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On today's episode, we get into the complexities of the Syrian Civil War with recurring guest Brace Belden, a volunteer soldier who fought alongside the Kurdish YPG forces. Brace shares his firsthand experiences from the frontlines, shedding light on the motivations that led him to join the conflict, the challenges of fighting in a foreign land, and the human stories often overlooked in mainstream narratives. Plus, we get into the college football playoff ranking, new Jay Z and Diddy news and the UnitedHealthCare CEO. (00:02:23) College Football (00:05:53) Jay Z & Diddy (00:12:50) Syrian Civil War (ft. Brace Belden) (01:07:30) UnitedHealthCare CEOYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/macrodosing

Make sure to follow this week's guest Mark Sleboda on X at @MarkSleboda1 Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   Announcer (00:06): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Dr Leon (00:14): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to see the broader historical context in which events take place. During each episode of this program, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and why does the United States keep throwing good taxpayer dollars after bad. To discuss this, we are joined by my guest Mark Sloboda. He's a Moscow based international relations and security analyst. Mark, as always, welcome back Mark Sleboda (01:18): Dr. Leon. Thanks for having me. It's always an honor and a pleasure to be on connecting the dots. Dr Leon (01:23): So it's been reported that an attack on a convoy of Ukrainian military equipment in the esque people's Republic was carried out with the use of short range ballistic missiles. And it also seems as though with all of this hand wringing in the US Congress about funding for Ukraine, all the US and NATO is doing, or seems to be doing, is sending more targets for Russia to destroy your thoughts, mark. Mark Sleboda (01:52): Yeah, there's some rather dramatic developments really under-reported in the Western press that have very large implications going forward for the conflict in Ukraine. The current situation on the ground, I think the Western mainstream media has finally their propaganda narrative bubble has finally burst. Look, in a span of how short a period of time we have gone from Ukraine is winning to (02:34) Stalemate, it's a stalemate on the battlefield to, oh my God, we're losing to Nigeria with snow. I mean, that's the rather dramatic change in the propaganda narrative, and I think we can see it reflected in the political elite as well with the panic and desperation that is starting to sit in and become rather obvious among European leaders who really have the most to lose from this conflict, rather other than the Kiev regime in Ukraine itself. And this all occurs, these latest incidents in the final weeks of and the aftermath of the Russian breakthrough of the Kiev regime's most heavily fortified fortress city, these extensive defenses and fortifications trenches, concrete bunkers, pill boxes, networks of tunnels, layers of minefields, you name it, Inca, which is really quite close to Dan City, and a western journalist a couple of years ago already referred to it rather poetically if quite awfully as a knife pointed at the heart of Dansk. (04:10) They meant that in a good way. Another way, of course, looking at it was a Jack boot pressed to the neck of the people of Donbass because it is from aca and the settlements shielded behind it that the Ki regime forces brutally shelled the people of Dansk for the last decade pretty much regularly. They didn't shell military facilities, they shelled civilian areas with artillery, with cluster munitions, with pedal mines. And this was to punish the people of done bus for choosing wrong, for not accepting the overthrow of the government by the Westback Maan butch back in 2014, and with the intention with driving Russian ethnic people who did not accept the new Ukraine into Russia. That was the intention and one of the primary reasons for the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict, not the only one. There were security concerns as well, but this was loudly voiced as well. (05:22) And when the Russians broke through it aga, they did it rather dramatically towards the end. It ended up much shorter than say the siege of Bach Mu, despite the defenses in a DKA being considerably stronger, and this is because of a sea change on the battlefield. The KI regime's initial a integrated Soviet legacy air defense network, the backbone of which was the formidable S 300 systems had been largely deteriorated at this point already a few months ago. And on top of what hadn't been destroyed, they were absolutely out of interceptor missiles for it, and there were none left in countries that are now part of the west former Eastern Bloc countries. Their supplies were all exhausted. So there was an attempt to put together a hodgepodge piece meal air defense system not properly integrated with using Western systems, but that has also been attributed away over the last few months. (06:35) Russia launched an extensive campaign over the winter, and that was a primary target of their missile and drone campaign. So in afca, Russia fully unleashed the fab guided glide bombs on these defenses. And these are old dumb munitions with smart glide kits that turn them into precision weapons being able to fire from air at a distance of tens of kilometers. And because these are bombs, not artillery shells, they have a considerably bigger payload. They come in 500, 1000 and 1500 kilogram capacities and they just annihilate. I mean, if the Ki regime turns, say what they did pretty much to every building in the city, turning it into a mini fortress that has to be individually stormed one fab bomb, and it's gone. And particularly at the larger end, the 1500, they have an incredibly demoralizing effect on anyone within the radius of experiencing the explosion, the concussion and the like. (07:57) And in the closing days of a dka, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, they dropped over 500 of these, oh my God, on the fortresses in just the last few days, right? So that's why they collapsed so quickly and dramatically at the end and why there was such a route. And they're able to do this now because they can fly with a considerable degree of impunity over the battlefield because first, the Soviet legacy and now the Western Air Defense system sent us a replacement, have largely been destroyed. And immediately in the aftermath of Dfca, the Russian forces far from being exhausted, as many Western military analysts drinking their own propaganda Kool-Aid tried to claim claiming high casualties as they always do without evidence to back it up other than the say so of the regime in Kiev. Russian forces were not exhausted because they had not suffered any considerable attrition because they had been standing off and dropping an extremely large bombs from Sue, 30 fours from fighter bombers on ev dca, which is what did at least at the end the majority of their work for them once they were already ensconced in the outskirts of the city. (09:24) So they continued on fallback positions in the next line of villages that Kiev regime forces had retreated to and were hastily trying to dig themselves in because they had not built proper defenses. And for instance, Laska and Severna lasted two or three days, and as Russia moved on the second line of villages even further, and we faced a real breakthrough in the Kiev regime defensive lines at this point, the Kiev regime became desperate to try to at least slow down. We're not even talking stop, but to slow down the Russian advance to give themselves more time to hastily dig as the Western headlines have now been talking about what the Kiv regime needs to do to dig new trenches, to dig new fortifications. So they moved a large number of what air defense systems they had left elsewhere in the country into an area far too close to the battlefield. (10:32) And Russia at this point, not only of course, enjoys air superiority over the contact line, but they also enjoy drone superiority. And Russia has put a rather larger number of military satellites into the orbit in the last year, last few months that have started to come online. So they were able to track these air defense systems fairly well, and it's more than just three patriot launchers that have been destroyed. Also, one of the remaining older S 300 air defense systems, several NASS air defense systems supplied by the US and Norway, and also a number of books and smaller systems. By my count at least 11 air defense systems have been destroyed in the last two weeks over the area immediately to the west of F dca. And this is adding to the butcher's bill. Previously, the Kev regime has adopted a new tactic in several areas. (11:50) We saw it over the sea of, we saw it also in Belgo where that Ill 76 transport plane shut down the KI regime shut down its own plane full of prisoners of war A couple of months ago, if you remember forced to admit it, they've been sending in an attempt to try to stop the Russian dominance of the skies. They've tried to use essentially not mobile air defense systems in a mobile capacity to set up ambushes for Russian planes to instill a degree of caution and restraint. But that has proven very costly for them because they've also lost air defense systems in that way as well, because of course, Russia was actively hunting them down and despite their claims to have shut down large numbers of Russian aircraft, there is zero evidence providing this zero. I mean, and there have been plenty of evidence, for instance, of the Kev regime's own aircraft, remaining aircraft being shot down when they're shot down. (13:06) There is video footage, there is air wreckage and the like. So really questionable claims they may have sacrificed other than this, of course, the POW plane, which everyone noticed, but that was an undefended transport plane flying in what it assumed a mission of peace bringing POWs for an exchange. So they've lost a huge degree of whatever hodgepodge air defense they had left. Now, Forbes speaking just of the events in F dca, not of the rest of it, says that just in those engagements that the Kev regime lost 13% of its air defense capacity speaking specifically of the Patriot systems provided to it. And that's on paper because they're not acknowledging earlier patriot systems that have been shot down. So I would suggest that they have at this point lost far more. They probably have a number of patriot launchers in the single digits left in Kiev, for instance, possibly in Odessa. (14:22) But the implications of this going forward is that Russian use of air superiority and even now close air support over the contact line is going to dramatically increase because there is no air defense left to deal with them, which means the pace of Russian advances are going to increase. And this is when even Western analysts and Ukrainians are talking about rather large concentrations of Russian forces behind the lines that have been built up but not committed yet. And there is the suspicion that they're going to launch a large scale big arrow offensive sometime later this year. In fact, the Kiev regime has just in the past week evacuated the entirety of Harko region. Some 85 settlements ordered the civilian evacuation because they fear a big offensive in the harko direction in the coming probably months, perhaps weeks. Dr Leon (15:36): President Biden told us during his State of the Union address that Ukraine can stop Putin, Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons that it needs to defend itself. That's all he says. In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. My question is, who's operating these US supplied Patriot air defense systems and are there US special forces trainers that are on the ground training these forces? Mark Sleboda (16:14): Okay, so first to the last point, Joe Biden is lying genocide. Joe is flat up lying and we know it because the Western mainstream media has told us already in the summer of 2022 in the New York Times and the Washington Post talking about unusually large numbers of US intelligence and US and European commandos on the ground in Ukraine. Then later we heard there were hundreds of uniformed US troops on the ground, again from the western mainstream media that were doing tracking of Western supplied weapons. Now, if that's really what they were doing, then they weren't doing a very good job because it was only weeks after that we heard that the West couldn't track these weapons at all. So I mean either they were completely incompetent or they are doing something else on the ground Dr Leon (17:15): On top of them. Wait a minute, are these also, aren't these the same stories that a lot of these weapons are showing up in other battles in other countries? Mark Sleboda (17:24): Yes. Yes. With the idea that a tithe essentially of Western weapons is being sold through corruption in the Ukrainian military and the distribution networks off because of the prevalent corruption in the country to pad their own pockets. And then I don't think there's anything question about that. The Western mainstream media has long reported about that. In fact, early on, CBS noted that some 70% of the weapons supplied by the west were not reading the front lines. This was early on in the conflict. So on top of those commandos, we now the Russian government has long complained that these high-tech systems supplied by the west from the US in particular the high Mars and multiple launch rocket systems in the Patriot air defense systems, as well as some French air defense systems, Polish crab artillery systems, British storm shadows, cruise missiles, that these are all being operated by western military specialists who are being sent there under the guise of mercenaries or humanitarian and aid workers and the like, because it is impossible to train the Kiev regime forces in such a short period of time to operate these advanced western systems. (19:09) The Russian government's been saying this for a considerable amount of time, but this was confirmed by no less a person than the German chancellor Olaf Schultz, who in an apparent spat back and forth with the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, and to the British as well, when the British were pressuring Germany to deliver the Taurus missiles, the context of Ola Schultz is we can't do what the British, the French, and the Americans are doing and have people obliquely. He admitted that the West had their military forces on the ground operating their systems and that Germany could not be seen as doing that. And this was reinforced in these leaked military calls from the German Air Force planning, a series of cruise missile attacks inside Russia with the expected to be delivered towards cruise missile system, at least expected by them. The political elites in Germany aren't saying that, but they also revealed that the German cruise missiles could perhaps be operated on the ground by the rather large number of Americans of people on the ground wearing civilian clothes with American accents, which of course is a roundabout way of saying US military personnel not in uniform on the ground in Ukraine. (20:58) So I mean, they just have to Dr Leon (20:59): Be curious from Kansas that are wandering the fields and the step of Germany and Russia and Ukraine. Mark Sleboda (21:07): Yeah, they're not wearing boots. They're wearing ballet slippers or figure skates or something, I guess. So that's a lie. Second of all, the Kim regime can defeat. Well, Ukraine can beat Putin, right? The childish way that western leaders and media try to demonize any opponent down to just one leader and so forth. But if that was true, if Western military aid in Ukrainian regime hands was enough to beat Russia, then what happened over their failed summer counter offensive that was armed trained, financed intelligence planned and war gamed out by nato, primarily US by the Pentagon, that's who did it. They failed. They failed badly. They were mauled. They never even got past the first of Russia's five echelon defensive lines and suffered horrible casualties in the process. No one denies that. So there is no indication that however additional tens of billions of dollars of aid are sent that the West will ever again able to build an offensive force like they did for Ukraine in the summer offensive because they simply don't have the weapons in inventory to replace everything like that. (22:50) They do have some things, they got plenty of Bradleys if they want. Obviously they're very reticent to allow the rather small number of Abrams that they've sent to be used in combat. Four of them have been destroyed after just appearing on the battlefield in the last week. But the rest of the Western militaries that supplied weapons, they're tapped out. France, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, they've all said, we can't supply anymore because we've already dug past our stockpiles into our own military supplies and we can't replace these systems fast enough. For instance, one French Caesar self-propelled Howitzer, a total of 36 of these between France and Denmark were supplied to the Kiev regime for the course of that offensive. And they're practically through all of them, they have very few of them left because Russia's been hunting them down. And also they are subjected to considerable wear and tear, and they're not actually built for high intensity combat like this, much like the US' M triple sevens and the Paladins and the like. But it takes the French 18 months, the French military industrial complex, 18 months. 18 months Dr Leon (24:20): To Mark Sleboda (24:21): Build one Dr Leon (24:22): That's a year and a half Mark Sleboda (24:23): One Caesar. But we heard that they have shortened that time to 15 months. Oh Dr Leon (24:30): Wow. That makes me feel a whole lot better. You just mentioned the leaked recordings from the German Air Force, and is it a coincidence that after these conversations were leaked where the Germans were talking about taking out bridges in Russia with cruise missiles that Victoria Newland resigns because there are some who say that her name was mentioned in on these tapes and that the German Air Force officers were really talking about conversations either they had with her or ideas that she was presenting about these attacks inside Russia? Mark Sleboda (25:16): Yeah, there's a possibility there, and if that is the situation, then it appears that she was probably forced out by the Biden administration. But are I think there are other considerations in play. Victoria Newland, the Queen NeoCon of the us, she's married to Robert Kagan who is the arch NeoCon of the United States. Robert Kagan, his books, check them out if you're unfamiliar with his sinister work. I would say she has long dominated through several presidencies US policy towards Ukraine. She was instrumental in the actual Westpac, my Don pooch, if not the key architect of it. She was caught on recordings with then US Ambassador Jeffrey Piat, talking about how they needed to midwife this thing, bring then Obama's Vice President Joe Biden into midwife it picking the new Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arsen Ya from the leaders, the figurehead leaders of the Maidan, and then famously saying F, the when the idea that the Europeans might want someone else for Ukraine's next prime minister was presented. So I mean she's been instrumental and she briefly left office during the Trump administration and then came right back. She has been serving as under Secretary for political affairs, which despite the rather kafkaesque bureaucratic name is actually the third highest official within the US Department of War. I'm sorry, not the US Department of War, US Department of State. My bad. Dr Leon (27:23): I can understand the confusion. Mark Sleboda (27:24): I said the difference. Yeah, she a third highest official and she was actually operating as the second highest official just below the Secretary of State for about a half of year when Wendy Sherman, the previous Deputy Secretary of State stepped down. So she was doing the number two and number three job and it was widely expected that she would be permanently assigned to that position, a permanently elevated to Deputy Secretary of State. But we found out that just a month ago she was passed over for this position by Kirk Campbell. The Biden approved someone else, and Kirk Campbell is an Asia specialist. He's a specialist on China, which to my mind tells me that the Biden administration is tiring of this conflict in Ukraine and they're already looking past it despite the bad situation. Their proxy regime is in to China, which may indicate a planned change of policy or at least prioritization or at the very least an unwillingness to escalate further, I say may. Dr Leon (28:48): So does that mean then that the Biden administration is now following along the previous Obama administration's tilt towards Asia? Mark Sleboda (29:02): Yeah, that's entirely possible. I believe that's what the Biden administration always wanted to do. They wanted the Middle East to remain quiet and it was not a priority for them. That didn't go out down so well. Just a week before the October 7th, seventh launching of the all Axel flood operation by Hamas on Israel, Jake Sullivan was in an essay talking about how nice and quiet the Middle East was, which allowed the US to concentrate on other areas. Well, that didn't go so well then since then. But they wanted the Middle East to be quiet. They expected to finish off Russia quickly. They expected their sanctions to destroy the Russian economy, Putin to be overthrown, and because of the economic commiseration of the country Dr Leon (29:58): They wrong Mark Sleboda (30:00): And that they would now, their biggest concern would be dividing up Russia into smaller pieces and how to go about that. That appears to have been their plan. Okay, so not so good on the plan thing, but then they hoped they thought that would be finished quickly and then to pivot hard to China. I think that was always their plan to finish Russia off quickly, ignore the Middle East and pivot hard to China. And none of that, of course has gone according to plan. So with A and B having failed, they're trying to go to C anyway in very likely the months at this point that they have remaining to them. And I think that the passing over of Victoria Newland for that is a sign that the Biden administration is already lost interest, possibly due to inability to achieve their desired goals and is shifting to the next goals that they can't probably accomplish even more so I would say if they think that they're going to defeat China in some type of conflict off of their own coast in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea. But anyway, I expect that Victoria Newland was extremely unhappy about being passed over. She was probably, she can see the bureaucratic writing on the wall that the prioritization is changing away from her reason for existence, which is fighting Russia. And I think that that probably at least as much if not more so played a role in her deciding to quit or being forced out. We don't know the real truth of that yet, although I imagine that she won't be able to keep her mouth shut forever on that score Dr Leon (31:51): Or her husband. So political reports that France finds Baltic allies in its spat with Germany