 I'm Mark Curtis, the editor of Declassified UK. I wanted to welcome everyone to this special AMA. It's special for two reasons. One is we've just launched our new website, which I think will take us up a level, be able to reach new people and reach new audiences. And I hope many of you watching now will be able to help support us and fund us going forward. We hope that many of you will become a member of Declassified. And I would like to thank you in advance for those people who will do that and for our existing members, many of whom are no doubt online now as well. And with me on the panel is Matt Kennard, who's our chief investigator. And Phil Miller, who's our chief reporter. But tonight is mainly special because of our other panelists who is, as you will see, Noam Chomsky and it gives me a huge pleasure and honor to invite Noam on our panel tonight. Noam's brilliant analysis of US foreign policy has been read by millions of people and has totally transformed our understanding of the US's role in the world. I mean, he's inspired millions of people. I'm one of them. I think Phil and Matt are others and no doubt many other people on this call. And not only as analysis but but his engagement with people and his engagement with activist groups and his humility and commitment to human rights, which is as impressive as is as his analytical work. So Noam, I wanted to give you a big welcome tonight. Thank you very much for coming. My pleasure. Glad to be with you. This is obviously an opportunity to put questions to Noam. The idea is if you could put those questions in the Q&A bit of the website along the bottom. I'll then field those questions and ask them to Noam. Please try and make them as short as possible because we've only got an hour and we want to try and get through as many questions as we can so make them as short as possible. We do want to keep the conversation focused on US foreign policy and UK foreign policies and the special relationship as much as we can. So, if you can keep your questions to those subjects that would be great. As people are thinking of those questions, Noam, can I put a general question to you and ask for your thoughts? In the vast amount of work you've done on US foreign policy over the decades, how would you characterize the US-UK relationship? What role does the UK play in the system of US imperial power? And how would you describe the impact that the two countries have on the world? Can I ask you for your thoughts on that? Actually, that was described quite accurately by the British Foreign Office back in the mid-1940s. Britain had basically lost its global role as a result of World War II. The British Foreign Office sophisticated people have centuries of experience in imperial mastery. And the Foreign Office recognized that unfortunately from now on Britain will be what they called a junior partner of the United States. The United States, they said, will be like a friendly uncle who says, I have something that you want. And I have something that I'll give to you and it's something that you will get whether you want it or not. That's the relation between Britain and the United States. So when the United States does something, Britain tails along politely. If the United States wants to kick Britain in the face, kicks him in the face like Skybolt, other things. And Britain politely accepts and goes back to being a junior partner. Kind of like what happened with France just a couple of days ago. The English-speaking countries decided our alliance will carry out the next dangerous provocative act in the Asia area, nuclear submarines. France had already had a contract to do it, but we'll just kick him in the face. Okay, don't even tell them. Just put it through. And France will make some gestures but they'll take it. I don't have much choice. France has tried over the years to be a little more independent of the United States. Gaulism. Germany tried slightly but didn't get very far. Power relations are just too overwhelming. Britain doesn't even try. It just goes along politely. The United States invades Iraq. Britain alone joins in invading Iraq, similarly on most other things. So I think the Foreign Office, British Foreign Office understood very well in the 1940s. Thank you, Nern. And one of the things you touched on there, which is actually one of our first questions. So maybe I can come on to that. You mentioned this new agreement between the Orcus agreement between Australia, the US, and the UK. And Chris Wells asks, interested in your thoughts on the new Australia, UK, US alignment. Could this escalate a new Cold War with China? And, wait a minute, I've just lost that question. Well, could this escalate a new war with China? And if so, what to make of the splits emerging with France's apparent sidelining and disapproval that you've touched on? But particularly the China point. I mean, are we in a new era of dangerous tensions with China? Oh, very definitely. As for the new nuclear subs agreement, well, Britain, people in the UK can ask themselves, how would you feel if China was just developing a nuclear submarine fleet in France, which was advertised publicly as able to sink the entire British fleet in 70 hours, nuclear subs to appear unannounced in any British port? How would Britain feel about that? Well, it wouldn't like it much. Probably couldn't do much about it. I suppose it was China sending nuclear submarines to Cuba with the same announcement. Well, the United States would probably nuke China. Okay, China fortunately is acting in a kind of restrained fashion, I assume they'll react in some way, but they're