and all sorts of undemocratic practices were used the world. questioned the. protesters reportedly been killed during the government clashes in minsk that's often. been heard in the by the russian capital. throughout the country over the presidential election leading to thousands of arrests including an aussie correspondent who has now been released. resigns following growing pressure over last week's devastating blast and beirut. was evacuated from a news briefing then were tons all following

a shooting outside the white house president praises the secret service is a response with a senior official adding the shooter is in custody. from reportedly telling the u.k. it's happy to help stop the increasing for moderates crossing the english. 1000000 pounds. in just a few moments time the team and i'll be back in one hour to bring you that i just had lines join us again then. hello and welcome to crossfire all things considered is there any news in the truth is there any truth in the news on. so what is the swamp creature known as elliot

abrams say about trucks foreign policy. to disguise this and more i'm joined by my guest alexander mackerras and london he is a writer on legal affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com and in athens we're joined by alex kristof he is the director and writer for the duran dot com or a jelling crossed up rules in effect that means you can jump any time you want and i always appreciate where it's going to london for us alexander during the soviet union the 2 of the major state publication was probably his best you're proud to obviously means truth is best it means news and there was a joke during the soviet union there is no truth in the news and there's no news in the truth i think i tend to think that's where we are in the west. where does truth meet news and does news ever have

a thing to do with the truth because it is so deep weaponized politicise that it is just a commodity to be used for ideological purposes so what is the what is the purpose of i guess media and can we even say free media anymore go ahead what i do we can say free media best the 1st time i would make i mean in my opinion media today in the west has become very very controlled it's become very centralized as a very small group of owners those owners very well connected within the political system and they have certain perspectives we see in that political system so the result is we have. all 4 opinions commentry and just and when it comes to facts what you tend to see especially on foreign policy issues but even increasingly on domestic policy issues is that the facts. now of

very very much a present in a certain way that seems to fulfill certain agendas so you will consist see that for example if a particular foreign government is on call could look with the united states the entire media will connell in and will repeat the various allegations against it without much truth we see the same kind of phenomena being used on specific toll peaks within the political debates in and be it within our within western countries so the taranaki of the media for example with one or 2 exceptions bolted to the russia gate narrative hasn't withdrawn from age or backed away from it and the other thing that's happened this is one of the most extraordinary and distressing things for me is that at the same time as the media has become will concentrate its head and its dog it's very his own agendas almost in

unison he has become extremely aggressive and the language and the use that now comes out to the media is off the scale and the concept that used to be very rigidly follows a separation separates opinion from reporting she had you know the reporting of the facts which is usually salient jex if and then you have the opinion pages all the. comments on the television which are always state now you repeat the reporting of the facts and he's full of the creating it and there's hardly any account separate so you bet there is not facts don't really matter i guess that's the that's one of the underlying principles of oh so far as you know i don't i'm i'm sure you saw me the full length the version of the george floyd video ok they did it was released a few days ago. so it gives you

a much broader picture of what was going on and it's a more complex story than it was being presented in the initially which doesn't take away from the outcome obviously and then we haven't as only generate me curious mention of the russia hoax which has been proven to be a hoax over and over again but you wouldn't know that from mainstream media is when fact they continued it to double down on it just in different variations of it is a hoax that will never die because it's the foundational element of their world view when it comes to particularly in american domestic politics here so i mean even if you have the facts as we would understand it of the 3 of us and our viewers that doesn't amount to much doesn't count for much does it. then make up stories and they lie and i think everyone understands the word fakirs now but the problem is they never correct themselves out of a problem with with making mistakes as you're reporting i get it that's going to

happen but they never correct themselves so they say the lie and then they distribute that lie and they distribute it quickly i think this is an added danger to what's happened in the media not only do you have a centralization of mainstream media you have a centralization of the distribution and it's very quick distribution and that's in the form of social media so you have the mainstream media colluding with the social media example of the george floyd tape the truth came out we got to see the whole video everyone can make up their own mind and that's great everyone can judge it as they see fit to judge it but the may stream media would not report it with the exception of maybe one or 2 late night hosts dr carl segues actually exactly and the social media made sure that no one was allowed to see it the big tech social media of course you go to sites like shirts or a parlor or these alternative media and see if. but the you tube the twitter is the

