I once thought Kenneth "you should be permanently removed from all media outlets everywhere in the world" Katzman was the nuttiest TV Zionist I would ever face.
And then I met Stewart Stogel.
- Stewart Stogel is a walking, talking mishmash of non-sequiturs
When I heard that my opponent on Press TV's The Debate
works for Newsmax, I realized that he probably wasn't the brightest
filament in the pack of journalistic flashbulbs. Even so, his idiocy far
exceeded my expectations.
I've debated a lot of goofy characters, but this guy takes the cake. Compared to him, Hannity and O'Reilly almost look sane.
To appreciate this guy, you need to watch the video, not just read the rough transcript.
* * *
US indifferent to Bahrain's want of democracy: Analyst
A
Middle East expert says that Washington is indifferent to the Bahraini
people’s aspirations for democracy and human rights since the US views
Bahrain as nothing but the base for the US Fifth Fleet.
The
comment comes as Bahrainis have staged a mass anti-regime demonstration
near the capital to protest against the upcoming Formula One Grand Prix.
Thousands
of Bahrainis took to the streets in the village of al-Aali, some 15
kilometers outside the capital Manama, on Friday to express their
opposition to the Persian Gulf state's hosting of the April 19-21 event.
Bahrainis say Formula 1's governing body, the FIA, should cancel the event over Manama's ongoing crackdown on protests.
Press
TV has conducted an interview with author and Middle East expert, Kevin
Barrett, in Madison to further discuss the issue. The program also
offers the opinions of New York-based Stewart Stogel with the Newsmax
Magazine. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV:
Kevin Barrett, twenty arbitrary arrests of activists prior to the
Formula One Grand Prix. So the race is more important than Bahrainis. It
raises questions about the Bahraini authorities’ commitment to reform
doesn’t it?
Barrett: Well, I think the question
is about the Bahraini authorities commitment to reform “have already
been answered” as the viewers will recall the Arab Spring died in
Bahrain.
We had genuine people’s non-violent revolutions in
Tunisia and Egypt and Bahrain was the next domino that was tottering and
about to fall; this is when the Western imperial powers stepped in and
shut down the Arab Spring in Bahrain.
They supported the Bahraini
government which is kind of a puppet really of the US Empire and of
Saudi Arabia which itself is a puppet of this empire as they crushed the
non-violent peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain and then the imperial
propaganda apparatus went into over drive in using all of the means of
their disposal which are quite considerable everything from internet
propaganda to probably even subliminal techniques I would imagine are
being employed.
They were able to create these artificial
destabilization uprisings in Libya and Syria and create vicious bloody
civil wars in those countries designed to destabilize the last
independent Arab nations.
So this has been an imperial
mobilization really of the post-Arab Spring world and Bahrain is the
place where they kill the Arab Spring and these rulers have been propped
up, the Khalifa dynasty has been propped up by the empire and told this
is the kind of country that we like to have in the Middle East.
A
very small powerless country that’s really just a US naval air station
with a couple of local figure heads running it; taking orders from the
West; running all of its policy for the West and crushing any genuine
popular sentiments for independence and for running the place on behalf
of the local people and so this sets the stage for really what’s the
coming conflict in the Middle East which is will this region be governed
by its own people or will it be destroyed in destabilization efforts by
the empire.
Press TV: Kevin Barrett (your reaction to the other guest)?
Barrett:
If Obama isn’t an imperialist then [former Spanish dictator] Franco,
Mussolini and Hitler aren’t fascists. Obama was put in power precisely
as the velvet glove to follow the Iron fist of the [Dick] Cheney regime
that used the false flag attacks of 9/11 to destabilize the Middle East.
Obama
was set in there with his nice surface, his fancy talk, his middle name
Hussein designed to appeal to people of this region as a way to
continue the same imperial policies and in some ways accelerate the same
destructive aggressive, illegal imperial policies that have been
followed for decades and accelerated under the lawless era left by this
9/11 false flag attack. Obama is the biggest imperialist of the century
and if anybody out there doesn’t know that they must be living in a cave
somewhere.
Barrett: Obama raised the US military
budget more than any other US president in decades, far more than any
democratic president. Every other democratic president that’s come into
office has actually reduced the increase of the military budget but
Obama was the first democratic president since World War II who greatly
increased the military budget in his first years in office.
He
initiated a brutal drone campaign designed to assassinate political
opposition all over the world. He has presided over the biggest
expansion of US Empire since what, the Spanish American war.
And you
are telling me this guy isn’t an imperialist. Excuse me but what
arguments can you possibility muster to claim that Obama had shut down
the US Empire; closed all 1000 US military bases there infesting our
planet like little cancerous sores everywhere. What has he actually done
to shut down the empire?
Press TV: Stewart Stogel do you want to respond to Kevin Barrett there?
Stogel: Who killed Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, freedom fighters? Who beheaded them, freedom fighters? These are the kinds of people you are defending?
Barrett:
The short answer to that question is CIA killed Daniel Pearl. Daniel
Pearl was killed by the same false flag terrorists running amuck in
Pakistan.
Stogel: Who beheaded them? Who massacred them?
Barrett:
It doesn’t matter who actually beheaded him. It matters who was paying
the executioner who beheaded him and that executioner was obviously in
the pay of the same people who are waging false flag destabilization
campaigns in Pakistan and every other country on the region.