reacting at the moment, like adults, not going crazy about it. I don't think the West would do that, not the United States. It's a highly provocative act. That's basically no military significance. The submarines won't even be deployed for another probably 15 years or so, but then the world will have changed enormously. It's a highly provocative act saying we're going to show our muscle. We're going to defend what's called freedom of the sea. Freedom of the sea. You have to, it's important to recognize that there are two independent notions of international order. One is the United Nations based international order based on the UN Charter, other agreements, Geneva, and so on. That's one. The other is what's called in the United States and Britain, the rule-based international order. Totally different. That means we set the rules, you obey them. That's the rule-based international order. So it takes a freedom of the seas. The rule-based international order says we run the seas everywhere. If we want to carry out piracy on the high seas, which carries the death penalty, we do it. And nobody even notices it. So when the United States seizes ships in the mid-Atlantic, carrying Iranian oil to Venezuela, two countries that the U.S. wants to smash, seizes the ships, brings them to a U.S. port, piracy. Nobody even notices. Maybe it gets a small notice in the newspaper. The U.S. demands that the law of the sea be observed, condemns China, rightly in this case, for violating it in the South China Sea. The United States doesn't even ratify it. It's not for us. It's for you guys. That's the rule-based international order. Scholars soberly discuss the rule-based international order without pointing out what it means. We make the rules. You follow it. What's happening off the, the United States claims to be threatened by China. A lot of criticism we make of China. They do a lot of rotten things internally in Hong Kong and so on. They are violating the international law in the South China Sea. They have a highly autocratic government. Is this a threat to the United States? The threat to the people in China and the Chinese region. It's not a threat to the United States. In fact, what's called a threat to the United States is at the borders of China. It's not in the Caribbean. It's not in the, off the coast of California. If there were anything there, it probably blew up the world. But the, these are problems. And the fact that the United States is taking provocative actions in these areas is dangerous, extremely dangerous, shameful. Britain, of course, is pretending that it's still a world power. Kind of on the order of shifting back to shillings and tuppence. We're a world power. So we'll send the ship off to the South China Sea as well. Try to show that we're still in the game. It's kind of a joke. I mean, the, I don't think France even withdrew its ambassador from Britain because it's so insignificant. But if you can play it up in England and say, you know, the, we're still the imperial power that rules the world. Well, to get back to your question, the question, it's extremely dangerous. China so far is carrying out improper acts, but it's not reacting very, there are other things that are dangerous. So, you know, there is what's called a one China policy on Taiwan means formally, we agree that there's one China, including Taiwan, but we tacitly agree not to do anything about it. That's been in place for decades. The United States has recently under Biden has slightly violated it by sending diplomats to Taiwan, not permitted under this arrangement by other moves. China's reacted by overflights of Taiwan with nuclear capable bombers. So far, they're just making gestures to each other could blow up. Very dangerous. There's no point US strategic policy. Recent most recent version 2018 under Trump calls for preparing for simultaneous wars against China and Russia. The word insanity doesn't reach anywhere near as far as covering this. There cannot be a war between nuclear arms, major nuclear arms states out of the question, preparing for a war against China and Russia. Do you sense known that and this follows a question that Peter has is asking you do you think that that is symptomatic of US power being in global decline. So Peter asks, is US influence in decline globally all its military intervention seem to end in defeat. How would you assess that. Let's take a broader look. US power reached its absolute peak after the Second World War was a level of power that no country in the history had ever achieved. The United States had maybe 40% of total world wealth total security run run the Western hemisphere ran both oceans ran the opposite sides of growth oceans. US industrial capacity had practically quadrupled during the war was already far ahead of anyone else. Other countries had been devastated. Well, that couldn't remain, of course, it began to decline in 1949 with what's called in the West, the loss of China. Interesting term, we own it, and we lost it. And that had a huge impact. Over the years, US economic power has of course declined couldn't stay at that level. So if you look at national income GDP, it's maybe 20% very misleading. Sean stars of political economist in Hong Kong has pointed out discussed in detail that in the globalized Europe, national accounts don't mean what they used to a more telling account is how much of world wealth is held by nationally based multinationals. And here the US is out of sight. First and just about every category second and some others and the one else's clothes. If you took to talk about military power. It's not even a competition. US military budget is last year was about 750 billion. Of course per capita for less. Third is India. Fourth is Russia around 60 billion. Nobody and the US is far more advanced technologically. Moving into space war way more advanced than anyone else. 800 military bases around the world. China has one and Djibouti. Just nobody else is in competition. If you turn to soft power, what's called soft power, it's different. China is very systematically developing. All of Asia, most of your Asia into a China based system. