I once thought Kenneth “you should be permanently removed from all media outlets everywhere in the world” Katzman was the nuttiest TV Zionist I would ever face.

And then I met Stewart Stogel.

When I heard that my opponent on Press TV’s The Debate works for Newsmax, I realized that he probably wasn’t the brightest filament in the pack of journalistic flashbulbs. Even so, his idiocy far exceeded my expectations.

I’ve debated a lot of goofy characters, but this guy takes the cake. Compared to him, Hannity and O’Reilly almost look sane.

To appreciate this guy, you need to watch the video, not just read the rough transcript.

WATCH THE PRESS TV VIDEO

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US indifferent to Bahrain’s want of democracy: Analyst

The comment comes as Bahrainis have staged a mass anti-regime demonstration near the capital to protest against the upcoming Formula One Grand Prix.

Thousands of Bahrainis took to the streets in the village of al-Aali, some 15 kilometers outside the capital Manama, on Friday to express their opposition to the Persian Gulf state’s hosting of the April 19-21 event.

Bahrainis say Formula 1’s governing body, the FIA, should cancel the event over Manama’s ongoing crackdown on protests.

Press TV has conducted an interview with author and Middle East expert, Kevin Barrett, in Madison to further discuss the issue. The program also offers the opinions of New York-based Stewart Stogel with the Newsmax Magazine. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Kevin Barrett, twenty arbitrary arrests of activists prior to the Formula One Grand Prix. So the race is more important than Bahrainis. It raises questions about the Bahraini authorities’ commitment to reform doesn’t it?

Barrett: Well, I think the question is about the Bahraini authorities commitment to reform “have already been answered” as the viewers will recall the Arab Spring died in Bahrain.

We had genuine people’s non-violent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and Bahrain was the next domino that was tottering and about to fall; this is when the Western imperial powers stepped in and shut down the Arab Spring in Bahrain.

They supported the Bahraini government which is kind of a puppet really of the US Empire and of Saudi Arabia which itself is a puppet of this empire as they crushed the non-violent peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain and then the imperial propaganda apparatus went into over drive in using all of the means of their disposal which are quite considerable everything from internet propaganda to probably even subliminal techniques I would imagine are being employed.

They were able to create these artificial destabilization uprisings in Libya and Syria and create vicious bloody civil wars in those countries designed to destabilize the last independent Arab nations.
So this has been an imperial mobilization really of the post-Arab Spring world and Bahrain is the place where they kill the Arab Spring and these rulers have been propped up, the Khalifa dynasty has been propped up by the empire and told this is the kind of country that we like to have in the Middle East.

A very small powerless country that’s really just a US naval air station with a couple of local figure heads running it; taking orders from the West; running all of its policy for the West and crushing any genuine popular sentiments for independence and for running the place on behalf of the local people and so this sets the stage for really what’s the coming conflict in the Middle East which is will this region be governed by its own people or will it be destroyed in destabilization efforts by the empire.

Press TV: Kevin Barrett (your reaction to the other guest)?

Barrett: If Obama isn’t an imperialist then [former Spanish dictator] Franco, Mussolini and Hitler aren’t fascists. Obama was put in power precisely as the velvet glove to follow the Iron fist of the [Dick] Cheney regime that used the false flag attacks of 9/11 to destabilize the Middle East.
Obama was set in there with his nice surface, his fancy talk, his middle name Hussein designed to appeal to people of this region as a way to continue the same imperial policies and in some ways accelerate the same destructive aggressive, illegal imperial policies that have been followed for decades and accelerated under the lawless era left by this 9/11 false flag attack. Obama is the biggest imperialist of the century and if anybody out there doesn’t know that they must be living in a cave somewhere.

Barrett: Obama raised the US military budget more than any other US president in decades, far more than any democratic president. Every other democratic president that’s come into office has actually reduced the increase of the military budget but Obama was the first democratic president since World War II who greatly increased the military budget in his first years in office.
He initiated a brutal drone campaign designed to assassinate political opposition all over the world. He has presided over the biggest expansion of US Empire since what, the Spanish American war.
And you are telling me this guy isn’t an imperialist. Excuse me but what arguments can you possibility muster to claim that Obama had shut down the US Empire; closed all 1000 US military bases there infesting our planet like little cancerous sores everywhere. What has he actually done to shut down the empire?

Press TV: Stewart Stogel do you want to respond to Kevin Barrett there?

Stogel: Who killed Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, freedom fighters? Who beheaded them, freedom fighters? These are the kinds of people you are defending?

Barrett: The short answer to that question is CIA killed Daniel Pearl. Daniel Pearl was killed by the same false flag terrorists running amuck in Pakistan.

Stogel: Who beheaded them? Who massacred them?

