Let's begin with the rising tensions between Israel and Iran.
Sanctions put into place by the United States and the European Union
are starting to hurt the people of Iran in a major way
with access to food and other imports blocked.
The West hopes that the pain will bring Iran
back to the bargaining table, in terms of its nuclear program.
In the meantime, Israel is stepping up its threats
that an attack on Iran may be imminent
with Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak drawing a line in the sand.
He calls it the 'zone of immunity'
the point at which Israel could no longer put off taking action.
In the West's efforts to isolate Iran
India has announced it will send a delegation into Iran
and has now emerged as Number 1 customer of Iranian oil.
There are new indications China also will send in officials
and this global chess match looks like it may be
a messy one and a long one.
Peter Joseph is the founder of The Zeitgeist Movement.
His group works to tackle some of the toughest issues:
global economic crises, diplomatic issues, and a lot more.
He just returned from Israel.
- Hey there, Peter. I know you spent about a week there.
Talk to me a little bit about your impressions of Israel
of the people you spoke to, and what's going on there.
- Thank you Kristine for having me.
Israel is in a very complex state.
On one side you have a very intelligent public
that is not representative of the state
that's causing all of these general war-like interests:
interest in the occupation, the prisons of the West Bank and Gaza
and everything else that I'm sure we've talked at length, to death about.
It's important to initially point out that
there's an incredible culture there that does not represent the state.
In the speech that I gave to a sold-out audience
full of not only Israelis but Palestinians
there is a general interest to want to see all of these problems STOP.
The Zeitgeist Movement's attempt, broadly speaking
is to get the world to come together with the general foundation
that these issues have to find resolution holistically
or we're going to have some very caustic problems in the future
World War III the first to mention.
- When you say these issues, as you say
war is one of these issues, and it's not just as simple as:
Should we have war or shouldn't we? I mean, there is
number one, a huge defense industry, both in the US and Israel
that, a lot of people say, may have an interest in war.
I know you've written about in the past, as far as consequences of war
that it benefits the upper class
and it results in the denigration of the lower class.
Talk to me about this divide as it relates to war
and if you think there's an undercurrent of something else here
other than a legitimate threat.
- We often hear the term geopolitics;
the correct term is geo-economics.
If you go down to the foundation of the state:
Neolithic Revolution 10,000 years ago
suddenly we went from hunter-gatherer type of nomadic societies
to fixed cities, Mesopotamia
suddenly the introduction of the permanent military.
You ended up with this sort of corporate approach
to economic management, defined as 'the state'
which invariably generates imbalance and conflict
and the necessity to override the interests of other states.
Very similar by the way to how our economic principles work
across the world, through the corporate enterprise and the
'free-for-all' market as I often refer to it.
It's a competitive, war-like system. In the broadest scope
what do we expect when the states begin to behave this way?
If you were to look at a map of all the territorial disputes
all the resource acquisitions, all the annexations gone through history
it's one massive affair of warfare! Thousands and thousands of wars
that have existed for the past 5000 years that have been noted.
The problem is much more underlying.
We can talk about the specifics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We can talk about the Chinese, Russian and Iranian issue
with respect to power development against US
Israel, Canadian and Western interests
which is very terrifying by the way
especially given the financial burden and collapse
we're seeing across the world, which is always
a characteristic of warfare on the horizon.
Underneath the whole thing is the economic premise
and until we find economic resolution
until we begin to learn how to share our resources
speaking poetically, but very literally:
Until we can define a new level of what we see as peace
meaning a collaborative effort
not state entities seeking their own advantage over each other
but something new, which I can talk at length
we're not going to see any resolution to any of these issues.
That's a fundamental premise, in part, of the type of
economic reforms The Zeitgeist Movement pushes forward with.
- What was your reasoning, Peter, for taking this movement?
I know you've got a lot of followers from around the world.
What was your reasoning for going physically to Israel
and speaking there?
- Well, because it is the hotbed of a great deal of tension in the world
it's seen as one of the most pivotal crises and
positions of destabilization in the world.
It was symbolic to go there and to speak on the issue of war.
The lecture that I gave was on the broad definition of the state:
its evolution as I mentioned just a moment ago
and how we really can resolve this issue.
I went there for symbolic reasons, but also
obviously, because of the growing tensions
between these massive superpowers
that are now dividing themselves
that can very easily trigger another world war, which is
what terrifies all of us. Those are a few levels [of] why I was there.
- You've laid out some of these problems
and I think that they're, for anyone who is following what's going on
keeping their hand on a pulse of geopolitics
or as you say geo-economics
these issues are out there. But, are there solutions available
or do you just think war is inevitable between Iran and the West?
I'm not a prophet, but I will say that generally speaking
war has been inevitable for a long time
based on the very nature of the structures that have been installed
and the very dynamic of our economic system.
Are there solutions that can be had in the meantime? Yes
but I don't think they're going to come from
'speaking truth to power' as they say.
I am in deep support of a large, grassroots, global movement
that unifies humanity to step up against this rather sick distortion
that has emerged throughout power across the board.
We can talk about the neuroses of the US Empire
...about the neuroses of various Arabic states, of Israel as well.
We can talk about all of these things to death as far as the specifics
but at the very core of this comes a deep social change
that's required, and it's going to take a grassroots movement
to move this forward; I have little faith in the change
coming from the state empires.
- We understand that you'll be working on it in the meantime.
Peter Joseph, founder of The Zeitgeist Movement.