10 years in prison is the maximum sentence for making threats to kill in decent assault and burglary with intent to commit rape It's now also the maximum sentence for lying on a passenger location form This is the policy announced by Matt Hancock yesterday We think it's probably to make up for having actually quite a weak policy on travel restrictions He's come out with something which is incredibly Authoritarian and I imagine very unlikely to ever be used I can't imagine anyone going away for 10 years, but anyway, it's a sign of The tactics this government are comfortable using they don't want to pay sick pay They don't want to have proper quarantine, but they will put you away for 10 years I'll be discussing this new policy with Aaron Bustani. How are you doing Aaron? I'm doing very well Michael. How are you keeping? I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine haven't been out. I haven't left the front door and like three days, which is a little bit worrying Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow We It's not it's not amazing. We are also going to be discussing tonight huge issues We're going to be talking about Joe Biden who has Stopped or said the US will no longer support offensive operations In the Saudi war on Yemen, Britain aren't following suit. We'll ask David wearing why and we'll get Rivka brown on to talk about labor's new anti-semitism advisory board another story about labor and spy cops and then The new the new zoom call that has captured the world's imagination You know the score share the show link tweet on the hashtag tisky sour But your super chats under the YouTube video and comment on the twitch feed On Tuesday Matt Hancock announced new travel restrictions to come into force next Monday to keep new variants of COVID-19 out of the UK Hancock announced that arrivals from countries on the red list which currently includes South America and Southern Africa Would have to stay for 10 days in hotel quarantine at a cost to the traveler of 1,750 pounds Arrivals from the rest of the world will not be subject to hotel quarantine But will be legally obliged to take a COVID test on day two and day eight after their arrival Those tests will be genomically sequenced so that we know what new variants we might be letting in we'll find out a little bit too late But it's better than nothing now the rules themselves have been trailed for a while There were a few surprises. However, it was the punishments for non-compliance that sparked political controversy Passenger carriers will have a duty in law to make sure that passengers have signed up for these new arrangements Before they travel and we'll be fined if they don't and we'll be putting in place tough fines for people who don't comply This includes a 1,000 pound penalty for any international arrival who fails to take a mandatory test a 2,000 pound penalty to any international arrival who fails to take the second mandatory test as well as Automatically extending their quarantine period to 14 days and a 5,000 pound fixed penalty notice rising to 10,000 For arrivals who fail to quarantine in a designated hotel We're also coming down hard on people who provide false information on the passenger locator form Anyone who lies on the passenger locator form and tries to conceal that they've been in a country on the red list in the 10 days before arrival here will face a prison sentence of up to 10 years So lots of fines there, but it was that 10-year prison sentence which really raised eyebrows now the situation or the Circumstance in which you could find yourself with that 10-year prison sentence is if you travel to somewhere or you arrive from somewhere Sorry from which is a red list country. So for example imagine you're in Brazil You're trying to get back to Britain, but you don't want to do the hotel quarantine You go via Miami and then the British authorities you tell them Oh, no, I've been in Miami the whole time So if you lie on that form and say no, I haven't been in a red list country When in fact you have then according to Matt Hancock you could end up in prison for 10 Years We're going to talk about sort of the policy Announcement in more detail first of all I want your your take specifically on that on that fret of 10 years in prison for lying on a passenger locator form Well, I hope I'm a little bit less pixelated now, Michael apparently a little like I was coming live from 1992 a second ago in terms of the In terms of this measure. Yeah, clearly, it's just performative authoritarianism to cover for ultimately a huge failure a historic failure Of policy and governance when it comes to public health measures. There was polling out. I think And last week beginning of this week two days ago The beginning of this week showing that even amongst Labour supporters 84% of Labour supporters think the government's doing a good job on vaccinations That's entirely fair. I think it's also entirely fair to say they've done a decent job on economic stimulus I mean, my god, they should be given we're running a 20% deficit the highest of any major economy where they've completely failed Is actually keeping people safe keeping Various mutations out of the country keeping the R-rated down and this is to make up for that And you know what it may well work Michael because this is the exact game the Tory's been playing for the last 10 years And as we've seen each general election, they get a higher share of the vote So I think it's entirely plausible On their side that this gestural performative authoritarianism makes up for very real shortcomings when it comes to policy I think I mean, I imagine you're right that they won't be punished for example for putting forward this this very authoritarian policy The Tories aren't normally punished for that kind of thing. But I think there are many people who are seeing through What is quite a transparent ruse? I think this was a text from a Tory MP to Alex Wickham It was in the politico email this morning. And so the Tory MP writes We've been stuck on a border's policy that is too weak and now Hancock has shit the bed and come up with this empty threat to over compensate Now that has been I think you're hearing actually lots of Tory backbenchers speak along those lines It's also quite possible that Matt Hancock didn't really want to Announce this policy This seems to be a bit of a messy compromise between the prime minister and Matt Hancock Matt Hancock wanted to have a blanket quarantine policy which would apply to all countries because I mean you can fault the guy, but he does seem to understand Um, you can't keep variants out by just lip restricting travel from places where you already know They are you actually do need A blanket policy but sort of to come out and and it not looked like the government are being weak He's had to announce this quite embarrassing Um, I think policy to say that if you lie on this form you get a similar Punishment to if you've um, as I said in the introduction committed burglary with intent to rape Um, so, you know, this is this is a real sentence for hard criminals Now the Labour Party are backing blanket hotel quarantine Just like Matt Hancock is in private and it is one of the issues they are making really loud noises about They've got lots of policies. You don't really notice. This is one. They are consistently pushing Let's look at the relevant exchange from today's prime minister's questions Another area where the prime has repeatedly delayed and now changes policy pretty well every day Is securing our forders against variants of covid Every week the prime minister comes here and says we've got one of the toughest regimes in the world We know his home secretary disagrees with him We know the health secretary disagrees with him Luckily, mr. Speaker oxford university keep track of how tough border restrictions are in every country They say that there are at least 33 countries around the world Which currently have tougher restrictions for the united kingdom 33 prime minister including canada Denmark japan israel There are many others In fact, they say we're not even in the top bracket of countries for border restrictions 50 days after we first discovered discovered the south african variant 50 days How does the prime minister explain that? mr. Speaker there is There are some countries in europe that do not even have a hotel quarantine Scheme such as the one we're putting in on monday We have amongst the toughest border regimes anywhere in the world and people should understand that on a normal day, mr. Speaker At this time of year you could expect about 250,000 people to be arriving in this country We've got it down to about 20,000 5,000 from whom are involved in bringing vital things into this country such as medicines and food as we discussed last week And he agreed that was a a good idea, mr. Speaker Unless he actually wants to cut this country off from the rest of the world Which i think last week he said he didn't want to do unless of course he changed his mind again, mr. Speaker We have i think that this policy is measured. It is proportionate. It is getting tougher from monday. I hope that he supports it Now any regular viewer of this show will know that britain doesn't have one of the toughest travel policies In the world. We only required a negative test from the 15th of january So while he's saying hotel quarantine isn't in place in in lots of european is in france isn't it isn't everywhere though He's correct on that on most counts. We were really really far behind everyone else We were an outlier in terms of how relaxed we were about international travel into this country It's also worth noting that whilst he loves to compare britain to countries who are even more relaxed than ourselves It's not a surprise You know at this point in time Which countries are succeeding and which countries aren't so australia, new zealand japan vietnam They have all Restricted incoming travel and that's the reason why they have such low covid cases and low death So i'm not sure why we wouldn't be comparing ourselves to those successful countries instead of excusing inaction because other people are even worse Now unfortunately for boris johnson on the day he was or in the week Sorry, he's trying to argue that britain actually has a very Tough system when it comes to incoming travel a journalist Arrived in britain from south africa So south africa obviously we hear all the time about the south africa variant the variant Which is somewhat resistant to the vaccine? We don't know how significant this will be when it comes to severe disease But when it comes to moderate disease the astrazeneca vaccine isn't very good against that south africa variant So this should be um the type of incoming travel we're particularly Worried about however this journalist sharon feinstein said she had very few checks at all She described on tuesday to the bbc her experience of arriving at hefro They're full of documents. I had my passenger locator form. I had my test my negative covid test I had various other things Proof as to why I had traveled in the first place, which is in november And I was through in 10 minutes as you said, uh, no one was there. No one was checking me You know, it was very distressing to be honest. I wasn't trying things about it I looked around people were waving people in this direction that direction Um, and then I did the electronic passports and I was through I was in the arrivals hall within 10 minutes I'd expected to be an hour as I was when I arrived in south africa because they did Check everything. So I was shocked and I was as I say, I wasn't triumphant I was very