force the exchange of letters confirms that the u.k. can unilaterally deliver all of the commitments we made last week to safeguard the interests of the people and businesses of northern ireland and their position in our precious union gives clear answers to address some questions that have been raises the deal was reached that the deal means no change to the arrangements which underpin north-south cooperation in the belfast agreement that stormont will have a lot on any new laws the e.u. proposes should be added to the backstop and that the u.k. can give a restored northern ireland executive a seat at the table on the joint committee overseeing the deal. this is speaker president says explicitly in his letter that the backstop would represent a sub optimal trading relationship for both sides we've spoken at length about why we want to avoid the backstop but it is not in the e.u.'s interests are into this backstop gives the u.k. tariff free access to the u.s. market it does so with no free movement of people no financial contribution no

requirement to follow most of the level playing field rules and no need to allow e.u. boats any access to our waters for fishing furthermore under these arrangements u.k. authorities in northern ireland would clear goods for release into the e.u. single market with no further checks or controls this is unprecedented and means the e.u. relying on the u.k. for the functioning of its own market so the e.u. will not want this backstop to come into force and the exchange of letters today makes clear that if it did they would do all they could to bring it to an end as quickly as possible nevertheless mr speaker i fully understand that these new assurances still will not go as far as some would like i recognize that some members wanted to see changes to the withdrawal agreement a unilateral exit mechanism to backstop an end date or rejecting the backstop altogether ok we're just listening there to the british prime minister to resume a speaking to there in london giving assurances about the backstop agreement relating to the. the deal parliament will vote on that tomorrow it is

a crucial international back again i was hoping. you. join me every thursday on the alex salmond short and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see that.

hello and welcome to crossfire for all things considered i'm peter lavelle u.s. secretary of state might palm pale tells us america is a force for good in the middle east well that's pretty amazing and online censoring continues apace also for the democrats the party of war now. talking some real news i'm joined by my guest here in moscow he's an international affairs and security analyst we also have dimitri bobbitt she's a political analyst we spoke nick international and in london we cross to marcus papadopoulos he's the editor of politics first magazine right gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate

let me go to marcus in in london we have we have a mike pompei on his tour in the middle east he gave a wide ranging if very confusing speech in cairo essentially he's blaming american foreign policy in the middle east on barack obama while at the same time talking about the same three issues iran iran and iran what were you what's your take away from the secretary of state's tour. yes i read the transcripts of estates and i found it's a most peculiar want but i think i can partly explain it i think that's missed the point is trying to reassure americans key allies in the middle east and who say on israel saudi arabia and to a lesser it's an extent egypt that america despite having lost in its objectives in syria is not walking away from the middle east is not

a weakened force in the middle east now of course there is a lot of truth to that because as i said it's moments ago the american objective in syria has spain defeat states and has been defeated in large measure because of the russia but of the signs flying since mr trump became president of course america's ties to its two most crucial allies in the region israel and saudi arabia have been enhanced great make let us know yet trump has now recognized jerusalem as israel's capital and of course trump assigns defense contracts for saudi arabia to the chair not something like five hundred billion or six hundred billion dollars so yes it's a strange states because we all know all people want this planet at least know that america is a great forms for destruction and instability in the middle east but i think because the americans have been defeated in syria they need to reassure their

allies and also she said i do fear for iran because i believe we've trumped in office and this represents an opportunity in a lifetime for those on capitol hill who want to overthrow the iranian government and perhaps something will happen under mr trump's tenure in the white house you know we'll talk about how the democrats in the media reacted to the speech as well mark what was your takeaway from. from the speech because if we agree with marcus in london. is it so bad the pump you has to reassure people yeah well versed of all without disagreeing with the substance just a slight correction on the numbers trump aside roughly around three hundred billion dollars worth of deals with with saudi arabia there's a lot of other deals in the pipeline and the hour was ninety some percent of those are actually obama era that were just resigned so it's just about something like one hundred eighty. six hundred billion dollars but i don't know him.

