The Pete Quiñones Show - Post-Nuremberg Russian-Syrian Relations with Thomas777 - Complete

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Relevant to my most recent Substack and Inquisition Episode - Pete2 Hours and 55 MinutesPG-13This is the complete audio of Thomas777 talking about Soviet/Russia-Syrian relations post-WW2.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingana show. Thomas is right back. Two episodes in a row with Thomas. We are blessed. How you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well, thank you.

I'm glad people. Well, we're suffering Thomas overdose, I guess. But yeah. I don't think that's possible. All right. So the last time we recorded, you had mentioned, we were talking about Russia. You had mentioned Russian-Syrian relations. And I'm just obsessed with Syria have been for a while now.

I got kicked off a podcast ones for saying that Assad was probably one of the best leaders in the world right now. And when you look at the post-Norimberg order, these are two countries that you're supposed to hate. So I have great interest in them, and you have information on their relations since this order kicked off and want to hear about that. So start anywhere you want. Yeah, I mean, there's two variables

that even people who are generally dissident adjacent don't fully grasp regarding the relationship between Russia and Syria. Syria's got outsized significance for a small country for a lot of reasons, okay? Some of those are cultural, some of those are geostrategic. You know, some of them owe to the kind of peculiar circumstances that

Syrian people, who are unique people, it's not just some kind of chauvinistic mythology that the Syrians themselves promote. You know, they view themselves as very much the airs, kind of like the Hellenic tradition.

You know? But in the case of the Soviet Union and then Russia, you know, a major component of the Cold War was the ability to index with both developing societies as well as well as well established national cultures in a meaningful way you were basically like selling your culture okay and the case of the Russians stuff like this was deeply historical in a way it wasn't for America I

mean for reasons that I think are fairly obvious you know like what America had is kind of its selling point to be kind of basic about it, you know, was a technology, a model for prosperity, you know, an opportunity to kind of align oneself with what appeared to be the superpower that had kind of like the momentum of history and kind of the glamour and prestige of what is new behind it. the Russians really, I mean, maybe this is somewhat ironic, considering the kind of dictates of Marxist Leninism. You know, the Russians really kind of sold the Soviet Union, and the Russians today kind of like sell their diplomacy

in terms of, you know, like them representing a deep and powerful heritage. Okay. And as I'm sure people have noticed, there's been something of an orthodox, resurgence, which is really interesting. That very much owes the kind of like United Russia and not just Putin himself. I don't think it's particularly religious. But that owes very much to kind of the

Russian public diplomacy. And I mean, there's historical and zeitgeist variables. Obviously, they facilitate it. But, you know, Syria is very much part of that. Okay. You know, after I'm jumping around a bit. but bear with me. I cite

1999 is the year when not only did kind of the the neo-conservative faction truly triumph in foreign policy corridors, but that's also when the Bush-Baker Concord that they established with Moscow, which is like

shattered for all time. And what shattered it was like the unprovoked and like blatantly irrational attack on Serbia. Because, I mean, Serbia is the Russian Federation and like the Russian nation kind of what Croatia is to Germany, but even more like deeply felt. Because obviously, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, among Russian people that there's not

as part of it. But, you know, when, when NATO assaulted Serbia, it, it was, it was like, it was kind of like viewed as like an assault on Byzantium. itself, okay? Now, Syria obviously is very diverse in sectarian terms. However, there's a tremendous amount of orthodox artifacts of Orthodox lore in Syria, you know, and I believe, although cultural anthropologists and religious scholars will disagree on this somewhat, I believe that Alloites are occulted Christians, okay? Even if they're not, they're very much adjacent Oriental Christianity, which itself is very, very, indexes very tightly with Orthodoxy, okay?

So there's something of a special relationship between Russia and Syria anyway. And not to be, I mean, crap. isn't the word, like, not to be, like, overly simplistic about it or not to, like, fetishize, you know, um, racial matters. But I mean, if you look at, if you look at the Syrian, uh, kind of like ruling cadre, al-Awhite or Muslim, I mean, these look like white people, okay? That's not like some, that's not just like their, it's not, that's not, that's not telemundo optics. That's not some accident, you know, traditionally everybody kind of viewed like the 11thine Arabs and especially, you know, like the Alawites and the Christians is like basically like not a Western people,

but like a civilized people. So trying to cast the Syrians as like they're a bunch of like Bedouin like Salafis or something is totally bizarre. Like that's that's like saying like the Japanese or a bunch of like primitive like cave dwellers or something. Like it's really, it's really, really ignorant, but it's also just like totally at odds with kind of how how Near Eastern cultures sort of like index with the West and with Russia, which isn't the West, but which is, you know, a powerful, a powerful cultural force to this day, although obviously not, not know it at the same degree as it's kind of anglophone societies and and moors have um formative power but there's a lot here and if you want to like if you want to

understand like why the syrian war also like syrian civil war like cut so deep in the minds of zionists like um russia's been at war with israel for decades like intermittently okay and a lot of that derives from Israel's ongoing conflict with Syria. You know, as we'll get into, like, Russian forces literally went into action against the IDF. There was a huge dogfight over the Suez Canal between Soviet Migs and, like, Israeli F-4s and Mirage fighters. I'm talking like the largest, like aerial and gate, like, larger than anything I happen over Vietnam. This was, like, a general war between the Soviet Union and Israel. Okay.

This is why the 1973 crisis was so dangerous. You know, like I'm always saying, that's what the Nixon quotes and Nixon tapes where he says, like, you know, we can't blow up the damn world for these people. Like these people, meaning the Israelis, that's what he's talking about. Okay. It wasn't just an ordinary matter of Cold War proxy battle that kind of got out of control. you know

I think we should get a little bit into like Jewish-Russian relations just to kind of recap if that's not going to derail the conversation too much this might have to be like a two-part thing if that's agreeable no problem at all okay and I know that we've dealt somewhat with

um in Russo-Jewish relations before but let me give like a brief like a little background okay and um stop me if i'm i'm kind of becoming too tangential um like for context by the turn of the 20th century like by 1900 the majority of european jury like as we think of it or like lived in the russian empire there was about eight eight point between 8.5 and 8.7 million like europe European Jews, over 5 million of those people lived in the Russian

Empire. They constituted about 4% of the total population of the Russian Empire. And about 90% of that population, they lived in the pale of settlement, you know, to which they were largely restricted there. You know, like going to both law and custom. Okay? Like, we got the

and all but about like three to five percent. I've heard varying statistics. I rely on Hana Arendt for a lot of this because I don't think people can, I mean, people try to impeach her credibility all the time, but like serious people don't, you know, really attempt to suggest that she's not, wasn't a credible scholar. But, um, close to, close to 97% of these, these Jewish people in the palest settlement.

Or it works as like middlemen of a sort, okay, in commodities. You know, like, it was like literally like the converse, like this funny converse of, of like the Russian Orthodox peasant population where like the majority of them were farmers. You know, like virtually, virtually no, virtually none of the people in the pale settlement were farmers or factory workers. the primary role of these pale settlement Jews they bought shift resold local produce they provided commodities on credit

to provide a basic like security to the standing crops as well as you know like more more speculative endeavors they're involved in estate management, you know, and leasing, you know, they held the deed or the title to a lot of

productive capital, you know, tanneries, distilleries, like sugar mills, like granaries, and, like, taverns and inns, which the latter were, like, heavily indexed with the government because there was, the government had in a lot of these Eastern European kingdoms and states, like a monopoly on liquor production and things. I mean, it's complicated. But, you know, they were disproportionately represented in the professional services, namely as doctors and pharmacists,

which obviously had some prestige behind it. I mean, it's like today it doesn't really, but in those days it really did. You know, and there was a this became an issue during the second world war as like ethnic cleansing began in earnest I mean between various populations but there's a lot of Jewish artisans you know like Taylor, shoemakers, guys who understood like metals not a work metals you know specialized jewelers and watchmakers these guys were overwhelmingly Jewish and especially in rural environments

You know, as I think we got into before to these people, the Russian Jews and the Russian peasantry, they lived in absolutely segregated quarters. Like, the Jews spoke Yiddish. You know, they wore distinctive clothes. They observed, you know, a dietary regimen totally different than the majority. They practiced a rigid kind of endogamy. You know, they only married within the tribe. you know they basically like every aspect of kind of like their cultural learning was oriented towards like the preservation of a collective memory which was contra that of the majority okay you know they um the centers of communal life obviously were you know like the synagogue you know like in russian culture like they're like going to like the bathhouse or sonnas a big thing there was like jewish sonnas and like you know Russian ones you know, these people that were not, like, assimilated into, like, Russian society.

And it wasn't just, like, because they desperately wanted to be, but, like, Russians were racist or something. Like, these, like, these people literally lived, like, parallel, but not intersecting lives. And, like, the Russians themselves, like, they viewed Jews as, like, this kind of... They viewed their culture as bizarre and opaque. They viewed it as... As hostile to the Christ. They viewed it as, like, unclean, like, literally and, like, ritually, like, other... You know, those are 30 people.

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population was, you know, like, heavily represented, depending on mandate and locale and stuff. You know, and I mean, like, non-Jews didn't even, it was very, other than scholars, you know, and linguists, like, almost no Russians even understood,ish, you know. And this went beyond just Russia, like, in Ukraine and Lithuania, Latvia, and Moldova, and Belarus. Like, we're at, like, what's now Poland. these pale settlement people and the people outside the pale settlement nonetheless who were like

you know heavily indexed into that cultural milieu like they didn't a lot of them didn't even speak like the national language what we think of as the national language you know it's um so they're you're talking about you're talking about like an enforced alienation okay um

coming from, you know, Russian Jewry itself. I don't mean that, like, the Tsarist system was like, we must exclude these people at all cost. Like, don't get to be wrong. There was definitely, like, reciprocal enmity, you know, but it's,

but people got to understand. It's like, you read, you read these, like, dummy accounts where it's like, oh, you know, Russian and Polish Jews were just like everybody else. But then there was this prejudice that came about the 20th century.

That's totally completely assidine. It was nothing like that. You know, you could make the case, in Berlin, which might as well have been a different planet, you know, than the Russian Empire, especially in its kind of rural geographic corridors. You had Jewish Berliners who basically, like, looked askance at kind of like their, the Ostuden,

their Ostuden brethren. You know, they spoke German. You know, they, you know, they, um, even if they didn't particularly want to mix or integrate with German people, You know, they, they kept up appearances. You know, it was totally different. You can't extrapolate that experience or the experience like Paris and Jews to that of, to there the east. You know, like, I'm not saying there weren't like enmities in the case of the former that sort of dictated the terms of cultural interaction, but it was, it was not remotely comparable.

So, like, I want to move, I want to jump ahead of it, you know, so that's, this kind of like laid, so this is the context to understand, you know, know, like the Russian national culture and the place of, like, Jews in it. Now, obviously, like, the Bolshevik Revolution, you know, is Kevin McDonald, he coded a lot of data, and he wrote a lot about, you know, the outsized role that, the outsized role that Russian Jewish people played in the NKVD and the terror apparatus and things like that. You know, that's all true, okay? And then, of course, you know, we've talked about, you know, Yaki's view of the doctor's plot in what was then Czechoslovakia and the kind of purging of these elements from the nomenclatured. I don't want to rehash all of that because it's kind of too outside the scope.

But the point is when people today talk about like, oh, Russia is Zog, quote unquote Zog, or like Russia is this, you know, vis-a-vis, you know, the, you know, the, the Jewish diaspora or Israel, you're talking about, like, deep-seeded hatred and animosity, like, real hatred. You know, the fact that, like, the Russians don't, like, as I'd punch the air and, like, openly curse Judea every morning, or the fact that, like, Putin doesn't go on TV and, like, declare that, like, you know, I deny the Holocaust. And the fact that, you know, Netanyahu doesn't say inflammatory things about the Russians publicly, like, that means absolutely nothing.

Like, first of all, I mean, if you don't understand politics, if you think it's about, you know, wearing your actual feelings on your sleeve, you don't understand diplomacy, even at war, especially at war. If you think that does this is characteristic about enemies relate. But, like, anybody would say that, you know, like, Moscow with something like love for jewelry is an idiot. Okay? I mean, that's not, this is a very, very, very hostile and tragic history. you know so jumping forward as people know you know Stalin who was the Casa Machiavellian

Stalin played cards pretty close to his chest when like the when um you know during the when when Israel like um you know from 947 to 49 basically you know like when Israel is a Jewish state

was being established he did it for a couple of reasons first of all because elements like Urgun and Hagan and whatever were like at war with the British Empire what remained like the falling British Empire and Stalin obviously like supported that but Stalin also like he wasn't

clear like what kind of trajectory Israeli politics would take like very quickly you know the Soviets like dropped any and all appearance of good offices with Israel I wouldn't have a game clear that this was you know that

that um it was basically you know a state that represented kind of like the express political will or like radicals and highly racialized Zionists and it was just like it was totally up the table for like the Soviets to get behind Israel and really by

after the Suez Canal crisis um like Israel like Palestine became like literally kind of like other than Europe Central it became kind of like the conflict die out of the Cold War, okay? And

the Soviet Union literally went to war with Israel, and the key to this, you know, hostilities in absolute earnest really emerged in conventional terms, and the immediate aftermath of the Sixth Day War, in 1967. This kicked off what was called by the Kremlin,

as well as, as well as by Nassar's people, the continuity war. It translates roughly to the continuity war. So between 1967 and 73, the Soviet's not only took a massive re-armament and retraining

program of Egyptian forces. They actually started trying to prop up Egypt when, well, the 60 war was still in progress. But regular Soviet troops, I'm not talking advisors. I'm talking the Red Army. They took up infantry positions opposite Israeli forces do hold the Suez Canal line at all cost. There were Soviets who were manning the anti-aircraft defenses around Cairo.