saddened because of what we're going through because of how desperate our situation is I mean with the fourth highest death rates in the world, let's get a grip We're doing all this we're spending all this money to go around testing people who may have the south african strain And I could be incubating it Um, how do we know how many people are infected at the airport? Not only that I was on that little passenger train from Where I got off to the the customs and we were crammed together like sardines There was no one to enforce social distancing You know, I thought if I if I'm going to get the virus anyway, it's going to be a heat throw Now there were a number of things that were really worrying Um about what that journalist said there I mean, obviously she she said in that interview that she will be self isolating for 10 days So even though there weren't any checks, it seems like she's going to do the responsible thing Or at least that's what she's telling the the bbc. Obviously if you're someone who you know Doesn't really, you know, you're not keen to self isolate You probably need a bit of nudging to do it Then the fact that you can go straight through heat throw with no checks or anything That's not a very good sign Most worrying though, I think is that even if you are someone who wants to do the right thing So Sharon Feinstein was a person speaking there. She sounds like she does She's saying to get to her house before she could self isolate She has to go through a very busy airport She has to go on a packed You know, there's trains that go between the the runway and and the airport And that to me sounds like a potential super spreader event coming from a country with whether the dominant strain of kovat 19 Is specifically the strain we don't want to come into this country or to become dominant into this country because it could completely Disrupt our vaccination program Aaron, I want to bring you in on this point I fought Kirsten on that point was actually fairly effective in PMQs and and Boris Johnson's Line that actually we have a very tough tough system. I don't think anyone's believing it at this point. Are they No, and I think I think the specifics really matter here, Michael So let's go to Vietnam And I think Vietnam is a really useful country to point to you can point to Singapore You can point to Taiwan But Vietnam is a very is a very poor country It's a very large country and it has a huge land border with China So, you know, you're looking at a country that's poorer than Bulgaria, for instance, Singapore is one of the wealthiest countries in the world per head But Vietnam had about 35 deaths. I believe so far It blocked all travel from China inbound travel from China on the first of february On the first of february last year It blocked all incoming travel on the 22nd of march Michael When did we close nightclubs and bars and restaurants in this country last year? Was it the 23rd of March? It was the 20th 20th of March And so that was the kind of that was how we were behaving by then already you've had all incoming Passengers from from China more than a month and a half. That's happened And about the same time in fact the same day that Boris Johnson goes to hospital Vietnam says, you know what? We're not going to have any new people entering the country They'd already closed all schools and that's why they've only had 35 deaths It's not because they're fixing the numbers It's not because they have uh, you know, they've thrown huge amounts of money at this They've got very effective tests and trace but the the the the two key interventions they made Incredibly low cost. I mean clearly they're going to have massive consequences of the economy people's mental health As they do here right now, but closing schools and closing borders And they did it early. They did it decisively and it worked And I think just holding those comparisons up like you say we are literally A year behind we're a year behind Vietnam and we're still not doing things as well as they are But when you look at quarantine hotels when you talk about the the and a relatively informed conversation about, you know How this might work through borders a relatively informed conversation when it comes to school closures and so on We're a year behind Vietnam Vietnam. That's not to denigrate Vietnam It's an incredibly impressive country given everything. It's faced over the last 80 90 years But it's not a very wealthy country And I think it's really incumbent on us as people in the United Kingdom to say our political class Our media class has been utterly second rate Compared to a country, which like I say is poorer than Bulgaria Romania on a per head basis And I think that really does give food for thought to people who believe in British exceptionalism You know, we have been completely massively outperformed By a very very poor country a country which let's be let's be real Most brits would look down on and they would say, you know, they're nothing compared to great Britain Britannia rules the waves look at the facts. Look at the data hugely impressive response by Vietnam and it highlights how pooling and abject ours has been No, I totally agree with that and I mean there's a and this is a this is a lesser point We shouldn't say the problem here is people on left twitter This policy was made by the government and they're the only people who should be blamed for it But I do find it quite frustrating when I see people on the left who say sort of like How dare you back a policy of restricting travel severely during a pandemic? That's not the real issue. The real issue is we need a well functioning test and trace system Now we do we need a well functioning test and trace system We do need to support people So that they can self isolate if they get contacted by that that test and trace system It's outrageous. We don't have those things But at the same time the countries which have been successful At limiting outbreaks of COVID-19. They have all had severe travel restrictions I don't think The the sort of principles that people stick to in normal times don't necessarily apply in a pandemic and The thing I think that's really important here that I don't think is quite cut through to everyone Is that closing your borders or you know to to most people in a pandemic is not a beg of thy neighbor policy It's not saying look screw you. We're going it alone It's actually the opposite Because if you close your borders during a pandemic and I'm saying specifically this is during a pandemic You're not only stopping new variants and new cases coming into your country You're stopping new variants and new cases leaving your country And I mean britain has been quite a hotbed for for new variants So the fact that we've had lots of international travel going through britain. It hasn't been very good for us It probably hasn't been very good for everyone else. There are lots of countries who are now having Spikes because of the variant which we think originated in kent. So to lock off travel benefits everyone And it's not a coincidence that we're not worried about the new zealand variant or the australia variant or the japanese variant or the vietnamese variant We're not worried about those because those countries have taken responsible actions Which yes have included basically shutting their borders to most travelers and that doesn't just benefit them It benefits us all so I do think most of the arguments against having very strict travel restrictions are very very weak in this case Aaron do you want to comment on that? I mean, I don't know if you've seen sort of a similar level of sort of people saying like For example, when this when this 10 year prison sentence or threat of 10 year prison sentences I'm sure it's never going to happen people say. Oh, this is what you asked for when you encouraged Strict to travel measures I mean to me. I don't find it very convincing I don't know what you make of it. Is there something I'm missing should we at least be worried about the rhetoric That we used when we caught when we used when we call for these policies Well, I think you know Labor had the advertising campaign which highlighted the issue of needing to close the borders And I think it was couched in a way which wasn't particularly useful I mean, I agree with the intervention as a policy intervention. You need to articulate why But it needs to be couched with an a broader public health kind of argument You can't say close the borders and not say why and I think you know that that needs to be made clear This is a very cheap very effective way of dealing with this virus Which the government hasn't done and just and just explain it for what it is What I also want to say Michael is because over the last year We've heard an argument about this is you know, the economy versus public health And actually if you look at and foremost within that Britain's so globalized so connected so networked We have to keep you know air travel coming over because of course, it's good for the economy But let's go back again to China, Vietnam Taiwan these are countries which have closed their borders very quick decisively last year by the way And if we look at their economic growth people might respond say well gdp doesn't matter It's not good. You care about climate change way to my gdp But we're just talking about the terms the conversation we've seen from our domestic politicians the economy versus public safety Guess which economies have seen gdp growth this year? Of around three percent Vietnam or last year rather Vietnam Taiwan and China And we've seen huge economic Contraction and Britain and the rest of the European Union less so in the United States So again, it just belies you know the common sense that's being peddled by the government The economy versus public health old solutions have cost so much Oh, you know, everybody's struggling here. All of this is is factually incorrect And this is not about getting a gotcha on the government This matters because a we want to get out of this as quickly as possible. But b Britain has to learn from this for the next pandemic that comes along The reason why the east asians and australia and new zealand are doing such a great job now Is because they learned the lessons after sars in 2003 What worries me the most is that this kind of bellicose british exceptionalism Manifests itself in not actually learning the lessons, you know What are the big policy takeaways the tories is going to take going forward from this? Oh, well We're going to have a law and order approach next time. There's a pandemic. That's not going to help us It's not going to keep us safe. It's just they're safe and happy place when it comes to trying to appeal to their electoral base Restricting travel without a broader strategy is pretty pointless The broader strategy is what matters and I think restricting travel has to be part of that But obviously what's key here is the issue of variants So in britain in kent and the kent variant was more transmissible. That was what was so worrying about it That's why it spread so fast. That was called the n 501 y or that was the that was the Sorry the feature that it had it's called the n 501 y mutation which makes viruses more transmissible What we're what we're really worried about now is a different mutation called e 484 k And this is the one that gives the the virus Some degree of vaccine resistance not necessarily total vaccine resistance, but some degree of vaccine resistance That's what the south african variant has also the variant in brazil Which is why we're currently restricting travel from those particular countries We did