Transcripts For RT On Contact 20240712

Of the outbreak of covert 19 which has included an absence of federal planning severe shortages of basic medical items such as test kits masks gallons and ventilators and a white house that peddles quack remedies and patent false odes has exposed the deep rot within the American Society the United States now has the most confirmed cases of covert 19 in the world 15 times the number of cases reported in china the 2 ruling parties rushed to pass 3 relief bills but some 85 percent of the Financial Relief is for corporations this while some 40000000. 00 americans have lost their jobs bringing the Unemployment Rate to about 20 percent of the workforce this while health care and that is inadequate and states face breadlines of up to 10000. 00 people. Over more than 2 centuries the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world love and hatred fear and hope envy and contempt all and anger the columnist Fintan Otoole wrote in the irish times but there is one a motion that has never been directed towards the us in till now pity. Joining me from toronto is John Ralston Saul the president emeritus of Pan International and the author of several books that are profoundly shaped my own thinking including voltaires bastards and the collapse of globalism john lets begin by discussing term you use in your books to describe them technocratic elite you call them systems managers and ive been struck as the pandemic has unfolded in the United States how these system manners do just what you have predicted they do which is serve the system even when thats counterproductive not only to the common good even when its not of course rational but even when it when its self destructive. Merely intrastate thing is that youre if youre trying a government in the essence of a Civil Service is on the one hand theyre professionals and on the other hand they have to they have to search through a president yes but that has to be limited by their in dependence from politics and their own ethical standards so that if you actually look at the history of Civil Services theyre all about this balance between professionalism service and ethics and what we really see thats what i was writing about new able to sponsors and since then is the gradual squeezing out of the ethical element that turns towards the idea that search is 80 morality you just do what youre told you know which is completely different immorality is not independence it is not loyalty it is not sort of abraham and he is evil. So that you know it you can make comparisons with social services that were very clear and grow my actions you know in the in the ninetys same analyst century pretending 20 century middle of the 20th century where they basically said no or they resigned on mass or they were very clear they could speak up it was going to shape it wasnt that they were sort of a secretive force behind the scenes you can actually know what the scientists very clearly with the tea and the engineers were thinking and you know you can see this with things like the you know the installation of of clean water throughout the western democracies i can tell you that large the entire business i asked was a guess. And large parts of the political classroom because it was going to cost them money they won it you know bait they thought these were just fine with the dirty water you know it produced massive diseases and so on but the Civil Services stood for those principles and spoke up very so all the time so i mean im judging countries in this middle of this crisis largely on the basis of you know not just your politicians but the extent to which the Civil Services are really to speak up as ethical and well in our Civil Service and technocratic class and weve seen this with a pandemic. Has served the interests of this cup all this corporate global cobol at the expense of the citizenry and as you point out in several of your books we have trained this technocratic class so that thats all they know how to do they only know how to reinflate the system of corporate capitalism even in the in the moment of. You know severe social stress exacerbating the problems that that stress in this case the pandemic has caused well i mean whats fast it is a credit youve got this gigantic Civil Service rights and you know its not at your head to be as populists of the world but youve got a very big population and very big Civil Service and of course like canada and germany federal and state are provincial. You know so there are a whole thousands of pieces to the tragedy that certainly in the last half century after say 50 years progress the last half century has seen the penetration i think of pretty well all Civil Service in the world but the image in terms of the developed economies the americans leading the way for actually the penetration of the simple large sections of the d Civil Service but the lot of us and the large corporations and so. So that once they get control of tax policy and then of standards scant Environmental Standards you just go through all those areas then what remains of the Civil Services which one stand up to that is in a minority position so you can see theres a tie who are going out in the us that will serve a real time war but the power theres no question that power lies in the areas where the lot of us and the corruption has had its biggest set and thats what makes it so tragic because there are a lot of good people in there who would act differently if they had the power and those who question that well that really up until Ronald Reagan it is these are just cut off and start differently but they go in slopes right but up until Ronald Reagan you could see a really interesting american Civil Service and then it goes its the slow decline so even under republican president s like i said howard you could criticize but the fact is you know he basically will walk with what i would call an ethical aspect of the Civil Service was Ronald Reagan the again the move towards dont give a damn about their ethics and what it with the political side which would dominate everything and that is not 100 marcus he works it is not the marxists always a balance between you know these different forces and one of them is ethical professionals you write a civilization unable to differentiate between illusion and reality is usually believed to be at the tail end of its existence. Sitting in toronto watching the follies d in the white house that line particularly resonated with me. You know it there are 2 possibilities or probably theres stuff in between its entirely possible that this is. A clear sign of to climb from which theres no richer i mean i can only look at this as an historian and look at what happened in various other empires i believe the british the roman the french and so on so less something radical happened. To change direction it would have to be pretty strong. If for example if. Mr trump is reelected in whatever conditions that 8 years the damage will be enormous enormous and it comeback would be very very difficult to do and if i learned it from the outside what is you know already you