There was a, there were Soviet advisors who were like leading company level elements of Egyptians against the IDF. You know, like again, this isn't speculation or something or something that was like, you know, filched out of some like CIA memo that may or may not have been an accurate reading of the of the battle space this is this this this happened this is documented um so that it became a great concern to um kissinger himself as well as uh people at defense intelligence as well as the Pentagon, there was a massive deployment of integral Soviet combat units to Egypt in response to what Israel called depth bombing in the Egyptian hinterland. Like basically, this, this, this, this was, this was, this can't be a strategic bombing

of basically like any, like any target that, uh, it could remotely be construed. is like infrastructural, okay? Like, they're basically trying to flatten Egypt and, you know, like, and bomb it back to the Stone Age, as it were. Okay, Nassar visited Moscow secretly on grounds of, you know, legitimate urgency. And this accelerated, this rapidly accelerated,

rate of implementation. Basically, Nasser, we're ahead of state, especially in those days when, I mean, this is obviously like well into like the jet commercial travel era, but for the chief executive of a nation at war to travel to Moscow and say like we're getting killed,

like hell. I mean, that's that's crazy. Okay. So from that point forward until the conclusion of the 73 war, like basically the Soviet took over, like, operational authority, like, on the Egyptian front.

The Soviet Expeditionary Force that showed up in Egypt, it was the most advanced element they had. Some of these, like, serviced their missile systems they were using. They weren't even sending these to North Vietnam. This was, like, still experimental. They were sending, like, their best man, their best material, their best hardware to Egypt to fight the IDF. Ready for huge savings?

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but it was also to kind of like a swage American anxieties, which at that point were at a fever pitch. You know, the Israelis claim that by the time that ceased fire in August 19th, 70. There was like this tacit ceasefire with Egypt. They claim that like, well, you know, there's this owed like our victory over Soviet and Egyptian forces and such and it's only like a

you know, it's only like a skeleton crew or kind of like a token detachment of Warsaw Pact forces on the ground in Egypt. Like that was complete, that was completely at odds with reality. The and also, I mean, if you're fighting, if the Soviets, and I mean, today,

a far lesser degree, but I think the point still stands in some capacities. Saying that, like, the Soviets can't stand the attrition you're implementing, I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, the one thing's Russia, whatever their problems, and I don't have any illusions about the problems Russians had, the Russian Federation and Russians historically have in military operations, like suggesting they can't handle attrition, I mean, it's kind of like laughable.

I mean, that's like the one thing they can absolutely handle. So there's, so this kind of bizarre state of things like set in. We're on the one hand, you know, there was a, there was this, there was kind of like this, the like the official party line in Washington was that this wasn't a meaningful deployment by the Soviet Union. Union, although the theater remains critical. You know, you had the actual Soviet army on the ground, like fighting IDF. In 1972, and part of this, I believe, was Nassar's ledgered main and the, and Nassar's successor's ledgered main, because, like, periodically this was declared.

In 1972, there was a quote-quote rift between Cairo and Moscow, whereby Soviet advisors were supposedly like expelled from Cairo. Meanwhile like the Soviet army again is fully indexed at you know in the command of control capacity on you know what

on the on the on the Egyptian front contra IDF and they're like waging active war and um you know this so this was a this was murky as anything was during the Cold War but that's like a standard rebuttal

people have is like oh but what about what about the you know the expulsion of soviet advisors but it's like okay it also big the question is like why this would be some public schism you know i mean it's not it's not the way the communists did things and it's certainly not the way the russians do things and certainly not the way nasorite egypt did things um there were tensions between moscow and kairo leading up to the 73 war but i mean literally on the october 6th um offensive in concert with Syria. This was literally planned on the Arab side by

Soviet command elements. So, I mean, like, if there was this, like, a rift whereby, like, Soviet advisors or something like banished from Cairo, it's like, well, I mean, apparently they were remained, you know, like, for all practical purposes, like, the war planners in Cairo. But, um,

the, uh, there's a guy named Victor Kayak. He was a he was a KGB type Who uh in a 92 back when a lot of these security apparatus types And the former East block I mean they were both substantially younger then a lot more than a lot more than were alive but also there was It was a rare brought 1991 to like 1996 There was a rare kind of candor that these guys were prone to when in terms of discussing colder operations but and um

Kaykin said, you know, it was the KGB, like us, us being the KGB. He said, quote, the KGB persuaded President Nasser to wage the war of attrition to the bitter end. You know, Nasser may not trusted the KGB entirely, but he did ask for help. And us, the KGB, the best friend of oppressed nations, did help. person military gear want to begin clear. They're not going to not do it on the own by sending in our own forces. That's a quote from Cayagan. Now, the actual war of at Trisha, and I will bring it back to Syria, I promise.

From 1960, this involved fighting between not just the idea, the idea from one side and not just Egypt, but also Jordan, the PLO, Kuwait. And really kind of the, what I think of is like the Strapunt, the USSR, the Cubans, as well as Syria. All right. From 67 to 70 is kind of the peak of this conflict cycle. You know, and then it endured the varying intensities until 73. And then 73 led to, you know, the escalation to the point of DefCon 3 in America.

And that changed everything. that that's kind of ahead of ourselves. Following the 67, 6-day war, there was no serious diplomatic efforts for a political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Like the Arab League in 67, in the immediate aftermath,

their policy became known as the three-nows. You know, no recognition, no negotiations with Israel, and like no peace until Palestine is liberated. Okay. and the Soviets basically they're the ones who like who made this possible they made the confidence to sign for the several you know for the Arab League plus some of these non-state actors to sign off on a long campaign all right initially as kind of the traditional kind of the traditional Russian doctrine

in the opening in the opening salvos as it were of this kind of period and hostilities engagement of the form of limited artillery duels like small-scale incursions from into Sinai and vice versa by 69

the Egyptians or at least their Soviet advisors and commanders judged judged like company size and forces level

company size forces and beyond like they judge them like prepared for like a higher level of operational sophistication. Okay. This is kind of when like the true like war of attrition kicked off I think in like the public mind in terms of people who consume, like, global news and things, as well as people kind of on the periphery of military affairs.

You know, extensive aerial warfare, like, large-scale shelling, you know, like, command or raids, like, you know, combine arms assaults. The frontiers remain the same as when the war began, but this, you're talking about, like, real clashes of combined arms here. Okay. the Israeli Air Force responded by directly targeting Soviet military personnel. From January to March, 1970, 48 Soviet troops and pilots were killed in bombing raids at Cairo. And there's a summer of Cairo called Deshore.

This was where most Soviet fighter pilots lived. The Soviets responded, which was in flagrant violation of international agreement. they deployed S-125 service their missile systems to the Suez Canal Zone. They were fortifying the Suez Canal Zone like a smaller scale as deep as Hanoi was.

Okay? And this led to like heavy attrition. This culminated in a massive dogfight over a... The operation was coding Ramon 20 by the Israeli Air Force. There was 12 to 14

Soviet MiG-21s and 12 Israeli Mirage 3s and F4 Phantom 2s. Like I said, it was this massive dog flight in the Suez Canal operational area. Like five Soviet aircraft went down. At least four of those pilots were killed. Israeli attrition, it's hard to say. I mean, the Soviets claimed it was far higher than it was. Israelis claimed minimal attrition, but it was probably comparable.

But the entire purpose of this, by IDEP, to lure Soviet fighter pilots into air-to-air combat so they could be taken out. Because, I mean, it's costly to, like, kill fighter pilots. I mean, obviously. You know, and, but this is for the people who claim it's, like, euphemistic that, you know, the Soviets were at war with Israel. I mean, this is my rebuttal, okay? I mean, serious people don't.

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Zionist shills or something. Some people claim that, like, well, Israel withstood Soviet combined arms and, you know, they were able to fight off, you know, they were able to fight in ways that there too they hadn't been comfortable with or that hither

or two had been an alien type of warfare. I mean, I don't I don't really think that's true. I mean, I think the Soviets brought, they brought a quality of hardware and manpower and operational sophistication to the table, obviously. But the IDF was used to fighting Arab armies

that had real problems, but were basically following Warsaw Pact doctrine. You know, the American claim was that, well, Israel was successful and continuing to hold the main line of resistance, which was the borough level line, and forcing the Egyptians ultimately to come to the table.

But, you know, eventually, I mean, but the consensus really on both sides of the aisle was that this really kind of sapped Israeli morale. You know, and this really, this culminated, really, in the 73 war in its conclusion. I mean, Israel had some big victories in 73, but they also took some big hits. You know, this wasn't, people kind of trying to cast Israeli history as like the sixth day war in a perpetuity. Like, oh, these Israeli armies just top-notch and they just bowled over all their ops.

Like, it's not true. You know, and admittedly, like, if you're fighting the Soviet army and what was then, you know, their cutting edge war tech, like, it's not a minor thing. I'm not even saying that like there's something like shame in that. You know, it's um, I, uh, interestingly, there's a couple, there's a guy and a lady, there's Israeli military type academics. The guy's name is Gideon Ramez. The way's name is Isabella Ginnor, or Ginnor. They've written a lot on Soviet, Israeli hostilities.

And obviously, like I said, these people are both like Israeli Jews. They're not, they're certainly not. you know, people are going to be said to have a poor view of the Zionist state. They both consider the war to have been like a defeat for Israel. I mean, their argument is Israel is forced to accept a ceasefire. And basically a change, like a change in the kind of like the criteria for peace on the Israeli side. And just like a holy and just, you know, just completely, a complete sea change in the tenor negotiations. but Soviet air defenses were dropping FF4 Phantoms out of the sky at an unsustainable rate.

The Soviets and the Egyptians proved they blatantly violate not just preceding a, you know, ceasefire and treaty arrangements in the theater, but they didn't care a wit about, you know, deploying, you know, banned weapon systems to the region. You know, they were in it to win it. You know, Ramon 20, this aerial operation that, you know, was purpose to zap the Soviet Air Force tactically. Yeah, that was a victory. But I think that as part of the whole paradigm,

like that allowed the Israelis to kind of accept what there before would have been not acceptable to design as hardliners. but while also saving face. You know, hey, look, like, we, we defeated the mighty Soviet air force. You know, we can't be said to have lost. So, I mean, it's complicated, okay? But, like, my point is that, like, Israel's fortunes were literally decided by the Soviet Union, you know, in the continuity war, then in 73. You know, so that's, I mean, there's two things here.

So, I mean, this is demonstrative of how heavily. the Soviet Union and Russia wasn't as politically invested in Arab fortunes and specifically Syrian ones but it's also like you think the Israelis have like good feelings towards Russia I mean really I mean it's um you know

it's preposterous closer to um this the main subject at hand what Hepheza Assad was doing during this period. Taphazasad himself was a mig driver. He was a fighter pilot.

In 1971, as a Syrian bath was kind of consolidating its hold. Syrian politics were very Byzantine and a lot of backstabbing, a lot of corruption, things like this. Not quite as bad as the

Iraqi situation has developed by a decade later, but it was very chaotic. Um, Assad, Hafez Assad, really is kind of like the father of a modern Syria's political culture, okay? But that's kind of a subject for another

day. But in 1971, Hafez Assad and the Soviet Union, he permitted the Soviet Union to open its naval base and TARDIS. And the Russians continue to utilize this base to this day. TARDIS is the sole

Mediterranean naval base for the black sea fleet of the Russian Navy. Okay. This is a big deal. Not just in like, you know, strategic terms. But it demonstrates like a willingness of the Russians to sign on for the long term on, on, on, what amounts like a mutual defense treaty. So they've really got like absolute confidence in like the tenure, the perennial tenure of the regime currently situated in Damascus, or they're absolutely not going to let that regime fall. Okay.