get some worrying news this week though because It seems that the the vaccine resistant variant is evolving or mutating Independently in this country again. I say vaccine resistant is not completely vaccine resistant But it's more resistant to the vaccine than the original viruses that we have Yep, so so this mutation the e 484 k mutation emerged in bristol this week Or at least was identified in bristol this week patrick valence was asked about this today So I want to go to his answer at the downing street press briefing I'm going to show the whole answer because it was it was a really good explanation Of variants in general. Let's take a look The bristol variant has got one of the changes that the south african Variants got as well. And again, it's one that the virus likes to try and get so it's not surprising It's happened and it will happen elsewhere as well And in getting that variant it does make it slightly more likely to look different to the immune system So we need to watch out for it. We need to measure it need to keep on top of it And need to keep testing the vaccine effects in the in this situation But the very key thing the thing that we have to do is get numbers down The lower you get numbers the lower the chance of getting more mutations Thank you, uh, tom clark itv news We we didn't actually need to leave the last two seconds of that clip But we decided to because what you saw was laura coonsburg leaving her microphone on saying Oh, he didn't answer the question that wasn't about patrick valence. Actually, he answered his question very well It was that the laura coonsburg had asked boris johnson Whether we would be able to travel this summer and boris johnson didn't answer The question I thought that was quite entertaining The point there from valence though very very important Which is to say that because this mutation is also evolving independently in this country We really do need to get rates of transmission down because the more transmission you have the more mutations you have The more likely it is that our vaccine program will be Undermined again. I should stress it's not going to make the astro zenica vaccine completely useless But it is going to mean that at least it's not really going to stop transmission, which is going to be very very important We have 1800 people watching do share the show stream if you haven't already and a couple of comments Nick gusset with two pounds. How many years porridge should you get should a p.m. Get for lying? It's an interesting question. I'm not really sure we should put the prime minister in prison for lying I think the real issue is that the media let him get away with it But I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it. I'm clint tweets on the hashtag tisky sour I think it's time to introduce real-time fact checking for the house of commons. I think that's a very good idea I think it's it's it's interesting. I think that The bbc it was recently suggested sort of don't fact check boris johnson as much as they otherwise would Because um, they're worried that would undermine faith in politics Just a little bit circular because the moment, you know, they're doing that. That's when you really have an undermined degree of faith in politics I think that was a quote from from peter roborn him speaking to someone who was working at the bbc now We're going to go on to our next story The ongoing Saudi war against yemen has resulted in what is perhaps the biggest humanitarian crisis on earth right now The armed conflict location and event data project have reported that 100 000 people have died as a result of the war Which includes more than 12 000 civilians killed in attacks directly targeting them So that's a war crime if you directly target civilians In a war now what's more according to save the children the blockade imposed by the Saudis and their partners Is the leading cause of a humanitarian crisis that has claimed more than 85 000 infant lives Now the Saudi war is only possible because of support from the us and uk governments Which meant this announcement from joe biden was a relief to many This war has to end And to underscore our commitment We're ending all american support for offensive operations in the war in yemen including relevant arm sales So that was one of joe biden's first acts as president to halt the sale of arms to Saudi arabia if they will be used For offensive operations However, the british government is not following the us in suspending arms exports This was james cleverly ministered for the middle east and north africa in the commons on monday I note the us decision to pause its arms exports whilst it reviews its policy toward yemen And i can reassure the house that the government takes its own export responsibilities extremely seriously And assesses all export licenses in accordance with strict licensing criteria So the argument there is that britain doesn't need to suspend arms sales because we already have strict licensing criteria on Exports i'll be asking my guest david wearing what relationship that statement has to reality david welcome to the show hi I wanted to start by getting you to talk about the significance of that announcement from joe biden Specifically so he's pledged to end support for offensive operations and related arm sales A cynic might say well the Saudis will just say these are defensive operations and then the americans will sell them arms Anyway, how seriously should we take the commitment from him? Is this a big deal or is this just rhetoric I think people people have focused on that choice of words offensive Operations and as you might say Saudis will say as everyone does when they're in a war while we're doing all of this from a point of view of self-defense But if you look at that choice of words within the context of the wider announcement It becomes quite clear that biden wants this war over Um, he's called for the u.n to call for a ceasefire Um, and actually the u.s is well up till now and the security council has been to give diplomatic cover to the Saudis Now wants the uh, the u.n security council to call for a ceasefire Um, he's appointed an envoy to the conflict whose job is going to be to bring the parties together And then the war It's clearly wants this over so it's not a kind of you know Here's a clever formulation of words that I can use to carry on business as usual while it looks like I've honored my promises It does seem actually to be to be following through. Um, And it's really significant because as as you indicated in the intro To this piece The british and americans sustain the Saudi bombing campaign. That's a really important thing I always try and drive home in these interviews because I don't think And there's because I'm sounding about that. It's not the case that people have just been That the british have just and americans have just sold these arms years ago And then the Saudis are using them now It's ongoing operational support that the british and americans have been providing which is literally kept the Saudi jets in the sky Which if you remove that support Those Saudi jets don't fly anymore and the Saudis entire war has been based around the exertion of aerial power so for the americans to literally pull the plug on Offensive operations is a really really important thing. I mean the americans of the Saudis depend on the americans for For their survival effect. I'm talking about the regime other than the population So, you know when your superpower patron tells you it's over then it is kind of over And is it is it over even if the uk don't follow suit? I mean obviously, you know We live in britain So we should be lobbying our government to follow joe biden in in this pledge But is it almost irrelevant what the british do here is other Saudis now screwed because of joe biden's decision Yeah, I mean Obviously, there's a there's a mismatch between the power of the british versus the americans Americans much more powerful that if it had been the other way around Let's say labor had been allowed since 2017 or 2019 and labor would pull the plug on It's portion of support for the support for The portion of the Saudi air force that's british supplies that would have really impeded the Saudi campaign if If it had been trump in which it was in both those elections Trump's president would probably have carried it on But it would have made it much harder because the british component of the Saudi air force is really really significant It's about half of the jets that are in operation over yam So you've impeded the war But you've impeded the Saudi's efforts the british supply jets were really important in their war But with the americans, it's different not just because americans supply the other half But because this is the superpower, right? It's ultimately the americans that the Saudis are dependent on if the south if the americans Click their fingers the Saudis have to the Saudis have to fall in line and from the british point of view that means that It looks like the sound is certainly offensive operations are going to be over and it doesn't sound as though You know defensive is going to be defined in such a ways to allow them to carry on substantively. So the Saudis war is going to be Significantly wound down Leaving britain with not much of a war to carry on fuel and carry on supporting So it's kind of a fatal conflict from the point of view of you know, where the british are And I think the root one of the reasons that they're That they're refusing to say oh, yeah, okay. We're gonna do the same as joe biden is They would effectively be accepting that what they've denied all along that their arms sales Are fueling the conflict is in fact true the last thing they'd want to do is cooperate What joe biden has just said about the role of the british new americans That's interesting. So because obviously I was thinking is this because they're making so much money from this obviously 40% I think of the volume of uk arms exports between 2010 and 2019 have been to Saudi Arabia Um, so I was thinking potentially this is just the money is too big. That's why they're They're not following joe biden But I think that's a really strong argument actually you make there that for them to say oh trump's gone Now we'll now we'll withdraw is to suggest that their policy was actually never based on Well, we all know it was never based on human rights, but it was it's an admission That their policy was never based on human rights. It was just they'll do Whatever completely with no You know attention to to what is what right and wrong. They'll just go along with whoever happens to be u.s president And remember the british government could be back in court on this In the not too distant future. So there's been two cases two court cases one in the high court one in the court repeal In the high court case and this is brought by a campaign against arms trade who have done within british society The best work on on yam And what the case is all about is basically saying The arms controls that britain has which the government is always saying are really robust and tight on the rest of it Completely disproved by the yammer case The arms control say you cannot Sell arms to a country if there's a clear risk that the arms May be it is not will may be used in serious violation of international law, which of course they have been routinely for five years The government somehow successfully argues that it hadn't They had reached a conclusion that that risk didn't exist through a For a rational and defensible process here successfully argued that to the high court god knows how Um, I think partly to do