This Week In Utopia: Libya.
14 April 2019 [link youtube]
In the context of the reconquest of Libya by Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army, here are some reflections on the "tragic realism" of Thucydides's view of political history… in contrast to the surreal "optimism" propounded by the U.N. and the mainstream media.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in general so did you come to the
Security Council with a with a plan or with new ideas because obviously you went to Libya with some ideas and you shared it with the parties there and obviously it was not enough for the parties to to reach an agreement or to stop the pipe of humanitarian colleagues on the ground report that the escalation of violence in and around Tripoli has caused the displacement of some 3400 people fleeing from fighting and is blocked emergency services from reaching casualties and civilians clashes with heavy weapons or affecting residential areas and an unknown number of civilians are unable to flee and the United Nations remain available to facilitate any political solution so do you have new ideas you shared with the council and how did you find the reaction in the Security Council today we're calling for a temporary humanitarian truce to allow for the provision of emergency services and the voluntary passage of civilians including those wounded from the areas of conflict [Music] so do you have new ideas you shared with the council and how did you find the reaction in the Security Council today it is for the city council to speak in relation to other Security Council decides when my girlfriend and I first started reading Aristotle Plato through Citadis major thinkers in the history of political thought primarily in of Athens I think a few of them out of Rome in Sparta weirdoes Xenophon fallen way we started reading some of these major major thinkers in the history of Western political philosophy one of the things I said to her is when you look at contemporary politics when you look at the people to make the decisions you will be amazed to find that they also read these texts they also are familiar with these sources they're familiar with the arguments and ambiguities that are to be found in Plato Aristotle through cities so on and so forth even somebody who might seem like a kind of lowbrow despicable career politician someone like Bill Clinton to a remarkable extent recent generations of politicians have had this kind of education whether they got it formally in elite Ivy League universities or whether they sought it out for themselves one of the things I find disturbing in surveying both the journalistic and professional political opinion about the current events in Libya is that it shows to me the extent to which the people who are now in power and the people who now broadcast the decisions made by those in power they really have not read Aristotle Plato Thucydides they really do not have that kind of classical learning I see it reported throughout the mainstream press that the strongman in eastern Libya is supported by Saudi Arabia as if this is some sort of proof positive that he is not supported by the United States of America as if Saudi Arabia the United States of America have not been on the same side of every conflict consistently since george w bush and there was a time i'm old enough to remember when Obama first came to office and people wondered is Obama gonna guilt the ongoing military alliance really worldwide military alliance between the United States people held their breath and no Obama really continued exactly the same policy as george w bush and the world elder breath people were really uncertain what was gonna happen when Donald Trump was first elected and we had this series of absurd really observed statements from Donald Trump or he he said among other things that the world looks much different when you're behind the desk at the White House and he announced that no he's just gonna carry on having America be Saudi Arabia's number-one mercenary army so yes we know that haft are in the the east is supported by Saudi Arabia the fact that the eastern Libyan forces are supported by Saudi Arabia does not exclude the possibility that they have been supported by the u.s. in the past nor that they will be in the future on the other hand I see some left-wing and peacenik sources people are pro-peace and I'm not ridiculing them for that but let's see what I say this people who are just general advocates for peace ridiculing and lambasting this eastern Libyan force saying that their leader has been on the payroll of the CIA or that he is now continuing to be on the payroll of the CIA the truth is we don't know that we don't know the big news what we know right now is that he's backed by France that's a much harder piece of news for the mainstream media to spin as opposed it's not useful propaganda one way or the other the photographs from this conflict are no longer coming from journalists they're coming from combatants themselves because there are no journalists on the ground as you may have noticed I just played some cliffs in this senior senior officials the United Nations flew in and flew out and made very florid and bold and vague declarations those YouTube videos I just gave you clips from they have fewer views than the the YouTube videos on my channel it's shocking to me so this is major major news announcements from Libya on the United Nations own YouTube channel and I can say wow I get more views than the United Nations on YouTube because look I can't say nobody cares I can't say that but seriously one of them at 56 views and I'm two of them because I clicked on it twice these are small small numbers people I can't say that nobody cares I once had a debate with a professor University professor in class where he was talking about the public's lack of interests in Canadian politics in contrast to way or interest is focused in American politics because there's a lot of interest at the top shall we say American politics and a lot less interest for a local boy and I said so I said look your own premise here you know it refutes itself your point isn't this isn't a difference tree in American politics in Canadian politics point is universally people pay attention where the decisive difference is made people are gonna look at the stage of political activity which actually gonna make a difference and nobody believes that the United Nations can make a difference anymore and nobody believes that they will make a difference anymore but it's still time to