had a level. Its lost its leadership you talk about pity embarrassment confusion people just dont know what to do some people havent given up on us yet but its lost its leadership position its no longer really an economically i mean thats it is it doesnt matter how much fluff laughing there is not so what you really have is. That the High Tech Companies which is why washington and whatever the government is so eager to sign deals in which they are their power is protected because for the moment they have a kind of enormous power in large parts of the world and that communication is very important. For a couple of time theyre also a few things theyre also fused with security and surveillance apparatus so do it as well there are issues with that and so you have this kind of security structure. Communication structure and military structure United States of whatever it is 50 percent rocks a layer of International Military finance activity so that those are mechanisms to hold an empire together but theyre not anything at all to do with what people dreamt the American Leadership would be and i dont think theyre anything to do or what most americans think American Leadership should be you know the kind of very very highly interesting and of data to hash this out. And i dont want her to go back to the involved tears bastards you write about. You know both. Louis 16th and versailles and the inability to differentiate between what you call appearance and reality but also you write about the roman empire where they no longer grow their own grain in the same way that we kind of outsource our. Public offices infused with the ability to accrue power and wealth in the same way that we see within the United States that these are that you know even if there is a kind of brief resurrection under a figure like hadrian these are kind of fatal structural flaws which i think we see in the United States but you know youre absolutely right that that you know we were people like me who spoke up against globalization we were in speech he got it didnt create were making a call for narrow negative nationalism and for borders being closed we want more has to be opened for the public good entry to take place well i you know this risky up against was that this was not about trade this was about the rumor mill of the idea that place managed that it mattered if you loot from place you know where you lived its a race in france or germany or wherever and instead the power unit kind of middleman or. Trading groups and what youre what youre seeing with coke at 19 is the old and very narrow part of rio which is you dont even control the making of me and the michigan medical supplies inside put it trillions of dollars into medical research the government. And some people are suddenly waking up to this but the problem is this the guy like. Truck just like is. In a few other places change of power because the liberal class was so addiction the idea that place ownership didnt matter that citizenship didnt really matter and we were going to come back. Also the rights of workers because of course workers were disenfranchised but what will come back to that when we come back well continue our conversation with author and philosopher John Ralston Saul. We go to work. Straight home. There was a clip of. My its always ok it was a guy. On the late. Like not something you know you didnt see the media was supposed to lead take you to thats the mood at the close up close to the Smithsonian National open book absolutely clear that at the day i. Knew they had a. Long 8 g. B. P. S. Block 8. Welcome back to on contact we continue our conversation with author and intellectual John Ralston Saul so 1 we were talking about the trail d of the ruling elites before the break and theres a passage i just wanted to read you write elected officials and private sector leaders seem to have been tied together by the politicians acceptance of the idiology that the world must be dealt with through the prism of the market the politicians and their willingness to accept the idiology of the inevitable forgot the perpetual warning tied to the public good and the sickly ringback put by aristotle wealth is desirable d but not at the price of. Freedom. Is that what we claim and thats a kind of. Treason by the ruling elites towards their own societies it yes its true. Yes its a refusal of the idea of citizenship that their citizens i do think at the heart of it lies a bigger problem than the problem of the one percent and. Didnt present it i do think a lot more to do with this if you remember zaire of. Reestablish the traditional class system. Because of the class system that existed until it say 929. 00 days and that there are various parts class consistent which they wanted to put back into place so that. Its worse than treason its a refusal of the idea of their role as citizens in nation states or civilizations and you know its hidden by kind of the prettiness of giving money away things like that which is really. I just want to embarrass you make this point you make this point. That that neo liberalism never made with any economic sense that it was and idiology that justified a centrally the consolidation of wealth and power by the ruling oligarchy by was in terms of economic theory was perpetuated by complete outliers you know i know randon and hajek and but it wasnt well i dont think ive used it were rational but it wasnt economics it was just wasnt economics it was near a very you know i mean. You know i read and reckoned writers will almost 3rd rate 2nd rate people theyre not very intelligent theyre not saying anything very interesting its still reconstitution its not sound economics in any weight shape or form and it really really about a shift of power and it was shifting a power towards a christ is it away from the ideas of the chair and whos it and i dont i actually were they are i never use that term to the older bulls really of conservatives because those are classic high theft. They have and these movements have nothing to do with liberalism and nothing to do with conservatism conservatism stood for these are not weak. You know these are not waves they dont stand for what we stood for and they certainly dont stand for what liberal stood for this is something narrow ideology which has nothing to do with sensible economics and youll wrote that the people who are the absolute. Mother of this whole ideology which they call you know liberalism and servitors and i havent said a word to this crisis because they wanted governmental money to be sent to save their bacon so it really means you have a century of overlook those red money and then suddenly really mad and in a duel or so as to this one was the thing about. The other thing which we should talk about is your credit the story of debt which is what were heading into right now so if i can just say yes the system that was set up a new National Level was to break the back of what you might call respectable life for individual citizens like removing the control of regional and national and even multinational governments 2 or 3 governments are things like you know work