Like the TARDis Treaty, for example, it runs, it ran, it, uh, it was set to run for 20 years with automatic five-year extensions unless unilaterally terminated. Um, I mean, it, uh, and, uh, immediately. Immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union officially, like Hefez-Assad recognized the Russian Federation as the legal successor to the USSR and, you know, retaining all basing rights and everything else. Okay. During the 73 war, obviously, which was kind of like Syria's moment in the sun, because they proved themselves, you know, that they could, they could function. at a high level of operational sophistication. Thousands of Soviet advisors, technicians, officers, like combat officers, assisted the Syrian Arab Army.

At least 20 were killed in action. Almost 3,750 tons of aid was airlifted to Syria. They sea lifted, at the conclusion of hostilities, the Soviet Union sea lifted over 60,000 tons of materials. materials to Syria to replenish losses, you know, like infrastructural, military, you know, like foodstuffs, like you name it. The one kind of blip in Soviet or Russian-Syrian relations came in 76. The Soviets were displeased when Assad deployed the Syrian Arab army to Lebanon. And something of a diplomatic rift emerged.

the Soviets were really worried about a confrontation between the PLO and the Syrian Arab Army, and for good a reason. Like, they were very much at odds, you know. Both of them were Moscow clients. This could have been catastrophic in terms of broader interests held by Moscow in the Near East. And like taking sides in a sectarian war between Arab factions, I mean, that's always, going to be a losing proposition. The Brezhnev went as far as threatening to freeze

military aid shipments. This ultimately was like smoothed over. Like a fence visited Moscow in 1977, like much fan fear. He met with Brezhnev and Alexei Kossigen, among others, or Kossigan. you know the Assad openly endorsed

and supported 100% the the Soviet attack in Afghanistan which distanced them from basically every other Arab leader but I mean he didn't care like Assad's Assad sent the message like he stands with Russia so I mean the final kind of if there was

in fact like a rift that still need a remedy by Christmas this 1979, like that what sealed that like Russian-Syrian kind of like affinity for all time was the fact that Assad said like, you know, we stand with the Soviet Union like against its enemies in Afghanistan. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back.

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You know, which was incredibly ballsy, among other things. I mean, it was the right play for Assad, but it was very ballsy. October 1980, Syria and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Friendship. Really until it all went down in 89, you know, Syria, South Yemen was the only Marxist-Leninist Arab state,

but Syria was that, even though Syria was not a communist state at all, like they were the jewel in the crown of Warsaw Pact in terms of their, in terms of Arab affairs and, in the Middle Eastern Theater. This Gorbachev scaled us back

in April 87. But once But again, like within after after I mean Russia was a mess like post Gorbachev but the

any unwillingness of the newly a stalwart Russian Federation the back Assad like evaporated with you know the end of Gorbachev's tenure um

that interestingly medvedov he was the first he was the first Russian president to visit Syria like Putin visited Syria um

I believe he was on the ground for the there was two parades or I'm going to be a Condor Legion honestly like the the Russian military contingent, you know, marched in Damascus after after victory. And I think, I can't remember if Putin was made a state visit there or not, but point being, maybe it was the first leader of the Russian Federation to visit Syria. Jumping ahead closer to the present.

For context, you know, this is a good. exactly why Syria was targeted for destruction in part. Okay? Haphaz Assad joined Bush 41's Gulf War Coalition, which was instrumental. You know, and the Syrians deployed to fight Saddam. You know, like anybody remotely reasonable would view Assad as like, you know, somebody who the West wants on their side.

But, of course, you know, he was, um, there's no like strategic logic. trying to destroy Syria and utilizing, you know, terrorists and ISIS and these tech-firy lunatics as a detonation strategy. At the onset of the Russian intervention in Syria, government forces, they controlled only about 26% of the country. You know, they were truly beleaguered. um the uh

you know Russia was fighting the Islamic State they were fighting the LNus for a front which is basically Al Qaeda these are the guys like John McCain that are like are like you know fighting for democracy you was talking about Al Qaeda

John McCain wanted he said we need to support al Qaeda to murder the Assad family and I guess everybody else who like Al Qaeda doesn't like you know great guy that John McCain the uh Putin in um I mean for context I mean Putin is constantly

cautious as I think people know which is ironic that he's painted as this like mad reckless madman like he's you know he really it really is a disservice to the Russian state that he's he's pissed poor at at decision points I think

okay um so it's not only he's prone to ultimatums it's not he's prone to absolute declaration the matters of war and peace but uh um Putin said that the you know the bath regime is absolutely not going to be allowed to fall you know and he said we don't negotiate with terrorists neither does not neither does um you know president Assad and I mean that was the core of the issue too like this was still, it was on the tail end of such things. There was still an America was supposedly fighting the global war on terror. I remember, like, a bad party spokeswoman who, I can't remember her name, which he was got in this, like, severe Arab lady of whom there are many. But, uh, she was addressing some British media contingent, and she said, like, we don't negotiate with terrorists.

We're not, we're not going to let, we're not going to let al-Qaeda. We're not going to let ISIS. We're not going to let some constellation of jihadists, you know, force us to change the government by murdering people. You know, and I mean, there was this there's kind of like this like dummy silence by these media people then, you know, when they're like a great chorus of

talking about like how evil Assad is. But I mean, that's really, this to me is really, this is what America lost all credibility in foreign policy. You know, you're like, you're literally saying that you're, you're army equipping al-Qaeda to destroy a secular

regime led by a guy who's eye doctor who was raised in London. You know, like, it's, I mean, that's, this isn't even like a, you can't even realize, like, I don't, on, under, you know, some kind of appeal in Machiavellian necessity. It's just like, it's just bizarre.

It's, it's just like, it's just like a bizarre, uh, scorched earth position, you know, uh, that only makes sense to Zionists, you know, um, yeah, a buddy of mine, a buddy of mine used to say, how do you make excuses for trying to kill somebody who wakes up and shaves his chin every day?

It's not a cleric. It's interestingly, back when CNN, I mean, CNN was always, they always had some goofs on their staff, but they, you know, I'm talking like 30 years ago, they were like a normal news network. You know, like they had goofs like Peter Arnett, but like there was this,

they did this big interview with Afezasad, who people viewed as a compelling guy, you know, and he kind of came to prominence, going to the Gulf War coalition you know and people seemed grateful for that you know and I'm sure like Baker's State Department was but it's like if you

you know his pay's like we paid back the Assad family by arming al Qaeda and like calling for you know Bashar Assad and his family to be murdered I mean like he like who does that you know like you can't there's no percentage and

you know if you if you lay down with pigs you're going to get dirty you know and not not only going to get dirty by dealing with america but they're going to try and like arbitrarily murder you at some point you know i mean like this isn't that it's aside from like the naked irrationality of it i mean you you can't conduct politics that way you know i mean that's uh that's like trying to that that's like trying to go into business with geoffrey domer or something you know like uh some some some unhate you like Mary is literally like

it's like an unhinged psychopath that might like randomly try to murder you like I you know but you're supposed to there's supposed to be some like percentage and playing ball with with uh with its ambitions but um we should probably wrap it up because I'm

coming up on an hour and um my our dear friend uh Jay Burton I gotta he's hosting me in a minute on his show but um I'm sort of to break this up into two segments if that's not what you had planned, but there's a lot here. Is that cool?

Absolutely. All right, this was great. Yeah, yeah. Let me know when you want to complete part two and we'll get it done. Sure. As per normal, do plugs. Yeah, man. For those who don't know, I'm sure everybody probably does know already.

Like I'm back on Twitter. It's like the same account. It's at capital REL underscore. Number seven, HMAS 7777. I'm on Substack, Real Thomas 777. At subsac.com. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Telegram.

I'm, I got a website. It's number seven, HMAS, 777.com. Like, find me all those places. And I got like a MERS line that people seem to like, and I'm re honored by that. Put that in the description line, if you would, please. Always. Yeah, thanks. Eric Krieg does some good,

Eric Krieg does some good work. I really owe him a lot. Like, he's a great, I mean, he's just a good dude, but his designs are really, are really tremendous, man. Yeah, definitely.

All right, Thomas. Thank you very much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinae show. Thomas is back for more Syria and Russia talk. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm well. Thank you. I'm not,

it's been a minute since we were, recorded. So if I'm repeating myself, please correct me. I can't remember exactly where I left off. I think we left off approximately where I was talking about some of the more recent scholarship on the 1973 War. Yeah, that's it. That's exactly where it was, yeah. Which has something of an outsized significance. It's warranted. I don't mean outsized in the sense that. Ready for huge We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

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That really changed the regional security paradigm in the Near East. It exposed a lot of IDF weaknesses. I mean, don't get me wrong, IDF on the Egyptian front, they performed exceedingly well. The Syrians, however, caught them lacking in some key capacities. you know and one of the reasons why Israel was so fixated on Iran

admittedly Nanyahu's very clumsy in the way he articulates propaganda. I mean that's just a fact I don't think that can be denied Ariel Sharon didn't have a lot of finesse but Sharon was something of a military prodigy

at least in comparative terms and obviously Nanyahu doesn't possess that skill set. However, the Hezbollah, Syria, the Syrian Arab army, you know,

and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, you've kind of got to look at all those actors as kind of operationally integrated. You know, there's nothing conspiratorial there. I mean, these are Israel's primary ops, okay? And, you know, like we talked about before, And anybody who is it all knowledgeable about the conflict paradigm dynamics

understands that Israel and NATO, to varying degrees, back, you know, these Salafi elements, okay? That's something of a detonation strategy. You know, because they identify their primary ops as Syria, Hezbollah. you know, Hezbollah slash Iran. I mean, in all but name, Hezboa is kind of the Iranian foreign legion. And the Russian Federation is part of that, is like an essential part of that constellation.

And this goes way back. And that's key to understanding the state of war and peace in occupied Palestine and with respect to the Jewish state. So, I mean, Israel essentially has two problems. They've got this internal crisis, demographic crisis

relating to the fact that Israel is a racial state. You know, and they've got this unmanageable majoritarian population. There's like super majoritarian population. You know, it's not, the strategic

situation is not unlike that of the Republic of South Africa around the time of Bota, you know, when the kind of permanent emergency set in, you know, I'm not, I'm not comparing Israel to the Boer Republic at all, unlike cultural or ideological or ethical terms, anything like that. But in terms of the military situation, there's a parallel. You know, and so they've got this internal, this ongoing internal emergency. they've also got this geostrategic problem you know with respect to

what they call the Shia Crescent which I mean Shia are obviously very much the minority in Darul Islam but there's there's a critical kind of like the Shia heartland you know is Iran and Iraq obviously

and it cuts across the region in the webinar you know so it there's a that's a that's a very daunting

that's a very daunting arrangement you know in a general war it's a discussion for another time but it kind of begs the question like why exactly

Israel maintains nuclear arms you know some people argued it was a prestige and clout move during the Cold War. Being Prevald, he basically suggested it's like a Samson option sort of thing, whereby people wouldn't let Tel Aviv fall because there'd be this uncertainty relating to what they would do with these weapons of mass destruction.

I think that's a bit too imprecise. Like, it's not really a military imperative. That doesn't mean it's impossible. And Israel was kind of strange in the way they approach things because they're a totally abnormal state. I invoke Ernestownality a lot in discussions of, you know, dialectical processes and things. But he was kind of reluctant during the Cold War to diagnose, like, then current strategic matters. for the exception was kind of the case of Israel. And he made the point that, you know, Israel's not really,

Israel's not an anachronism in the way some people on the left would talk about it and still do to some degrees. It's not like it's this retrograde state, like colonial power or something, despite, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the propaganda in the era of that effect. that it derived from the same kind of like dialectical process and like causal nexus sociologically historically historically ideologically speaking as the third

right and the Soviet Union like that's why it's so strange I mean obviously Department of State and the executive branch they're constantly claiming it's a liberal democracy because I mean that's just a floating signifier that suggests moral approval but even were that not the case it would be difficult to describe what exactly

Israel is you know it just would be because it's it's it's um it's not just an outlier like North Korea

is owing to its geostrategic situation and it's not like one of these emirates or one of these small countries or constellation of the sovereignty is that you know they ruled by a monarch or something it's something totally different than that

and it very much belongs to the 20th century and 20th century dialectic but anyway I kind of bring it back the consensus these days is essentially that the 73 war was a stalemate

okay I um David A. Corn He was a diplomat Back when Department of State was still a tripping quality people And he's

He's written a lot He's contributed a lot of articles Especially to Publications like foreign affairs You know things like that He served Um He served for some time in Tel Aviv

As it was called the political officer and Hanchu, what's called the political section. It's kind of like a halfway if you're in that role you're kind of halfway between an intelligence officer and a diplomat.

You know what I mean? Everybody who's assigned to a diplomatic posting is in some ways an intelligence representative under light diplomatic cover and everybody knows that. But guys like corn, they deal more in diagnostic analysis and things.

