Hey, what are we still arguing about? God? Do what we're doing
here? The point, yeah, ask not what your country can do for
you and what you can do for your count Either you were with us or
you were with the terrorists. Hendra has done and continues to do, invaluable
work to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza. We put him. It's the
Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Steve Awards sitting in for Peter Robinson. I'm
James lylex. Today we talked to Richard Goldberger about a rod and unrawed,
so let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast,
number six hundred and seventy seven. I'm James Lylyx in sunny warm Minnesota,
where it's been plus fifty degrees, which of course everybody believes portends at the
end of the world. Won't. Upon a time we just go outside and
say, oh, lean up against the wall and like people in lenin Grod
you know who got the temperature of twenty two degrees in January? Now we
are just you know, it's the end. It's the end, I tell
you. But this is just the beginning of the podcast with Rob Long as
usual, and Steve Hayward is sitting in for Peter Robinson. Gentlemen, welcome,
Hey Hi Steve. How are you doing. I'm good, I'm great.
Thanks you. So many things to so many things to start off the
week with. But of local interest to me is the fire bombing of the
Center for the American Experiment office, which is unusual here to have. What
is the Center for the American Experiment? Is that? Is that? I
mean? I mean it's shorthand Do I like it? Do I not like
it? You like that? You like it? And it's the Center of
the American Experiment? Okay, yeah, we like it there. They've been
around for an awful long time and they do good work, and I like
the guys who are involved. And it's a you know, you know,
connected to the power Line blog in ways that i've I mean, they are
sort of a official, non official. It's just it's just a good,
smart place. And they put out a magazine, uh, the only conservative
magazine to come out of Minnesota, which I should note has hosted some writings
by one of Ricochet's own Jenna s So so applaud for them, I see
for seeing talent and surfacing it. But yeah, Hinderrocker posted it powerline.
The other day. They fire bombed my office SEOM. They were incinerated along
the Office for Take Charge, which is an organization to quote, inspire and
educate black and other minority communities of their full rights and privileges as Americans end
quote. And the Upper Midwest Law Center, who quote pursue pro freedom,
pro freedom. You know what those buzzwords I mean, yeah, that's dog
whistles. I mean, don't you litigation safeguarding against government overreached, left wing
special interest agenda's constitutional violations, and public union corruption end quote. Those are
the organizations that were targeted. So we can expect perhaps that the arsonists will
be quickly found the atf ISIGN case and then spun out with probably zero bail.
They'll give a middle finger to the cameras and get on a bus for
California. I'm just saying, that's what That's what happened in New York.
Rob, you are in the in New York, Yeah, and this was
This is one of those stories where you think, once upon a time,
if you were on camera actually beaten the sawdust out of a couple of cops.
They're trying to do so you would find yourself if not experiencing Juliana time,
Giuliani time, you you, you'd be in the gray bar. You
you would be in the tomb yea, and things would not go well for
you. And if you were illegal, if you were not even here legally,
you might be removed to the place from which you came. But that's
that's It's impossible to ask, now, isn't it. Yeah, it's a
very very weird story because you keep thinking, you keep thinking that it was
by chat GPT, you know, like what you know, Siri or chat
GVT. Please come up with the most incendiary story you can so that ninety
five percent of all Americans will read it and think we have to do something
about crime in the streets, law and order, and the border. Like
it's like a fever dream. And it happened. It really happened. They
beat him a cop and they're getting away with it. They're going to California.
And there was a report today on CN in this morning, which I
think but by the time but anyone hears this, I think this, I
cannot imagine this clip will not go viral. I think was this morning maybe,
yes, a report on C and I said, listen, I've talked
a bunch of detectives, and here's how it works. These these are organized
gangs. A lot of the things that are happening in New York City right
now that seem like random crime are not. In fact, they are organized
crime. And that is actually but was true of the eighties two apparently.
So it's organized gangs come from Florida or somewhere else and they come to New
York City and they organized and they do they do the snatch and grabs,
they grab the phone, they take your they do all that stuff, and
then they get the money they go down to Florida to spend it. And
so someone says, so why don't they just when I come here, you
know, why don't we just stay in Florida into it? And the answer
was, well, because in Florida they'll be arrested and put in jail.
So if you ever have doubted pure free market economics, the natural human impulse
to to mitigate risk, an opportunity, to balance risk and opportunity, it
is right there. You go to. It is easy and cheap, basically
to get to New York City, where there is no law enforcement. You
Maraud do whatever you want. You grab, snatch and grab however you want
it. You get all your money, and then you quickly h tail it
down to a fun, warm place so you can spend it. Because in
New York City, you know that there the risk is low, and in
Florida the reward is high. What it's you know, this is an economics
class, and I just don't quite understand the sclerotic nature of American politics,
both local and federal, and the idea that ordinarily this there'd be torches in
the streets for this guy, you know, Alvin Bragg would be out,
he'd be you know, they'd become a home for his head in the City
Hall plaza. Well, we might not be far away from the porches in
the street figuratively speaking. You know, it seems like we have to go
through what Tom Wolfe called the great relearning. And not long ago I dusted
off the classic book from the seventies by James W. Wilson, thinking about
crime, and that book, you know, just update the figures in the
dates, and it reads exactly like a description of what's going on today,
including what needs to be done. And it did occurred to me. So
here we are it's twenty twenty four. If memory serves, it was forty
years ago. Sometime the summer of nineteen eighty four, we had the famous
episode of Bernard Gets. Remember the guy in the subway, he pulled out
the gun and shot four muggers. He was not charged in that particular case.
Things were starting to turn in. I think Koch was the mayor then
maybe he wasn't charged with manslaughter or anything like that. He was ultimately charged
and convicted for illegal possession of a handgun, which of course was illegal in
New York in those days. Probably still is, although there's some doubt about
that after the Bruin case. But in any case, you know, we
saw this case a few months ago of the guy on the subway, the
ex marine I forget his name, who put that menacing person in a chokehold,
who died, and he is being prosecuted for manslaughter. I can't imagine
that even in New York jury will convict him of that. But I think
we're not far away from citizens and frustrated police and they're going to say,
you were going to see some more Bernard Gets incidents. That's what I think
is going to happen. Yeah, I mean I expected that you're right or
or or or something like it. I mean, just to me, it's
but also it seems to me that two things were revealed to me recently.