standards and employment standards and so on it was part of the loop massively towards lorre standards and it was done by rick in the hour of the national and regional governments it was very conscious it was very intentional. Rate a tax system rate the protection of the citizens system and it was just the were class was the lore middle class and a life for the middle class but i think that and you havent asked about it but i mean i do think were now at this stage in this cross. Where air so many people said well we have to do it differently to me about this and what youre seeing that in the rush to open up again part of that rush is to make sure that we go back to the way it was done before if you can do it if you can open it up fast enough theres no time to change theres no time for consider a clear how can we do things differently and it is this we failed miserably. In 2008. To get the changes which were required considering the failure of the ideology in place and the question is are we going to fail a 2nd time for me 2008 and call it are one in the same. Not to come from different sources you in your book. Quote gramsci the interregnum and one point you write how. In essence the credibility of the ruling idiology has collapsed feature of globalization strengths has somehow turned out to have an opposing meaning a lowering of National Residency requirements for corporations has morphed into a tool for massive tax evasion the idea of a Global Economic system mysteriously made local poverty seem unreal even normal the decline of the middle class the very basis of democracy seems to be just one of those things that happen unfortunate but inevitable that the working class and lower middle class even parts of the middle class could only survive with more than one job per person seemed to be the expected punishment for not keeping up the contrast between unprecedented bonuses for a mere managers at the top and the 4 job families below that seemed inevitable in a globalised world for 2 decades an elite consensus insisted that unsustainable 3rd world debts could not be put aside in a sort of bad debt reserve without betraying globalism essential principles and moral obligations which included on wavering respect for the sanctity of International Contracts it took the same people about 2 weeks to abandon saying today and propose that debt banks. For their own far larger debts in 2009 are we seeing. And i think we are on both ends of the political spectrum theres loss of credibility in terms of the any ology that spend shoved down our throats in economic departments and by pundits on television and what will that mean what what what are the cardwell i mean the very practical consequences if theyre allowed to do what they want and they can get governments taking it 1015 governments to go want them to actually get the west. To do better strains. And that would be to convert the money printed over the last couple of months interest into the weight of debt then they will have succeeded in a massive way in holding on to power even though it will be catastrophic for them and everyone else and this is one of those very very important moments in history when the so lawnmowers really the 4 moments where you actually have to say this is not real d get me chris paul this is not an economic crisis this is a Health Crisis right there it was there were there are enormous problems with the economy but thats not what caused the printing of the money. We are not inflationary period there is no excuse for a series theres only one excuse was there any and that is runaway inflation 920. 00 style in germany thats the only excuse there is christine there is no other minute when the orses are out of the park and you just have to do something right and were not in that situation not ready flesh an errant theory and so the most important thing can be done now and i can only say this is what will sound really your response but it is its deeply response which is i would call for a meeting of is quite an of probably not invited government United States of of as many developed economy countries small. Hole it very silent some press. And they would agree that the money they have printed is extremely serious and will be paid back in about 200 years and everybody will write and beautiful pieces of paper and look at lovely people with wonderful handwriting to write go their their moral and ethical obligation to pay back this money on his beautiful piece of paper it be signed by the right already and theyll all be put together and really put most beautiful blue 14 desk in a drawer and it will be locked and hell be strong. I mean im joking but im not joking this is what needs to happen they just need to find a way to say this is not debt the worst thing you could do is to allow governments and state banks to convert that debt into the from melody of public barns that start to be traded in the marketplace. And create a complex mess the sooner we actually say we dont know this this is not something owed by our children and grandchildren all that nonsense we have to walk away from all of that and if we walk away from her that i think youll find it will be extremely easy to relaunch an economy but what will be important is not simply to rely on the economy but to repeat some basics about how we reliance and it mean if you want we can talk a bit. We have to end there but i think the consequences of not doing that and were already seeing it our social unrest in the United States we have rent strikes people are not paying their mortgages this is just going to cascade they cant pay their car loans student debt Household Debt and with all of the economic. Catastrophes that that will engender and this is once again because of service towards if this is converted into your we expanded inflating their role of the speculative route in society. Did we already in the United States in particular i decline which will be very great thank you that was often intellectual John Ralston Saul speaking to us from his home and thank you thanks john. According to several sources at least in the United States from 2 to 4 people every day my. Head his hand. With sad eyes to. See what am i being arrested for a response from enough such that its just their little world to establish they developed just us against them its. A long history of 2525 years as. I read this from someone calling you know. There is a corruption inside of the families when i think all sure is. My. Im. I know team no crowd. No shots. Actually felt. Well its true i know its. Which your thirst for action. Join me every thursday on the alex simon show and ill be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business im show business ill see you then. Hello there im manila chan youre watching in question broadcasting from r t Americas National news headquarters in washington d. C. We want to welcome our viewers from across the nation and all around the world tonight we start with breaking news america in chaos. And were staying on top of the breaking news here at the Nations Capital where thousands of protesters have defied a 7 pm curfew and have gather