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Okay, thank you. I need some
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Welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me, George Galloway,
and me, Gayatri.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are not
so much two cheeks of the same backsides
as Godzilla 1 versus Godzilla 2.
One blunders around the states, babbling
incoherently against just about every
subset of humanity. The other can't get
about the states much and generally
excuse vulgarity, but is deadly serious
about being deadly.
The billionaire Trump turns out not to
be a billionaire at all. Whilst down
home Hillary and Bill have amassed a
king's ransom, some of it from kings,
who's going to win? Can't they both
lose? And what will it mean for us in
the rest of the world? We're joined by
Professor Indjet Parmar, head of
international politics at London City
University. First of all, who do you
think's going to win? And secondly, uh
what will be the main difference?
Well, I I suspect that Hillary Clinton
will win in November. Um even though the
poll, the national polling may be quite
close, uh we have to remember that the
United States presidential election is
50 separate elections in 50 separate
states. And it's not like the EU
referendum where they just tot up all
the votes and decide who got the most.
So it's first passed the post 50 times
and the Democrats have an inbuilt
structural advantage in terms of
electoral college votes which come from
big states like California and New York
and so on. There would be important
differences I think uh significant
differences because I can't see them
between a Trump and a Clinton
presidency. I think Clinton presidency
would first of all if you just look at
foreign policy national security areas
America's kind of global uh position and
role I don't think there'll be a major
change at all in that uh even in terms
of questioning what is that role what
are the different institutional bases of
that role what are the goals of it and
the means by which it's to be achieved
so in that regard I would say Hillary
Clinton stands in a long line would
stand in a long line of American
presidents of both parties over at least
since 1941. Um I think with Donald Trump
there's a little bit more
unpredictability. I think that's the big
problem that he has said many many
different things about the Middle East,
about South Korea, about Japan, about
NATO um such that it's difficult to know
exactly what he might do. So I think
that's why a lot of people who are
seen as national security experts or
people who are experienced in that area
uh feel so much worry about him.
But it's the predictability of Hillary
Clinton that troubles me.
She's predictably
fanatic about Israel, for example, on
the Israel Palestine track. She's
predictably determined to bring about
regime change in Syria. She's
predictably hawkish against Russia. Uh
she is predictably on her warhorse. Now
there's something to be said for
predictability, but if it's predictably
wrong and dangerous, which is what I
think many people in the world see her
as, that's a negative, not a positive.
Well, you're asking differences. That's
what I was answering. Um but correct. As
I said, uh, Hillary Clinton is a part of
a foreign policy establishment mindset
which is hooked into the sort of main
bases of American power in the world and
she thinks in that way. Um so that is a
dangerous position in many cases for her
to be taking
particularly in regard to a place like
Syria where there are so many different
forces at work and uh there's a deep
crisis and the kind of a the sort of
blowback from that of the development of
uh destabilizing regional actors more
regional actors and uh forces like ISIS
for example I think that is a dangerous
thing I'm not sure whether or not uh
Hillary Clinton, a Hillary Clinton
presidency would lead to an actual
full-scale military intervention into
Syria. Uh that it is easier to say that
than it actually is to do it because my
own view is that if had that been viable
um and I felt it was unviable because of
what happened in Libya and also what
happened in Iraq and the syndromes that
have kind of impacted American foreign
policy since then. So, I'm not sure
whether or not that's going to be the
case, although they're making a lot of
noises, especially in the election
campaign because Democrats uh wrongly in
my view uh appear to be seen as weak in
foreign policy and national.
It's ironic that, isn't it? Because
despite the fact most of the wars,
most of the wars were
correct.
What about uh domestically? Uh they are
they're both more or less the same,
aren't they? Two sides of the same Wall
Street coin. Both are with Wall Street.
Both are in fact Hillary's more bloated
with Wall Street money and the donations
of big business. Uh neither of them
really is going to do much for the main
street, are they?
Well, on top of that as well is that we
of course we are discussing these
foreign issues because we're from abroad
and we can see the impact and the
legacies of those foreign issues. But in
the US, the people hardly know what's
happening or care what's happening
outside of their state, the liberal
United States. So the domestic is really
important for the people.
Absolutely. I mean that's where they
live and that's where they work and uh
their health care, their education,
people's uh work and so on is all
exactly locally based. But um I don't
think I think um both may be for Wall
Street but I don't think Wall Street is
for both of them unequally. If you look
at the numbers uh Hillary Clinton as you
said has received a very large amount of
money and continuing to do so from Wall
Street donors. In fact, Hillary and
Bill's pretty much 50% of their income
annually comes from speaker fees at
those kinds of institutions.