One is that in the eighties in New York City, everybody had a sign
in front of their car say no radio in car, right, don't you
know? Because people break into the cars, see. And the theory at
the time was this was kind of random, distributed petty theft, and then
since revealed studies have revealed that it wasn't really it was an organized it's actually
organized crime. I think it might have been actually what we can now considered
to be organized crime, like the mom or something. And they were doing
it, and they were sort of collecting the radios, and they had come
up with an economic way to sort of dispose of those things and make some
money, and it was a low again, low risk, high reward kind
of business. And I think we've discovered that maybe early here in this one
story. Obviously, the story is it's not you dispositive proof, but it's
emblematic of a problem, and that there are people who have seen weakness and
they are going to take advantage of it because they are economic individuals. They
are already here illegally, so there's not much they can do. But by
actually, ironically, by being here illegally, they are protected in ways that
an America's citizen is not protected. Right. I mean, there's no you
know, nonprofit organization and trying to help somebody who just beat up a cop.
You first have to be here illegally to receive that benefit. And they
are acting exactly as you would expect the human economic animal to act. The
only people who are falling short are us in this city and I think in
the country in general, because we simply have lost the nerve or the words
or the vocabulary for emphatic disapproval and punishment. We just don't know how to
do it anymore society, mean, we do. Some peoplevote with their feet
and they leave, and I certainly understand that, but it just seems astonishing
me that this happens so quickly. Manage not just an economic man's not just
an economic aniam on these moral animal and so these people do share primary culpability
for what they're doing for the Yeah, no, you're right, I mean,
I just I just like, you know, I like to think of
you know, I like to be a cold you know, Adam smithist,
you know, we're just robots trying to maximize return. When you take it
all in aggregate, though, when you look at what the Democratic Party in
other states is doing, you have I think I think it's Illinois that is
doing what many states have done, cities have done, is saying we're no
longer going to enforce traffic laws because of disparate impact. You had a vote,
I believe or where was it was it also in Illinois where the one
hundred and fifty Democrats voted against against deporting illegals who are convicted of drunk driving.
Well, that was Congress James, not Illinois. That was the United
States House Representatives yesterday. Yes, that I misread the piece. Now it
passed, but one hundred fifty because they can because their constituents believe that any
of these things are prima facia examples of systemic racism. Frankly, that enforcing
the traffic laws is race that doing that, that's somehow the objections that you
would have to somebody staying around in the country after being convicted of being drunk,
that's based on your opinion, your attitude toward their ethnicity. All of
these things. It's it's insane. So they're apparently still afraid of a handful
of very loud activists as opposed to the people who live in the neighborhoods and
have their lives affected by the people who do these things. It was Boston
the other day where this man is unburdening himself at the COMPS because the local
community center. He was homeless. He said he worked forty hours a day,
could not afford an apartment. He was homeless. He depended on this
community center and had been taken it had been turned over to a to an
illegal immigrant. I'm sorry, Migrant Outreach center. And he is every right
to be incensed. He's a citizen. And this continual blurring erosion of the
distinction between is one of those things that I think we can probably get most
people in the same around the same table completely think. There was a panel
in d C yesterday, a community panel, the bunch of res DC residents,
and they're mad about the violent crime spike in DC. It's great,
you know, they're really upset. They're there and they're you know, and
you know most of them are black, right, because it's a d C's
very pronominally, black Town Sky stands up and it's like complaining to the d
C Attorney General. Bryan Schwalb says, you know, what are you gonna
do about this? This is really a problem. The crime in the streets
is a problem. You got to do something about this problem. What are
you going to do? It's your job, you're the attorney general. And
he says. And the response from this from the DC Attorney General, Brian
Schwalb was this. He says, listen, you know talked about these are
big problems, crimes, big problem. He says, we cannot prosecute and
arrest our way out of it. Now. I think there are just two
kinds of people in the world. Right. There's a kind of people who
believe that really that's how you actually take care of I'm you arrest to prosecute
your way out of it. And those people have been, you know,
more or less in charge for two thousand years, and there's a kind of
people who now think, you know what, actually you can't. I just
what was staggering to me was that I think that the common sense line gets
bigger and bigger and bigger. But those people seem whether they are or they
are not more and or they feel less and less empowered, and that I
find very strange an American politics. Ordinarily, when you're part of a big,
burgeoning populist group, you feel powerful. You get to do big things.
You get to pass civil rights legislation, you get to amend the Constitution
to the outlaw alcohol, these amazing stuff that you can do. And it
seems to me like there's ninety percent of Americans degree on basic stuff, but
they just in a world where're all networked, they just feel like, well,
I don't have any power. It's very strange. I'm not sure I
understand why. Rob. Can I pose a question to you? I want
to get this down to the I don't know the personal level. But you
gave up the sunny, gonzo bohemian climes of Venice Beach for the bohemian,
not so sunny climes of Greenwich Village many years ago. Now have you changed
in what ways? If you have, have you changed your personal habits of
living and walking around in maneuver ring in New York? Have you made adjustments
because of the increasing anarchy of the place. Well, I mean, you
know there's the anarchy, and there's anarchy, right I mean I live.
I lived in Venice, very close to the beach. A lived before that.
I lived in Santa Monica on the beach, and there was like they're
crazy almost people there all the time. That was the you know, my
friend Harry Sherry's referred to the Santa Monica still does it's the Home of the
homeless, because it really was. And it's like it's kind of a fun
little, you know, group theater because you could watch incredibly incredibly ardent progressives
just absolutely yet you know, dead set liberals and progressives in their multimillion dollar
mansions just torn up inside because the homeless people were, you know, just
kind of going to the bathroom, their bushes and they just and they just
they were mad about it, but they didn't know how to be mad about
it. And there was a lot of crime in Venice, and there's a
lot of a lot of drug crime Invet's when I was there. You know,
I'm an idiot, Okay, I walk around like oh do at night
in New York City. I don't really care. I sometimes put my air
AirPods or air buds in my ears, which you're not supposed to do.
Both of them. You keep wanting here so you can listen and listen to
music and walking around smoke a cigar, and you know, just kind of
I just don't pay attention. I routinely find myself standing for some reason on
the white line on the subway right there, So there's some lunatic to just
pushed me tracks for no reason. So you know, I'm not a very
good personal safety consultants. But I am starting to get remember how I used
to be when I was in New York, when I was younger, when
New York was different, or New York was the same as it is now,
which is, you know, you don't stand close to the tracks.