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Central Asian States, Iran recently joined. Probably will try to extend the Turkey. US asked to become an observer was blocked. It's not allowed in. Combined with the built road initiative development investment. Turning this whole huge region into a China based system of development and integration. We're all familiar with my kinders, famous geostrategic theory that whoever controls Central Asia controls the world. Well, China is working to build that. Also in Africa, a lot of development programs which integrate Africa into the Chinese system, even in Latin America. Conflicts, but the main trading partners by now China, most countries trade and development. Meanwhile, the US is busy fighting wars all over the world. Spending huge amounts of the whole recent estimate of the soak of the centuries wars is about 8 trillion. Money that's badly needed for other purposes, badly needed. And it's also devastating the environment. The Pentagon alone has a CO2 carbon output approximately the level of middle countries in the world. So destructive. So an internally the US social order is collapsing. So the one major week as far as US power is concerned by standard measures overwhelming. If you bring in what's called soft power. Internal. If you bring in what's called soft power. Internal social order. Much worse. If you take a look at global COVID hotspots around the world, you know, you take a look at the maps where the hotspots. United States. Mongolia. No functioning country. The United States is basically alone. It's not the United States. It's the old Confederacy. It's the Southeast United States. The Confederacy during the Civil War. Couple of outliers. Republican states. And it's largely the result of major cult. Anti-vax, anti-science cult. Exists in Europe, but much stronger in the United States and have an effect. People are in the Republican states. There are no beds in ICU units. People are dying in the halls and there was using to take vaccines. Because we don't trust the federal government. And it's eroded the social order. You take a look at attitudes. It's hard to believe. Among Republicans. Over a third. Believe that. The virus was created by the Chinese as a bio weapon to attack states. Over a third. But a quarter. Believe that. United States is run by a satanic cult of pedophiles. Who are torturing children. A quarter of Republicans. That's larger than the membership of religious groups. It goes on. If you look at it more seriously. Attitudes towards. Global warming. Just recently, the major research Institute. Few research did a study where they. They gave people 15 choices of serious problems. Ask them to rank them in order of seriousness. Among Republicans. Global warming was last. 15%. Highest was the federal deficit. And immigration. It's a fantasy world. And it's very dangerous. And so. Just, just what you're saying there about climate change. No. There's a, there's a question that's coming from new. I mean, there are loads of questions actually on all sorts of different subjects. So I will try and keep to some sort of order to them, but the question from no, no calmness is how, how will climate change shape shape future wars? And is it already shaping. Current wars. Climate change has had a significant effect on wars in many parts of the world. The. Darfur. Atrocities were largely the result of. Nomadic tribes losing their. Areas through drought and global warming. Syria. Significant part of the. Global warming. And the second horror story. Is a long drought. Which undermined agriculture drew people into the cities. No support. Beginnings of breakdown of society. You hit a. Collapsing society with the sledgehammer. Goes crazy. It's happening elsewhere. There's going to be much, much worse. Take South Asia. It's not going to survive. I'm in India and Pakistan. Rely on the same water sources. From the Himalayas, which are declining. Both are no clear or. Plenty of tensions. They've come close to war. It's not going to be long before they're going to war over diminishing water resources and control over. Same things are happening almost everywhere you look. In the Middle East. Iran. Damning rivers and so on. Iraq. So. I mean, the good side is that probably the other effects of global warming. Will. End this all before this happens. So that's a kind of a bright side. But. It's important to recognize exactly what's happening. So. You've all I'm sure read the spread about the IPCC report. The latest one that came out. I think. August 9th. Nice state. It was the anniversary of. Nagasaki. The most grotesque. Experiment in human history. Hiroshima was bad enough. The Nagasaki bomb. It was a different. A much more advanced bomb. Fat man. They weren't sure it would work. There was no reason for it. The Russians had entered the war. The. Day before the war was essentially over. But you had to see if this would work. Nagasaki wasn't even the prime target. Clouds over the main target. So let's see how many people we can kill. Nagasaki and see if this. Fancy device works. Famous day in