And they're not just going to cocktail parties and kind of trying to divinate, you know, palace intrigues and things that determine what the true seat of power is, you know, they've got a more, um, they've got a more serious role than that. and he made the point pretty consistently that one of the reasons why the paradigm is so volatile

Israel Contra the Shia Crescent the states that constitute that your strategic concept one of the reasons that's so volatile is because, you know, it's... Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th

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Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. The outcome was not only was there no clear victor on the Syrian front, the outcome was poorly understood. You know, especially in Israel. It was retrospectively deemed a success

because there was some big, there are some major kills scored by the IDF, in some cases where they were pretty seriously outnumbered by combined arms. But the fact that they kind of convinced themselves of this, it led to a false sense of security, especially on the political side of things. The military, IDF, whatever its problems, its military is pretty serious because they have to be to sustain, the status quo. And

as people on the left, they don't so much anymore because the intellectual left is kind of dead. But during the Cold War and even beyond, even into the 90s, they'd make the point that IDF is, I mean, yeah, they've got a national service law in place.

You know, it's like young people get drafted. But generally, they get drafted into support roles. Like, you're talking about, like, special operations capable elements and, like, infantry elements. you basically have to sign up for that. And the guys who do, they're going to be pretty racialized in the first place.

That's why they want to do that kind of work. And, you know, if they weren't before, it's going to become that way. You know, like, there's no pretension in an army, like, the IDF of, like, hey, we're apolitical. We don't, you know, take any position. We're just, like, loyal to the state.

I mean, part of that's because of the fact that Israel's find itself in Arasn Creek. But part of it also is that, you know, again, like Israel's not, it didn't develop organically like a European country did or something. So there's not this tradition of like an Israeli state that's, you know, like the post-medieval heritage of the people who live there. or something. You know, Israel is the Jewish state. The way it's configured

isn't really important so long as it is capable of sustaining that demographic balance and being able to perpetuate its demographic supremacy

despite being massively outnumbered. So you're not going to have, I mean, even if the just under those conditions. I mean, I guess I'm getting as you can't extricate those conditions from ideological imperatives, okay? So, that's probably a force multiplier in some ways, like when IDF actually goes into action.

It can also lead to some bad outcomes because institutions like that, particularly military institutions, where having the wrong opinion can be interpreted as like a breach and doctrine or something, it becomes this kind of like ideological ghetto. You know, and Ehud Barak, he's really the Israeli guy I pay attention to, okay? He's an interesting guy. He was a military man, you know, like career IDF type, and he's not a particularly charming guy. but he's really kind of been the only champion

at Yitzhak Rabin's memory you know Rabin of course was unceremoniously murdered in 95 by this crazy young guy who's like rotting in prison now but you know I I'm not going to say there was some conspiracy to whack

Rabin but a lot of people were happy that it that happened and from that point forward Israel became a one-party state you know and Rabin was going to Rabin was looking to commit to some way out of the the racial war okay

I don't think that would have I don't think you ever would have seen any kind of like formally quality between the populations nor was Rabin just going to throw his hands up and be forced enter the position that the clerk was in South Africa and just say, okay, we're, you know, any

any man or woman a majority within Israel or Palestine, we're just going to have, you know, where we're going to give them the ballot and see where the ships fall. That wouldn't have happened. But some kind of extrication from grand apartheid would happen. Okay.

But Barack, Ihood Barack he's the guy who made the point as well that really was keeping Netanyahu alive politically

is the fact that swapping out the civilian executive or kind of like rendering it headless like if Dentia was removed by no confidence or if he was indicted

which you may very well be if and when this war results but there's perverse incentives that kind of pursue like bad strategy is what I'm getting at okay and and what Barack is getting it you know um people turn around I know it I know it's I hear from them and they say like well how is Israel performing so well if what you say is true well two things like I said, we're talking about basically two two totally different conflicts that are related

and increasingly Shia and Sunni are breaching the sectarian divide to tentatively cooperate against the common Zionist enemy but the Gaza situation and the situation in the Levant in Syria are two different things

I don't feel comfortable going as far as I say that they're just like two fronts of the same conflict. I mean, there's like a common nexus of causes but it's more complicated than that.

However, you know, IDF got caught lacking when Hamas assaulted. I think I covered this on a pod so if I'm repeating myself, forgive me, but you know, on October 7th, Christ, it's almost been a year. But when Hamas breached the barrier fence,

they assumed that the lead element was going to get wiped out. You know, basically like a company-sized element, like store on the main line of resistance. But when they did that, there was nobody there. You know, like the Israelis were, it was like a skeleton crew that was not abiding any kind of alert deployment at all. Some of them were literally sleeping and Hamas just like waxed them.

And then when they broke through immediately Hamas immediately started storming the breach with like as many men as they could get through as possible. You know, then IDF like swarmed drones on them and combined arms and sort of like hosing them with fire. But my point is that shouldn't have happened in the first place. You know, that'd be like if when...

That'd be like if when it became clear the Russians were going to, like, assault, you know, Don Bass to, like, relieve their people who were under pressure there from these guys who were, like, supposedly, like, irregular as, like, Azob, or very obviously, you know... Very obviously, like, acting as official, you know, in the service of the Kiev regime. that it'd be like a point it became clear like Russia was going to assault these like Azov guys and the Ukrainian armed forces

like preemptively like assaulted them then like broke through the Russian mainline of resistance like ended up in Russia then like the Russians had to reconsute like bring up their firepower to bear on them in the form of like armor and you know like hyperbaric artillery and stuff

to like get the situation under control. Like, if that had happened, like Putin would have been gone. You know, that's a catastrophic fuck-up. So, you know, I'm not saying, like, oh, IDF is,

like, a shit force, because they're not. But there's real problems there, okay? And this isn't just like some, like, intelligence failure or something. But moving on. But there were, like,

Immediately after that, I was tracking people in the State Department who were retiring. And there was one specifically, I can't remember his name, but I did an episode. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself

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and he said that there were divisions in the IDF that he was not comfortable with arming. Yeah, I'm sure that's true. And they've got real problems. You know, like, I'm not some expert. I know something about Judaism, like the faith. I know something about their heritages of people. I mean, I do. I'm not some expert on the internal situation in Israel,

but I do know that hardline Zionists are the kind who like sustain the military apparatus. Those people are aging and there's not a lot of young people to replace them. Like there is a hardline Jewish right, but more and more it's that's going to be constituted by the people who are called correctly or incorrectly in colloquial terms like the ultra-Orthodox. and they have a strange and somewhat contentious relationship with the military. I mean, Israel's got real problems. You know, I mean, they can't be denied. So I don't doubt that you guys' testimony for a minute. But, I mean, like, why would he lie about that?

That doesn't, if he was going to try and make, if he was going to drop some kind of cap to try and make the situation seem less severe than it was, to try and make Israel look like more cable heroic. You wouldn't say that. But, you know, the degree to which to, you know, Israel had to kind of, Israel kind of had to win in Syria. Okay, if they could have, like, knocked out Assad

and, like, crushed the Syrian Arab army and also, like, hit Hezbollah and, like, really, really hard. Because the idea has been smarting from, from their fight with Hezboa in 2006 for almost like 20 years now. You know, they really kind of needed to make a statement like that. And if

if Damascus had gone down in flames and Syria kind of became partitioned, they would have been totally fine with like these lunatic killers like ISIS controlling, like some chunk of it. You know, then they wanted to like basically, create some fake Kurdistan through like

a swath of Iraq and like assimilate part of Syria into that and then probably like have some some zone that was like occupied by America but was technically like you know a DMZ or something or some kind of like free zone so it's like okay then like

basically like they've sewn up they've sewn up their problem and also too then like the Russians can't like access like their key port there like the Russian our Federation can't deploy there. That would have solved like basically like that that would have solved like one half of the equation. You know, and then they could have brought like full firepower to bear

and, you know, 100% of forces in being like to bear like on Gaza. And there's really nothing anybody could do about it. So the Russians really foobarred their program. Like the degree of which they did like can't be overstated. that's why like when I say to people I'm going to point out to them the fact that you know like the Ukrainian war is literally like a secondary front I mean it's not secondary to people there it's a disaster and at scale it's it's just like a the area is suffering and and death is staggering but I'm saying like to Israel

that's like a secondary front where they can bring pressure to bear on Russia and the fact when I raise that to people, they look at me like, why would you say that? It's like, you really don't understand that Russian Israel or like hate each other. You know, they're like literally like mortal enemies. You know, it's like the fact that Putin doesn't like call them the K word and like shake his fist in the year

and call for them to be destroyed like, you know, like you sound like Arab strongman or something. I guess people are literally minded. They can't like compute this or something for the fact that like you know lay Avrov isn't going around like calling for some like program of like Ukrainian Jewry or something like I I don't know I don't know how people can't discern this but that's really what's so dangerous about this situation and that's also why

it's also why like NATO is being so reckless you know if it was just a question of we want to Merck the Russians and moving forward you know we want to afford deployment where we can that's like farther east and central vis-a-vis the you know

the Central Asian landmass you know then then Germany is that America wouldn't be going about it and it's kind of like just like catastrophically reckless way it's because it's you know what this is um

this is a this is like a key front of basically of Israel's war to survive and perpetuate as like the Jewish racial state. You know, um,

that's also why like Zelensky's in there, like out front. Like that, that's not good optics at all. And it's not just that the Ukrainian is an alibi like, oh no, we're not, you know,

that this isn't some criminal psychotic regime. Look, we've got, we've got this Jewish guy out front who, you know, it's involved in the entertainment business and, you know,

we're in normal country. like that's not where they're doing it um it's because uh there's no way uh there's no way some like goyish frontman would would be trusted there because like at any minute like he could flip even if he wasn't intending to

that he could find himself in a Milosevic situation where suddenly like a bunch of band rights are like look we're like tired of this you know like we we're not gonna like we're gonna keep killing the Ivans but we're not we're not taking orders from a from a Zid they call them but that's

you know that's um and Syria is an important country and it's got an outsized significance there was I know your friend he was asked and forgive me for being all scattered he was asking about

why there's panzers in Syria and Lebanon one of the reasons why part of it is because the of the peculiar dynamics of the Lebanese Civil War that went on for decades. And the French were kind of backing all sides in that war, depending on who had the upper hand, because that's what the French do. And the French, like, shoved some panzers into the breach on the Arab side. But there were a few dozen Varmac officers who served in the court of Nasser.

as well as in Syria before and after the Syrian bath conquered the political culture and the Czechs the Skoda Arms Works

which is kind of like the Czechs make great weapons they're like the Transylvania Saxons historically and like the Skoda Arms works that's kind of like the Czech counterpart to Krupp that during a communist struggle Slovakia.

There are so many panzers in like various Warsaw Pact armies and adjacent armies. They started like manufacturing, replacing parts for panders. And also too, obviously that's what that's what these Vermachs guys were familiar with.

You know, that's the armor they knew how to fight in. And habituating yourself to a new tank model, you can do it if you're a skilled tanker, but it's hard. Franco, Spain in 1943 they got about 20 panzers

like Mark 4 panzers that they'd ordered. And Serrano Sooner, who was a great man unlike Franco, and he was like a diehard national socialist. He was constantly looking for a way to get Spain into the war against the UK

in an official opacity. And after negotiations, broke down because like Franco was like a ludicrous demands that were you know purposely that purposely sabotaged any agreement between you know the the Reich and Madrid there was still hope and the pandas that arrived like towards that end because people thought so highly a sooner and I mean German counter legion had like spilled blood on Spain I mean that was sacred you know these

mark fours they got were like the same ones that like the panzer are used. They weren't these, they weren't these, like, off-brand, like, knock-offs. You know, they were real panzers. And, like, most of them had never, like, been deployed anywhere. So the Syrians got, the Syrians got, like, a bunch of, like, brand spanking new, like, Mark 4 Panzers. And they also got some, like, yeah, they also got some Yagpons or, like, tank killers, like, what was called assault guns in those days. Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th, because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back.

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Lidl more to value So yeah like in 67 and 73 like there was a there were hands or there was like assaulting a IDF which is pretty pretty cool and there's a certain level of irony there that's not

exact but still causes you some truth the fact I mean I'm um people like me

I you know I'm very much like an angle from a person I mean I'm I uh

I realize I realize proper Englishman and Scots like Peter Brimelo who's like an awesome guy and he was like very cool to us and he there

but I can tell you things I can tell you things that I'm like I can tell you things that I'm kind of like a little Ulster B and like that's not wrong but uh I like a very angle of a person so I've got uh I I think every I think every angle Saxon is something of like an Orientalist so I find um I find Eastern people's very interesting for various reasons you know as did guys like

Johann Von Weir and a lot of these national socialist guys who ended up in these Arab states it was twofold. In the one hand, they're like, okay, well, we've got to accept Cold War realities, but there's room to there's proverbial room to breathe and ideological and cultural terms and some of these places in Latin America in the Near East. And there's people who remain receptive to our ideas and

kind of want to be shaped by our ways. And they were also kind of like the shock troops kind of for Zionism you know so there wasn't an ideological component to it there's an incredibly silly propaganda and cap like put out by guys

you know about oh like you know Islamism is is just uh it's just this sort of anti-Semitic you know Nazi conspiracy I mean there's like very stupid stuff to that affect

but there was and is ideological affinity between people like the Syrian bath and and um national socialists that's my reason why like I mean I like the Syrian people like I know a lot of Syrians

and I hold on high esteem I I think they're interesting in like a culture people but they also you know if you if you if you some of these are

are with the Third Reich and what it stood for you know the obviously like a like I think too much Croatia was the only it was the only true national social state that existed

after the day of the fee. But like an adjacent political culture is like bad to Syria. Like absolutely. So yeah, I mean that's not to your point. Like it's not totally off base or anything.