with judges not wanting to second guess governments on national security But campaign gets arms trade appealed it the appeal court struck it down and basically said to the government You haven't approached this correctly. You need to suspend the approval of of licenses So the government said, okay, we'll suspend them and we'll look into it properly Which of course they didn't they looked into it and came back and said, oh, we've looked into it And it's just a few isolated isolated incidents isolated incidents Amnesty international human rights, which the u.n. All say it's widespread and systematic attacks and civilian targets Rich government said it's isolated incidents and they carried out although they resumed Um giving approval for the licenses for arms exports Campaign against arms trade are appealing against that now if at the next court case Campaign against arms trade and their lawyers are going to be able to point to the americans and say Look the americans the other side of this the other the other partner of the saboteurs have accepted That they've been sustaining these this is bombing and the and biden said out loud You know in that speech and many times on the campaign trail of what the americans were doing was unconscionable So the british can't for that legal reason Except what biden said so they have to say oh well. He's made he makes us policy we make ours The reality is though this this war is you know the plug has been pulled up very much doubt that Serious Saudi operations are going to carry on past this point sort of british won't have a war to support But they're in a very awkward and embarrassing position And and finally, I know this is a big question So try and keep it brief even though it's a big question is this has been You know as as we've both said one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the past five or six years I'm on earth This news from joe biden which means that the Saudis will have to to some degree stop offensive operations What is now the near future looking like for the people of yemen? It is peace on the horizon. What what happens now? So the Saudis are the biggest killers in the war And they've been taken out of the game To a significant degree so that saves lives instantly, you know, just as if labor would one in 2017 or 2019 It would have saved lives instantly The humanitarian crisis is largely the product of the blockade that the Saudis and UAE have imposed I mean if that ends Yemenis have a much better chance of humanitarian terms It all then comes down to dialogue civil wars Especially in the middle east often sustained and prolonged by outside interference The domestic parties don't have the incentive to make pace of each other Because they've got regional powers backing them and international powers Piling in as well Now the Saudis being the biggest killer in the conflict Having that support withdrawn Potentially the start of process of de-escalation Where other parties start pulling out that external parties particularly around potentially pull out their support as well domestic parties have more incentive to make pace We knew all this five years ago It was never going to be a military solutions This conflict had to be about a national dialogue between the communities in yemen Hopefully that will now take place. We'll see the conflict de-escalating and we'll find some kind of Yemen's still going to be a disaster area, but the worst of it could be over and we could be on about Hopefully Um well something that's that's hopeful Um and you know a media action from Joe Biden becoming president So that's you know, that's that's on the upside of what we we might have expected david wearing. Thank you so much for joining us this evening No, oh, thank you Um, let's go to a couple of comments. Um mtg forest 90 with a five pound super chat Thanks nm for all you do kept me saying it's surprising. You'd think the Tories of all people would be rushing to close borders Do I suppose it maybe you mean the do you mean slightly different? It's surprising that the Tories are reluctant to do that Um max basto fab informative show as always cheers navara any plans to cover nafan j robinson being fired by the guardian Um, yes, um, I'm definitely going to ping him an email tomorrow Nathan j robinson for anyone who's not aware is the editor of current affairs Which is a left-wing magazine in the united states. He was also a columnist for guardian us Which is obviously related to the guardian. Um, u.k. It's their american operation. Um, he tweeted Some criticism essentially of the american congress when they passed a covet relief bill also Committing money committing financial aid to the israeli military He basically got fired because of that tweet Um from the guardian. I do recommend you check out. He wrote a great article about this today And yeah, obviously it would be be really good to speak to him about it Since kis dama became labor leader suspensions from the party have accelerated a pace Many of these justly or unjustly involve accusations related to anti-semitism Which means there has been a great deal of anticipation About the creation of an independent complaints procedure for anti-semitism due to come into being later this year Now many suspect it will be this complaints process Which will ultimately decide the future of starmas predecessor jeremy corbin Now as part of the process of putting together this new system and advisory board has been put together And its membership has caused quite a bit of consternation among the labor left We can get this up now We think this was announced today because it just appeared on the labor party website. There was no press release But you can see here the members of the board are david ebbons general secretary of the labor party He's obviously the person who made the decision to suspend jeremy corbin in the first place Adrian cohen is the trustee of the jewish leadership council is also a co-chair of labor friends of israel Natasha engel trustee of anti-semitism policy trust. It's a former mp mark gardener CEO of the community security trust They put out that that document engines of hate Which labeled quite a lot of sort of corbin supporting twitter accounts Anti-semitic marie van der zaar president of the board of deputies You probably know a lot about the board of deputies. They are a legitimate representative of of jewish organizations in the uk They also this week tweeted opposition to the international criminal court decision That it had jurisdiction in palestinian territories So it also is you know as well as being a representative body. It has politics day margaret hodge Obviously called jeremy corbin at effing anti seamite, which is also Lied about me on social media baron s doreen laurence of clarendon and baron s jan royale of blazed and she Wrote the the document into Alleged anti-semitism at the oxford labor club Now to discuss these appointments I'm delighted to be joined by rivka brown who as of this week is a commissioning editor and reporter at navara Media and rivka is also editor of the jewish media platform Vashti Um, thank you for coming on the show tonight Thanks, Michael Could I get you to talk? So I think there are no real surprises on this list other than perhaps baron s Lawrence which we can talk about later But I think um, you know those members of the board that I am familiar with which is the kind of the rest of them Really, I think what characterizes them above and above all is that they are not anti-racists You know these include people like marie van der zeal who wouldn't condemn trump's racism The jewish leadership council whose members believe that the concept of islamophobia is moronic And whose members including the millionaire property tycoon leo noe Donate to settlements in hebron. These are not people that I trust with an anti-racism agenda These are people who have expressed a very specific and particular interest in anti-semitism in the labor party during the corbin years But don't seem to have broader than that Anti-racist principles, which I would expect of of such a board. I think Really what this this tells us their kind of limited experience in anti-racism is that they actually have quite a poor understanding Of anti-semitism, you know, many of these many of these people Are people who who claim for example that anti-zionism is anti-semitic something that we we know to be false And who claim that only jewish people should be able to determine Their own oppression often citing the mcpherson principle wrongly Ironically, obviously this this principle originated in the investigation into into baron s laurence's son's murder so You know, these are not people who I think are very familiar with what Anti-racism means even really what anti-semitism means. Um, and so, you know, I who I don't really trust to To to give good advice to the to the leader of the labor party I think they've been brought in as allies of kistama as as yes men really I think, you know In in some ways, it's quite incredible It's it's hard to get a group of jewish people in a room who will all agree with each other Um, but somehow, you know kistama has managed to do just that These are not people who who really disagree about the nature and the causes of anti-semitism in the labor party And in fact, um, have quite a kind of specific Attribution of that problem to the kind of carbonite left And so, um, I don't think there are going to be very many interesting insights or kind of much interesting advice to come out of this board And let's talk a little bit about who's been excluded as well So, I mean, I don't know everyone who was nominated to this board But one thing we do know is that john mcdonnell? Um nominated antony lerman who's former director of the institute of jewish policy research brian Clark an oxford professor and founding member of jewish forum for justice and human rights and rabbi danny rich who until last year Was senior rabbi and chief executive of liberal Judaism in the uk now at least the first two of those I know were people who were quite prominent voices critical of the international holocaust remembrance association definition of anti-semitism because they thought it It limited people's ability to advocate for for palestinian rights, um, i'm wondering, you know For you because obviously i'm sure the mainstream media sort of analysis of this and from labor MPs will be look What did you want? Did you want cranks on this panel? These are the people who are the legitimate representatives of british Judaism You're just suggesting people, you know talking to the left who are, you know, not really part of that community They're just apologists for Jeremy Corbyn. Anyway, what are you complaining about? How would you respond to that? Yeah, what I would say is that these organizations have been on PR campaign to brand themselves as the representative voices of british jury I mean that's that's literally the board of deputies slogan ironically the very existence of the jewish leadership council Is proof that that's not true the jlc split off from the board of deputies when a number of their kind of big Benefactors realize that they couldn't use their money to just influence the board So so, you know that split is evidence that the board doesn't represent british jury and it certainly doesn't represent In fact, none of these organizations really represent the over half of british jews who are either secular So not affiliated to a synagogue or wouldn't identify with any of those communal bodies or ultra orthodox And that's probably because a lot of those a lot of those groups particularly and including in