face folks they wouldn't let anyone see that tape see that video in order to make their own judgments so i mean not only do you have the cable news and the prime time news and the big corporate news centralized the social media has also become centralized and they're working together and to me peter that's been the biggest disappointment of all of this when social media came out i actually thought wow these guys could actually work as competitors to the mainstream news we twitter could compete with the b.b.c. facebook could compete with fox news at the end of the day though what happened they ended up working together you tube decided to scrub and get rid of alternative news outlets and favor the mainstream media news you know in other words it's just becoming another platform where you can watch cable news and on a personal note peter i go to sites like the usa today and they've written articles about the duran every now and then they have me listed they actually describe me as

a russian native and that's i'm not exaggerating a russian if i wasn't born in russia has no connection to russia of greek cypriots born in the u.s. so i mean that's that's the amount of misinformation yeah i like to throw out there nobody calls and i've been mentioned in the only fact that they did write is that i wear a boat. ok to be curious you know i can understand like for example have a break that was it was a deeply divisive issue it was deeply political there was a lot of best interest on all sides we could look at the russia gate hoax obviously that was used as a. weapon against donald trump and it had no foundation to it it was just a conspiracy took on its own life for political reasons but then it got worse ok i can understand partisanship i got no problem i'm partisan ok then why do you listen to the other side or other sides what it would. and with this pandemic i don't know

what to believe about it and people say it's a science but most people would say it's the science have no idea what science is and they have but they have their own agenda here and i think that's really been very damaging to the body politic in the west who are particularly which i know best about but what can you what should you believe and can you have tolerance for people that believe differently and this is even a worse place than just partisan politics well this is exactly true to go to the to the pandemic i have very clear if used for. about the pandemic which i did expressed very clearly in various places and they are close to what we might consider to be the orthodox here but i absolutely do not believe in suppressing people who hold alternative views to me what you eat few jews at is that you will undermine trust and if you do it on every single tool create you

will in the end undermine trust in everything i think if we look at attitudes to the media now that is exactly what is happening in the united states in place an angel mini you discover that institutions like you know the media the big media mold is the b.b.c. m s m b c. entities which once used to command immense trust are no longer trusted anymore and where there is no trusts they cannot be proper consensus action and of course we have to understand one which is very important in democratic societies trust is essential people may disagree with the chancellor but they have to accept that within the political system within the political debate on a subject like the pandemic the. people are actually and speak in good faith if

they no longer believe that if they think that they have been manipulated and longs to untold stories in order to suit agendas which salty many people didn't say today and with a cold coke was then you start to see and humilation across lives and that's exactly what's been happening top it off to top it off to talk in the west eloquence for that alexandra here is there's something just brilliant here about you know good faith if you disagree you cannot by definition have good faith and that is a that's a one way i mean that is that is that open itself up to any kind of and interrogation you know what you know we used to think that you know and talk about in the manufacturing of truth but really this is the manufacturing of myths because you know it has no foundational basis so it's a myth can can be built upon and can be manipulated all at once and we've seen this

over and over again with innumerable topics here so it's really that the the manufacturer of myths and you must because if you don't you're not a good faith factor faith factor they do monetize you they d. platform you they make you disappear some of these companies go after your means of living they call after your pay pal account after your bank account i mean what alexander said in the beginning not only do they not let you absorb the news make your own decision or speak about your opinions about the news they go after you think don't agree with you and they go after your entire livelihood let me give you a going back to the pandemic let me give you an example of what twitter has done twitter came out with a statement the other day and they said that the corona and any news coming out of china about the corona we did not see it as going against our terms the next day they come out with a statement saying trump. tweets about the karada violate our terms and he needs to

take down that tweet. it doesn't make any sense and people see this this is the president the united states is a twitter account 606070 1000000 people fall and i don't know how many but they see this and they go what is going on something is going on with corona they're not telling us the truth they're lying to us they make people even more suspicious and they make people doubt the media even more and it's not working in anyone's favor you know it's getting you have to still censor yourself now you have to i don't even know if i'm allowed to say corona am i allowed to say that i'm yes so god will bring that they believe that they can determine what truth is i mean that has been the entire experience of western civilization is the discussion about but they seem to have come to a rather easy gentlemen would jump and you know we go to a short break and out about short break we'll continue our discussion on some real news.