over Ukraine troop deployment, that France is building up an alliance of countries to open potentially that are open to potentially sending Western troops to Ukraine. That Mark sounds to me like there's a lot of tension within nato. And going again back to President Biden State of the Union, he told us America is a founding member of nato, the Military Alliance of Democratic Nations, and that to prevent war, we've made NATO even stronger, which is the point that I was trying to get to about this element of his speech that we've made NATO even stronger, and now he also assigns or attributes Finland joining NATO as evidence of NATO's strength. It doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like it's all good in Mark Sleboda (32:59): Yeah, I mean definitely. I mean, Hungary and Slovakia of course are the most egregious examples of this because they are completely against the proxy war now being fought on Russia in Ukraine completely. They won't have anything to do with it. But yeah, there are definitely, I think tensions and cracks emerging and a bit of a panicked blame game going on right now with different European countries all trying to blame each other saying You haven't done enough. And with Macron coming out now in the aftermath of the taking of a DKA coming out and openly talking about putting NATO troops on the ground, I think this is not something that is a secret, something that has not been discussed for, and something that contingency plans are not already in place to do in the future. They just aren't in a political situation to have it said out loud. Now, I think that's the real problem that Germany and other countries have. It's causing them, no one is ready to do it now, and the fact that it has been brought up now, they see as politically detrimental to them in their own countries Dr Leon (34:29): As in the farmers' protests in Germany, Mark Sleboda (34:32): Yeah, in Poland, yes, Poland. I mean there are protests across Europe, but also, yes, the fragile coalition government in Germany, the rise of the A FD, the alternative for Germany, the alternative for Deutsche Man, yeah, party in Germany. These are all blowback from the European involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, and they just did not need this. Now, I think Macron has pointed out two things. One is that levels of escalation in this conflict, red lines that we will not cross in terms of escalation have been passed again and again and again. I remember back in February and March of 2022 when Joe Biden saying that US tanks and jets us would never supply tanks and jets to Ukraine because that would mean World War iii, right? But US tanks are now burning in the urban agglomerations of the Donez region, and US F sixteens are supposedly on their way within the next couple of months to the Kiev regime. (35:55) So again and again, these lines have been crossed, and I believe this line will be crossed eventually, but not yet. The second point, and Macron pointed this out, what we once thought was unacceptable has become normal operations repeatedly during this conflict as they've crawled further up or down the escalation ladder, however you choose to look at it. And he also then made a point that when French troops might be sent into Ukraine, when Russian forces move on Kiev or Odessa, which is most likely some time away, probably more than a year, maybe longer than that. So yeah, I mean, right now fighting Russia has a lot of advantages on the battlefield, but big advances can still be measured in a handful of kilometers, a tree line, a small village. (37:04) The writing is on the wall in terms of the logistics of a war of attrition and everything, but I think there's still a lot of hard ground slogging into the future. Macron sees that as well, so they're panicking now. I think he's right that when Russia moves towards Kia or Odessa, there will be probably greater support for his suggestions, but we've already seen support from the Baltics. The Baltic leaders have come out and said, yes, we're ready to send the handful of troops that we have now, because if there's anything the Baltics country need is to come out on the losing end of this conflict, having sent their own troops to war with Russia and having a NATO either fall apart or turned into a toothless tiger as a result of this really, really bad geopolitical move to my mind. I mean, because they're of course the most vulnerable. (38:05) They've got large populations of Russian ethnic populations that they have been rather seriously politically and linguistically culturally repressing, particularly over the last two years, even trying to expel as many Russian ethnic people from their countries as they can, practically inviting some type of Russian backed efforts against those governments in the Baltics, really not a smart move, but also Poland has made the Polish foreign minister Sikorsky back again, by the way, has also seemed to suggest contrary to statements by the Polish president, that at some point down the line, Polish troops could be sent into Ukraine and also Canada. Trudeau has also volunteered Canadian troops as well in non-combat roles of course, because that's what you do with your military troops. You send them into a conflict zone Dr Leon (39:16): Very as non-combatants Mark Sleboda (39:19): Like trainers. First you have trainers and advisors, then you have non-combatants. We know the way this goes, so obviously there is already, and check the Czech president has also suggested he is a former NATO official himself, a very big hawk on Russia, and he has also hedged his words and seemed to suggest that Czech might be able to consider it. So these are countries who are already coming out and we're just past aca, which is really only about 12 kilometers away from Donis city, right? I mean, there's a lot more to come and the panic and desperation will increase, and I think Macron will definitely find more countries down the road when it becomes completely impossible to deny as it will become in the future, the writing on the wall that the regime cannot hold militarily. The New York Times has already talked about the possibility, and I think it's a very strong possibility of later this year cascading collapses along the Kiev regime's, defensive lines, not me, but the New York Times has raised that as is talking to anonymous western military intelligence analysts about the probable course of the Ukrainian battlefield over the next half a year. Dr Leon (40:51): We mentioned Sweden joining NATO and Finland has joined nato, and we know about the very strong and robust social programs that those countries have because they, up until this point, have had a position of neutrality in conflict, which means they haven't had to send the public resources over to a defense budget. Now that that seems to be changing, are we looking at Finland and Sweden as having to shift those resources? We now see more NeoCon policy as well as what we'll call austerity measures. Can we expect austerity measures to creep their way into social policy in Finland and in Sweden? Mark Sleboda (41:49): Yeah, inevitably, I think we've already seen it to a certain degree. They've already, of course, suffered heavy economic consequences from their own sanctions on Russia, probably more significant than have been experienced by the Russian economy. Finland in particular did a very good cross border business. I was on the Finnish Russian border just a year ago at kind of a wilderness vacation place on the border there, well, actually a couple of years ago before the conflict, but very nice, and it was normal to cross the border from Russia and Finland to go to the store, for instance. Someone had this better, someone had that better, and there was a great deal of cross border business that has immensely suffered as a result already hurting the finish economy. The Swedes have suffered the same thing, perhaps to a lesser degree without sharing an open border, but experienced it as well, and now, I mean they've exhausted a great deal. (42:58) Finland and Sweden have both provided outsized military resources to the Kiev regime already, and those resources like so much else, are largely gone. They're either up in smoke or filtered away in the Kiev regime's corruption, so on top of the Kiev regime, of course, loudly demanding more, more, they also have to replenish their own military stocks, and now they have to militarize their own borders, which were UNM militarized, particularly in the case of Finland, which has a very large border. It was demilitarized, it was not a militarized border. There was police presence, but it was not a militarized border that is now changing and of course, facing the prospect of Finland joining NATO and US forces on finished soil, Russia has reordered, completely changed military districting on the border there and provided tens of thousands of new troops to be placed on the border as having to potentially deal with US troops being stationed in Finland as defensive contingencies, Finland is going to bear an increased burden with military. I do not see how this makes them more secure than they were before. I mean, they weren't targeted with nuclear missiles, and now they will be. (44:36) I guess that is the price of joining the cool Western Kids Club in nato, which it seems that the Finnish political elite wanted more than not creating economic and military problems with their much larger southern neighbor. Dr Leon (44:57): I read a story recently that elite units of Ukrainian armed forces are discussing overthrowing zelensky. Is that a rumor? Any traction of that story there in Moscow and any insight into commanders and soldiers in elite units of the Ukrainian armed forces? They're dissatisfied with the reshuffling of the leadership and they're talking about ousting VMI Zelensky. Mark Sleboda (45:30): Yeah. When Zelensky got rid of zany, and let's be clear, this didn't happen because of his military failures on the battlefield. It was done for political reasons because he saw zany as a threat as possibly running for president himself for staging a military coup and the possibility there were plenty of signs that the US was actually for a time considering switching horses, which is why he forbade elections in Ukraine, citing the martial law emergency powers, and so that he didn't have to face zny in an election, which the polls say he would've lost because zany has more support in the country than he does now. He didn't only get rid of ny, he got rid of whole streams of top down to low level commanders who were seen as loyal to ny. There was a huge reshuffling or replacement of Ukrainian of the Kev regime's military leaders. As a result of this, there's a lot of embittered military people because of this. We don't need to look in secret telegram chat rooms to hear this discussion because Dr Leon (46:56): Regime, which is where this story was originally attributable, yeah, the Mark Sleboda (47:00): Story is sourced from here, but there have already been open public statements by Kiev regime, military commanders on the battlefield saying to the Ukrainian journalists, this is wrong. There was a list signed by hundreds of Ukrainian military commanders serving on the battlefield, a petition asking Zelensky to get rid of Ky, whom he chose to replace Zelensky, whom is known as the Dr Leon (47:38): Butcher, the butcher Mark Sleboda (47:40): By his own forces, not because of the opponents that he kills, but because of his careless attitude towards the lives of his own people. So they made an Dr Leon (47:54): That's not a good moniker. As a commander, you don't want your own forces seeing you in the light of butchering them. Mark Sleboda (48:04): Yeah, I mean, my military experience tells me that that would not be the type of military commander that I wanted. Certainly, and I seriously doubt that they do as well. Plus Sirki is actually ethnic Russian. He was born in Russia in the Soviet Union. His family still lives in Russia, and they're actually quite Russian patriotic, so it's a rather bizarre situation, and in many ways there's a lot of Dr Leon (48:30): Parallels. It makes for a tough Christmas dinner. Mark Sleboda (48:32): I don't think it makes for a Christmas dinner at all. I'm pretty sure, and there are definitely parallels with the US Civil War to be drawn there and with so many other families across Russia and Ukraine. But yeah, they've made demands of Zelensky public demands that they replace, that they bring back zany and get rid of ky, and of course that was ignored and large numbers of those commanders were replaced. But if they're discussing it openly and he's already taking this vengeful action against them, there's no great surprise that they are talking about it in what they believe to be secret chat rooms about taking it into their own hands. It's rather interesting, of course, that the Russian intelligence chose to make this public because if they have penetrated this chat room, you can be totally sure that the key regime's military intelligence, let's say Ka bov loyal to Zelinsky, has penetrated this as well, and by going public with it, Russia might be forcing Zelinsky hand to take action against these coup plotting, even if it's in the very nascent, we hate this guy, why can't we get rid of him? Stage of, shall we say, trash talk. It might be forcing Zelinsky hand to take action now, probably because Russia sees Zelensky and KY in charge of the key regime, political and military as far better for them than ny, whom was not a brilliant military commander, but perhaps not an entirely incompetent one either. Dr Leon (50:36): Switching gears, the cradle is reporting US proxies fear, Afghan style withdrawal from Syria. The Syrian democratic force is the SDF. They're fearing that their US patrons will abandon them in favor of closer ties with Turk, what's happening here with the US military, their Kurdish proxies occupying northeast Syria and fearing a Afghan like pullout. Is that a serious cause for concern? Mark Sleboda (51:13): I mean, that has been a serious cause for concern since 2016, right? The Kurds have been thrown different Kurds, but Kurds have been thrown under the bus by the US government after having been turned into proxies again and again by the United States in Iraq multiple times in Syria, previously against Turkey. Turkey Dr Leon (51:38): Going all the way back to HW Bush, Mark Sleboda (51:40): Yes, Dr Leon (51:42): Throwing the Kurds under the bus. Yes, Mark Sleboda (51:44): It's primary routine, which really amazes me that Kurds keep willing to be US proxies when they see the long history, not just of the US abandoning proxies like say in Afghanistan, but the US specifically abandoning Kurdish proxies before and abandoning these same Kurdish proxies. When Turkey advanced into northern Syria, they still, of course controlled northern Syria while the US illegally military occupies East Syria. They with just withdrew their forces and said, we're not going to defend you. Sorry. You should probably pull back or the Turks will wipe you up. I mean, that has already happened. The Turks regard the SDF as the YPG, the Syrian branch of the PKK, which is opposed to the Turkish government and fighting for the cause of a Kurdish ethnic nation state that would have to be carved out of parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and perhaps Iran. They are the biggest ethnic people in the world that do not have a nation state. (52:55) And it was inevitable that at some point, if the US failed to overthrow the government in Damascus with their jihadi regime change, that they would at some point leave East Syria and they haven't done so yet. And despite the rumors to the contrary, I don't expect them to do so in the near future, but it is inevitable at some point is you can't maintain an open-ended occupation of a very large amount of territory forever, despite sitting on the Syrias valuable oil and wheat fields preventing the economic stabilization of the country seemingly out of spite geopolitical spite. If nothing else, you can't maintain this forever, especially with the increase in the number of attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq from local resistance groups like Katai, Hezbollah who don't want the US occupying their countries, right, meaning Syria and Iraq. There's certainly a cost that has to be paid there, but the cost is still not extremely high, and Biden already being seen as responsible for the disastrous Vietnam style withdrawal from Afghanistan leading the Taliban to completely retake the country in rather embarrassing fashion. (54:40) He does not want to be seen the same role in Syria, I think certainly not in the next year. Perhaps if he wins reelection against all odds, then there might be a possibility in his next administration. But a word of warning, if we do see Biden moving troops out of Syria and Iraq, the reason would probably be that they intend to strike Iran and they're moving their forces out of the range of Iranian ballistic missiles that would target them if that happened. There's a history of us withdrawals preceding attacks elsewhere when the US pulled out of Afghanistan. We found out later from the US Secretary of State that withdrawing from Afghanistan allowed the US to provide the resources to the Kiev regime in Ukraine that they would not have been able to do otherwise. So it seems that they already had intentions towards that regard, so watch it. If Biden does pull out of Syria, it may not actually be good for the Syrians or for anyone else in the region. It might actually be a signal that the US intends to escalate towards Iran. Dr Leon (56:08): Is there a possibility in terms of signaling here that we look at, of course, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah is now talking about escalating in terms of coming through Lebanon. If this thing were to grow even more full, great even more bringing Iran in, you've got Ansar Allah in the game, does Syria get in the game as well? And so could the United States move out of Syria, be in preparation for a larger conflagration of that nature? Mark Sleboda (56:52): Yeah, I don't see that. First of all, I think the US and Iran are still doing everything possible to avoid direct conflict with each other, hence the stand down by Katai Hezbollah saying they wouldn't attack US military bases any further. And it is actually Israel who is talking about escalating against Hezbollah in Lebanon. I think the US and Iran are both doing everything they can to maintain their state's dignity and still dance around each other, avoiding direct conflict in the Middle East. That said, Israel is doing everything possible to incite conflict between the US and Iran, which makes that a non guarantee. But the Syrian government is in a very weak position economically. The US is still illegally occupying the entirety of the east of the country, including the country's oil and wheat resources. The country is, the government is unstable, it's economic, very hard times, and Turkey is still occupying the entirety of the north of the country, and they still have a hundred thousand jihadi under arms occupying those territories in northern Syria. And of course the US military occupation forces alongside the Kurdish YPG in East Syria. The Syrian government is in no geopolitical or military shape to contribute to a fight. I do not see this blowing up because no one wants to go to war with the US over Gaza. No one except for our sala. Dr Leon (58:45): Final question for you. The United States relative to Syria developing stronger ties with Toa, how can the US make Reproachment in this manner when Erdowan is so erratic and undependable? Mark Sleboda (59:05): Yeah, I don't think they can. Does Dr Leon (59:06): That make sense? Mark Sleboda (59:08): Yeah. I think Erdowan has become a perennial thorn in their side that they constantly need to keep appeased to prevent him from, shall we say, flipping into the bricks Eurasian camp, and Erdogan routinely plays the US and Russia off of each other to what he sees as his country's advantage. The US support of the Kurds in East Syria, of course, has infuriated him, as has the US withdrawal of the F 35 program from Turkey when Erdogan bought the S 400 Air defense system Dr Leon (59:50): From Russia, Mark Sleboda (59:51): Yes, from Russia, he also regards the US as at least being, if not complicit, then at least having knowledge of the coup attempt against him several years ago. Very bad relations there. The US cannot rely on Turkey and Turkey. Well, it sees itself as being betrayed by the United States. I don't see any ability to improve relations between the two until there is regime change perhaps in the United States, but more than likely it will require Erdogan passing on one way or another for a substantial change in Turkish US relations. Dr Leon (01:00:37): I know I said that was my last question, but this is my last question. Since you mentioned the coup in Turk a few years ago, Golan is still, I believe, somewhere in Pennsylvania at a property in Pennsylvania. Are you surprised that he has not been turned over to Turk as a way of appeasing erdowan, and do you think that Golan can be fairly confident that he's not going to be turned over as a fig leaf for better relations? Mark Sleboda (01:01:16): Yeah, I think the US constantly sees him as a bit of leverage. The US likes to keep shadow governments in place for just about every country in the world. Somewhere in the United States, leaders forces Dr Leon (01:01:30): The Shah's Sun is still roaming around Northern Mark Sleboda (01:01:32): Virginia. The Shah's son, Joe Biden just declared Yulia Navalny and then Yolanda, whoever she is, to be the new leader of the Russian opposition. You've got Juan Gau still out there. This is actually absolutely normal. There are entire communities outside Langley that are just exist of us backed shadow governments ready, waiting to be installed in foreign countries. But I have to say that I don't actually think the Golan movement had anything to do with the coup against Erdogan that occurred several years ago. This was almost entirely, once again, a military attempt to restore a kaist state in Turkey against Erdogan's Islamism. It was just sprung early by the Turkish government under what it believed to be controlled conditions, and then rather than admitting a secular Islamist divide in the country, they simply blamed it on a convenience scapegoat, which was the ING gong. I don't think that he actually had anything to do with that QI think that's just a rather vocal if unconvincing bit of Turkish propaganda that everyone has just played along with. So as not to anger Erdogan. In fact, the Russian president when asked about it a couple of years ago, when asked about their responsibility for the coup, his comments were pretty much to the point of if Erdogan says that's what happened, who am I to say otherwise? Dr Leon (01:03:26): Mark Sloboda, man, thank you so much. I always appreciate you carving out the time for me and for the show that you do. Mark Shada, really appreciate you joining me today. Mark Sleboda (01:03:38): Thanks for having me. Dr Leon (01:03:40): And folks, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please, please follow and subscribe, leave a review, share the show. We're growing tremendously, but we can only grow as you allow us to follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we do not chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace. We're out Announcer (01:04:31):  

