Neutrality Studies. (Tri)Weekly Recap #8

September 21 - October 11

Hola!

Pascal here. As always I’m a bit late with my “weekly” recap. This time, the update has to cover even three weeks. But, I have a few excuses. The main one being the neutrality studies conference I’m organizing here in Kyoto, and just the sheer number of things that happened over the past weeks, with Iran’s missile strikes, a new Japanese Prime Minister, and last but not least a censorship wave on YouTube that I wrote about in my last post.

Now, in the last seven recaps I listed the videos I posted on YouTube and gave short summaries of what they were about. Let me change things up a bit and instead discuss a couple of issues that have been important since the last update.

Georgia

I did several programs on Georgia, as the small Caucasus nation will have a general election coming up on October 26, and the narrative battle about what this election means is heating up. While many Western media outlets and even academic analysts paint a picture of Georgia as a country turning slowly autocratic and “pro-Russian”, my guests find such assertions mostly ridiculous. The situation is obviously much more nuanced. I had great discussions about this with Alexander Mercouris, Lasha Kasradze, and Ambassador Jack Matlock.

US Empire and the (Failing) Proxy War in Ukraine

I am happy to report that I had a great talk with fellow geopolitics YouTuber, Danny Haiphong—who does wonderful work over on his channel—and that we even agreed to collaborate. Danny lets us translate and upload his videos to our 8 multi-language channels over on the SaneVox Network, where we now make his episodes available in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese.

Naturally, we also talked about the state of the US empire and the now obviously failing Proxy War in Ukraine, which was also the topic of a short analysis I did two weeks ago when it became obvious that the Biden Administration is now throwing Zelenskyi under the bus.

The Failed European Project

Next up, I had two very good conversations about Europe (and Germany more specifically). One was with Ulrike Guérot, one of Germany’s most outspoken public intellectuals, and John Pang, a wonderful Malaysian thinker, in which we compared the European Union and ASEAN. The discussion was so lively and insightful, that we ended up talking for nearly 90 minutes. Turns out, we all agree that the ASEAN model is much more promising for the next decades, as the EU discredits itself not only as a peace project but also as a democratic forum. Especially in the eyes of the Global South. The second talk was with another great German thinker, Leo Ensel, with who I discussed Europe’s sleepwalking into yet another general war if the situation with Russia is not de-escalated soon. And just to spice things up, I published a talk my friend, Fritz Edlinger, from the Austrian Magazine “International” did with one of BSW’s new EU-parliamentarians, Michael von der Schulenburg, about the (soon to be) lost Ukraine Proxy War and its ramifications. My own take on why neutrlaity helps escape such wars you’ll find in an interview done with me by my colleagues over at the Groong Podcast.

Propaganda and Censorship

And then I had to dedicate several programs to the topic of censorship and propaganda—online and offline. There is so much spin going on at the moment, combined with a crackdown in the West on free speech that one is really left to wonder how MSM pundits still seem capable of pretending that this is normal. Nothing to see here when critical voices get shut down and a former US Secretary of State officially calls the First Amendment a “roadblock” that makes it “difficult” for the executive to govern. The mindset of these people is quite fantastic. Scary times ahead for us in “the free West”.

How does money work?

This is a topic that I haven’t explored yet on my channel, but one that I actually feel quite hot about. I once read this great book by Dirk Ehnts on “Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics”, which taught me so much about misconceptions regarding the role of money in sovereign states, and forever I wanted to go deeper into the subject with people who understand monetary mechanics. Luckily, I found two great academics. One is Professor Randy Wray, who’s been working on MMT for decades, and the other is Professor Dejan Šoškić, a former Governor of the Serbian central bank. While Dejan does not view himself as an MMT scholar, he helped me a lot with my questions about how central banks approach the economy. Importantly, he also added a discussion about misconceptions concerning the Russian economy. I found this fascinating.

Iran and Israel

Without a doubt, the saddest topic that I looked at was the horrible developments in West Asia. If you are watching my channel regularly, you know that I talk about Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon a bit, but not on a daily basis, and not as profoundly as other channels do. The ongoing genocide in Gaza and the inhumanity with which not only Isreal but the entire Collective West is treating Arabs in these countries is just beyond words to me, and I actually have to avoid this sometimes to not plunge into emotional despair. Besides, by now Israel and many supporting Western states have committed so many war crimes in Palestine that I also just can’t follow them anymore. This desensitization to the worst crimes humanity can commit is progressing at a horrible speed.

However, I do try to follow and talk about macro developments, especially the constantly looming threat of an all-out war between US/Israel and Iran. It seems to me and many other commentators on YT (especially Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou from the Duran) that a decision has been made somewhere in Washington to shift from Ukraine to Iran. If indeed true, we might see much worse things coming our way in West Asia. I’m still praying that the war with Iran is not a done deal yet and that somehow the mood in the US and Europe will shift toward finally putting pressure on Israel to wind down the insanity. But I don’t have much hope, to be honest.

Japan

For those of you who are still reading: I also did a little program in which I outlined my thoughts on Japan’s new PM. He dissolved parliament and the whole country is now in campaign mode, as Ishiba is trying to get a strong popular mandate for his time in office. If he succeeds, this might be the beginning of an interesting premiership. But everything will depend on the outcome of this snap election, also slated for the weekend in two weeks (just like Georgia). Let’s wait and see.

That’s it for the last three weeks. Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Pascal