Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome back to Going Underground. Broadcasting all around the world from the uae, where Abu Dhabi has been scheduled to host tomorrow's Russia, us Ukraine trilateral talks today in Antalya. Turkey though, is so called COP31. Yet another UN climate change conference occurring during a UK US EU armed genocide. Expect the usual pageantry from greater powers driving climate catastrophe. Fleets of private planes with endless performative deliberations on reducing fossil fuel dependence. All the while, COP31 will be used to shield the machinery destroying our planet. Capitalism, the US Foreign policy establishment, the media military industrial complex. Flanked by swarms of fossil fuel lobbyists, the world's largest institutional polluter is the pentagon. Burning over 4.6 billion gallons of fuel annually. The Pentagon anchors a global war machine spanning 800 bases built in violation of national sovereignty and sustaining mass death and destruction, including wars in Europe, here in West Asia and the Gaza genocide. Newly elected Congressional Democrats and so called socialists support ever more military support for Ukraine's Zelensky. Journalist Abby Martin's new documentary Earth's Greatest Enemy, co directed with her husband, US army veteran Mike Prysner, investigates the unprecedented threat the US Military poses to us all.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: The US Military has driven the destruction of the planet as a battering ram for resource extraction.
Now that we face a future of scarcity, disaster and instability, they want more militarization to protect the same interests that brought us here.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Well, you have to have it.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: These are the so called national security concerns they're talking about abroad and at home.
Truly, we are looking at Earth's greatest enemy.
And when we thought we'd seen the worst, we come to Gaza.
The most devastating ecocide and genocide of our generation, only possible through American weapons and political support.
The consequences will be felt by everyone on Earth.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Earth's Greatest Enemy is streaming now. Abby Martin joins me again from Portland, Oregon. Abby, thanks so much for coming back on going Underground after such a long time. I wanted to start with COP31, which starts in Turkey today because COP features in your new film. But quickly, your consideration of Trump's catastrophic midterms and supposedly the rise of Marxists and communists who perhaps would understand some of the themes in your film.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Inshah. Unfortunately you just see a lot of, you know, obviously there's this huge repudiation of fascism, of Israel, Zionism becoming increasingly untenable and I think consequently US Imperialism as well. But unfortunately we know the duopoly, we know how it works. I've been through this wave several times in the past where Speakers of the House, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, you have the leader, Chuck Schumer, immediately saying, we're not gonna hold anyone accountable. We're gonna work with the Trump administration. We're not out for blood. Well, guess what? This has been the most vicious, insane election cycle I have ever lived through, and people want blood. They want accountability. They want these criminals and corrupt warlords to be held accountable for their war crimes. So, you know, we're in for a catastrophic failure of leadership. And I worry a worse Trump next time if they don't actually step up and try to listen to the people this time who don't want any new wars and who want actual not impunity for these. For these criminals running the country.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: I'll get on to how at least Trump was transparent about Empire, arguably. I mean, it's seven years since you've been on. There's something today called COP31, and it's partnered by Bloomberg Philanthropies, whatever that is. Tell me about cop, what it means to you and how it features in your new film.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Right. I mean, every year you have global leaders convening all around the world. You know, it was in the Amazon rainforest the previous year where they actually bulldozed and emitted God knows how many carbon, you know, emissions to get delegates there. It really is just a farce for business lobbyists and fossil fuel corporations. The largest delegation at these COP conferences are fossil fuel lobbyists. They outnumber any country's delegation. So it's really just a corporate trade show. You have countries like Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states that are very fossil fuel heavy, basically touting their green energy plans and initiatives. And really what they do, what they're designed to do, is completely obfuscate the real perpetrators of the planet being destroyed. Right. The big fossil fuel emissions, which is,
[00:05:18] Speaker A: of
[00:05:18] Speaker B: course, China.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Well, as we hear in NATO nation, media, the evil country here is China.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know what's amazing? China and Russia aren't involved. And I just find that so disgusting that these huge countries that we should be collaborating with and cooperating with on these global catastrophes, on the precipice of these environmental catastrophes. And we're not collaborating with them at all. We're. Instead of fomenting war and agitating this great power competition against them. So, you know, what I found fascinating is back during the first COP conference in Kyoto in 1997, led by the Clinton administration, militarism has been exempt ever since the first COP conference. And so ever since then, no country has basically been mandated to put forward their military missions. So every single COP conference where they agree on net zero or carbon caps or any of these schemes. No one's talking about the elephant in the room, which is militarism, which together accounts for more than 150 countries. And that's just US led military missions. So there's a huge problem and it's just being obfuscated intentionally by the people who are destroying the planet?