so. pompei opened up his speech with this little bit that i found very interesting in my office i keep a bible open on my desk to remind me of god and his word. to the truth and then he said it's the truth with a lower case t that i'm here to talk about then he went on to say america is a force for good in the middle east now there's nothing of course wrong with him having a bible on his desk but he's giving a speech in a muslim majority country to the muslim world and he opens i felt that he was an evangelist that i tent revival list i help house expected him to suddenly pull out a group of stakes and start going around in circles yelling america is a force for good america is

a force for good as the snakes bit his head off i guess you know it was absolutely bizarre speech. even across the middle east even among the supposed that u.s. allies and we're talking about the gulf dictatorships here saudi arabia qatar bahrain u.a.e. qatar. kuwait. they were embarrassed by this they were unfair and insulted by this speech and i mean there's just so many you. know when he said at one point that in world war two american g.i.'s. were there to free north america. we assume you meant north africa from nazi germany would russia and china come to your rescue well well russia and china of course for in world war two and it was russia that the feet of nazi germany in berlin. interestingly enough in the american media doesn't like to talk about it

certainly my pump ale doesn't like to talk about it but there is a peace process going on to finally resolve the issues in syria and it's being led by russia my pump doesn't realize or doesn't want to recognize that. this process is pretty successful because basically they consider commission is walking most likely there will be negotiations in geneva or the fight in syria is now much less than just a few months ago and obviously you have russia and iran walking along and you have . that is this where it is yes it's very because look if you're going to go into you could put turkey in both camps so i. can compel speech you know it was strange i when i read some of their sentence from it i thought oh jesus he started to say no you know like when he said always shows us the choices that we

make have consequences for other countries as well jesus yes yes he's going to talk about old destroyed. in iraq you're going to talk about leave about syria he's going to repent or no no no the choices are all of north interfering is is bad you know according to pump fail then he says there is also a bottomless mused judges have been done i'm like well you. yes he he made a mistake when he supported the insurgency in syria who was going to say that he did not support their rebellion in the wrong cheesus so it was not at all for us the war in syria the war in iraq the war in libya the parallel wanted to know what i was going to write another to take away from it is that. western meddling is good it's moral it's virtuous but russian meddling alleged in the united states is evil again i find the western american in those ideas that i see this pattern over and over again the lack of self reflection of actually looking at your own words let me

go back to markets in london and change gears a little bit here glenn greenwald came out with an excellent article the intercept as democratic elites reunite with neo cons to parties voters are becoming far more militaristic and pro-war than republicans i never thought i would read a headline like that is an excellent article i think our viewers should take a look at it but we have a historical shift here or maybe we don't do that just out of spite because trump has talked about during the campaign and during his presidency about. withdrawing troops from. syria and syria for sure afghanistan. rethinking the possibility of american troops in iraq i mean this is something that his base likes public opinion polls show it but because trump is for it the democrats in the in the liberal media are against it what's going on here marcus. well i don't think there's been any shift and suddenly at my lights i'm again the democrats have been

as true or as the republicans let's not forget in the one nine hundred ninety s. how bill clinton treats all who facilitated the arrival of the mujahedeen to post during the civil war there and the mujahideen and that's what some of the most appalling atrocities of the twentieth century against mostly in service let's not forget how being bill clinton gave the order for nato to stop bombing serbia to free months and mock was talking earlier about how it was referring to the bible well. the beginning of nine hundred ninety nine bill clinton will sit in the oval office and he also skulls shall i bomb serbia and guess what got sense yes yeah i guess so i guess it just like george w. bush was talking to god about it in iraq that's what the other phone in the oval office is for it's a straight line that got to that in my opinion the democrats and republicans when

it comes to foreign policy they aren't seuss ites of the same color health same point they have no respect for the united nations charter they have no respect for international law and i think you know the democrats have proven their action it months to walk over the last twenty years and i can tell i mean you know i want to go back and we came we can take a look our viewers can take a look at the article the root of the point is that polling data shows that the democrats are more prone war then republicans though i suppose you know it's to one degree or another both are interventionist both support american exceptionalism marco hey yeah so the numbers show that as of right now some forty nine to thirty three percent the majority of americans support trump's withdrawal of u.s. troops from syria and the vast majority of that thirty three percent is democrats. and the six almost. we see very similar numbers with the withdrawal from