the ultra orthodox community supported And continue to support Jeremy Corbyn, you know, there there was a letter in 2018 at the height of the antisemitism crisis signed by I think around 30 ultra orthodox rabbis You know expressing their support for Jeremy Corbyn and those voices are often marginalized in the debate around Antisemitism in the labor party despite the fact the ultra orthodox jews in the uk in the us Are often at the receiving end of the most acute antisemitic violence You know, there was a stabbing in stanford hill just around the corner from where I grew up Of an ultra orthodox man just last summer. So, you know, it's it's profoundly painful and ironic but in many ways unsurprising that You know A huge proportion perhaps even the majority of british jews in this country are not represented by any of those bodies what I would say also is that, you know This this the way that this um, this this board has been selected Doesn't even represent the the the labor party itself doesn't even represent the plp You know speaking today to a number of left-wing jewish mps None were consulted Including charlotte nickles who is the shadow of qualities minister and you know, this is therefore very much in her remit And it's it's it's therefore completely patent that, you know, the the voices of left-wing jews outside the party within the party Were completely silenced on this issue. There was no consultation of the kind of plp You know charlotte and colleagues found out about this These appointments in the same way that I did, you know on social media in the announcements Um, and you know, there's even been reports that the board of deputies and the jewish labor movement had veto over Who was nominated? You know, this was a completely on on an undemocratic process. I'm sorry In a manner that's kind of appears to be quite characteristic of particularly david evans way of managing the party I mean, that's really interesting that that jewish members of the plp weren't consulted I also know that the n e c weren't consulted about this So the the the people who make up this board seems to have been a unilateral decision by david evans the general secretary I'm told that in fact n e c members had previously asked Um, you know for for sight of of who was being considered for the panel and that was refused So this this doesn't seem like a decision which has involved Many different opinions and stances and perspectives from within The labor party And I want to go to sort of some general issues in the labor party I want to bring in Aaron for this one as well Because we know now that the 50 chairs or over 50 chairs and secretaries who were suspended For allowing motions relating to corbin losing the labor whip There's been some developments in that case which we talked about before on this show now Apparently the legal advice to the party is that they should all be reinstated some already have But many are still waiting for the information. So on on learning this I reached out to darin mcloughlin who you might have seen Previously on tiskey. He was a co secretary in bristol He had been suspended again for the same reason as everyone else because they debated a motion Which wasn't necessarily even about corbin, but related to the issue He has now had he was going to be a candidate for My camera has gone, but I'll throw over to Aaron after I give you this information. He was going to be a candidate for Labor But that seat has now been passed on to someone else or it's about to be selected for someone else Which is why he thinks and potentially there is a delay before letting him back in Aaron, I want to throw to you on where you think this is heading Yeah, bristol is a really interesting microcosm because of course it's one of the largest clp's in the country constituency labor parties in the country I think actually it's really emblematic of the of the direction of the labor party under kistama. So you had One of these metro mayor nominations For the southwest of england. It's not for bristol. That's obviously marvin reese And the person who won that was a former labor MP a former Blair rights surprise surprise But he didn't actually win the most votes in the nomination process. So it was still Chosen by people who weren't the members I thought the whole point of a nomination democratic nomination process Was that the person with the most votes wins? But apparently not at the same time it's not just Darren They've been a number of other people as well michael on the left who Were looking to contest council seats They thought they would be labor counselors after may and and and there's basically been a bureaucratic maneuver to get rid of them And I think when you look at bristol, you know, we have people saying the future of the labor party is zara sultana or you know Any young left-wing mp sam tarry That that's not true. I think that the future of the labor party right now is what we're seeing in in in bristol Which is the imposition effectively of a a failed Blair right MP is the candidate for the mayor of the southwest And the removal of young charismatic people who would like to be local representatives So one happens to be a bay man and another is a woman And these are the kinds of people that labor repeatedly says they want to elevate As public representatives whose votes by the way as general demographics they depend upon And yet when push comes to shove they aren't really serious about it michael I hope your camera has recovered I've actually switched cameras. My apologies to our audience because this is the second time in a row This has happened. Um, but I am going to make sure it never happens Again rift cry. I want to go for you for your final thoughts on what happens next. I know you've been sort of following The internal disputes within the labor party Does this um, I suppose this advisory board, maybe we shouldn't overstate how significant it's going to be but Is what we've seen so far Um suggestive of a future purge of of labor left members or do you think that this might all be, you know Worrying but but not necessarily that Let's say pivotal in the future of of the labor left Yeah, I mean First of all, I would say that this is you know, it isn't significant necessarily in itself But it is a turning point in which a number of actors who've been trying to kind of enforce their authority on the labor party You know the board of deputies temp ledgers, which they, you know, kind of encouraged Labor labor leadership candidates to sign up for included You know, the board having oversight of the disciplinary process, which I mean is illegal or would have been illegal um, you know, this this does represent a kind of Dovetailing of some of those kind of establishment and jewish groups and and the labor party So I think it is a concerning development. Um, I think it will also mean it kind of goes to what Aaron was saying It it does mark a kind of further A furthering of this trend that we've seen of jews being used as a a battering ram against the left You know, this will the advice of this board will be used to make more and more kind of tenuous Suspensions and expulsions, you know, still supporting Jeremy Corbyn You're an anti-semi still, you know, um calling for, you know, no confidence in David Evans You're an anti-semi want to hold a pro-Palestine solidarity event anti-semi and you know, to me this this does kind of give credibility to To that kind of political football as it were Um, but I think, you know in terms of what's going to happen to left-wing jews in the labor party I think this is already a trend that has kind of is well in train You know jewish people like a lot of left-wing jews I should say like a lot of left-wing people have have begun to leave the labor party in order to to kind of Throw themselves into social movements and in the case of british jews. That's not a mod. That's jewish solidarity action That's, you know, judas That and hope to be kind of modeling the anti-racism They would want to see from the labor party from without rather than attempting to kind of fight a losing battle from within Rufka brown. Thank you so much for joining us this evening and I'm sure we'll be speaking a lot more on tisky sour in the future I hope so my girl season season um, let's go straight on to another story about the labor party um 18 labor peers have defied the party whip to vote in favor of reinserting an amendment to the spy cops bill That would ban the authorization of rape torture and murder by public Bodies so the authorization of rape torture and murder by public bodies for Undercover agents now the vote took place on tuesday in a lords debate on the covert human intelligence sources bill Which gives law enforcement agency agents Immunity when breaking the law while working under cover now. We've talked about this bill before there are arguments for it in Principal undercover agents will sometimes have to break the law So for example by joining a prescribed organization that in itself is illegal So it would make sense to say well if you were joining a prescribed prescribed organization so as to undermine their activities think of a far-right organization Then you know that should be fine The problem with the bill though is that it has no limits on what laws undercover agents are able to break That's why former shadow attorney general shami shakrabati tabled an amendment Which would rule out legalizing agents to commit the most serious crimes including rape and torture My lord's the government's rebuttal is i'm afraid both circular and hollow It argues that the grave offenses in this amendment would provide a deadly checklist against which Suspected undercover agents might be tested But it also argues that the convention rights already provide these express prohibitions My lord's this amendment might either be dangerous or superfluous But it surely cannot be both So which is it? In the past government lawyers have argued that the convention rights do not under cover agents of the state And only recently in the very litigation which provoked this bill They have argued that agents are not precluded from committing murder My lord's what would your lordship's house say if this kind of criminal immunity Without detailed limitation for even Even grave offenses were being passed in russia china or anywhere other than here My lord's what indeed would the government say? So as a matter of conscience and if only to record our grave concerns for the benefit of the litigators And senior jurists who will inevitably pick up the stitches that legislators have dropped I wish to test the opinion of your lordship's house and beg to move That was really well put very important argument there by shamishak rabati the defense by the government of not having you know specific legislation to exclude this being used to justify rape or murder or Any other heinous crimes is because they say this will mean that if someone in a prescribed group Or a drug trafficking group or whatever if they want to get someone to prove They are not an agent of the state then they will just make them They'll just go through the checklist of things that you're you're not allowed to do as an agent She's saying that doesn't work because the government are also arguing We don't need to specifically legislate for murder rape, etc. Because that's um made impossible because of the the human rights act or the european courts of of justice so It all falls Down um the argument I think the labor party were kind of put putting forward to say that they're going to abstain is that this had already ping ponged between the commons and the lords and the commons and