history. IPCC report. Was released on the anniversary. Very dire report. Much worse than the others. The next day. Joe Biden. Appealed to OPEC. The oil cartel. To increase production. Increase production. So that that would reduce gas prices in the United States. And improve his. Electoral prospects. That's the day after the IPCC report. No country has. Come even close to. What it has to do to meet the IPCC conditions. Biden's policies. Are much better than anything preceded. On papers. Congress will never let them go through. The Republicans are blocking everything. In the new. Proposals that might. Cut back. Fuel production. The. Right wing Democrats the ones called moderate. Or really right wing Democrats. Kind of the Blair rights. They. Are joining with the Republicans. To block. Cutting subsidies. To fossil fuels. We only have to produce more fossil fuels. We have to subsidize it. Okay. On paper the programs look good. They can only be implemented by real. Mass popular action. It does exist. But not at a scale that's. Overcoming the. Dedication. Of the leadership of the. Major countries to. The fossil fuel industries to private profit. It's a death warrant. Unless that's changed and pretty soon. We're on a path to. Irreversible tipping points. At which point. We don't all die tomorrow, but we can effectively. Say goodbye to each other. Can we come on to. Another subject known that you've written a vast amount on over the years. US relations with, with Israel. There's a question from KZ. Who asks what, what are your thoughts on, on the current relations between. The US and Israel. As the situation in, in Palestine. Declines further and further. I think that was something. Very significant happened yesterday. The. Progressive caucus. The house was able to. Pass a resolution. Banning military aid. To Israel. Mainly for the. So-called iron dome. Funding is about a billion dollars, but a threat of aid. It won't go through Congress will overrule it. But the fact that this could happen. Is very significant. You go back five or 10 years. It was inconceivable. Aid to Israel wasn't even discussed. You know. Holy territory. Well, this is. The result of something that's been happening on the ground. For many years. You look at Congress and the White House. The support for Israel looks. Unchallengeable. With Trump that just became a caricature of itself. Give them everything they want. Kick the Palestinians or nothing. Biden's pretty much continue that. That's at the. Executive. Congress level. It's eroding at the popular level. And has been for years. For some years now. Israel used to be. The darling of the liberal left. Liberal Democrats were the base. Basic support for Israel. Totally shifted. Among liberal Democrats, there's. More support for Palestinians than for. Israel. Especially among the young, which means the future. That includes young Jews incidentally. Support for Israel has drifted to. Evangelicals. It's a huge part of the population. 25%. Evangelicals in the far right. Military and security industries are. Very much involved in Israel. Total very close relations. Go into it. And the ultra nationalist right. Strongly supports Israel. So it's way off on the right. And on. And it's still. Holding at the. Government level. And it's been eroding at the popular level. And beginning to show up. At the fringes at the government level. Like what happened yesterday. Bill introduced by. Betsy McCollum. Minnesota, I think. Democrat who. Call a resolution calling for. Ending military. It was unthinkable in the past. Well. Sooner or later that can have an effect. The popular opinion is. Not reflected in government policy. But it can't be totally ignored. In a more or less democratic society. So over time, I think there's. A good possibility that US policy could shift. This would be decisive. Back in the 1970s. Israel made a fateful decision. This is the labor government. They decided. To abandon. Diplomacy negotiations. Security. And. Focus on expansion. They chose expansion. Over security. In the 1970s, there were. Easy ways. To move forward. To a political settlement. Of a kind that. Reflects the. Overwhelming international consensus. So. In 1976. Security council. Debated a resolution. Calling for a. Two state settlement. Israel Palestine. On the internationally recognized border. The. So-called green line. With some quoting with. Guarantees for the right of each state. To exist in peace and security. Within secure and recognized borders. The Israeli labor government was infuriated. Refused to attend the session. Yes. Foreign minister declared. There will never be any negotiations with Palestinians. They'll never be a Palestinian state. The president. Later. Ambassador to the UN. Later president. He also. Declared that the. Resolution was initiated by the PLO. In order to destroy Israel. Which was of course total nonsense. The resolution was backed by. Syria. Egypt. Jordan. So-called confrontation states. Tacitly. Quietly supported by the PLO. Back by the whole world. U.S. vetoed it. I won't return the rest of the record but up until today. They've been many. Attempts at the United Nations to move towards some sort of settlement. Blocked by the United States. Barely gets reported. Sometimes it does sometimes it's so extreme. That there has to be a report. So in. 2011. Under Obama. Security council. Resolution calling for Israel. To abide by U.S. demands. Obama vetoed it. I mean that actually made the newspapers. You know. Sometimes it's that extreme. But I think we're coming to the end of that period. So that might change. Right now Israel looks. First of