Pangolin

[@RoboticPolishingBuffingDeburr]

we are gagging for the next edition of the half Syrian podcast. Happy Christmas to Alexei, Linda. Wilf & Talal!. xxx

[@RoboticPolishingBuffingDeburr]

Another great way to spend an hour and a half, accompanying me on my tasks.

[@living4ward2it]

Sandwich bar is excellent! I just binge-listened to many episodes, and your work is quite rich in detail and interesting I will enjoy re-listening too

[@clarewillison9379]

10:49 😢 a tale as old as thyme. (Yes, I know it’s mint or rosemary but.)

[@robgoogle1364]

I have a friend in Damascus who tells a different story. He is not really political or religious and he has fled to Lebanon for his life. You don't mention all the documented history of the CIA involvement on Wikileaks

[@michaelrobson3460]

Ive never watched broadcast news. And i love William Hurt. Wowza.

[@mootpointjones8488]

Fab listen you two 👍

[@ianwestell6656]

It’s possible to hold the notion of there being no good guys in a given situation

[@dannycleary3682]

Best scene is Brooks sweating when he gets his shot to present the news.

[@peterlayzell7245]

Really good to hear Tal’s Perspective on Syria. Alistair Crooke’s excellent analysis of the ME is available on Judge Andrew Napalitano’s podcast every week.

[@Malky5279]

I think saying Pilger has dictator blindness is unfair. Now there is plenty of his work I won't have read or seen so maybe there is some evidence of it I'm unaware of but I'd say about Pilger what I think about Chomsky is they they focused nearly 100% of their energy on their own and other Western regimes because we're supposed to be the good guys. The democracies where our politicians are meant to respond to pressure from the public. No amount of their writing or journalism on the obvious repressive and dictatorial regimes is going to make the slightest difference in those countries. But if you can get the public in Australia, the USA and the UK to care about their respective nations foreign policies then your work can just possibly actually do some real good if it leads to pressure not to sell arms to horrible regimes. How effective they were is another argument but I think their basic logic for focusing on what they did is sound.

[@dogmatronic]

Totally agree, as Chomsky said and I’ll paraphrase - The job of the public intellectual in the West is to criticise and hold to account their own governments. Basically hold the mirror up. If we actually did that and lead by example others would follow suite. By invading and destroying Iraq, crushing Libya and leaving Afghanistan in a worse mess than when ‘we’ found it makes it far easier for Putin to justify invading Ukraine, and even though I think he was wrong to do that, his reasons were more cogent than the reasons given for Iraq.

[@jimshelley8831]

​@@dogmatronicRussia had geo-political concerns about having their borders encircled by NATO. If the Mexicans & Canadians invited Russia to put their weapons on the US borders how do you think the US would react ? Pliger was a fantastic journalist , he focused on the West because our hypocrisy is the worst. Who had 855 known military bases abroad. China has 1 , Russia 5. The West think they are " civilized " lol. Let the Syrian people decide their own future not West , Turkey let basically Isis " diversity loving Isis lot" make the country into a basket case. At least Syria was secular ,this will no longer be the case. The podcast is demonizing President Putin , where is the criticism of the West meddling in this .

[@bbbl8910]

More serious is a good development. To quote The Ruthless Rap Assassins, "less mellow".

[@bjh3661]

"..Drop.down a cog...Round the roundabout..." We used to recite that in primary school. In the playground. Every day. Laughing our little faces off! This man Sayle is a solid Brit. Alexei trumps all the comic strip stars except Mayall. But that's another conversation altogether.

[@RoboticPolishingBuffingDeburr]

Gordon Brown sold our gold for 250 dollars and ounce. it's now worth 2700 an ounce. Blair& brown did terrible damage to the UK

[@Talalaban]

I agree! I was but a child when he was around

[@ThatGuyThanus]

‘Our’ gold.. lol

[@shoxx48]

Bargain!

[@wibblywobblyidiotvision]

Blair and Brown most certainly did do terrible damage to the UK, but it wasn't selling "our" gold that did it.

[@Wraithing]

Thanks for the show, Guys. Glad to hear some love for Crispin (and Hedges). Talal's hope and optimism is nice to hear. It'll be good if it works out for those he holds dear. Starmer sending Yvette Cooper with half a million quid to the Iraqi Kurds, just two days before the Assad overthrow might be a coincidence. Probably nothing, only pocket money nowadays. Sadly, I'm more convinced the world for us ordinary, smaller mortals is slouching toward the dangerous edge of a worse precipice, with yet more US and Western funded trauma to unlock. That's if the last month of the Blinken/Kirby government don't nuke us all by Boxing Day.

[@dogmatronic]

I do hope the best for Syria but I think some of the views that were expressed, whilst understandable, were also quite naïve. Only yesterday the new unelected ‘leaders’ of Syria have said they want ‘normal’ and ‘friendly’ relations with Israel… and this is after Israel has just bombed the shit out of Syria! It doesn’t bode well at all, unfortunately.