the lords but Shamishak rabati made the important point that this was not in the conservatives manifesto So there is a convention that the lords won't block anything which was in a a party manifesto Because that would be anti-democratic but shamishak rabati saying this wasn't in the manifesto So it is well within our rights as the house of lords to block this This this this legislation which we think will be terrible for human rights now It didn't pass the amendment didn't pass. Sorry that the law Has it will almost certainly go into law without that amendment labor whipped to abstain But the rebels weren't only confined to The labor left there were 18 lords 18 labor lords who rebelled they included andrew adonis Who's a former minister under Blair and stewart wood who is a former advisor to gordon brown and ed miller band Aaron i want your Your take on this i mean it's quite interesting actually that the rebellion did include people who we would you know normally think to be quite amenable to kia's dharma andrew adonis is is i mean i might assume he was a star marite But he was willing to break the the whip on this occasion I think andrew adonis in more ways than one michael is quite you know to use a latin term sweet generous He's quite unique. You know, I think he would like labor to rejoin you know campaign to rejoin the european union 2024 I think he's clearly a liberal. I mean you can say he's got bad politics from any which way But I think when it comes to civil liberties, he's he's relatively consistent I mean his his political trajectory before labor was from you know the the social democratic party and the liberal democrats So I believe you easy. I think the only position yet. He's actually ever been elected to I believe He was either a lib dem counselor or he ran for lib dem counselor and didn't win That doesn't matter by the by it's important to say that though because you say former cabinet minister, of course He was unelected. He was also I believe The first head of the downing street policy unit under tony blare that was definitely a role he had so very much within the kind of the the Blair I Penumbra of interests and people and personalities for sure, but very much a liberal stewartwood similarly soft left Yes, I mean, you know 18 michael 18. It should be a lot more than that. Let's be honest I think this law and labor's positioning on it frankly is a moral nadir I think it's a moral nadir because you are genuflecting. So I think a grotesque a grotesque proposal For what? You know kia stomm is doing this because he has this pastiche this idea of Tory voters in the red wall who he has to win He's completely selling out any moral basis. He might have sort of laid his integrity upon What for latest polling shows that labor are winning 4 of 2019 Tory voters But we you know, they're giving 2 back there's a net 2 gain amongst these people And he's making such immense Personal political and I think ultimately professional sacrifice. I think he completely undermines his credibility There's the next prime minister when he's paving like this For what it's having no electoral payoff So I think it really is an idea for both kia stomm around for the Labour Party We say it repeatedly on this show But look This is politics if you looked at the opinion polls and labor were leading and labor were gaining 2019 Tory voters. It's understandable. It's explicable It's in a way excusable by appealing to a language of political expediency. However, it's not working So on any, you know Set of terms you wish to kind of examine it. It's a failure And I think really people look back on this as a as the low point of all low points of the kia stomm's leadership I think that's very possible just because it's just a a reprehensible law It's it's it's similar to the to the Yemen situation because it's one where we find ourselves to the right of the american establishment So joe biden now is saying that we The america is not going to support offensive operations for the Saudis Britain to the right of that and in this case even in american law undercover agents are precluded From committing murder or rape and britain for some reason is not willing to put those clauses into this particular law I want to go to a couple of comments conjectures In green song with a fiverr says a brilliant show, especially enjoyed rivka and david's contributions. Absolutely two Amazing guests and i don't rivka is not even a guest now because she's in the navarra media family Actually david wearing is also a navarra media columnist. It was all This is a good reminder to say go check out our website because we have some great articles Including by rivka brown and david wearing But the article is really really top of their game at the moment Henry the seventh fake with a six pan 66 super chat Happened upon extra taxes from the lands Here's to your hard work and keeping the guillotine man off my back long live the fake king I'm not sure I want to know what that means Um, let's leave it there. Do you know what that means aron? No idea No idea. Okay. Henry eight fake six six six, you know, it's the mark of the beast Eight pictures telling me he's being henry the seventh But I don't know how that really I don't know enough about british history Let's go. I'm sure michael gove will be very very upset about that. You're confirming. I did the old curriculum All right, let's go to our final story Now the only upside of lockdown there really aren't many is that every now and again We get to watch a hilarious screen recorded Zoom event be that a council meeting we saw jackie weaver And that real big showdown last week this week It was an american lawyer who couldn't remove a cat filter Let's take a look Japan and I believe you have a filter Turned on in the video settings You might want to uh We're trying to which can you hear me judge? I can hear you. I think it's a filter It is and I don't know how to remove it. I've got my assistant here. She's trying to but uh I'm prepared to go forward with it. That's I'm here live. That's not I'm not a cat I can I can see that I love everyone in that clip, you know, I can see that but also the I felt I felt like the the lawyer was really humble though. I like, you know, I know I look like a cat Which is a bit ridiculous, but I'm willing to go forward in the case because honestly I'm not a cat I'm sure you enjoyed you weren't on the show and we did the the jackie weaver harms for parish council zoom Um, but how do you compare them? Do you think this one has beat last week's viral zoom clip? I mean at least I thought this was funny. I thought the jack I didn't get the jack I'll be honest Michael. I didn't get the jackie weaver thing I think it was an interesting social commentary because of course people are using these new tools You know a year ago some people use zoom sure but not many people now they're ubiquitous even amongst boomer It must be said conservative Local politicians.  I mean I I find the idea of like a an older an older man who's an attorney or or what have you Using a cat filter when he's talking to people on zoom Well, it might be a kink, but I think the fact that he couldn't remove it probably suggested it was someone else He put it likely story Um, we can meet the guy we can meet the guy behind the cat rod ponton is his name He spoke to the bbc's nick robinson this morning It's as it turns out at hindsight, it's it's provided a good laugh. I think for the country Because I think anybody that's ever struggled with the computer or with zoom Can recognize that those kind of things could happen and it certainly did happen to me today An inspiring message to everyone struggling with their laptops Aaron You want to comment on this? Yeah, he reminds me maybe he's from Arkansas, but he reminds me of bill clinton, you know It's kind of when he talks.  He's like, I am not a kayak kind of similar Just an observation But anyway, again, the reason why these things are so funny is that that's a lawyer from the bible belt In his 60s by the looks of it as the last person you'd expect to be using a cat filter This whole 12 months has seen a huge acceleration of a bunch of things including the adoption of digital tools So there's a social comment there. I understand why it's gone so far. But the jackie weaver think come on man. She's a tori That was a very good bill clinton impression um No, I mean jackie weaver she is speaking at a conservative party association So she probably is a tori on that parish council. They were all independence. I looked it up afterwards Although I do think probably the angrier ones were Were more to the left The vibes they gave me Um, we're going to wrap up the arambastani. It has been a pleasure as


and in free market principles to save the free market system. In a world of conventional confusion, there will be time for them to make profits. Now is not that time. Daddy, what do taxes pay for? Oh, why everything? Policemen, trees, sunshine? And let's not forget the folks who just don't feel like working, God bless them. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Prepare to unshackle your mind. An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government. Your professor has arrived. Tom Woods. Beware, citizen, you are now departing from the world of allowable opinion. The Tom Woods Show. Welcome, everybody. It's Friday, March 28, 2014. It's back to basics Friday. There is no day of the week that starts with B, so there's no alliteration possible. So we might as well make it back to basics Friday with Stefan Kinsella. In addition to his well-known work on intellectual property, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point down the line, Stefan is just a great explainer of foundational concepts. He's very clear.  That's just what I wanted to have, because these days, varieties of libertarianism are proliferating, like every young person feels it necessary to redefine what libertarianism is or what amounts to aggression and so on and on. And, you know, nah, nah, not interested in that. Let's clear up what these terms mean, and we're gonna do that today with Stefan. Stefan, in case you don't know, is a practicing patent attorney and the executive editor of Libertarian Papers, LibertarianPapers.org, which publishes scholarly papers in the libertarian tradition across a wide variety of topics. He was formerly a partner with Dwayne Morris LLP, an adjunct law professor at South Texas College of Law. His books include International Investment, Political Risk and Dispute Resolution, a Practitioner's Guide from Oxford University Press, Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary, Property, Freedom and Society, essays in honor of Hans Hermann Hoppe and the forthcoming Law in a Libertarian World, Legal Foundations of a Free Society. Stefan, welcome to the program. Thanks, Tom, glad to be here. There's so many things we can talk about because really we're talking about libertarianism in general and you and I both find it fascinating in all its aspects, but it's something that can easily, somebody who doesn't get the main concepts or gets them only superficially can go really wrong and there are all kinds of divergences among libertarians and some of them boil down to an inability to grasp or refusal to grasp first principles. So we wanna talk about some of those. I get new listeners all the time and I don't wanna assume that everybody just knows everything. So I think before you can talk about things like aggression, I think first you need to talk about self-ownership because it seems to me that if you're gonna engage in aggression, you're violating self-ownership. So