A unique assessment of American military involvement in Syria, written by three very different authors who between them participated in all large Kurdish operations between late 2014 and mid-2016, experiencing first-hand the impact America had on the battlefield. With America's War on Terror and the subsequent democracy experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq having turned into geopolitical disasters, the US military campaign in alliance with the Kurdish forces in Syria remains a rare success story. Considering the overwhelming military victory, the functioning Kurdish civilian governing structures that followed the fighting, the extremely light military footprint and the strong link to Kurdish partners, many political analysts, military experts and politicians in Washington, DC, judge the intervention against ISIS in Syria as the nation's most successful campaign since World War II. However, since neither these experts nor many journalists were on the ground during the fighting, they struggle to explain exactly how this particular operation turned into a just war. The authors, however, were there. Between the three of them, they fought for over two years with the Kurdish forces. They participated in all the large Kurdish operations against the Islamic State between late 2014 and mid-2016. They endured muddy archaic trench warfare, witnessed the first waves of decisive US and British airstrikes against ISIS, and experienced the impact America had on the battlefield. Later, when American, British and French Special Forces were deployed at the front lines, the authors worked closely with those teams when they evacuated hundreds of wounded from the battlefield together. Based on the authors' unique insights, this book analyses America's war in Syria and structures the intervention into different phases including the secretive build up and the ultimate destruction of the ISIS Caliphate. Today's Sponsor: Mad Rabbit Tattoo https://www.MADRABBIT.com/team They've preserved over 1.5 MILLION tattoos and right now, they've got an exclusive offer just for The Team house Project listeners. If you go to MadRabbit.com/team and use promo code Team you'll receive 25% off. Take care of those tats!

