i. wonder if the people in the central russian city the mom the execution of a murder suspect often on year old girl is found strangled to death. in ecuador more protesters are confirmed killed. intensifies following more than a week of unrest over government measures. turning up the heat on joe biden the ukrainian m.p. publishes documents he says reveal corruption involving the us presidential election. and a true legend soviet cosmonaut alexei off who conducted the 1st ever space walk at the age of $85.00. as the headlines in all teams a national you can check out more information on our website or social media as

well back in an hour with the latest updates. on this week's show tune milestones both sorry as the rich get richer and income inequality in the usa is highest ever and military suicides hit 5 year high why and are you overlooking warning signs from someone you love but 1st president trumps defenders are undaunted by everything he has said and done until now and it didn't take long for things to go from bad to worse in syria i'm hollande cook in washington this is the big picture on r t america. if

unlike our president you don't live on twitter you might not know that the little blue checkmark next to his name on tweets means this is really him it's not a parody account and yes donald trump actually cited his quote great and unabashed wisdom in a surprise serious stand down plan he had hatched after speaking with the president of turkey on the late show with stephen colbert former united nations ambassador susan rice explained the stakes these are the people who for the last 4 years have been fighting on our behalf with our equipment to defeat isis and they have done it with enormous of efficacy and they've

sacrificed immensely and we basically just said to them sia and let the turks who are like the hungry wolf trying to kill the lamb go for. his most reliable apologist senator lindsey graham war in the trump strategy ensures an isis comeback forces kurds to realign with assad and iran destroys turkey's relationship with our congress and will be a stain on america's honor for abandoning the kurds who trump's former united nations ambassador nikki haley calls instrumental in our successful fight against isis and syria adding the hash tag turkey is not our friend she warns that leaving the kurds to die is a big mistake senator and former presidential candidate mitt romney fears the says america is an unreliable ally and risks another humanitarian disaster

dire predictions unfolded just days later when turkish warplanes struck curtis targets and northeastern syria what next is a story that's moving fast what this looks like to the rest of the world let's ask veteran diplomat jim john trysts jim. thank you for being here for this fast moving story. what do you make of this deal that the president has hatched well i'll tell you some holiday you and i may not be on the same page on this when you have war crazed warmonger susan rice mitt romney lindsey graham nikki haley and alexandria ocasio cortez all on the same page announcing the president to me that's usually a good sign the president's done the right thing he says he wants the americans out of these wars that's what he promised in 2016 i think a lot of the dire warnings we're getting about our allies the kurds and i and isis

are very ill founded we'll have to see what happens here but i think there's a lot more here than meets the eye in terms of how far the turks intend to go into syria and whether the kurds will now do the smart thing that they've been advised to do over the years not only by the russians but even quietly by our military which is to reconcile with the legal government of syria and damascus this does not need to turn into a bloodbath and i don't think it will actually it will in the line of fire kurds are jail keepers to thousands of isis fighters this is got to horrify our european allies you know our european allies say they're horrified because a lot of these are their citizens they don't want them coming back on the other hand they're not willing to bring them back and prosecute them you notice nobody ever says what the obvious thing is and that is that these people committed their crimes in syria there's a sovereign government of damascus turn those people over to the baskets i'm sure mr assad will know just what to do with them turkish president air to one seems

unconcerned about how this plays with the e.u. listen to his words. a european union if you attempt to label our operations as a new vision is. simple she was cool that we will open our borders. 6000000 refugees is the norm of it and president trump dismisses concerns about the people he calls these people here are his words. they didn't come from our country and we did i'm a big for ever and we said to france we said to germany we said to. various countries in europe we'd like you to take your people back well we don't want him we don't want him how about you take in him i said we don't want to meet there nobody wants him that bad but somebody has to watch over him and here is nato a general secretary chance stoltenberg. i count on turkey to act with restraints.

and sure that any action it may take in northern syria is proportionate message. we must not jeopardize the gains we have made together against over common enemy isis jim is the one wary of losing is made those status no i don't think so i there's been talk here over the years oh we should throw turkey out of nato there's actually no mechanism for throwing a country out of nato and i don't think he would be smart to pull out of nato where he still has considerable leverage as as a member you need unanimity in the organization to do much of anything which makes the basically means he has veto power look the europeans are complaining about this it's interesting in the security council european countries want to condemn turkey for this action and the russians or the americans actually teamed up to block that resolution i think for president trump this is a way to get us out of there the idea that somehow isis is going to make a comeback i think is it's a red herring and the idea in fact we were there primarily to fight isis is itself

