Ukraine situation. In fact, Glenn Greenwald has said the same thing I mean Glenn Greenwald you know, ah Glenn Glenn Greenwald for a number of years was probably the single most world single most prominent journalist in the entire world. You know during the time of the ah the snowden exactly.

02:23:49.55

cactus chu

Right? Snowden and then the ball sonaro after the car wash stuff.

02:23:31.78

Ron Unz

Ah, exactly and he was pushed out of his own publication that he co-founder. In fact I wrote an article about giants and Pygmy . He was pushed out of the intercept because he refused to go along with fraudulent dishonesty.

02:24:12.17

cactus chu

The intercepts. Yeah.

02:24:04.94

Ron Unz

Material being written he basically was being censored in his own publication. But that no no, no, no, ah not the Russia that was 1 thing but the thing that finally pushed him out was when he pointed out the fact that basically um, there was a.

02:24:41.61

cactus chu

I think the specific thing was that he was trying to criticize the Russia investigation right.

02:24:42.68

Ron Unz

Media coverup to hide the fact that the Biden um the Hunter Biden laptop was a scandal and basically it was being censored by virtually one hundred percent of the media and including social media and so you wanted to write a column basically pointing out this ridiculous amount of media censorship to basically.

02:25:21.11

cactus chu

Oh right.

02:25:22.24

Ron Unz

In effect steal a presidential election and he couldn't do it in his own publication. He basically was the co-founder of the world's leading anti-censorship media outlet and he was being censored on his own publication. That's when he resigned and like I said I wrote a column about the time in the longer article afterwards.

02:26:17.90

cactus chu

2

02:26:01.36

Ron Unz

Which I probably would if I'd known we were going to go in that direction. I also mentioned the Stephen Cohen case. I mentioned a lot of other cases on exactly that same pattern. So what we're talking about is a situation where the media with the exception of Tucker Carlson on television. With the exception of Glenn Greenwald and a couple of other sorts of freelance journalists and with the exception of all these academics who were getting 0 attention until their Youtube videos were suddenly discovered and went super viral I mean basically the entire media. And the United States was giving an incredibly biased unbelievably biased in some ways worse than post nine eleven bias presentation of what was going on with Russia and Ukraine which I mean given example again Stephen Cohen was a very eminent Russia scholar and back four or five years ago he was saying that America he thought back then there was a greater risk of a global nuclear war between Russia and the United States than there had been or at least as bad at the height of the cuban missile missile crisis fifty or sixty years ago

02:28:46.25

cactus chu

Oh my.

02:28:22.30

Ron Unz

That's what he was saying four or five years ago. Can you imagine what he would be saying today? I mean America is America right now in a proxy war with Russia and NATO is in a proxy war with Russian American Intelligence officers whether honestly or not have been bragging.

02:29:06.27

cactus chu

Writes.

02:29:01.52

Ron Unz

They have been involved in assisting the assassination of Russian Generals America ah yeah yeah, they they were bragging to the New York Times that they were involved in sinking the flagship of Russia's black sea black sea fleet.

02:29:40.45

cactus chu

Right? This was directly so communicated with the New York Times right

02:29:40.94

Ron Unz

I mean America is in a proxy war with Russia. Russia has enough nuclear weapons to exterminate most of the American population. It's insane. I mean what America is doing is utterly insane right now and it's all these crazy neocons. I mean it's exactly the same as Iraq. War and neocons I mean after the iraq war turned out to be such a disaster they potentially had to keep their heads down for a little while but then they've all come back again except the ones they're too old I mean basically it's the Iraq and and the difference is now they've taken control of the democratic.

02:31:11.55

cactus chu

Right? This kind of political alignment was crucial to that as well I think.

02:30:57.98

Ron Unz

Party as well as the republican party I mean it's just an utterly insane situation when America is in a proxy war with nuclear armed Russia right on the russian border and take for example I think it was very haines. You know that neocon who's a director. Ah ah, averil hainees is.

02:31:57.77

cactus chu

I'm not familiar with her.

02:31:34.76

Ron Unz

I think she's the director of national intelligence. She's one of the top intelligence officials in the biden administration. She's another neocon, a younger neocon. She probably was too young to be influential during the rack where I think she's probably in her forty s right now or maybe early 50 s. She was basically in None of her discussions about you know what America was planning or what it was doing. She was saying that there's certainly some risk of Russia using nuclear weapons now. Personally I think that's doubtful. But I mean she was saying there's some danger that Russia would use nuclear weapons in the current war. But she said that would probably only happen if Russia were clearly losing the war and then later on in the same conversation. She was asked what American policy is. Oh the american policy is to ensure that Russia loses the Ukraine war I mean what.

02:33:32.45

cactus chu

To.

02:33:16.18

Ron Unz

Talking about crazy people, America is run by insane people, people basically who are promoting a nuclear war with Russia and not only not only that but 1 one ironic thing about John Mirsheimer is you know as I've said.

02:34:04.15

cactus chu

Right? ah.

02:33:50.26

Ron Unz

There's been a dividing line. In other words people generally in the more republican conservative side have generally been pro-russia or from my perspective pro-russia or at least not anti-russia while very very hostile towards China. While people on the democratic side were less hostile towards China but ferociously hostile towards Russia at mostly started with the russiagate hoax when you know there was that ridiculous thing that Putin had put Trump in office because Hillary Clinton didn't want to explain how she possibly lost. So anyway. We're talking about a situation where basically most people on the conservative side were typically saying we have to be friendly towards Russia so that we could ally with Russia against China and in fact, John Mirasheimer was one of the leading figures. The realist policy camp now. I disagree with him there. I think we should be on good terms with both Russia and China but his argument was that we needed to stay on good terms with Russia. We needed to bring Russia into a western alliance so that we would be stronger in the ongoing future confrontation with China. And it was in fact, it was called the pivot. In other words America was supposedly pivoting at the attention away exactly starting with Obama and then going on with Trump to some extent and then continuing on with Biden so the idea. Yeah exactly.

02:36:36.35

cactus chu

Right? The pivot to Asia was under Obama I think.

02:36:57.61

cactus chu

Yeah, it's been remarkably coherent at least at least kind of until now.

02:36:39.34

Ron Unz

I Mean we're talking about. Basically if we have a husband and wife team where the husband is a top porn of foreign policy adviser in all the Republican administrations and the wife is the top foreign policy advisor in all the democratic administrations. What do you expect, but we're talking about a single party that's been for.

02:37:36.15

cactus chu

Say. And how we get here. How do we get here? Is this an accident? Is this just like people agreeing?

02:37:17.00

Ron Unz

It's crazy I mean we're talking with them. Well I'll I can get in them moment but but just finishing up what I was saying about Russia so John Mesheimer when we ended up then provoking this confrontation with Russia he was sort of banging his head against the wall because his entire realist strategy which you know is supported by the friends in his camp and you know the people he's been talking with are that America has to attract Russia as an ally so that it can. Bring Russia into a future confrontation against China and instead we're basically on the verge of war with Russia, even nuclear war with Russia. It's just utterly insane. I mean there's no sense. There's no sane national security expert. Who could possibly say that what we're doing with regard to Russia is an irrational policy. I mean basically we're talking about staging ah the analogy which a lot of people made including me is that imagine how America would react if China fomented a coup. A military coup against the democratically elected pro-american government in Mexico seized ah a pro-china anti vehemently anti-american government seized power in Mexico and then basically began a low level war against the United States on the border. And including possibly basing chinese missiles here I mean it's insane I mean we went crazy when the russians were talking about basing nuclear weapons in Cuba and we're talking about doing exactly the same thing in Ukraine plus for example, these biowarfare laboratories which apparently are real since Victoria Newland admitted

02:40:50.93

cactus chu

Right? The Cuban missile crisis.

02:40:41.26

Ron Unz

Their existence is inner congressional Testimony so I mean we're talking but ah here into the whole. No exactly that is not ah the whole thing is the russians were claiming that they had massive documentation that they'd seized.

02:41:13.11

cactus chu

I Don't think they're necessarily bio warfare laboratories. There's some kind of research laboratory.

02:41:14.98

Ron Unz

Arguing that they were you know bio warfare labs now at the time I really was fairly skeptical. In other words, you know America has a massive biowarfare program America as the world's leading biowarfare program. We've spent by some estimates a hundred billion dollars and biowarfare over the years and we can get into that with root. Well.

02:42:12.77

cactus chu

I Mean it's so difficult to classify these things. I mean I'm kind of actually somewhat interested in this as well because I was looking into existential risk and this kind of pandemic stuff. But yeah, it's hard to classify like what the heck do we count as biowarfare.

02:41:53.88

Ron Unz

Ah, sorry we should use which well I should say America spent ah probably a hundred billion on biodefense since biowarfare was outlawed None or forty years ago all of the programs then were relabeled biodefense exactly but whatever you want and want to call it I mean basically bio dealing with either defending or offensive with bio weapon pons and so and you know there are all these labs allegedly in Ukraine.

02:43:01.51

cactus chu

Yeah, an informal categorization.

02:43:02.90

Ron Unz

And at the time you know when the Russians were claiming that I really wasn't that sure because you know it seemed it's perfectly possible America would do something like that. But it's perfectly possible. The Russians would simply make it all up because it would be exactly the sort of propaganda accusation. You'd expect it if you invaded another country but then Victoria.

02:44:02.31

cactus chu

Oh yeah.

02:43:37.56

Ron Unz

But then Victoria Newland specifically admitted the lab's existence in her congressional Testimony and said she was very worried about the contents falling into Russian hands now that shifts the presumption in a fairly strong direction because if the labs were entirely innocuous if they were simply dealing with them. You know the sort of thing that you know labs I mean that dealing with you know, flu or colds or something like that. Why would she be so extremely concerned that the materials and labs would fall into russian hands and then the russian.

02:45:11.47

cactus chu

Wait wait hold I completely disagree with this at all. Maybe this is just because of my background again. But like for example, we would not want ah mrna technology following and falling into russian hands I think it's in the strategic interest of the United States to be extremely ahead. Of its competitors and these kinds of legitimate technologies or kind of productive technologies not just like military stuff.

02:45:27.64

Ron Unz

Productive type of possibly I'm not saying that her testimony proved it but it' shifted in other words, you have the United States and you have Russia making entirely contradictory claims on whether these biolabs existed and what was in them. The Russians released a huge amount of documentation. They made certain points which you know I'm not going to look through the documentation but then the argument America was making for example, look yeah if you watch that clip with Victoria Newland she was specifically asked. You know, ah the I guess it was rubio asked her something like you know. What do you think about these Russian claims that there are biowarfare labs and she did not deny it. She did not deny the existence of biowarfare facilities. She basically.

02:47:28.49

cactus chu

No, she's a rubio and asked something along the lines of like are there he was living very specific in his wording because I think it's actually very easy and there have been statements which are saying like there are no bio Warfare Labs I Think the exact wording was something like ah biological.

02:47:21.00

Ron Unz

Um, exactly.

02:48:06.30

cactus chu

Or like research into viruses or something like that. I actually don't remember the exact verting but I do think it was much more conservative or much more general than that.

02:47:39.28

Ron Unz

Right? The whole thing is basically his statement in other words, it looked very clear that he was expecting her to issue a flat denial. And instead she basically admitted that the lives existed without denying that they were involved in biowarfare facilities. It would have been very easy for her to say the Russians are lying. There are no biowarfare facilities. None of it would have taken 10 seconds. She didn't say that. Oh yes, well the labs exist and we're worried about them falling into Russian hands now. Why would she not deny the russian charges unless she was under oath and the russians had the evidence now I'm not saying that proves it. But for example, Glenn Greenwald reacted in exactly the same way. He'd been hearing exactly the same accusations from the russians. And a discount for exactly the same reasons. But once she made that statement suddenly the presumption shifted in the other direction in his mind and he was on the Tucker Carlson show a day or two later and Tucker Carlson said exactly the same thing as Victoria Newland's very suspicious response. Tremendously increased the likelihood that the russians were the ones telling the truth and the american government was the one lying and I'm not saying 100% by I'd say it went from being say none or 6040 up to none in terms of likelihood and the russians have released all of this documentation now you know again I can't check documents to see whether they're forged or not. But in fact, Scott Ritter, who spent his whole career as an intelligence officer and had also been the chief UN's weapons inspector in Iraq, was looking exactly. For those sorts of biological weapons. He apparently has reviewed some of the russian documents and feels that they're probably accurate and legitimate so and.

02:51:47.51

cactus chu

Where I don't think we want to be trusting the Iraq guys on wmds I'm just saying but also in general I would not have put the base rate at something like none that just seems incredibly high to me like I just don't think that that we would expect especially in Ukraine because like. Like it's right next to Russia I don't think that this is a particularly sensical idea. Even if there was a kind of incentive to use it, it was just very dubious.

02:52:04.86

Ron Unz

Well, um, the whole thing is the Russian claims that the ukrainian there. No the russian claims are that the ukrainian biowarfare lives were experimenting with using migratory birds to spread disease into russian and naturally if you're doing something like that. You'd have to be on the russian board or at least. In the general vicinity of Russia now I'm not saying that throughnan. But I'm saying those are the claims made and given Victoria Newland's nondenial of those claims I think that preserving. Um why why? you know.

02:53:14.69

cactus chu

Are and.

02:53:31.29

cactus chu

No, she didn't. This was not in response to liking that specific thing. Okay I'm just gonna like take a moment you actually look at this look at this now.

02:53:19.16

Ron Unz

Yeah, ah, no exactly. But I mean the whole thing she basically was asked about the Russian claims and she could have easily denied them but she didn't. I mean to be honest, the biowarfare angle is something that I've been. I haven't been focused much on the Ukrainian biowarfare angle. I've been focused much more on the covid by a warfare angle and you know that is one reason I tend to be very suspicious about America's reaction with regard to the Ukrainian Alleged Biowarfare Labs is that I'm very very knowledgeable and I've spent a great deal.

02:54:54.15

cactus chu

Yeah, we'll put it. We'll put a pin on that because I definitely have that scheduled Beforehand I definitely have that as a topic of interest for sure and I think I would probably have a lot of similar skepticisms to what I just raised here. But yeah I would say.

02:54:32.80

Ron Unz

But I like it exactly.

02:54:52.74

Ron Unz

Perfect, perfect.

02:55:32.81

cactus chu

Like something that I wanted to talk about before we get into that and maybe this was also deeply related to the Ukraine stuff is what is your theory of the kind of institutional change. What is your theory on why there is this kind of I think I think like this is just widely acknowledged that there is this kind of increased presence of neocons in mainstream media.

02:55:04.30

Ron Unz

For sure.

02:56:11.71

cactus chu

If we're going to use that term or many of these other social issues. Why do you think that happens? Why do you think that there is this kind of change in legacy institutions?

02:55:58.28

Ron Unz

Well I mean the neocons started taking over the republican party in the 1990 s the neocons traditionally had been part of the conservative wing of the democratic party. You know, originally their ancestral roots go back to the Trotsky movement. But I mean that was a long time ago. Ah, so the neocons started taking the neocons basically lost a battle for control of the democratic party with the rise of the sort of more liberal or left-wing or. Anti-war groups within that party in other words ah traditionally many of them actually start off with Henry Jackson senator Scoop Jackson that wing of the democratic party and also they were some of them were tied in with like Lyndon Johnson the Vietnam war that type of thing they ended up losing a control. Battle for control of the democratic party so they shifted into the republican party and during 1990 s they ended up taking over a large segment of control of the republican party and then following 2001 the none attacks they pretty much gained total control of the republican party.

02:58:13.90

cactus chu

Moon.

02:58:16.60

Ron Unz

Now at that point since the Iraq war became a total disaster. Naturally the country shifted back towards the democratic party but the new khans being very shrewd people had sent a segment of their forces to take control of the democratic party. So basically they ended up taking control of both political parties. Even the last ah the story of the last twenty Twenty five years is that the neocons have taken control of the foreign policy wing of both the democratic and the republican party. Well I mean they have a struggle.

02:59:41.71

cactus chu

Yeah, but how did that happen? Like if it was that easy to take control of a political party I think I think we've had more. We'd have even more problems right now.