But I'll move it ahead. I realize I'm getting tangential. You know, the Russians cultivated I can't remember how much we got into it. I should have reviewed our earlier episode before, like yesterday this morning, so forgive me again

if I'm repeating myself, please call me on it. But, you know, the Soviet leadership they really cultivated Fais al-Assad and like vice versa. You know, like I, the naval base of TARDIS,

which is essential. It's the sole Mediterranean base for the the for the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet to this day. That was a big deal after after the Soviet Union went down. The Assad and the Russian Federation worked

out that this is like the Soviets have like permanent rights, like the Tardis naval base. You know, it's and it was it was Assad's politicking. I mean, I take nothing away, obviously, from

the game is the Syrian Arab army and their toughness and their desire to win and things like that but during the 73 war you know which which Muslims called the Ramadan war

um all the whites and Christians um call it a couple different things or just the 1973 war the Israelis call it the Yom Kippur war but you know like we we talked about there's thousands of, um,

advisors, technicians. Um, there were, um, special operations, it's type of Soviet troops, about 20 of whom died in action in 73.

Um, you know, and over, close to 4,000 tons of aid, you know, ammo, uh, like ration packs,

you know, medical supplies, like you name it. Um, by the, by the, by the conclusion, by the end of October

you know it's a station of hostilities immediately beyond the Soviet Navy they see lifted over 60,000 tons of of gear like weapons again like weapons, ammo foodstuffs

um agricultural commodities to Syria to replace its losses I mean that's that's a huge effort you know And as we talked about, there was some tension from about 75 to 77. I guess the Syrians directly intervened in Lebanon.

There was this kind of tense minuet because, you know, the PLO, the PLO despite its declared secularism was always, you know, like a Sunni outfit. And the Soviets were really concerned about, you know, active hostilities breaking out between the Syrian Arab Army and the PLO. Hafez Assad was able to smooth that over with skillful diplomacy, but what really kind of solidified their relationship, even in the midst of some of these interesting conflicts between Soviet allied elements was Assad unconditionally backed like the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan

and he made a lot of people really upset by doing that you know like within his own within Darla Islam you know um but it was it was the right play considering the circumstances and it was also essential

I mean building during the Cold War like that kind of consensus building across national frontiers was essential you know and it was the kind of last hurrah of that sort of

war and peace diplomacy was Bush 41's like quorum that he gathered to wage the Gulf War which was an incredible which was a master's stroke you know but that was I think of that is kind of the book end of the Cold War and the entire paradigm

And of course Offiz Assad, you know, the Syrian already deployed to back to back U.S. forces. And of course, America, how does America like pay that back by like trying to murder the Assad family?

It's unconstitutional. Like, it's vile. I mean, aside in the fact that it's totally irrational but it's just vile. Like, you don't do that. April 77, Fess Assad, he made a state visit to Mawes and he got an audience in the president himself as well as Alexi Cossigen

you know who were I mean basically got to meet the whole control group of the Soviet Union I mean for for a small you know underdeveloped country that's that's pretty remarkable and they signed a they put a pen to paper on what was called the Treaty of Friendship in 1980 you know less than year after the Soviets assaulted in Afghanistan and that was that was not a that was not a cool that was not coincidental with those very much tailored to send a message to the world and subsequently there became a permanent garrison in Syria of Soviet troops you know not only were the bulk of Syrian weapons you

know coming from Warsaw Pact you know the Soviet Union itself the DDR just Czechoslovakia, Hungary, what have you, but also North Korea. You know, like Syria, because there wasn't the only, the only Marxist-Leninist Arab state was South Yemen. You know, so having an ally in the Arab world, which again, Syria had and has something of an outsized, profile in conceptual terms. This is a big win

for the communist world. Even though the Syrian bath was not particularly sympathetic to doctrinal Marxist nationalism. But that, you know, that's that agree to which the Soviets became tolerant increasingly

of what a lot of people would have viewed as kind of like a third position as tenancy. That's really, that's highly significant. And, of course, that's the kind of stuff that guys like Otto Riemer and George Mr. Vierich and H.E. Thompson and Francis Yaki. I mean, that was their whole

kind of diagnostic prediction. You know, and that's one of the reasons why they are just incredibly ignorant people who they like to bandy that there's some kind of quote third worldism. I don't even know what that means, but it, you know, within the extant

paradigm of the Cold War, this made absolute sense for, you know, anybody who was on the, you know, on the national socialist or fascist side of things, you know, it, um, it absolutely tracks. And Kerry Bolton, he's one of the only, um, he's one of the only, um, he's one of the only kind of contemporary I mean he's an old guy now but he when it's a contemporary I mean like somebody's active he's only sort of like

too like dissident like national socialist like um academic writers I take really seriously like he's great you know and I he's kind of an eccentric guy some of his interests

are kind of eccentric but I you know he's his is his viewpoint is closest to my own out of anybody he's kind of active in writing out you know political theory

and national socialism and stuff in 2010 Medvedev became he became the first president of the Russian Federation to reciprocate and visit Syria I think like I said before

I can't I cannot remember if when the Russians after at this Syrian Arab Army routed ISIS. You know, there was a, there was this parade for the Russian contingent there. They reminded me of the Condor Legion parade.

It was, I thought it was really cool. I watched it on, there was a YouTube stream that came through live at like 3 a.m. And I can't remember if Putin was there or not. but regardless it was you know the first state visit by a Russian Federation

executive was mitigative um and that was a that was a big deal too and obviously in 2010 like less than a year later you know the civil war

kicked off and that that wasn't that um that wasn't uh that wasn't accidental you know um Africanics, I can't remember if we're going to do this or not, but the, to understand the situation in Syria with ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra front, the Salafi terrorist elements who were assaulting the government, these guys were rapidly successful.

you know like obviously they had deep support you know above border or not from from Washington and Tel Aviv you know they the Syrian government by the time of Russian intervention

they could be set of control only about 26% of the country I mean they had Damascus and they had most of the built up areas but that didn't matter you know and the integrating between Damascus

and these kind of like outlying territories that were held by government forces and an adjacent allies it was they couldn't operationally integrate with the forces in being that they had

that's one of the things that the Russian Federation brought to the table you know um Russia also, they showed absolutely no mercy to these Salafi Islamists. You know, they were practicing a scorched earth campaign against them. But that's what... So the most horrifying modern world footage I've seen is when ISIS, they assaulted the suburb of Aleppo.

And they beheaded all the males, you know, from like little kids to... like military age, like teenage boys to like old men. And it was like this forest of like heads like impaled on these stakes. And um these ISIS guys they were doing their

they were doing one of their afternoon prayers and um you know they were on their prayer mats like it's probably like a whole platoon of them. And there was just these heads. You know, like it's, it is like something out of a horror movie. You know, I mean, that's, those are the kinds of animals that American Israel were turning loose on Syria as a detonation strategy.

You know, and, um, so the Russians, I mean, God bless the Russians were like blasting those guys to help. But, you know, the, that's probably the greatest victory, like battlefield victory. The, anybody, like, who should be, you should view as, like, an adjacent element, if you're right wing. And it's really, like, what the Syrian Arab Army, the Russian Federation and his blood accomplished there, other than Operation Storm. like when the Croix routed the Chetniks and

like liberated Ukraine that's like the only thing in my lifetime that was comparable so when these like demento internet guys like don't go outside or something

instead of talking about if they love Ukraine it's I realize like how sick these fucking people are and like delusional you know like they don't they're like they're either like ops where like masquerading as being like

right wing or they're just like or they just think that shit's like video games or something. I don't know. But, you know, I think the point again and again, if you don't understand that, like, the Syrians are, like, you are allies, and this is an international struggle. You can't isolate it and say, like, I don't care what happens outside America.

Like, that's this basic bitch, like, white N-word stuff, but it's also, like, you're not in the game if you think these things occur in isolation. whether you like globalism or not, it doesn't matter. Like, it's, you can't ignore gravity. You know, it's the same thing. Globalism is like gravity. The power political paradigm you live under is like the weather.

You can't change it. I mean, I mean, you can change it, but you've got to, like, work within its parameters. You know, like saying you're, you're going to, like, you're going to take some, like, non-positioning, going to some, like, ethical orientation that, you know, you convince yourself, like, means you, like, reject, like, the prevailing, the prevailing order. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's meaningless in, and, in political terms. But, you know, the, uh, plus two, that's when the Russian Federation, like, finally drew a line in the sand, you know, and I, had they not, I, I, I, I think Russia would be

an even worse shape today than, than, than it is. I'm not saying bad things about Russian people I mean the Russians are in a desperate situation Putin said that like like Assad is not going down he said the bad regime is going to remain at all costs and that and he delivered on it

you know that's that's what's kept Russia alive as in war in peace terms you know like had the Russians just a lot of Syria to go down. Like they would have had a cascading effect of of

catastrophes. You know, you've developed certain instincts for identifying what events are going to have those sort of seismic kinetic effects and you would have to believe if Damascus had fallen that would have been one of those events.

it's also it was executed pretty splendidly man you know I'm we've talked a lot in various capacities and I recommend you know Subrov he's most known for Icebreaker but his book inside the Red Army you know it's about the state of it's about the state of Soviet Army

you know basically in in the in the later Brezhne of era and something that remains this day and something that preceded the Fultwick Revolution the Russian's big thing their big military science imperative

is to do everything possible to like overcome fog of war issues you know situational awareness issues within the battle space you know by eradicating uncertainty these. So

they treat battle doctrine almost like a Western Army or like the U.S. Army would treat regulation. It's highly inflexible. Okay. But for the way the Russians fight,

it does work. And the combined arms the Russians brought to bear against ISIS, like cut them to pieces. you know um and it was absolutely

you know like a like the Russians didn't just like rashly deployed like I remember I can't remember his name he was he's that black guy on I don't even think he's on TV anymore

but he was kind of like he was kind of like mini me Lester Holt or something he was I mean not that Lester Hulls any great shakes but this guy was like he was kind of like the Bushley Lester Holt and he was he was talking to

he was talking to he was talking to like uber Zionist like NATO shell like idiot who was like a light colonel like a retired like light colonel or something and this guy was dropping cab about like

well we saw in Chechnya in 94 the Russians can't fight it's like first of all that was you know 20 years ago you fool secondly you know if um if that was a state of the armed front of the Russian

Federation, frankly, wouldn't have been able to deploy its scale to Syria at all. You know, it's not like they would have been able to like arrive in the battle space, you know, deploy in depth, and then completely foobar the operation. I mean, they definitely could have lost it.

But, and I'm not going to suggest that the Russian army deploying to Syria is like something on order of the British accomplishing the kind of logistical a mirrorably did at the Falk, Winston, 82, or something, but it was pretty damn impressive, okay? And once they were able to, essentially, like, immediately drop, like, you know, 5,000 boots on the ground and

a whole gang, a MiG-29s, and some kind of sexed-up, like, thermobaric artillery and things like that, it's like, okay, I mean, it appears as if, like, the Russian army's back. I mean, the Russian already performed pretty well in Georgia in 2008, but there were still problems. I mean, there's problems today, but the, you know, I, nobody who's not resorting the kind of callow propaganda, the very deliberate sort is going to say that, you know, the Russian operation in Syria wasn't impressive or something, you know, it's um but uh moving on um

yeah it's uh the Russian um the chief of the Russian air force Geracemov Valerie Grasimov he stated in 2017 in 2017

like in 2016 like started 2017 there's kind of like this big retrospective on the series operation. And part of it was, you know, like a Russian flex. Like, hey, this is what we did. Like, you know, rah, ra, we're back. We, you know, we were serious, you know, we're serious, we're serious military power again.

But they carried out, they carried out around 20,000, sorties. Like, yeah, between like 18 and 20,000 sorties. And there was over 70,000 strikes. on what Grasimov called quote the infrastructure of terrorism which what I take that to me is like a lot of ground assault type of stuff

you're like basically like it has a blood the three of Arab army going to action probably backed up by some Russian armor and artillery and then um like basically like the Russians that uh they like pound the hell out of ISIS positions from the

you know like an immediate advance of that combined ground element you know which would then like encircle these positions with kind of like textbook like Warsaw Pact deep battle just like smaller scale you know and um basically treat basically treat the operation as like you know the advance of fire wherever possible you know, like lay as much fire as possible on the opposing force to kill it, you know, and even overkill it. You know, it's not exactly a lot of places to hide in the battle space. And there are some very serious fighting in Damascus, but I believe by the time the Russian Federation arrived on the ground, I believe that it basically resolved.

