Larry Johnson was so kind as to indulge me in having what amounted to a podcast for his YouTube outlet, CounterCurrents. He has a very easygoing style, which made for a fun talk (I hope not too much fun at the expense of information content!). Even though Johnson has regularly mentioned in his regular Judge Napolitano and Dialogue Works talks his role in developing propaganda, erm, information management programs in his time at the CIA, I got a better sense from this discussion how much he had done on this front (a lot!) and how extensive these operations were, even back then.
Just finished watching it and a surprising revelation was when Larry said that as a country, the Ukraine was the biggest contributor to the Clinton Foundation. So the most corrupt couple in American politics received money from the most corrupt country in Europe. Imagine my surprise.
Thanks for this to both Larry and Yves.
I was quite interested by Yves’ speculation about how the Hunter pardon and possible Trump revenge investigations might cause some mainstream interest in the scale of corruption in Project Ukraine. We’ll see how that goes next year I guess. As others have noted, the pardon doesn’t protect Hunter from subpoena and gives some reason to cooperate.
I send Larry a message encouraging him to make the audio of each Counter Currents episode available as podcast.
Why didn’t the Russians do the same? I know they paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for his speech in Moscow, but it’s now clear that that was not enough to change U.S. foreign policy toward Russia.
Clinton was paid by Eltsin circle because Eltsine wanted to be re-elected at any cost, and this is also what Americans wanted in order to secure a firm grip inside Russia. The personal ambition of Eltsin played together with American goals. Americans were hired in order to run re-election campaign and Clinton was part of this. USA wanted to keep any communist or socialist faction from coming back, Eltsin had manipulated in 1993 part of the army in order to run a coup against the parliament he was in difficulty in the public opinion, with Communist Party having good pronostics.
Back then there was no distrust againts USA but a a strong naivety among Russian elites.
Mistrust started when Russian saw USA wanted to control national resources and with the formation of Soros-Kissinger-Rothschild-Khodorkovski alliance under an Open Russia foundation thingy that was supposed to move the ownership of YUKOS from Moskow to London. If so Russia did loose its main energy group.
At the same time NATO was pushing Eastward which combined with the former fact means USA and NATO wanted to break Russia and get the resources.
The feeling was aggravated by the illegal USA-NATO bombing of Serbia.
But back in mid-90’s it was still not apparent.
Your explanation really helped me understand. Thank you!
Yes Ukraine was generous:
https://www.pinchukfund.org/en/about_pinchuk/biography/
and his father-in-law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kuchma
so too was the German Government………$5 million
A very enjoyable interview, lots of great stories.
Yep. The most interesting for me is that it provided perspective in many issues.
Yes, I watched it and then moved on to interviews with Telegraph and with Paul Jay 14 years earlier……….to find myself in agreement with Yves’ viewpoints to a greater extent than I had a priori imagined
I am definately interested in the conversation, but videos (and podcasts) just don’t really work for me– my problem, not yours.
So, a quick search led me here:
YouTube Transcript Generator
Easily convert YouTube videos to text transcripts for free online with NoteGPT. Download or copy the transcripts with timestamps.
https://notegpt.io/youtube-transcript-generator
This is my first time using this tool, but it seems to work pretty well. And it appears that you can download a copy of the transcript– great for copy/paste of select quotes or whatever.
Hopefully this is new and helpful to someone else too.
Thanks LawnDart, that works well. Normal good-but-imperfect accuracy for speech-to-text.
I pasted the generated transcript into ChatGPT, asking it to punctuate the text and make it readable. Instead it bowdlerized the text in the most creepy way possible, all bubblegum and rainbows, including pull quotes that did not exist in the transcript. It’s actually frightening how the tone was converted into a cheery, meaningless summary.
Don’t trust people you don’t know, and you don’t know who is behind the computer services you are using.
Yes, tool is good – thank you.
Very edifying and enjoyable, thank you, Yves.
Great interview!
My parents were quite the travelers, and went to Russia and the Ukraine for a month in 1993, of which they spent a week of it in the latter, and upon their return I asked mom what the Ukraine was like?
She dryly related that it was like Iowa, but without the charm.
From the UK – Larry touched on a point that shouldn’t be underestimated and that is that the Ukraine conflict has brought together a huge number of people around the world who are opposed to US (and UK/ Anglo Saxon) Imperialism and really given it legs. When I discovered Naked Capitalism and The Moon of Alabama I thought I’d discovered gold. After Vietnam I turned everything relating to the USA off. I dismissed the US as a hopeless case. I was wrong. ‘Progressive’ US is way ahead of Europe – but US politics are primitive. The more I read Yves, the more I appreciate how incisive she is and the more I receive Larry’s stuff, the more I realise just how much he has his finger on the pulse of history. I took me years to get where I am now but if this kind of resource had been around in the 60’s we would have changed the world by now. That’s why ‘they’ are desperate to stop it.