You you don't walk down that street, you don't plug your you don't plug
yourself into music when you need to be aware of what's going on, and
you know, you keep your eye on people. That in New York though.
The thing about it is in New York you have to stay aware of
everything, but you can't let them know that you're aware. So you can't
got to look at that guy, but you can't let him know you're looking
at him, because otherwise he's gonna say, you look at me? What
are you looking at? It? You don't want to do that. So
I'm I'm I'm relearning all that stuff, but I'm very bad at it.
So not to get more bid. If you you know it's this this still
don't don't don't replay this clip at my memorial podcast. Idiot like you even
knew, like three weeks ago. He's telling us he was, So there
you go, it's not acceptable. It isn't. We all got used to
the idea that the cities of America had turned a corner, that what had
once been on the decline. We had the decline of the of the fifties
when they decided, well, the answer to this is to bulldoze everything and
put up really solis Meusian office buildings I didn't work. And then we had
the decline in the eighties when you had crack and crime and the rest of
it. And we beat that. We beat that with a set of tools
that we still have. We may not have as many hands to implement them,
but we know how to do it. But they don't want to.
So consequently, this thing that was the great accomplishment really of the early twenty
first century was the restoration of American cities and turning them into safe places.
I remember going back to d C. I mean I lived there for years,
and then I go back in the teens when we were doing all those
books and Sea Span stuff and walking around and marveling how safe I felt.
I walked back to my hotel, I think from the tablet at like two
o'clock in the morning. I didn't care. And there's no I mean,
never would have done that in the early days because my head would have been
stove in five times a block. But now it's reverted back to that,
and I love too. The thing Rob was talking about, I think he
had it backwards when he said that we can't prosecute and arrest ourselves our way
out of this. I think, well, no, you arrest first and
then you prosecute. If you tried that, yeah, that's yeah, that's
that was the problem. And give you good for you. So you know
when when I tell when you tell people though that there's there's simply not enough
police presence, not enough arrests, and not enough people in prison, they
look at you as though you're absolutely mad, because the only people in prison,
they believe, it seems to be, are people who were arrested and
sentenced to thirty years for possession of an eighth of an ounce of pot.
That that's what they seem to think, oh, you know, in a
couple of bad, violent guys. But you know, but the rest the
idea that they're that that that strong societal disincentives rapidly applied judiciously to all actually
does have a concentrating effect on the criminal mind. Yeah, I mean,
yes, well yeah, I mean the way the way James Q. Wilson
put into his book was pretty simple. It was criminals are not stupid.
They respond to incentives like everyone else. And if you make the price of
crime very low, the demand for it's going to go away up. And
then the end, you know, there is I can keep wondering winner voters
going to wake up. There's you know, another recall effort against the Oakland
Alameda County prosecutor who said the same nonsense out here in California, where by
the way, uh you know, in and Out Burgers, which is Rob
Knows is you know, a cult classic closing their only location in Oakland,
which is still profitable. But there's been so much crime and you can see
videos of people get in carjacked in line at the drive through window, and
then Denny's yesterday's close announced they're closing their only restaurant in Oakland. So the
recall effort there, recall effort again in LA with what's it a gascone?
But nobody's paying much attention because it's up on the corner of the country.
But I think it's either King County or the City of Seattle. I forget
which jurisdiction. The last election, they actually elected a Republican district attorney with
considerable democratic sport by the way, from moderate Democrats like the former governor,
Christine Greguar, who I know a little bit, is very smart and what
as a woman, and what you said was is what Rob was saying.
An awful lot of crime these days is organized, it's hypertensity criminals. And
the first thing she did was, let's look for people who have been arrested
more than ten times in the last year and let go, and let's not
let them go next time they're arrested. And guess what, they haven't completely
turned the corner. You're getting resistance from the socialists on the Seattle City Council,
but the crime rate and Seattle has been down after years of just going
as crazy as every place else. So this is not hard, it's not
rocket science. It's just a matter of, again, to use Tom wolf'shrads,
we need to relearn a lot of basic proofs about it. Yeah.
Yeah, but it's also kind of like, you know, the the national
mood, national whatever you want to call it. It's sort of erratic,
and we are impulsive and we just kind of throw ourselves into something and then
we're kind of like done with it. Masks not so much. I still
see a lot of masks, but you know what I'm saying, like kind
of like, ah, you know, even when I talk to the people
like I'm doing this thing on book Jay Abaticharia and COVID, and people like,
oh, even though they agree with you're like, ah, I'm just
I'm all COVID it out. And I actually feel like there's a whole bunch
of people who I think, even marching in the streets even were like Black
Lives Matter even really upset about what was happening in twenty twenty year, what
was revealed to be happening in twenty twenty or what people thought was happening twenty
twenty, which, of course the just didn't prove it, but it was
kind of a national media that all cops are bad, and I think they
kind of want that to be gone. They're like, we're over that now.
Okay, we did that thing, remember when we were all mad,
never not mad anyone. We want you to come back in the streets,
and we want you to come back and police and and it just doesn't work
that way in the real way, the real world. When you have a
mania and you go crazy, it's actually hard to you know, unring the
bell as hard as they politicians say to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
You pass a lot of laws, and you you liked a lot of
morons, and they're all there, and they're all you know, they're all
The District Attorney of New York City is like a fool, and it's responsible
for these kind of crazy things happen in New York City almost directly. So
it's like a you know, when you're a kid, you have to learn
when your teenage boy to learn that actually some things you're gonna do you're not
gonna be able to undo. They seem like they're fun at the time,
and it's a fun impulse to jump out of the tree or push your friend
in the wall or whatever, or try to roll out of a rolling car
like you know, dukes of hazard. But actually that's not a smart move
and you're gonna regret it. And so this we have to learn that all
the time. I guess it's amazing that people applied the Chesterton's fenced idea to
the police. You know, of all the things, the purpose of the
police ought to be self evident. But but, but but no, here
in Minneapolis, you know, we've the epicenter of twenty twenty unpleasantness. I
just a headline popped up in my news feed. It's a video found of
new slider crimes. We have a new crime they've given a name called sliders.