A unique assessment of American military involvement in Syria, written by three very different authors who between them participated in all large Kurdish operations between late 2014 and mid-2016, experiencing first-hand the impact America had on the battlefield.With America's War on Terror and the subsequent democracy experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq having turned into geopolitical disasters, the US military campaign in alliance with the Kurdish forces in Syria remains a rare success story. Considering the overwhelming military victory, the functioning Kurdish civilian governing structures that followed the fighting, the extremely light military footprint and the strong link to Kurdish partners, many political analysts, military experts and politicians in Washington, DC, judge the intervention against ISIS in Syria as the nation's most successful campaign since World War II. However, since neither these experts nor many journalists were on the ground during the fighting, they struggle to explain exactly how this particular operation turned into a just war.The authors, however, were there. Between the three of them, they fought for over two years with the Kurdish forces. They participated in all the large Kurdish operations against the Islamic State between late 2014 and mid-2016. They endured muddy archaic trench warfare, witnessed the first waves of decisive US and British airstrikes against ISIS, and experienced the impact America had on the battlefield.Later, when American, British and French Special Forces were deployed at the front lines, the authors worked closely with those teams when they evacuated hundreds of wounded from the battlefield together.Based on the authors' unique insights, this book analyses America's war in Syria and structures the intervention into different phases including the secretive build up and the ultimate destruction of the ISIS Caliphate.Today's Sponsor:Mad Rabbit Tattoohttps://www.MADRABBIT.com/teamThey've preserved over 1.5 MILLION tattoos and right now, they've got an exclusive offer just for The Team house Project listeners. If you go to MadRabbit.com/team and use promo code Team you'll receive 25% off. Take care of those tats!