the world is driven by. the day or thinks. we dare to ask. is the u.s. economy was booming growing numbers of people were made homeless. you can work 40 hours a week and still not have enough to get housing everybody believes america still has the lead up to the reality of we're not financial inequality and the lack of a floor to. housing for

a living minimum wage give many people no choice. that's been a problem with the city notice turn around and told to stay away oh miss. lawrence. before. the most vulnerable were abandoned on the streets to become the invisible cops. welcome back to crossfire we're all things are considered i'm peter belt to remind you we're discussing some real news. ok let's go back to london which here is gentlemen. and the last few news cycles we

learned that elliot abrams is not only keeping the venezuelan desk he's been given the iran desk as well a convicted. convicted felon lied to congress and he's elevated here i wouldn't have done this story just on elliott abrams because it's very clear cut in my mind in the in the minds of people who watched these videos. and this program but at the same time we had susan rice being touted as a possible vice presidential. position in a biden in ministration. what does this tell you that abrams is elevated and you have susan rice that has a track record of utter and complete failure on foreign policy so what does this say because we have a never trumper elliott abrams now further in bed in the trumpet ministration and

we have. a former obama official there with a track record of failure that is the on track now maybe not president but maybe another position in that future administration what does that tell us about foreign policy now what does it say about this one go ahead what he says 1st rule is that there is no punishment in the united states if you will wrong on foreign policy crew volume you wall wrong in a certain way if you were wrong in favor 8 regime change in other countries and aggressive political and economic stunts for the united states if you believe intel gets you not the country this they you all right well gees even if they're all you know no weapons of mass destruction in iraq even if your attempts to stage coups in venezuela are already complete failure yet even if iraq itself is

a total it's unbuckled because if you look at 88 grams and you know can sue some qualities of course they will argue they come to this just specs and susan rice will say she's a liberal humanitarian intervention is. of course any 8 grams is a neo conservative interventionist the result is exactly the same. i would all like you that the united states he's actually based interests at this point is history. why would trenchant any pulling away from these extremely aggressive policies which have done no good. full but just sponsor criticism these policies coming fall what we see is that people who advocate all this is in fact the most extreme that all is this a groundswell the one so i susan rice on the other they're about to be promoted.

right i call this the bin laden is a shed of american foreign policy because that you know is that very famous symptom is rather than out interagency consensus but that's exactly what it is trump is made no impact on it and it is a as a foreign policy act during his own right i mean he hired in fire john bolton he's brought in elliott abrams and you know with some very nuance on the margins it's a it's a bush obama foreign policy and as and it shows that it is his role as president is animals nothing to do with steering the ship of state for the united states and i think that is really pathetic because that was one of the foundations that he ran on as president and people voted for us i mean i think the disheartening part is that after bolton and the mistakes that trump made with bolton mcmasters and all

kinds of and all kinds of people and now you have abrams getting elevated but i think that's that's definitely an element of having tom pale as secretary of state trying to win 3 election i expect and i expect that tom taylor will be moving on that's what i think will happen and i think a lot will change cantelli does move on and if if trump appoints a proper secretary or secretary of state and not a neo con or near liberal like topsail then we may see some changes maybe a flint type of appointed 20 you're going to say that you know don't you think. that we could only kind we can only hope but what why should we believe that would be it wouldn't be. i mean i agree i'm saying if. if if he appoints someone on the opposite side of top and once again i'll say like a flame when he 1st appointed flynn and then he got completely sidetracked when what happened to flynn happened and he went down this other road of mcmasters and pompei on all these neo cons so if he gets on track in his 2nd term and he avoids

listening to the swap then we may have some hope that he male point someone that will do a better job we're in the case of biden we have no hope that's my point i think with trump we do have some hope there is some hope trump hasn't gotten us into a war has the us into war he hasn't gotten the us bogged down in any major conflicts so there is some hope that if he does win a 2nd term there is a chance that pompei only and that he's done with all the russia ukraine gay stuff and he can appoint someone along the lines of the flynn type who may actually implement some change with biden i think there's absolutely 0 chance of seeing any kind of change in us foreign policy i think it will get more aggressive susan rice case in point how many times has she lived how many times that she lied to the american people are under oath i meet nothing has happened to her work a lie from flynn page papadopoulos stone you see what has happened today when you