all I should say that the way this issue is debated. Is pretty much misleading in my opinion. There's a huge debate on the left on the right about. The choice between a one state and a two state solution. That's not the debate. The debate. There's no one state. Israel is never going to agree. To turn into a Palestinian state. With a Jewish minority. Out of the question. If there's no international support for essentially zero. If it ever developed Israel would use its ultimate weapons to prevent it. So those who are talking about one state mean an apartheid state. That's conceivable. Other than that, it's not an option. The choices are between. Two state agreement, the international consensus. And what's greater Israel. I think that Israel has been systematically developing. With US support. For 50 years. Take over everything in the West Bank. That's of any value. But leave out the population concentrations. Israel doesn't want Palestinians. So they don't take over noblas. Don't take over to. Just take over Jordan Valley. Anything of value. That's of any value. The rest of the West Bank. Sequestor the remaining Palestinians and. By now. 165. Enclave surrounded by. Checkpoints. Israeli forces separating them from their. Fields. They're all of Groves. Subject to constant attack by. Terrorists. Israeli terrorists from the. World. Level. So they don't make major. News, but practically every day there's some atrocity. Just make life unlivable. Maybe they'll leave. And take over what's of value. Integrated all into Israel with a huge infrastructure system. The younger Israelis don't even know there's a green line. It's all just Israel. Whether it's deep in the West Bank or Tel Aviv. That's the alternative. Developing before our eyes. See that. Or two states. And we should recognize. Thank you. Thank you. No. And actually just to say on a. Topical point that we have a piece. Going in declassified tomorrow from professor. On this. On this very subject. Well, actually mainly on UK policy towards Israel. And the. And the two state solution. So I urge people to look out for that. I just wanted to give you a little bit of a breather known for a minute or so while I just urge people to. Support declassified. And to help fund us as, as members because. And I know that, you know, people are inundated with, with calls to fund this, this cause and that cause. And the, you know, money is tight for most of us, but we've deliberately set the costs to all you people who are watching out there at a very, very low level to. To support and fund declassified. So if enough people do fund us at very low levels, then I think we can change things, you know, we can, we can inform many more people what's being done. In our name. If we can, you know, if the independent media sector can get bigger and bigger. I can't see a scenario in the UK where. A foreign policy will, will improve, will change, or where our governance will improve in the UK. And unless we change our whole media system, and I think we need, you know, we need to ask people to fund independent media more. The establishment already have their media. You know, the corporations and the state, they have their media, but, but we need ours. And we're looking to members of the public to, to help support us. That's my, that's my plea to everyone. Can I, can I now come on to another question? No, and this is, this is actually on a subject that we are declassified in, especially my, my colleague Matt Kenner, who's on the panel, has done a vast amount of work on, and that is the situation of Julian Assange. Yeah, so that Darren Furness asks, what are your thoughts on the current situation of Julian Assange being held in this maximum security prison in London at the behest of the US and, and, and does this highlight the British subservience to the US? Dramatically. I mean, the whole effort to punish Assange is grotesque in the first place. The US attempt to extradite him is outrageous. The Britain's participation in this has been scandalous. This goes way back. I mean, I, when Assange was still in the Ecuadorian embassy, I, I did manage to visit him on a trip to England. It was, I mean, the embassy, as you know, better than I do. It's a, it's basically an apartment of being stuck in an apartment without being able, even though look at the outside, you can't, it's worse than prison. In a high security prison, you're at least allowed out into the yard once in a while. It's, and finally, Britain just captured him, basically put him in a high security prison. No charges, nothing. The few fake charges that had been introduced were most were withdrawn. A high security prison amounts to torture. UN rapporteur for torture already described it as torture effort to destroy him. It's having an effect. People can't survive that kind of thing. Britain is doing it because they have to follow US orders. That's the ultimate in subservience. Even if we have to torture somebody, because you guys want to throw him into prison for life for having informed Americans of what they ought to know in the first place, you know, we're going to help torture him. I mean, it's not the worst crime in history. Britain is responsible for four more crimes, worse crimes than that, but it's a particularly ugly one. No, I have a question here from none other than Benjamin Zephaniah, the fantastic poet and all around very interesting person who is one of our advisors actually. And Benjamin has put a question to you, which I'd like to read out. So he says, you said that global warming could, could kill us all soon. But when you see young people taking to the streets and