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the first one was in Berlin. But are you the only person then who thought to yourself to look at the Kyoto Protocol and how it gave carte blanche to the US military to evade any idea of environmental dimensions to their activities?
[00:06:48] Speaker B: You know, this has been an ongoing issue that a lot of activists and independent scientists have tried to call attention to. There have been protests, there have been dual kind of COP conferences led by grassroots activists and scientists have tried to calculate these emissions that have not been transparent by the US ruling class. And so all of these things have been an effort. But you know what I find startling is that no reporters from the inside have held these people to account, tried to hold power to account, and really just try to ask the most basic questions possible to someone like Jay Inslee. This was a guy who ran on the climate change agenda for president and he's running away from the most bare minimum question saying, should we count military emissions in total emissions? I mean, what are we doing here if we're not actually counting emissions? So a lot of people have brought attention to this, but unfortunately it hasn't really hit the halls of the powerful because no reporters will do their job.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: And so trillions of dollars of US public money obviously spent on all the post 911 wars in those calculations are not the environmental cost at all. The external factors, they're just not calculated in it. So the war on Iran, the proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, these things are just not calculated at all. As NATO countries are saying, ever more military equipment, say, should be poured into Ukraine.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you look at just the maintenance of a global military empire, the toxification, the dumping, the callous disregard for the environment, I mean, that's just to maintain the arsenal of military equipment because of the cleaning of the engine parts, the pointless missions of flying these Boeing Pegasuses, which are basically mobile gas stations around just to keep these machines mission ready. We're not even talking. We don't know the application of the actual weaponry. We can't even begin to quantify the impact on the environment that war caused causes. One just has to look at what is happening across the Middle east today. It is a Ecocide in front of our eyes. Genocide, turn ecocide. We see the black soot, the rain, the intentional targeting of oil infrastructure and civilian oil depots and ships. These are crimes against the environment every single day that are not being held to account. And this isn't even being calculated. This is just part of the mythology of having a military empire, part of that necessity that's dictated to us by the ruling class, that we need this global military empire, that in fact it keeps us safe, and in fact it's the solution to climate change. There's a complete failure of imagination of how we can solve these problems. And they just look to the military, the same force that's protecting the fossil fuel corporations, and the same force that has exacerbated the crisis that we're in today.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Obviously you want something else and it shows in the film, but you've got to admit that at least with Trump, who said that the whole idea of environmental climate change is a load of nonsense, it's better, arguably, that he could create wars one after another and obviously the environment didn't matter. Whereas Obama, Joe Biden and his genocidal accomplices, Holocaust, Harris and the rest, they, they never mentioned the impact of environment, let alone as they were continuing to go, we care about the environment. Democrats, the Democrat National Committee, they're always talking about the environment.
At least Trump didn't bother to talk about
[00:10:17] Speaker B: it.
Right? I mean, Trump basically said it's fake. I mean, there's been such a severing of our consensus reality that you have less people believing in man made climate change today than they did five years ago, even though it's clearly worse. But there is this kind of interesting moment that you're talking about the drop of any pretense of a benevolent democracy, a benevolent empire, I mean, spreading human rights and democracy. The pretense of environmentalism. Right, the pretense of the Pentagon being some sort of environmental stewards.