[@user-jj6wj5wx5c]

Exactly. How Syrian are these 35,000 rebels? 5,000 Uighur, a few thousand Ukrainian, a few thousand Turkish, a few thousand Iraqi. All on CIA payroll.

[@lloroshastar6347]

I often feel like there are no heroes really, as soon as anyone gets a whiff of power or money they often become terrible people, and some people are terrible without money or power anyway, but it seems that most people who are rich and powerful get there because they lack basic human empathy and don't care about stepping over people. I can't think of a single regime in the world right now I do have any respect for, dig a little deeper and you'll inevitably find some kind of scandal. It kind of renders tribalism meaningless when all sides are just as bad as one another. Thing is, when people say 'both sides are bad' what they usually mean is 'the middle is good', but I think there is another side of that coin which is that all sides are capable of destruction. I wish I could point to a leftist regime that genuinely cared about human rights, but I can't, they all throw human rights and equality out the window when they find out how much they enjoy playing games with peoples lives. The best society is one that decentralises power where people are incentivised to work together through mutual benefit, not to have a small minority who get to dictate what should and shouldn't be, because that always inevitably leads to oppression.

[@lloroshastar6347]

This guy Assad 'disappeared' like 30,000 people in his sadistic prisons, he was supported and backed by Putin who is now giving him asylum, and I'm supposed to listen to all these Putin supporters and genuinely think they care about human rights or freedom. Assad was a monster, Putin is a monster, they are no different to Western leaders like Thatcher for example, friend of Fascist dictators. All around me I see Fascism on the rise and yet I've never felt more convinced by leftist causes. I just don't understand why people can't see they are being brainwashed to support the far-right by the rich, by the mainstream media, but they are so gullible they think that by backing Putin they are somehow 'anti-establishment'. Apparently being anti-establishment in this day and age means being a corporate bootlicker and living a life where the state dictates what you can and can't wear, how you can behave, who you can sleep with, who you can marry. I'm so fed up of far-right 'populists' claiming they are anti-establishment when the only 'establishment' they are opposing is freedom, democracy and individual liberty.

[@RoboticPolishingBuffingDeburr]

Howard Jacobson

[@michaelrobson3460]

So it was strange being in Morroco ( pmlfn that defaulted to Morrisons on my spell check - which would have been a completely different story) during the fall of Assad. I don't get Morrocan media in my "chat" usually. I'd expect to get " sign up to the UK ex pats, news letter" and stuff and I probably would, if I did. But, I got a big piece about how the Assad regime wasn't in any way related to the Morrocan Royal family, despite them having similar sounding names. Usually, I just Glovo and real estate adds

[@michaelrobson3460]

* get, ffs

[@Adamb87]

I'm gonna suggest JFK again for the film club, I would be interested to know Talal and Alexei's perspective on the assassination , the cover up, Nixon/LBJ/Ford/Bush snr. Being involved at varying stages and MSM continued total ignorance to the significance of this event (CIA event) Love to you God bless everyone

[@user-jj6wj5wx5c]

Maybe get one of Crispin's guests on the show. None of them were pro-Assad, and I love you both but instead of promoting the CIA progress in Syria website, perhaps you could get Ghadi Francis and Kevork Almassian on to lay out the situation. Ghadi was actually expelled by Assad so you know you won't get pro-Assad. There have been over 600 scientists assassinated in the first few days, so who does that sound like to you, considering the huge land-grad Israel have just made?

[@billyjo1148]

Seems the Syrian euphoria is exclusive to the sunni Muslims, turkey and isreali forces less than 20miles from Damascus My hope is that why dont see another Libyan style descent into slave markets Americans proxy regimes I would suggest may not be the progress humanity seeks. This is the highest place in the region, looking upon Lebanon, upon Syria, Israel,” said Efraim Inbar, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) refering to there occupation of Mount Hermon

[@aaronrichards7652]

Slovakia have Switched off Their High Voltage Electricity power systems to the Ukraine...

[@TheLocalComedyFarmersMarket]

Key of a Waltz! 🎻🐘 *D Monkee DAleksea D Loofy D SaylorManQuay I live in a frying PanKeok I eat all da WORMBULLand spitout GERMBULL a Poppin an StalinGraduATE this song a song of nonsense tuvallahlulie AYE~* *ISSA WALTZY MATHILDE GIALLO GARIBALDI* *MEOW*

[@aaronrichards7652]

The stouch between Poland Minsk Slovakia and The Czech Republic and the Gas Pipeline brought Ukraine into Suspicion of syphon tamper crime sooo what happened was Slovakia Switched off the High Voltage Electricity powered line from Slovakia Poland have now been asked to follow suit and Do the same thing as Slovakia...

[@jimshelley8831]

This Podcastvignores tge role of Turkey, Isis ,Isreal US ,West meddling in this mess.

[@FootballAgainstFascism]

“Giving Syrians credit for….” an invasion led by Turkey, provided air cover by Israel & aided by Israel’s weakening of the resistance in Palestine & Lebanon. TAL is not an objective commentator when it comes to Syria.

[@lloroshastar6347]

Are you Pro-Assad and his t0rture prisons?