SIO32: What Happened In Syria?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm your host Thomas Smith. This is episode number 32. Got some, I'm back in America here. I was, I was gone, as you know. I was in Europe for a while. I have a lot of thoughts on Europe in general, and I will not be sharing them here really because they're more more just funny things that I would share on my podcast, Comedy Shoeshine. So check that out on Sunday or Monday, I guess it would be. I'll talk about a lot of the observations I made. It was fun. I've got good stories. So be sure to check that out. But today's episode is less cheery than that. I'm gonna talk about Syria, mainly. I've got a couple little news items to talk about first, really quickly, but the main topic today is the strike on Syria, the Syrian war in general, all that kind of stuff.

0:01:18 Thomas: I think, you guys, I've been thinking a lot about this, a lot. It occupies my mind a lot, I enjoy that I get to do this stuff for you guys now, tons of research I've done on it. And I'm frankly surprised at the conclusions I've come to on this serious strike. I think maybe you will be too. So I look forward to that. But first, let's play that music and then let's talk about some quick stories.

0:01:50 Thomas: Unfortunately, this is just a pretty depressing episode in some ways. There is a story I've seen, you've likely seen it too, I kept seeing a headline that I just had to hope was fake. And you know what, it was so awful that I didn't even want to check it. I was like, you know, I'm just going to hope it's fake, I don't want to look, I just can't process this right now.

Now, well, I finally, you know, decided to check on it because I might want to talk about it and it's pretty much accurate. I Snoped it and the story you've seen about the Chechnya concentration camps for gay men, pretty much true, unfortunately. Not literal concentration camps, so take the slightest amount of comfort in the fact that it's not a literal concentration camp. The sources that Snopes used said Like the the International Human Rights Watch and all that, they said that you should call it more like a detention center. It's still horrifying, it's absolutely awful, and and frankly I'm, I'm really sad about this. I feel helpless about it. I feel like this is something that, what can we do, no one's going to do anything. Can you rely on this administration to apply any sort of pressure for something that is truly horrendous. Horrifying? Alright, I'll just briefly go into what's going on. Frankly, it's almost too tough to talk about. But, Chechnya, you might know the leader of Chechnya if you're a fan of John Oliver, he's the funny looking, frankly douchey looking leader of Chechnya who's all about Putin,

0:03:24 Thomas: Just absolutely worships Putin, so that gives you some insight into his character, and he would seem like a funny joke of a person, of a leader, if he weren't so horrifying and harmful. And they've decided that they're detaining anyone suspected of being gay, and in full fairness also certain criminals and drug dealers, that kind of thing, but there's a real focus on gay men. And they're being essentially beaten and tortured, in some cases killed, but they're being pressured to give up other gay men in a really just, just disgusting, horrifying, almost like a red scare kind of a way, where they need to give up, you people they know in their phones or whatever they know are gay. And then they'll be essentially tortured into giving up more people.

0:04:10 Thomas: It's it's it's absolutely catastrophic. It's just disgusting and horrible. It would be a great thing right now to have people in office who were allies to LGBTQ. Now, I don't really think that even someone like Mike Pence, who I think is horrifying in his own way, I do not think he would literally be okay with this. But I do NOT think he is going to try too hard to put any pressure on anybody to stop it. I mean, I DO NOT anticipate that.

We can wait and see, I suppose. But, I can book it on a prediction website that I reference later in the show, if I want, that the Trump administration will do absolutely nothing about the Chechnyan. Yeah, maybe I will. Okay. So tune in for that later in the episode when I talk about a prediction website, I'm going to start putting stuff into, but anyway, yeah, it's horrible. Me give you the quote. This is always, again, this is always horrifying first, but funny in a, I can't believe that you would try to say this way. The spokesman for Chechnya's, you know, strongman, douchebag leader said, no, this is just a bad April Fool's joke, despite the fact that it's been confirmed. He says, there are no homosexuals in Chechnya, and if they did exist, the spokesman argued, detentions would be unnecessary as relatives themselves would send them somewhere they wouldn't return from. Yeah, cool. That's a charming, that's a, that's a great denial there. Oh no, we don't need to put, gather gay men into camps because there are none, which obviously is just laughable. I think, who was it?