self-ownership has to be the prior concept. So let's first start talking about what does that mean and is there maybe a better way to understand self-ownership? I mean, you suggested body ownership as a way of clarifying so we don't get lost forever in defining what the self is. Yeah, and this arises, look, I think libertarianism is in a way a new science, okay? So we made a lot of progress in the last say 100 roughly years even by using a lot of metaphorical, flowery, flowery, colorful language, but at a certain point you have to start refining it and using more precise language in part because we confuse ourselves or because our adversaries will take advantage of it and dishonest types of argumentation. So I think the use of metaphorical language and more descriptive language, which is unavoidable, but we should be at least aware of it. So over the years, I have come to see the traps that can be set either unintentionally or intentionally by not using clear and precise terms in a consistent way, conceptual thinking and the language we actually use. And so one of them is self-ownership. There are others like property and digression and coercion that we can go into as well. So self-ownership is a good one to start with because the kind of intuitive concept of self-ownership is the root of the entire libertarian philosophy, I believe. However, the word self is something that's vague and open to interpretation. If you're religious, you might have one conception of the self, it might be related to the soul or to spiritual matters. If you are a materialist, you might have a different idea. I think the bottom line is what we're really talking about is body ownership. I use the term self-ownership on occasion, but when I have to, when I have to clarify the discussion, I always say we're really talking about ownership of the physical borders of your scarce resource of your physical body, because that's really the only way that you can be harmed by someone in a way that we need rights to protect us from. Trust-pass invasion, the very idea of aggression in a simple way means, you know, punching someone, stabbing them, physically manipulating their body or harming it without their consent or permission. So I think the fundamental root of libertarian norms is body ownership. You are the one who has the right to own and control your body or at least the first one, the presumptive one, unless you do something that changes that. Now that, on one level, seems intuitive, but on another level, I think it's hard for people to grasp the idea that they own their physical bodies the same way they might own a Frisbee or an automobile, and I think a useful illustration to help people get it, to help them understand that they do actually accept this principle is the thought experiment of G.A. Cohen who was an analytical Marxist who was nevertheless very attracted to the idea of self-ownership, and he said, well, let's imagine that we had an eye lottery. You know, we have blind people in this world and we'll just put everybody's name into a hat who has two functioning eyes and if we draw your name out, we'll take one of your eyes and give it to a blind person. Now, the blind person going from not being able to see to having one eye, that's a huge jump in satisfaction for him. And you going from two eyes to one, well, that's unfortunate, but certainly your fall in satisfaction can't be compared with his rise. Well, why would we nevertheless find this appalling? It's because we feel like I own those, right? Those are my eyes. They're not part of the common wealth, right? You don't have the ability to do that. So once we get self-ownership under our hats, we still can't get to aggression completely because aggression doesn't necessarily have to be committed against the physical body. It can also be committed against the things that you own. So now we have to talk about property and how it is that people legitimately come to own property. Right, and I think that the equivalent example illustrates the perils of both utilitarian philosophy, which is the idea that something is permissible if it increases overall utility, even if it's at the expense of someone else. You know, if you can take $10,000 from Bill Gates and distribute it to some four persons, by some people's account, you're doing net benefit to the world.  In terms of property, I think the reason people are reluctant sometimes to view themselves as self-owned or as body-owned is that they're sort of a framer that might lead. They're afraid to treat the body as a commodifiable object, like an object of commerce. They're afraid of the idea of voluntary slavery. They're afraid of freedom of choice and where it might lead. I think a lot of those fears are understandable but are misplaced if you understand that the basis of rights in our bodies is not exactly the same as the basis of rights in other resources in the world. There's relationships, there's similarities, there's dependencies, but they're not exactly the same. And this gets back to a lot of, and I've talked about this in a couple of lectures on libertarian controversies or libertarian confusions, trying to clear these issues up. And so you talked about the idea of property. One problem with using the word property as we do nowadays as basically a synonym for the physical object that you own. So for example, we're used to saying that car is my property, or you would even say something like that's a piece of property. That sandwich is a piece of property. Then when you say your body is a piece of property, people start getting uneasy about it. I try to avoid nowadays using words in a way that could lead to equivocation or to abuse by our adversaries. So for example, I try not to say government instead of state, because government has different meanings. Sometimes it means these full governing institutions of law and justice and order. Sometimes it means the state because the state has co-opted it like the state has co-opted roads. So you will have status, we'll use the word government in an equivocational way to trap you, okay? Same thing with the word property, I find. If you make the question, is that property or is that not property? You sort of lose the original reason for property, which is the possibility of conflict in the real world between human beings with scarce resources of their bodies and other things that they can use to accomplish their goals, which is what Misa talks about in his proxy logical framework of how people get things done. We basically act, which means we use our bodies and we move and we employ things in the world, sticks, wood, food, heat, and we use them to achieve our ends. These are scarce means or scarce resources and property rights originally, word property was meant more like the word characteristic. So you would say that because you could use that stick or that farm or that field or that horse or that house to achieve your ends, it was a property of yourself. It was an extension of your own ability to control the universe. So the notion of property rights arose because of that, but originally the word property meant the relationship between you and the thing, or you could say the relationship between you and other people with respect to your right to control that thing, but it wasn't the thing itself. So I always try to be careful to say, what is the scarce resource that people can fight over that they can conflict over, that we have a dispute over, the thing that we need to identify the owner of? Okay, who has the property rights in it or who has the ownership of it? So that's always the question. And if you keep the question on that level and you don't get bogged down and say, is it property or not, which could use the issue, it helps to solve the issues. And another thing I would point out is we need to recognize that the distinct aspect of libertarianism is not that we believe in property rights. In fact, I think everyone in every political system, every political theory has a view of property rights because that is simply whatever the rules of a given order say as to who gets to control a given scarce resource. What is distinct about libertarianism is how we allocate property rights. Every system allocates property rights in a certain way. Every one of them except for libertarianism basically advocates some form of slavery, which is the person doesn't completely own their own body. Someone else gets to control it or the resources that they have a legitimate right to control. All right, so how is it then, what is the rule? What's the benchmark for determining that somebody owns something legitimately as opposed to somebody who doesn't? Like how do we say for sure in a world, let's imagine in a primordial, let's imagine the very beginning of time and nothing has yet come into individual ownership yet. What needs to be done for me to say this is mine and it's not yours? So the way I think we have to look at it is we have to first identify what is the object under dispute, and others what is the thing or the scarce resource that the ownership or the control of it is contested. And that is usually brought out by the dispute itself. If two people, two or more people both argue they can control certain things, by the nature of their dispute they're defining what they're talking about. If it's a piece of land, if it's a cow, if it's an apple, et cetera. So that defines the thing that we're talking about. And then the question simply becomes if we believe that we ought to have a normative property system where we have rules that determine who gets to use this thing so that it's not a system of chaos where we're fighting over things all the time and no one has sure possession of their resources. If we want a system of rules, then the question is what rules could possibly be adopted in a society of civilized people as legitimate and fair and valid? And it turns out that, at Rothbard pointed this out, there's only two or three or four candidates of possible rules. One is the Lockean rule of first possession, okay? Augmented by contract. So in other words, if you are the first one to take something out of the state of unowned, the commons, and transform it and put borders up around it, then you have a better claim than anyone else. Simply because if you didn't, you would never be able, no one would ever be able to use anything in the first place. Someone has to be the first user or resources to be employed usefully in the world. So we can't say that no one could ever be the first one. And then if we say that the first user doesn't have a better claim than later users, well then that means that no possession is ever secure because anyone could come along and be a third taker or a fourth taker and just keep taking things. So we go back to a world of might versus right and a world where possession is only in the matters and there's no such thing as right or wrong or right. So these rules basically show that the only logical conclusion is the Lockean rule that the first person has to have a logically better claim than anyone else unless he has contractually given it to someone else, in which case that person now has a better claim than him because of the contract. Or if he may be committed a tort or a crime against someone and owes them compensation. But unless you can find some special reason, the earlier possessor of a resource has to have a better claim in any kind of proper terrain, any kind of civilized system. All right, so let's turn now to aggression. And before we get into the issue of aggression, can you clarify why it is that some libertarians seem to prefer non-aggression principle over