stop it's still time for a ceasefire to take place for a cessation of hostilities to take place and to avoid the worst which would be a dramatic bloody battle for Tripoli we're calling for a temporary humanitarian truce to allow for the provision of emergency services and the voluntary passage of civilian so yes you know nations can have senior personnel being paid very very high salaries wearing very very well-tailored suits fly-in fly-out and staid a bunch of platitudes about you know human rights and reducing the body count and calling for a ceasefire and calling for a political solution nobody notice that and again the really strange lack of maturity both coming from the people making those statements and the people reporting them the people repackaging them into propaganda various kinds cuz it's all propaganda right now if you present half tar as a CIA puppet that's propaganda we don't know that we have no indication that his plan of the series of decisions he's made or his army has been in lockstep with u.s. foreign policy we don't know if he's really been independent but he's someone who has 20 years experience living in Virginia who probably has a sense of what's normal in a Western democracy from living for 20 years in Virginia and that the CIA might now want to co-opt that might want to build on that good feeling we do not know about his relationship with Russia we don't we know we know what is really heated with France we know bosz relationship with Saudi Arabia to its extent it seems unlikely that the French are in bed with someone who is a dire enemy of American democracy but I doubt I doubt that the people at the top of the United Nations have a whole lot better information to work with and what I see is is a real lack of the sort of sober tragic realism that reading lucidity and Aristotle helps you to cultivate the future of Libya now is going to be decided by the one who wins by force of arms period and we hope we hope that during his 20 years in Virginia he developed a taste for elections we know he received an education from the CIA we hope that the CIA did not teach him to be a brutal dictator but they taught him to fail you you know creating elections of some kind I will read a passage from through Citadis today in which he said the concept of rights in the United Nations context human rights political rights rights rights only exist in relationships between equals as for the rest the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must at the end of World War two with the whole world taking a step back and looking with shock and awe at the destructive power of the atom bomb we told ourselves a story and in two words it went never again and the reality is it's only in a very limited set of contexts in which two sides are pointing nuclear warheads at each other that that feeble we all told ourselves the end of World War two holds any weight at all so right now the map of Libya is being redrawn and the political destiny of Libya is being defined by the same old fashioned politics that go back more than 2,500 years to Aristotle and Thucydides and it's saddening and shocking to me to see that the handful of people who in totally undemocratic unaccountable non-transparent organizations whether those are in the press journalists or within the United Nations the people who really earn a good living to do political analysis and provide some meaningful guidance on this is it that they don't care or is it that they simply don't [Music]
Security Council with a with a plan or with new ideas because obviously you went to Libya with some ideas and you shared it with the parties there and obviously it was not enough for the parties to to reach an agreement or to stop the pipe of humanitarian colleagues on the ground report that the escalation of violence in and around Tripoli has caused the displacement of some 3400 people fleeing from fighting and is blocked emergency services from reaching casualties and civilians clashes with heavy weapons or affecting residential areas and an unknown number of civilians are unable to flee and the United Nations remain available to facilitate any political solution so do you have new ideas you shared with the council and how did you find the reaction in the Security Council today we're calling for a temporary humanitarian truce to allow for the provision of emergency services and the voluntary passage of civilians including those wounded from the areas of conflict [Music] so do you have new ideas you shared with the council and how did you find the reaction in the Security Council today it is for the city council to speak in relation to other Security Council decides when my girlfriend and I first started reading Aristotle Plato through Citadis major thinkers in the history of political thought primarily in of Athens I think a few of them out of Rome in Sparta weirdoes Xenophon fallen way we started reading some of these major major thinkers in the history of Western political philosophy one of the things I said to her is when you look at contemporary politics when you look at the people to make the decisions you will be amazed to find that they also read these texts they also are familiar with these sources they're familiar with the arguments and ambiguities that are to be found in Plato Aristotle through cities so on and so forth even somebody who might seem like a kind of lowbrow despicable career politician someone like Bill Clinton to a remarkable extent recent generations of politicians have had this kind of education whether they got it formally in elite Ivy League universities or whether they sought it out for themselves one of the things I find disturbing in surveying both the journalistic and professional political opinion about the current events in Libya is that it shows to me the extent to which the people who are now in power and the people who now broadcast the decisions made by those in power they really have not read Aristotle Plato Thucydides they really do not have that kind of classical learning I see it reported throughout the mainstream press that the strongman in eastern Libya is supported by Saudi Arabia as if this is some sort of proof positive that he is not supported by the United States of America as if Saudi Arabia the United States of America have not been on the same side of every conflict consistently since george w bush and there was a time i'm old enough to remember when Obama first came to office and people wondered is Obama gonna guilt the ongoing military alliance really worldwide military