02:59:32.60

Ron Unz

Well I mean they they you know they're very energetic people I mean they have a tremendous base of funding support. For example, a lot of the biggest fund financial donors to both the democratic and the republican party these days are jewish Non billionaire neocons.

03:00:18.51

cactus chu

M.

03:00:07.98

Ron Unz

Ah, to give an example. Ah the biggest donor to the trump camp. Well you sure of course I mean the newmans aromatically on jewish issues I mean the neocons for example, the neocons number. 1 issue is Israel in the Middle East that's traditionally been the number 1 issue for 30 or forty years and then.

03:00:39.95

cactus chu

Is there any importance that they're Jewish really.

03:01:13.67

cactus chu

I don't think so like the Iraq war Ukraine now. They just like fighting wars. I don't think Israel is a particular priority.

03:00:47.18

Ron Unz

But yeah, the Iraq war. No no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the Iraq war was all because of Israel it was all because of Israel Iraq traditionally of course the Iraq war was because of Israel everybody knows that. It was all because of Israel. If you weren't you weren't a word. No. What think it's all because of Israel you're you're not aware that the Iraq war was fought because of Israel I can't believe that first and.

03:01:56.30

cactus chu

I'm very skeptical. Maybe this is my naivete but you can say like this is because of None right that's the that's the entire.

03:02:19.93

cactus chu

Do do you mean like the the None Iraq war or like the the second Iraq war the the second one the first one I'm less familiar with the second one I think is like pretty obviously because of None right

03:02:03.32

Ron Unz

Like an Iraq war but the second life people.

03:02:16.86

Ron Unz

The Iraq had nothing to do with nine eleven yeah, but but why no no yeah, can't but you're not a word that of course it was all the pro-jewish newo of the jewish or pro jewishw pro-israel neo.

03:02:55.11

cactus chu

Yeah, but that was kind of like a justification.

03:02:51.84

Ron Unz

Who were all behind the Iraq war. In fact, there's basically there was even an article publish that Israel's largest ah Israel sort of most influential newspaper is called Araz and it had an article talking about the 25 neocons in Dc who caused the Iraq war I mean all of the neocons were fanatically pro-israel neocons and they were all the ones behind the Iraq. Of course they did. Iraq had traditionally been viewed by Israel as its most dangerous adversary because Iraq had both oil wealth, a large population and water. In other words Iraq under Saddam Hussein Iraq tried to build for example nuclear weapons. To balance out Israel's nuclear weapons and that caused Israel to launch and you know a ah preemptive attack on the Iraq ah Iraq or Iraq the Iraq's nuclear reactor in um, let's see what year was it eighty nine eighty eight something like that 87 you're familiar with the fact that Israel attacked ah Iraq's nuclear program.

03:05:22.17

cactus chu

Um, I am not not too familiar with it.

03:04:57.42

Ron Unz

Ah Israel basically they their their their planes did a refueling. In fact, the whole for about ten or fifteen years there'd been a massive hidden war going on between Israel and Iraq over Iraq's nuclear program Israel was doing everything. It could. Including ah assassinating iraqi scientists sabotaging Iraqi equipment because Iraqi Iraq had enough money that they could afford to build up a nuclear weapons program while you know, a lot of the other arab states you know didn't have the money or the resources or the you know well-educated population. So I mean basically Israel had fought. Ah, a very bitter um sort of intelligence war to try to sabotage or defeat Iraq's nuclear program to prevent Saddam Hussein from getting a nuclear weapon and then finally when all their other avenues were exhausted. They launched an attack against Iraq. It violated an international law. But I mean they basically they sent their bombers over um I can't remember exactly which route they followed. But I think over. In fact I I can't remember whether America supplied. No they they had problems because it was it was far enough that they needed refueling so it was a difficult mission and they destroyed the iraqi rocker. Because I mean their number Israel's number one adversary in the arab world was Saddam Hussein Iraq and then after then you know it's not entirely clear why Saddam. Hussein in fact and the other thing I should mention is the israelis actually supported Iran in the war with Iraq because Iraq was their main enemy so they ended up giving they sold weapons and equipment to the iranians so that the iranians you know would be able to hold off and then ultimately defeat Saddam Hussein I mean the war went on for five or six years and the israelis were the ones behind the iranians at the time. So anyway, once the war was over the israelis then were concerned that once Iraq then recovered Iraq then again would become a major threat to Israel. So. It's disputed. In other words I can't really say but there's some evidence that America deliberately provoked the Iraqis to Attack Wait so that we would have an excuse for destroying Iraq but it's certainly true that once the Iraqis invaded Kuwait, um. The pro-israel elements of the american foreign policy establishment. The neocons were the key key figures in urging us to destroy Saddam's regime and destroy Iraq and attack him. I mean there was a lot of opposition at the time. In fact, if you just you can even find it on Youtube.

03:10:28.22

Ron Unz

You can find it at that time. Pat Buchanan was one of the most prominent conservative figures in the United States especially and you you can find a clip of him saying it's the only people supporting war against Iraq are so are the ah pro-israel amen quarter.

03:11:08.77

cactus chu

Right? I'm pretty familiar with him.

03:11:05.10

Ron Unz

In Dc hey he was he was say he said it on one of those shows I think it was the um mclaughlin group. You can probably find the clip on Youtube somewhere I mean it was basically it was all the pro-israel ah overwhelmingly Jewish neocons who were the ones behind the war. Now. They were not the only ones behind the word you know. I'm not saying you know obviously Saddam had invaded Kuwait and there were a lot of other elements of the foreign policy establishment that believed that Saddam had to be driven out but I mean they certainly were. Probably let me put this way if not for the pro-israel neocons. We probably would not have fought Saddam in 9091 and it's absolutely None certain we would have not invaded Iraq after the none attacks absolutely None certain not the slightest doubt about it I mean the whole thing but notion of America attacking Iraq because allegedly, um, ah, allegedly, um, Osama Bin Ah Saddam Hussein was the arch enemy of Osama Bin Laden the arch enemy so the official story was that Osama Bin Laden had launched the nine eleven attacks against the United States and in retaliation we attack his number None enemy makes no sense. The reason we did it was because Saddam Iraq was viewed as the moat. Greatest threat for Israel in the Middle East and all the pro-israel neocons were the ones behind it.

03:14:43.90

cactus chu

Yeah, I'm just kind of I mean you can draw the causation out in a lot of different ways right? like what causation is a kind of is a kind of dubious thing I guess what's happening here is that you have this kind of neoconservative establishment. And that there is some kind of direction that it takes I'm not sure if it's particularly because of Israel as opposed to something that I'm more at.

03:15:03.46

Ron Unz

Of course it's Israel I mean you can even find there's that famous quote where one of you know, Bush ah w george w bush at None point was asking what does it mean? What are these neocons? One of his father's advisors told him. None word Israel.

03:16:09.50

cactus chu

I think americans just want power in the Middle East and of course Israel is a country in the middle east that's allied with the states but you have a lot of these kind of social phenomenon like I'm I'm just very skeptical that there are kind of plans to these things because really, this is just kind of like an opportunistic thing where.

03:15:50.16

Ron Unz

No, but.

03:16:46.71

cactus chu

There is this reaction to None there's this kind of very sketchy and now in hindsight obviously false accusation of wmds and then there's there's this, there's of course this kind of profit incentive and power incentive to take military action.

03:16:41.60

Ron Unz

No, no, no I don't.

03:17:16.71

cactus chu

And I don't think there is necessarily a world where Israel doesn't exist. It's still. It's still fairly likely that this goes through it's still fairly likely that neocons still want to do wars in general and that they want power in the Middle East

03:16:57.44

Ron Unz

Um, no, no, no, you're absolutely None wrong in this issue. I mean to be honest I've been following foreign policy for 3040 years or something even longer than that. I mean I know all of these neocons. Used to work with them in Dc all the time I mean I remember you know them but the interesting thing is none of them back George W Bush they were all against George W Bush and so they were and no big. No because no and there was all the news.

03:18:19.37

cactus chu

Yeah George W Bush was against war and then he opportunistically became for war because of nine eleven.

03:18:07.66

Ron Unz

Conse gained control of the Bush administration which is really astonishing since not a single one had been given a cabinet appointment the whole thing about it now. America's strategic interest in the Middle East according to all objective observers is always to have good relations with the oil producing countries which are the Arab countries.

03:18:48.23

cactus chu

Moon.

03:18:43.40

Ron Unz

And in other words if not for the strength of the Israel lobby in the United States America would have very good relations with Saudi Arabia with all of the oil countries because we need their oil. No, no, no, no, are you aware that Saudi Arabia was absolutely.

03:19:32.70

cactus chu

They do have pretty good relations with Saudi Arabia, maybe not recently, but certainly for a long period of time.

03:19:22.20

Ron Unz

Dead set against our invasion of Iraq in 6003 massively lobbied against it. The Saudis put everything they had to try to prevent America from attacking Iraq and did nothing. They were just.

03:19:58.59

cactus chu

I was not completely aware.

03:20:18.37

cactus chu

All right I was just not aware of that.

03:19:55.40

Ron Unz

Okay I mean but basically it's all about Israel and the Middle East and the whole thing is also about these neocons you know since many of them originally. Ah, they're Jews who originally came from Russia. They also hate Russia and they hate Putin because basically Russia had been under the control of the jewish oligarchs after the fall of the. The Soviet Union after all of communism virtually all of the wealth. A huge fraction of the wealth in the country were seized by None oligarchs 6 of whom were jewish and they were very tight with the neocons in the United States they supported them everything like that and then once Putin came to power they impoverished the entire country. Everybody was desperately poor and the death rate went enormously high, the highest peacetime death rate of almost any country in, you know, any modern country in world history because I mean the country was totally impoverished. Everybody was entirely impoverished. All the wealth was held by those 6 the None oligarchs 6 of whom were jewish and then when Putin came into power. He pushed them out and so the neocons are very angry at Putin for having displaced the jewish oligarchs who'd been running Russia who they thought would run Russia indefinitely. And they also have very hard feelings towards Russia going back to you know the tsar and pogroms and everything like that but that was one hundred years ago I mean just yeah.

03:23:03.15

cactus chu

Yeah, like I'm so like this also seems kind of dubious to like people or the causation seems quite dubious to me because there are a lot of reasons to hate Russia number one among them being just like history right? um. Ah, the Soviet Union obviously and before that they were still a geopolitical adversary if not enemy.

03:23:07.72

Ron Unz

Um, here's a question here's a question. Ah, here's a question for you. Anybody who follows the American media knows that in the last ten years, especially the last few years, the American media has been incredibly more hostile towards Russia.

03:24:12.85

cactus chu

In the past ten years yeah that seems about right to me.

03:23:45.50

Ron Unz

Now that it's ah, let me say then it was now than it was during the peak of the cold war in other words during the period when the Soviet Union was under a communist regime that was sworn to destroy the United States economic and social system. Least allegedly in other words, the communist Soviet Union never had a fraction of the hostility leveled against it that the christian Russia does today because basically the neocons the jewish neocons hey that the bolshevik revolution was a jewish. Revolution in Russia I mean the leadership was overwhelmingly jewish they seized power in Russia and then they turned against Stalin when he got rid of most of them and but I mean still the jews had a tremendous amount of power during most of Soviet history. And in fact, the hostility towards the Soviet Union and the United States in the media only developed. After Stalin had pushed the after basically destalinization when the jews lost most of their power in Russia.

03:26:21.55

cactus chu

I feel like there are a lot of other things that Stalin did that that would probably make us much more much more averse to to the Soviet Union

03:26:09.60

Ron Unz

But the whole thing is but you really you really have to study the sister. I mean look, we're talking about a situation where the American elite media was actually very friendly towards Stalin during the period when he was killing the largest number of people. I mean for example, take the 1930 s. I mean when you're talking about the number of people killed by Stalin and the famine and mass executions and everything like that, the bulk of it happened in the 1930 s and 1940 s especially in the 1930 s we're talking about during that period of time. The American media was overwhelmingly friendly. Towards stalin and meeting it.

03:27:54.31

cactus chu

Right? There was the levante There was the levante Pro Pro Soviet coverage. There was all this stuff there. There are definitely sympathizers.

03:27:40.60

Ron Unz

Yeah, ah, right? And yeah, exactly and that was when Stalin was killing all those people later after Stalin pushed the jews out of power and the jews became much less powerful. That's when the hostility developed but still there was very little hostility towards.

03:28:39.29

cactus chu

I

03:28:17.82

Ron Unz

Look I'm somebody who lived during that period I mean we're talking about I was aware of what the media was like towards Russia soviet Russia during the nineteen not really 1960 S but 1970 S and 1980 s the media in the United States the elite media. The respectable media. Was not friendly towards Russia but was, you know, moderately neutral towards Russia in other words, anybody who would say you know extremely anti-russian or anti-soviet things would be regarded as like an extremist lunatic during that period if you take the things we're saying about Russia now not even. The most extremist lunatics would have said things back then and anybody nobody in the New York Times or the wall street journal any of these respectable publications would have said even a fraction of those things probably not even the most right-wing members of congress would have said even a fraction of those things. The whole change took place after Russia. Was no longer communist. So the leftists stopped supporting it for that reason and after the jewish oligarchs were pushed out of power for example during the 1990'S the 1990's was the most disastrous period in russian history since the stalin era in terms of number of deaths disasters for the ordinary people of Russia.

03:30:52.27

cactus chu

Mm.

03:30:51.32

Ron Unz

During the entire period of the 1990 s there was tremendously favorable sentiment towards Russia in the mainstream media because basically it was all controlled by None jewish oligarchs and so you know because the media basically was friendly towards those individuals. Was portraying them in a very you know extreme way I mean basically nobody reading the American mainstream media during the 1990 s would have been aware of the tremendous rise in the death rate of all the disasters and the fact that the entire wealth of the country had been stolen by a handful of people. Ah, people who actually were involved in organized crime. So there were many many murders being committed I mean Basically America was very friendly towards a group of international jewish gangsters who ended up seizing control of Russia and looting the entire country. And then once those jewish gangsters were driven from power at that point suddenly America became much more hostile towards Russia or what I should say is the american media became much more hostile towards Russia. It's simple as you know obviously.

03:33:36.71

cactus chu

Are you aware of the idea in machine learning of overfitting.

03:33:17.00

Ron Unz

I Have no idea what machine learning is.

03:33:53.49

cactus chu

All right? So the idea of overfitting is essentially that if you so , machine learning is essentially a tactic or a tool to understand data to to draw patterns from data to allow you to predict in the future and. Problem of overfitting is when you kind of ah when you kind of look at a specific sample and because of what you are doing with your specific techniques or because of how much you've been training your model on that specific smaller set of data. It becomes very good at answering things that are contained within the data but are not very good at kind of generalizing to the real world and I think what happens is that whenever you're looking at. A small set of factors and you're trying to draw conclusions from them. It's like a very kind of noisy environment. There are just a lot of random kinds of mutations, really like twists and plot twists in history. That you can't attribute to like None factor and and maybe this is the same thing that that kind of motivates my skepticism of um or like my uncertainty in terms of my don my skepticism in terms of quote unquote bio warfare labs. However, we want to define that. Um. It's just that I'm very just like I'm. I'm very against these kinds of monocausal explanations because in the real world. There are all sorts of things that we haven't labeled that we haven't kind of pointed out as a thing in specific that we should be worried about. But and and of course this happens in the mainstream media as well in the exact opposite direction. You see this happening with racism, the kind of narratives around racism I largely consider to be very conspiratorial at their core and that whenever you have these situations where there's a lot of incentive to concentrate on a few factors. And to say like okay this is the actual reason why instead of things being generally different just on the balance of probability and generally much less correlated than many people think you end up in these scenarios where I think that while certainly a lot of people in my audience will find this kind of ah. People who have lower degrees of openness will find this kind of bad and I don't think that they should do that either. But I think that whenever you have a kind of single single or or not even just single but a kind of like myopic definition of what we're what we're going to look at.

03:39:12.10

cactus chu

Ah, what specific factors we're going to look at it becomes just increasingly easy to draw a narrative from that that is just as um, as in Them Taleeb from it puts it just being fooled by randomness.