You know, the had the Russians had to rout ISIS from demand. I mean, I it might be an improper, counterfactual, because like if ISIS was holding Damascus, it's like what, I mean, that would indicate the war was over. But it, but point being, you know, they,

that wouldn't change things if, um, that would have changed things if, like, Hizbollah was charged, basically. It was like liberating demand. I mean, like, what do you... That would have kind of neutralized Russian firepower, too, unless they were planning on, like, leveling the city

without regard to... Without regard to, you know, friendly attrition and things. But, yeah, it... Yeah, I... I guess, hung up on an hour.

Yeah, I'm sorry that it's too, like, heavy on the military side of things. I'd like to... I realize we still have... to wrap of our Gladio series. There's, um, if you want to do like an epilogue in this, I mean, it's totally up to you, obviously. It's just

so, literally. There's something to be said for, like, the, the Jackson Vannock Amendment and what led to its passing, and the whole kind of narrative

of Soviet Jewry being, like, under threat. And, um, you know, the GRU and the KGB quite literally establishing a directorate

to monitor Zionism. I mean, this is part of the equation. I mean, there's a lot to the Russian-Syrian relationship and just kind of like the Russian enmity with Israel. And we could definitely go like another hour on that

if you want, but it's totally up to you. Just let me know what you want to do next. Yeah, let's finish since we're we're on this. Let's finish this up. And then we'll come back and do a wrap-up episode on Gladiotio and then figure out where you want to go from there. Yeah, that's great, man. All right. So just tell everybody where they can find your stuff and go.

Yeah, man. You can find me on a substack. That's for my podcast content. It's real Thomas 777.7.com. I'm doing some biweekly pods with Jay Byrdon he's like my homeboy he's great like he really is

we're putting that up on gum road and having Burden do it like I might be a total retard I literally found gum road like fucking unusable I spent like four hours of that fucking platform it's not easy

it's like totally it's not intuitive it's not intuitive there's always like redundant buttons that don't do anything and it's like it's like some fucking yeah it's like some crazy person

or like some like lobotomized pageet like programmed it or something so you have like four hours of this garbage I'm like what the fuck am I doing? I'm like I'm not gonna I'm like this it's I'd rather have a fucking root canal than like fuck with this platform

just let Burton do it he's young exactly you know it's not enough to do it and the main thing is I love substack because it's literally simple as like point and click or like drag and populate. But they make it difficult. You can like add collaborators on substack, but it doesn't just like automatically like split revenue.

Right. Yeah. It's a. Now we're getting inside baseball. Yeah, yeah. Check out, uh, check out Burns action on,

on Gumroad. It's radio free Chicago. And I'll, I shout it out when we record new stuff like on my substick. I like post a link and stuff as well. well as I'll pick up a link to it and add it in. Yeah, thank you. And yeah, I mean, obviously I'm on, I'm on X, formerly Burb app.

You know, I'm at capital R-EAL underscore number seven, HMAS 7777. Here, Krieg has been, he's been visibly making some new swag for like our merchandise, which I think is pretty cool, man. Like I legit, like I stand by it because I think it's, cool and people seem to like it. So yeah, if you could like drop a link to the MERS stuff in the description

that would probably be cool. But that's otherwise, man, I'm I'm trying to get a jump on my I make progress on my my manuscript stuff. My long form written

stuff, especially because I'm going to have to travel a bunch this winter which I didn't, which is fine. I'm blessed that people enjoy my company and want me to go places where they're hosting things. But I didn't think I'd be like hitting the road again until like springtime. So I'm going to try and in like the next month, I'm hoping I can have like a workable manuscript. It just takes time, especially when you got to properly like cite, you know, your data on things. but that's what I've been up on.

Awesome, ma'all right. Until the next time, we'll wrap this and wrap up Gladio and figure out where to go from there. Yeah, man, that's great. Take care of Thomas. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinae Show. Thomas, how have you been? I'm all right.

Let's finish us up talking about Russia and Syria, and I think I know where you're going to go with this one. So just let loose. Yeah, that's your thing. You know, obviously, we're coming up, too, in the anniversary of the Ramadan War. You know, the Yom Kippur War is, which interestingly doesn't get, it doesn't appear a lot in media these days. Some of the fellows that have made the point in our discussions that, you know, historical events don't really occur anymore. I mean, that, like, you know, like Zizek makes that point a lot.

and so to some of these other guys who are kind of trying to salvage what remains a continental philosophy. I mean, that's a deeply psychological mechanism, you know, and there's like sociological locations to it too. But in more kind of prosaic terms, that's an important point because I'm always emphasizing to the fellas who don't remember because they weren't born yet, that media narratives, like however corrupt they were, corrupted they were by ideology and by conceptual biases, they did in fact build on a continuing foundation of historical time. You know, I make the point, even really up until 2000, kind of like the last instance of this in the spring or, no, it was like summer or fall of 2000. I remember this vividly because I made my dad really upset. And he went on this local radio show to talk about it, this show beyond the Beltway

that used to be like based here in Chicago. and me and like my then girlfriend we went down to the studio to meet him in the loop and the subject of the day and my dad was on this panel with this like former Navy SEAL guy and this kind of crusty older dude who was a civilian but he'd been on William Odom's staff in some capacity

but Peter Arnett and this is one of the things that kind of crushed his career I mean he was getting old up there in years anyway but he broke this story where this guy claimed that first of all the guy claimed that he was a deser

in the Vietnam War and he claimed he ended up in Laos, okay? And he said there was this village like full of like, you know, like young white men who were like married to indigenous women. And he's like, what's happening here? And they're like, oh, we're all deserters. This is like our commune.

We're like escaping the war. And if anybody who knows the history of the conflict, that's preposterous on its own terms, okay? There's no way that happened. But he was Our net was taking what this guy said is fact. So our net's like, well, like, what happened? I don't come there's no record of this place.

So this guy's like, well, you know, he's like, Army Special Forces arrived one day after they bombarded us with nerve gas and everybody died. But I was out in the fields that day or the rice paddies. So I escaped. And he's like, it was called Operation Tailwind. You know, and my dad's like, this is outrageous. This is outrageous as being reported as news.

and how dare this guy, like, defame these special forces operators. But I did it takes that real seriously. You know, he was a civilian, but he got to know a lot of these guys very well. You know, and he takes the honor of such people seriously, you know. And I mean, for me, I mean, it was just, I mean, aside than that, it was like, I mean, Arnett was just, like, lying. Like, if you're a serious journalist, this guy's story was preposterous. you know, like I said, I was, I was like 24, 25 years old, and I was just kind of like a student of the Vietnam War. And I'm like, there's no way that happened.

And of course, it broke out of this guy with some crazy liars that our net kind of disappeared. But it was a big deal, man, because, you know, even 25 years after Saigon went kaput, you know, Vietnam was still on people's minds, man. You know, in conceptual terms, it was one of their main kind of like whole stars. of historical events. So that it doesn't really, it's just like not the case anymore and part of it's deliberate. It's like a deliberate sort of like whitewashing of the collective memory.

They're not so much, it's just kind of like erasing the collective memory of historical time. But it's also, these narratives increasingly are just kind of generated out of nothing, you know, they're, they draw upon these kinds of endure, this kind of like enduring praiseology that regime, information or propaganda always disseminate.

You know, so there's a certain structure to it. There's a certain conceptual structure, but it's very much like every aspect of it's just kind of like autonomously situated in a psychological term. It's really weird. But in any event, even through the late 90s, they, when there was, when any kind of crisis was emergent,

between like Israel and its and its enemies they there there'd be contextual references to the Ramadan war which they called the Yom Kippur war and the 1967 six-day war which was Israel's greatest victory that's not just cap that um Israel had they were unusually larded with military talent at operational level for various reasons and um I mean that was so that was a big deal And that's kind of what the myth of Israeli military supremacy, like, was emergent. Because in 67, it wasn't a myth. I mean, on the one hand, like, modern combat resolves rapidly. That's why I was trying to upside the people.

You know, they... People get a corrupted view of this because pretty much, like, the only wars in living memory involve these kinds of nonsensical paradigms where like, you know, some Pentagon guy or some State Department spokesman or woman is suggesting, well, we're making incremental progress. You know, like these kind of like endless deployments that don't resolve anything. Like, people think that that's normal. Like, they don't understand that even under conditions or relative parity, you know, like modern kind of combined arms war, it's, battles are usually massively one-sided.

It's usually a route. It usually resolves, like, within days. you know but just the same the IDS performance in 67 was unusually strong but all of that all that basically came to an end

in the 73 war and it's significant to us I mean even people who weren't particularly invested in Israel Palestine I don't think that's a correct disposition because if you know within the current paradigm you

you can't just kind of like select that we choose what you quote care about. It's not a question of caring about it either. Like everything is impactful. You know, anywhere that, um, anywhere that, the, the U.S. forces are NATO where like IDF is deployed,

you know, with the full, with the full faith and blessing and operational integration with another United States, you know, this has, um, this has implications for everything that occurs in a political nature.

But, um, you know, in 73, I believe that that was a more dangerous crisis modality than the Cuban missile crisis. Like, the Cuban missile crisis, the way it was unfolding in real time, and the way these Soviet naval vessels were approaching Cuba. And there was a question, like, will they run the blockade or not? Or, like, how will this resolve? like and as like the days and hours were ticking away in Kennedy's war room,

you know, people got the perception that this was especially critical, and it was, don't get me wrong. However, there was nothing approaching strategic parity then. In 1973, there absolutely was. Like the Soviets didn't officially accomplish like strategic parity in terms of forces in being, you know, that were in fact deployed. until 76 to 77. By 73, they have the capability

to absolutely devastate Western Europe and the continent of the United States. And owing a command and control nuances and the shrinking of the window where human decision makers are capable of reacting, that window of opportunity to render decision had shrunk dramatically

from a decade previous. So I maintain that 1973 when America went to DefCon 3, that's the only time that's ever happened. And for context, it's now like during the early years that war on terror

with those like goofy, like color-coded alerts like today, like the terror threat is purple, so like shove a drool up your ass or whatever like you're supposed to do. It wasn't like that. Like, it was quite serious. And at DefCon 3, you know, basically that means America shifted to a war footing. And missile ears in their silos, they strapped into their seats to prepare for deep impact and awaited launch orders.

And, like, the little doors, like atop the silo went like, you know, which is kind of horrifying. but um and presdanov he mobilized the soviet union operationally in some ways they mirrored the nat order of battle but in other ways they were totally different but they had you know america's kind of america's kind of rapid reaction forced during the cold war was uh it was the 8 2nd airborne division the soviets mirrored that um like the soviet air air were in troops at that point were like an air assault

element they went on high alert and they were preparing to deploy to the Middle East to relieve the Egyptian army you know so this was this was really really bad but that it's interesting that that's been

conspicuously absent I mean it's to somebody in my age the absence is conspicuous I haven't read one reference to it and since the IDF assaulted that Russian target, which don't get me wrong, it's happened many times before. Okay, but it does constitute, if only in the court of public opinion and public opinion in wartime takes on an outside significance.

It does represent a kind of escalation that, you know, the IDF is flagrantly assaulting Russian targets. And it was one thing to do that during the Syrian Civil War. It's nothing to do that now. but I would think that any newsman or lady would you know kind of like invoke the 73 war as the direct precedent to contextualize what's happening you know and they're not doing that at all so that's just something that sort of jumped out of me but like moving on to you know the topic of the day you know once again I as I indicated I don't want to

sound like some crazy old person. But if I'm repeating myself, let me know because I do forget sometimes where we left off. And I try to refresh my recollection from the last episode, but I don't always have time to like totally go through it. So I'm not going to be offended if you stop me and say, like, we already

covered that. But I think where we ended, we were talking about, you know, the Russian Federation in Syria and how one of the major foreign policy moves, even even in the Yeltsin era

was to absolutely guarantee that the Soviet Mediterranean fleet could still base in Syria and the Syrians were still obviously very much amenable to that but you know despite even Yeltsin's

either you know apathy or gross incompetence or combination of both on power political matters you know it wasn't as him obviously either It was, you know, the equivalent of the general staff, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the foreign ministry and other things. But they, even when they were not at all in a position to, you know, be pursuing a true kind of world, felt politic strategy, you know, they made sure they locked in a continuation of good offices with Syria. you know and um this is

the 1971 naval treaty that was signed with Hafez al-Assad it granted the Soviet Union um you basically like unrestricted access to the naval basic

part is that it had built um and it can say that continues to this day you know and um it the treaty runs for 20 years and there's automatic five-year extensions and it's one of the parties opposite terminated the agreement, but it's a rubber stamp sort of thing.