know the f.b.i. has questioned them and they caught them with very vague very minor infractions so my point on all of this is with trump and why you have to vote trump is that you do have some hope that things could change with biden i think there's 0 chance that 3 and a half years ok i mean and that means something here all right i agree trying to get us and into any new wars here but it's all a whole gambit against iran it is just a disaster for everybody concerned i mean look at that horrific explosion in beirut not for a millisecond it was then that maybe we should look at the same actions against lebanon so they can. get out of this no not not at all ok if this is a trumpet ministration ok it's not an obama and it's not a problem it's apparent that it applied in ministration again let my point here this is like an arrow pilot here there's not much you can do about it the swamp is all powerful and they have their own lines in the media and everyone looks out for

each other and that is the pathetic state of american foreign policy today and make your well if we if we actually look at what has happened in doha soon a half years and we don't break even by conflict might flip it was supposed to be pretty simple at greenland he doesn't 3 weeks he was a hand he was prosecuting it's been decided by the justice department he was innocent after all and still he's tangles uk legal cases we had over there last year was at the beginning of this year we had colonel been talking about the interagency which the presidency in the present should be in peach fool disagreeing with this i mean this is what he was sake set what we have is a form of permanent governance in the united states did under the current government in the united states which supposedly the elected politicians

must obey or if they don't update what will happen to their is what happens if layton who wasn't elected was appointed by the president all well we saw what happened with well she case with trump's impeachment proceedings and all of these things is a very bad place for a democracy to be and consider susan rice susan rice we've discussed her foreign policy stance this we can also look at her domestic policy and says she was heavily involved in unmasking people in the last years last weeks of the obama. administratorship in mali that is reason enough to disqualify. true of any kind of public goal in this country because he's now head of the 1st president said i have no need of it in your purse the baking is that you know she went you know cheech because she's the patriot quote unquote cheat she did everything she was the

1st resistance fighter at what she does the fact is that she's ponces the interagency consensus and this is the real power which is it seems holds is impossibly difficult to break into the jungle against you because you're facing impeachment your facing criminal proceedings your face you give to the media you come up against all of these problems what's next off the world boxes to for biden i mean to just go ahead and we were to tax off the world boxes for by those who are biden has boxed himself in and said i'm going to i i'm going to have a black woman as vice president and he doesn't have many choices there so you're down to come on harriss and susan rice unless there's someone we don't know about but those are stresses so susan rice obviously isn't the only so aside from the fact that she is part of the swap and the swap is very excited to get her in there for biden she checks off those boxes you know it's only stay with us i think it's.

you know people know american politics and. you know it's a rule of thumb that almost nobody cares who the vice president is ok there is hype in the media you know it's just part part of be the the rich will but in this case enough people enough people that supported troop in 2006 again foreign policy did play a role being anti interventionist with susan rice on the ticket it may give people a reason to say yeah let it go out and vote for him again because if maybe they say this time around if we take the rice issue of tables like what's. point ok i didn't get what i wanted ok that judge that you didn't work out on the supreme court but with susan rice it seems to me that's going to be that's going to rivet the trump base to really get their act together and go out and vote and i'm a strong believer that this this election will all be about turnout go ahead ours

yeah i agree with you on that i mean once again i'll go back to the fact that biden boxed himself in he doesn't have any choice and he's thinking do i put susan rice and energize the trump base especially the trump base that's interested in foreign policy and international interventions and all these things or do i appoint kemal hatteras kemal harriss is not the best choice for biden because there he's alienating all the progressives the entire progressive base so he's stuck with these 2 people doesn't have anybody else because he has to check those boxes that he himself put on the ticket i mean he put those restraints i'm still there one day . to pick and you know if he if he if that's his set that he's going to choose from when he wins then they will check his box on the you know curation day book it will say them out of the past year ok that's a topic for another program you are in jail and i want to make an announcement here i've seen crosstalk is going on vacation as of today will be back in

a month i want to thank my team my crew for all their hard work particularly during this endemic working from home and fingers crossed knocking on wood you'll see me again on crossfire for my studio in moscow that's all the time i have and gentlemen i want to thank my guests in london and in athens and i want to thank our viewers for watching us here are you see you next time remember.

join me every. sport i'm sure i'll see that. is what i did. master of the mass and. i'm still working on this one it's called 9.