mobilizing, do you think that we internationally should, should be hopeful or, or are we doomed? Like qualification, it's not going to kill us all soon. We may reach tipping points soon. That's different. When you reach tipping point, you're on the way to destruction of organized human society, but it can take a long time. And on the way will, there'll be such crises that will probably kill each other off in other ways, like nuclear war between states that are fighting for resources. So it's not going to kill us off right away. Human society will drag on for maybe centuries. I mean, well, other, remember, we're also slaughtering other species at an incredible rate, a rate that hasn't happened for 65 million years. And it's actually much faster now. The same level, the same level. So yes, we can drag on as a curse to life on earth for centuries. Is it necessary? No, we have answers. There are feasible answers to, in fact, every one of the crises we face. And certainly to this one, the International Energy Association, very fine economists, my colleague, Robert Pollan, Jeffrey Sachs have done, they and their teams have done careful studies. It's a resolution in Congress introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Marking. They're all about the same. They give detailed, extensive proposals of how the IPC goals can be reached at an expenditure of, on the order of two to three percent, of course, domestic product. It's big. That's not a small number, but it doesn't even come close to the expenditures during the Second World War. And this is far more serious. It's about on the order of the treasury subsidies to Wall Street during the COVID epidemic. It's big, but not out of reach. And it would create a much better world, much better, a world in which people aren't suffering the effects of pollution, traffic jams, overcrowding, everything that goes along with increasing global warming. So we can create a better world at feasible cost by measures that are available, no fancy new technology. It's not going to be easy. There are powerful forces against it. Of course, the fossil fuel industry, the big banks, governments, which are enthralled to them. It's a large part of the capitalist industrial system altogether. Overthrowing that's not simple. But there are very positive signs which were brought up in the question, especially among young people, the mobilization, extinction, rebellion, sunrise movement in the United States, the global strike that's coming up in another week or so, almost all young people. Those are very promising. And they've had an effect, had a big effect. So take the United States, sunrise movement, group of young activists been working hard on this for years, reached the point of straight civil disobedience. They occupied congressional offices, including the office of Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker. Ordinarily, they would have just been thrown out by the Capitol Police, not this time. They received support from some of the young representatives who came in on the Sanders wave. Mainly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to join them and support them. She was able to get support from a senior Democrat in the Senate, Ed Markey, who's been Massachusetts, been working on environmental issues all his life. They stayed in the office. It pressed Biden, these and comparable activities, pressed Biden to push forward a moderately reasonable climate program, much better than anything that preceded it. Quite a decent climate program. Then came, this is before the election. Then comes the battle inside the Democrat. Republicans, of course, 100% opposed, nothing. They actually, it's important to understand that they have a strategy, a sensible strategy. If we can harm the country as much as possible, it will be blamed on the Democrats and we can come back into office. That's basically it. Mitch McConnell's policy under Obama extended today. It's open. They don't want to keep it secret. So they're going to block anything that might help the population or help the world. That's a given. And the question is, what happens among the Democrats? Well, they're split. There's the party management, which is in the hands of the Clinton, Obama, neoliberal Wall Street, donor oriented, you know, elite professionals, that kind of segment. And there's a young, mostly young progressive element, the ones that got Sanders virtually elected into a high position now. We should recognize that Sanders' policies are in the United States, they're called radical. Take a look at them. One of the associate editors in the Financial Times, Ronald Farah, kind of, as a joke, it's not a joke, pointed out that Sanders, if he was in Germany, could be running as a Christian Democrat. It's actually true. His two main policies are universal health care and free higher tuition. Just about everywhere. I mean England. England had the best health service in the world. They're busy turning it into the worst system in the world, namely the U.S. system. But Europe is still maintaining some form of universal health care most of the world. So these Sanders' policies are by no means radical, kind of moderately new deals, social Democrat, but they do include climate programs. And they do have support among the population, quite a lot among young people, very much. And this could make the difference. It's going to be a battle, a hard battle. It's not impossible. So as to, are we hopeful or doomed? Well, if we persist on our present course, we're doomed. But we don't have to. There are feasible answers. Large part of the younger population of the world, some