You know, and the Syrian state, Hefez Assad, who passed away in 2000, he was one of the first heads of state to recognize the Russian Federation. You know, basically immediately as a Soviet Union became the Russian Federation, he recognized it and made clear that the Syrian government was going to abide any military. agreements and specifically the naval treaty regarding TARDIS. But you know, I can't remember we got into this or not, we were talking about

the continuity war between 67 and 73 and how the Israeli Air Force, you know, they fought this pitch this pitched air battle, you know, between the Israeli Air Force and Soviet Migs. But during the Ramadan War, the Yangapur war, the Yon War, the Yon Gapur

itself. You know, there's thousands of Soviet advisors on the ground as well as, you know, direct action military elements, you know, technicians, you know, a veritable battalion and technicians to assist the Syrian Arab army and, you know, to maintain their equipment and their armored platforms, their aircraft, all of that. And 20, at least 20 of them died. The Russian so at least 20 KIA and probably more. I mean, that's just what the Kremlin acknowledged, but there was a, during the war

there was over 3,700 tons of aid airlifted to the battle space. By the end of October, 1973, by C, the Soviet Union had transported 63,000

tons to steer you to replace its, its, it's, it's, military and infrastructure. losses that's a massive commitment in relative and absolute terms I'm not sure people recognize that because you know America throws money around like water and and is constantly just like dumping these like aid packages and in secondary theaters that this was a big deal okay I think I got into the fact that there was

some tension in 76 77 between Damascus and Moscow. The Syrian Arab army deployed to the Lebanese battle space, which put them directly opposite the PLO and the PLO, the Popular Front and the Popular Front, the Liberation of Palestine.

They were very Warsaw-Pact adjacent. There's big concern in the Soviet camp that this would upset the kind of delicate balance that was in place in the Arab Cold War, as it's called. This was remedied

basically 110% when the when the Soviets went to war in Afghanistan because I can't remember if I mentioned this or not either like Assad

immediately like declared like solidarity with the Soviet Union in the war in Afghanistan and obviously I put him at odds with basically

every other Arab government you know and that's huge that's and it's significant too I mean because there's obvious

inherent tensions between the Soviet between there were between the Soviet Union and Iran there are out of day between the Russian Federation and Iran some of these are sectarian and religious theological some of these are ethnic you know I

the persons and the Russians aren't particularly cozy but there's there's a very large Azeri minority in Iran you know Amatinajad is an ethnic Azeri there's there's some bad blood there aside from the intrinsic value with Syria

in absolute geo-strategic terms to the Russian Federation it's also very much like a con it represents kind of like it facilitates concord between the Russians and in a real way you know the I'm sorry one second Oh, and it's, um, in, uh, in April of 77, like as this kind of Lebanon situation was developing, um, Hefez al-Assad, he had, he traveled to Moscow.

And there's some interesting sort of like cool footage that the Russians shot. Um, and there was, there was, there's also some, there's also some British, uh, media guy in the ground. the British were very well indexed with the Soviet Union in terms of media for whatever reason. But there's this footage of Hafez Assad arriving in Moscow and receiving

great honors. You know, it's really interesting and especially for a small country. You know, it's Syria has a very outsized relevance for this reason.

but it uh he he got an aside got not just an audience with bresnan but uh with uhlexey cisigan um who uh was uh he the way to think of him is he was kind of in the role that laverob is today you know it's an imperfect analogy but for foreign policy purposes and war in peace terms especially like it used to be the Arab world it tracks and um you know it's not

that's no small thing and it's not you know that's why when people when people talk about the Assad family like they're like they're like you know like Saddam and his clan

they're not at all you know they're they're they're for the Assad was anything but just some like tin pot dictator you know I mean I I

I think they're a I think the Syrians are a noble people generally and I find the Assad's particularly impressive but that's not that's not just um

that's not just cap on me to conceptual bias or something you know Afez Assad visited Moscow again in early spring 87 April 1987 1987 and um

he traveled there with the then serving defense minister Mustafa Klaus and he has to require this advanced service to air missile system. And Gorbachev denied him, which is really interesting. And this was during a time when, it's a critical period when avionics were becoming hyper-advanced. Obviously, the stealth, like the B2 stealth on. it was a really kind of played for them than those that the these missile systems that the Syrians wanted to acquire were tailored to as a countermeasure for but that that entire sort of like skunk works um series of projects that was emerging from this this kind of culture of high-tech avionics okay so um you know the Syrians were asking were requesting this for a reason

you know they they need they desperately needed countermeasures because Israel Israel and in West Germany around the Cold War they were getting America's best equipment I mean the Germans in their own right

I think the I think the leopard tank is the best like modern battle tank like hands down but the but um they the West Germans in Israel I mean in the in the former case that you know what old obviously

cold residences. The latter was ideological and the latter obviously still this is the case in terms of what they received but they weren't getting like they weren't getting like knockoff versions of of American aircraft. They were getting the real thing you know and this

obviously decides to give the Syrians pause because even before even before stealth technology became the norm you know long before it um

advanced avionics were making it increasingly difficult, really to develop any countermeasures at all. And the Soviets, one of the things the Warsaw Pact did very, very well was aircraft countermeasures, particularly serviced air missiles. But you know the old book and film, Flight of the Intruder, it's a dumb movie,

but it's a pretty good book. If you're interested in the air, I read the book and saw the movie. Yeah, the book is, better yeah yeah but it um and stephen coons is is kind of a he's kind of a strange guy but he he flew 86s over vietnam and um the part where the the kind of the kind of john wayne type aviator jake grafton you know his new his new uh radar intercept officer his new rio is this kind of like wild guy but um even he like he like like,

fog sorties or downtown Hanoi is like a terrifying prospect for American aviators because other than Moscow, like, it was like the most hardened, like, target on this planet.

Like that's not, that wasn't creative license that was included in the book or something. And that owed the fact that, I mean, the Soviets built it up to make it that way. You know, it wasn't,

um, it, obviously it was, you know, the Vietnamese are an industrious people, but they, they had nothing approaching that kind of technology. and, you know, they

the Soviets knew that I mean, that was before the Sino-Soviet split but, you know, the like the Chinese had nothing remotely powerful, you know, like the the Chai-on-quivant was junk. But, um, in any event,

so this was a, that was kind of, um, a turning point, obviously, in 87 when Gorbachev refused, basically, to you kind of honor the good offices that had been sustained with Syria really since day one, at least, you know,

as regards to military necessities and exigencies. But, you know, that was, the, what, what Garber would show off was attempting to accomplish. I was writing some about this the other day, but that's kind of a subject for another episode. I don't know if we go off on that tangent, like we'll be here all night. But, um, it is, uh,

that, that was, definitely like anomalous though you know like I said it even even even under Yolson's tenure the you know the Moscow never made any indication that they did any intention of abandoning Syria but moving forward with some I mean obviously what's most relevant to the president is you know the Syrian Civil War you know and I it's it's hardly divinate really what's what people are thinking in in watching Because you don't have a serious foreign policy establishment and you haven't since you know 1992 but when Obama's people when they were saying that Damascus is eminently going to fall

That that that was that was in fact accurate At the outset of the intervention the Russian intervention and I there's another case of Putin waited far too long intervene I mean it it's a credit to the Syrian people you know those loyal to Assad and to Hezbollah and those Russian forces who were deployed that they won but it was becoming critical you know the

the Syrian government they officially only controlled about a quarter of the country you know this statistics I've read is like 26% of overall like territory and how much that territory you can deploy in depth or defend it I mean they had to

they had the built up areas by and large but, you know, they were, they were essentially, there was this garrison, Damascus was like becoming a frontline city, you know, and Assad, Assad sends his wife away, and he sent his sister, Ushra Assad, away, and, you know, he, I developed huge respect for Bashar, the son, because he said I'm not leaving Damascus by half-to-old out of here. And that's, you know, I'm like, okay, this guy's a real man and he's a real president. You know, he's a real leader of a, he's a real warlord now, you know, because that's the way it has to be. But, you know, when the Russians did arrive, you know, they rapidly integrated with, you know, a lot of the Syrian Arab army defected. You know, I think a lot of that, the degree to which that Sunni bath helped. elements and the Iraqi bath and the Syrian bath party are very different animals.

But there is a common ideological core and there's a common sociological rationale to like the men who were in our heavily indexed with the party. And, you know, a bunch of Saddam's officers who were, you know, a part of the Sunni minority in Iraq, like they clipped. They clicked it with ISIS basically immediately. Not all of them, but a lot of them did. And they were accepted by these guys, which is really interesting. And some of the same thing happened in Syria. You know, and the Syrian bath party, even, like, at the top is more ecumenical than they're credited. But it still is, I mean, it's basically, you know, like an al-Away, like, minority rule situation. But, and it's interesting.

in May 2010 like before the formal onset of hostilities Medvedev had visited Syria and that Medvedev's like brief tenure as the president is interesting man and it's interesting

how he became it was like out bad with Putin subsequently but it's pretty obvious that NATO Israel and I'm sure they're proxies in these ISIS types as well because those guys weren't stupid

they realize you know look the time to move you know the time to truly escalate is when the Russians are having some kind of crisis of leadership you know or if not not so much a crisis and a literal like

you know war in the Kremlin like happened after a drop off like you know you when the civilian executive is kind of headless. That causes problems. You know, it causes problems in terms of, like, grand schemes, strategic decision-making

all the way down to the operational level. That's one of the reasons why Netanyahu is secure, unfortunately, because even people who despise them, you know, playing musical chairs with the civilian executive is not what you want to do at war. But, um,

be it as it may, um, when the Russians did deploy, they immediately integrated, you know, with Hezbo and the Syrian Arab Army and command of control capacities, you know, like, deeply. And this, how this, you know,

the Russians, no, like, wartime diplomacy, man. I mean, that, during the Cold War, I'd say the key ways, I mean, NATO had them beat in all kinds of capacities, like material, political, and otherwise. But, you know, what the Russians had was, I mean, they had firepower. obviously they had a very tough in game population in the Russian people but they

were very they were and are very adept at like war and peace politics and that that that's how they were able to accomplish that you know because like I I mean obviously especially considering the the tactical situation on the ground in Syria I mean his blah wasn't about to say like we won't index with the Russian of course the Russian Federation, but there's always tensions in trying to integrate a command and control structure, you know,

and this was accomplished seamlessly, essentially. But the, well, you know, the Russians, the Russians brought in, like, real firepower to bear. You know, the Russians can't do high tech like America can,

but their war tech, as during the Cold War is now, was good enough. and the Syrian intervention and the way they they pursued a truly scorched earth policy in the in the battle space against their against the Opheur and it paid off

you know the um and Putin declared in no uncertain terms that you know the the Assad government is not going to be allowed to fall there is some momentum behind Syria too in the quarter world that opinion because like we talked about I'm not susceptible to propaganda and I mean I am not some young naive person I was legitimately horrified by those scenes from you know the suburbs of Aleppo where these these isis

barbarians you know we're beheading people and putting heads on stakes you know like I said I saw this video of them you know they were doing their afternoon prayers on their prayer mats and a there's like a forest of hits. You know, it's like a horror movie. But you know, people were seeing that kind of thing. And I remember a bath party spokeswoman

in on certain terms telling some European media type, like look, we're not we do not negotiate with people who we do not negotiate with, we're not going to change our government because terrorists are bombing us and killing people and beheading people. Like what that's, you can't ever allow that.

you know, this is, and, you know, this was also, too, when the war on terror was still on, it's like, so you, America's telling us, and telling the world, like, you know, we're waging the war on terror yet you're, you're trying to bring down a secularist eye doctor who, uh, it's got like a pretty wife who looks kind of like any white woman in the United States. And you're saying that, like, ISIS are the good guys. Like, that's, that's really when America lost all credibility. You know, like, even more so. I think, then the Iraq fiasco, because that was just like laid bear. You know, it's like we will burn down civilization and hand it to barbarians, you know, that basically accomplish what we want. And that's the opposite of civilization, you know.

I say nothing of the fact that that's, I mean, 9-11 should never have happened, but it did happen. And it's like, okay, it's like a decade, you know, a mere decade subsequent. like now now you're willing to like accept that as you know

it's kind of like the verbal cost to win business that's like that's that's unconscionable it's grotesque but um you know and then Putin clarified in 2015

it's really interesting too when speaking of the Medveda situation for three four years when Putin you know his kind of like second permanent tenure

as president of Russian Federation. There's this kind of window where he was speaking very candidly. I think Putin acquits himself pretty well, generally. But he plays so close to the chess and kind of issues these non-answerers, the policy questions. There was like this brief period of a few years where he was kind of trying to humanize his image, I think.