You'll be pumping the gas and some burgers only just slide right into your
car and take your valuables and pop right out. And sometimes if you you
know, if you leave your car running or you're an idiot, they'll drive
off with it. And I thought, oh boy, that's where did this
happen? So I just call up the video. It's micro it's my gas
station around the corner from where I live. Wow, So now do I
have to do so? Now do I actually have to be that guy who's
always got my head in a swivel. I mean where we are now is
that they provide for us a video screen on the gas pump in case you
are bored with your phone and want to be and want to look at programming
on a gas pump. There's something a cup of gas. It's the gas
Station Network, and they provide nationwide feeds of all kinds of ads and programming
and the rest of it, which lasts for about as long as it takes
for you to fill up your tank. So now they've given us these,
but at the same time, society has not given us a sufficient order to
make sure that our you know, computer is going to be there in a
car when we turn our backs. It's and that's happening here. These are
all anomalous, but they're all incremental, and the end result of it is
the changing of zero minds in this city. There's absolutely nobody around here who
is going to vote differently from law and order because of this, because they
still in the back of their heads, will believe that A you don't want
to get people, just a system involved, as the you know they call
it, and b better than you spend your energy, addressing the systemic problems
that caused this behavior in the first place, as opposed to just saying now
he's a crook. I yeah, so you and I think we were talking
about this before. If the Democrats ever actually get their hand around law and
order again, they will, they will, you know everything, right,
all right? The law and order conservative Southern Democratic governor is an unstoppable American
forks. All you got to do is have one, as means you got
to get one like it. I'm not so easy. Yeah, the little
things, little things, little things. Hey, let's go to our guest.
We're going to talk to Rich Goldberg, Senior advisor at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies and he served as the director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass
Destruction for the White House National Security Council. Rich, thanks for joining us
today. Hey, great to be here about those Iranian weapons of mass destruction?
Where are they? I mean, how far along are they or if
they've already got them, where are they? Well, we know on the
stock file end of the metrics. They've been amassing highly enriched geranium for better
parts of three years now, since Joe Biden took office. They first escalated
the twenty percent high rich uranium in January twenty twenty one. Later that year,
moved to sixty percent high enriched uranium. That's about from a technical perspective,
ninety percent of the way to weapons grade uranium. And they've simply been
making more and more and more of both twenty percent, sixty percent and the
low enriched uranium still at multiple facilities for three years. They've accelerated at times,
they've decelerated at times, but they've never stopped producing more and more.
And so every three months the International Atomic Energy Agency comes out with metrics of
how much uranium have they produced at what levels, and you can analyze based
on the data based on how many centrifuges they have. They've continued to install
more of these advanced centrifuges that spin faster, can therefore produce more. If
they wanted to take all that stockpile to ninety percent weapons grade, they could
do it in a long weekend and have at least one bomb's worth. If
they wanted to make two, three, four, five, a dozen bombs,
you know, you're looking at up to six months, and they would
have a dozen or so. Now that's the uranium part. That's the material
part. You still have to build a weapon or potentially a crude device,
and that's a big distinction. If they just want to make something go boom
in the desert and claim to be a nuclear power, they could do that
rather quickly, and they might be able to do that in secret in certain
aspects. Claim there's a fire at a facility, inspectors can't come in for
a couple of weeks and suddenly they've done something while they've done some secret work
at an area we don't know about. So these are the contingencies that worry
us. And of course their long term vision of being able to put a
nuclear device on a missile continues as well. We've seen them advancing their space
launch vehicle program, which is a cover for intercontinental ballistic missiles, and so
they're they're continuing a pace that you know, it's sort of like building the
assembly line without getting the order to build the car, but being ready at
any moment. And so I think a lot of us fear that what we
see in the Middle East right now is a weapon of mass distraction, and
we're so forgetting about the pursuit of the weapon of mass destruction. Richard Steve
Hayward out in California. We're all waiting right now to find out what the
Biden administration's response is going to be to the death of the three American soldiers
from an Iranian sponsor group in Jordan. And they've already said though that they're
not going to attack inside Iran. And on the one hand, you could
say that's because they're afraid of actually having a wider war directly with Ran.
But my question is, does Ron essentially effectively already have deterrent capability for the
reasons you just laid out, they do not. This is not like the
Soviet Union that was a nuclear power when we were having a showdown for decades.
They are still nuclear threshold if that, and of course they are not
a superpower. We are, And so for us to show a lack of
backbone, to really fear escalation against the middle power like Iran is quite the
message to true superpowers and competitors on a global age, especially when you think
of what China's planning for Taiwan in the future. Now, what could we
do? We have a lot of options. We've had two hundred and fifty
attacks or more since January twenty twenty one against US forces in the region.
We look at the metrics since October seventeenth, but it didn't start after the
October seventh attacks. It goes back till three years ago, and not once,
not once, have we ever responded to any of those strikes by attacking
a Revolutionary Guard commander in the region. That doesn't have to be a strike
inside of Iran. It could be an Iran, Syria, or Yemen.
Doesn't sound like we're planning that, maybe we're going to hit some buildings.
What I fear is two things. Number One, no policy has changed,
and that especially with respect to sanctions relief being provided to Iran, there was
a waiver in effect right now where Iran is drawing on ten billion dollars or
more in cash we've opened up. That hasn't changed, never stopped, still
transacting, still accessing money. So if you're in Tehran, you're looking at
the game board here in the full picture, Washington's is still giving you money
as part of some sort of accommodation policy while they're saying, oh, we're
going to take some military action. Number Two, we have been signaling throughout
this process what we're thinking, what we're planning. There's breaking news that left
and right. Oh, we might have a B one bomber taking off here.
Oh, we might attack over here, literally telling the Ranians what we're
going to do so they can clear out and avoid any casualties. The intelligence
community now having some phony assessment that we now have an assessment that maybe Iran
doesn't control the proxies after all. As if we have now justification not the
hit back hard against the Revolutionary Guard core. We won't put the houthies in
Yemen on the actual foreign terrorist organization list. We put some sanctions on because
of political pressure, and then we put exemptions on the sanctions so that the
Houthies don't actually feel any pain while they continue throwing missiles into the Red Sea.
This is a policy that's completely distorted and is overridden by an ideological,
almost pathological commitment to pursuing a nuclear deal at all costs with Iran. That
is the reason why I don't think you're going to see a very big response,
and why the reason why attacks on US forces and our allies will continue.