non-aggression axiom? What's the significance of that? Well, I think that a lot of libertarians got their influence from Ayn Rand. And Ayn Rand has a sort of a peculiar use of the word axiom, by which she means something more like me is meant by a priori statements. By axiom, I think Ayn Rand meant something that was fundamentally true because the denial of it was self-contradictory. It was something so basic and elemental that you couldn't deny it, like the law of non-contradiction, for example. In normal terminology, we would mean an axiom in mathematics to mean just an assumed, like an assumed state of affairs. It's not something necessarily true. Rand used it to mean something necessarily true, something that was basically undeniable. And that is what Mises means by his a priori-type theory in praxeology, like you can't deny that humans act. Or Hoppe means in his argumentation effect when he talks about the a priori of argumentation, giving a little for a few here, but so the basic thing is that, so I've noticed in the last couple of decades, libertarians have tended to stop saying non-aggression axiom. I think they used to say that maybe under Rand's influence. Nowadays, they mostly say NAP, non-aggression principle, or some of them say ZAP, zero-aggression principle, right? And that is fine. I think it's useful as a placeholder. But I do think we have to recognize that the concept of aggression is a dependent one. It's not an independent one. In the case of your body, it's more or less synonymous with self-ownership or body ownership. To say that it's wrong to commit aggression against another person, to stab them, to kill them, to kidnap them, whatever, is basically the same thing as to say that they have the property ownership right in their own body. Those are basically equivalent statements. But in the case of other resources that we own, which is why earlier I tried to say that the basis for ownership were different in bodies than external resources. For external resources, you can't know if it's aggression to take something from someone else unless you first identify who the owner is. Yeah. So if I see a purse by your feet or an apple by your feet and I just take it without your permission, well, it's only aggression or theft or trespass if I needed your permission. And I only needed your permission if you were the owner. So ownership in the case of external resources is the more fundamental concept. Aggression follows from that. I think it's a useful, compact way of summarizing what we're for, but it does depend upon a specific theory of property ownership and allocation rules. So let's be super clear then. Aggression amounts to a violent interference with the peaceful use of somebody's physical body or justly acquired property. That's what it is. It's not something that makes you feel bad. It's not an insult. It's not anything like that. It's got to be this type of invasive activity. Is that right? I think that's exactly correct. Although in keeping with my very, sometimes overly precise attempt, I would say not property. I mean, I know what you mean by that, but I would say they're scarce resource that they have a property right in, but it's the same idea. I think the idea of aggression is rooted in the body. Okay? So we imagine conflicts between physical bodies and that's why these concepts are so interrelated. Aggression means the violation of the property rights of someone else. In terms of their body. And when we want to extend it to other resources that we have legitimate ownership of, then it's not so obvious. It's always obvious who owns your hand or your eyeball. You're the one who owns it. But it's not obvious who owns the apple or the chair or the purse or the cow or the farm. So we have to have a system of identifying owners of these scarce resources in that sense. So a property system has to play a role in identifying what aggression is. Papa has a very good point. He points out that one mistake a lot of people make is they believe that aggression can be just this kind of vague concept of harm, which means basically taking some action which reduces the value of someone else's property. But if you're in Austria and you recognize that value is a subjective concept and value is simply how other people regard the utility of objects that you have an ownership of and they don't have a property right in that because you are the owner of that. So for example, if you have a nice rose garden which your neighbors might appreciate it might increase the value so-called of their homes because they live next to a beautiful house. They don't have a property right in your rose garden and if you cut the roses down and you reduce the value of their home, you have not committed aggression against their home because you've not committed what Papa calls an active invasion. So the way he characterizes it and Rothbard characterizes aggression is they use different terms. But sometimes they say invasion which implies crossing the borders of a scarce resource which you don't have the right to control without the permission of the owner, right? Or they will sometimes say, you know, interfering with the physical integrity of that thing. But all these ideas give it the same idea. It's a physical invasion or as I think of it in more general terms, it's a use of someone's scarce resource without their permission. That is the basic essence of aggression. All right, let me raise an objection then. Couldn't we then say if that's what aggression is that in that case it would be perfectly fine for me to walk around waving a gun in people's faces, scaring them half to death all the time because after all I'm not physically invading them, right, I mean I haven't done them any physical harm. So what's wrong with me waving a gun around at people all the time? So this is another good point of libertarian theory which sort of the intuition is there but the analysis of it has broken down because of imprecise use of terms. So you hear libertarians say all the time that we're against force and fraud. Now they just sort of throw fraud in there, right? Now I'm bringing up fraud because fraud is related to what you're bringing up which is threat or what the law calls assault. And assault, by the way, does not mean attacking someone, that's battery. Assault, that's why we say assault and battery. Assault is the attempt to commit a battery or putting someone in fear of receiving a battery. So it's a subtly different thing in the law. So assault is like a threat, basically. And coercion, by the way, is basically using the threat of force to tell someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do which is another term we can briefly talk about. Solution is often used in libertarianism as a synonym for aggression but I think it should not be. Aggression is per se those things that are illegitimate acts of actions that should not be permissible in a free society. Orson is like violence or force. It's a species or type of force but some force is legitimate, some it's not according to libertarian theory. Defensive force, for example, is useful.  You have to point a gun at them and say get in the basement until someone arrives.  So coercion should not be synonymous with aggression. Now on the threat issue that you're talking about, so libertarians just assume, they just assume in this kind of vague way that like fraud and coercion and threat are kind of like aspects or types of aggression. I think their intuition is right. The reason they're right is simply because when you perform an action that either is an attempt, okay, it's an attempt to invade the border to someone else's property or you're putting him in legitimate fear of receiving some kind of a battery like that. When you do that to them, then they have the right to respond reciprocally. The reason is because the person that's doing that to them has no right to complain if whatever he's doing is done back to him. This is sort of my own personal stop-all theory of rights and kind of based upon Hoppe's argumentation of it. It's just the idea of consistency.  But to threaten someone back means you have to have the right to carry it through.  But if you have the right to attempt to do it, you have the right to complete it, okay? So this shows, to my mind, exactly why the reciprocity of sort of the way norms work, the way things work out, the way universalizability works. It shows why a defensive forceful response to a threat or to coercion or to an assault or to certain types of fraud shows why it's legitimate. If it's legitimate, it shows that the initial act was a type of aggression. Well, Stefan, I can't believe the time just zoomed by, but it's basically all gone. But still, I mean, I think we hid in this short space the key concepts and why fuzzy thinking about them is so, well, dangerous might sound over the top, but so likely to lead people astray, lead them to draw false conclusions, lead them to be confused about libertarianism. But libertarianism is so elegant and simple in so many ways. And yet, at the same time, paradoxically, it's this inexhaustible source of interest and intellectual excitement. And I think you have done Yeoman's work here in helping to clarify a lot of these important concepts. Is there anything I can plug for you before I let you go? Well, I have a, well, I have longer lectures on this as you're right, when we had the luxury nowadays of having a more mature philosophy that we can get into these issues and we stand on the shoulders of giants and I appreciate where we are now and it's good that we can do this and we need to do it. And I've talked for three, four, five hours in two or three other lectures before. You can find them on my website, stefanconcela.com, where I go into more detail on these issues. I think I have a Mises Academy course called Libertarian Controversies, which deals with this. And I did one at Hoppe's Property and Freedom Society on Libertarian Confusions and Fallacies and tried to go into a lot of these issues. So anyone is welcome to go to stefanconcela.com and check it out there. Although the one exception to the non-aggression principle is if people call you Stephen Concella, I think you are allowed to smack them in the head. Hi, I don't care what you call me as long as you call me and I even answer by Norman, my first name. Oh, how about that? I'm pretty cool about that. All right, well, thanks a lot, Stefan. I appreciate you being here. Thanks, Tom. All right, everybody, make sure and check out libertarianpapers.org and stefanconcella.com. Just wanna remind you where I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be speaking April 9th at Florida Southern College, April 10th at Liberty University. April 26th now in Madison, Wisconsin. I'll be making my second visit to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I'll be posting the details about that one soon. I won't be in St. Paul in May, but I will be in Provo, Utah on May 9th. You can get details about these events at my personal site, tomwoods.com on the events page, tomwoods.com slash events. I haven't yet posted details of the Madison, Wisconsin event on April 26th, but if you're in the area, just save the date for now and we'll put up details very soon. Monday, David Stockman returns to this program. How can you not be subscribing on iTunes and Stitcher? Think of the gems you might be missing. You can find easy subscription links at tomwoodsradio.com for iTunes and Stitcher. So go right over there right now while you're thinking about it. Subscribe and we'll see you on Monday. The Tom Woods Show.


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