I put on closed captions and WHOA I had no idea Yves was head of murders and acquisitions at Sumitomo Bank! (20:35)
Do not mess with the moderators.
Being familiar with how routinely she kills it, I’m not surprised in the least.
A real treat to hear your voice, Yves, thank you!
Awesome interview, Yves. You also sound like you’re in good health, which is great to know.
Good interview with nice mix of current events commentary and your personal/professional backgrounds. Enjoyed it thoroughly. As mentioned above, $$$Clinton/Ukraine$$$ connection particularly interesting.
Great interview!
My parents were quite the travelers, and went to Russia and the Ukraine for a month in 1993, of which they spent a week of it in the latter, and upon their return I asked mom what the Ukraine was like?
She dryly related that it was like Iowa, but without the charm.
Weird. Saw identical comment above, attributed to WUK. Gotta love the mysteries of the internet.
Glitch in the matrix.
A version that I heard years ago subbed KS for IA.
Thanks for this to both Larry and Yves.
I was quite interested by Yves’ speculation about how the Hunter pardon and possible Trump revenge investigations might cause some mainstream interest in the scale of corruption in Project Ukraine. We’ll see how that goes next year I guess. As others have noted, the pardon doesn’t protect Hunter from subpoena and gives some reason to cooperate.
I sent Larry a message encouraging him to make the audio of each Counter Currents episode available as podcast.
That was a real treat. Thank you, both of you. Yesterday I was consumed by the events in Syria. It had the distinct feel of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In more ways than just the confusion. I wish you two would get together and analyze the sequence of events that led to this. Because there is a clarity between you that is contagious.
I understand your sense, and to some extent share it, though I do not see it as “Berlin Wall” which – we now know – as Thatcher and Mitterand feared at the time – would “unfreeze WW2”.
I see the coup in Syria – and I think it is a “coup” like the one in Romania that replaced Ceausescu in 1989 – within the ruling clique. I suspect the Russians had told Assad repeatedly to negotiate with opponents and step down and when he steadfastly refused – made their own ‘deal’
If anything, I see it as akin to the fall of Saddam Hussein (the other Ba’athist Secular State) and the hell that unleashed…..I fear Turkey may be next
The comments that Assad refused to negotiate out of cussedness are uninformed. Per Kevork Almassian of “The Gaggle,” Erdogan set the precondition that Syria had to accept back the Syrian refugees in Turkiye. Assad said he could not do that, where would they go, unless Erdgon helped Syria reacquire the Golan Heights or US/Kurdish occupied territory, or the Turkiye buffer zone, otherwise the influx would be massively destabilizing.
Cussedness ? Not at all but self-preservation perhaps. What is Erdogan supposed to do with 4 million Syrian refugees ? They are unpopular in Turkey.
EU states were already talking with him about recovering his diaspora – Germany has > 1 million Syrians thanks to Merkel now forming criminal networks and responsible for huge surge in knife crime.
Maybe US should be leaving and returning the agriculture and oil to the populace. All the Syrians I encounter seem to be from Damascus unless they are Kurds.
I see reports that US Kurds are now fighting Turkish Kurds in some NATO sparring contest between Erdogan and whoever runs USA
Like Turkey EU wants rid of Syrians snd Afghans and Ukrainians before voters explode in revolt. The largest single group (38% applicants) applying for German Citizenship is Syrian currently.
There are 4.5 millions Syrian refugees in EU and things rub up badly between them and Turks who also make up a large refugee group in addition to those here long term.
This is a reading comprehension fail. The “cussedness” refers to Assad, not Erdogan. Some commentators have fiercely criticized Assad for refusing to talk. If Erdogan insisted on Syria taking the entirely of its ~4 million refugees back, when the total Syrian population was down to 10 million even before you reduce that further by the people living in areas under US and Kurdish control, that is obviously would have vastly destabilized Syria and worsened its economic crisis.
Sorry, I took your use of „cussedness“ as an American term to describe Assad. Now you refer to Erdogan. Assad failed to negotiate as required by Russia and by Iran and even France was in this picture.
The economic crisis in Syria is entirely due to USA and that has not changed. US forces are still occupying 33% country and Erdogan wants them gone
Assad was never going to remove them.
Now Erdogan has freedom for his terrorists to fight US terrorists without Russian bombing.