This was the rhetoric under the Biden administration and under the neoliberal doctrine. That was very heavy because they tried to placate liberals and environmentalists to make it seem like they can, you can have a compatible global empire with some sort of sustainable planet. That is not possible. And I think we see that very clearly today that neoliberalism simply incubated the next iteration of fascism. So this movie, Earth's Greatest Enemy, this shows us what happens under the liberal doctrine. It breeds someone like Trump and we have to completely break that mold because the status quo is completely unsustainable, with a habitable planet.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Sy Hersh was on this show exposing that the largest man made methane emission in history was the Nord Stream pipeline destruction. I should say it's not mentioned in your film. Not sure why you didn't mention it, but Western European countries often say they are the best countries for the environment. The European Union has all commissions on it.
How do you explain the green movement in Western Europe and their response to a destruction that causes the largest man made methane emission in history?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the Nordstream pipeline, it was clearly, it was the Biden administration. We see Cy Hirsch and other people coming out and verifying that. The thing about the movie Action is that I didn't even need to say anything that wasn't put out by the government's own data and websites.
All of the data is totally quantifiable through their own output and through their own data. So, you know, we didn't even have to really speculate here. This is just the catastrophic impact that we know about.
So, you know, it really just completely obliterates any face that the EU had any sort of semblance of international norms or rules based order. I mean, we've seen the complete collapse of these institutions.
They're hanging on by a thread and a shred of credibility. They have none left. Gaza destroyed it. So yeah, you can look at the complete, utter, disgusting hypocrisy when it comes to their environmental speak and language and environmental stewardship, but really Gaza really was the nail in the coffin for any sort of credibility for the rest of the world. They are just doormats for US power and empire. They are junior collaborators that are just terrified being held hostage at the barrel of a gun under the fear of sanctions and tariffs by this erratic, extreme government. So you know, whether it's Palestine, whether it's Cuba starving an entire island because of the dictates of the US or whether it's the environment. I mean, you cannot claim that these countries are looking out for their people. They're just slaves to the U.S.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: abby Martin. I'll stop you there. More from the co director of Earth's Greatest Enemy after this break.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with the co director of Earth's Greatest Enemy, Abby Martin. Abby, you were talking about the excuses being made, I suppose, in Western Europe as regards using environmental speak to cover their own militarism. AOC is in your film, Dear Truster. She voted against Marjorie Taylor Greene's $500 million amendment to stop aid to Israel. They're talking about a new generation of politicians in Your country that are supposedly aware of the, if not the environmental impact, at least the human impact and the financial impact of war.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, in the film, you know, it's really obvious that no member of any political party or any member of the ruling class will answer the bare minimum question. Should we count military emissions in global emissions when we're trying to curb emissions? AOC was the only one who did the bare minimum, who said yes. Now I don't think that should be especially lauded. It should be just a very basic fact that we should approach this as, you know, clear eyed, rational beings. But I think AOC represents something really indicative of the larger cycle of this kind of electoral problem, which is we have these insurgent candidates who say they're going to hold power to account and then they get swept up into the system. And I think it just really speaks to the fact that we can't correct this from a few people getting into Congress that are progressives or democratic socialists. This is a bipartisan mandate that has existed since the beginning of the American empire. It's a bipartisan imperial consensus that sustains Zionism, that sustains these 800 bases around the world, that imposes the, that dictates at the barrel of a gun that holds the world hostage. I mean, this is something that I have not heard the most progressive member of Congress step up and say, let's decommission the bases. Let's decommission this global military empire. Somehow this is all kind of the backbone of the mythology of American empire. You need to be a good old capitalist Zionist and imperialist in order to gain power and ascend through these institutions. And sadly, I think AOC as well as so many other people who have gotten into office through this last midterm sweep are going to play out the exact same way. And it speaks to the, to the larger nature of grassroots organizing and the need to actually build power aside from just this duopoly that's going to shift every two to four years.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: I mean, would you stand?