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a strong opponent of the Syrian regime, says his country could be ready for dialogue with Damascus. It's a prospect that's causing alarm in the ranks of the Syrian opposition that relies heavily on Turkish support. Since the onset of the Syrian civil war, Erdogan routinely targeted his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al Assad as a tyrant, devil, and butcher, pledging that he would pay for what he calls his atrocities against his people.  But this month, Erdogan is singing a different tune. Referring to his nation's relations with the Syrian regime, the Turkish leader told reporters: "Political dialogue and diplomacy cannot be cut off between states."   Ankara severed its diplomatic ties with the Assad government at the start of the civil war. Erdogan has played a leading role in backing the opposition in its bid to oust Assad from power. But Turkey is now looking to return millions of Syrian refugees.  Talk of 'peace' Earlier this month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu revealed he had recently held talks with his Syrian counterpart.  "I had a brief chat with the Syrian foreign minister on the sidelines of a meeting, telling him that Turkey believes there will be peace between the Assad regime and the opposition and that Turkey is ready to help in such circumstances," Cavusoglu said.  Syrian rebels angrily protested, burning Turkish flags as they got news of the discussion between the Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers.   "It's terrible news for the Syrian opposition," said Galip Dalay, a Turkey analyst at Chatham House.  "Because of the trouble they were facing, they were already more and more turning into Turkey's proxies, and now that will be basically the nail in the coffin of the Syrian opposition. "But some of the groups there might also be decoupling between Turkey and some of the Syrian opposition groups." Syrian Kurds Analysts say Erdogan could be looking for rapprochement with Damascus to get rid of Syrian Kurdish forces of the YPG from its border.  Ankara accuses the YPG of having links to an insurgency inside Turkey. "From our perspective, we need to feel secure definitely," said Omer Onhon, Turkey's last ambassador to Syria. Erdogan is also facing mounting public pressure over the millions of Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey. But Onhon says Ankara needs to be cautious in its dealings with Damascus. Kurdish PKK fighters may retreat to Iran as Turkish military closes in "We need to see that Syria is secure for the return of Syrians in Turkey and in other countries. So, the regime has to prove that they are sincere in seeking a real political solution. But up to now, this is not the case," said Onhon. But time may not be on Erdogan's side. He faces reelection next year and is languishing in the polls, with many voters citing the presence of Syrian refugees as one of his most significant election liabilities.  Moscow a player The hand of Moscow, which has long backed the Assad regime, could also be a factor in Erdogan's deliberations, says analyst Dalay. "This is precisely in line with the Russian vision of Syria," said Dalay.  "The core of it is that Turkey needs to engage Damascus. That the road to Turkey's concerns in Syria goes through Damascus, so that's the message that Putin and Russia have been sending to Turkey. "How Turkey will follow through is a big question because Turkey has a significant military presence there (Syria). How Turkish voters are beating internet press clampdown before polls "So, Syria would insist on the withdrawal of the Turkish presence from Syria. And this is a very difficult position in terms of foreign and domestic policy. "  Assad has repeatedly called for the unconditional withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory — Ankara controls a large swathe of Syrian territory along the Turkish border, seized in its fight against the Kurdish YPG group.   It's a demand the Syrian president could make face-to-face with Erdogan in September when both leaders are invited to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. 

Macer Gifford is the pseudonym of a British former currency trader who travelled to Syria to fight with the Kurdish YPG militia against the Islamic State group. Macer went to fight ISIS not just once but twice. First in 2015 and again in 2016. In 2020, he released a book called Fighting Evil about his experience in Syria. I got good Tweets: https://twitter.com/Ideas_Sleep​ Support the show with a dollar/pound per video and get your name in the credits and my heart: https://www.patreon.com/Ideas_Sleep

What makes someone give up a lucrative job in the City of London to risk their life fighting ISIS in Syria – with no prior military training? In one of our most astonishing interviews, Macer Gifford describes how he left the UK to spend three long tours fighting with the Kurdish YPG militia against the brutal terror group Islamic State. He tells Arthur Snell what it's like to cross into a warzone, his book Fighting Evil: The Ordinary Man Who Went To War Against ISIS (£2 on Kindle!) and the shocking, inspiring and sometimes tragic stories of his fellow foreign fighters.“It wasn't about fighting, it was about standing in solidarity”“Volunteers aren't all left-wing activists. I'm a card carrying member of the Conservative Party.”“The Kurds are talking about amazing things like women's rights and gay rights – and it's all off the back of the most brutal conflict”Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Syria, American foreign policy faces an enormous humanitarian crisis and a political challenge to implement UN Security Resolution 2254, against the backdrop of competition from both Russia and Iran. A US return to "the Iran Deal" is likely to exacerbate conditions in Syria, while continued American support for the Kurdish YPG in Northeast Syria raises human rights concerns. The Syria file is one of the most complex and most urgent that the Biden administration will face.

After a stint in the U.S. Army Erwin embarked on the ultimate adventure, traveling to the Middle East and volunteering to serve with the Peshmerga in Iraq and the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria during the war against ISIS. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse NEW! Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/

Click here to buy: https://adbl.co/35ZPKzl A visceral, riveting, no-holds-barred military memoir told from the front line of the war against ISIS with a foreword by Andy McNab. In the summer of 2014 the world watched in horror as the black flag of ISIS swept all before it. Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq fell, ISIS proclaimed the caliphate and the horror mounted: from the mass murder, rape and enslavement of the Yazidis to the public beheading of journalists by British jihadis. For Macer Gifford it wasn't enough to ask why more wasn't being done, he knew he had to act. So, he left his job in the city, split from his girlfriend and a few weeks later found himself illegally crossing the border into Syria to join the Kurdish YPG in their fight against the savagery of ISIS. Macer Gifford became one of longest serving British International Volunteers and one of the only few to be promoted to be a Commander in the YPG. He fought alongside the Kurds (and their Syrian Allies) for three long tours of duty from the dawn of the caliphate all the way to its military defeat in the ruins of Raqqa in 2017, sniping at the final deadly wave of suicide bombers as they burst from the rubble. Along the way, he made - and lost - many friends. This is the only complete account of the war against the Caliphate by the Kurds and the remarkable and often eccentric band of international volunteers who fought alongside them.

In this episode of Good Treason, we hear about Robin's rapidly advancing love life in Brazil and then we dive further into his experiences in Syria fighting with Kurdish YPG in the war to stop ISIS. 

Syrian and Russian forces will deploy in northeast Syria to remove Kurdish YPG fighters and their weapons from the border with Turkey under a deal agreed on Tuesday which both Moscow and Ankara hailed as a triumph.

Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant and Jerry Gordon bring back Dilliman Abdulkader, a Kurdish policy expert. He is director of external relations at Allegiance Strategies, a Washington, DC -based public affairs consulting firm. He is involved in advocacy for Congressional passage of tough sanctions bi- partisan legislation just as a cease fire “pause” of 120 hours comes to close in northern Syria. The “pause” was concluded with Turkish President Erdogan during a session in Ankara with Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo. The pause has been interrupted with continued fighting between Turkish -supported jihadist Syrian National Army (SNA) militias and elements of the Kurdish YPG-led Syrian Democratic Force. Moreover, there is increasingly evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the jihadist SNA and use of chemical weapons such as white phosphorous. President Trump ordered the redeployment of 1,000 US forces in Syria to bases in Iraq, while abandoning and even bombing former bases in Syria. Abdulkader thinks sanctions in proposed bi- partisan legislation co-sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) are tougher than those lifted by President Trump in the “pause “agreement with Erdogan. A bi-partisan US House resolution condemning the President’s withdrawal from Syria passed resoundingly by a vote of 354 to 60. A House version of the Senate sanctions bill has been scheduled for a vote. Adoption of the Senate version is dependent on a call by Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) who wrote a Washington Post op ed critical of President Trump’s withdrawal from Syria. Abdulkader said Erdogan’s Turkish Armed Forces unleased a jihadist terror war using former Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and ISIS fighters to ethnically cleanse Kurds from their ancestral homeland in northeastern Syria. He noted Friday preaching in Turkish Mosques of the Quranic Mohammedan Army verses promoting jihad against Kurds, Jews, Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities. Abdulkader noted that Pakistan and Hamas support Erdogan’s terror war against the Syrian Kurds. The irony is Turkey is a NATO partner committing this jihadist terror war in Syria. The Turkish-backed jihadists have committed documented war crimes against Kurdish civilians. They have videoed the execution and beheading of prisoners, that in one example included the brutal murder of a 35-year-old woman Kurdish politician. Many children have been maimed by random Turkish artillery bombardments. Abdulkader noted that upwards of 300,000 people have been internally displaced during the fighting in a massive humanitarian crisis. The only realistic option for many fleeing the conflict is Iraqi Kurdistan, which is united in support of Syrian Kurds. The Turkish attack on October 9th followed a phone call on October 6th with President Trump who acceded to Erdogan’s demands for withdrawal of US special operators. Abdulkader believes that President Trump may have been “duped” during that call. Erdogan already had a security arrangement acceptable to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force with joint US patrols, and removal of border barriers. Abdulkader thinks it would be in Israel’s long-term interest to support Kurdish interests in northeastern Syria. He suggests Israel reduce exports to Turkey akin to EU arms embargoes. He contends that US presence on the ground, while symbolic, is necessary to preserve the gains of Kurds and other religious minorities to stabilize the area. The alternative facing the US is the resurgence of ISIS that cost 11,000 Syrian Kurdish lives to defeat the Caliphate. Meanwhile, Russia has gained ground in the region, as evidenced by meetings with Saudi Arabia and the UAE concerned over US withdrawal from the region. The US appears to have no strategy in Syria, let alone the Middle East. Beyond the Matrix 23OCT2019 - PODCAST