afghanistan here's the problem just a few years ago when it was obama campaigning on withdrawing troops from afghanistan which he ran on and then actually surge troops into democrats were overwhelmingly supporting withdrawing all troops from afghanistan and republicans were explaining forty seconds partisanship. but it was just not as heard from a play into this how does trump play into this because republican voters as a whole you know there's always specific support whatever trump says when trump was launching airstrikes into damascus on the pretext of chemical weapons republican supported that so but i think there is a long term shift with the neo cons gravitating to control both parties directly now when we have bill kristol and robert kagan supporting hillary clinton and so on and this may not be reversible this may have a

a longer trend than partitions and so the new cancer on the republican party is just grating to the democrats to black and i jump in here gentlemen we're going to go to a short short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on some real news today with art. make this manufacture consent to the public well. when the ruling classes protect themselves. with the famous merry go round be the one percent. we can

all middle of the room sick. welcome back to more all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing some real news. you can let me go to demon out of change gears and we see. online censorship gaining a pace here we have this new scarred app that will basically. the consumer of news sites what's. truthful news real news as opposed to fake news but if you look

at these the background of these people here i mean this is. a combination of old media traditional media and deep state figures determining what news is all about is it trustworthy in your mind because of you obviously the new york times is gets a passing grade but of course the television station that we're on right now doesn't well i mean these people from the so-called heritage media you know the media they have been exposed even in the last two months just look at all the stories you know the solid attack again. you can get plants in cuba was actually produced by insects crickets crickets in ukraine they supported the regime which surprise surprise added step on down there as booze the you know on the first of january they've made it in the city of ration dates one of the most important anniversary in nazi collaborators going to. have all of that ukrainian nationalists

who destroyed tens of thousands of jews in kiev lol and this was reported by the new york times the new york times published an opinion piece by a god linsky the crowd over the ukrainian jewish community who exposed it but the newspaper and the regime in the united states continues to support for president for a show called ukraine and his regime so they have been exposed but they continue to say that are they guys are dangerous the same story with france and germany and in france suddenly there are more yellow vests you know these last saw the seventy there were more you know mass than at the previous one who's to blame russia russia the same story with germany and we hear calls in the first that germany and france they have also introduced very tough laws controlling the internet their representatives have solved there. are the first week tips in both france and germany and these guys they just could not admit that their ideology can be wrong

it's almost russian or. something to let these russians feel that these minister islands he led these arrangements plus their messages that this is obviously a terrible mark and this is a continuing trend here that we saw with jones which i'm not a big fan of but i think that he should have a platform and many many others here this seems like a second wave this news guard wants to basically when the american the american market presumably to be rolled out on a global scale so this is going to be a very and two to two thousand one hundred going to be another bad year for free speech go ahead marcus in london. well let's approach this new apple as a product of low points and i have two questions to pose number one who owns this at what it what is their backgrounds or whatever backgrounds and number

two who decides what is trustworthy or not now these are two critical questions which have to be addressed and have to be offset but as we all know pete for many many years now has been a concerted campaign in both america and britain to denigrates russia and the russian people and to denigrate those commentators in the public eye inside russia and outside of russia who show more open mindedness when it comes to russian's foreign policy objectives for example what's happened in ukraine what's happens in syria if we just have a look in princeton we have it is being revealed in the last few weeks about the institute the state cross and the integrity initiative the british government funded projects which have been designed which have been established to do exactly what i said just now to denigrate russia and to denigrate those people in the

public eye who challenge the british and american narratives when it comes to russia or ukraine or syria so yes these are very very dark times and what we see in newspapers in britain and america saying that aussie for example is controversial or crustal is controversial well i always pose this question. who defines what controversial is and secondly who kline's the words controversial now all you need to do is a bit of research and you will see that the people who define the word controversial in the concepts the hot seat the people who apply the word controversial in the context of aussie having. so the knowledge whatsoever right exactly in a market it's a very insidious marriage between the deep state and journalists that have abandoned their profession in the way that i understand being

a journalist here i mean this is just a mechanism to shut down free speech at all cost ok yeah absolutely to support the official stablished narrative and they claim that they have real journalists and editors doing what they call fact checking but the connections with the u.s. deep state are obvious first of all they're partnering this is their news guard is partnering with microsoft on this they are fighting to get this installed in schools public libraries universities they want this mandatory on every mobile phone and computer sold in the united states they want facebook and twitter to start using them as as well and they've they've got a color coded yeah system right. and voice of america radio free europe radio liberty the u.s. propaganda network our green r t c g ten right those are those are are red they're