others are pressing hard to implement them. The United States is far behind Europe in this regard. Maybe 10 or 15 years behind, but it can move forward. And so can the rest of the world. But it's going to be a battle. Thank you, No. Can I, can I come on then and ask you a question from Hadjid Abduani. And this, this relates to a lot of the core subjects that Declassified has been working on, particularly Phil Miller and myself, actually, over the last couple of years about UK, US policy in the Middle East. And Hadjid Abduani says, to what extent do you think that US, UK interests in the Middle East rely on and rest on supporting dictators and monarchs, especially in the, in the Gulf? And, and what can be done about that? Well, when, as you know, better than I do when you talk about a country's interests, it's ambiguous. Do you mean the population? Or do you mean the power sectors? Who are often totally opposed? There's a long interesting history about this. Let's keep to the Middle East for fossil fuel industry, for those interested in extending US strategic power and domination alliance with the most reactionary, brutal states in the world makes good sense. I'm kind of ringing calls to Newcastle. I think the work showed that Britain during its period of global rule overwhelmingly tended to face to support radical Islam in opposition to secular nationalism for very good reasons. Radical Islam, maybe they'll suppress women's rights, torture people, kill people, but they say they do what they're told. They don't interfere with our policies. Secular nationalism has the threat of moving in an independent direction. Well, when the US took over from Britain, kicking it in the pants several times along the way, like Iran, Suez, Sky Bowl, others, Britain quietly accepts, as the United States took over had the same policy, support radical Islam in opposition to secular nationalism. That reached its dramatic peak in 1967. Before 1967, US relations with Israel were friendly, but not outlandish. In fact, most of Israel's military aid was coming from France, not the United States. 1967 changed everything. In 1967, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were at war. Saudi Arabia is the center of radical Islam. Egypt was the center of secular nationalism. They were at war in the Yemen. Israel performed a huge service to the United States, smashed up secular nationalism, supported radical Islam. US relations with Israel totally changed, totally, it became unique in the world. A shot up also was cultural. So, for example, in 1967, for the first time, the Holocaust became an issue. Very striking. The late 1940s would have been possible to rescue Jews in concentration camps. Truman wouldn't accept that, the American public wouldn't accept that, force them to go to Palestine. We don't want them, okay? Ernst Bevin, you may recall, was quite bitter about that. Later years, simply Britain doesn't count. Same thing through following years. In 1967, everything changed. You have to have a Holocaust museum in every town, Holocaust studies in the curriculum, Holocaust is the big issue in the world, had nothing to do with the Holocaust, had to do with laying the background for support for Israeli crimes. It's ugly to say, but it's as simple as that. To some extent it happened, you know, there are different things in different parts of the world. Well, this increased. 1970, Jordan was crushing the Palestinians during Black September, looked as if Syria might intervene to support the Palestinians. U.S. couldn't do anything about it. It was all tied up in Southeast Asia at the time. Got Israel to do it. Israel mobilized, pressured Syria to keep away, let the massacre continue. U.S. military aid Israel quadrupled. So it continues. I won't go through the rest of the story. So for U.S., how are our interests? Support for Israel is significant, makes a difference. Saudi Arabia, obviously. They've got all the oil. UAE, the same. They're also in a strategic position for the region. Britain just tails along. You know, has no policies. If they can make some money sending arms to Saudi Arabia to kill Yemenis, fine, let's do that. That's Britain's role. But so I think the policies have been successful for power interests, military, strategic, global domination, and so on. For the population, they're harmful. Take 9-11, Saudi Arabia, you know. It's Osama bin Laden's main concerns as he revealed in his public statements were crushing of the Palestinians and U.S. forces in the holy land of Saudi Arabia with the holy sites. It wasn't secret, you know. It wasn't, they hate air freedom or any of that nonsense. It was, his reasons were very clear, very explicit. That's what they were. Is that good population of the United States? I mean, just like the invasion of Afghanistan. Great success. At the time, Radical Islam was pretty much sequestered in a corner of Afghanistan, the AFPAC border, thanks to U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's all over the world. Wonderful for the population. Well, the security of the population is not a factor in government policy. It's very easy to demonstrate that. I mean, sometimes it's astonishing when you look at it. I'll just give you my favorite example, but there's millions of them. One of the most remarkable events in my view in modern history was in roughly 1950. The United States had overwhelming security, unheard of security. There was one potential threat, potential. The future development of ICBMs with nuclear warheads hadn't been done, but sooner or later it would be done. Well, if you care about the population in the least, what