CARMEN, as I said before, you are _*very easily*_ impressed.

Are you the kind of TV junkie that listens to ALLL the Friday night PBS and Sunday morning commercial and weekday evening cable political debate shows? -- especially the PBS and cable ones where people just rant and shout and slur each other?

Actually, CARMEN, believe it or not, I don’t think that most of us who *were* pleasantly surprised and quite pleased with the daring, novel and informative *1st* edition of Julian’s show, but not with the typical mainstream media verbal slugfest style of the *2nd* edition, need your point-by-point itemized "play-by-play" of what we saw, and could see, for *ourselves* and your "play-by-play" of how we can interpret it for *ourselves*. We actually *can/did* see and listen to the show for *ourselves* and can, believe it or not, actually arrive at our *own* "play-by-play" interpretation of how it unfolded.

But, ’thanks’, Carmen, for trying to point-by-point tell ALLL the *rest* of us what we can see for *ourselves* in an otherwise purely coffeetable armchair philosopher topic -- turned ’BARROOM’ RRRANT -- between two boisterous people (albeit one AN AGGRESSIVE, CAUSTIC, BELIGERANT *BOOOR/BULLY*, much more boisterous than the other, and we can easily see which one is the *BOOR/BULLY*, who ad homimen accuses the other one of being *everything* but -- *yet*, that is... -- "You’re also a friend of the child pornographers!!", and who apparently thinks such *purposely outrageous* ad hominem attacks are an "intellectual" reply) and the nice guy in the middle trying to keep the two on either side from going to blows.

Really interesting exchange, but unfortunate that so much time has to be spend defending claims from the other, which they often aren’t trying to support. I mean that Zizek often has to lose a lot of words to repudiate the ad hominem attacks on his character e.g. that he supports the closest thing to Nazi faschism because he supports Palastinan statehood. Also, blanket attack on ’the left’ or ’the right’, on ’liberals’, are often not_very_helpful - these are not homogenous groups. Nevertheless, I look forward to more videos from this channel! I wonder why Horowitz believes that the European welfare state has become/rendered itself insignificant, any thoughts on this?

An interesting discussion, but the opinion of Putin as always politically biased. The era of U.S. hegemony geopolitical ends, what will happen next?

OK, but phones must be off and you need to take charge and ask the questions. These guys are rowdy, they need time limits. Adversarial TV with opposing sides shouting disrespectfully at each other is too much like Fox and should be avoided. What we want is content, not abuse, tell them.

Professor Noam Chomsky will rock your show Mr. Assange. As "arguably the most important intellectual alive", the world ought to hear him!

You have to better moderate a debate in order to have a good and rich output.
Keep going! great program!
Guests: Please you are in an interview... turn off the phone!!!

their rants are just absurd, lunatic and boring...come on julian, please try to get better guests

need of better guests...

Hi Julian.
Well done!!
Very interesting and acceptable! I would be so happy to see Ahmedi Nejat and Putin on your show, and hope you can get them!
The time 30 minutes ,is a fair time for an interview, but could be better to increase it to 40 mintues and make the questions more specific,to point the seriouse agendas . If possible, can you try to reach Gulbuddin Ekmatyar, the leader of Hizb-e-Islami of Afghanistan,the Taliban and Al-Qaedaalliance.
the number 3 on the CIA wanted list, and the number 1 person ,supported by CIA ,US and other western countries in Cold War time(1980’s).
After killing the Afghan president Dr. Najibullah, in late 90’ the Gullbuddin is the only live history of Afghan war. I’m sure he have a lot to say to the world , what we don’t know about.

Horowitz points out right at the beginning (2:10) what the main difference between conservatives and communists is: The vision on human nature.
Conservatives think that people do not spontaneously like to share with others. That they do not care about justice and equality and that therefore communism can only be imposed by force.
He must have noticed how his parents where rejected by the American mainstream society and to this painful experience he adds the rational explanation that people just might be that way.(2.32) Horowitz points out pragmatically that the problem is not whether communism is just or not. He thinks that the problem is human nature which is not prepared for a equalitarian society.
I disagree with that hypothesis about human nature. But I respect this as a hypothesis.