And remember, in October 2015... Yeah, it was like October, November 2015. He gives us an interview. And he's like, look, he's like this... He's like, you know, the Syrian intervention was prepared well in advance. Despite the way he may have appeared, we weren't just responding an emergency situation on the ground. We knew that America and Israel wanted to bring down the bath regime. We consider this unacceptable.

We still do. It was really interesting. He just doesn't talk that way anymore. You know, and one of the things people criticize him for is, is this kind of like ambiguous language about Ukraine, you know, oh no, this is this is a special military operation. and not being clear about objectives and things, it's very different, but I think it's relevant. You know, I know it is,

but the, in Putin's terms and Russian speakers, I'm sure will suggest and suggest correctly, this is an imprecise, I'm precise translation, but it's, the most coherent when I found, like in the same

interview he said, quote, that the objective was and remains, quote, stabilizing the legitimate power in Syria and creating conditions for political compromise. And that's very much a Putinism. You know, as Putin's always resorting

to, you know, the rules-based international order that purportedly exists. And like, I understand why he does that, but I think the time is past. for that those sorts of appeals but um it's just it's just interesting the uh and if i can't remember we dropped the brass tax like the like the literal numbers of what this operation constituted in syria um in some ways especially considering a lot of the discussion about the deterioration of

russian capabilities in some ways this was as much a coup um in world opinion terms as the UK's effort in the Falklands you know because people were I mean Washington's always suggesting the Russians can't do anything right in military terms

but even relatively serious people were prone to talking that way but the Russian Air Force it carried out over 19,000 sorties 71,000 direct strikes on what they called

the quote infrastructure of terrorists. You know, I interpret that in like real human language, not military language as a combination of, you know, ground support, attack missions, you know, as well as,

you know, as well as bonding of any positions and things. But I close air support and direct support. of a ground element forces is what really

carried the day. And again, the Russians, they've always viewed warfare as kind of the advance of fire. You know, they're really Klaus of Witsian and they're like literally Klaus of Witsian and their perspectives. You know, that's who trained them to fight modern war.

You know, it was Klaus Wits himself and approaching officers and there are in our force of the Russian Federation on parade, they still you know, perform the goose step. It's, you know, not a coincidence or because they

think it looks really sharp, which it does, but it's because that's how they learn real, you know, and this solidified Russia as a as a real military power on the world's stage

once again, you know, and that's why it's, there's it's not as like a conceptual bias or like a categorical ignorance. I mean, it's both of those things too. But, you know, like, at the onset of Australia's in Ukraine, like, however mismanaged that war has been, and it's been, like, grossly

mismanaged on the Russian side. Okay. But this idea that like Russia lacks the capability to deploy its scale, it's like, what are you talking about? I mean, that's, that's at odds of reality. You know, and if you're going to

if you're going to fight the you're going to fight the Armed Forces of Russian Federation, like literally on the frontier, you know, the direct precedent that comes to bear is, well, what happened in Syria? You know, I, not make no mistake. There is no, like, military objective on, you know, that Ukraine is pursuing because there's no, there's no path in victory in military terms, and it's, but if you accept that, you know, U.S. NATO, Israel, their only interest is, you know, is, is, is in, um, creating attrition, you know, it's

it makes perfect sense. But this idea that these, these, it's not as these fools like blinking either, like there's, um, you know, there's this people, I don't think there's any serious people in the foreign policy establishment, but even people less kind of, you know, out of it than he is.

You know, they were talking like, well, yeah, you know, the Russian mainland resistance is just going to collapse, you know, the moment, basically, we, we start popping off combined arms. and, you know, from a barric munitions or whatever, and then, like, the, you know, the United Russia is just going to collapse. It's like, what, say, are you smoking cracked? Like, that's, you know, the one thing, the one thing the Russians have going for them, again, is, is the fact that, um, they can bring firepower to bear. They've got a very game population.

And I, as long as, as, as long as Putin is alive and relatively healthy, like, like, you, like, United Russia has never been stronger. Like, their problem is that apparently they can't achieve consensus on who, on a man to take his place. But this idea that, plus men of Russians literally took 25 million dead. You know, if you lose one in seven of your population to the Vermeck in four years, and not only do you not fall apart, you can reconstitute in. into a superpower, albeit a crippled one, immediately subsequent.

That's like nothing short of incredible. And I think it's basically unprecedented, you know, like some sort of comparable scenario where a state indoors that level of devastation and is able to, you know, if not profit from it, to, you know, immediately reconstitute and project power. in a way there to for unthinkable, even prior to the onset of a stories. But, you know, that's one of the reasons why, I mean, you've got to understand the Ukraine war as literally like another, a secondary front, a secondary theater of the same conflict as was underway in Syria.

and one of the things facilitated by Russian facilitated by Russian victory there was not just clout in the international stage but it basically guaranteed them access to the eastern Mediterranean you know and from there you can stage you can stage climate operations like tier wide basically you know including in places like Libya that for

reasons, some of which are within the bound of rationality of a, you know, native decision making. There's some reasons they call it Libya that makes sense. There's some that don't. But, like, point being, Russia absolutely can deploy their in-depth

if they're not tied down on their own frontier vis-a-vis Ukraine. And that's really the key to understanding what is underway there in in, like, hard material terms, I mean. But the Assad himself apparently on the eve of Russian intervention, I assume this came from his general staff, and I, the Syrian Arab army, I know people claim that their shit, like the Egyptian army or something, I don't accept that.

I don't accept that because of the 1970s, 3 war. And like I said, the issue with the Syrian Arab army, it wasn't that. like they were getting mauled in the field. It's that basically, like, the Sunnis said, like, we're not going to fight this war. You know, um, but Assad, again, I'm certain through like his general staff,

which equivalent, they issued this, um, series of reports to Moscow saying, like, this is the, this is the tactical situation. This is what we absolutely need. This is what needs to be brought to bear. They basically identified and characterized opt for and how it was hurting them.

And in a very concise and clear-headed way said, like, this is why we're going to lose this war unless you're able to deploy and guarantee A, B, and C. You know, and that events is like a remarkable level of trust. Because, like, among other things, if you invite a great power and in very reduced Russia still is a great power in relative terms, although like nothing, you know, like a superpower. You know, you invite the Russians to deploy in depth and in hand your commanding control mechanism over to them. They may well just decide that like now Syria is part of Russia for all practical purposes. Like that's not just cap. Like when people are like, you know, Putin's

going to attack Poland. Like it's no small measure inviting like five or eight thousand like armed Russians and their combat aircraft and guys and their general staff like into your country and saying like, okay, fellas, like, you know, do what you do best, then apply, implement, like, death at scale among, like, those people, but then, like, kind of politely bow out when it's done. I mean, it's, um, it's a rare case of, like, real kind of, like, respect and reciprocity at, like, cultural level as well as practical, um, levels. But, um, yeah, and that's why, uh, you know, like I said, if I could, um, if I could, um, if I

can meet the, when anyone had the state, like I find it all interesting is Bashar al-Assad. Like, um, you know, he's a, he's a fascinating dude and I find a highly relatable. Um, but yeah,

the, uh, I think that's, uh, yeah, I was going to get, at some point, and we covered some of this earlier, I mean, in, like, a different series, I mean, um, we were talking about, um, you know,

the Jackson-Vannock Amendment and what prompted it, which was in large measure of you know, the the public bureau and the Supreme Soviet moving to literally like outlaw Zionism. Like it became a

political crime against the state to, you know, like advocate for Zionism. You know, and um, there was a party official in April 83. Um, they're like this full page, this full page ad

titled, quote, from the Soviet leadership, laying out the case against Zionism as viewed from Moscow, which is fascinating. And then subsequently, you know, that's when you started hearing in media this narrative, like whether a Soviet Jews are at risk of of annihilation. You know, the Soviet Union is this, you know, anti-Semitic country. I mean, they'd been at war for decades already, but

it, um, it, uh, it took on, like an overt, uh, you know, an above board, like, character, you know, and, um, this, uh, the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the purported plight of Soviet Jewry. It, it, it was something that was endlessly bandied about by,

not just NGOs and sympathetic media people by the Reagan administration. Like, it's really, it's really wild. And, you know, speaking of Cold War movies, or Cold War theme movies, the movie Firefox is a really good

movie. If you can, I mean, you've got a little bit like the propaganda. But when I was like a little kid, my mom and dad, I wanted to see it with them, and it blew my mind. But, you know, one of the subtext of it is that, you know, that Clint East would, who's like the Rousseau American

like Nam era combat pilot who you know he he goes his mission is like steal with the then fictional Meg 31

like there is an actual Meg 31 it's call signs is Foxbat but it didn't exist when Firebox came out but the the Meg 31

Firefox is like this super plain and um it directly interfaces with the pilot's brain waves so like you so you think commands to the central processing unit and then it responds. And because Eastwood in the film, his character is this Russian guy,

Russian, he speaks Russian, you know, so he can think in Russian to manipulate the aviotics. But in any event, like a subplot is, there's this Jewish avionics engineer. And the Soviets are basically, they're like threatening to like waste his family. doesn't build the Firefox. And, like, at one point, like, Pliny's once character makes contact with him, and he's like, yeah, you know, like, the Soviets are, you know, they're as bad as, like, the German Reich,

and it's kind of like obvious propaganda insinuated, you know, but that, like, even, that wasn't just like Hollywood stuff. Like, that's, that was the narrative being presented, but that, um, that's kind of a tangential. and it's a long topic. But yeah, I think we're coming up in the hour. Yeah.

No, that's about all I got for this series. I don't want to break off another, like, sub-topic, man. And forgive me if I repeated myself. But, yeah, I think unless I got a real gap, in my recollection. I think we covered quite a bit of the of what's relevant, you know, over these past few sessions. Can I hit you with one question from current events? Yeah.

What was your take on the Iranian missile offensive? The Iranians had to do something. I mean, yes, like Hezbollah is for all practical purposes, you know, like the foreign the Iranian foreign legion but there's a plausible deniability that the Iranians like very sort of jealously guard there but also just

in in terms of in power political terms as well as for domestic consumption as in the court of world opinion like Iran had to respond somehow and this is basically an identical it is basically a redux of when when Soleimani was

murdered you know the same thing it was just like very very controlled response, you know, the target, the areas targeted were like exclusively countervalue, you know, it was announced that this was going to happen. So that's the way I read it. And it's more for the benefit of, like, Iranian regime, despite, the public media says, it's not like the Taliban or something. And it's also, like, it's really, they actually hold elections in Iran all the time. And, like, the regime,

have like certain credibility problem. So like, I'm a Dina Jod. You know, he was not only in Azeari, but the reason he always wore that like members-only jacket. I remember, like, media people would make fun of him. But it's like the dude worked, he was like an oil rig worker or like a pipeline, like a foreman.

And like that's why he was trying to look the part of like, you know, Mr. like Aziri working man. He was like this big, like socialist, kind of like labor leader, like rabble rouser. And like the religious authorities didn't like him at all. like they basically allowed him into the top jobs they had to

you know and so talking about some Islamist it's like this most like you're like smoking crack if you think that but point being Iran's it's a complicated situation domestically and the regime there they do have to

cater to public opinion more than people acknowledge in the West and especially if it looks like, I mean, even if these like retaliatory strikes, like, or don't mean anything, it doesn't matter. It's for domestic consumption anyway. You know, like Iran's, Iran's ground element in real terms is Hezboa. That's my interpretation. Yeah.

And it seems like with some of the incursions that I've been monitoring over the past 24 to 36 hours, HESPA is doing a pretty damn good job on the ground there. Yeah. It seems like Israel they can only do anything from the air right now. Yeah, they don't want, well, it's also two. What are they going to do? Are they going to assault Lebanon like it's the 80s, early 90s? We're in 2006 when they tried that.

You're not, you're not going to, they don't have the forces, they don't have the force structure or the political will to assault Beirut and try and like route Hezbollah from the Shia urban hardland. You're going to fight house to house against Hezbollah for the next. five years and you know and take like 20,000 dead in a few months like no you're not going to do that no his was they're they're no joke man they're they're definitely the most capable ground element other than IDF in the region 100% cool well um do your plugs we'll get out of here and I guess the next next time we get together we'll finish up the gladio and then move on to something after

that that's great yeah yeah um Yeah, man, you can find me on substack. It's real, Thomas, 777. That's substack.com. That's where the pod is at, and as well as, like, longer-form stuff and just, like, various things. I'm on social media at capital R-E-A-L- underscore

number 7-H-M-A-S-7-7-7. I'm on Instagram. I'm on T-Gram. I got my own website. It's Thomas-7777.com number 7-H-M-A-S-777.com. And I got I got like averse that I sell

because owing to popular demand. I'm not trying to be corny. Like, that's literally why I started doing it with my friend and partner in crime, Hare Creek. But if you would include a link to that in the description, that would be a great help so people can find it. Yep.

It did it last time. It'll be there this time. Yeah, thank you, man. I appreciate it, Thomas. It's all the next time. Thank you. Likewise.