Since most of the Syrian refugees are draft-dodgers in Europe Assad could have employed them
Is Larry on Tinder? Asking for a friend. Hi Yves :)
Now that’s what I call an Antidote du Jour! It’s been waay too long since I’ve heard your delightful voice and witty conversation – as you stated in your intro, Larry J proved to be a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking host (and like you, quite knowledgeable in his former occupation). Somehow I’ll have to find time to add him to my list of go-to sources (without sacrificing time I spend here at NC, natch ;^)
Besides me just ‘blowing smoke’, y’all briefly touched on Burisma and the Bidens – I’m pretty sure I remember reading at the time of the MH-17 shootdown that Burisma just happened to be drilling natgas test wells in the neighborhood of where the plane crashed – in an active Donbas war zone (“Donitfigger!” I remember thinking at the time). Pretty sure I read that from local ‘boots on the ground’ and other knowledgeable contributors to the Vineyard of the Saker’s deeply missed blog. I have yet to read John Helmer’s book (The Lie That Shot Down MH-17) but his blog posts suggest that he is more interested in the “who” and “how” and “cui bono?” – inquiries into “why” seem to run aground at “oops”, or, a “real fustercluck”. If memory serves (big if!) Burisma ceased hunting for frackable locations at about this time but Hunter kept his lucrative Board seat. I don’t have a clue to the ultimate fate of the ‘company’ – does anybody?
Once again, I hope that the NC faithful can hear your voice and ‘off the cuff’ sense of humor more often. I remember having an ‘ohmygod moment’ listening to Harry Shearer’s Le Show when he announced that you would be a guest on his next show. (You were a guest 2x, amirite?) And at the risk of bragging, it was a HUUUGE treat to meet and hang with you (and Michael Hudson too!!) at one of the last NYC Meetups- my first question to you was about the future of the Skunk Party- I can’t recall your words but you let me down gently and implied that it would need to be somebody else’s crusade- you certainly have plenty of ‘fish to fry’!
So, in closing…….more of this please!!
First time I’ve seen Yves in the flesh as it were – I assume the image was her – and grumbled that it wasn’t fair that someone should be so loaded with brains AND beauty!
If you haven’t seen old GFC videos (now sadly delisted), you haven’t seen nothing yet.
Something tells me Yves prefers to not be the sex symbol she is, lol. Why I settled on Larry for my affections.
The obvious question is why does the establishment discard people like Larry and Yves as soon as they question the emperor’s clothes. Is there no way that intelligent and honest people can form institutions that can displace the corrupt organizations that control the U.S.? Until such outsiders get inside the halls of power, the U.S. is going to continue its slide to ruin.
a comment about the words of Larry Johnson at 12:35, “an economist by the name Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber” (he says Servant-Screiber) and Yves Smith telling she remembers this person. I am puzzled, because the only JJSV (as he used to sign his articles and was then nicknamed) was not an economist but a journalist and a politician. Johnson tells “Servan-Schreiber was convinced the CIA was everywhere …. /… we did plant articles in his magazine that he didn’t realize were planted by us”.
Maybe, but the point is that JJSV was an Atlantist. The magazine is “L’Express” and he founded it in the 50’s as a replica of American weeklies. Servan-Schreiber was anti-De Gaulle and staunch pro-American…..
So on this Larry Johnson has mixed up something, also Yves Smith if she recalls Servan-Schreiber as an economist.
Thanks for bringing up Schreiber.
It is funny that Larry mentions Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. I once worked about a story that involved the French paper L´Express which he founded in 1953 with his wife and senior editor Francoise Giroud. Now the interesting thing is that Schreiber´s intention was to print truth about the new French Republic. But the men he was to put under scrutiny he met every day in some bar or party or other social event and was big friends with. He was always part of the game, half newspaper publisher half political advisor. To understand Schreiber gives you an understanding of how the French state works. Among other things this “co-habitation” (I am using it in the incorrect context actually) of allegedly opposing political factions was of course the result of the French 1940 defeat. There is a continuation of priorities there: When the French state was regarded to be in danger, all factions united. Which means social democrats and fascists. This went on after 1945. Every time at the expense of the Communists. So Schreiber knew on which side to stand.
It would be fascinating to hear from Larry WHICH stories he planted and then of course circle back to French Secret Service and what they knew or did not know.
@Larry, there is a book there!
p.s. The Schreiber are/were an interesting huge clan:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famille_Servan-Schreiber
As far as I understand the idea of pro-de Gaulle or anti often was mere surface.
Schreiber joined de Gaulle in 1943 and then left for the US to become a pilot (he did not see combat). However he was a close friend of left-wing PM Mèndes-France in the 1950s and opposed de Gaulle´s “coup” in 1958. As the Communist purge in France of post-1945 goes Schreiber was not concerned.
It would be interesting to hear experts with intimate knowledge of secret intelligence of that era talk about this. Because eventually they all sold out on the delusion of a great France post 1945.
Schreiber had a son who died young. May be the mix-up comes from there. Or from the fact that it´s a huge family (there was also a JCSS the brother: Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber)
No, sorry, the Servan-Schreiber I knew of (not knew) was a French journo/publisher of a very intellectual bent. Not anything as dopey as an economist.
Not finished watching but otherwise I will forget:
The information manipulation would be much less powerful with a less omnipresent internet culture and less monolithic intellectual one.