0:05:44 Thomas: I think it was Iran. Somebody, one of those Middle Eastern countries some years ago said that too. No, we don't have gay people here. They're only in America. America. Funny and horrifying, but I can't help but laugh at how ignorant it is. But also then saying they don't need these detention camps because their relatives would just essentially kill them or disappear them. So charming. That's an effective denial if I've ever heard one. So, I feel helpless about this, I don't know what to do, I dunno what any of us can do other than do everything we can to make sure that our administration, and I speak, I say our, of course, I'm always referring to the US, apologies, international people, as I've learned in Europe, I have a lot of international listeners, but they still care about all these stupid things going on in the US because they affect everybody, it's really, really interesting how US-centric the whole world is.

0:06:34 Thomas: Apologies for that, I don't know what, what to say other than it's where I live, so I'm just covering it. It's, I suppose it's, it's up to you Brits and other people if you want to listen or not. Uh, but, but anyway, I don't know what we can do other than to, I guess, wherever you are, do everything you can to make sure that your country and your administration, your leadership, is LGBTQ friendly, and maybe that will be the only way we can someday put pressure on these people. It's enough said on that, even though you can't say enough about it. But unfortunately, there's... there's nothing, there's no solution. So I just wanted to, guess, illustrate that in, in the world, gay people don't have it so easy. You know, a lot of people don't have it. I have it easy everywhere. I've got white privilege. I've got white straight male privilege.

0:07:19 Thomas: Uh, other people don't, and it's horrifying. It's, it's really disgusting what can happen, and it's unfortunate. So, anyway, final little story, this happened while I was gone, I guess it's still ongoing, but not really.

I'm going to assume you're familiar with the Susan Rice unmasking controversy, just to give you a quick rundown, I've listened to several experts, I have read several experts talking about this, despite Dave Rubin telling us that the Susan Rice unmaskings scandal is the story that the media ought to be covering, because he's fair-minded, middle of the road Dave Rubin, he's essentially just parroting right wing media that has said this is, there's some scandal here, that those are the only people who think there's som scandal here, right wing Fox News, Breitbart, that group, they're The only ones who think anyone is going on here. All the experts and all the people who have a brain who look into it say, oh, this unmasking thing is just a normal part of everyday intelligence gathering, where someone is given a report, there's been intelligence gathered, just to explain for anyone who didn't follow along. There's been intelligence gathered on a foreign official of some kind, a foreign agent. And when there's a U.S. citizen involved, they mask the name. So they, they protect the privacy.

It's a very, very important thing that they protect. The privacy of American citizens, because FISA, this doesn't give them, uh, the, unless they get a FISA warrant, they don't have the right to just monitor Americans, but they can pick up American dialogue or whatever American, American information conversations if they are monitoring a foreign agent who is talking to an American.

0:08:55 Thomas: So sometimes when the information is provided to people like Susan Rice in the position she was in, sometimes it doesn't make any sense unless you know who they're talking to. So you're given a report and you're like, I don't know what to make of this unless I know who they are talking to, and so Susan Rice doesn't have the authority to do this, by the way. She merely puts in a request that the the intelligence agency in charge unmasks the name. It says, I need to know who this is because I don't know what this means without the context of who this agent is talking to. And the whoever's in charge has every right to deny it. It's not up to Susan Rice. She merely makes a request.

0:09:40 Thomas: And this is the scandal. This is what the right wing news sources like Dave Rubin, by the way, total right wing news source has decided that is a big scandal. This is why we need to be talking about someone doing their job in a totally normal way. That's absolutely every day how they do it. So that was another thing I missed. I think there's been a lot I missed, of course, but those are some things I wanted to touch on. And now let's get over to the main topic of the day.