Hey, Rich, it's Rob Long and New York. Thank you for
joining us. So I guess I'm trying to figure out what that strategy is.
And you keep saying, you said, you know, get a nuclear
deal with Iran. I mean, couldn't you get a nuclear deal better if
you had more leverage? I mean it seems to me like that. I
mean, it's a unique position that we're in with Iran. Is that or
am I missing something? Iran has some powerful friends of convenience, They're not
very close, right, I mean Putin was in a very losing war with
Ukraine for a while and then really had to go hat in hand to Iran.
They are sponsors of terrorism around the world, around the world, but
in that region there aren't that many. Certainly the ones that are a lied
of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia aren't collied with Iran. I mean, what's
holding us back from a coalition to you know, bomb them. I trying
to come up with a diplomatic term. But the for having them pay the
price? Well, what's the common thread rob across all of these foreign policy
decisions go back to Afghanistan. You know, the Taliban are marching on Kable,
our allies are about to fall, and the president go with the camp
David and won't take anybody's phone call. We cut off Ukraine for military assistance
for a year to avoid angering Vladimir Putin. We give a press conference saying
if he just has a limited incursion, we might be okay. We close
our embassy with we withdraw our military trainers, and later literally hand Kiev over
to Russia. And now the Iran policy. What's the thread? The thread
is a fear of escalation this, you know, it's like it's like FDR's
warning of there's nothing to fear but fear itself. Joe Biden fears fear itself
is my view, whether it's a ron or anywhere else. Yeah, I
mean, I just I'm just trying. Here's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to figure out a way that I can understand this so I don't
end up with the queasy and unpleasant feeling going into the weekend that the people
running American policy towards a emerging nuclear power run by religious fanatics, that those
people are dumb. And I'm terrified that the answer is that they might be.
And so I guess what my question is. I mean, I know
we want to go to another topic first before, but eventually my question is,
like, what what are we what kind of thinking are we locked into
that we could just unlock? And I guess what I mean is that my
example is that we see to be locked into the idea that you could only
strike at the actual bad actors, you can't strike at their supporters, that
you can only strike in measured, escalating terms, which means first you have
to have sanctions. First, you have to shut down the bank account for
it. Then you have to say a lot of mean things, and then
you have to say, well, listen, we're gonna be sitting in Vienna
at the table you come to negotiate. And then only then do you stay
by the way on you know, March eleventh, at three in the morning,
you better expect to sneak attack or a surprise bombing. Right, Like,
what what could we do in the next seventy two hours if you know
National Security Advisor Rich Goldberg is in charge, Well, we cut off all
the sanctions of waivers. We send a message to China saying we're cracking down
on all the all the oil imports you're receiving, cut them off within forty
eight hours. Otherwise you're going to see us start taking action. We're going
to work our way up to state on enterprises, any banks or companies involved.
So you start moving on the pressure on economics. We're going to say
to our allies, we're going to the UN, We're snapping back all the
UN sanctions to isolateor on. So now you have political pressure in isolation and
then you basically go ahead. You don't give warnings, you don't leak out
over thinking this thinking that you just look for the intel. You say we
have a standing order. You see an IRGCEE commander, take them out,
and you send a And then you send a message over to the regime saying
we have a target list of fifty people in sites. Some are outside Iran,
some are inside Iran. You tell us if you want to dance,
that's that's it. That's it. I mean, we're not locked into anything.
We're choosing to do this. It seems funny because it could. I
think you could do all of that and also say to Americans, who are
naturally wary of this kind of stuff, because you know, the endless war
people, et cetera, is like, and we have no intention of liberating
Iran or governing Iran or doing anything with Iran. That's up to the Iranians.
Our intention is merely to punish people and to stop. Let's let let
me pivot, just because I know we want to talk a little bit about
Israel and Gaza. The last time a brilliant counter Iranian nuclear plant, nuclear
program move that I can remember was stucksnet, which was a computer virus that
was sort of invented in a shadowy lab somewhere, but we know where it
was invented. It was probably a veited a Haifa, and it was somehow
put into their whatever they had. I don't pretend to understand all this stuff,
but I think they got. They smuggled asion through printers, printers perfect
right, because printers never work. And and we rely and I think we
still rely on irate on Israeli intelligence to guide us in our actions in the
region. And I just feel like the last six months, what we've discovered
is that Israeli intelligence isn't all that great. I mean, they knew a
lot what was going on, but they didn't know about October seventh, which
is sort of the whole point of having Israeli intelligence is to avoid in October
seventh, who are our friends in the region, who are who's helping us
aside from Israel, because we're talking about Israel a second, who do we
who do we trust aside from these Raelies to give us the information that we
need. Jordanian intelligence is very good. We have a close working relationship with
the Jordanians on the intelligence side. Saudi intelligence is fairly good. We have
a close relationship with the Saudis, especially in the counter terrorism missions. You
think about Al Kaida and ISIS and things like that, but Iran as well.
But nobody has what Israel has as far as assets on the ground,
nobody has it. We don't have it, the Kingdom doesn't have it.
Nobody has. It's obvious we rely on Israel heavily, and it's obvious that
it's Israel and Israel alone that carries out clandestine operations inside of Iran. And
the Iranians know that as well. Now they're obviously testing and trying to figure
out tactics to evade surveillance, evade you know, doing this or that.
So you know, the idea that we had this intelligence assessment after October seventh
from the US so that Biden could justify not doing anything to Iran, Well,
we haven't seen any smoking gun that Iran was behind October seventh. Well,
yeah, what are they going to do is sit in a meeting where
they think they're being listened to and say, hey, how's October seventh going.
Well, of course that didn't happen. That's not how they operate.
It's the same you're just seeing this leaked out of They don't control their proxies
as the new assessment, so we don't do anything to Iran. Of course
they control their proxies. But I mean, the answer to your question is
the Israelis are still operating. The Masada is still conducting operations. Stuck's net
was very high profile. We've seen other cyber attacks since then. We've seen
assassinations, we've seen buildings and facilities just blow up. But we've seen even
more dramatic events like drone strikes inside of Iran, launched inside of Iran,
likely by Israel. We've seen people kidnapped, IRGC generals, taken hostage inside
of Iran, interrogated, videotaped, and then released back into the wild,
likely by the MOSAD. So their capabilities are still pretty strong. The question
is how long can you keep up these types of operations against the clock.
