Shooting Wars & Trade Wars
Shooting Wars & Trade Wars
Ralph speaks with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, about the fall of the American Empire and self-proclaimed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Then we welcome the CEO and co-founder of the Canadian-based organization Corporate Knights, Toby Heap, to break down Trump’s unprecedented trade war with our closest ally. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for Hakeem Jeffries and his meeting with Jared Kushner and for Hillary Clinton and her take on the war with Iran.
Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum.
Two-thirds of the world now thinks that we are an enemy of their state. Two-thirds of the world. And it happens to be the two-thirds that has the greatest amount of the GDP in the world.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
I’ve lived for 81 years, almost 82, and I’ve watched my country go to hell right in front of my face… And the billionaires who want all of this to happen, they do not want a democracy. A democracy is fallible. A democracy can’t beat China. A democracy can’t beat Russia. A democracy can’t even beat Iran. They want a technocracy that is run by them, armed by them, technical revolution by them. They want all of this, and oh by the way they want to live to 150 while they’re doing it too.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
Every freaking hour they create a series of war crimes in Iran. Every freaking hour they perpetrate war crimes in the Persian Gulf. Every freaking hour they perpetrate war crimes in Lebanon with Israel. “What’s new?,” I want to say. We are a criminal state. There is no other way to describe it. We are a criminal state. We pay no attention whatsoever to domestic or international law. Only when it benefits the person who is doing the deed do we pay any attention at all.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
Toby Heaps is the CEO and co-founder of Corporate Knights, and Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Knights magazine. He spearheaded the first global ranking of the world’s 100 most sustainable corporations in 2005, and in 2007 coined the term “clean capitalism.”
What we’re seeing is a sort of political physics—for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. Canada has in many ways benefited and rallied around our nationhood. We’re often not the most boisterous or loudest type of folks. But this continued disrespect for our statehood and the continued attacks and the unreasonableness and the unfair play, our prime minister said something to the effect of: when the United States signs something, it’s in pencil. It’s really denigrating the United States’ reputation globally and in Canadians’ minds.
Toby Heaps
News 8/28/26
This week, the left-wing insurgency in the Democratic Party scored several new victories. First, NBC reports that in Oklahoma, N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Markwayne Mullin, who Trump selected to lead the Department of Homeland Security following the resignation of Secretary Kristi Noem. Thomas will go up against Republican Congressman Kevin Hern in November. Unfortunately, Thomas stands little chance of winning the state, which has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1990. Thomas is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and identifies as a Democratic Socialist, but is “not yet” a member of DSA.
Next, in California, Democracy Now! reports progressive state lawmaker Aisha Wahab has prevailed in the special election to fill the seat vacated by disgraced former Congressman Eric Swalwell. This piece notes that Wahab “overcame a flood of attack ads from pro-Israel groups,” which sought to bolster her Democratic primary rival, Melissa Hernandez. In an interview, Wahab said that she “appreciates” voters in her district for “seeing through” the “lies that were spread by AIPAC.” Wahab will make history as the first Afghan American in Congress and has called for the United States to engage with the Taliban government and attempt to “[steer] them in the right direction” on human rights.
In Georgia, the Hill reports another progressive – Everton Blair – won the special election to fill the seat of Congressman David Scott, who passed away in April during his 12th term in the seat. Blair, the former chair of the Gwinnett County School Board, defeated Scott’s daughter Marcye Scott. However, Blair will only represent this seat until the end of the year. Beginning in January, State Rep. Jasmine Clark, who won the May primary, will fill the seat for the 120th Congress.
Meanwhile, in the Cornhusker State, the Nebraska Examiner reports that the “Legal Marijuana NOW U.S. Senate candidate Mike Marvin announced he can’t put more ‘energy’ into the Senate race because of health issues and endorsed nonpartisan U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn.” Marvin will remain on the ballot, but is “urging all who supported [him] to now support…Osborn.” This piece notes that this announcement comes on heels of reporting by Flatwater Free Press showing that two staffers from Osborn’s 2024 independent Senate campaign joined the Legal Marijuana NOW executive board and sought to dissolve the party from the inside. This, combined with the fact that former Democratic Senate nominee Cindy Burbank paid Mike Marvin’s $1,740 candidate filing fee and dropped out of the race one day after the secretary of state verified Osborn’s signatures to be on the fall ballot has fueled speculation that these were coordinated efforts to clear the field for Osborn. Marvin for his part disputes this and says he never planned to leave the race. Osborn is quoted saying “We hope to earn the support of the LMN voters and hope that we can represent their concerns well in the US Senate.”