Zizek points out, that in fact totalitarism can be a consequence of trying to impose a just society.
There he is being interrupted by Hollowitz, who points out that Zizek himself supports governments who Horowitz is afraid of that they might endanger the existence of the Jewish people. He being a Jew himself it is perfectly understandable that he should worry about this point. And this is another issue of conservatives. They do not believe in the state as a guardian for people’s safety. It is natural that conservatives should then be frightened of the individual "others".
That explains the tendency of conservatives to racism too. It does not justify it. But certainly one thing easily can lead to another. I am not referring here to Horowitz as a racist but conservatives in general, specially the most uneducated ones.

Zizek takes up the issue of Palestinians. Both agree that Hamas and all the religious fanatic groups in the West Bank and in Gaza are doing more harm than good.
The question is how to solve this problem. Zizek sustains that the policy of the State of Israel has pushed the Palestinians into the hands of those groups (4.14).
The same happened in Irak Zizek says. The situation of women has become worse after the US through that war pushed the people into the arms of religious fundamentalists.

The assumption here again is in the case of Zizek, that people seek a better more equalitarian society. But that economic interests of the US would not permit this to happen.
Horowitz agrees with Zizek on Irak (5:25),but says that this is caused by some kind of conspiracy of the democrats who induced the conservatives to go to a war against Irak. He thinks that a better solution would have been to just invade Irak (and so avoiding the fundamentalists to gain power). I disagree here with Horowitz for several reasons. Nevertheless his point seems to be that since human nature does not tend to a more just and social society, and since the US was going to enter into Irak anyway, they should have done it in a proper open way as an invasion and not through a war and not financing local groups to attack the Iraqui government (and this fundamentalist groups are now the problem he seems to think)

(7.26) Again Horowitz points out the conservatives basic assumption: People are not equal, and only by force they can be moved to act as if they were equal.
That is why the governments in Libia, Irak were considered totalitarians: because they forced people to live in a more equalitarian society than many of their neighbors. They were Utopians from Horowitz’s perspective.
The discussion moves on to the kind of inner organization a state should have in order not to get so corrupted. Again Horowitz points out that the problem is not social, but one of individuals (9.54) individuals are basically evil (man is the wolf of men, as Hobbes would have said). (11.30) The competition between mafias keeps us save, he says. This is a classis liberal assumption. Lets not forget that American “conservatives” are really conservative liberals.

Zizek and Assange on the other hand trust human kind. They believe men seek progress and they even talk of a revolution towards a better world. Such world of course is only possible if we think of all humans as social beings that basically and mostly like to live in society, share, seek justice, are eventually capable of learning and changing to the good, etc.

Zizek points out that the danger of the fall of the European welfare society and the American dream seems to be that dark religious movements will take over(16.00) and so we might be drawn into a dark era again..
(17.00) Now Horowitz and Zizek try to think about what could be done Is it possible to do modest changes? Do we need to intervene radically? They agree about a strong state.
(18.00) Horowitz once again argues in the sense of Hobbes’ Leviathan and poses the question: Who should that strong power in the world be?
Zizek prefers not to answer to that question. Assange proposes to keep a variety of options side by side. But is this possible?
No definitive answer is given to the questions raised along the program, about the nature of human being, and the eventual decline of welfare societies and the eventual rise of religious fundamentalisms. The discussion just meant to be a presentation of the issues that really matter, I believe.
Both guests have been deeply involved in politics and suffered and still suffer accusations from different sides for defending their views, both of which have strong points to take into account, because they involve the lives of millions of people. I think both guests sincerely worry about the future.

What Assange did with his Wikileaks was to show, that many of the explanations of political events that have been accused in the past of being crazy conspiracy theories, and that most people outside the US believed were true, actually were true. Now the question for us is to think about how to continue to struggle for a better world, knowing more or less how things work, and act accordingly.