03:39:06.42

Ron Unz

Well I mean using some of that framework I think it's important to have an adequate data set. I mean on these foreign policy issues I've been following them for 203040 years and it sounds like you really haven't paid any attention to any of them. So to the extent that. For example, you know if you weren't even a word that Israel had bombed the iraqi nuclear reactor if you're lacking that data point then it's hard to form a sort of coherent picture of history. If you're unaware of those things I mean for example I am curious where you were. For example, None of the None oligarchs who controlled almost all of Russia's wealth were jews friendly with the neocons in DC.

03:41:04.69

cactus chu

I was or I would have expected them to be friendly with the neocons in DC but I was not aware they were jewish now.

03:40:45.22

Ron Unz

Well you see that's the sort of data point I mean for example, take actually there's an interesting book. Do you know who Amy Chua is, okay well you know she wrote a good book back about twenty years ago about minority market minorities. I can't remember the title of it.

03:41:28.50

cactus chu

Yes, yes I've been trying to get her on the podcast. Unsuccessfully so far.

03:41:47.79

cactus chu

Right World on fire I believe is the book.

03:41:24.60

Ron Unz

Yeah, the world on fire exactly and in in None page of the book I think in the introduction she mentioned that sort of she was looking at Russia and she noticed that like and all of almost all of the our oligarchs who'd seized the total wealth of the country were jewish and she mentioned that to one of her colleagues and. Colleagues said oh that's not something to pay any attention to and you know it's not something you should probably write about and so you know the whole thing about it is virtually nobody who reads the american mainstream media is aware of these facts because they're excluded from the mainstream media and so you know the the problem is you can be a quite smart and intelligent. Thoughtful person. But if you're not given any of the information to form a proper judgment. You come to mistaken conclusions in other words, if you're not and by the way when I said for example, Iraq was traditionally regarded as Israel's leading adversary in the Arab world. That's not a controversial statement, that's a statement that I've probably read None times in statements by foreign policy analysts. I mean it's something that everybody who follows the Middle East knows perfectly. Well that Iraq was regarded Israel Israel's number one adversary. Israel had spent years fighting a covert war over Iraq's nuclear weapons program and it finally then launched a bombing attack violating international law to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor and so you know if you're unaware of those things. It's hard to form. Ah, proper judgment as to why America attacked Iraq in 2002 and 2003 and you could believe that the neocons who are very pro-israel did it for entirely different reasons. But if you are aware of those data points you form more coherent you know core and that's why for example. Ah, a tremendous amount of information can be found simply by reading books and reading articles and reading the newspaper every morning even if those sources of information themselves are quite biased in their interpretation. You can still get the nuggets of truth that you can then combine into a coherent whole.

03:46:04.45

cactus chu

Yeah I think that an experience is a lot of what's happening. I Think what's happening is kind of asymmetry right? like an iceberg problem where you've kind of laid out some data points and I've taken them basically for granted in this assumption and I still think that there's.

03:45:37.68

Ron Unz

And so.

03:46:39.31

cactus chu

Not sufficient data but you have of course plenty of things that you haven't told me and probably plenty of things that if we were to fully talk about this podcast might be 24 hours or so but yeah I agree that there's hey yeah I would agree that I'm kind of.

03:46:35.18

Ron Unz

Were twenty four days I mean that there are you.

03:47:15.79

cactus chu

Informed on this issue and that my opinion also shouldn't shouldn't necessarily be trusted either? Um, yeah I think there is kind of a bad faith critique that happens sometimes where where there's kind of like a kilt by association of like oh you, you cared about. Um, you cared about people who are jewish and so did Hitler and this is very bad or this kind of like because let's face it. This is this is kind of like a real a real thing that there are some people who exist out there who are particularly um, who are particularly kind of. Really like in the true sense anti-semitic and and are and have this kind of like um, very repugnant ideology but that there's this kind of there's not even guilt by association. Although that sometimes happens but this kind of like this kind of like actually do you know what? it's very similar to It's very similar to the kind of like contrarian impulse. It's kind of like anti-current thing thing because you have these people who are who are just like making a completely separate case. There's kind of no correlation between that and this kind of ah the actual kind of repugnant ideology types and. Ah, people just have this kind of like impulsive reaction this kind of instinctive like like broken pattern matching thing that goes on and and it's like just very silly and and I want to make sure that my readers don't do that. But and. Ah, simultaneously. Of course, there's this kind of thing happening in the opposite direction where they'll say like not only is the establishment and bad but like the opposite of what the establishment says is true and and I think this is kind of the same deal where you'll have this kind of shitty political tactic of people saying okay not only are are white supremacists. Bad which they are but also like anything that and but also like the opposite of or not even just the opposite but like anything that remotely asks those who ask those questions even if they have completely different lines of argument are also bad. So I want to make it clear that like I reject those types of arguments and that's not the reason why I'm pushing back on you the reason why I'm pushing back on you and I think the reason why you're making these arguments in the affirmative as well is that I just I just see that I just see the data differently I just have a different opinion. Um.

03:51:28.12

Ron Unz

Well I mean people can have different opinions. Again some of the things I've been some of the statements I've been making might be considered somewhat controversial. Many of them I think you know, many of them I think are accepted by virtually everybody who's looked at the situation.

03:52:18.27

cactus chu

I think it's quite controversial at least in the present.

03:52:04.64

Ron Unz

And so you know again, like for example, None issue that people have argued about which I really don't have strong feelings about is whether America deliberately lured Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait for example, what was their name April Gillespie the American ambassador. Specifically told Saddam that we don't take sides in inter-arab disputes. I can't remember the exact language she used, but it was widely regarded as giving a green light to Saddam to invade Kuwait and there. There's a fairly plausible argument that we deliberately lured him into invading Kuwait so we would then have an excuse to attack and destroy his regime I don't know about that in other words, that's something that can be disputed but I mean the fact that for example, Israel bombed the iraqi reactor I mean. Everybody knows that it's in the history books you could find it on Google in ten second and you know yeah so I mean all all these um probably 80% or 70%. The fact that like None of the seven. Ah oligarchs who you know siphoned off almost all of the russian wealth to themselves were jewish I mean that's well known you can find in.

03:54:16.27

cactus chu

Yeah, and I don't, I don't contest that at all.

03:54:19.52

Ron Unz

In fact, you can probably look at Amy Chua's book if you have it around somewhere like that.

03:54:54.63

cactus chu

Yeah I don't really contest those kinds of point statements, I kind of contest the correlation that you draw from them. But as I said before, this is the iceberg problem right? You probably have a lot more points to form that conclusion with.

03:54:45.60

Ron Unz

Well I mean like let me give you None more. Just example and you know you see you've got to understand a lot of what people in the field certainly know doesn't get much in the mainstream media. So that when people haven't been following the issue for years. They're sometimes caught on a worse For example, there's really fairly smart foreign policy as a guy policy guy I know who's you know, interest in foreign policy was discussing with me oh a few weeks ago something like you know how our relations with Russia broke.

03:55:55.50

cactus chu

Right.

03:55:53.44

Ron Unz

You know what caused the sort of conflict to originally develop and you know he seemed totally unaware or at least he hadn't focused on the Magnitsky act which was passed by Congress which sanctioned a lot of top Russian leaders and I mean really is I think widely regarded as the act complete break.

03:56:44.53

cactus chu

Um.

03:56:32.68

Ron Unz

And american relations with Russia and the magnitsky act was ah basically passed in congress the lobbying of um, no, what's his name that russian oligarch um, ah Russian -american oligarch um his grandfather had been head of ah browder but browder. Um, ah. What's his none name hold on a none this is stupid is grandfather was head of the communist party in the United States Earl Browder but um.

03:57:43.74

Ron Unz

Bill Browder sorry Bill Browder so ah basically Bill Browder had with this hermitage funded become a billionaire by gaining control of a lot of russian companies and wealth and arguably using illegal tactics and you know there were some accusations of some murders and something like that. And then he ended up being pushed out by Putin so browder ended up lobbying congress to pass the magnitsky act basically sanctioning a lot of the top russian leaders. Ah, but you know it really was the thing that broke relations and None of the interesting things about it is. Ah, there was a russian filmmaker who was very supportive of browder and you know believe the story. He'd said about putin having or Putin's Kgb having murdered None of of Browder's associates or something like that who was ah Magnitsky was the guy's name which was the reason the act was named after that. And the filmmaker ended up then doing ah with Browder's cooperation he decided to do a documentary on Browder's story but as he started investigating the facts. The facts were entirely on the other side. So the documentary ended up basically arguing that browder was the one who probably murdered. His own subordinate to keep him from testifying against him or at least raised serious doubts in that direction and the documentary has been banned from the west in other words basically browder has used all of his legal clout to prevent anybody in the west or anybody on the internet from seeing the documentary. And we ended up publishing several articles on the whole thing which you know I mean the evidence seems really quite straightforward but it was interesting that that policy guy wasn't even aware of the magnitsky act or Browder's role in it because it was so excluded from all of them. Discussions you read in the newspapers if you know why America broke with Russia. So yeah I mean all this stuff I think is really fairly straightforward if you look into it and it's only shocking because none of it ever appears in the American media I mean it's sort of like you know again, you. People are surprised when they learn things that you know sometimes maybe most people in the world are aware of but not the United States

04:02:39.71

cactus chu

Yeah I think what's very interesting is that there's almost this kind of there. There's almost this kind of symmetry that that I think is happening with all of these all these different It's like very easy to kind of attach on to. These like very very specific issues and there there seems to be like the symmetry of with all of these different groups doing it in the same way and and because of that it becomes really easy to kind of like attack them in a very silly way of saying like oh there is this one like quote unquote fringe group. And there is this other quote unquote fringe group and they must be the same. They must be equally incorrect because None of them are incorrect and both of them are fringe. But that's like not being coherent whatsoever. But I think that that is a kind of big recipe as to why um. As to why you get these kinds of media effects and that's really where I want to focus at least like a majority of the rest of our time on because as funded as it is talking about kind of current events the kind of frame of the podcast is that there are these institutional. Um, changes going on that there are these realignments or there are these kinds of ah, really structural problems that that we're looking at so I think a very big question I want to investigate with you is that is how these kinds of these kinds of lobbying groups or these kinds of organizations. Form because I think from your from your kind of position so far, you probably perceive them to be much more competent than I do I see them as quite incompetent and as really only being able to accomplish things that that are already kind of so emotionally salient and and like emotionally. Ah, basically manipulative that they're able to gain a large audience based on the ideas by themselves versus versus like I think your framing gives those kinds of organizations much more agency and much more much more kind of just like competence in general and. And I mean I've probably met fewer of them than you have and of course of a younger generation mostly but they really don't seem competent to me at all. So I guess the question is like what is the structure if you were to summarize that strength. Both in the level and in the kind of in the kind of origin of their strength of these kinds of lobbying organizations or these kinds of pseudo political organizations. What would those strengths be like? How do they get their interests across?

04:07:45.86

Ron Unz

Well I mean None thing I should say is the arguments you're making seem to me very general arguments. In other words, basically suppose you were discussing the history of Rome with a rome scholar. You know a rome specialist, a classical historian who was one of the leading experts on rome and you'd actually never read a book on rome you know it seems to me the statements you're making could be just as effective. In other words, you would say well you know you. Claim that there was this group in Rome and that other group in Rome and they were fighting with each other and they maneuvered against each other but I'm skeptical whether you know it really were simple as that and so you know there really is no, there's no. Replacement for actually having detailed knowledge of a particularity and I certainly don't have much detailed knowledge in many areas but in some I do and in and some I really have read and you know when we're talking about. For example, America again, you know, in the last couple of months in the last few months the coverage of Russia in the conservative American media has undergone the most radical change I think I've seen for any country in my lifetime. In other words, you know, even as of like. You know, just a few months ago, take here's an example in another country which had an impact in the French election. There was that guy za more. You know the right wing was running in France he was like apparently a few months ago, you know, saying nice things about Putin Putin was like exactly you know the sort of the.

04:11:23.85

cactus chu

Yes.

04:11:18.60

Ron Unz

Putin was sort of almost as role model for how to run a country and that was not at all considered controversial was basically what all the right-wingers in the west did all the time they always praised Putin They you know endorsed putin they said Putin was exactly the sort of leader we need in the United States

04:11:52.47

cactus chu

Citizen.

04:11:50.44

Ron Unz

And then in a period of just a couple of months that's entirely gone into reverse where you have some of these same right-wingers on american television demanding Putin's assassination now you could say it's because Putin started a war which you know is obviously the trigger. But as you know from mesheimer and all of these other people America's basically been provoking this war for at least None ears I mean Basically America has been doing everything it possibly could Nato the neocons Ukraine. Provoking war and I mean you had for example, the ukrainian leader just a few days before the Putin finally invaded the ukrainian leader said not only was he going to become part of Nato which had been the red line that must not be crossed but that he wanted Ukraine to have nuclear weapons I mean how would America react. If a violently anti-american coup regime in Mexico declared there was going to get nuclear weapons against the United States I mean just it's absurd. So the fact that America's mainstream republican conservative establishment has done a total 81 and Putin. In a period of just a couple of months you know is I think a shocking statement of how quickly people have shifted and you know again I'm not saying it's the social media I think it's probably more the donors than anything else. In other words, you have a group of elite donors who fund both parties. The donors in many cases are friends with each other. Many cases they have perilous interests and since you get what you pay for both political parties basically are subject to the will of the donor. I think that it's not only money. It's also the media but the media is under the control of the same people as well. And you know, but by basically preventing certain simple facts from being mentioned in the media, someone like you who you know I'm sure is quite intelligent. Well-meaning you know a person knowledgeable in certain fields is simply unaware of the basic facts. That are necessary to understand the framework of what happened and I mean that's exactly you know another issue that you know as he said we were going to talk about would be the whole bioweapon covid thing I mean there are all these crucial facts about the covid outbreak that virtually nobody in the in in the media obviously would mention whatsoever. And in fact, virtually nobody in the internet would mention whatsoever because once those facts are known an explanation for what happened is so obvious that you know nobody could possibly look in a noble direction. I mean it's sort of the way you eat.

04:17:37.97

cactus chu

Yeah, so here's the kind of founding philosophy of the podcast. So. The big idea is that you have these kinds of symmetries and you have these kinds of parallels across these different areas and and and as to your kind of question. Ah, you're asking a few minutes ago about why I prefer these kinds of general questions because I believe they're meaningful. Ah, it's because I believe and I think many of my other guests believe or maybe you believe this as well that there are very striking similarities and behind the kind of social effects that say. Ah, drive newo conservatism to be successful and that drive quote unquote wokeness that drive this kind of social progressive ideology that drives the kind of say other culture war fights even when the right wing is successful say on abortion that drive those and that there are these kind of fundamental dynamics. That um, that basically and that that plays a large factor in whether your political strategy succeeds or syncs and that we want to use these examples in order to build a kind of broader model in order to build a kind of broader understanding of these things and I get that that can. Seems like I'm just trying to distract or trying to um, trying not to focus on the specifics but like that's the kind of goal of the podcast. The goal of the podcast is to create this kind of unification. Idea or unifying patterns behind these types of political changes and I'm very sorry if I wasn't if I wasn't as clear about that as I probably should have been.

04:20:32.80

Ron Unz

Were um, yeah that's perfectly fine. But again I think things are sometimes simpler than you're making them out to be. Here's another example and you probably aren't familiar with him. But do you know who Haim Saban is okay, he basically for many years with is israeli Egyptian Jew who

04:21:19.91

cactus chu

No I do not.

04:21:07.80

Ron Unz

Grew up in Israel I think he basically he's a multi-billionaire and for a while he owned the Univision television network but I don't think he owns it anymore he basically was for a number of years. The number None donor to the democratic party under Bill Clinton at the time. He's also publicly said so. And he's been quoted as saying his single only issue is Israel. The only issue he cares about is Israel so when somebody is the number one donor to the democratic party under Bill Clinton and he's well-known doesn't make bones about it. The single only issue he cares about in the world is Israel. You can imagine the democratic party would care about Israel also and in fact, he ended up being one of the largest donors I think he gave like $11000000. Are you familiar with the brookings institute brookings institution. It sort of was always like a modern liberal think tank in dc. It was sort of the modern liberal think tank in dc.