In more third party news, Trump has launched new broadsides against the emerging ex-MAGA clique – consisting of Tucker Carlson, Congressman Thomas Massie, and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to the Hill, Trump attacked the group, said to be exploring the possibility of founding a new right-wing party, calling Carlson “a loser,” Greene “a highly neurotic woman” and Massie a “real JERK” on Truth Social. The president added, “What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!...The only chance they have is to join the Radical Left Dumocrats, and try breaking into the Primary System. To all of them I say, PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!” The proximate cause of this latest flare-up between the camps is Trump’s decision to allow in 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported in the next 90 days, a move Massie called “worse than socialism.” Greene, who has been perhaps the most vocal defector from the MAGA camp, said “He attacks us with such vitriol because we actually are everything he claimed to be…he has proven as President that he is nothing more than a neocon puppet for Israel, corporations, big donors with special interests, and his dear friends in the Epstein class…We never changed, Trump did.”
Another story from this side of the aisle comes to us from NOTUS, which reports that an “unknown actor” has stolen over $16,000 from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). This incident, alternatively characterized as a “theft” from a “foreign country” or simply a “fraud,” occurred in early July, when the NRCC “attempted to pay a bill from Ranger Wi-Fi Consulting, a Texas-based firm that specializes in helping clients ‘optimize their wireless networks while ensuring healthy security measures are in place.’” Seeking to assuage the fears of donors, NRCC spokesman Will Kiley told the press that “Protecting donor funds is a top priority for the NRCC,” and vowed that the committee is “working to recover the funds, and…taken steps to ensure it can’t happen again.” Listeners might remember that in July, the DNC admitted that they had fallen prey to a scammer, losing almost $30,000 in the process. It would seem that these committees do not have functional safeguards against such schemes.
Our final stories this week all deal with the Middle East. First up, Axios reports that while AIPAC was gearing up for a major ad blitz in Michigan against Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed and on behalf of Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, those plans have apparently been iced at the behest of the Rogers campaign. According to this story, Rogers believes that AIPAC spending in the Democratic primary – over $30 million on behalf of El-Syed’s rival Haley Stevens – actually helped boost El-Sayed’s candidacy, making his opposition to AIPAC a “centerpiece of his…campaign, using the group’s spending against him to portray Democratic opponent Haley Stevens as beholden to the pro-Israel lobby.” Rogers fears the same fate, so he has sought to keep his distance from AIPAC while his allies are urging AIPAC to “get involved without putting the group’s name front and center.” However, Rogers’ attempts to put some daylight between his campaign and AIPAC has resulted in the latter turning cold towards the Republican candidate. Republicans now worry that AIPAC will “sit out the general election entirely.” As for the perception of AIPAC in Michigan, a recent poll found that “55% of Michigan voters oppose continued U.S. aid to Israel.”
On the other end of the Michigan political spectrum, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding that he “ensure the immediate
and permanent release of U.S. citizen Sama Safi, a 20-year-old university student with a severe complex chronic health condition, who the Israeli military has arbitrarily and wrongfully detained since June 2nd.” This letter goes on to describe how “armed Israeli soldiers raided her family’s home in the occupied West Bank in the middle of the night and tore her from her family,” and that since then, she has “suffered under appalling conditions in Israeli military detention including “frequent physical assault, shackling, and the throwing of gas and stun grenades into already overcrowded and poorly ventilated cells,” among other horrors. 40 more members of Congress signed this letter, including six senators, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen among them. 85 civic groups also signed onto this demand, ranging from faith-based groups to human rights organizations and beyond.
In the region itself, a broad coalition of Muslim states – including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and, perhaps most notably, the United Arab Emirates – have issued a categorical condemnation of Israel’s new “E1” settlement plan. This plan relates to new settlement activities east of occupied East Jerusalem and the signatories decry the plan as constituting “a dangerous escalation that further advances settlement expansion and annexation and undermines the geographical contiguity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory…thereby threatening the viability and realization of an independent, contiguous Palestinian State based on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.” The UAE was the most significant state in the region to sign onto the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, which sought to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors at the expense of the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia was said to be on the verge of signing the accords prior to October 7th and Israel’s subsequent genocidal military campaign in Gaza. The UAE taking a new stand against Israel on behalf of the Palestinian cause is widely seen as the final death knell of the Abraham Accords and the beginning of a new era of relations in the Middle East.