[00:16:39] Speaker B: I have too many skeletons in my closet. The whole Russian thing. They're never going to let me get anywhere near the halls of power option. They're never going to let us get anywhere near the halls of power.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: I've got to ask as well about Gaza, because you made a film in 2019, Gaza fights for Freedom. And I suppose I've got to ask you how you reacted to the images that were coming through despite the censorship from social media as well about the full scale Gaza genocide and what you felt About Biden, Harris, Blinken, Sullivan and the Democrats.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: I mean, ever since I was little, war has been the dominant factor in my life and through every election cycle and it's totally ignored by the ruling class. They pretend that anti war sentiment is not a deciding factor in these elections. I remember the huge repudiation of the Bush administration. I remember Obama saying, look forward, not backward. And Nancy Pelosi saying impeachment was off the table and that was the beginning of the end for me. And to see it go over and over again and to see the Democratic Party establishment subsidize a genocide of my brothers and sisters and colleagues, journalists being hunted, hunted alongside their families, doctors, the entire medical infrastructure destroyed, decimated with my tax dollars in my name and not being able to do anything about it and to be told, go to brunch, go to brunch. The liberals are in power, it has been absolutely catastrophic. And then to ignore the fact, right, to shout down the leftists, to not even give a Palestinian a voice at the dnc. That's how much they hated leftists and Palestinians. That's how much they thought that they could just cast them off. Biden bypassed Congress over 100 times to directly sell weapons to Israel. And then they turn around and think, oh, the socialists cost us the election. No, it's the genocide, stupid. It's the economy, stupid. All these things are connected and Americans can see it very clearly with $6 a gallon, gas at the pump, with groceries 30% higher. All of this is connected with ICE doing field executions in the street street and seen kids shredded every single day on our devices. No, we deserve better than this. That is what the status quo has been. That is what was deemed normal in society before Trump's second term. So, you know, I think Gaza really changed the world. It certainly changed me. And I knew this stuff before, but it made me realize the stakes are too high. There's no going back. I refuse to live in a world where this is normal, where this is considered the price that we have to pay for our.
For our privilege and status in the West. It's sick and torturous and to know my colleagues are suffering still every day, waiting for their homes to be rebuilt, just waiting for the hope, the silver lining, that Democrats will do something to give them the right to return, to rebuild their homes. And we both know that's not going to happen. And it sickens me. Afshin.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: The ruling classes, of course, have long gone away. They're preparing, presumably for the post Trump presidency. You probably noticed some of them People like Antony Blinken trying to make out, oh, we should have done a little bit more for the Palestinians and making comments like that. How do you expect them to be preparing for how they resuscitate their neoliberal rules and formations? How are they preparing right now for the post Trump presidency?
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Well, it's very easy. They're good at point talking Jeffries and Chunk Schumer to say our hands are tied. These are the leaders of the party. So whatever progressive measures that they bring forward, they'll be stymied by the veto power of Trump. Trump just posted today. Remember, I'm potus. Yeah, we know. And we know exactly what's going to happen because we've seen this playbook rolled out several times. They're gonna try to pass a modicum of progressive legislation and it's gonna be stopped dead in and they're gonna say, well, we tried, let's get back to losing, just like we do best.
So look, there's a lot of excitement and rightfully so. I mean, Kansas, Texas, these states turning blue for the first time in my lifetime. I mean that's monumental. And it shows again, the repudiation of this draconian authoritarianism, the fascism, big tech, the data centers, the culture war, the wars. All of Americans see it for what it is, but it's not going to translate to any sort short of policy change. And the Democrats are going to do what they do best, which is co opt these, these movements, mobilize them into just a voter base and just go with more of the same because right now they're locking down with their self preservation. And we, we saw what they did to Angie Nixon in Florida. A democratic socialist that was anti Zionist was this close to actually popping off a blue seat in Florida. And Chuck Schumer said he'd rather not. Not he'd rather not because he's that scared of anti Zionism. So we already see where their loyalties are and we see what they're willing to give up to hold onto their power and their allegiances. And it's going to be another huge disappointment for the American people moving forward.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Have you been surprised about the alliances between libertarians and the left that have now coalesced? Especially in terms of foreign interventions that cost the environment, cost human lives, have.