That the Iranians are on as well. And in the end, you know,
there's a big facility that people should be watching by one of their existing
nuclear plants Natons deep underground. Supposedly, according to report, it's supposed to
be very hard and more hardened than their underground one at four to doh the
impenetrable to military strike. If that facility gets completed and it really is impenetrable
to military strike, it's sort of the game over moment. So we are
approaching this moment where whether it's clandestine, cyber, whatever you want to call
it, there's going to have to be a decision made on the nuclear program
soon, right, Yeah, Richard, Steve Hayward again, and I think
we should shift gears for a moment to the Israel causes specifically, and in
particular something you've done some sterling work on which is exposing the rot and that's
two kind of term for the UN refugee what is it gen run? Right?
Yeah, Look, and so two part question here. One is for
listeners who may not be keeping up, just give us a couple of bullet
points on some of the really shocking facts that have emerged here, such as
a quarter of the UN staff for hamas hamas people on the UN staff.
And then second, it's too broad to say what is to be done about
this. I'll put it this way. My default assumption about the UN is
that something like this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think UNISEF
and some a lot of the other agencies are also thoroughly corrupt when they're not
actually on the wrong side on at actively on the side of evil. I
mean, we've known for years now about child sex trafficking and involved the UN
officials in Africa, so forth. I mean, what's to be done here?
I mean I'm tempted to go full populist old style John Birt Society saying
it's time for the United States to say the UN is over. You guys
should leave. And because we're leaving, we got to be more than just
cut off the money. And you know, like we saw the UNSF,
after a period of years, we come back in and everybody else comes back
in. And I worried that epicycle is going to repeat itself. So I'll
stop there and please fill us in. Yeah, listen, your last part
of the sort of the broader UN systemic issues, and we see that with
China taking over UN agencies, advancing their interests, undermining America. The alphabet
soup of problematic organizations, the World Health Organization, human Rights Counsel, you
name, it is long and undistinguished, and to me, the right policy
move in general is to move away from these what are called assessed dues,
assess contributions, where the UN says you owe us this money, this is
how much you owe. You have to hand it over your you know,
mandatory dues, and we go to an all voluntary system where we say,
no, we're not giving you a billion dollars here. No, we're not
giving this organization any money that's out of the budget. These guys are doing
good work. You can still have our money, or we find, you
know, if you have a governance structure where you know, the money talks.
We're twenty five percent of the budget, so we get twenty five percent
influence and we get to choose who leads it, et cetera. We can
change policies, we'll fund you. Right, That's that's the correct way to
think about policy. We're afraid to do it because our diplomats in New York
would be shunned to cocktail parties, so everybody recommends it against it. Now,
this UNRA UN Relief and Works Agency just for context, guys, not
an international organization like we think of. Right, there's the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees, which is responsible for thirty million refugees around the world, tens
of millions more internally displaced persons as well. It's the premieer you and refugee
agency. The mandate is to get people out of refugee status as quickly as
possible, whether that's moving to a third country, going back to their home,
settling where they're at, whatever it is. And in the case of
UNRA, you have an all Palestinian staff thirty thousand people decades old. The
only organization that exists just for one particular group of refugees dates back to the
nineteen forty eight War of Independence of Israel, where the Arab armies didn't win
and they told people who had left their homes, don't worry, stay in
camps. We're coming back to destroy Israel soon and you're just gonna flood back
into Israel and drive the Jews into the sea. Well here we are seventy
five years later, those Arab armies have mostly made peace with Israel, but
this institution still exists to keep generation after generation raised to believe in this vision
of manifest destiny. We're going back in the modern day Israel. We're gonna
kill all the Jews, wipe them into the sea, and that's that.
So in Gaza, two point one million people living there, one point seven
million being considered refugees by this one UN organization, UNRA, thirteen thousand employees,
all Palestinian. And what do we know now? What was pretty obvious
because the UN doesn't recognize Hamas or Hezbolah or Islamic Jihad or you name the
terrorist organization as a terrorist organization takes a Security Council resolution for that, and
so that might not matter in parts of Africa or Asia or Europe, but
it matters if you're operating where Hamas and Islamic g Hat are. So of
course they employ Hamas and Islamiji. Had they give aid to Hamas and Islamijiha?
Did they collaborate with them when they're the host government in Gaza? And
what have we learned? Twelve people apparently took part in the massacre of October
seventh who worked for UNRA. We know of ten percent or twelve hundred or
so thirteen hundred employees who are actually members of Hamas, fighters for Hamas,
and then half of all the employees reportedly have a family member who's in Hamas
or Islami Gihad, another terrorist group. And we've poured so much money into
this agency. Donald Trump, by the way, Trump administration cut them off
in twenty eighteen because he was so fed up with them and they wouldn't change
their ways. Joe Biden came in and this whole sort of pro Palestinian alignment
that says, no, the refugee issue is core, or the refugee issue
is the future. We have to support UNRA because this is the vision of
the right of return to drive the Jews into the sea. It's a core,
you know, Rizona d'atrey of the Palestinian authority, let alone Hamas.
Yeah, so they refund un rauh a billion dollars since twenty twenty one.
Think about how much money is just gone straight to Hamas. Yeah, I
mean for all this those a hang gliding so uh Rich, I know,
I don't want to keep chill long, but I do want to ask you
the larger fifty thousand foot question, because it does seem to me that I
understand that it's deep. You know that it is sort of a tinfoil hat.
Was a tinfoil height issue for a long time, as long as it's
a sturdy tinfoil hat. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm taking the
tinfoil hat offer. I'm putting it on or something. Why don't we just
leave the un Why don't we just give them, you know, five years
to move to Dubai or somewhere building stuff, or you know, maybe make
it real, move to where the headquarters is and somewhere outside of Peijing.
They got a lot of those empty cities, you know, settle out the
building which I think we built and they own, and you know, give
everybody, you know, three four years to vacate, make a lot more
room for luxury housing here in New York City. What do we get from
them that we that we would miss? I guess that's what I mean.
If we just break up with this very very it's very, very bad,
one sided, abusive, toxic relationship, what are we going to lose?
There's a strong argument, there's a strong case there is, and I think
we grapple with this. Those that are very much in tune with all the
corruption. Anti American interests of the United Nations are in tune with this.