Barrett: It doesn’t matter who actually beheaded him. It matters who was paying the executioner who beheaded him and that executioner was obviously in the pay of the same people who are waging false flag destabilization campaigns in Pakistan and every other country on the region.
You should Google the name Raymond Davis. Raymond Davis is a CIA officer who was arrested planning false flag attacks in Pakistan. He was driving around Pakistan setting up bombings of mosques and markets. They were going to be attributed to so called ‘Islamic radicals.’ Google the name Raymond Davis CIA and you will find out the kind of people who killed Daniel Pearl.

Press TV: Viewer comment: “John Kerry, where is your call for regime change that you so eagerly and readily express for Syria? Why do you remain silent [on Bahrain]?”
Dino Di Lucido
Kevin Barrett reaction on that from you?

Barrett: Well, I actually heard a couple of things from the guest (Stewart Stogel) that weren’t complete nonsense so that’s nice. I think it’s true that the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria recognizes that its own destruction would bring in an era of even more repression and violence.
But I think the guest is utterly it appears to be ignorant of basic geopolitical realities which are that we have sort of a US Zionist imperialist axis that some of us consider the real axis of evil going up against those forces in the region and around the world that want to maintain independence.
And in Syria the Russians who are trying to maintain at least a degree of independence and a world in which we wouldn’t have a single imperial center, Washington DC or occupied Jerusalem or whatever are putting their foot down and saying no I’m sorry but NATO is not going to have the chance to overfly Syria and drop bombs and kill tens of thousands of people like they did in Libya. The Russians have said it’s going to have to be fought out on the ground in Syria.
So the imperial forces US, Israel and their puppet states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending these-you know, they open their prisons, they say we’ll give you a lot of money criminals if you want to go in there and blow things up.
And so they are sending these mercenaries into Syria to wreak havoc and Syria is being destabilized by the empire; they’re punishing it for its support of the axis of resistance; its support of Hezbollah and Hammas and its refusal to knuckle under and be a slave of the empire that’s why they are destroying Syria.
It’s interesting that my fellow guest doesn’t even seem to recognize that there is a geopolitical aspect to any of this. He is just kind of delving these surface platitudes that get buzzed on Fox News as kind of brainwashing discourse to try to sucker Americans into remaining as ignorant of the world as they already are.

Barrett: (In response to the other guest) Nobody in the Middle East wants an American military anywhere in the Middle East. The entire Middle East wants US bases out.
They want US bases out. The population of the Middle East wants US bases out. Face that fact Sir. Would you like to be occupied? Would you like your country to be occupied by Chinese bases? Do you want to live under occupation yourself?
You should visit the Middle East yourself sometime. I speak Arabic pretty well and I’ve been there and I have yet to meet anybody from the Middle East who wants American occupation to continue and the people you hang out with over there being the puppets of the empire are probably quite happy but 99 percent of the population wants those US bases out and they want the Zionist occupation to end too.

Stogel: You know it’s funny if all these human rights abuses are going on especially in Bahrain I would have thought that at least the group of 77 would have raised the issue at the UN. I’ve seen very very little even with states ‘sympathetic’ to the anti-government Bahraini forces. I don’t see them making a big issue inside the UN before the human rights commission. Why don’t they do it? I haven’t seen any of what you are talking about.

Press TV: Kevin Barrett why don’t they do it enough?

Barrett: Well, they’re certainly not doing it enough but there are human rights organizations all over the world, including some of the big ones; they are taking a lot of money from the empire through the foundations which is supposed to keep them quiet on Bahrain and other sensitive issues but they are raising the issue of human rights in Bahrain if you haven’t heard about it I think you know again
you’ve been living in a cave.

Stogel: If the issues in Bahrain are that serious there are many sympathetic states in the Middle East why have they not raised on an official level to get legal action taken against the Bahraini authorities?

Barrett: I’m not sure what states you are referring to that are sympathetic to the people of Bahrain obviously Iran would be sympathetic because it’s still an independent state.
Stogel: Why is Iran not raising the issue on a formal level at the UN?

Barrett: I hope they do and maybe since Press TV has a pretty big English speaking audience in Iran they’ll pick it up.

Press TV: Kevin Barrett we are looking at two years on here and we had the US human rights and labor assistant secretary of state for Bureau of democracy, Michael Posner. Well, they said they welcome the call for dialogue by the Bahraini government. That was last year and here we are; is this just talk from the US so they can add their comments on it but yet do nothing about it?

Barrett: Of course it is. The US has decided that the base for the US fifth fleet which is what Bahrain is; is more important than the aspirations for democracy and human rights of the people of Bahrain. That’s not new the US Empire has been making this kind of decision about virtually any country it occupies in the world and there have been many dozens, probably hundreds since World War II.
William Bloom’s great book Killing Hope gives a pretty good record of these US occupations, CIA interventions and military interventions that have killed probably more than ten million people and ruined the lives of many dozens of millions since World War II. Bahrain is just more road kill on the highway or road kill on the Formula one road race of the empire.