04:23:11.87

cactus chu

Yes, yes.

04:23:03.80

Ron Unz

Ah, after the 119 attacks or or was around the time of the nine eleven attacks maybe a little bit before he ended up giving $11000000 I think was 11000000 to the brookings institution largest stone the largest donation they'd ever gotten and after the None attacks one of the leading ah senior fellows. Ah. Ah, the brookings institution ended up being strongly critical of the looming Iraq war. In other words, he was sort of saying you know, maybe it's a mistake for us to go into Iraq. We know we should have no thoughts about it or something like that and then supposedly for and I read at the time you know. Saban sort of said he didn't like that and the guy did a complete u-turn and within a few weeks or a couple of months suddenly he was 100% behind the Iraq war because he didn't want to lose his job and so you know it's the sort of thing if somebody says my only issue in the world is Israel. And if somebody then becomes the number None donor to Bill Clinton's democratic party and also the number None donor to the leading liberal think tank in Dc and those organizations seem to sort of shift in a pro-israel direction. Maybe it's coincidental. But. Maybe it's not.

04:26:03.49

cactus chu

So yeah I think that it is quite hard to argue with that I think I've all I will definitely do some do some thinking about this in the future.

04:25:39.60

Ron Unz

Yeah, that. And you say the whole thing is and again the fact that Saban was saban was the number None donor and the fact that he was you know he said his only issue was Israel I mean I've probably read that None times in the newspapers over the years I mean it's not a disputed fact you can Google it and find in 10 seconds but when you've read something a none times in the newspapers over many many years that still means it probably only gets into the newspaper once every few months or something like that and maybe only None newspaper at the time and in fact, it's probably been at least a decade since I've seen that mentioned in a newspaper. So if you are a younger person and you come along and you're only starting to read the newspapers in the last five or six years you're not aware of that and you've never heard of saban or any of that so you know that's why I think it takes us a lot of research to gain the raw material information.

04:27:48.17

cactus chu

Writes.

04:27:38.14

Ron Unz

To be able to form a coherent picture and I think the problem with sometimes just sort of looking at things from a philosophical point of view is that the arguments can be made regardless of any of the evidence on any of the different sides and the evidence I think what really determines. You know the reality of this situation in the same way with you know the articles I've written on lots of other subjects I mean virtually all of my articles draw even the extremely controversial ones draw on extremely mainstream sources like the New York Times top academics top journalists. But. You know it's the sort of thing I have to find sometimes those sources and sometimes takes quite a lot of effort to find those statements that they made because they're not heavily promoted by the mainstream media and so it's the sort of thing where you know I mentioned these things to people and everybody's totally shocked and then they checked in sure enough it was in the New York Times but you know it was only in the New York Times once and The New York Times editors made sure not to repeat it afterwards and the same thing I mean it's like with John Mccain with you know with all of these other issues and especially you know with the covid outbreak I mean all of these facts are there. They're very very. Easy to point to because they're there except they're not repeated by the media and so for example in some of these cases a really very clear example would be the case of for example, a war crime committed by a very prominent democratic senator. It ended up being discussed in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine and on 60 minutes there was a whole 60 minutes episode of it. A massacre of vietnamese civilians I mean you can't get any bigger than a cover story in the New York Times Magazine and a 60 minutes episode but then it vanished from the media afterwards so that within a year or 2 nobody was aware of it who didn't hadn't read it at the time and didn't remember it and so you know that's why I think these facts are more important than somebody's sort of theoretical philosophical framework as to how these things happen. But. You know that's my opinion.

04:32:34.49

cactus chu

Right? I wouldn't consider it to be philosophical though because it's an actual like practical application of like what is actually going on here when 1 group when when None group actually lobbies say a democratic senator or a republican senator for that matter. What is actually happening here. So I think this is like much less. Maybe I have put it in kind of like podcast language and in kind of like very again or very like broad strokes terms but okay, let's try to talk about it like what is practically happening here was practically happening here is that there's kind of a game of power. That's happening and maybe that's too general for you. What's what's happening here is that there's an attempt to pass a policy or attempt to start a war and so on and so forth and there are groups of people who are interested in doing that and they're going to these democratic senators and they're starting meetings and they're hosting fundraisers and such and then. We want to actually think about okay which one of these are effective and which one of these are not effective because it's impossible for all lobbyists to get their wish because they often they often are are in conflict with each other and so you actually like you actually need a kind of deeper. Theory of this and I don't think you get that theory simply by looking at the specifics but you get that theory by looking at what is the pattern within all of politics because you just have a larger data set to work with. So I think like the very big question that I have here with ah with a lot of these theories is about that kind of specific. Mechanism of action specific mechanism of action of going to elected officials and saying or or ah trying to say at least like we want this outcome because if you actually just look at the way that politics has progressed with both policy and with these kind of cultural changes quote unquote wokeness. Or changes in the media in general is that there is a very kind of like there is a very kind of almost schizophrenic pattern here where it's moved right on issues of foreign policy. It's kind of done with very strange things. Very strange like pendulum things. Maybe even like accurate pendulum things on issues of economics and of and it's gone quite far to the left on these kinds of cultural issues and I think really in order to understand what is happening here. Why are the media making Xyz decisions? You do have to say like you have to say like what is the overall pattern. What is not necessarily just the conclusions that we can draw because of course the conclusions that we draw on the data points assume beforehand what our mechanism of action is anyways. So.

04:38:01.71

cactus chu

The main point that I really do want to delve into here is that the main kind of specific investigation is basically like what makes a lobbying campaign successful. What makes it so that you can lobby for um, for more wars in the Middle East but you can't lobby for say. Um, honestly, like even just like the tech stuff the really quite absurd crackdown on tech I'm not sure how familiar you are of this is maybe kind of my kind of home turf. You could say um, but that that has been. Successful and the tech lobbying back against it has not been successful. That's a kind of example of a very big question here. It's not just a question of who has the money because I think Facebook would not be dealing with any of the problems that it's dealing with now the regulatory problems that it's dealing with now if it was just about who had the money. It's kind of like a strange political thing. So do you have any answers to like what? what? basically like what makes a successful lobbying campaign. How do you pull this off and how do you do it?

04:39:33.74

Ron Unz

Well I mean obviously that takes a lot of experience. First of all, you have to be aiming at something that you know is some things are easier to achieve than other things and some things are sufficiently unpopular. It's very difficult to get them through even though you have enormous clout I mean it's basically like you know a military conflict if you have if you hire a large army you're more likely to win than if you have a small army but just because you have a large army doesn't mean necessarily you will win. They might be poorly led, they might have a bad strategy They might have bad weapons, they might be fighting in very difficult terrain. So all those factors come into play as well. I mean I think a lot of these developments. We're talking about this woke stuff I think it might be partly just sort of random fluctuations or just sort of craziness or something like that. And you know again I mean I really was shocked when you know basically that black guy died apparently of a drug overdose in Minne ah Minneapolis and that was like the factor that caused a huge huge uprising in the United States I mean it's just. Whole thing was very bizarre. I think probably part of what was going on was the media was trying to stir up the black vote against Trump so as to get him out of office since the media hate Trump so much they were using whatever they could to sort of galvanize the anti-trub backing. Of the population. You know whether through Russia gate or through the murder of George Quote murder George Floyd or anything like that. But I ah, ah it depends I mean it depends what you're aiming at in other words, you can be it. If you hire a good lobbyist. You're more likely to be successful than if you hire an incompetent lobbyist and typically what most of these organizations do is just throw a huge amount of money at something they hire a lot of lobbyists some of whom are good. Some of them are bad and sometimes they win and sometimes they don't. I mean a lot depends whether they're fighting any powerful forces on the other side and in many of these cases. They're really the opposition for one reason or another. They are so weak or so marginalized that they're pushing against an open door. I mean again, take for example, someone like Barry Weiss, I mean she basically. You know on many issues probably would be considered least socially on the left or on modern liberal but she was pushed out of the New York Times because The New York Times had moved so far to the left on certain social issues that she you know was made to feel uncomfortable then so now she's on substack.

04:45:24.57

cactus chu

Yeah, so I would say especially on the wokeness stuff I would say actually there's actually there's quite a significant pattern which is the basically I had Robin hintt or sorry not robbed I had Rob Henderson on on this podcast a few weeks ago and.

04:45:28.92

Ron Unz

Who's Rob Henderson

04:46:03.13

cactus chu

Rob Henderson None of the things he's famous for and I'm going to talk about now. He's ah I think he's a ph d student in moral psychology and he has this idea of luxury beliefs which is very similar to this kind of idea of politics as fashion which is really this kind of centralization of information against. Basically what is fashionable and this is like a very very kind of narrative driven by a kind of media and it's like a question of conformity. So this is one other kind of thing I have a pet peeve with. It is like this idea of how the media is like. I think it's like an over-simplified model that is very useful. Especially to like conservatives but it is actually like missing a lot here about basically like how these things actually actually become stories and how these things actually become kind of quote unquote viral and of course there was something that was basically an analog to viral even before that. And like even kind of like George Floyd stuff like you. You talked a bit about the influence of drugs and like yeah once again, like but for causation like obviously there's an influence of drugs and there's an influence of the police's actions and it's like misconduct. And so on and so forth I would still say like even if someone is on drugs. You should not be doing anything like that. But um, the question of even extrapolating from None from None kind of basically like local crime story like let's say let's say let's assume that like Chauvin is guilty which I do believe right? he was ultimately convicted convicted and he was sentenced and so on and so forth, but this kind of None singular case this kind of narrative this kind of individual story being extrapolated to something that requires as much attention as the covid pandemic is just so absurd. Um, it's only going to be effective if you are statistically numerous, just completely unaware that there was this poll by skeptic magazine which is basically talking about how people overestimated the number of I think it was unarmed black men who were killed. Ah, by police every single year in the year Twenty nineteen the people overestimated by none fold on average and so you actually like think about um you think about like what what is happening. It's far from random. It's these kind of like emotionally manipulative stories. They're spun up. And and there are other emotionally manipulative stories wars are often wars are often None of them you can engage that kind of tribalism that kind of group instinct and so on and so forth and ah and I think as we as it's turned out. It's quite effective on not just conservatives but also on.

04:51:24.35

cactus chu

On so on large swathes of liberals, especially institutional liberals and that there actually is a very powerful competing hypothesis here. There is a powerful competing hypothesis where it's not in this case, it's kind of strange because the roles kind of flipped you're arguing for randomness I'm arguing for not randomness that. The thing that is very powerful here is this kind of emotional salience, this kind of narrative bias that's occurring and of course there's studies on this as well. People are much more perceptive to these kinds of narratives than these kinds of individual stories and they kind of much more overgeneralize. From them. especially if they're emotionally salient, especially if they're kind of manipulative in that way. So my big kind of counter argument here is that you have this ascribing of or of power I think and I think there is some kind of influence. From lobbying. There is some kind of influence from this kind of political game for sure from from activists and I know Richard Hanania has talked about that to a long extent including on my podcast but that there is this underprescription in my view this under prescription to really the kind of innate emotional power of a lot of these stories. These kinds of emotional saliences that basically like people are kind of susceptible to being baited into wars that people are kind of susceptible to being baited into say like and into say like conspiracy theories about mass racism. That people are very easily kind of just led into these things because it's kind of just human nature and there are the psychological results to back it up.

04:54:04.88

Ron Unz

Well yeah, but I mean again, those are just complete generalities. I mean the whole thing about is you know when you think of New York but but.

04:54:48.65

cactus chu

What do you mean? generalities like you kind of have this aversion to generalities. But it's like this is just a thing that happens that happens across a wide variety of things and the fact that it happens across a wide variety of things gint discounted as a pattern.

04:54:45.58

Ron Unz

Well but but here's the whole thing I mean the number for example of videos you can see showing horrible horrifying horrifying incidents with a strong racial overtone is really quite substantial if more of them were broadcast. Or even allowed to be broadcast on social media. I think dramatic things might happen in all sorts of different directions and so it's a question of which ones are allowed to go viral and which ones aren't I mean. But basically you know again, the number of people. What was it last year? I think 20000. The number of killings that take place in the United States is really very very large and you know many of them are captured on video and you know if they were allowed to go viral I think you know society could move in all sorts of different directions. But I mean the whole thing is really the wokeness thing I think probably was mostly caused by a massive reaction against Trump and Trump's perceived supporters which sort of and so that basically caused you know all of these groups to become very agitated.

04:57:38.25

cactus chu

I'd agree with that.

04:57:21.36

Ron Unz

And they just you know went farther and farther and people didn't want to oppose them because opposing them would be seen as sort of supporting Trump or something like that and so yeah I mean that's actually where a lot of the um, the deep platforming took place after Trump won because nobody nobody expected Trump win since basically.

04:58:17.43

cactus chu

Yeah, that tribalism is a big deal. I agree the story goes on.

04:58:00.70

Ron Unz

And Trump was massively outspent and the media was like 99% against him and under those circumstances people thought you knew it would be impossible for him to win but he won which made you know a lot of groups very very nervous about the power of these others. Social media outlets and that's why you know the platform starts at that point. But I mean nothing I really you know and believe me I very much appreciate it. You know your willingness to challenge some of my views. On you know some of the issues that I really spent quite a lot of time working on last year especially dealing with the biowarfa and covert because I just checked and you know we've gone now a lot longer than I ever expected none and so you know it really would be I think a good idea to sort of at least get some of that in there. Rather than you know, sort of letting it go by and you know I'd been I'd be very very happy to have you know the statements I'm making about all of these facts being very obvious and well known to anybody who bothers looking into them.

05:00:09.61

cactus chu

Me.

05:00:06.88

Ron Unz

Challenged and opposed by you know you or anybody else. But you know I do think it's important that some of the stuff get out there.

05:00:49.69

cactus chu

Yeah, and and I'm going to cut out this bit but how long like what I'm saying now how long more do you? Ah do you have it available or can you go for it?

05:00:34.82

Ron Unz

I think I can put in another half an hour. I mean 3 hours is very long. Ah to be honest I enjoy discussing these things so you know I mean a lot more time has gone by than I imagined. I mean I sort of assumed we were at the 1 hour point and then I found out with that.

05:01:24.91

cactus chu

Yeah I get. Yeah I can I can tell you definitely have a very very like endearing enthus them. But yeah, ah, half an hour sounds good and we can. We can jump to that as well.

05:01:10.94

Ron Unz

Powerpoint.

05:01:27.62

Ron Unz

okay okay I mean how much do you know about? um because again the covid issue is the main thing I've been focusing on for more than two years since the outbreak of the epidemic and I don't know if you've looked at any of my material or read any. Ah.

05:02:28.15

cactus chu

Yeah I've definitely gone through I've gone through the American Pravda series on the biowarfare labs and I've gone through I mean I've been I've been kind of like paying attention to lab leak stuff I don't think I've been paying too much attention to the biowarfare stuff before you highlighted it to me.

05:02:09.88

Ron Unz

Okay, right? ah.

05:03:06.81

cactus chu

But I've been paying attention to the kind of natural or accidental Lab Leak stuff and the drastic stuff and I'm pretty ah I'm quite aware of that I would say.

05:02:46.10

Ron Unz

Okay, so you're aware that I mean basically the whole thing is at the time the outbreak originally began in Wuhan China within really a period of a month or 2 You know once it spread to the rest of the world. It was almost universally agreed that it was a natural viral outbreak.

05:03:52.45

cactus chu

Move.

05:03:24.72

Ron Unz

In other words, there was that article in Science Magazine there was an article in nature health. The establishment orthodox opinion was that it was a natural outbreak meanwhile you had a few fringe elements mostly on the right-wing fringe and then eventually elements of the Donald Trump administration or some of his republicans in congress. Arguing that it had been a wuhan lab week. In other words, there was an institute of biology wohan had accidentally released this virus and those were the Non conventional arguments going on and then just overly.

05:04:56.19

cactus chu

I would actually push back. Ah, a little bit on the idea that it was right wing I think it ultimately ended up being adopted more by the right wing. But I think initially it was just like a political disaster for scientists. It wasn't necessarily initially a right wing thing but sorry to continue.