You
should Google the name Raymond Davis. Raymond Davis is a CIA officer who
was arrested planning false flag attacks in Pakistan. He was driving
around Pakistan setting up bombings of mosques and markets. They were
going to be attributed to so called ‘Islamic radicals.’ Google the name
Raymond Davis CIA and you will find out the kind of people who killed
Daniel Pearl.
Press TV: Viewer comment: “John
Kerry, where is your call for regime change that you so eagerly and
readily express for Syria? Why do you remain silent [on Bahrain]?”
Dino Di Lucido
Kevin Barrett reaction on that from you?
Barrett:
Well, I actually heard a couple of things from the guest (Stewart
Stogel) that weren’t complete nonsense so that’s nice. I think it’s true
that the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria recognizes that its own
destruction would bring in an era of even more repression and violence.
But
I think the guest is utterly it appears to be ignorant of basic
geopolitical realities which are that we have sort of a US Zionist
imperialist axis that some of us consider the real axis of evil going up
against those forces in the region and around the world that want to
maintain independence.
And in Syria the Russians who are trying to
maintain at least a degree of independence and a world in which we
wouldn’t have a single imperial center, Washington DC or occupied
Jerusalem or whatever are putting their foot down and saying no I’m
sorry but NATO is not going to have the chance to overfly Syria and drop
bombs and kill tens of thousands of people like they did in Libya. The
Russians have said it’s going to have to be fought out on the ground in
Syria.
So the imperial forces US, Israel and their puppet states
like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending these-you know, they open their
prisons, they say we’ll give you a lot of money criminals if you want to
go in there and blow things up.
And so they are sending these
mercenaries into Syria to wreak havoc and Syria is being destabilized by
the empire; they’re punishing it for its support of the axis of
resistance; its support of Hezbollah and Hammas and its refusal to
knuckle under and be a slave of the empire that’s why they are
destroying Syria.
It’s interesting that my fellow guest doesn’t
even seem to recognize that there is a geopolitical aspect to any of
this. He is just kind of delving these surface platitudes that get
buzzed on Fox News as kind of brainwashing discourse to try to sucker
Americans into remaining as ignorant of the world as they already are.
Barrett:
(In response to the other guest) Nobody in the Middle East wants an
American military anywhere in the Middle East. The entire Middle East
wants US bases out.
They want US bases out. The population of the
Middle East wants US bases out. Face that fact Sir. Would you like to be
occupied? Would you like your country to be occupied by Chinese bases?
Do you want to live under occupation yourself?
You should visit
the Middle East yourself sometime. I speak Arabic pretty well and I’ve
been there and I have yet to meet anybody from the Middle East who wants
American occupation to continue and the people you hang out with over
there being the puppets of the empire are probably quite happy but 99
percent of the population wants those US bases out and they want the
Zionist occupation to end too.
Stogel: You know
it’s funny if all these human rights abuses are going on especially in
Bahrain I would have thought that at least the group of 77 would have
raised the issue at the UN. I’ve seen very very little even with states
‘sympathetic’ to the anti-government Bahraini forces. I don’t see them
making a big issue inside the UN before the human rights commission. Why
don’t they do it? I haven’t seen any of what you are talking about.
Press TV: Kevin Barrett why don’t they do it enough?
Barrett:
Well, they’re certainly not doing it enough but there are human rights
organizations all over the world, including some of the big ones; they
are taking a lot of money from the empire through the foundations which
is supposed to keep them quiet on Bahrain and other sensitive issues but
they are raising the issue of human rights in Bahrain if you haven’t
heard about it I think you know again
you’ve been living in a cave.
Stogel:
If the issues in Bahrain are that serious there are many sympathetic
states in the Middle East why have they not raised on an official level
to get legal action taken against the Bahraini authorities?
Barrett:
I’m not sure what states you are referring to that are sympathetic to
the people of Bahrain obviously Iran would be sympathetic because it’s
still an independent state.
Stogel: Why is Iran not raising the issue on a formal level at the UN?
Barrett: I hope they do and maybe since Press TV has a pretty big English speaking audience in Iran they’ll pick it up.
Press TV:
Kevin Barrett we are looking at two years on here and we had the US
human rights and labor assistant secretary of state for Bureau of
democracy, Michael Posner. Well, they said they welcome the call for
dialogue by the Bahraini government. That was last year and here we are;
is this just talk from the US so they can add their comments on it but
yet do nothing about it?
Barrett: Of course it
is. The US has decided that the base for the US fifth fleet which is
what Bahrain is; is more important than the aspirations for democracy
and human rights of the people of Bahrain. That’s not new the US Empire
has been making this kind of decision about virtually any country it
occupies in the world and there have been many dozens, probably hundreds
since World War II.
William Bloom’s great book Killing Hope
gives a pretty good record of these US occupations, CIA interventions
and military interventions that have killed probably more than ten
million people and ruined the lives of many dozens of millions since
World War II. Bahrain is just more road kill on the highway or road kill
on the Formula one road race of the empire.Labels: arab spring, bahrain, Israel, military bases, newsmax, Obama, occupation, Palestine, stewart stogel, us empire, Zionism