Donald Trump, as far as I've read, and
whatever surveys they've been done, he's
only received $19,000
from Wall Street donations. So, he's not
they're not voting for him.
No.
And I think they're running from him in
great numbers.
Really?
Partly because of his uh his
unpredictability.
uh that makes everybody insecure
especially those markets which they
watch all the time. uh but also because
he's an anti-globalization and it's
anti- capitalist global or he says he is
anti-globaliz he wants to build walls
he wants to stop movement of peoples um
and therefore I think he threatens some
of that rhetorically now he's a billion
well he has a large amount of money
because he's had to spend large amounts
of it on his own campaign he's find it
very difficult he he gets it back from
the state now but uh no you're right uh
she's the big money candidate and that
was one of the Bernie Sanders uh
campaign platforms.
Uh and he's got 19,000 bucks from big
business. Is that because though they
all see her as the winner and they want
to back the winning horse or because
they think he might actually threaten
the NAFTA, the other free trade
agreements that the US wishes to
conclude in Asia, in Europe uh and that
uh he will uh as it were withdraw
America from the from much of the global
playground that they have been
dominating for so I think it's the
unpredictability of Donald Trump, but I
don't think anybody can manage him. His
own campaign seems to renew itself and
its campaign management is renewed every
few weeks. He sacks one person, puts
another person in who seems to me
to be even more right-wing and uh
audacious than previously.
So, if they can't manage him and his
family can't manage him, I it'd be very
difficult for anybody else in the
position that he would be in.
So, I think unpredictability is one of
the biggest problems. Now you you're an
expert on American politics. So uh maybe
you can help me with this question. Out
of all those people with all those
achievements to their name, this uh
blessed country from sea to uh shining
sea. How did we end up with a choice
between two Godzillaas? I think the the
reason we are here we are where we are
today for America globally and at home
is for because of a fix in the 1970s
which has uh borne out full fruit in a
way in directions which were probably
not predictable at that time. In the
1970s there was a threat from the third
world sort of postcolonial leadership
for a new international economic order
to readjust the structure of world power
economically, politically and
institutionally. And one of the big
fixes was to divide that third world if
you like was the picking out by the
likes of David Rockefeller and Ziggub
Bazinski and many others was to pick out
what they called middle class powers
from the third world countries.
countries which would which had a future
in the world system as led by the United
States and which in in which investment
would eventually bear fruit such that
they would have a stake in that system
that depended on the um export of a
large amount of industrial capital which
was previously largely invested in the
western countries particularly Britain
and the United States that
de-industrialization
is one of the reasons why the sort of
people who are supporting Trump in such
a hardcore way
are supporting him because he is the
GOP, the grand old party
which has run on low taxes and small
government
has delivered nothing to those Reagan
Democrat
kind of bluecollar voters and they have
now finally come to the point where they
are revoling against the GOP and that is
the reason why Trump if you like he's
the only one who speaks to them like
them and their problems. Uh there's a
wonderful new book called Hillbilly
Elegy which is a by a guy who's just
finished at Yale but who comes directly
out of those kind of communities in the
Appalachian Mountains and so on but he
explains who this white ethno
nationalist kind of Scots-Irish
immigrant descendants are that they are
a kind of white tribe which sees itself
as increasingly heading towards
extinction.
But they've seen their country from the
1970s onwards as they see it going to
the outsiders,
African-Americans, immigrants, other
minorities who've come in and taken a
big share of the American dream which
they've been kind of left behind with.
So, one of the reasons why we are in
today and that they have a particular
experience and I think that they have a
kind of right-wing uh racialized
response to their what is really a kind
of class-based problem. Um but if you
look at the Sanders uh movement as well,
there's quite a large part of the sort
of uh other people sort of sort of lower
middle- class people who are supporting
Saunders precisely for the same kinds of
reasons that the opportunity and the for
a good income for a good career without
college debt of being in hundreds of
thousands of dollars health care
provided which doesn't you if
you can't find a decent job and so on
but without the easy scapegoating
right without the scapegoating that's
what makes Trump a populist cuz I don't
believe that he will deliver on anything
for those people.
Whereas I think somebody like Sanders
probably could have shifted uh political
and economic power a little bit in that
direction because there is room for
maneuver within the American political
system. we've seen over the last 100
years, you know, you've got uh the
progressive movement uh in the in before
the first world war, the the New Deal,
the Great Society programs in the 1960s,
but also you've seen the the right-wing
responses to those as well.
It's fascinating. Professor, thanks for
joining us on the sport, Nick.
Welcome.