05:04:52.38

Ron Unz

well well I mean the whole thing is ah virtually all of the original chatter on the internet came from anti-china right-wing sources or for example from ah like Alex Jones's group. From radio free liberty from ah but basically you can just go through and see you know who was talking about it and virtually all of it was from anti-china organizations who you know are generally classified as being in the right wing and so now that changed about a year ago or a little over a year ago when ah nicholas wade. The longtime former science editor at the new york times published a very important article where he pointed out that really there was a great deal of evidence drawing on some of these other sources that hadn't received much attention that the virus itself the covid virus probably was not natural and if it weren't natural. Then the obvious other possibility would be it leaked from the vaughan institute of urology which had been conducting experiments on exactly those sorts of coronaviruses over the previous couple of years. You know they published papers on it and everything like that. So. In other words. The entire stage of the media debate in the united states or in the western world has been primarily until last year or so that it was a natural virus with the secondary possibility published and backed by a number of books being that it probably was a leak on. Ah, accidental leak from the Wuhan institute of virology but when you actually look at the facts involved and the pattern of information I've argued and I'm really virtually been virtually alone on it arguing that it very very likely was an American biowarfare attack against china. Which is an explosive hypothesis and I've been absolutely astonished given the amount of evidence for it that it's been virtually ignored by not only the mainstream media. But also you know the alternative media or virtually all of the alternative media I mean none of all. Well let's just start off and I'll go through a few of the items and sure.

05:09:34.27

cactus chu

Yeah, let me ask you let me ask you a kind of few introductory questions because and and I'm sorry because I know you've answered these in your in in your article, but ah yeah, my audience is not my audience even if I tell them are not going to read like are not going to read like.

05:09:17.60

Ron Unz

Um, ah no, definitely go ahead. This is perfect. This is exactly what I want to define.

05:09:38.96

Ron Unz

Exactly.

05:10:11.10

cactus chu

Quite long articles. Yeah, so for example, like what is the kind of motivation here. What is the goal of the United States if we assume that this is true?

05:09:58.92

Ron Unz

Well I mean for years now for going on 10 years of America's views. The rise of China as being a very major threat. To American world dominance, economic dominance and military dominance I mean it's not a secret I mean you have somebody for example, like John Merasheimer the entire circle of realists all the neocons in the republican party have all said over and over again. China is America's number None threat now. Based on the newspapers when you read the wall street journal of The New York Times or any of these papers. They always talk about China having the largest economy in the world. But that's utterly false. China became the world's largest economy in 2 around 2014 on a purchasing power parity basis which is the right news and so China has been the world's largest economy and is growing much more rapidly than the United States and for those reasons clearly.

05:12:11.93

cactus chu

Right.

05:12:05.14

Ron Unz

Is America's major rival in the world. I mean that's why mearsheimer and all the people in the circle have been saying America has to form an alliance with Russia to together balance out china that's why for example, we had the pivot to Asia under Obama that's why America tried to form this new alliance. Including let's see India ah Taiwan India um Japan and a couple of other Australia to sort of balance out China so I mean everybody in the strategic circles has viewed China as America's greatest geopolitical rival. It's not a secret you can see it everywhere in the newspapers now the point is okay so the point is you have a situation where a large segment of the american political establishment. Especially it's right-wing establishment.

05:13:59.93

cactus chu

Right? So I would agree completely with this.

05:13:57.34

Ron Unz

Views China as a tremendous threat to American World dominance. It's not a secret Trump then came in and basically the Obama administration had been somewhat middle of the road towards China. Trump came in and immediately he and the people he brought in said China is the greatest threat we have to focus on China. We need a trade war with China. He immediately moved against China. And for not secret reasons you could ask I mean you could read any of the articles of John Mirzheimer who's a very mainstream person that China is basically a threat to world dominance of the United States it's the first time america has faced a major threat since the collapse of the Soviet Union and in some ways China is a greater threat to american dominance. Then the Ussr was because the USSR had no, you know, very unsuccessful economy. For example, America kidnapped the daughter and Cfo of Huawei, China's most important technological company, when she was changing planes in Canada. I mean basically of course.

05:16:31.19

cactus chu

And right that was a very big controversy in Canada here as well. Yes.

05:16:08.40

Ron Unz

Of course , of course I mean that's why I brought it up in Canada we're talking about everybody in the Trump administration agreeing that China is the greatest threat to the United States. We have the Trump administration being a very disorganized administration and bringing in more.

05:17:09.81

cactus chu

Oh yes.

05:16:44.74

Ron Unz

And bringing in the most extreme neocons I mean basically John Bolton and Mike Popeo are 2 of the most extreme neocons and they both said China is our leading adversary china is the threat to American Dominance China is America's enemy that's what they said, but as soon as they came in now. You know again, the facts I'm talking about are very well-known. Anybody can go on the internet you can find in The New York Times you can find in any other publications. But I mean the facts are not put together in a way by anybody which is why you know I've had to do it soon after America basically soon after the Trump administration came in.

05:18:21.13

cactus chu

M.

05:18:02.94

Ron Unz

Ah, Trump brought in somebody named Robert Clack who is America's leading biowarfare advocate. He was head of biowarfare in the leading biowarfare figure in the George W Bush administration he's been writing on biowarfare issues since the late 1990's he's America's a leading biowarfare advocate and he was brought in as a senior figure in 2017 by the Trump administration by Donald Trump now he was brought in in 2017 in 2018. There was a mysterious viral epidemic. Suddenly hit China's poultry industry and devastated one of China's main food sources in 2019. There was a mysterious viral epidemic that destroyed most of ah the swine flu asian swine flu that destroyed most of China's pig herds

05:20:10.99

cactus chu

E.

05:19:49.30

Ron Unz

40% of China's pig herds were destroyed. China has the largest pork industry in the world. A quarter of all the pigs in the world were destroyed because of losses in China and there were also a lot of reports in the Chinese press that the virus that the. Disease was being spread by mysterious small drones now. Whether that's true or not I can't say but it's absolutely true that the drones were never connected with the United States in any way but those were the claims going on in the Chinese press. Whether true or not I can't say but it's undeniable.

05:20:58.27

cactus chu

Yeah, the Chinese press. Well the Chinese press.

05:20:56.30

Ron Unz

A mysterious viral epidemic devastated China's poultry industry in 2018 and in 2019 a mysterious viral epidemic devastated China's main food source. Now if America were confronting China there are only a limited number of ways of doing it. China as you probably know. If he followed it all, he would have developed a new generation in the last 15 or 20 years, a new generation of carrier killer killer missiles and the widespread view of military experts that our America's carrier fleet is entirely vulnerable to these and so.

05:22:34.13

cactus chu

Yeah, actually learned about this from our mutual friend Steve Shu

05:22:10.68

Ron Unz

Yeah, oh sure I mean that's been It's been discussed now for probably 8 or 10 years or something like I'm not sure exactly when you know the consensus was but I mean basically China has missiles that can destroy America's carrier fleet so if America then got into a confrontation with China we'd have to position our carriers. Very far from the Chinese shore we could still probably embargo China in some ways and cut off their supply of raw materials and oil but it would be much more difficult to do furthermore and that's and that's the reason China is also developing good relations with Russia. You know the whole silk road thing is mainly.

05:23:38.10

cactus chu

Yes, and very costly to us.

05:23:52.83

cactus chu

M.

05:23:27.32

Ron Unz

I think it was largely developed because of China's concern of being cut off by a Us train marco over the ah you know over the ocean. So in other words basically China is trying to develop methods of both transporting out their. Finished goods and importing the raw materials that are invulnerable to American embarcos and that's also the reason I've heard China went so far into electric cars partly for reasons of pollution but partly also because most of the cars in China were electric. They would then not be as vulnerable to an oil Embargo. America might be able to implement at least that's one of the reasons I've heard so you know we're talking about a situation where America is in a confrontation with China America then brings in our leading and the Trump administration our leading biowarfare advocate. Ah Robert Clack who had actually in the late 1990's written articles. Saying None advantage of biowarfare attacks is plausible deniability in other words and is considered okay.

05:25:52.30

cactus chu

Yeah I Want to make it very clear to my audience. I know I've disagreed with you a lot here, but this is just shockingly clear that this is like this is not like a subtle bio. This is not like I know I've been kind of picky about calling things biowarfare but this guy is not Subtle. He is like if there is someone who is actually a biowarfare advocate He is quite explicit about this.

05:26:07.40

Ron Unz

Yeah, yeah, and he's been that way for 30 years 25-25 years so I mean but you know it's not that he's unusual that way in other words basically there are you know any person's looked into biowarfa says exactly these same things. But you know he's still been America's most prominent biowarfa advocate. So he was brought into the Trump administration in 2017 at a time when the Trump administration was focusing all of its hostility on China. In other words, we were trying to establish good relations with Russia to some extent and focusing everything on China. And then suddenly a year after he's brought in There's a mysterious epidemic that devastates China's Poulter industry a year after another mysterious epidemic that devastates China's primary food source its pig herds and then in early 2019 ah an exercise was staged called the crimson contagion exercise in the United States that was run by Robert cadillack for ni for eight months from January to August Two Thousand and nineteen american state and federal officials coordinated their efforts in planning on how to protect. American society from infection if a mysterious dangerous respiratory virus suddenly were to appear in China in other words, the scenario was a mysterious dangerous respiratory virus suddenly appears in China. How does America protect itself from being infected by that virus?

05:29:35.13

cactus chu

Um.

05:29:07.90

Ron Unz

And they spent eight months working on it from January to August Two Thousand and eighteen ah 2020 I mean ah sorry January to August Two Thousand and nineteen and then a virus of exactly those characteristics broke out in Wuhan China A couple of months after the end of the Nine eight-month exercise that was run by America's chief bio warfare expert now when you hear something called the crimson contagion exercise which has the characteristics I've described it sounds like a lunatic conspiracy theory. That you know was suddenly you know you found on the dark corners of the internet. Do you know how I found out of the crimson contagion exercise? I read it on the front page of The New York Times. There was a big front page story in The New York Times. I think it came out in two Thousand late 2020 or something like that.

05:31:03.77

cactus chu

Shit it in.

05:30:52.20

Ron Unz

Focus on the fact that even though America had spent eight months practicing on how to guard itself against a viral outbreak the efforts hadn't been successful and then you know suddenly we were suffering exactly that outbreak but think about him. What are the odds America's chief biowarfare expert chief biowarfare government official would spend eight months practicing with state and federal officials in this huge exercise on how to guard America against any spillover. Of a dangerous respiratory virus that might suddenly someday appear in China and a virus of exactly those characteristics appears in China immediately after the end of the exercise I mean it's ridiculous now you know I'm not in on anything I should make very clear and that's where people can get confused in no way. Am I claiming that any of the individuals involved in the exercise were personally involved in releasing the virus in China and I have absolutely no reason to even think that Robert Ka himself was involved? You know again I can't say who was involved. But the notion of the coincidental exercise of that type going for eight months just prior to the outbreak of exactly that virus in Wuhan China which was. Being targeted by the Trump administration is our great international rival. It's just ridiculous I mean when you find out something like that. But there's a tremendous amount of additional information as well. Again, all of which I found out which you can find out easily on the internet you can confirm all of it for example, the virus when it broke out in China. Very very quickly. You had all of these groups around the internet anti-china groups around the internet before almost anybody in the world was even aware. There was a viral outbreak in China because you know it was very small. You know I saw something in the paper about some disease outbreak in a city in China and very few Americans have ever heard of Wuhan. It's not like Shanghai it's not like Beijing some Chinese City there's some disease outbreak there I you know was in the New York Times but I didn't pay much attention to it at the time because you know we just assassinated Iran's top military leader and so we were almost on the verge of war with Iran at that moment. So that's what I was focusing on now. It turns out. Almost from the moment. The outbreak took place in China I mean very very quickly by Mid-january you had all of these groups on the internet anti-china groups on the internet. They were all claiming in their social media postings Youtube videos.

05:36:02.58

Ron Unz

That it was either a leak from the Wuhan Lab in China or more likely some of them said it was a chinese bio weapon that had been accidentally released in Wuhan and was devastating Wuhan and would destroy China you had a lot of videos apparently that were going around by anti-china shore says. Showing people like dropping dead in the street or something like that you know saying that oh this will destroy China now. It's just you know that that's a moderately suspicious element. In other words, you can imagine and it was also broadcast on radio free liberty radio free. Um, europe radio liberty radio free asia you know the america propaganda organs that are run by the cia and they were all claiming. It was a chinese bio weapon or at least they suspected it was a chinese bio weapon pon and you can read the books that have recently come out you know with the detailed you know, statements of that sort of thing. Now America is very very strong in the world of propaganda. That's America's great one of America's greatest strengths right now and so it's possible that they just jumped on that outbreak in China very quickly and used it to sort of embarrass China even though they had found out by now. More quickly than anybody else, but struck me at the time it seemed suspicious that such an organized orchestrated propaganda campaign of such magnitude would begin so quickly when virtually nobody else in the world was paying any attention to the outbreak in China. And you know you could say it increases the likelihood that some people are involved in that group. You know, None or 3 levels removed might have known what was about to happen because based on all the existing evidence nobody in China, nobody in the Chinese government, was aware of the outbreak until right at the end of December. And no death in China didn't occur until I believe something like January Tenth or January Twelfth and China notified the world. There was this mysterious virus I think was January it was January first or December thirty first they notified the world health organization. So basically within days of. No deaths occurred in the city of Wuhan, China. You had this massive internet propaganda campaign claiming that it was a Chinese bioweapon and you know if you were launching a biowarfare attack against China the best way to guard. Yourself against accusations would obviously to be making the accusations none in other words, if the None thing everybody heard in the world was that that a chinese bioweapon had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of technology Wuhan Institute of virology

05:41:28.22

Ron Unz

And was killing all these chinese but it was a chinese bio weapon that would stick in your mind and so then it would make it much much more difficult for the chinese or anyone else to then accuse America of having been responsible for the attack itself. So. That by itself is certainly not nearly as strong evidence as the eight months of preparation America made under its chief biowarfare expert to defend itself against leakage from a chinese outbreak right? before that outbreak occurred but it still adds to the you know. Evidence involved another very interesting factor which again finally got attention later on but very little and late was that Wuhan China had been the site of the world military gains and at the time all this discussion was taking place in 2020 all of the expert opinion in other words basically.

05:43:28.65

cactus chu

Um, yes.

05:43:16.88

Ron Unz

Ah, you know, using a mixture of epidemiological data and um and genetic mutational data. The established opinion by the leading you know mainstream biologists and virologists in the United States microbiologists was that the outbreak in China probably patient 0 occurred. Right? towards the end of October or the beginning of November Two Thousand and nineteen say between October Fifteenth and November Fifteenth Two thousand and nineteen though probably right around November first or so it turns out that world military games in Wuhan China took place in late October Two thousand and nineteen three hundred american servicemen participated and I think was something like None or nine thousand military servicemen from the rest of the world participated. If somebody were trying to introduce a bioweapon in a Chinese city that would provide absolutely ideal cover with none of the military officers from all of the world in the city sightseeing traveling around. It would be. Perfect idea would be to cover it for America to have slipped in one or 2 agents to surreptitiously release the virus or even set up some sort of timed release mechanism or something like that because with none of American or foreign servicemen traveling all around the city. There's no way they could be monitored. So you know again, it may be pure coincidence but it really is very strange that you have no American servicemen in exactly the city, the place and time where this mysterious vibreak then occurred and you know put it another way which would be more understandable for americans. If None Chinese military servicemen were visiting Chicago and immediately after they left America had a mysterious viral outbreak in the city of Chicago Americans would be extraordinarily suspicious over that. And so you know again, it's not proof, but it's certainly when you have all of these convergent patterns and many many more besides which I'll get to in a moment you really have to wonder why none of it is covered in the media and why almost none of it is even discussed in the alternative media. I mean to give you an example, None thing that I also viewed as somewhat suspicious though not as highly suspicious as this is you may have been following it early on there was all that bizarre conspiracy stuff about the world economic forum and bill gates and Klaus Schwab did you ever hear any of that.