And I would say there's a couple of things. Number One, there are
there are likely agencies the World Food Program that we would probably need to invent
if we were still interested in helping people in crisis in different parts of the
world quickly and having infrastruate rture to deliver certain assistance in certain contexts that were
in our interest, and we have to reinvent the wheel in those cases.
And so that's one argument of why you wouldn't just say everything is cut off.
The other is these do in Security Council. We have a permanent veto.
We have a seat on the Security Council, and at the very least
we can enforce a policy if do no harm in the international community in the
body of international law, for whatever that's worth to people, legitimacy, etc.
We can use it as a bully pulpit if you actually wanted to conduct
political warfare against your adversaries. We can also stop bad things from the Chinese
and the Russians and others trying to push things to condemn Israel, to do
other things the way you see us use our veto regularly. It's not a
place where we're going to advance good. It's just you know, in some
of these smaller organizations. Maybe not certainly in the General Assembly or in the
Security Council for the most part, but it is a part where maybe we
can use our veto to stop bad. That to me is like the the
most interesting reason why I think of staying. But again I go back,
don't just hand over money. I wouldn't hand over any dues anymore. I'd
say we're going to fund what we think is good. Yeah, it seems
like we could do that all a cart. It seems like a Brexit,
a u N Brexit is not a bad idea, at least on wheel here.
Yeah, I wrote a great piece. I think I was a griefous
for a new republic. This is now thirty forty years ago maybe, And
it was old school. That's the old school O I am this O G
And the head the headline was let it sink. And it was like people's
heads exploded. This is crazy. You couldn't even why you you could even
say that it's very old new rohole thing to do is to take this extreme
view and kind of like you know, you know, like a late night
dorm argument. You make heads explode. Now, Rob Donald Trump should say,
my idea is to put the Trump logo on the top of the UN
building after we kicked them out? Can I what can I make one more
suggestion here? This is really important. The disconnect between countries foreign policy and
their capitals and their foreign policies in New York at the UN is breathtaking.
In many cases, we have countries that we give money to on a bilateral
basis in foreign aid. We have countries that are supposedly allies of ours and
they screw us at the UN every day. Why do we allow that to
happen. We don't have to step away from it. We don't have to
do the Oli card. All we have to do is to remove diplomatic immunity
from parking tickets and they will find themselves all of a sudden, last wing
episode about that. There is one last question before one last question before we
let you go, and that is, you know, some people say that
ever since the Iranian Revolution that we have been that they've been at war with
us, and that you know, they're just waving their hands. Come on,
here we are, let's do a war and then we just have you
know, decided not to engage. But do you think war with Iran in
the end is inevitable? Do I think a war with Iran is inevitable.
I think that a military confrontation that puts them back on their heels and likely
destroys and removes their nuclear program is an inevitability at this point, I think
that we do not have to consider and should not consider, any sort of
invasion or large scale war the way people would think or demagogue about. But
I am very fearful that, based on what I have seen over the last
three years, where their nuclear program sits today, we should not allow ourselves
to hand over the region and be afraid of Iran because of the fear of
them going nuclear. I do think we're at a point where we need to
consider military options on the nuclear program, combine with continued economic pressure and isolation
due to their sponsorship of terrorism. Agreed, and we thank you for that,
and we hope that we never come back to talk to you about the
aftermath of the brutal exchange, but rather define your expertise in some other matters
as well. Rich Golberi. Thanks joining us today in the podcast anytime.
Thanks Rich. Yeah, I mean yeah, I think it is. Of
course, nobody is in the mood for nation building. For Iran. It's
a different situation than I rack, completely different situate. It's not an invented
country like Iraq was. But no, no, we're not going back there
to do that. Pity though there was a time when we had them surrounded,
what with Afghanistan and in Iraq and the rest of it. Now Joe
Biden is making noises about leaving a rock in the same style. Perhaps not
perhaps is fleet footage as we did in Afghanistan, but to remove what we
have there, Well, gentlemen, before we go, let's go to the
actual events that are gripping the minds of the nation, at least those people
on Twitter. There are actually people who believe that the Taylor Swift is part
of a psy op to get people to We have a post on this in
Ricochet where one of our members correctly says that you people are dumb as turnips.
If you believe this, you actually are as stupid as turnips. It's
surprised, I mean when I see somebody talk about it, I see Uh,
perhaps they're just floating this for a larf, but some of them are
actually you know, clicks and grafts. See what are you gonna do?
But it is a ridiculous theory, isn't it. Well wait a minute,
I mean it's really theory for a couple of reasons. One, it's because,
like you, how do we get people? You have to come up
with it vot for Joe Biden. You have to come up with a conspiracy
theory for why you know, an attractive, internationally famous pop star is into
uh, the quarterback of one of the great football teams, Like like you
know, that's actually how it's supposed to be. That's I know, it's
like a movie that's like a it's a Hallmark movie. You can't possibly come
up with a theory that's that that would explain that a way because it's so
obvious, right, But it does show I think there is this issue.
I think maybe in the American politics and left too, but definitely on the
right of this. Like I I I we are, we are, we
are, we are more popular. We everyone agrees with us, so when
we lose, there must be a trick. And I just feel like that's
a very strange position for people to be in politically on the left, on
the right, right like the left. From my whole basically education, the
idea was like, every time the Republican wins, every time they people vote
for Ronald Reagan, it's because they've been manipulated by the media or by big
business or something. And now the right has decided to take that up too,
Whereas the answer is really simple, which is they just have to persuade
people instead of like assuming that you're a ninety five percent. It's what baffled
me about the Trump loss in twenty twenty. The people found absolutely unfathourable had
to have been you know, Hugo Shabaz Like, No, he was an
unpopular president and he never bothered to enlarge his population. If, if,
and when Joe Biden loses in November, are people going to say, I
wonder what trick they played on me? No, the guys we don't like
him, and the people who do come up with a trick, we rightly
think are lunatics and small minded weirdos. I keep thinking that what is he
eighty years old? Now? Joe name of somewhere is kicking himself saying why
didn't I think of dating Carol King or Joni Mitchell back in nineteen sixty nine.
That would have choosed the ratings in my salary, right. And you
know the other one is Rob says he's old school, and you know my
joke on this is, look, I'm still mastering the discography of Britney Spears
and now I'm going to catch up with what's your name is the Swift Boats
or whatever. And I've been leaning into it too, saying that the conspiracy
theory that they're going to announce an endorsement of Joe Biden from the middle of
the Super Bowl after Kansas City wins, that's not it. That's a misdirection.
