Rob’s comments are in italics.Derek’s comments are in normal font.
Right, okay, so we've had another week of Trump's presidency. Lots of squeals of outrage from all directions. The Senate confirmation hearings are going ahead now. Predictably enough, Robert Kennedy's been given a hard time by several of the senators...
Several of the senators who are notably being paid by Big Pharma.
Most reports in the mainstream media seem to imply he's not handled these attacks terribly well. According to who you listen to online, that's the story some people are selling.
Other people are saying he's done a pretty good job of holding his own despite the viciousness of the attacks. Some video clips I've seen - it's difficult to know how representative this is without watching the entirety - he seems to have given a pretty robust response.
I don't know whether J Bhattacharya's hearings for the NIH have happened yet, but I expect there'll be a similar onslaught. There's been Tulsi Gabbard, who's nominated for National Security Head.
I think that's forthcoming.
There have been some pretty forthright attacks on her. We just have to see how the votes go, whether any of these get overturned. The mere fact that these things have been raised and aired in the open is significant.
Some people will remain stuck in their entrenched existing positions on both sides. I can't help feeling there's going to be a gradual movement of people more and more going, "well, hang on, what is going on with all this?"
If you rock the boat too hard and often it will create some ripples.
We've still got ghastly situations in Ukraine and Gaza. There's supposedly a ceasefire. As of this morning, 80 Palestinians have still been slaughtered by Israelis in the days since the ceasefire happened.
Netanyahu seems to be getting more flak within Israel. I'm amazed that the Ukraine conflict seems to get no airing at all in the British news. I would have thought this was one of the most critical things going on in the world.
I listened to radio for lunchtime news, which goes on for three quarters of an hour. Every day I've listened to it, there's been no mention of developments in Ukraine. Some people try to put a positive gloss on the fight back that Ukraine is performing.
Listening to the people who appear most level, most impartial, most well-informed, it seems the Russian advances are getting more consistent. There are obviously some small skirmishes which go in Ukraine's favour, but they're just occasional tactical reversals.
The overall trend is that Russia is taking more territory. That was one of the things I was surprised about. I don't know whether you saw that thing on Trump's first day in office where he was sitting at his desk signing presidential decrees at great speed.
With an overly large fountain pen…
He was bantering away to reporters, somebody asked him about Ukraine. He said, "Well, I'm going to make a deal with Putin. I don't know whether Putin wants to make a deal or not, but it would be a good idea if he did."
He claimed Russia's economy is in ruins, inflation is out of hand, they've lost a million Russian soldiers, Ukraine far less than that. I thought, could he really be that uninformed?
Yeah, that doesn't hold much water, does it?
The best estimates from people like Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor are that Ukrainian casualties outnumber the Russians by somewhere between six, seven or eight to one. That seems much more plausible.
Either Trump has been grossly misinformed and is perfectly happy to take that at face value, or he's not really as uninformed and stupid as that. He made those remarks as a kind of grandstanding towards his American audience.
I think the latter. I think he's a showman.
If America really has put a halt to arms and ammunition shipments to Ukraine, that will very much hasten the collapse of their side in the conflict, which will make attempting to do a deal almost a moot point.
I think when you observe the movements of war machinery, the question is does one will fizzle out or collapse somewhere and another one pop up somewhere else? That seems to be the pattern.
Related to that fact is something we've touched on before - while this conflict has been going on, Russia has been steadily expanding its trade with China, India, and other countries in the global south.
There was an interesting YouTube video I saw, a talk at some conference given by a woman called Taylor Kenny. She was very articulate. The talk she was giving was about the loss of the primacy of the dollar in the international financial area.
She started by saying this was a very difficult topic to breach in conversation with most Americans. If somebody suggested this to her, she'd have said, "possibly, but not in my lifetime." That's what she said three years ago.
She's now saying this is looking more likely and imminent. She identified four factors contributing to bringing this about. One is the unsustainable levels of debt in America - the government, population, industry and banking.