Coming up next, the war of the rich
against the poor. It's the Saudi
slaughter in Yemen. Stay with us.
Welcome back to Sputnik. The world's
richest dictatorship has blasted its way
into an internal squabble in its
neighbor Yemen. A squabble in which both
of the contenders for power have long
been its own clients.
Saudi Arabia is using Western weapons
and expertise to destroy the always
scanned infrastructure of its
impoverished neighbor. No school,
hospital, bridge, mosque, highway, or
public building is safe from the latest
military hardware on the market.
Virtually no media covers the subsequent
slaughter. Even though Yemen is a former
British colony, and the 1960s massacre
by the Argyle and Southerntherland
Highlanders in the crater district of
Aiden was the last harrah of the
official British Empire in 1967.
But one man and his friends who hasn't
passed the Yemenes by on the other side
of the road is Dr. RS Karim, co-founder
of Mona Relief Yemen, and he joins us
now. Dr. Thanks for coming on board the
Sputnik. Just for the viewer who almost
certainly knows far less than they ought
to about what's happening in Yemen,
please tell us the current situation.
Thank you for having me. First, welcome.
Uh since I'm a humanitarian
um the political views that I present
will purely be my personal political
views in as far as Mona Relief's
humanitarian um work. Uh we basically
look at uh the need and not the cause.
So um
tell us what the need is then.
Oh the need is absolutely incredible
right now. there is there is no food
which is which is primary. Um
about 12,000 people have died um as a
result of direct hits. This is not
counting
um the thousands who are dying from
malnutrition and uh other sicknesses and
illnesses. Uh people who are in the
hospital on their deathbed without any
medicines. Um so
normally you know the the figures that
we get from the United Nations
um are not the reality on the ground.
The reality on the ground is completely
and entirely different.
And how is it possible that nobody
covers and therefore nobody knows about
what's going on there. As I say in
Britain especially because it's actually
formerly a British colony. there is a
media blackout. Uh according to the
reports that we have or I personally
have is that um the Saudi agents have
basically bought chunks of prime time
airtime from TV stations and and paid
them um copious amounts of money on the
condition that nothing about Yemen would
be said on television.
Well, nothing is said. I don't know the
reason why. Um it may be that uh access
to the country is difficult. Indeed it
was under siege and Monor relief broke
that siege didn't it?
Mon relief started on Twitter.
Um, I was talking to a friend of mine in
Yemen who is a journalist and he was
trying to get or trying to solicit for
little funds so he can feed some
families that he knows and he was being
successful at that but not nothing
nothing major. And so we started talking
about the situation in Yemen and I told
him I said this has to go much larger
than it is. And this was in in the
beginning of April 2015 when the war had
already started.
And so um we decided that we were going
to create a hashtag which was called 20
for Yemen. And anybody who donated $20
or 20 pounds they would be able to feed
an entire family for a month.
and a lady by by the name of Mona gave
us our first £1,000.
We took the,000
and um we bought food which was which is
very expensive in in Yemen itself
because of the blockade.
Uh but um we had some some good people
who who basically were willing to work
with us. So we bought some food
internally and started distributing it
in in an area called Harf Sufyan
um which was um suffering a lot at that
time. And we took the pictures and we
put them on Twitter and say this is what
we have done so far. Please would you be
able to help us
and in about a week Twitter had given us
almost £5,000.
But how did you get the relief in? I can
tell you we got the relief in, but I
won't be able to tell you the secret
behind it because if I do
have to kill
they have No, no, they will kill me.
I want them to kill you. They will kill
me.
But uh
it is a shameful business, isn't it?
It is. It is.
Yemen is the poorest Arab country.
Correct.
It's one of the poorest countries on the
earth.
Correct. Its next door neighbor, Saudi
Arabia,
is one of the richest countries on the
earth.
Correct.
And not only is Saudi Arabia not helping
its poor nextdoor neighbor, it's
pulverizing it with the world's most
expensive and advanced weapons sold to
them by us.
That's correct.
Now, which part of that scandal does the
British media not understand? Have you
been able to entice or interest anyone
in the British media about this?
Well, I have spoken loud and clear with
uh with television stations like Press
TV and and and uh um you know and as far
as the local media concern is concerned.
Nobody is they're disinterested. Let's
put it that way. Even if they're
interested, they're told that this is
too political and it is going to go
against us. So, let's not go. Yes.
You know, Syria fills the airwaves and
fills the media while Yemenitical is
completely uh ignored. You have to smell
a rat here. A very big large rat.
That is correct. It's it's irrudent.
Yeah, you're right.
So, they're not covering obviously the
um the the war being waged onto Yemen.
