JAMES LUCHTE—Merely pawns in the foreign policy machinations of the United States, we are expected only to nod and desperately struggle to mitigate the collateral damage of US foreign policy, such as the refugee crisis – a direct consequence of NATO aggression in the Middle East and North Africa.
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WM. HATHAWAY—The clash of cultures has created other problems. Two-thirds of the refugees are young men, some of them convinced God has ordained males to dominate females. In their view, women who aren’t submissive need to be punished. Since being male is the only power many of them have, they feel threatened by women in positions of power, and they sometimes react with hostility. Over a thousand women have been physically attacked — some murdered and raped and many aggressively grabbed on the breasts as a way of showing dominance.
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GARY LEUPP—Many prominent Germans oppose the sanctions. Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder (Merkel’s predecessor for seven years) opposes the sanctions (and indeed says he can understand the reasons for the Russian seizure of Crimea). The minister presidents of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia have both called for an end to the sanctions, which are particularly damaging to their economies. They are widely understood to have been adopted by the EU under U.S. pressure (aided by the UK—so long as it was a member—as Washington’s main agent within the EU) steering the union towards unwanted confrontation with Russia at U.S. behest.
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JEFF J. BROWN—In the first book of my China Trilogy, called 44 Days Backpacking in China- The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (https://ganxy.com/i/88276/), I wrote that even for China, the fate of Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine and so much more, is the axis upon which all world geopolitics turn. After hosting David Pear on the show today, my convictions are considerably reinforced. Not much has changed in the last 5,000 years, with the gates of this ancient city changing “owners” 44 times (a coincidence to my book’s title).
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GREGORY BARRETT—I want to tell you that there was some serious panicking and freaking out going on here in Europe the morning after election day 2016. Europeans don’t often run around shrieking their fears in public, a cool façade is the preferred mode here, but they did that day, and for many weeks afterward.