0:10:13 Thomas: All right, well after that far too inappropriately cheery musical interlude, let's talk about Syria. I'm going to assume that you listened to the episode with Nenar from, I guess what, a couple weeks ago now, maybe a week ago. That is important. Listen to that first to get a good primer on the Syria situation in general. I'm gonna assume that, you know, the basics before I talk about what I want to talk about. So that aside, side. I also have been chatting with Nenar because this chemical weapon attack happened just days after we recorded. So I've gotten his thoughts on that. It's going to be interesting to hear. I'll get to that in a minute. Let's go back to March 30th when Tillerson is quoted as saying that the longer term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.

0:10:59 Thomas: He said our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out. They wanted to focus, focus on ISIS. So that was said March 30th. And I think that's important. I think that's actually quite important to the story. So, think it would be unfair to say that the Trump team took a very favorable view of Assad. Now, it is suspicious because, as usual, we're always thinking about Russia and Trump. Russia, of course, supports Assad. So it was suspicious. It was noted. It was noteworthy. But I wouldn't say that it's necessarily any sort of red flag, flag, because it's kind of always been true that any side you pick in this crisis, in this war, is a bad side. There are no good actors, as Nenar said. There's just a bunch of victims and a bunch of bad people, essentially.

0:11:46 Thomas: There is not a good side to pick. So targeting ISIS when they're the only ones who are targeting us, Assad is not targeting the U.S. So, targeting ISIS, who are are the only ones who are threatening kind of an international jihad. It actually does kind of make sense. And despite the fact that there were people saying this is definitely because of the Russia connections, oh, he's showing favorability to Assad. I think the subsequent action shows that that probably wasn't exactly what was going on. I mean, I think it's a good thing. They just didn't want to bother with it because it's regime change is an unpopular thing to do. It's a difficult thing to Do. But it's important. So they shifted a little their stance on Assad, Assad. They softened a little. And I think, my theory is from what I've read, I really think that that may have contributed to the willingness by Assad to use chemical weapons.

0:12:37 Thomas: Now, what, April 4th, there's a, an attack, it seems to be chemical weapons, there are, I think I'm going to talk a bit about why we know, with why I think we know, with reasonable certainty that it was chemical weapons, and then further from that we've got to talk about why we know, with reasonable certainty that it was the Syrian regime rather than anybody else. And there are truthers on all sides of this, and I shouldn't say that, I apologize for using the term, there are some truthers, and I use that term to mean people who are conspiracy theory nuts who are spreading all kinds of crap right now, that the people did to themselves. I just saw one that Paul Joseph Watson, a moron on Twitter, tweet did. Oh, they just, some anonymous source says the strike came from Saudi Arabia.

0:13:23 Thomas: Total nonsense. No, absolutely no evidence of that at all. So those are capital T truthers when it comes to this stuff, false flag type people. But there's also a very reasonable reason to wonder why on earth Assad would do this and to think, gosh, maybe this could be some sort of weird conspiracy. Maybe there has been evidence. So let me talk about the attack first. I also want to let you guys know, I think this is a very important issue. I think it's, it's a difficult issue. I'm including all my sources that I've used. There's going to be a ton of links in the show notes. If you want to look for yourself, I think there's a really good one, uh, on, well, sorry, I won't say all my sources because I checked like, you know, 20, 30 sources on stuff. I don't want to put that many links, but I usually I put like whichever one is the, the summarizes the view that I, uh think that I've corroborated.

0:14:16 Thomas: I usually pick one representative, one, maybe two if need be. There's a BBC article that I think really does a really good job of summarizing what we know and why, and why the mainstream view of, well, really most people, but the intelligence community and the Trump administration and senators, everybody, is that the Syrian regime dropped chemical weapon on a rebel-held town that I probably can't pronounce in northwestern Syria, so there's a testimony from a 14-year-old resident to the New York Times that she had seen an aircraft drop a bomb on a one-story building, so that's important. Aircraft is already very important and this confirms and corresponds with what the government has said, what the U.S. government has said, that they traced the route of an aircraft that made this drop.

That's immensely important because the only people who have aircraft are the Syrian regime and the Russians, but who are working together. There is no way that ISIS or al-Nusra Front has aircraft capable of delivering this kind of weapon. So that already is a huge signal. So, in the aftermath, the estimates are at least 89 people died, including 33 children, terrible. Another 541 people were injured. And the key is, from all the pictures and video coming in, there aren't outward signs of injury. That's the red flag for chemical weapons. When you see a bunch of people who are essentially dying before your eyes and they don't have any visible injury.

