Q and A with Primo Radical

(Ray interviewed: 15-min video and podcast; March 31, 2022)

By Ray McGovern

VIDEO

PODCAST

https://www.primoradical.com/podcast/episode/78f35107/patron-questions-for-ray-mcgovern

At the end of the first episode of PRIMO RADICAL: UNCENSORED, I answered patron questions regarding RussiaGate, the cover-up surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop, and election interference — including how the NYTimes helped give us four more years of Bush junior. (The full interview can be seen at https://Rokfin.com/PrimoRadical. )

Among the topics of the full interview: How is it that the United States and Russia find themselves on the verge of World War III; why do folks still believe in RussiaGate; NATO expansion; U.S. sponsorship of the 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev (appropriately labeled “the most blatant coup in history”); Washington quitting the ABM and INF treaties; and how the conflict in Ukraine is pushing Russia closer to China, India and other nations peopled by folks who don’t look like most of the rest of us.

MUST-READ Abridged Excerpts From Interview of Ted Postol, Professor Emeritus, MIT, with Robert Scheer

Photo from Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Gist: From the ‘Best and Brightest’ to a ‘Bunch of Ignorant Punks’

For more, see https://raymcgovern.com/2022/03/26/cold-reality-vs-nonchalant-talk-of-using-little-nukes/

Postol: “My grave concern is I know some of these characters who worked for Obama, and who now work for Biden. And I’m sorry to say it—I know it will be considered arrogant to say this—but they are ignorant. Let me be very clear: this is not an accidental statement on my part. They are outright ignorant. And they’re a bunch of—you know, they trained at these elite schools; they don’t know anything, but they think they know things.

I have taught at Stanford; I have taught at MIT; I have taught at Princeton and at Harvard. So I know what a lot of these people are, because they are very privileged—this is of course a generalization; there are certainly some extremely intelligent and thoughtful people among these. But a great bulk of these people are just completely in love with themselves; they are convinced that they know a lot more than they do; they will not listen, they’re not interested in learning—I mean, you try to present facts to them, they sort of walk away from you laughing.

And they are not experts. And it’s not a problem—it’s no problem at all that they are not experts. The problem is that they’re not interested in learning. So, you know, I had this character, a guy named Colin Kahl, he’s the deputy assistant secretary now for policy at the Pentagon. He doesn’t know anything. He was at Stanford, they made him a co-director of the center there. Rude beyond belief. And you know, he tells me at one point, I’m trying to discuss something with him—discuss something—he turns around and he says, I’ve got a job, I’ve got a real job, I don’t have time for this. This is a guy who’s at the Department of Defense, top levels now, possibly advising Biden.

This is the danger. And if we look at the Obama administration, we saw similar dangers. There’s a very interesting Atlantic Monthly article written by a guy named Ben Rhodes. Rhodes was the national security advisor for communications in the White House, and he wrote a totally fraudulent, supposedly government intelligence report that was released to the public about the nerve agent attack that occurred in Damascus in August of 2013.

And it’s very interesting; I would suggest your readers go read that Atlantic Monthly article. Because in his attempt to show everybody what a smart guy he is, he’s revealing that his main objective with Obama, with the president, was to get him to make a decision which would have been a disaster for the United States, but he [Rhodes] didn’t know it. But to attack Syria, before the public outrage from the misinformation people had about that nerve agent attack died down. In other words, he didn’t want the public outrage to die down before he forced or tricked or got Obama to make a momentous decision that would have been a disaster for the United States. A total disaster. [Ironically, it was Russian President Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of that fire.]

So Rhodes is bragging about in this article about the role he played. That’s a real window that people ought to use to look into the mindset of an individual who basically, through privilege and accident [check out Collegiate School in Manhattan, where he spent his formative years], became a national security advisor with no real knowledge of what’s going on.

So we’re in a dangerous situation. We have a lot of—I’m sorry, because I’m so disturbed by this—we have a bunch of punks, you know, 30-year-old punks who come from privileged backgrounds, claiming they’re experts in policy when they actually do not have the basic knowledge. And they’re advising presidents. And this is not a good professional system. we need to do something about it.

We Will All Be Dead

With respect to why nuclear weapons cannot be used is this: if we use them, we will all die. It’s that simple. And I can explain in much more detail why what I just said is correct. So if they ask the question again, why can’t we use these weapons, the simple answer is: if we do, we are all dead. … These weapons start getting used, and before you know it, it escalates into thousands of weapons being used. It’s just inevitable. It’s inevitable that the catastrophe will not be stoppable. So that is why you really ought to be very afraid that nuclear weapons will be used at a ‘low level’.

The argument about using small nuclear weapons is equivalent to saying, if I create only a small spark in this room that’s filled with gasoline vapors, it won’t be a problem. I think this is not a bad analogy. It’s physics rather than social, but it’s basically the situation. You can’t have a small spark in a room that’s filled with gasoline fumes. It’s not going to be a good outcome.”