alliance between the United States people held their breath and no Obama really continued exactly the same policy as george w bush and the world elder breath people were really uncertain what was gonna happen when Donald Trump was first elected and we had this series of absurd really observed statements from Donald Trump or he he said among other things that the world looks much different when you're behind the desk at the White House and he announced that no he's just gonna carry on having America be Saudi Arabia's number-one mercenary army so yes we know that haft are in the the east is supported by Saudi Arabia the fact that the eastern Libyan forces are supported by Saudi Arabia does not exclude the possibility that they have been supported by the u.s. in the past nor that they will be in the future on the other hand I see some left-wing and peacenik sources people are pro-peace and I'm not ridiculing them for that but let's see what I say this people who are just general advocates for peace ridiculing and lambasting this eastern Libyan force saying that their leader has been on the payroll of the CIA or that he is now continuing to be on the payroll of the CIA the truth is we don't know that we don't know the big news what we know right now is that he's backed by France that's a much harder piece of news for the mainstream media to spin as opposed it's not useful propaganda one way or the other the photographs from this conflict are no longer coming from journalists they're coming from combatants themselves because there are no journalists on the ground as you may have noticed I just played some cliffs in this senior senior officials the United Nations flew in and flew out and made very florid and bold and vague declarations those YouTube videos I just gave you clips from they have fewer views than the the YouTube videos on my channel it's shocking to me so this is major major news announcements from Libya on the United Nations own YouTube channel and I can say wow I get more views than the United Nations on YouTube because look I can't say nobody cares I can't say that but seriously one of them at 56 views and I'm two of them because I clicked on it twice these are small small numbers people I can't say that nobody cares I once had a debate with a professor University professor in class where he was talking about the public's lack of interests in Canadian politics in contrast to way or interest is focused in American politics because there's a lot of interest at the top shall we say American politics and a lot less interest for a local boy and I said so I said look your own premise here you know it refutes itself your point isn't this isn't a difference tree in American politics in Canadian politics point is universally people pay attention where the decisive difference is made people are gonna look at the stage of political activity which actually gonna make a difference and nobody believes that the United Nations can make a difference anymore and nobody believes that they will make a difference anymore but it's still time to stop it's still time for a ceasefire to take place for a cessation of hostilities to take place and to avoid the worst which would be a dramatic bloody battle for Tripoli we're calling for a temporary humanitarian truce to allow for the provision of emergency services and the voluntary passage of civilian so yes you know nations can have senior personnel being paid very very high salaries wearing very very well-tailored suits fly-in fly-out and staid a bunch of platitudes about you know human rights and reducing the body count and calling for a ceasefire and calling for a political solution nobody notice that and again the really strange lack of maturity both coming from the people making those statements and the people reporting them the people repackaging them into propaganda various kinds cuz it's all propaganda right now if you present half tar as a CIA puppet that's propaganda we don't know that we have no indication that his plan of the series of decisions he's made or his army has been in lockstep with u.s. foreign policy we don't know if he's really been independent but he's someone who has 20 years experience living in Virginia who probably has a sense of what's normal in a Western democracy from living for 20 years in Virginia and that the CIA might now want to co-opt that might want to build on that good feeling we do not know about his relationship with Russia we don't we know we know what is really heated with France we know bosz relationship with Saudi Arabia to its extent it seems unlikely that the French are in bed with someone who is a dire enemy of American democracy but I doubt I doubt that the people at the top of the United Nations have a whole lot better information to work with and what I see is is a real lack of the sort of sober tragic realism that reading lucidity and Aristotle helps you to cultivate the future of Libya now is going to be decided by the one who wins by force of arms period and we hope we hope that during his 20 years in Virginia he developed a taste for elections we know he received an education from the CIA we hope that the CIA did not teach him to be a brutal dictator but they taught him to fail you you know creating elections of some kind I will read a passage from through Citadis today in which he said the concept of rights in the United Nations context human rights political rights rights rights only exist in relationships between equals as for the rest the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must at the end of World War two with the whole world taking a step back and looking with shock and awe at the destructive power of the atom bomb we told ourselves a story and in two words it went never again and the reality is it's only in a very limited set of contexts in which two sides are pointing nuclear warheads at each other that that feeble we all told ourselves the end of World War two holds any weight at all so right now the map of Libya is being redrawn and the political destiny of Libya is being defined by the same old fashioned politics that go back more than 2,500 years to Aristotle and Thucydides and it's saddening and shocking to me to see that the handful of people who in totally undemocratic unaccountable non-transparent organizations whether those are in the press journalists or within the United Nations the people who really earn a good living to do political analysis and provide some meaningful guidance on this is it that they don't care or is it that they simply don't [Music]