bad and they're rolling out a brand new guard as well that goes out with this and they're what it's doing is attempting to force companies to stop using advertising online that many all media sources like say press and others you know rely on ad revenues in order to help generate funds on their you know their paper thin budget but there's all kinds of connections first of all the founders of news guard are are are linked to all kinds of neo con think tanks like the heritage foundation and the american enterprise institute and they're on their list of advisors you know for how this is set up who is going to who are the. advisers telling nose guard what news is good and what is bad michael hayden the former director of the cia and the n.s.a. both right you also have richard stengel on there right just to show the bipartisanship of it he's was an obama era official he was an undersecretary.

of believe in the state department for the obama administration and he famously said many people call me obama's chief propagandist and then he went on you know in a council of foreign relations discussion right in front of cameras to say that he's all in favor of targeting propaganda in those words propaganda against the american people and he's the one who's going to be advising those guard. on what's real news and what's not is this going to work i mean you know you know there is when i was growing up there was a nice saying is that you know if you push the toothpaste out of the tube you can get it back in and have public spin exposed to an open open sources on the internet so well enough for these state supported actors to start contract ing it i mean what would be the reaction you know from my attitude is this is that when i'm on facebook i can see what a fake story is when it's

a fake story when someone puts it on ok i mean you have an intuitive sense here and i think most people that are interested in news how of an intuitive sense i think we have to trust the individual here is this this this form of censorship is going to destroy what we understand is the internet we know that media can fuel. it more than the actual act you know and i think this is a more than they were atheism when you declare a certain group of people simply known eligible for a certain extent if you like there was racism against russian athletes they can't compete at the olympic games you can't even speak russian they have gone full show russian flag even though it. it's the same story with the media let me call toward the french president said last year about r t and sport without referring to them by name but he said aggression the french journalists there are some people who hate your speech your madness your four months but they're not you and we have to

deal with all of that so it's just amazing he is basically saying that there are certain people posing as journalists but because they're objective here they're not journalists and this is the reason why french people. sure huge a position to mark i think even the british even the germans don't understand this the they all expected their yeah well versed brought us today though why they didn't because mccrone doesn't learn anything you know he he divided speedball into friends and enemies and enemy side dehumanised you know. they just imitate journalists for months. you could meet them at the train station is just says you can meet that there's a train station successful people like me who did something in life and you may meet absolute nobodies so you know it is this kind of a tour that makes people angry it drives them to their advantage of me garvey asli

that's why they're in the streets marcus let me go back to you in london i would i would just take with him a bomb which had the same kind of inverted here in you know in my lifetime i think about you know before the internet some really great journalist great television journalist great writers and all that but today there are just basically. for power i don't see you whole or whole lot of quality journalism it's always the reference is to power i suppose that makes you rich and makes you famous you get celebrity but it's the there are just peddling a message here so to criticize me because of where i work you know to to invalidate that is exactly what demon by. which is saying here i mean it to you it's basically people that have that opinion invalidate journalism as a as a profession go ahead marcus in london yes let me be candid and i suppose brutally candid about the east he poor in america and britain who masquerade as journalists

they are not of course proper journalists and lee and not so subtle you know in our definition of what makes a journalist and it is my view that they fall into two categories the absolute of cats agrees the first category i would describe them as ideologically driven not focused so just of the american establishment and the british that some of these people genuinely the late in the necessary city of west and global dominance they believe in that as much as we believe it is important for russia ok to be so mark our almost out of time what's the second category we're almost out of time what's a second category you said quite simply money talks money makes the world go round and so on and when it comes to the institute to stay strong we now know many of the ok it's the business model he has i have to jump in here gentlemen a many thanks to my guest here in moscow and in london this is the end of our broadcast segment stay with us for the extended version on our you tube channel see

you next time and remember. what politicians do something anything. they put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or somehow want to be. too bright to be for us that's what the four three in the morning can be good that i'm interested always in the waters of our. first city.

full of people all killed and more than forty injured after a huge explosion rocks the afghan capital never ever recover the sense of the farm workers. u.s. media coverage of alleged russia collusion provokes the ire of the american presidents that softer.