Russian forces will deploy in northeast Syria to remove Kurdish YPG fighters and their weapons from the border with Turkey under a deal agreed on Tuesday which both Moscow and Ankara hailed as a triumph. After talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kurdish fighters will withdraw 30km from frontier within 150 hours. - Thỏa thuận đạt được giữa Tổng thốgn Nga Vladimir Putin và Tổng thống Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ chứng kiến sự trở lại của lực lượng của Tổng thống Syria Bashar al-Assad đến biên giới cùng với quân đội Nga, thay thế người Mỹ vốn đã nắm công việc tuần tra khu vực biên giới trong nhiều năm cùng với các đồng minh người Kurd cũ của họ.

US Vice President Mike Pence announced Thursday that after hours of negotiations with Turkish officials, Turkey has agreed to suspend its incursion into northern Syria. Ankara will suspend military operations for 120 hours while Kurdish YPG forces withdraw from the proposed Turkish “safe zone” in the northeast. Pence said that after the Kurdish forces withdraw, Turkey will completely halt all operations.Congressman Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), who gained national attention for his principled stands on politically charged issues in the House of Representatives, his calming effect on the anti-police uprising in Baltimore and his forceful opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump, died October 17 at a hospice center in Baltimore. He was 68. Congressman Cummings was principled, dedicated, focused and consistent.UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's hopes of leading Britain out of the EU on October 31 are hanging in the balance Thursday, even after he secured a Brexit deal in Brussels. His deal still faces the threat that it could be killed in the House of Commons within 48 hours. The Democratic Unionist Party said it would oppose the deal, as relations between the Northern Ireland party and Johnson remain fractious. This falls into the category of when is a deal not a deal?General Motors negotiators and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union have reached a tentative deal to end a 31-day strike by nearly 50,000 workers. The proposed agreement needs the approval of both union leadership and the rank-and-file union members at GM before it can take effect. The UAW strike against GM will continue while union members vote on a new, four-year labor contract.GUESTS:Elisabeth Myers — Editor-in-chief of Inside ArabiaDr. Lenneal Henderson — Eminent Scholar and Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Virginia State UniversityDavid Schultz — Professor of political science at Hamline UniversityDr. Linwood Tauheed — Associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Margaret Flowers, a medical doctor and the co-coordinator of Popular Resistance, whose work is at www.popularresistance.org.12 Democratic presidential candidates squared off last night, with 10 trying to set themselves apart from frontrunners Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. Political observers in the media are declaring Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and even Bernie Sanders the winners. There’s no telling what will happen in the polls in the coming days, and the race is still wide open. Fighting continues to rage in Northern Syria as Turkish forces face a newly formed alliance between the Kurdish YPG and the Syrian government. Meanwhile, pressure grows on the Trump administration to reverse course and maintain the U.S. occupation in the country. Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, joins the show. Chicago’s teacher’s union is meeting today and it will almost certainly vote to strike effective tomorrow. Classes already are canceled, and negotiators are not optimistic about any breakthrough. Both sides say they are facing multiple issues, including teacher pay, staffing, and the duration of the contract. Brian and John speak with Kofi Ademola, an activist and organizer with the Black Lives Matter movement. As Brexit negotiations go down to the wire, the UK’s Brexit secretary has indicated that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will send a letter requesting an extension if there’s been no deal by this Saturday, as the legislation that was recently passed designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit requires. Neil Clark, a journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Week, and Morning Star, joins the show. Carrie Lam, the head of Hong Kong’s government, was unable to deliver her annual speech to the city’s legislative council today after opposition lawmakers shouted her down. As the United States prepares to intervene more forcefully and the central Chinese government remains determined to stand strong in the face of increasingly violent demonstrations. John Ross, Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute, Renmin University of China, and an award-winning resident columnist with several Chinese media organizations, joins Brian and John. Wednesday’s regular segment, Beyond Nuclear, is about nuclear issues, including weapons, energy, waste, and the future of nuclear technology in the United States. Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, and Sputnik news analyst and producer Nicole Roussell, join the show.Wednesday’s weekly series, In the News, is where the hosts look at the most important ongoing developments of the week and put them into perspective. Sputnik news analyst & producer Walter Smolarek joins the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Ambassador Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria.A major realignment has taken place in the Syrian war as the Turkish invasion of northeast Syria enters its sixth day today. US troops are out of the immediate area and a new alliance between the Kurdish YPG and the Syrian government. President Trump has put economic sanctions into place against Turkey for their military actions. Fiona Hill, an aide in the White House, testified yesterday for nine hours about her interactions with former National Security Council John Bolton. She testified that Bolton asked her to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council about the pressure that several of the administration’s officials were putting on Ukraine. Dan Kovalik, a human rights and labor lawyer who is the author of the book “The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil,” joins the show. Ecuadorian protestors succeeded in forcing President Moreno’s government to withdraw the IMF-imposed austerity package on Sunday. The move ended strikes across the country and created a new commission to design a new set of measures. The commission includes representatives from the indigenous movement as well as the government and will be mediated by the United Nations and the Catholic church. Meanwhile, leftist leaders were arrested and accused of instigating the protests. Brian and John speak with Arnold August, author and journalist currently on an international speaking tour on the theme "US-Venezuela-Cuba-Canada: The Geopolitics.” As tensions grow and alliances shift rapidly in the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an official visit to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The crisis in Syria, the global energy trade, and security cooperation in the gulf are at the top of his agenda. Mindia Gavashelli, the Editor in Chief of Sputnik News’ D.C. Bureau, joins the show. A Spanish court handed down harsh prison sentences for Catalan political leaders for their role in a push for independence. The sentences, which include a 13-year prison term for the Vice President of Catalonia, have caused widespread outrage in the region and militant demonstrations. Dick Nichols, the correspondent for Spain and Catalonia for Green Left Weekly, joins Brian and John. Tuesday’s weekly series is False Profits—A Weekly Look at Wall Street and Corporate Capitalism with Daniel Sankey. Brian and John speak with financial policy analyst Daniel Sankey.Today’s regular segment that airs every Tuesday is called Women & Society with Dr. Hannah Dickinson. This weekly segment is about the major issues, challenges, and struggles facing women in all aspects of society. Special guest and creative activist Eleanor Goldfield, host of the podcast Act Out!, which is on Free Speech tv, and whose work is at ArtKillingApathy.com; Hannah Dickinson, an associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and an organizer with the Geneva Women’s Assembly; Nathalie Hrizi, an educator, a political activist, and the editor of Breaking the Chains, a women’s magazine; and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell join the show.

In Episode 105 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jake Hanrahan about the crisis unfolding in the border region between Syria and Turkey following the US withdrawal of forces from northern Syria. This withdrawal precipitated the subsequent assault by Turkish Armed Forces on the Kurdish YPG-controlled region of Rojava. Jake Hanrahan is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the UK. He has reported from Syria, Iraq, southeast Turkey, and other conflict zones for HBO, Vice News, PBS Newshour, and BBC News, to name a few.  Turkish President Erdogan, after obtaining the consent of President Trump, began his invasion into the Kurdish YPG controlled region of Syria known as Rojava this past Wednesday. During Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed to Margaret Brennan that roughly 1,000 U.S. troops would be evacuated from northern Syria following Trump’s troop withdrawal announcement. There are also multiple reports of ISIS families and fighters previously captured and held by Kurdish forces starting to escape after Tukey’s bombardments. Also, Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen reported Sunday that the Syrian army would enter Manbij and Kobani in the next 48 hours, based on an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (the latter, according to Mohammed Shaheen, the deputy chairman of Euphrates region told North-Press).  It seems that what we are seeing transpire in the Middle East is the disintegration of artificially constructed national borders around sectarian lines. The forces being unleashed have thus far remain contained within the Greater Middle East, but Turkey’s involvement creates the further potential for spillover into the Balkans and southern Europe at some indeterminate future date. Additionally, Turkey has been flexing its geopolitical muscles where Greece is concerned in recent years, and it is no longer inconceivable to imagine that its troubled relationship to the EU and its membership in NATO will prove insufficient as deterrents for curbing Turkish military aggression or the expansionary ideas of Erdoğan in the Aegean.  This conversation is meant to help Hidden Forces listeners develop some context for what has transpired over the past week, the significance of Trump’s decision, and the implications moving forward.  Hidden Forces is listener funded. We rely on you to help us keep the program free of corporate advertising. You can help us do that by subscribing to one of our three content tiers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Your support is deeply appreciated. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