a big if we were there to block the russians in the iranians and to put pressure on the syrian government and that is no longer our agenda we have no reason to be there and as far as the kurds go they weren't fighting for america they were fighting for their own interests and at that point their interest coincided with american interests now if mr trump wants to put american interests of american policy and mr trump want to put american interests 1st now and get us out of there the kurds need to take what's in their best interest which is to go back to damascus where you mentioned a promise candidate trump made to get us out of what he called these stupid wars and bringing home the troops is a norman rockwell picture historically how much does domesticity publico pinion here influence the u.s.a.'s foreign policy fortunately not enough and you know if you had as doctors foreign policies immigration policies trade policy where the people feel one way but the elites all feel a different way again across the spectrum all the people that are trashing trump on this are this. people have gotten us into failed war after

a failed war for no national interest the united states but how does that affect the american people what they want nobody cares about them trump said he did care about them in 2016 this is the 3rd time now he's trying to get us out of syria each time he was he was stopped by the establishment let's see if he can pull it off this time i'm not sure he can i hope he does we were just a moment ago showing some footage of trump in rare form at that rally minneapolis the other night and during the recent g. 7 event i made a point to mute the sound and just watch the body language of other world leaders who seem merely to tolerate our bellicose president having worked in the foreign service how much do you reckon that other world leaders allow that this too shall pass sent another way glass half empty how much of this trouble buffoonery is going to tap to future presidents i think that the leaders of foreign countries are like the bipartisan elite the feed corrupt leadership in our own country that are all of

the same mind and they despise trump they despise all those regular americans out there whom they can't stand and they see those people out there they say that they hate those people those are regular ordinary decent hardworking americans and they're the reason trumps in the white house in the 1st place he hasn't always delivered they think he's delivered more than he actually has but i think that's where their real hatred lies and what i think we need is a populist policy i think we've seen the same kind of rise of populism within europe as well and it's long overdue because these elites have run their countries into the ground and the sure they look forward to the time when he's gone they can go back to a nice cozy republican party with somebody respectable like mitt romney great the rockefeller republican exactly right exactly right veteran diplomat jim thank you again for a 2nd home to the big picture. here the 2nd monday in october is a federal holiday in. the usa celebrate and the talian who sailed for spain and

landed in the bahamas and his native italian he was crystal floral columbo 2 is spanish benefactors he was crystal ball cologne and we call him christopher columbus and when he sailed the ocean blue in 1492 he was bound for the far east not knowing that the americas and the pacific ocean were along the way when he cited cuba he thought it was mainland china he thought his plan yolo is japan columbus called the locals he encountered indios meaning indians as in india where he thought he was head that they were native americans columbus was appointed viceroy and governor of the indies a title the spanish crown eventually stripped him of after accusations of incompetence tyranny and torture this dark history prompted some states and cities including here the district of columbia to instead observe this as indigenous

peoples day yet many celebrate columbus as having discovered america continents named after explorer america. unlike columbus of disputes he was out to prove that there was a new world and both of them showed up 500 years after a norse explorer a late ericsson set foot here back to the future this week marked the 250th anniversary of captain james cook landing the h.m.s. endeavor in new zealand ushering in colonial rule there and not all the kiwis were celebrating 9 indigenous people died in their 1st encounter with captain cook and 1769 and in 2019 laura clark the british high commissioner to new zealand acknowledged. that was greatly regretted by the crew of the endeavor at the time as

documented in the diary of joseph banks. and this is regressive here today. it is deeply sad that the 1st encounter happened in the way that it did it and see you as the descendants of those killed i often my every sympathy. for i understand the pain does not diminish with time. coming up history is also happening here now and despite the president's hearty self congratulations we've got work to do this is the big picture r.t. america.

on this edition of crossfire we demystify serious kurds almost all of the criticism launched against syria policy is not rooted in facts actually that criticism is driven by false narratives and the inability to admit that international proxy war to overthrow the damascus government has failed the sooner all american troops leave syria the better for syria and the beach. we've got a crumbling infrastructure roads bridges tunnels are not working we students that are in massively in debt and probably will never add to the productivity of society all because of this. propaganda that debt doesn't matter we just know it to ourselves.