0:15:56 Thomas: If you drop a barrel bomb, obviously, gruesome, horrible injuries, people die. But when you drop chemical weapons, it's a bunch of people with no outward signs who are dying. And there are lots of technical reasons that I'm not an expert on, but the experts I trust, and again, I'll cite my sources in the show notes, there are people who like to try to say that it was just chlorine gas. And the reason I believe they are doing that is because chlorine gas is something that IS and Al Nusra Front might have access to. It's also something that is not technically a chemical weapon in the same way that sarin gas is. It is less serious, and I think the international community, for one reason or another, cares less about it. It isn't as hardcore of a chemical weapon.

0:16:41 Thomas: One bit of evidence here is a doctor testified that when they were, when patients were given an antidote for sarin that is called atropine, their conditions became stable and they survived. So that's a sign, a sure sign of sarin gas. The testimony also said they smelled of bleach and that suggests chlorine. So it may, as I said earlier, maybe both. So what's Syria's explanation, what's Russia's explanation? Well, Syria says no, we've never used them, didn't happen, I think they even deny that there was even a chemical weapon attack, that's, you'll notice dictatorships are able to deny far more, they're able to, eerie similarities to some things Trump has said, but of course not as horrible, but they're really able to really deny reality, so Syria has said this didn't even happen, no, nothing, nothing like this happened.

0:17:31 Thomas: Russia has said on the other hand that there was an airstrike, but it was on a munitions facility controlled by the rebels. And the explanation that some people are even believing, some people like, I think even Nenar kind of believes this, that a weapons, like a chemical weapons facility was bombed. And that's why people were exposed to the sarin gas. However, I've seen multiple sources and I'll tell you one right here. Someone named Hamish Day-Bretton Gordon, a fancy name, says here, former commanding officer for the British Armed Forces, joined a joint chemical, biological, radiological nuclear regiment, said Russia's assertion that the strikes had hit a rebel chemical weapons facility were pretty fanciful.

0:18:18 Thomas: He said, axiomatically, if you blow up sarin, you destroy it. So I've corroborated this with other sources I use, usually it's stored in a binary matter, so it's like epoxy or something, you've got two ingredients you store separately to avoid the possibility of accidents like this, so when you blow them up, they don't automatically create the perfect concoction that is the end result, when you blew them up they're disabled. And that's by design, you wouldn't want to have an accident, that kind of thing. So that explanation does not make sense to me, does not make sense to the mainstream intelligence community sources and all that either. Now, here's where I want to talk about people's concerns with this story. There are a lot of people who insist that the Syria regime wouldn't have done this, that Assad wouldn't have done.

0:19:05 Thomas: And, you know, they've got some pretty good points. And I have to say, right when this happened, after I had spoken to Nenar, I thought to myself, why? Why would Assad do this? He hasn't made. He's got the Trump administration kind of off his back. He's winning the war, essentially. I mean, slowly, but he's got control. Why? Why jeopardize his position by drawing attention to himself in this way, by doing something horrible that could potentially spark this reaction? Well, that's a tough question. I think I have some explanations. I've seen some possible explanations that make a little bit of sense. It's not 100% satisfying. So I don't think that question is perfectly solved, and maybe it's unknowable to know the exact motives of everyone who made that decision, if it's Assad himself or others.

0:19:58 Thomas: I have some possible explanations, but first let me talk about Nenar. So I chatted with Nenar a bit. And, frankly, he doesn't believe that Assad did this, and tell you guys that because it's a hard thing to say, it's hard position to be in, but I had someone who's from Syria who knows a lot more about it than I do come on the show and take us through this, but ultimately I disagree with his conclusion on this. I've been trying to convince him, we're still going back and forth, but he cited, here's his reasoning, I hope I'm doing it justice. This, but I did ask him to get his opinion on this to tell you guys, so I'll do my best. By the way, the first legitimate concern, which makes total sense, is why would Assad do this? I get that. I totally get that, and it leaned me toward, initially, there's no way.