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, I think it's great that the right wing is splitting apart on Israel. I do think that there is this larger psyop at play where there are people trying to basically co opt the, the pro Palestine movement and, and generate energy back into maga. And so there is a faction that's very intentional that's saying we might have to throw Israel under the bus to maintain our hegemony, to maintain the status of our global empire. So they're riding that fine line. And you see J.D. vance, you see the Tucker Carlson's kind of R line, because I don't think they know where it's going to go. All they see is the youth completely rejecting Zionism, where Zionism is becoming totally untenable. So they want to, to, to ride that energy and be able to straddle both sides and, and use it for their advantage.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Beat on this show. It didn't seem like he was strategically trying to triangulate that way. I think there was a kind of recognition.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Well, you know, his dad is. I mean, look, he was just in the White House celebrating the seizure of Venezuela's oil supply with Donald Trump. Where is he on Venezuela? Where is he on Cuba? We have to really speculate. These people who have been cheerleading war their whole lives, is this cynical opportunism or not? But regardless, I love it. Let them fight. Let them split. Let Zionism become untenable because it needs to be. And we need to isolate Israel with every fiber of our being, every single country in the world. Isolate the psychotic, apocalyptic, genocidal, maniac apartheid society until it collapses.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: The US military features in the film obviously a lot because you're talking about the disguised effects of environmental pollution. What do you make of the fact that the US military doesn't look after its own, as you show in the film time and time again, the water pollution at Camp Le Jeune. How is it that they continue to even recruit? Is it having an impact? Has your film made an impact in people not joining up? And of course, the film opens with a veteran. Veteran of the war, of the Iraq War.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, it really shows, like Thomas Young, the paralyzed Iraq war veteran who took his own life writing that letter to Duchenne saying we are the human detritus. We are the ones who are churned out, used as cannon fodder and spit out in the streets, left to die. And that's the state of veterans in the US today. We see the modus operandi of the US military with the top brass that cycle through these bases two to four years, that's not their home. They're not impacted by the destruction of the environment. They poison callously, they're dumping peef as contamination, and they toxify their own soldiers and kill them. And then they deny the claims just Like Camp Lejeune. I mean, we're Talking about a 60 year old story that they're still denying, claims people have died left and right without even knowing why they're sick, why they're dying, why there was a thousand stillborn babies. None of these people were held accountable for callously and knowingly toxifying their own soldiers. But we see it with burn pits. We see it all around the world. Peas contamination at every single base in the US and around the world. That's going to be the next public health crisis. This should be on the nightly news and it's being ignored just like everything else is being ignored when we can't see what's right in front of our faces. But we shouldn't be surprised because the military basically acts as if it's a for profit corporation. So they do the same things that corporations do. Dump, callous, toxify their own people just for money, just for profit, just to line the coffers of defense corporations and oil billionaires. So the people who are the privates and the soldiers, they don't care about those lives. They're just used to make the people at the top richer.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: For many all around the world, Cuba has always been a synonym for national sovereignty. You're one of the few to have interviewed the president of Cuba, Diaz Canal. Do you think he's competent? He's up to the, the job of running that country which is such a symbol across the global South.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: I mean he inherited the worst moment in Cuban history. I mean the oil embargo, the actual suffocation of the island. It's worse than the special period in many ways.
They don't have the support from anyone. There aren't countries stepping up to try to stop this asphyxiation that's imposed by the US he is leading very, in a very crucial time and I think he's doing an excellent job given the circumstances.
I encourage everyone to watch Cuba after Castro to learn more. But yeah, I mean it's absolutely devastating, Afshin, that this is kind of the silent genocide that's happening that no one's really talking about.
Every issue in the world today is a case study of earth's greatest enemy of, of what US imperialism is, is bringing around the world and destroying around the world, killing millions of people every single year with sanctions, with war, with toxifying from the bases, with the takes in the ocean. I mean it's global and it's criminal and it's a dictatorship.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Abby Martin, thank you.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: That's it for the show, Earth's Greatest Enemy is streaming now. Our condolences to all of those of you bereaved or affected by Washington's wars of aggression. We'll be back on Saturday Saturday with a brand new show. Until then, you can keep in touch via all our social media if it starts sense in your country. And head to our channel goingundergrandtv on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See Saturday.