They're going to announce that the Kelsey Swift ticket will replace Biden Harris for
the Democrats in the fall. So I mean, there's nothing too preposterous you
can say about this. But I do wonder, though, Rob, about
the architecture of all this. Part of what happens these days is, you
know, someone gets on social media and then the two sides pounce. You
know, the left says, look, how stupid these people are. I
believe all this, and you sort of wonder did the start on the left
as a way to punk and that's what. Yeah, this this if we're
gonna get into conspiracies, this does feel like a false flag, right,
this is the way to This is the op. The op isn't Taylor Swift
and Travis Kelsey. The op is anti Taylor. This is this is what
you is. This is deep steep stuff that the commies were doing in the
gens and twenties, you know, like this is like why Hitler had this
and when he was making speeches on the street he would have people walking through
the crowd saying, you know, he makes a lot of sense, right,
he makes a lot of sense. This is what this is. This
is false flag stuff. So or maybe it's just that every damn thing isn't
about politics. That could be, that could be possible. I thought the
first instance of this that I observed playing out was almost twenty years ago now,
and Robbie might remember. It was the documentary called March of the Penguins,
always cute penguins, narrated by Morgan Freeman. It was a big hit
in right, but I remember that was the beginning of social media and the
internet. We didn't I don't think we had Twitter, yet, but a
big culture war broke out online about it because somebody said, well, penguins
have family values, and no, they're homosexual penguins. I forget what it
was, but it was. It was completely stupid in all the usual ways,
and I thought, Ah, this is the new world. It's just
going to go from here and get worse. And you know, you were
right, it did. Twitter magnifies these things, and the people in the
media are inordinately on Twitter, and so they conflate what they see in their
glowing little rectangle in their hand with the truth. But my favorite regarding the
NFL was the idea that the NFL logo itself, the colors of it,
indicate who has been chosen in advance. Supposedly they went back and looked at
the colors. They compared the colors to the uniforms and the way to uniforms
and said, ah, you know what it's coded in here? And what
I love about that and all of the other psy ops and all of the
fascination the I saw somebody the other day who camera what it was. But
one of the first allegations that somebody on Twitter made against him was right.
Anybody who is to a degree away from you. In politics, you heap
upon them everything that you hate about the world in general on them, and
you call them all the bad names. Fine, so all of these peters
that huge pedophiliac, and I have no doubt, by the way, that
there are people in Hollywood who subscribe to that. I have no doubt that
there are people in industry and religion and the rest of it who have pedophilic
and ebopeliac leanings. It's a horrible part of human nature and it's endemic.
But I don't believe that the country is led by a Satanic cabal of which
Taylor Swift is a part, because if you look at her videos and break
them down, you can see all these references. And I don't believe that
Oprah Winfrey is the high Priestess of Milkezedic or whatever they're calling or her,
because purple is the color of this particular sect of demonism, and the color
of purple is removing the rest of it. Just as I don't believe in
the NFL logo being color coded in order to tell you who the winners are,
because if a bunch of randos on the Internet are able to look at
these things and find all of these. That would mean one of two things.
One that the people who control us, who've who roll out every day
a brand new psyop the term that we always have to use here, that
they are so contemptuous of us that they spatter giveaway signals in every single image.
Right. They're always telling us upfront what they're conspiracy is about. Right,
And either that's the case or this is all random noise and nonsense,
and it has absolutely no reflection to a world that consists of about six and
a half seven billion moving individual parts, which is lubricated by money and stupidity.
And that what these people believe is this grand enforced strategy to put us
all into our mental cages is actually no just what you get in society.
So I mean I and the only people, of course who have figured it
out are the people on the internet who have seen the science and who can
look at a picture of a video from Will Smith from nineteen ninety two and
they look in the back run and decode what happens to be said in the
show. It's part of the pizza gate, you know, brain harvesting chemical
formula. Yeah, I mean, but there's a weird thing about it.
I mean, I know, we got a run, but it's weird.
They want I noticed this when this is before I noticed it on the right,
but when on the left. Right, I's in school, and all
these conspiracy theories, and there was the kind of like there wasn't so much
of the outrage, like we got to do something about it. They kind
of like it. They like the idea that the world's controlled by malevolent grown
ups. It's good of comforting, you know. It's like, at least
we know it's under control, right, I just tell me what, Just
give me my orders and everybody. And then there are people who want to
fight back against the orders. But there's still something kind of weirdly, deeply
psychologically comforting about the evil conspiracy of corporations and whatever controlling everything. And yet
when you really find out that there's nobody in the room where there's another room
or whatever, it's a little disconcerting. Right. It absolves you of agency.
That's it. You know the truth, and you spread the truth,
whether it be flat earth or the Tartarian civilization that preceded ours. By the
way, I'm going to go full Tartarian because all these people who believe in
this other stuff. They're just pikers. Tartarian is that's the way. That's
the way, all of the pedophilia stuff, all of the Taylor Swift,
all of that. That's the SiGe up to keep you from really believing in
the Tartarian empire that preceded us. But that's another post. Stephen's great to
have you. Hope to see you soon. Rob in my regards to New
York, step away from the from the line, would you please, because
I will step away. Yeah, yeah, thank you, And I'll stay
away from the I'll stay away from the gas station where guys are getting jacked
and the rest of it. And with all luck in the world, we'll
be back here soon, at least in a week. So oh should remind
you. I'm not even gonna tell you to go to Apple Tunes and I
podcast and give us five stars, because I know you're going to do that,
I trust you. But I try new podcasts. Uh. You know
software that Apple has been running. It is pretty good and those algos will
kick up some stole other stuff that you like too if you like us,
so go do it. Oh, I said, I wasn't going to tell
you, well, go do the w Also, you can join Ricochet for
a mere pittance, a mere farthing or two, and that helps contain and
sustain us. And by the way, the Ricochet Audio network is what brought
you this. And if you like that, if you like us, there's
like so many others, including my new podcast, well my very old podcast,
The Diner, which is up every week. That's about it except to
say that we'll see everybody, not a Ricochet five point zero, which is
right around the corner. It's going to be fantastic, but we'll see you
all in the comments at Ricochet four point oho next week. Next week,
fellas Ricochet join the conversation