0:20:50 Thomas: There's got to be a mistake. I don't get why he would do this, and Nenar's reasoning is, he cited me a a couple of articles talking about how IS and al-Nusra Front have had access to chemical weapons in the past. So they took over a depot at one point, one of Assad's stockpiles and got a hold of some. By one source, there was another article he sent me that I thought was way too pro-Syria friendly. It cited a Syria source saying that they didn't do it. But his theory was, and also he, I think he told me the theory about hitting a chemical weapons facility and that's what caused the sarin gas explosion. So he was buying onto that form of events. Last I spoke to him, I sent him the articles that I had seen that really indicated that that's not how it works and I haven't gotten a response.

0:21:42 Thomas: So I don't know. I'm not trying to pass any judgment on the guy. I think we're both trying to just figure out what's going on in a really difficult situation. But that's my opinion. His opinion is it wasn't the Syrian regime. So take that. I mean, that's a considered opinion. That's someone with a lot of knowledge of the situation. And I just want to let you guys know that that's his opinion.

And you can definitely do your research and just know that someone with more expertise than I have on Syria disagrees with what I'm about to say. But I just think that the expert community that I'm looking at here, in the mainstream articles, the BBC, the New York Times, this kind of thing, I am convinced by their coverage of it. And so I just wanted full disclosure, though, that Nenar, as of now, last I heard from him, disagrees key with me. Is that it was an airstrikes, so even if the rebels got a hold of chemical weapons, they couldn't deliver it in that way. The Trump administration released a map showing the movement of the aircraft. I don't think that's the kind of thing you just make up. I mean, there's a lot of people in the intelligence community, in the Department of Defense, all that, who are figuring that out, who are monitoring this kind of thing.

I don't think that's the kind of things you just make up out of nowhere. Furthermore, I have to tell you this. Given that Trump had just made a sort of Assad friendly remark, and given that he has this, there's suspicion of connections to Russia and that he's been way too soft on Putin, wouldn't it stand to reason that he would want to back Assad?

0:23:15 Thomas: I mean, if, if it were true that Assad had nothing to do with this, surely the easier route to take would just be to say, yeah, he had nothing to do it, so we don't, we're not going to blame him. We don't need to do anything about it. It was furthermore, he could have pinned it on ISIS because if that's who it was, he already wants to attack ISIS. He could have said, yeah, it was rebels. It was ISIS rebels. Maybe it was al-Nusra or whatever. News for fun. But but he didn't. I mean, they they said they had to do an about face. You know, they had the Trump administration had to had to do a quick turnabout and say, crap, even though we just said Assad was kind of cool. He's not that that is strong evidence to me, combined with everything else that we have that they're not trying to be deceptive on this. Piece of evidence for this is it's up to Trump and it's up to Steve Bannon to gather intelligence on this.

0:24:07 Thomas: I mean, the worst people in the administration, i.e. Trump and Steve Bannen and others, they're not in charge of this part. It's actually true that the best people, and this is very relative term, but the best people in the Trump administration, and that would be, I would say Mattis would be one, McMasters, the people who and honestly, Tillerson. I hate to say it, he's among the better Trump appointees. Again, relative term. But he's doing an okay job. I have a lot of complaints about Tillerson, time for another episode or something, but But he's not the worst. And it's actually some of the best Trump appointees who are more reasonable. And it is up to the intelligence gathering of the community that already existed, a bit of the establishment, to do these things.

0:24:59 Thomas: It is not as though Trump somehow fired everyone in the military or everybody behind a radar screen who would be tracking these things, that is why I trust it. If it were just an assertion that Trump made with no backup from the administration at large and from the military and intelligence community, it would be a different story. Then there's the part of it where people want to say that, no, this is a diversion. So Trump's being investigated for Russia. So what better way to counter that than to strike against a Russian, Russian ally? Here's the thing. I actually think that this could be a component of the decision-making. I don't think it's literally true that Trump and Putin are communicating saying, okay, here's how we'll throw them off the scent. I'm going to attack this airbase that, and then you'll pretend you're mad about it.