Finally, the Economist reports that a group of seven top officials within the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is consolidating power in Iran. The man rumored to be leading this junta is Mohsen Rezaei, the new national-security adviser, former presidential candidate and the longest-serving chief of the IRGC, having led the corps though the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Others include the head of the navy, currently overseeing Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the IRGC’s commander-in-chief and founder of the Quds Force. Notably absent from this group is Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. This piece judiciously avoids making any definite predictions about whether this new clique will rule as hardliners or pragmatists, but emphasizes that the late Ali Khamenei expertly “balanced the competing interests of his realm” while these military men favor action.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
Discussion about this episode
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/shooting-wars-and-trade-wars
Col. Wilkerson is the first expert that Ive heard in years that can detail and remind listeners just how bad the international domestic situation has become since the 70s. Few voters grasp how bad it is, Ralph included. For example, Ralph keeps hoping for impeachment notwithstanding that most Democrats [not to mention the GOP] are not willing to impeach, partly because they are too old, as is noted, the Congress is old baggage and has no wish to rock the boat.
Sabby Sabs (youtube.com) shrewdly questioned the Jeffries-Kushman meeting. She discovered that the day after the meeting the avid Israeli zionionist Moskowitz suddenly was awarded head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Subcommittee. Hmmm. Mere coincidence? Jeffries' pockets bulge with AIPAC money. Note the timing of Jeffries disinterest in Medicare for All/single payer; "Jeffries explicitly stated that Medicare for All is "not legislation that I currently am cosponsoring or that I support...Past Position: He previously co-sponsored single-payer healthcare legislation in the House between 2013 and 2021, but dropped off the co-sponsor list by 2023 after becoming the top House Democratic leader."(AI) The People are right to be enraged.Hmmm. The House Speaker controls what legislation is considered. Jeffries = zionist, corporatized. Guess which legislation would be served up and which thrown in the eternal holding bin? Democratic Establishment finagling?
“Shooting Wars and Trade Wars” was important to the Radio Hour in many ways. I respect and admire Col. Larry Wilkerson, who did not pull punches, an analogy that was used in the second interview of today’s program. Col. Wilkerson accurately describes the dire predicament of the federal government as we approach the Congressional election. All branches of the federal government are in, or under, the control of the far right and the appetite for the revival of republican democracy is not at the level for which most professional gamblers would put their money on the table. The Supreme Court just recently kowtowed to Donald Trump on mail-in ballots, a move that will probably reduce the vote in November, along with all of the other intimidating voting actions of the Trump administration. That this administration has studied, and is ready to subvert, the election down to the precinct level is cause for great trepidation. As a former precinct captain in a presidential election, those actions are beyond belief, but among the yahoos of the Trump administration, quite believable.
Toby Heaps of Corporate Knights does a great job describing the Canadian view of the most recent part of Donald Trump’s tariff wars. To enrage a trading partner and longtime ally, Canada, is a sickening kind of bravado. A guess is that Trump will back down, especially since the three states’ senatorial races could be negatively impacted by this insanity. As an aside, most people who have a foot on the ground, at least one hopefully, have to wonder why a senate race could be determined in such a way following all of the years that is the Trump disaster for most.
Excellent nerve racking interview before the SF Commonwealth Club -
"Gil Durán and Wajahat Ali: The Rise of "The Nerd Reich” " - re cabal of tech billionaires with a plan - implementation already begun - to destroy our Democratic Republic and replace it with dictator run fiefdoms under a "world government." Listened skeptically until plausibility appeared.
Impeachment is a meaningless slap on the wrist. In nearly 70 years I have never seen one article, statement or document that disproves Chomsky's statement that every US president since WWII is guilty of the same war crimes determined at the Nuremberg trials. A war of aggression was deemed to be the supreme war crime but no US president has ever been charged, imprisoned of war crimes though illegal by International law, the Geneva Conventions and the UN Charter, and therefore US Constitutional law. If the worst war criminals guilty of the worst war crimes, a country cannot even pretend to have law and order or a minimal level of democracy when both parties represent only the criminal class that finances the both party campaign, which in effect steals public representation. Since WWII the leading cause of death for US military personnel in all branches has been presidential lies. The recent Lancet human rights study not only reinforces, but proves that sanctions over the last 50 years killing 38 million people, the United States has become a political monopoly serving a criminal empire. If there is to be a country with Constitutional law. the empire must be destroyed or the rest of the world that seeks prosperity and mutually beneficial trade will do it for us. Charge war crimes. It is the Constitution.
I havent found anything in the Constitution that prohibits "war crimes" under the Presidents watch. I guess one could argue that Article II requires the President to faithfully execute US laws, and so there might be something in federal law prohibiting and sanctioning war crimes, but if there is, obviously its ignored, or unenforceable. The record of war crimes under every Presidents military and CIA is glaring = Col. Wilkerson says here that the US has caused over 30 million deaths and compares the bloody US to other notorious tyrannies such as Mao and Stalin.