END OF EXCERPTS from Robert Scheer Interview of Ted Postol

Note: Professors Postol and John Mearsheimer are from Brooklyn; Robert Scheer and I are from the Bronx. None of us had even heard of the Collegiate School in Manhattan, and could not have afforded to go there in the first place.

As for me, I can still hear the admonition of my Irish grandmother, a seamstress in the employ of a wealthy socialite (and thus able to avoid the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), as I went off at age 14 to caddy at a “exclusive” Golf Club. 

“Do you know what the ‘upper crust’ is, Raymond?”

I think I do, Grandma.

“No you don’t at all! Sit ye down, then; I’ll tell ye, because you surely need to know this, going off, as you are, to caddy at that fancy golf course.

The ‘upper crust’ is a bunch of crumbs held together by a lot of dough.”

Biden Calls Openly For Removal of Putin

By Ray McGovern

Feeling his oats after receiving effusive adulation from the leaders of NATO — and of Japan at the G-7 summit — Biden provided the Mother of All Faux Pax this afternoon in Poland. (No, sadly, it was not some kind of Polish joke.)

Echoing imperious King Henry II of England, Biden uttered the equivalent of “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest” … or troublesome president? The priest, of course, was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.  The president is Vladimir Putin, who had already warned of a complete break in Russia-U.S. relations.

Referring to President Putin, Biden said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-live-updates/?

Here’s a reminder that should not be necessary: For a host of good reasons, prudent presidents have shied away from saying such extreme things of foreign leaders — sometimes even when the two are at war. In Poland with Ukrainian refugees, Biden was asked what he thought of Putin; he replied: “He’s a butcher.” So add “butcher” to “killer”, “war criminal”, “murderous dictator”, “pure thug”.

Nor do I need to point out that by calling today for Putin’s removal from power, Biden has erected another an extremely high obstacle to the mutual cooperation necessary to arrange an early ceasefire in Ukraine, followed by the kind of negotiations that will be necessary to bring a durable end to what is now a proxy war between Russia and the West, with the Ukrainians as pawns of history — like the Kurds.

It seems unconscionable to hold out the prospect that Putin will be removed from the scene, if the Ukrainians just hold on. Is it all the same to Biden that the carnage continue, with rhetorical promises of support for outgunned Kyiv, weapons that are blown up as soon as they cross the border into Ukraine, faith-based predictions, and crocodile tears?

This will not end well. Among other things, it amounts to public confirmation, at the chief-of-state level, no less, that a cornerstone aim of U.S. involvement in Ukraine (particularly since the U.S.-arranged coup d’etat on Feb. 22, 2014) has been “regime change” in Russia.

That coup has been accurately labeled “the most blatant coup in history”. The main orchestrator, who was caught on tape arranging for the overthrow of the popularly elected Ukrainian president and picking his successor — while arranging to have then-Vice President Biden to come in and help seal the deal, was Victoria Nuland — now number three at the State Department. It is no secret that Nuland gives here nominal boss Tony Blinken instruction on what to say and do on Ukraine.) See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeeqooNWO48

Coup No Surprise: Neither Was Russia’s Reaction

After Nuland openly bragged in Dec. 2013 of the U.S. having invested $5 Billion in Ukraine’s aspirations to join the West, and then orchestrated the coup two months later, one agency of the U.S. intelligence community, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) got it right, presaging what slipped out of Biden’s lips earlier today. In an annual “National Security Strategy” report mandated by Congress, DIA Director LT Gen Vincent Stewart on Dec. 2015 signed off on the following text:

“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

For some reason, the mainstream media gave no play to that key finding. Let’s see how they play Biden’s confirmation of it.

Cold Reality Vs Nonchalant Talk of ‘Using Little Nukes’

What You Really Need to Know About the Threat of Nuclear War

By Ray McGovern, March 26, 2022

Robert Scheer has done us all a service by interviewing MIT Professor Emeritus and former senior Pentagon adviser, Ted Postol, on how vulnerable human life is at this point to extinction by nuclear weapons.  There is quite enough blame to go around; it is a devil’s brew of hubris and ignorance. ( See:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/25/ted-postol-what-you-really-need-to-know-about-the-threat-of-nuclear-war/ )

PARENTAL ADVISORY

In my view, this is a must for ADULTS to take in; but it will be too much for CHILDREN; and only very mature ADOLESCENTS will be able to “handle the truth”. But please do forward, however, to anyone advising President Joe Biden — whichever of the above categories they happen to fit into.

Extra Credit

1 — Here is Professor Postol, with Cynthia Lazaroff and Joe Cirincione, addressing the same issues at a recent salon sponsored by the Committee For the Republic on March 17. ( See: “Is Ukraine Our Armageddon”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quju5qY91Xk&t=31s

2 — My gist of Postol’s remarks on that occasion appears in “Will Humans Be the Next ‘Freedom Fries’?” ( See: https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/03/23/will-humans-be-the-next-freedom-fries/