0:25:48 Thomas: I don't think that's happening. I honestly don't. And I want to talk a little bit more about why, but what I think is happening is it was an ingredient in the decision. You know, they, they... But, but there are a lot of ingredients. There are a lot of ingredients. Think back to when Obama, I've always said this. I've always said the red line comment that Obama made was something I was disappointed in his administration for. I've always said that his foreign policy was a little weak because of how they dealt with Syria. Now I've learned a lot more about that, and one thing I didn't know was that they actually made a deal, they struck a deal after the red line comment, so what they did, they didn't do was any sort of too much military action, they didn't put boots on the ground, they did some stuff, but they... They didn't seek regime change militarily, but they struck a deal to get rid of chemical weapons.

0:26:41 Thomas: Now, it's up to debate whether this was the right move. It's absolutely up for debate because it turns out, of course, that despite the fact that we were assured, and by the way, they got rid of, it was documented that they got rid of like 15,000 tons of sarin gas or of chemical weapons, gallons of, something like that. It was a ton. So, they did get rid of a ton of chemical weapon. It's not as though there was nothing to be shown for it. However, if you were someone who paid attention at the time, and if you were someone Who criticized Obama, I didn't do this, but if you were someone, who criticized him and said, you can't rely on a dictator to make, keep their promises, this is a bad move. You need to do something else. And furthermore, you need to have another plan, by the way, that's the thing.

0:27:29 Thomas: The overall message about Syria here is you've got to have a plan. If you're going to criticize, I think you've gotta have a better option because all Republicans did, as I'll show, I'm going to talk about in a minute, all they did was say, nah, bad idea, Obama, bad idea, Obama with everything. And then they're forced to take the helm and it's like, ah, man, boy, who knew this would be so hard. Uh, hmm. Let's see. What do we do? But anyway, when 2013, when that happened, when the chemical weapon attack happened and Obama talked about the red line, they, they came up with a solution. They, he went to Congress. He said, you know what? I'm going to go to Congress, I'm gonna get their authorization. Some suspect that he did this on purpose, knowing Congress wouldn't approve it because he didn't want to engage militarily.

0:28:15 Thomas: Some people suspect that. I don't know. That's, that's up to, up to you to decide for yourselves. It's a possibility, I think. Because I know that Obama was very reticent to use any sort of military force because of, you know, Bush and all that. So what he did instead was they struck this deal. They got rid of a whole crapload, literally, like a literal craploat, whatever, it must be 15,000 tons, of chemical weapons. So, I mean, that is a victory of sorts.

However, Asad either kept some hidden or maybe he reacquired some after the fact, we don't know as of now, but he still has them apparently. But going back to what I was saying about there being a lot of ingredients in this, there were a lot ingredients. So when it's been documented by the intelligence community and the military community, Everybody, when they believe that there's been a chemical weapon attack and when a lot the international community believes there's a chemical attack and Trump saw how Obama was torn to shreds on a lot his policy regarding Syria, I don't think merely doing nothing is that great of an option, particularly for a Republican. It's one thing for a Democrat to say, no, our party is all about not getting involved in stuff, we're going to talk it out.

But I don't know, for a Dominican, I know Trump isn't a normal Republican, and that's the reason that a lot of his supporters are actually dropping him right now. They're saying, we didn't want any intervention in Syria. This goes against why we elected you, Trump. We're out of here. There's been some very prominent alt-right people that are furious over this attack, tech, which I think is so fascinating.

0:29:53 Thomas: More on that in a minute. But one thing that I heard someone say on a podcast, I think it was an ex-Obama official on one of my many podcasts I listened to, they said this. They said that when someone doesn't have a coherent foreign policy agenda, when someone does not have strong convictions on things like that, a president that is, then that's when the establishment sort of has their way. So, when you had Obama, he had very principled, very strong views on the world. He did not want to engage militarily if he could help it. He wanted to talk things out. He didn't want to start another war, all that stuff. He had a lot of convictions. So, people, the military would recommend things, and they did, by the way.