05:48:47.23

cactus chu

M. Yeah I'm kind of tangentially aware of it. Yes.

05:48:31.86

Ron Unz

Okay, total crackpot nonsense I mean basically you had this massive alternative media push claiming that the outbreak of covid had something to do with the world economic forum and Kawa and even bill gates now you know the truth is I mean just utter crack. Total craftpot nonsense and the argument they used was that I mean the truth is all of these international organizations for years and years and even decades have had you know ah simulations and testing you know sessions just sort of guarding with yep.

05:50:11.17

cactus chu

Yeah, the pandemic preparedness people.

05:49:47.36

Ron Unz

But exactly pandemic preparedness and they've been doing it for years I think they go back 1015 years and the truth is I think the world economic forum was sponsoring one of these right around the time the veer off break occurred in october or something like that and it was ah I think was called a vent 2020 or event 2 ah 1 ah, ven None something like that now you know the truth is there may actually be a connection with the viral outbreak I'm talking about but I mean the notion of you know the world economic forum bill gates. Producing a virus to exterminate most of the human species which is how some of the people were claiming or to get them for example to get everybody to take vaccines I it's I think yeah I think a lot of that you know if I it's possibly it.

05:51:40.17

cactus chu

Yeah, that kind of scale is like that. That's just.

05:51:26.72

Ron Unz

Just all those crazy theories developed organically, that's that's perfectly possible. But if you were involved in a biowarfare an american biowarfare attack against China by releasing covid and if you wanted to then divert all of these conspiracy people including like.

05:52:31.35

cactus chu

2

05:52:06.28

Ron Unz

Conspiracy people in a different direction having them go after bill gates and vaccines and Klaus Schwab and the world economic forum would seem a very logical way to do it and since people. Yeah exactly yeah so you basically get them wander off in a crazy direction or something like that vanstein.

05:52:57.23

cactus chu

Yeah, it seems like a very yarvinesque tactic.

05:52:44.64

Ron Unz

Never I mean again, the world economic forum doesn't have a virology Laboratory America has the world's largest and longest standing biowarfare program. I mean it's not a controversial thing and it goes back to the second world war. You can read all these books by leading mainstream historians and scholars. We have the world's largest biowarfare program and in fact, so another interesting development that again got no attention at the time the outbreak occurred I was sort of you know, probably by late january I started to get a little bit suspicious because you know people pointed out also in the newspaper in the New York Times when I was reading the articles. They pointed out that China would have a very difficult time coping with this outbreak if it was China at the absolute worst possible time. In other words, the outbreak had occurred so that it became large so you know ah sort of major outbreak in Wuhan.

05:54:37.91

cactus chu

To.

05:54:38.52

Ron Unz

Which was a key transportation hub right before the Lunar new year travels when 450000000 Chinese travel so at the time I started thinking boy you know it's really unfortunate. You know it's bad and it wasn't me saying it was you know the New York Times reporter you know in. The article about Wuhan saying oh it's so unfortunate China it hit China at the absolute worst possible time. So you know that also raises suspicions in my mind and so you know at that time I just was sort of getting more and more suspicious late January mid -january and then in february another interesting developed happened as I've said in most of january I was focused on the possibility of war with iran because america assassinated general suleimani ah iran's top military leader and some people said he probably would run for president of iran in the next. Presidential election and America assassinated him. It wasn't secret I mean we did it and then in early february I think was yeah, it was basically early mid-february suddenly the new york times reported that iran had become the global second epicenter of the covid outbreak. In other words. The place in the world where the disease was spreading very rapidly was Iran and not the Iran capital city where you'd expect but was the holy city of Gom which is the center of their religious and political establishment. In fact. 10% of the entire iranian parliament became inflicted with covid many of iran's top leaders especially since the elder ended up dying of covid all the neocons who hated the iranians were on twitter bragging about the fact that all their iranian enemies were dying of covid. So you think about the situation at that point in time the 2 countries in america in the world that america is most hostile towards were china and iran the 2 countries where the covid outbreak took place none were wuhan china and then suddenly it jumped to the other side of the world. The holy city of game of go in iran it made absolutely no sense whatsoever I mean the whole thing about it. The outbreak in Iran began, you know again, an outbreak that targeted Iran's elite political and religious leaders and they're the only political religious leaders in the world who've died in any significant numbers. Even two years later the outbreak began probably within two weeks of America assassinating Iran's top military leader. So let me think of the scenario: America assassinates Iran's top military leader and then mysteriously there's a viral outbreak.

05:59:55.62

Ron Unz

Then suddenly two weeks later it begins to infect 10% of the iranian parliament and kills some of Iran's elderly top leaders. I mean it's just ridiculous. So you know you add that to the China evidence and I think we're talking about something that goes far beyond. Typical presumption when you're looking at you know who probably was involved. In fact, here's another thing that I only became aware of probably about Eight or nine months ago . At the time I thought, my god , you know, the iranian leaders are being infected by this mysterious virus. How in the world. Did it get to run that's thirty five hundred miles away and you know you'd expect. If a viral outbreak broke out in China just like it had with sars one. You'd naturally expect it to spread to East Asia so you'd expect maybe Taiwan maybe in South Korea Japan maybe. Other countries that have large Chinese populations that might spread to the United States, maybe Canada for example or other places like that. That's exactly where it expected to spread if you were making a list of cities in the world. If you got a bunch of epidemiologists together and you asked them here are the none biggest cities in the world or None biggest cities in the world. Where do you expect the via a natural viral outbreak in Wuhan China and the next spread in Iran would have been absolutely towards the probably at the bottom of the list China Iran has almost no chinese population negligible chinese population I mean afterwards. Then the virus did spread to Northern Italy where None chinese live and work many of whom had just returned from the lunar New Year holidays it spread to Spain where you have I think None chinese living and working but there are only none chinese in all of Iran and almost none of them are in the holy city of gom. So I just. Very very unlikely and suspicious now at the time that happened with Iran I'd sort of said to myself. This is really extremely suspicious. Do you know it really? That's the point where I started thinking it probably was an american biowarfare attack. Ah, I thought to myself. How strange it is that the Iranians aren't aware of the same facts. I mean you know, look , their top military leader was just assassinated by the United States and you know their top leaders are coming down with this mysterious viral disease. Why is it that they're not aware that it's probably an american biowarfare attack. And then it was only a year later I found out. Not only were they a word. It was probably a biowarfare attack but they publicly accused the United States of a biowarfare attack. They're top political leaders. They're top military leaders. They're mainstream media.

06:05:07.80

Ron Unz

All of them said you know they didn't have hard proof but they said they all felt it was very likely that it was an American biowarfare attack against Iran and against China. Not only that but Iran's former president even filed a formal complaint with the United nations. Denouncing America for having attacked Iran with an illegal biowarfare weapon but it was never reported in the American Media so I only found out it about a year later in other words, the iranian accusations were so obvious that if it had been reported in the American Media people would have immediately figured out what was happening so it was never reported in the american media we're talking about a situation where Iran's president the top iranian leadership publicly accuse america of having launched an illegal biowarfare attack against their own country and against China. And it was never reported in any American mainstream media source. In fact, even the alternative media ignored it so you know that shows why media control can shift the ground in tremendous ways now there's one more point I'd like to make and this was to my mind. What really became the smoking gun. And it's really been so at that point I thought it's an open and shut case you know I've mentioned all these other things all of these other pieces of evidence I think are circumstantial now when America assassinated Iran's top military leader and two weeks later Iran's top political and religious leadership is infected with him. Deadly virus in the holy city of gum that's extraordinarily suspicious when America's in a conflict with China and suddenly this mysterious viral epidemic breaks out right after America spent eight months preparing for a viral epidemic in China that's also extraordinarily suspicious. But this moves it to a different category you know because ah why by one point I should make before I go on to it I very very very much doubt that Trump had anything to do with it himself. Because once the virus then spread around the world from China from Wuhan China Trump basically ignored the whole thing even when it spread to the United States Trump basically said oh it's nothing. It's just that it'll go away. So I mean there's no way in the world Trump would have reacted in such a lackadaisical way if he were.

06:10:08.10

cactus chu

Yeah, and he was getting a lot of information from her too. Apparently he trusted her on this? yeah.

06:09:45.50

Ron Unz

Um, but yeah I don't know anything about that. But I mean the whole thing about it. Basically everybody in the world knew it was this devastating epidemic but basically Trump ignored the whole thing because he thought it hurt the stock market or something like that or embarrass him and also the other point I should make is that.

06:10:37.85

cactus chu

Say.

06:10:21.96

Ron Unz

There was a widespread belief in America that we were insulated from any blow from any contagion of that sort of virus because when sars one had appeared in China.

06:11:10.83

cactus chu

Writes.

06:10:43.78

Ron Unz

It affected a few neighboring countries and I don't think even a single american died from it maybe a couple few people in Canada or something like that I mean basically never spread to the United States and never really spread to Europe in the same way when the mers epidemic broke out I think in 2008 in the Middle East again deadly coronavirus. It infected a few middle eastern countries. It never spread to the United States, it never spread to Europe in any way. So you know there might have been a natural belief that this third coronavirus that suddenly broke out in China would similarly leave America unscath. Also all the international bodies at the time because America is very strong in propaganda and spends a lot of money on healthcare in an inefficient way. All the international bodies ranked America as being best prepared, having the healthcare system best prepared with any viral outbreak, any disease outbreak and China was considered.

06:12:45.50

cactus chu

To write.

06:12:27.64

Ron Unz

Very weak. So China was vulnerable and America was the best in the world. So under those circumstances. It's very easy to imagine that people basically thought oh nothing will happen and you know they advised Trump oh just ignore it. So the whole point about it is the scenario I'm talking about is obviously not where Trump orders the attack. But rogue elements in his administration, probably people in the circle of Pompeo or John Bolton, are the ones who then organize the attack, probably a very small group of people with everybody else in the chain of command. Assuming it was authorized by Trump because, for example, Mike Pompeo had been head of the CIA right before becoming secretary of state. He was probably the second most powerful person in the administration after Trump because you know the vice president can't even remember names you know weren't really much of yeah Pence wasn't really that.

06:14:35.35

cactus chu

None

06:14:09.40

Ron Unz

Significant figure. So Pompeo was probably the second most powerful person in the administration x head of the cia secretary of state leader of the Anti-china faction. So if someone likes him I'm not saying it was him. But if someone like him or Bolton or possibly a few other people had gone to some of the actual. Members of the national security biowarfa apparatus and it said we've been given the go ahead for that project. We were discussing whether everybody else in the chain of command would assume it was a fully authorized project. The viruses would have come from. For example, the um. Would have come from ah Fort Dietrich or None of our other bio labs the individuals distributing the virus probably would have been special forces or Cia operatives again. Ah the details I generally say but everybody in that chain of command would have assumed it was fully authorized by Trump so it was a rogue operation. Some of the people under Trump I'm just like you've probably read some of the stories where Trump's aides would hide his executive orders sometimes so you know.

06:16:41.79

cactus chu

Oh yes, yeah, and this is a point that I really want to point to because this is actually the thing that made this most compelling to me is that it's already extremely well known in the research in the viral research community that this kind of this kind of. Ah, really, they usually it's phrased as kind of like a terrorist attack right? This kind of um, this kind of small group of people like a really small group of people like even maybe None people getting together and putting together something like this as an attack this is a major threat that people are at an existential risk.

06:17:10.42

Ron Unz

Oh for fun. Sure.

06:18:00.27

cactus chu

And specifically in the pandemic risk community are looking at it because the technology is there. This is not like a difficult thing to do So The base rate argument is actually maybe more in favor of this. This is something that I really want to emphasize is that this kind of like this kind of like group of people going off and doing a thing. Without the kind of support of the entire apparatus This is a very this is like a this is not like ah this is not like a difficult thing to put together.

06:18:20.98

Ron Unz

Why but they would have had the support of the apparatus. In other words, what I'm talking about is a rogue operation below the president but otherwise using basically all of our standard stuff. In other words, you know those sort of things are if the if some members of the top level of the Trump administration not Trump. But None level down had simply told a small group of people. This is a special need to know the operation. We've been given the go ahead to take down China and take down Iran using our bio efforter I mean we've spent probably a hundred billion dollars over the decades building up. Biowarfare technology and what was it built for it was built for exactly these sorts of purposes and there's actually quite a lot of Evidence America has engaged in biowarfare both during the Korean war and with some less evidence against for example, ah food. So the food supply of um Cuba. And the food supply of East Germany and some other eastern bloc countries. So in other words basically these are things we've probably done in the past though, you know it's not absolutely proven. But in this case basically the one difference is this time we're talking about an anti-human. An anti-personnel weapon though it really wasn't anti-pernel. In other words, the lethality of covid is really only a moderately lethal virus. The death rate is at least for the original covid was probably about point five percent to one you know, averaged across all age groups. So in other words, it's not like it would wipe out 40% of China's population but if it's spread since it was extremely contagious and also only moderately lethal ah experienced biowarfare expert who ended up writing on a blog site who. I think an experienced warfare expert who spent 40 years in american biodefense really said a moderately lethal extremely contagious virus is perfect for devastating an economy in other words and yeah, yeah, that's all thing in other words, if it's spread in China.

06:22:38.83

cactus chu

Yeah, and this isn't a hypothetical that this happened in real life.

06:22:25.42

Ron Unz

With the lunar New Year holidays hundreds of millions of chinese would have been infected. It would have caused tremendous instability, you know, it'd have killed none of the Chinese, you know, a few percent of the population but it would have totally disrupted the entire society and quite possibly even caused the fall of the government and the fall of the regime. You know if something like that had happened at the very least it forced exactly the sort of extreme lockdowns that have devastated the American economy and all these economies around the world. So it was basically an anti-economy bioweapon that had exactly the right characteristics to devastate the economy of China and. Also it's possible that a more lethal version was used in Iran. There's been speculation that because it seemed to kill, you know, have a higher death rate than most of the Iranians who died that people paid attention to were generally elderly. Leaders. So. In other words, they would be much more vulnerable anyway, so you know anyway, the point I was getting to is. We're talking about almost certainly a rogue operation not authorized by Donald Trump Trump was not aware of it and then when suddenly it started leaking back into the United States the american governmental response was so totally incompetent that spreading throughout the whole country and you know you have all these conspiracy nuts. Talk about oh it was all a conspiracy to cause lockdowns to devastate small business and None reason I know that they're being ridiculous is I know where the lockdowns came from the lockdowns all began because of the public health officer of Santa Clara County where I happened to live a woman named Sarah Cody as the disease was spreading around the country invisible. You know, a very highly contagious disease and we'd botched the production of the Cdc test so we couldn't even tell who was infected or not. Nobody really knew what to do. I mean nobody had any idea of this mysterious virus, nobody could detect it because we didn't have testing kits and nobody you know. Nobody was exactly sure what the lethality rate was though, but you know certainly if it spread very widely it would kill a huge number of people and get many more people sick who would die because of lack of health care and everything like that. So I mean we're talking potentially many millions of deaths and basically Sarah Cody got together with the public health officers of the bay area. 4 other public health officers and they took the unprecedented step of declaring a public health emergency lockdown. It was not something Trump did, it was not something the federal government did, nobody else knew what to do and since China had had some success with lockdown.

06:27:35.93

cactus chu

Writes.

06:27:19.12

Ron Unz

They probably thought well if it worked in China what else can we try so they tried it here.

06:27:52.83

cactus chu

Yeah, the kind of mainstream narrative is that italian academics and public health officials copied China and then copied them and I basically agree with this.

06:27:33.36

Ron Unz

Yeah, exactly right? exactly exactly and so then and then it spread to Los Angeles then so you know the lockdown spread Los Angeles eventually got to New York City everything like that. So you know the lockdowns basically were simply because copying China when you have I mean it worked in China so what else can you try? I mean there's no There's no cure for the disease There's no, um, you know, um, everybody can go around wearing masks and you know obviously then they implemented masks and other things like that. But we didn't have the technology. So anyway, the point is the lockdowns basically in the United States started because of Sara Cody and a few of the other local public health officers here and then they spread. You know as then the disaster continued because a lot of parts of the country didn't lock down. The lockdowns were leaky. They were unsuccessful lockdowns. I mean basically the whole thing didn't work and so we had well over a dozen deaths anyway. But you know as a few months went by then you had you know everybody obviously the media which hated Trump anyway. Was doubly accusatory towards Trump saying it was Trump's lackadaisical effort Trump had done nothing which is perfectly true Trump did ignore the problem and that sort of thing. So I mean all of those accusations were perfectly correct against Trump but you know there were all you know there was sort of a blizzard of media attacks against Trump for his incompetence.