do you do when there's one potential threat? You act to try to mitigate it. You see if you can construct a treaty with the Russians to ban the development of these weapons. The Russians almost certainly would have agreed they were way behind and much more vulnerable. Well, there's a study, a major study, of U.S. strategic policy by McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor for Kennedy and Johnson, former Harvard Dean, famous intellectual, had accessed all the internal documents. It's worth reading. Around the middle of the book there's a paragraph in which he says, he's kind of curious, he says he looked through all the documents. He could not even find one draft paper which was not submitted, which raised the possibility of trying to deal with the one major security threat of the United States. It didn't even occur to anyone. Then he goes on to the next topic. Scholarship is totally ignored, totally can't find a reference to it. It's a striking example, but a typical one. You run through the record, as you know very well, you run through the record, security of the population is a very marginal concern. What matters is power, profit, domination. That drives policy. Well, we can change that. That's not grieve and it's done. Thank you, I'm conscious of the time and the fact that we've already hit the time limit. I was wondering if I could sneakily fit in one last question but there has been quite a few questions about something close to our hearts which is the future of journalism and whether journalism is under threat and whether states are clamping down on journalism more. We've already touched on Julian Assange and what he's been subjected to. There's been some very worrying developments in the UK over the last couple of years in particular, moving in the direction of apparent clamping down on journalism. Keith Smart is asked, is responsible journalism under more threat now than in recent history, do you think? What's your view on that, about how good journalists should we say are being treated by the powers that be? Well, it makes sense to try to repress them. It makes good sense. For Britain, if Britain is going to continue in its role as a US vassal which is probably advanced by Brexit it means Britain's more vulnerable. It'll have to support the United. It'll have to fall under US control even more than before. If they're going to do that, they'll have to make sure there's no dissenting voices. There's no voices that represent the interests of the population. So it makes good sense to impose harsher restrictions. United States even more so. US is the world dominant power. It's in danger of losing that position because of internal problems, not external, internal problems. Social orders collapsing while the craziness, neoliberal policies have had a devastating effect on the population a lot of anger, resentment, fertile terrain for demagogues. Well, in that kind of climate you don't want to have honest dissenting voices. So there will be, and you don't want to have demonstrations, popular mobilization and so on. There's plenty of popular resistance both here and in the UK. It doesn't have to happen but you can be pretty confident that we measure to try to move in that direction and you can see them all over. Assange is a striking example of it but it also shows up in just, you know, local ordinances preventing demonstrations and things like that. In fact, in the United States a very striking thing is happening. The Republican Party which is not really a political party anymore it's in any ordinary sense they know that they can't win elections to frank about it. In fact, one of Trump's rare true statements maybe by accident was that if there's a free election Republicans can't win. They understand that. So therefore what they're doing is they haven't for some time intensified trying to ensure that there can't be fair elections. Under my inviting rights change practices so that the wrong people who are working people minorities won't be able to vote. It's taken an extreme form in Georgia and Texas other states are pursuing other Republican states are pursuing it trying to see if they can get a lock on power as a minority diminishing party. Well, that's not only terrible for the United States but even US power that's a disaster for the world. Britain has similar things are happening less significant because of the power structures. And on that note Norma I want to thank you very very much indeed for talking to us. I mean I for one could listen to you for hours and I'm sure most people watching this could also do that but I've conscious that we can't impose too much on your time. So I really want to thank you for joining us tonight and for endorsing us. It means the world to us. I'm sure everyone has been gripped by what you've said. I'm sure that everyone watching this has read your work and has admired you for a long time. I really want to thank you for your time to speak to us. And I want to thank everyone that came tonight as well. I'm sure that you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I would encourage you again to please think carefully about supporting us. We do need members of the public to support us as much as you can because it's not easy finding funds from the system that we have to do the kind of work that we're doing. We're working on progressive minded people in the UK and around the world actually to support our work. So we very much appreciate that. But I really want to thank you again Nirm. Wish you all the best and thanks for coming tonight and I'm sure on behalf of everyone thanks and see you soon.