income inequality is at the highest level ever since the us census bureau started tracking it in 1967 even now in the longest economic expansion in u.s. history how can this be and what does history tell us about a widening gulf between the haves and the have nots let's ask hillary ford which president of straw mark consultants hillary with unemployment so low the help wanted sign is everywhere doesn't simple supply and demand dictate the middle class both would rise with the tide yes it does you're totally right hala and in fact they should what they should be doing is looking at mock rows website because on there he has hundreds in hundreds of jobs that start at $50000.00 and all people need to do basically is be willing to work hard and to move there are jobs that are all in the sort of construction business and the heavy labor business the problem is we're graduating too many people from labor law schools where the average

starting salary is $43000.00 whereas tech jobs start. 66000 and heavy holland labor average wage now is 80000 is that people don't want to work in the kind of jobs that are available well i was an english major and i will never what my plumber does however i did. actually go to disney world is a good example but it costs a fortune to go there and you can see that right there yes well although the usa median household income is top $60000.00 for the 1st time it's roughly the same as 20 years ago adjusted for inflation meanwhile the federal minimum wage is $7.25 hasn't been raised in a decade and this is a hot topic along the campaign trail listen what's happened today is corporations get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and the stockholders and the c.e.o.'s are doing really well but look what's happened wages for the employees have gone down the line has this corrupt business as usual gotten us the highest levels of

inequality in the century wages barely budged crippling student loan debt shrinking opportunity for the next generation and the one after that in the one after that. the minimum wage is higher in cities and states that aren't waiting for uncle sam and that may have helped lower the national poverty rate for the 4th year in a row but hillary while that helps fast food workers and others on the bottom rung of the wage letter it has not boiled up the middle class correct right and if you look at new york city is a classic example actually what's happening is if you look at the employment institute they talk about is that 87 percent of restaurants in new york city are decreasing hours so actually it's going to help the it's going to a lower wrong and it's going to hurt the middle class and i think when you look at minimum wage you got to look at you know people i actually i wish that i could get $6060000.00 a month on the biden but something i'm not qualified at all but i think you need to look at somebody like bernie sanders i mean he owns 3 houses and he paid his staff

is $13.00 he didn't pay them $15.00 an hour why not he could have sold one of his houses and given that to employ his employees but he chose not to it's simple economics if you pay people more you have to raise prices that's what's happening in new york city and you look what's happening to the stopping they're being worked long hours and they're cutting back on staff you eliminate jobs well bernie and elizabeth warren are among candidates calling for a wealth tax jaegers reckons it would raise over 4 trillion trillion dollars in a decade do you buy that number and what would a wealth tax accomplish could it incentivize enterprise oh absolutely but i think 1st of all you would see a short term boom of course you've seen lots of money because he get it but i think 2 things number one trumps tax cuts have generated 31000000000 in tax revenue the problem is that we have while spending and spending has been far as a pace and has been in terms of the taxes that are being collected number 2 you look at entrepreneurship because happened across europe ok so in the united states

out of the global economy we have here approximately 63 percent of all of those global unicorn's the kind of companies that have generated these sort of jobs and actually the 2nd is china with approximately 13 percent only 8 percent were started in europe while. overregulation overtaxation greece is a great example 80 percent of the wealth is owned by about 20 families and they've all moved out of greece you tax people to a higher level they just move they simply move like in the united states where people are moving out of marion they're moving to virginia they moved out of california they moved to texas everybody's moving to florida when they were tired why it's because of the low taxes we will drive it away you mention proprietorship every time it's always us the driver or your day job and i'm surprised how many say is this how does this gig economy play and the income inequality or do these jobs just disappear in the calculation of us ago it's funny you should raise over that's a great example you think that it was avoiding paying all the benefits of the taxes that all these taxi companies do so the taxi companies and i know somebody who the c.e.o. of a taxi company in maryland out of business now and he said i played i paid my

employees benefits and alleyway each and he couldn't compete with so oberstar ironically is a limit so many taxi companies that were actually doing what you're proposing and that's a very great sin secondly i think if you look at the brookings institute which obviously is not exactly conservative brookings is to say the least the brookings institute says the 3 things that the poor need to do to get out of poverty number one is graduate from high school number 2 is work a full time job and number 3 is get married after 21 and don't have kids to over 21 and that's all we need to ask the poor to do in order to get out of poverty where the rap on the rich getting richer is that they simply move money around on paper rather than actually making anything fair charge and for. exactly to a point previously they move to the states and they move to the countries where they can get a lower tax rate that's what happened with ireland because island lower the corporate tax rate that's why american companies went to ireland they just undercut