Another is the weaponization of the dollar, which became abruptly obvious to many people at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. When Russia simply confiscated all Russian funds, not only government funds but private funds of substantial Russian individuals.
This sent a shockwave through many other countries and wealthy individuals who thought "if that could happen to them perhaps my dollar holdings aren't safe" and started thinking in other directions. Putin referred to this in the Tucker Carlson interview.
There was a YouTube clip being streamed live. It wasn't live because it was from last year when Tucker Carlson went to Moscow and did that interview. The recording was being streamed continuously, apparently part of that interview which hadn't previously been aired.
One of the things Putin said was that the move to confiscate the Russian funds was an own goal. It was the Americans shooting themselves in the foot, for exactly the reason I mentioned. He also said being taken out of the SWIFT currency settlement system strengthened them.
What's the SWIFT currency settlement system?
That's the Interbanks International Settlement System.
The third thing Taylor Kennedy referred to was the geopolitical alliances, which is part of that same thing. It's the BRICS groupings, with more countries becoming affiliated, either as full members or associates.
Effectively the arrangement they're making is in a way a full circle prior to the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of Second World War. The dollar became the global de facto standard where people would make arrangements with traders in other countries to settle trade in their own currencies.
That's what we're seeing. My guess is that over time there will be a move towards that and all those currencies will be calibrated in gold. This was basically how it operated right up to the Second World War.
The final factor she pointed to was technological enhancements. The increase in computing power, global communications and increasing sophistication in cryptographic techniques made this possible.
When the SWIFT system was set up, it was an enormous technical undertaking to deal with all necessary details and have it be secure. It's been the continuous standard because it has worked and because the costs and difficulties of setting up an alternative would be too extreme.
Now there's both the motivation to do it and also more technical availability of the necessary abilities.
I've been re-reading a couple of books lately. One is called Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson, published in 1971. I bought it around then. It made quite an impression on me at the time.
One of the things he said was that the two most significant events in his lifetime were the Treaty of Versailles and the development of cybernetics. The Treaty of Versailles was in 1920 after the end of the First World War.
Funnily enough, I've just gone and bought the book that John Maynard Keynes wrote at the time with his impressions of the Treaty at Versailles, which is fascinating. What's your reaction to that, Rob? What do you think of those two as significant events?
He was saying that in 1966, at the age of 62. He'd have been about 16 at the time of Versailles. Cybernetics really dates from 1947 when there were series of conferences and then Norbert Weiner published the book of the same name.
Sounds plausible to me. I know a bit about both, but maybe not enough to feel confident in that assessment. But it certainly feels to me like the Treaty of Versailles was a massive overreach and complete lack of compassion.
The science of cybernetics is the foundation of everything to do with computers, automation, electronic communication and a great deal of science. It's also the foundation of neuroscience.
Once you realise that, the developments of the last 70 years are very much built on those foundations. The difference in the world over that last 70 years is undeniable.
The interesting thing about Versailles is that the war could have dragged on much longer. It wasn't going well from the Germans' point of view after the Americans came in. Woodrow Wilson proposed throughout 1918 at various intervals a generous settlement to achieve a just and lasting peace if the Germans surrendered.
That was the basis on which the armistice was reached in November 1918. They stopped fighting based on a 14-point plan which Wilson had laid out, which was generous and just.
At the conference, Clemenceau, the French negotiator, really wanted to destroy Germany. Over the five months of negotiations, Wilson was completely outflanked by the British and French and ended up with a very brutal settlement.
That resulted in the impoverishment of Germany throughout the 1920s. It resulted in the hyperinflation of the mark and the rise to power of Hitler. The Italians were also misled over what they'd been promised as a reward for joining the winning side.
The Arabs were also misled because they'd been promised that if they fought on our side, they would be rewarded by being decolonised, which didn't happen.
There's echoes of that when talking about Gaza.
The callousness and complete dishonesty of international agreements and negotiations was set as a standard there. That has now echoed down the years for a hundred years.
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