0:30:39 Thomas: They recommended to Obama multiple versions of strikes that he could have done. We, you know, we strike this base, this base this space, let's do send a whole ton of missiles over there. And they had another version that was more like Trump's that he just did and may have actually been left over from that, by the way. But anyway, they send him these options and Obama says, I don't really want to do this. Like I'm, I'm not going to do that. Here's what I'll do. I'll go to Congress. I'll just do some other stuff. You know, so he had a strong policy on this. Trump is somebody who just doesn't have this. He doesn't have a thought out coherent view because he's never been a politician. He's never has no experience. He's got a few populist views that are kind of general views about stuff, building a wall, other, you know, very limited in scope views.

0:31:28 Thomas: And so what has happened is the mainstream, the establishment military community has been able to get his ear and to say, maybe people like Mattis, people, establishment military military personnel, uh, advisors and all that they've been able to say, here's what I think we should do. And Trump looks at all these options. He looks at the fact that Obama got criticized for not doing enough about chemical weapons. He looked at all this and he looks at the options on the table and he says, let's do it. Let's do this strike. I'm going to look strong. Maybe it'll be, you know, and maybe an ingredient in the decision maybe was still distract a little bit from some other stuff we got going on. But I do, I actually don't think that it's the main ingredient. I think that would be an ingredient but not the main one. And I have listeners, I cant be sure. But I may listeners who are more conspiracy minded than I am.

0:32:18 Thomas: By the way, I am conspiracy minded when it comes to Trump team members in Russia. I do think there is some conspiring going on, but there are certainly different levels of it. And there may be some of you out there who think, no, I think Trump and Putin are friendly. I think they're working together on I all of this. To say, I don't really think that's how it works. I think that we have to keep in mind what both parties wanted out of this and the position that both Trump and Putin would have been in. So I think Putin was in a position, as I've said before, to want to disrupt in in the U.S. He wants to sow chaos. He wants to make us less stable. And when you're looking at Hillary versus Trump, it's a pretty fair and easy decision to say, well, I'm going to go with this clown because a clown leading your country is going to make you less of a threat.

0:33:10 Thomas: I don't think that means, and what we need to keep in mind in my opinion, guys, I don't think that mean Putin thinks, oh, Trump's a great guy. Let's work together. He's done business here. We're friends. We're pals. I don't think that's how Putin thinks. I think he's trying to get, he's still in the end of the day, he wants Russia to be stronger. He wants America to be weaker. He's not going to be a fan of the U.S. president and help him. And, you know, so I think it was the kind of thing where Putin and others in Russia were running an influence campaign. They had, we now know Manafort is, as we speak, by the way, breaking news, is registering as a foreign agent as we spoke. Paul Manafort. I talked about him the other week. Literally happening. Unbelievable. And as we speak, we found out that there was a FISA warrant issued for.

0:33:58 Thomas: Carter Page, who was an advisor to Trump, now, gosh, there's so much to talk about today. I can't even, seriously, I could do like a three hour episode today. Here's what we need to remember. Remember way back in the day where Obama officials denied this wiretap claim and they said, and it might've even been Obama himself, I can remember a spokesperson for him, they said no, no such order was ever made by Obama because that wouldn't have been how you did it. And people noted at the time, and I said this at the time, I said that people noted that this doesn't mean there wasn't any wiretapping. This actually just means Obama didn't order it himself because that's not how it works. Now it comes to find out that was very prescient that because there was, there was wiretappings going on, but it was was because of a FISA warrant.

0:34:53 Thomas: And a Fisa warrant is a big deal, guys. This means that Carter Page, there was strong evidence.

0:35:01 Thomas: I'm trying not to spend too much time on this because I want to get back to Syria, but there was strong evidence that he was a foreign agent, that he wasn't involved in speaking to Russian intelligence, all this stuff. So they got a Fiza warrant and they were able to monitor Carter Page. Another thing to note, he might not be the only one. We don't know right now if he was the only wonder if there are others. So I think this Russia stuff has been people infiltrating the Trump campaign. I actually doubt that Trump was too terribly aware of it. I mean, it's my personal feeling. I'm not 100% sure, but my picture of it is people have influenced him. People have influenced them. They've influenced Trump into being more Russia-friendly. I'll grant you that. He is more Russia friendly, but there's been a lot of people influencing him in this direction.