06:30:09.53

cactus chu

Yeah, yeah.

06:30:04.78

Ron Unz

His ignoring the problem. Everything like that and then are you familiar with the Abc News story I guess okay

06:30:44.27

cactus chu

Um, was this the interview with was this interview with where some officials saying that Trump was Trump was basically just like taking taking his like notes from xi jinping. Okay.

06:30:38.74

Ron Unz

No, no nothing like that. This is the most important piece of the whole puzzle Abc News in April Two Thousand Twenty you know at the height of sort of the wave of the cover disaster nobody was sure how many Americans would die. You know it was doubling every couple of weeks or something like that. Abc News their chief white their chief white house correspondent did a story based on their chief investigative reporter getting 4 separate intelligence sources telling them 4 separate Us intelligence sources came to them and they said.

06:32:06.55

cactus chu

Oh this? yes.

06:31:51.20

Ron Unz

It's not our fault. We're the intelligence agencies we told Trump what was going to happen. But the Us government ignored it because the defense intelligence agency back in 2019 in November of 2019 had produced a secret intelligence report. Describing a potentially cataclysmic disease outbreak taking place in Wuhan china and how you know it could be devastating to the world and you know they'd given that report to the white house. They'd given that report to our government officials and the government officials and Trump had just ignored the whole thing so it was their fall. In other words, it was very much like what happened. During the Iraq war, after the Iraq war became a disaster, various intelligence agencies started, you know correctly, saying that they'd warned that there probably were no weapons of mass destruction and their warnings had been ignored and so same thing this time in other words, the intelligence officials wanted to make sure that nobody was accused. American intelligence had been asleep at the switch. It was Trump's fall; it was the politician's fault; it was the white House's fall. It was not the fault of american politicians and the initial response by the ah Trump defense secretary was oh I can't remember maybe I don't remember seeing that. Oh you know my memory is a little bit fuzzy I I don't remember anything about it which you know is basically a non-denial denial and he actually was interviewed on camera saying he couldn't remember seeing a report about the devastating outbreak taking place in Wuhan china then. Suddenly people noticed the data report had been produced in November Two Thousand and nineteen in November Two Thousand and nineteen according to all the conventional estimates by our epidemiologists and biologists.

06:35:27.89

cactus chu

A.

06:35:27.14

Ron Unz

Were probably a handful of people starting to feel a little bit sick in the city of Wuhan China, a city that has 11000000 people in the height of flu season. There's absolutely no way in the world. Any American intelligence source could have been aware of it and then would so immediately.

06:36:34.73

cactus chu

I'll push back on this specifically not the entire big narrative but like on this specifically. Okay, sure.

06:36:06.36

Ron Unz

I'll get ah get yeah I'll get that I'll get I'll get to that in a moment I'll get to that in a moment but let me just finish the threat. So then what happened after the defense secretary said he couldn't remember whether he'd seen the report or not then the pentagon denied the existence of the report they said no report. Never report. It was never produced. It never existed flat denial but then a week or two later israeli tv revealed that sure the report existed it had been sent to Israel and all of our Nato allies. In other words, the government had gotten a copy of the report. So.

06:37:34.13

cactus chu

There.

06:37:13.56

Ron Unz

It it seems you know based on 4 separate intelligence sources in the United States again by their top investigator Abc's top investigative reporter with the secretary of defense saying he couldn't remember whether he'd seen a report and with israeli intelligence. Confirming the fact that they received the report and it also been sent tornado allies and by the way the israeli report said the report had been produced in the second week of November again. The second week of November a report being produced by american intelligence describing a potentially cataclysmic disease outbreak. Taking place in the city of Wuhan heel now you know again, that's as open as shut as you can get and so when you have that sort of forow I think it's extremely extremely clear that certain elements of the Trump administration probably nobody producing nobody involved in producing the report but somebody. The Trump administration knew what was happening and decided to further protect America against any blowback by leaking the outbreak to that unit in the defense intelligence agency so they could produce a report on you know, further protecting America from any leakage of the virus. And you were going to say you had some arguments on the other side.

06:40:14.13

cactus chu

Yeah, So basically there's this very big.. There's a lot of talk about these kinds of pandemic prediction techniques in the kind of existential risk or pandemic risk those types of people which I guess I would include myself in as well. Um, and there are actually kinds of these ways of monitoring even if it ah is kind of a low on the kind of low case count end the kind of Analytics Google Search analytics that kind of stuff is actually quite effective especially if like very very well geo-targeted. Um, but I think like I don't think this completely. On your line of argument I'm just saying like when you say something as strong as like there is no way they could have known I think that's false but on the question of like the balance of probability like maybe maybe this is not too much of a difference I'm not sure about that.

06:40:58.76

Ron Unz

You know you know, excuse me. That's one.

06:41:11.54

Ron Unz

To be honest, what you're talking about is total garbage being very candid now the Google techniques you're talking about. In fact, here's an interesting thing that you may or may not be aware of right? You know the Abc News reports spilled the beans in other words basically it was the smoking gun that came out and you know. The Pentagon immediately denied it. But unfortunately Israel then confirmed it immediately afterwards a few weeks later Abc then came out with a very long report allegedly based on a research study done by Harvard where they confirmed. China had had a massive outbreak months before anybody knew using exactly the techniques you're talking about in other words, satellite detection technology and a satellite photo and by the way. Ah the secret report supposedly.

06:43:05.79

cactus chu

Move.

06:42:52.54

Ron Unz

Was based on electronic surveillance and satellite detection technology because they obviously couldn't say well we know there's a virus there because we planted it ourselves. So again, the arguments. The alleged methods used were satellite detection technology. And monitoring. For example, search engines call for um, you know, flu symptoms or things like that. But that's total garbage. Do you know? The reason it's garbage is because of the nature of covid the single most significant fact. Even the earliest version of covid is extremely contagious. The doubling time of covid was basically 3 to five days, maybe 4 to None days in the early stages because nobody had an immunity in other words until the reason you needed a lockdown to suppress. It is otherwise.

06:44:34.95

cactus chu

In.

06:44:34.72

Ron Unz

Go through the entire society until you reach hurt immunity. In other words, it's an extremely extremely contagious disease. In fact, you see the way it broke out for example in Northern Italy you had probably like your people you yeah you see you had like 2 people in Northern Italy or you had 2 people in Spain or.

06:45:25.15

cactus chu

Right? The timelines just don't match up.

06:45:12.46

Ron Unz

None people here None person in the Bay Area basically the way covid works and you know based on all the evidence and all the expertise that's come out afterwards is if you have a small number of people infected in a given city and nobody's aware of it in other words, you're not taking lockdown precautions. Not ah, everybody's not wearing masks. You don't do social listening. You're just you know you're going along in your regular lives with all your events, sports events, movie theaters. If you have a handful of people in a particular city. It may entirely die out in other words, there's a perfectly reasonable chance of 3 people infected. They don't spread it. It dies out. But if it doesn't die out once it reaches the point of None people or 10 people or 20 people. It becomes an unstoppable epidemic. The doubling time is 3 to five days and within a period of generally a few weeks you have a massive outbreak. That's so obvious that everybody can see it and that's exactly what happened in Wuhan China in other words. The conventional timeline in Wuhan China is that the none infection probably occurred around the beginning of November, something like that maybe a little bit later than that. It's gone back and forth a little bit. But if you have an infection patient 0 infected in the beginning of November right around the end of the year towards the end of December you suddenly have an outbreak that's large enough to be macroscopic and people notice what's going on according to the scenario you're talking about which again was Abc News then touted it but it really is a very stupid theory. There was a massive uncontrollable epidemic.

06:48:28.29

cactus chu

M.

06:48:25.16

Ron Unz

Taking place in Wuhan China in August Two Thousand and nineteen an epidemic that was so large it could be detected by satellite photos an epidemic that was so large you had even at the height of flu season. So many more people doing searches on Google or you know ah searches on um, whatever the chinese equivalent of Google is what is it but I by doing baidu searches. So many people in the city of Wuhan were infected.

06:49:42.15

cactus chu

By the.

06:49:30.30

Ron Unz

That it was showing up in massive hospital overflows everything like that. You know the point I've made to people over and over again is if the infection of the outbreak in Wuhan China had been so serious in August Two Thousand and nineteen that everybody in. You could detect it using satellite photos of hospital parking lots it would have gone through all of China long before December and the whole country would have been affected because the first public health measures taken to control the virus occurred actually in early to mid January months later

06:50:58.87

cactus chu

Meaning.

06:50:47.12

Ron Unz

If you give an incredibly contagious virus like that four months or five months to spread it would have hit the entire country. So I mean that would work perfectly. Well if you had a non-contagious virus but covid is extraordinarily contagious and so it was just it was basically many times you have. Theories produced that are meant to be like talking points. In other words, they're meant to sound good if somebody doesn't bother thinking about them and that's exactly what Abc News then came out with saying that basically satellite photos showed a massive disease outbreak in August Two Thousand and nineteen but with nobody really. Bothering to think about the fact that if he hadn't if he had none of the people infected on August Third in August Two Thousand and nineteen you would have none of None of the people infected right.

06:52:50.73

cactus chu

Yeah I think I agree or I wasn't familiar with the Abc report to begin with. But I think I agree with you more now that this kind of typical pandemic prevention stuff. The timeline just doesn't line up there. There's too much of a gap.

06:52:31.90

Ron Unz

Um, it was a Harvard study.

06:52:51.80

Ron Unz

Exactly' make case exactly it doesn't make any sense so we have basically the data point we have the data point of a secret american intelligence report describing a potentially cataclysmic they use the word cataclysmic a potentially cataclysmic outbreak taking place in Wuhan china.

06:53:28.45

cactus chu

Sorry.

06:53:26.38

Ron Unz

Before there was a cataclysmic outbreak in Wu Han Sha and the outbreak that did occur then took place None after eight months of planning and testing in the United States run by America's chief biowarfare expert Robert Cadett on how to protect America from any hypo. Technical respiratory virus break that might occur in China which occurred right afterward and you have the elites of Iran infected by this deadly virus in the holy city of gom almost immediately after the original outbreak in China before it hit any other part of the world. I mean just all of the facts lineup and the reason I think the media is so reluctant even the alternative media is so reluctant to even discuss any of these things is the evidence is so tremendously overwhelming that the moment the media disgusted everybody would know exactly what happened I mean we're talking about something that killed over a non americans.

06:55:49.11

cactus chu

Yeah, it's kind of like a silly pattern matching again right? Because I especially like these kinds of things that are very big deals right? This is obviously a very big deal and this kind of like I think even I had this reaction I had to like reason through it while I was reading your articles of like.

06:55:20.60

Ron Unz

I Mean we're talking about storage conflict power.

06:56:27.37

cactus chu

None of all, there are like these kind of like really silly conspiracy theories as you said and people kind of do like pattern matching on this and people do like very silly like dismissive things and they don't actually think through the probabilities they don't actually think about like oh how hard is it to actually pull one of these things off. And like anyone, any kind of epidemiologist, anyone in the existential risk space will tell you it's actually not that hard to to really like to have like None of these viruses. Um, in this way and like. People just don't really like thinking this through, right? They kind of like reason by like rhyme or reason by like ah by like yeah basically pattern matching and and of course and of course very often. This pattern matching fails and then they reject something even though it's like. Even though I think at the very least it should be thought about as a kind of hypothesis. Even if I don't think it's like None certain

06:57:42.66

Ron Unz

And there's another point I should make also early on and it's interesting the way this about early on again, you know the sort of establishment view was there was a natural virus and you know again, we have a situation where the Iranians and the iranian government publicly accused America. Launching an illegal biowarfare attack against Iran and against China it wasn't sort of something whispered on there and it was publicly. It was a public accusation. They filed a complaint with the United nations. Do you know how their arguments were rejected because I mean Iran you know Iran is a large one. Sorry.

06:59:19.50

cactus chu

Because people don't like Iran because people don't like Iran is just tribalism.

06:59:00.80

Ron Unz

I mean partly. But I mean the main argument you're against them was they said you know America's response to that was everybody knows it's a natural virus. It's been proven to be a natural virus when radio free Europe responded or radio free europe did respond to theranian.

06:59:48.71

cactus chu

To.

06:59:33.62

Ron Unz

Accusations never got into the American media but our propaganda arm basically quoted very scientists as saying It's a natural virus if it's a natural virus. It obviously couldn't be an American biowarfare attack and that proves how crazy the Iranians are now you know.

07:00:31.59

cactus chu

Yeah, and that line of argument is also false as well. Just as a side note like people can transport like natural viruses but sorry continue.

07:00:09.14

Ron Unz

Well yeah, right, right? But I mean, if it were a natural virus that broke out in Wuhan China it would be less likely that America would suddenly go there and grab it and bring it over to Iran that quickly.

07:01:05.63

cactus chu

To.

07:00:41.82

Ron Unz

I mean that's we we didn't even know there was a natural I mean you have to isolate the natural virus None But you know if it's a natural virus. It's much much less likely to be an American biowarfare attack but just now the interesting thing about it is during that period of time. It's possible in my mind.

07:01:31.63

cactus chu

Um, yeah.

07:01:19.74

Ron Unz

The whole natural virus issue was pushed by the American government to deflect the iranian accusations because of the establishment view. You know by claiming it was a natural virus. We developed a very powerful weapon to respond to the iranian accusations and then. A year after a year went by and everybody had forgotten what the Iranians had said the issue completely died out. It was only at that point that the american media suddenly became open to it being an artificial virus again and from my point of view I'm not a microbiologist I'm not a virologist.

07:02:51.91

cactus chu

M.

07:02:33.94

Ron Unz

If It were a natural virus I think a lot of my theory would be much much less possible. But once the theory suddenly developed that it was that it was an artificial virus and looked, you know, based on the arguments I read by people whose opinion I Very much respect. It's very clear that there's a tremendous amount of evidence. It was from a laboratory.. It was an artificial virus.

07:03:43.59

cactus chu

Actually you'll I think you'll really like this are you aware of the idea of a fire hose of bullshit. Yeah, so for the audience it's a propaganda technique like an actual Propagan like full-on propaganda technique.

07:03:26.32

Ron Unz

How vague.

07:04:18.93

cactus chu

That's normally used to describe the Russian government but I think is applicable in a lot of circumstances where you essentially throw out any narrative that kind of vaguely resonates with your kind of emotional or political goal. So you don't really care about internal consistency.

07:04:13.14

Ron Unz

Um, oh wish we were exactly.

07:04:48.57

cactus chu

You don't really care about people focusing on non-specific things but you basically like to throw whatever and see what sticks and and I'd made an article or I wrote an article basically advocating or not advocating for but like basically saying this is the most effective way to do propaganda in the social and media environment by far. And really like there. There is this kind of ah there is this kind of fire hose effect I think in american media in particular where where this is like most most like evidence I think particular in the kind of like culture war stuff but like even this.

07:05:26.74

Ron Unz

No I wouldn't disagree with that in other words, it's basically a lot of different conflicting theories were thrown out to sort of confuse the issue and to basically bring them all into disrepute in other words basically if there are None ridiculous conspiracy theories of covid being a. Viral bio weapon by Bill gates to exterminate the human race then you know you don't pay attention to like the key evidence or you know those people who might normally consider it just disregard it and you know and these other theories also Bill Gates is a more attractive villain. So everybody can get excited about bill gates and you don't have to worry about being canceled. On social media if you accuse Bill Gates while you know if you accuse the US government then you might be denounced as a conspiracy theorist or something like.

07:07:25.59

cactus chu

Wait I think even like the bill gates stuff is like there is a pretty big crackdown on that. Not necessarily. Yeah.