the u.k. and corporations will always move to where there are lower tax rates and so will individuals period human nature it's why people in maryland buy all their gas and all of their liquor in virginia versus in america. that is like out of the gallon cheaper people plan their calendars by the week that way yeah i live in rhode island and i see the connecticut plates coming over the same reason exactly thank you strong our president hillary ford which thank you for stepping into the big picture as a whole and a recent pentagon report tells us that the military suicide rate is at a 5 year high why let's ask matthew hoh who served in iraq he's a certified peer support specialist for mental health and substance abuse disorder he's helping veterans to matthew welcome back i holland thank you for having me back on the last time you were here we talked about afghanistan which is our longest war and you said something them that i want to pick up on now according to the veterans administration 20 some vets commit suicide every day and some say that

number is low and we tend to think of troops just home but when you were here last time you mention that among world war 2 vets the rate of suicide is 4 times greater than their demographic cohorts so these invisible wounds run deep don't they go absolutely this is nothing new p.t.s.d. and moral injury while you may only have had these terms the last few decades have been around forever in world war 2 there are 16000000 men and women in uniform of those 16000000 about 7000000 soar combat of those 7000001 in 7 were diagnosed or discharged during the war with a psychiatric condition and now remember it wasn't until 1980 that p.t.s.d. was even designated as a disorder as a condition so you had a 1000000 as the 7000000 who saw combat discharge and so you had many more who were

not diagnosed or who were not recognized and they went through their lives in a society that didn't talk about it and didn't give them the care and again this is nothing new i. the romans there's evidence that the romans knew of these types of issues in trying to take care of their soldiers in american history during the civil war or after the civil war should say hundreds of thousands of veterans of the civil war on both sides died from suicide alcoholism or opium overdose because of these invisible wounds so it is absolutely nothing new and it's something that will always continue we're going to show the number for the veterans crisis hotline and i want to keep this on the screen for a while if you're listening to this as a podcast the number is 802738255 if you or someone you know needs help call

802738255 of my demographic cohorts who served in vietnam did not get the warm welcome home the troops get now matthew is the suicide rate lower now than it was post vietnam when the highest rate right now for suicide prevention is our for those young men and women in their twenty's and early thirty's who fought in iraq and afghanistan they have a rate of 6 times higher than their. cohorts in the civilian world and in some infantry units we've seen rates as high as 14 you know 14 times their cohorts vietnam veterans certainly when they came back experience the same levels of suicide rates it's declined over time but their rate of suicide is still much higher than the civilian population and much higher than veterans who did not go to war it's estimated that since the end of the vietnam war as many as

200000 vietnam veterans have killed themselves that's 3 times as many were killed in combat about 58000 were killed in combat put that in perspective imagine the vietnam war memorial the wall you have to extend that. 3 times to include the suicides and then if you include agent orange the other great in invisible killer from that war war the estimates are that the wall will reach almost to the washington monument is something else i spotted that pentagon report the rate for active duty suicides is highest among marines and a close 2nd as army national guard any sense why. a lot of suicide in veterans hassett do with combat it's very clear there have been studies upon studies that demonstrate there's a clear link between suicide and combat so what you're seeing in the marine units in army infantry units and in army national guard units which have seen a lot of combat and you're seeing that relationship between combat and suicide

that's why you're seeing these numbers continue to increase the centers for disease control tells us to look for these suicide warning signs talking about wanting to die looking for ways to die talking about feeling hopeless and having no purpose talking about feeling trapped or being an unbearable pain talking about being a burden to others increasing use of alcohol or drugs acting anxious or agitated or behaving recklessly sleeping too little or sleeping too much withdrawing or feeling isolated showing signs of rage or talking about seeking revenge displaying mood swings here's that veterans crisis hotline number again 802738255 matthew i've got about 30 seconds if i have just described someone a viewer knows what's the best way to approach the person i carry my veterans

crisis line card with me i've used it it is staffed by very highly trained and compassionate professionals it's not just for veterans it's for non vet. turns out for caregivers family members but on the back where it lists all those warning signs that you just described holland it says the presence of the science requires immediate attention and what i would say to people if you have so much a loved one who is going through this what they need is unconditional love they don't need tough love they don't need to be called a hero they need your love and they need to be told that what they're going through is what previous generations of yours have gone through that there is help for them at the v.a. and through other organizations like wounded warrior program matthew hole thank you for your time here and for what you do and thank you for watching the big picture i'm holland cook in washington back next week in the meantime at holland cook on

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put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president and she. wanted. to go right to be approached this is what before 3 of the more people. interested in the waters of our. first. hello this is max kaiser this is the kaiser report you remember the wizard of oz and dorothy said if you click your heels 3 times and say i want to be home to get home something like that and of course it's an allegory about.