21WIRE's Patrick Henningsen reporting from Beirut, Lebanon joins Fault Lines Radio hosts Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan on Monday morning DC drive time: A lot of Americans are marinated in a set of mainstream media ‘facts’ — that somehow the Kurds have a nation-state located in Syria. They’re not even a majority in northeastern Syria, where the US is currently occupying alongside the so-called ‘Syrian Democratic Forces', that are basically Kurdish YPG militia who’ve been given a patch on their uniform that says ‘SDF’ and loads of weapons and money by the US. The Kurds wouldn’t be massacred by the Syrian government. That’s just preposterous. And they wouldn’t be massacred by ISIS, if the Syrian Army was allowed in with the Russians and also the Iranian militia and Hezbollah – who would pretty much wipe them out within about a month. This would also force the Kurdish separatists, if there are any real separatists there, to negotiate with Damascus and come to some sort of arrangement. That’s the reality on the ground. Turkey’s had a long-running plan of setting up ‘safe zones’ with the US in Syria, for refugees. It’s Turkey wanting to basically cleanse its hands of the refugee problem; when in fact, Turkey helped create the refugee problem by backing the so-called rebels in Syria since 2011. And they’re still using remnants of the Free Syrian Army as their shock troops in places like Afrin, Idlib and Jarabulus. So, Turkey is actually directly responsible for the proliferation of militants. They’ve also been implicated with letting ISIS traverse their border back and forth. Patrick also covers briefly the current situation in the UK with Boris Johnson and Brexit, as well as the latest on 'Ukrainegate' and the real election meddling that took place in 2016. *** Listen to Fault Lines Radio LIVE on Radio Sputnik: MON-FRI | 7-10 AM ET | 105.5 FM & 1390 AM in DC | CALL-IN: 202-521-1320 | Watch on twitter.com/FaultLinesRadio and YouTube This segment was clipped from the October 7, 2019 live broadcast: https://21w.co/faultlines-7Oct2019 

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Daniel Lazare. He is a journalist and author of three books--“The Frozen Republic,” “The Velvet Coup,” and “America's Undeclared War.”A second so-called whistleblower has now come forward claiming first hand knowledge of the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky that forms the basis of the Democrats’ impeachment probe. But the controversy is not just engulfing the White House -- Democratic 2020 frontrunner Joe Biden is also badly damaged by the details of the case, leaving the effort to unseat Trump in next year’s election in a severely weakened state. In a surprise announcement, the Trump administration announced that U.S. troops would withdraw from Northern Syria to make room for a new Turkish military offensive targeting the Kurdish YPG militia. The move has caused great controversy in the United States and around the world. Ambassador Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, joins the show. More than 100 people are now dead from an Iraqi government crackdown on protests that have been going on for the last week. Protestors have taken to the streets against unemployment, lack of basic infrastructure, and corruption in the government. Brian speaks with Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Non-Violence. Protests continued in Hong Kong over the weekend as many marchers defied a new regulation prohibiting the wearing of masks at actions. Demonstrations continue to be violent, and on Sunday a journalist was burned after being hit by a molotov cocktail. Mike Wong, the outreach coordinator for the San Francisco chapter of Veterans for Peace, joins the show. Monday’s segment “Education for Liberation with Bill Ayers” is where Bill helps us look at the state of education across the country. What’s happening in our schools, colleges, and universities, and what impact does it have on the world around us? Bill Ayers, an activist, educator and the author of the book “Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto,” joins Brian. In this segment, The Week Ahead, the hosts take a look at the most newsworthy stories of the coming week and what it means for the country and the world, including the new second whistleblower in the impeachment inquiry, the potential withdrawal of US troops from the north eastern region of Syria, and the heavy death toll in Iraq following protests there over the past week. Sputnik News analysts and producers of this show Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek join the show.Monday’s regular segment Technology Rules with Chris Garaffa is a weekly guide on how monopoly corporations and the national surveillance state are threatening cherished freedoms, civil rights and civil liberties. Web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa and Patricia Gorky, a software engineer and technology and security analyst, joins the show.

Welcome to this Bonus chapter of the Book Club podcast. This interview was first broadcast 19th February 2019 on LBC. Iain speaks to Macer Gifford, a former currency trader who travelled to Syria to fight with the Kurdish YPG militia against the Islamic State group. This is one of the most fascinating interviews you're likely to hear and we just had to share it with you. This podcast may not be directly about a book but we wouldn't be surprised if this story isn't turned into one in the coming years! If you enjoyed this podcast, why not listen to For The Many, Iain's political (and funny!) podcast with Jacqui Smith. Iain Dale Monday - Thursday, 7-10pm on LBC. https://www.iaindale.com

This week Donald Trump decided to rapidly pull out all the US forces currently backing the Kurdish YPG militia in Northern Syria, known as Rojava to the Kurds. The YPG has proven to be the strongest ally for the US when fighting ISIS, but now they'll be left alone for Turkey to attack.  We speak with journalist Wladimir van Wilgenburg, who's dedicated his career to covering the Kurdish issue. He speaks Kurdish fluently (both Sorani and Kurmanji) and was in Rojava just last week.  - www.patreon.com/popularfront - www.popularfront.co - www.twitter.com/jake_hanrahan - www.instagram.com/popular.front

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Alex Gordon, former president of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, & Transport Workers.There’s been a major shakeup in the UK government. Yesterday, Brexit Secretary David Davis and his deputy resigned because of Conservative Party anger over his policy of negotiating a “soft landing,” where the UK would still maintain close ties to the EU after Brexit. And this morning, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson abruptly resigned because he opposed the policy, which he likened to “polishing a turd.” This is perhaps an attempt by Johnson to position himself to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister. But this morning, British financial markets fell like a rock and Brexit itself is now in disarray. Mass protests in Haiti erupted and have been ongoing for several days. Protesters rose in the capital of Port au Prince over the government’s attempt to raise fuel prices and impose austerity measures. Tim Schwartz, an anthropologist whose latest book is “The Great Haiti Humanitarian Aid Swindle,” joins the show. On Monday’s regular weekly half-hour segment Technology Rules with Chris Garaffa—a weekly guide on how monopoly corporations and the national surveillance state are threatening cherished freedoms, civil rights, and civil liberties, they talk about facial recognition software and the best web browser to use. Brian and John speak with web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa. An on-call judge in Brazil yesterday ruled that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva should be released from prison immediately. But the head of the federal court stepped in and overruled that decision, saying that Lula was duly convicted of corruption and must remain incarcerated. Aline Piva, a journalist and a member of Brazilians for Democracy and Social Justice, joins the show. Charges were dropped on Friday against the last remaining 39 people arrested for participating in the rally against Donald Trump on inauguration day. Most of the 230 people initially arrested were charged with felony rioting. But the government simply could not prove its case. Alex Rubenstein, a Sputnik news analyst and journalist whose work is on Twitter @RealAlexRubi, joins Brian and John. Monday’s regular segment “Education for Liberation with Bill Ayers” looks at the state of education across the country. What’s happening in our schools, colleges, and universities, and what impact does it have on the world around us? Today they talk about the content and conduct of teaching and learning, that is, not just testing. The hosts speak with Bill Ayers, an activist, educator and the author of the book “Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto” and Sputnik news analyst Walter Smolarek.Reports are circulating that the Kurdish YPG and the Syrian government are in talks to improve relations and cooperate over the future of the country. Meanwhile, heavy fighting in the southern province of Deraa has subsided as a ceasefire takes effect. Brian and John speak with Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement.Dawn Sturgess, who was allegedly poisoned in the UK city of Salisbury, has died. The media and many politicians have jumped on the case to revive the “novichok” anti-Russia narrative had been falling apart after Yulia and Sergei Skripal survived their alleged poisoning earlier this year. Eugene Puryear, the host of Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary, joins the show.

Hunting ISIS follows a group of veteran and civilian volunteers who smuggle themselves into Syria and Iraq to fight against ISIS alongside local militias. Through the eyes of American fighters embedded with the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, and medics supporting a coalition of local forces in Iraq, Hunting ISIS follows these men as they begin the difficult push to retake ISIS’ capital cities. New episodes air Tuesdays at 10PM Eastern on the History Channel. What is most interesting about Hunting ISIS is these brave men are not doing it for pay, they’re doing it because they believe in the cause. Each and every day, they wake up to face the possibility of death or imprisonment, and they continue forward. Not only does the series showcase the mission of these men, it also directs audiences to additional information about the conflict, and what it means for the world at large.  For this exclusive interview, host Aaron Peterson sits down with  director, Sebastiano Tomada and Deirio Films producer Christopher Leggett to discuss developing and filming Hunting ISIS, where the threat of war loomed over every frame.   This is one interview you won't want to miss!

Portrait photographer Joey L went to war for the first time in Northern Syria to capture the fight of the Kurdish YPG, documenting the culture in a way he says photojournalists can't. jakehanrahan.com/popularfront @jake_hanrahan

This week I'm joined by Dr. Jamie Allinson to discuss the current situation in Syria, the recent Western air strikes, the role of the Kurdish YPG, and the significance of Iranian and Russian backing for the Assad regime.