07:07:04.46

Ron Unz

Oh that's possible, but the other point I should make is once then once you then have the switch from saying it's definitely and ah, a natural virus to basically it's now about none divided in other words in the media you know. Starting about a year ago it was probably may of 2021. You really had more and more people saying you know there's a very strong case for it being an artificial virus. In fact, ah one of the articles I wrote there were 4 books that came out reviewed by the wall street journal on the. Origins of covid and all of it argue that it's an artificial virus that came from a lab but when you're talking about a lab again. There's this lab leak scenario which was sort of what everybody focused on which really doesn't make any sense at all when you actually look at it in other words, you're just looking at it logically if we take the scenario. Ah, forget even about the evidence of the secret cia report or any of those other things we're talking about the virus appearing in Wuhan China at the absolute worst possible time for China right? leading up to lunar New Year a lab leak would obviously occur randomly in time and. Random point and so you know it's much less likely would hit chinaine exactly the wrong way a lab leak would never jump thirty thousand five hundred miles to ah to the holy city of go in Iran furthermore working at the lab leak you know Pompeo and some of the other people in the Trump administration who were claiming. It was a biowarfare. Ah, Chinese bioweapon Lee, they all claimed that they had secret intelligence sources saying that the lab was very poorly run and that it didn't use proper safeguards but there's really no evidence for that at all. In fact, the interesting thing is ah the single best western source on what was going on in the wuhan lab. Is a woman named Danielle Anderson an experienced virologist who was working at The Wuhan Lab at the time there was a long interview she published in bloomberg where she said the safety precautions taken to the Wuhan Lab were really outstanding. Absolutely outstanding. In fact, they were so good. She advised her own laboratory back in Australia to implement them. She saw absolutely no evidence of any leak. There was absolutely no evidence that the Wuhan Lab had been working on this type of virus. And she also thinks that she probably would have heard about something like that she was on a very friendly basis with the people at the wuhan lab she was working with them all the time Gossip got around and so she was very skeptical that either the virus was produced in the lab or it could have leaked from the lab.

07:12:27.40

Ron Unz

Under the circumstances that we're discussing so there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever for a lab leaked from the Wuhan lab. The only reason people point to the Wuhan Lab is that it's in Wuhan. In other words, virology lives in Wuhan and you know when you're talking about America launching a viral attack against China you know I'm sure if.

07:13:16.17

cactus chu

To.

07:13:04.36

Ron Unz

Planning people were thinking about it and they thought Wuhan would be the perfect target. Not only is it a major transit hub leading up to lunar New year but it also has China, one of China's leading virology labs and not only that. But the virologists at the Wuhan Lab were on very friendly terms with America's biowarfare experts. In other words America's biowarfare people would spend all their time going down to the Wuhan lab meeting with the people there they were on a friendly basis with. In fact, you know they had actually provided some funding for their research work through fauci. And through that organization. What is it and an equal alliance and that's another red herring. In other words, it clearly had nothing to do with the virus but you know got all these people excited as another you know, red herring to go after but the point about is we certainly were providing.

07:14:49.57

cactus chu

Ecohealth alliance.

07:14:45.28

Ron Unz

None of the thousands of dollars in government funding from our biowarfare facilities for the Wuhan Lab seems to me perfectly plausible that we were doing that to simply gain intelligence information. On what these different labs around the world were doing in other words, the eco alliance was spreading their money throughout all these other countries and presumably the hundreds of thousands of dollars were being used to gain you know entree so that we could just get a sense of what was going on there and in fact, personally it seems to me quite plausible that the progenitor virus. For covid probably came from the Wuhan Lab in other words we probably would have been able you know because we were funding some of their development work. It's perfectly possible that we would have gotten some of the progenitor viruses that we then modified to become you know the artificial covid year or two down the road. So I mean again. You know what I'm saying except for the secret report which I think is very close to smoking gun. All of this other evidence is circumstantial but extraordinarily strong circumstantial evidence. It's for example, if you're somebody who. Ghost an insurance company. You get a large insurance company on your wife and a week later she's mysteriously killed in a street killing you know it's something the insurance company's become very suspicious about.

07:17:47.97

cactus chu

15

07:17:28.40

Ron Unz

And they go through all this stuff and then if it turns out you were then bragging to your mistress that you'd soon be able to marry her because your wife would soon be dead then you know at that point the Jury starts to you know, turn back in verdict of guilty. So in other words, the fact we're talking about just going through the point.

07:18:10.11

cactus chu

10

07:18:05.88

Ron Unz

None american military servicemen were in Wuhan China at the military gain right around the time when the virus suddenly mysteriously appeared China had been hit in 2018 and 2019 by mysterious viral epidemics their devastated China's food supply. In poultry and in pork epidemics that occurred right after Trump had hired America's leading biowarfare advocate to a senior position in his administration then in 2019 top biowarfare advocate in the United States spent eight months from January to August Two Thousand and nineteen practicing state federalder. Ah ah, exercise on how America could protect itself. Against any leakage of a deadly respiratory virus if it suddenly appeared in China and it did suddenly appear in China Two months later you then had a situation where ah, the virus once it appeared in China immediately spread to the other country America was incredibly hostile towards. Holy city of Goulman Iran where it killed some of Iran's top military ah top political and religious leaders and infected 10% of Iran's parliament the second outbreak in the world occurred in the holy city of gum thirty five hundred miles away from China and then you have the secret of. Yeah, intelligence report in which basically America's defense intelligence agency told the white house told Israel told Nato that there was a potentially cataclysmic disease outbreak taking place in Wuhan china just before there was a cataclysmic outbreak in Wuhan china I mean all these facts are massive now you know as it happens you know China escaped the epidemic with almost no damage at all though now they're going through some economic problems but meanwhile over a none americans died. So we have a situation where over well over a none americans died and probably another non europeans.

07:22:39.91

cactus chu

Yeah, and I'm gonna and I know you answered this as well in your article but I want to ask it as well. Why hasn't China made a bigger fuss about this?

07:22:12.58

Ron Unz

And I.

07:22:23.12

Ron Unz

Well I mean my own feelings look like Iran did make a big fuss about it Iran publicly ah what you've got to understand is China is very weak in international media and propaganda I mean they're strong internally but overseas. They're very very weak. Iran is much stronger.

07:23:02.21

cactus chu

M.

07:22:59.56

Ron Unz

International media propaganda than China Iran publicly Accused America of a biowar for attack at the time nobody paid any attention and never got into the American newspapers. It never got any attention and so nothing happened and um, basically China did hint at the whole thing you remember back in like I think was probably mar. Maybe June, May or June of 2020 ah China's ambassador or one of China's foreign policy spokesman said oh maybe the disease came from the United States with the world military games again, not accusing America of a deliberate biowarfare attack which obviously would be an act of war. But simply saying that. Oh maybe somehow you know we brought it to China with the military gains and pro-china propagandists have been disturbing the most ridiculous propaganda you know, lost propaganda that the outbreak actually began in the United States that leaked that it had something to do with the a.

07:25:21.11

cactus chu

The Redfield lob.

07:24:56.60

Ron Unz

You know with the vaping epidemic. We had just stupid propaganda just garbage and so but I mean they're doing it to sort of argue that the virus naturally began in the United States or maybe leaked out of the out of the fort drich and then was accidentally brought to China. Through the world military games because basically people are reluctant to say America launched a biowar for attack day in China because that would be an act of war. No on the other hand the point I've made on the other side is since China suffered a few thousand deaths and America suffered over None deaths and None ars of Lockdowns. I mean we burned our own house down and you know if anybody should be angry at the people involved in the attack I think it should be the americans and should be the europe basically according to some estimates but when None and None people around the world have died now from covid far larger than the official estimates I'm the world health organization.

07:26:52.27

cactus chu

A.

07:26:46.50

Ron Unz

Says that 4000000 Indians probably have died of covid and it was basically there's very strong evidence that it was an american biowarfare attack by rogue elements of the Trump administration done without Trump's author ah authorization I can't you know say who they are but I mean you can. Make a list of the most likely suspects probably a small group of people and the result is an non americans more than None americans have died from it and I mean nobody cares I mean it's sort of I must say it's really at the time this evidence started red coming out I sort of assume. More and more people would focus on it but even in the alternative media almost nobody is willing to mention the whole thing I mean we're talking about a situation more when Trump does None stupid thing or sends out None nasty note tweets out a nastier mark at 2 am the media goes after him entirely. But when Trump the Trump Administration killed a none americans because of a failed the blowback from a failed rogue biowarfare attack nobody cares I mean it's just a very very shocking thing to me and I'm not easily shocked in other words, there have been many. Amazing things in history that I've uncovered but I mean the fact that basically all of this evidence is there. We're talking about a mountain of evidence and nobody pays any attention to it so you know what do I do? So I go to few people's podcast now. None thing I will say is a few people suggested to me recently. A few months ago yeah I'd been writing these articles and I mean the articles have been viewed maybe Nine times Nine times and so I sort of assumed. Well people must hear about it. But then a few people pointed out that you know sort of a lot of people are lazy and they don't want to read articles so you know maybe what I should do is go on podcasts or videos. And so I started doing that a couple months ago. Unfortunately, right before the war broke out Thera it was the week just a couple weeks before the Ukraine Russia war broke out and pushed everything aside, but still I did 3 or 4 video podcast interviews and within a period of few weeks they were watched by.

07:30:56.79

cactus chu

Um.

07:30:58.80

Ron Unz

None people and they're now up to None views so you know they're still up in the internet and they really summarize things I think a lot more effectively than I can in this sort of like a somewhat disorganized discussion. But you know the articles are up on the internet. They've read none of them. Videos have been watched I think they just broke None views you know and they're still chugging away even though you know basically everybody's talking about Ukraine and Russia in fact, you know again, the podcast who are willing to have me on are generally a very small podcasters so typically they would get like None views and my video had None views so you know, um, the facts are there basically and the fact that nobody else out there is pointing out to these simple facts. You know I guess it gives me more of a market because you know if you want to hear about this. You have to read my articles or listen to my podcasts. But I mean just. But talking about Non Americans who died and.

07:33:17.93

cactus chu

Yeah, maybe on a more positive note I know you're I know we're a bit we're we're quite a bit over time. But ah the last question of the show. It's always this. What do you think is something in the world that has too much order and needs more chaos or is too much chaos?

07:32:58.60

Ron Unz

Oh sure.

07:33:21.30

Ron Unz

I Honestly don't think in those terms. In other words, it seems to me that ah I mean I guess it would be better if we had a lot more kind of the honest truth is I Really don't have any yeah sensible sort of witticisms to end on. But

07:33:53.51

cactus chu

And needs more order.

07:34:06.85

cactus chu

Ah.

07:33:57.40

Ron Unz

I do think I mean None thing I really would hope is that american journalists and even offt journalists and podcasters become a little bit more courageous on some of this stuff I mean I'll say one more thing I mean on a couple of these podcast people we're talking about very very fringe podcast people who like. Deal with all these crazy conspiracy theories when they found out what you know I wanted to talk about. They said they wouldn't go near it. They would refuse to go near it was too. You know, too crazy or something like but I know the bio orphan stuff, of course the biowarphan stuff, all this other stuff gets taught.

07:35:25.27

cactus chu

Specifically the biowarfare stuff or like the other things wait. That's so much more likely than than a lot of the others like I'll just be honest here that that was like what on the like more likely range of the kind of like unlikely things.

07:35:11.64

Ron Unz

But all good.

07:36:02.61

cactus chu

Right? Like ah I had a lot of pushback for you at the beginning like I think people just don't really understand how like people especially who aren't exposed to the kind of existential risk clusterter and they'd understand how easy this is to kind of pull off.

07:35:53.88

Ron Unz

It's not it's notence horse America spent a hundred billion dollars developing biowarfa infrastructure I mean basically and and I mean again America used biowarfa in the Korean war it's virtually certain in other words, all the most respectable historians and journalists. Tend to agree America used biowarfare and you know I mean there's a massive massive amount of it when America spends a hundred billion dollars on biowarfare technology over the last fifty or sixty years mostly the last 30 or 40 years and America higher brings into them the Trump. Brought into his administration America is a leading biowarfare advocate and soon thereafter there is very strong evidence that America launched biowarfare attacks against the countries in the world America's most hostile towards. I think that's enough of a presumption that at least it should be discussed in the media. I mean I'm not saying the media should say that's definitely what happened, but the fact that not one whiff of this has appeared in the mainstream media and virtually not a whiff in the alternative media I mean a lot of these alternative journalists I talked to when they say when I when I've told them what you know? Basically I've been writing about how they say they'd never heard that anywhere. I mean I'm talking about all journalists I mean they're basically saying oh yes, they heard maybe it was a chinese bioweapon that leaked from the wuhan lab by I mean the notion of America launching a biowarfare attack just because we spent $100000000000 on biowarfare over the recent decades that's. So I mean I guess you know I think it's a mixture.

07:39:23.27

cactus chu

Yeah, all people aren't evaluating are like evaluating these from like relative positions instead of from like absolute positions in terms of just how they make sense of the world in general and maybe that's maybe that's a thing that they should be. Um, that they should be doing if they care about their kind of quote unquote careers. But like yeah yeah, whatever. Um, at.

07:39:35.94

Ron Unz

I'll tell you one last funny thing and then you know you can finish but it turns out 1 interesting thing I discovered was that for example Youtube and you know some of these channels. They basically deplatform you if you say dangerous controversial things when I was on Youtube and I discussed my biowarfare theory.

07:40:27.10

cactus chu

Yeah, yeah.

07:40:11.46

Ron Unz

There was no trouble at all with Youtube Youtube didn't care a bit. No problem whatsoever because again the whole thing about it is the notion of this being an american biowarfare attack has been so little discussed in either the media or the alternative media that the Youtube sensorors haven't even looked.

07:40:50.77

cactus chu

Interesting.

07:40:49.62

Ron Unz

I mean if you talk about some crazy waxing theory youtube will be a platform for you if you talk about all these ridiculous things. Maybe even bill gates exterminating the human race Youtube will go after you. But if you say well it's pretty clear. There was an American biowarfare attack against China. No trouble in Youtube whatsoever. Um.

07:41:59.79

cactus chu

Yeah, that is ah that is a bit weird. Anyways I do want to end it on a maybe a note of optimism and I know you said we never talked about this I guess but you founded a you founded a company you founded a trading company. What advice do you have for this? For young people going about the world today. What do you think is the best thing that they can do for themselves?

07:42:11.60

Ron Unz

Well, you know it wasn't really a trading company. It was just a software company. I sort of wandered into Austin. I ended up writing software that these other trading companies used to trade securities. So I mean the whole thing I you know again, it's sort of well.

07:42:59.21

cactus chu

M. It doesn't have to be related to that Just what what would? What would you have? What would you recommend for young people to do?

07:42:49.60

Ron Unz

Well I think probably it's better for people to do things that they find interesting or be willing to do something that'll make some money for them for a few years so that they can, you know, then have the money to do things that they find interesting afterwards. But. Speaking of chaos, the whole financial wall street situation with cryptocurrency and all of these s facts and everything like that has been so incredibly chaotic recently that I think it's very very difficult to provide any advice to people. In other words, this I think. A lot of what's going on right now makes http://the.comboomof twenty years ago seem totally sane by comparison. Great people basically invest in cryptocurrency with other cryptocurrency but basically the whole thing is nuts and you know at least based on what's happened the last few weeks it looked like the Mark. Looks like the Mark may finally be catching onto it. So um.

07:45:13.25

cactus chu

Yeah, oh man I did not. I did not expect probably the most amount of hate that I will get in response to this podcast to come from like these last few seconds but it seems like that's okay haste. But yeah I don't think you're. I don't think you're too far off the Mark there. Well.

07:45:00.42

Ron Unz

Um, ah.

07:45:19.36

Ron Unz

Um, oh great to be here and great to discuss again. The cover thing because you know I'm just it's been two years now I've been writing about it. It's just very strange. I'm not sure. Okay, well thanks a lot.

07:45:51.93

cactus chu

Thanks for coming on. Ron.

07:46:05.19

cactus chu

Yeah, it's been a wonderful 4 hours. Yeah, thanks for coming on.