They're not covering then the following
um uprising that happened this weekend
with almost a million people on the
street on the streets. Saudi Saudi
Arabia bombed it. They bombed. There's
no country on the earth
that would bomb.
That's correct.
A parade of a million people.
The other side effect is that because
the Yemenes now had to come together to
uprise. They've left the vacuum for
al-Qaeda to rise. Yeah. And they are
creating many states within Yemen. So
the problems are accumulating.
See, Yemen, let's not forget, is very
strategically placed. M
extremely strategically for two reasons.
One is that they have the Babel Mandab
which is the choke point of getting into
Africa into the Indian Ocean and the
other is the Sotra Islands. The Sotra
Islands were where if I'm not mistaken
was was where the American base was.
That is one island
which from where you can actually keep
an eye on the entire Arabian peninsula.
It's it sits right at the bottom of
Yemen. And from there you can gauge the
straight of Hormuz which is controlled
by Iran.
You can you can gauge the Babel Mandab
which is which Saudi Arabia wants
desperately.
um uh because they want to transport
their oil from there and and also keep
an eye on uh on the economic uh
situation from China because that is
where all the Chinese goods go into
Africa from. And so the idea is to keep
Yemen fighting and keep Somalia fighting
because either of the two, if you have a
solid nationalist leader who puts his
foot down,
then everything goes to hell in a hand
basket.
And so they're prepared to see al-Qaeda
and ISIS take control
Absolutely.
of the coastline of finance of Aiden.
They finance them.
Yeah,
they finance them. you know, for them
some ports.
Of course, it it has. Of course.
So, Saudi Arabia is destroying Yemen and
encouraging al-Qaeda and ISIS in this
vitally strategic part of the world.
Correct.
Rather than see the return to power of
someone that they used to have very good
relations with whose life they saved,
right?
Uh took him airlifted him to hospital,
saved his life. Now he's come back and
wants his job back and suddenly it's a
cause for Yeah.
the destruction of thousands of people.
Many of them of course children and
women.
Yeah. They are they are uh um you know
they are basically bombing them with
impunity.
It's not going to work. Uh so the the
Yemenes are very good fighters as the
British found as many uh would be
conquerors have found.
Egypt would vouch for that too. of the
lasser was
indeed. Uh the Saudis are not very good
fighters.
No.
Uh they've kind of uh gotten out of that
habit. Uh they can't persuade anyone to
come and fight this war for them. They
tried to bribe Pakistan to send its army
and fight the war for them.
Correct.
What's going to happen? What's going to
be the end of all this?
Well, right now, the way I see it, Saudi
Arabia is trying to save face. They may
have won the battle, but they lost the
war.
Yemen are the warriors of Arabia. They
don't give up. Those people dug their
feet in so deep because this is their
country and they're not going to give up
ever.
Um, you know, so right now, you know,
it's it's between uh um Prince Muhammad,
the Saudi effectively.
Correct. This was his baby. This was his
do something really big.
This was his baby to kill a lot of
babies.
Exactly. It It was do do something
really big so that you can get next in
line for the throne.
Well, that hasn't worked.
Well, that didn't work because now how
do you get out of Yemen? How do you do
it?
It's easy to start wars. It's very
difficult to
They have no exit strategy at all.
Dr. Karim, thanks for joining us and I
wish uh the Mona relief every success
and I hope everyone watching it does
too.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you very much.
And now it's your turn to tell us what
you think through the portals of social
media. What's rattling guy? So on the
race between Godzilla 1 and Godzilla 2,
Khaled Ali says that the world is worse
off either way and he thinks that with
Trump it will be more so whereas
Conspicuous says that Trump is the
lesser of the evil.
Well, one is obviously evil and the
other is quite likely to be evil. So uh
I think we have to end this lesser
evilism. That's why I'm supporting Dr.
Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate
who sat right there where you're sitting
now.
Indeed. And on uh the unfortunate war in
Yemen, Ricardo Picasso says that half of
the arms that Saudi Arabia kept is in in
Yemen and the rest are in ISIS hands
now.
Yeah. Well, it could be in ISIS hands in
both countries, Yemen and in Syria. It
is a monumental scandal. It's bigger
than the Himalayas, this scandal, yet
it's in plain sight, but nobody wants to
see it.
Well, that's all the tweets that we have
for this week,
which alas means that's the end of the
show.
You can stay in touch with us through
social media. On uh Twitter, it's
RT_Sputnik.
On Facebook, it's Sputnik on Russia
Today. It's goodbye from me, Gayatri,
and from me, George Galloway. It's been
marvelous.
Heat. Heat.
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