The blogosphere/online information archives are no replacement for book reading and the scholarship of records and studies.
However to cover the knowledge of entire eras and not only the past 15 years is necessary to create connections between tropes.
Besides I have had the impression that material from the early 2000s and before starts to disappear online because it is of less interest as less and less people know of it. A vicious circle. So I do like my hard copies or to know that they exist in libraries.
Chris Hedges has also stressed that for him being a writer reading books is vital for his skills and reflective processes. No social media. You need to read those 1000 pages if the study is 1000 pages. And you have to dig into it.
Yves of course – and I am as an individual listener thankful – points this out. But Yves – as almost everyone here – is from a pre-net generation.
What will happen once we are not around?
I must state, 90% of the people who have made sense since 2022 and withstood the insanity and furthered education on these matters and the rising dangers are pre-internet educated.
However an entire generation of journalists has grown up relying more on the net than books. Which then produces such articles like the one on THE INTERCEPT past autumn about the Powell Memo. As if that would have been discovered right then.
Well, the Memo has been discussed since the 1970s and if one had read the texts of the past that article might not have turned out that naive.
i.e. the internet will usually only contain info and knowledge that has been produced by humans before.
After all events discussed online originate not with the online world but the real one.
So we are at the danger of forgetting to return to the sources, to where things happen.
Seymour Hersh, Robert Parry, Jeff Cohen, Barbara Ehrenreich, Studs Terkel were products of the real world.
Where there is unprepared territory you are forced to develope the skill to prepare the ground first.
While young reporters today via internet believe they can always build onto something that is pre-existent.
This btw is one reason why the “narrative-“ism has spread with such a magnitude.
People who don´t have to bother with collecting raw data, mining the real world and real beings, under real circumstances, but instead find finished interpretations of data all over the place will instantly start not to acquire new raw data but rearrange what is already there. They will re-arrange old narratives into new ones.
The idea of sampling is a product of luxury. At some point the discipline however dies if everyone is merely a sampler. It is being hollowed out.
Another problem, the assumption everything that is presented to us as a “record” or “document” is automatically “the truth”.
Assange himself I believe cautioned that the information from Wikileaks would almost never present some major truth. In fact to believe in those leaks in an absolutist manner would perpetuate errors made by the system itself. Take say Wiki leaking those cables of US embassies world wide.
There was a lot of secret info in those. But does that mean their CIA intel was true just because it was leaked. Of course not. Much of it was bullshit – by embassy personnel who never left their condo and researched things – online.
Instead of going out to the streets.
p.s. reading literatury carefully:
For those who have seen Netflix`s THE CHAIR series: The professor for English literature is voted out of her chair becaue students cannot keep up with her reading syllabus which contains The Canterbury Tales. This is her answer: „“Chaucer has survived more than 600 years of literary criticism. And if you can’t figure out that he’s badass, and just stay f*ck out my classtoom”“ (great work there by the one and only Holland Taylor, also prominent in the – argh – “MORNING SHOW” – with a bunch of other great actors. Damn you Apple TV+)
I was today years old, listening to this, when I finally got the name “Yves Smith.”
(If you’re even slower than me: Adam Smith > Eve Smith > Yves Smith)
Sigh. My brain not been doing well last few years. But it’s getting better.
How about Yves Montand?
Haha, yes! On the the reasons for choosing Yves was the prominent “Yves” were top of their game: Yves Saint Laurent and Yves Montand.
I was about to make the same joke!
I was even looking for Montand’s famous trying-to-be-funny-scene with Tony Randall (odd walk) but couldn’t find it on YT.
Eventually I feared I might get across as too childish around here and banned for life.
p.s. Isn’t Yves strictly a male name?
Yes. There is a proud tradition of women writing under men’s names. George Sand. George Eliot.
The reason is that a writing sample, when attributed to a female name, is scored lower than when the same text is attributed to a male name.
However, cognitive bias research has also found that when someone forms a positive impression of a person or group, it is pretty resistant to later negative information.
I did not out myself for some time, and then by speaking at a conference.
I really miss Bill Moyers, especially shows like this (with Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith):
How Big Banks Victimize Our Democracy
https://billmoyers.com/episode/how-big-banks-victimize-our-democracy/
And the funny thing is that even though this show was from 2012, it’s EVEN MORE RELEVANT TODAY! (except as a comment about Yves and Larry’s discussion – sorry about that!)
Aaaw, thanks!
Thanks!
AND: there is a printable transcript!
Which can be translated.
Publicity can ruin you.
I was socialized in a time when letters to the editor were signed by real name, sometimes including the address. Unthinkable today.
But not for the crazy ones who attack you online. It´s for those who know your name, read or hear about it, and then punish you in the professional world in ways you cannot defend against. But that´s what hate speech nonsense of course never addresses.