Earlier this week, Trump made comments about withdrawing US forces from Syria. Shortly after, this comment was reneged and effectively stamped out by the establishment. Meanwhile, US coalition forces continue to occupy the Syrian-Kurdish enclave of Manbij with Kurdish YPG forces in defiance of the invading Turks.  To help me dissect these unfolding events, I am joined once again by Kyle Anzalone, host of the Foreign Policy Focus Podcast & the resident foreign policy expert at the Libertarian Union. Follow Kyle’s Work: The Foreign Policy Focus Podcast Immersion News Foreign Policy Focus at the Libertarian Institute Record Afghan Opium Crop Signals Violent Year for U.S. Forces (Co-authored with Will Porter) syria.liveuamap.com Episode 65 of the Liberty Weekly Podcast is Brought to you by: The Liberty Weekly Amazon Affiliate Link The Liberty Weekly Patreon Page: help support the show and gain access to tons of bonus content! Become a patron today! Become a Patron!   Our Nord VPN Affiliate Link Our Liberty Classroom Affiliate Link Show Notes: Ron Paul, Daniel McAdams Ron Paul Liberty Report: "Trump: 'Just Kidding. We're Staying In Syria' AP: In Private, Trump Has Mused About Syria Pullout for Weeks CBS News: Nikki Haley Issues New Warning Over Syria Chemical Weapons Attacks AP: US Forces in Syria Seen Setting Up New Front-Line Positions Antiwar.com: Turkey Says France Must Choose Ally, Turkey or Kurdish YPG CBS News: American Service Member, British Armed Forces Member Killed in Syria Antiwar.com: Turkey Seizes Full Control Over Syria's Afrin District

In this episode, Eamon speaks with Marcus, an American man who travelled to Syria to fight as an international member of the Kurdish YPG. Marcus explains his motivation for going, and what the several month experience was like, from the boredom to the intensity of combat. Show Notes: This is a link to the YPG site about Rojava: http://ypg-international.org/rojava/ This is a link to the North American Kurdish Alliance, which Marcus mentions in the episode everyone should support: https://thenaka.org/ This is a story about Michael Israel, a young international volunteer killed in Syria that Marcus mentions in the show: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-california-man-20161201-story.html This is some current reporting on the Turkish invasion of Afrin in Rojava: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42765697 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/afrin-turkey-invasion-syria-enclave-kurds-ypg-airstrike-war-civil-a8182266.html

The inherent incompatibility between the demands of Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement continue to be played out towards their logical conclusion, Erdogan recruiting former ISIS fighters to help hit the Kurdish YPG, plus a British man who fought with the YPG is facing terrorism charges. Hosted by James Fox w/ Alex Maskill

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Daniel Ellsberg, one of the the most important whistleblowers in modern American history and the author of “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.”In his latest book, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg reveals shocking details of the U.S. nuclear weapons program of the 1950s and 1960s, including how responsibility for launching nuclear war was delegated to theater commanders during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations. No other high-level insider has ever written so candidly about nuclear policy--and that policy hasn’t changed in more than a half century.Brian and John talk about the grave dangers posed by America’s aging nuclear power plants in a 30-minute excerpt from an interview with nuclear experts. Greg Mello, the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, and Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, join the show.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, under fire from members of his own party for giving in to pressure from Republicans on the government shutdown, said yesterday that any discussion of a border wall is off the table. Others say Schumer had no deal with House Republicans to discuss DACA. Brian and John speak with Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist.Google for the first time has spent more money than any other company lobbying Congress, the White House, and federal agencies. The tech giant spent $18 million to influence policymakers on such issues as immigration, tax reform, and anti-trust law. Web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa joins the show.Puerto Rico’s governor announced on Monday that he is moving to privatize the island’s troubled public power company after its slow and difficult recovery from Hurricane Maria exposed mismanagement and corruption. Ruth Beltran, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Tampa, and Richard Lopez, an activist with the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, join Brian and John.The Turkish offensive in northern Syria continues to press forward against the Kurdish YPG’s positions. Meanwhile Turkey’s foreign minister has claimed that the United States is in favor of a 30-kilometer security buffer along the Syrian-Turkish border. Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, joins the show.Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court struck down that state’s congressional district boundaries, calling them “unconstitutional” and saying that they must be redrawn before the May primaries. While Democrats and Republicans consistently split the vote about 50/50, Republicans control 13 of the state’s 18 House seats. Brian and John speak with Drew Penrose, Legal and Policy Director at the election reform advocacy organization FairVote.

Turkey launched this week a military offensive into Afrin, a heavily Kurdish enclave of Syria. Ankara is calling it an 'anti-terror campaign,' targeting the US-backed Kurdish group, the People’s Protection Units. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is justifying the offensive as a pre-emptive strike, or Turkey’s right to self-defence. The war is likely an attempt for the country to hide behind anti-terrorist rhetoric to settle old scores against the Kurds. Kareem Shaheen, a journalist based in Turkey, joins the show to break down why this move shifts Turkey’s political alliances. The Kurdish people have long been a part of the region and believe they have been severely marginalised. Sofia Barbarani, an editor on the foreign desk, has spent several years reporting out of Kurdish-heavy areas of both Syria and Iraq. She joins the show to discuss Kurdish history in the region, their ultimate goals and the political differences among the several factions spread across the region. This is an acronym-heavy show so we’ve provided a guide to the initials below: • Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK: the Kurdish organization that have been involved in an armed conflict with Turkey since 1984 with the aim of creating an independent state. They have more recently demanded equal rights in Turkey. • Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units, or the YPG: Syrian rebels fighting president Bashar Al Assad. Accused of displacing local Arabs ot expand the areas of northern Syria under Kurdish control. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the PKK. • Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF: a militia alliance dominated by the Kurdish YPG and backed by the US. Beyond the Headlines is The National's weekly analysis and insight from the Middle East. Follow, subscribe and rate us at [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/ae/podcast/beyond-the-headlines/id1256040890?mt=2), [Audioboom](https://audioboom.com/channel/beyond-the-headlines), [Pocket Cast](http://pca.st/rMMR) or your favourite podcasting app.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and Walter Smolarek are joined from Germany by Dastan Jasim, and from London by Mark Campbell, both are supporters of the Kurdish movement in Syria. The Kurdish YPG forces did the bulk of the fighting in the liberation of the Raqqa from ISIS, but the future of Syria is far from certain. U.S. military forces supported the Kurdish-led offensive. But the Syrian government demands that all U.S. forces leave Syria. We discuss the political position of the Kurdish movement as it relates to the United States and the Syrian government. Meanwhile, fears of all-out war between the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq and the central government Baghdad continue following the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from the disputed city of Kirkuk.The future of healthcare in the United States is in the headlines, as a new proposal from Senators Michael Bennet and Tim Kaine is announced and Trump’s “drug tsar” nominee is forced to step down due to his ties with pharmaceutical companies fueling the opioid crisis. Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance, joins the show.Next, The Chinese Communist Party’s congress opens tomorrow, as President Xi Jinping seeks to solidify his leadership and congress delegates discuss the future of the country’s economic and political reforms. Brian and Walter are joined by political analyst Ajit Singh. Then, Mexico’s currency is tumbling as the United States takes a hard line in NAFTA negotiations. Are we headed towards a complete breakdown of the agreement. Economist Steve Keen discusses developments in the ongoing negotiations.The judge in Senator Robert Menendez’s corruption case refused to throw out the case yesterday, ordering the trial to move forward. Who is Robert Menendez, and will this scandal claim his career? Andrés Gómez, the Editor of Areito Digital, joins the show.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Walter Smolarek fills in for Brian Becker and is joined by author and journalist Patrick Lawrence. Confrontation between the U.S. and China looks set to intensify after the Trump administration approved a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, casting a shadow over Donald Trump’s meeting with South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. Donald Trump’s travel ban came back into effect late Thursday night after a Supreme Court ruling lifted an injunction on parts of the executive order. What comes next in the fight against the ban? Ted Rall, columnist and political cartoonist, joins the show. A new escalation in Syria looks to be on the horizon with Turkey possibly preparing an invasion of regions held by the Kurdish YPG in the northern region of Afrin. But the Kurdish forces are warning that they will put up fierce resistance. Walter speaks with Kani Xulam, the executive director of the American-Kurdish Information Network.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by geopolitical analyst and author Catherine Shakdam. Turkish airstrikes on the Kurdish YPG militia has deepened the rift between Turkey and the United States. Meanwhile, fighting rages between opposition groups in Eastern Ghouta and near the de-facto capital of ISIS -- Raqqa.German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in Sochi today where she will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. As tensions between the West and Russia remain high, will the two leaders be able to make any progress? Geopolitical analyst Rainer Rothfuss joins Brian to discuss the significance of the talks. May Day demonstrations and protests took place across the United States yesterday. We bring you assessments from the frontlines of the struggle, with Juan Jose Gutierrez of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition and Preston Wood of the ANSWER Coalition.

Turkey's military has directly intervened in Syria without the invitation of the Syrian government to retake the town of Jarablus from the so-called Islamic State with U.S. cooperation. Clashes have also erupted in recent days between the Kurdish YPG and Syrian Army. Alliances are shifting fast in Syria’s ever-deepening five year war.Vice President Joe Biden has met with Turkish President Erdogan, but was their meeting enough to mend the relationship that was terribly damaged after last month’s coup attempt? Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government claimed is the coup mastermind, is safe in the United States - for now. Becker is joined from Ankara by professor and journalist Dr. Bilal Sambur.Secretary of State John Kerry is in Saudi Arabia where he is discussing the war in Yemen. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Yeminis staged a mass protest against the Saudi bombing campaign. Massoud Shadjareh, founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, joins Becker to talk about the role of the west in the Saudi-led war.