0:35:49 Thomas: And Paul Manafort, Carter Page. Now we see others who have had contact with Russia, and maybe I think they are red handed. I think they are doing pretty illegal things. It wouldn't surprise me if we never get the satisfactory Trump with the bag of Russian money because I don't know that it would have touched him.

0:36:17 Thomas: I I don't actually think he feels indebted to Putin, really, other than maybe he's been influenced to be a little more Putin-friendly. And there is some suspicious stuff, like the Republican platform turned all of a sudden away from Ukraine and away from condemning Russia. And I do think he's being influenced into it. But the thing about Trump is, as much as I dislike Trump, and that was too weak of a word, I hate Trump. I think he is an asshole. I think is a narcissist. I think has no regard for the truth. I think it's an idiot in a lot of ways. Ways. I think he's ignorant in a lot of ways, but you know what way he isn't an idiot? I don't think Trump is a stooge. I don't pin down Trump as someone who would, who would say, Oh gee, thanks Mr. Putin for helping me get elected. Now I'm whatever you, I'll do your bidding, whatever you want.

0:37:02 Thomas: I'm, I'm a, your wish is my command. No, Trump is the one on the other side of that. Trump is the guy who screws people. He's the guy Who doesn't pay people. He's he has people do work for them and he doesn't even pay them back. I don't think Trump Trump is really going to, I think it was natural. I wish I had done this on the prediction website that again, I'm going to mention in the future. I Wish I had predicted Trump will take a more anti-Putin view eventually, because I don't think he feels indebted. I don't think he has any reason to stay indebted to Putin. And you're seeing this now. They are, they have shifted to a very anti-Putin stance here. And conspiracy theorists want to say, well, it was smoking mirrors, smoking I don't really think that. I don't really think they have any reason to be terribly pro-Putin, to be frank. So that's my view on it.

0:37:48 Thomas: So if I have any listeners, I'm not, I don't know that I do, but I've, I've heard these people that are strong, like Bernie bros, kind of once again, the Glenn Greenwald bunch who deny any Russia connection. And that's all a fake thing that Democrats, Hillary Democrats, are making up to explain why they lost. If I have of those type of listeners, this is where you can see, this occurred to me today, I think this is interesting. This is where you can see how big of an asset it is for Putin to have tried to get Trump elected, because here's what's happening this very day. The Trump administration has just accused Russia and Putin of being complicit in the chemical weapons attack. And think about how easy it is now for Putin to say that is fake news, fake news...

0:38:35 Thomas: Fake news. Because he elected, he helped a president get elected who has no credibility. Trump has no creditability. So think about how it occurred to me today. Wow. That really does make sense. If you're Putin and you're, you know, kind of horrible and all that, but you're running your country and you need to stay in power and you needed Russia to be strong, all that. Uh, having an American president who has. No credibility so that when you go and do whatever, like, by the way, they might've been complicit in this sarin gas attack. There's indications that they, they would have been. It could have been a Russian pilot. I don't know. I'm not, that's still up in the air, but it's possible. And how much easier is it to discredit any claims of that happening when it's Trump making those claims? Putin is able to just say with impunity, fake news, fake News, fake New, because we're all used to Trump being completely full of crap.

0:39:27 Thomas: So that just occurred to me today that, wow, it makes sense strategically for Putin to have done that. And gosh, I'm looking at the time guys, I've already got about a 20 minute voicemail segment that was really good, great comments that I wanted to talk about, I am so sorry to have to do this, I have not even, I don't even think I'm a third through the stuff I wanted to talk about, I don't want to short change it, you know what I'm going to do, I'll have to pull a part 2, I will have to say, I leave you with a bit of a cliffhanger, and it is this, here's the cliffhanger, I haven't even gotten to the point of talking about the opinions opinions on this strike, how effective it'll be, what I think of it, what people have said liberals think about it. I've got a bunch of stuff about that. People are writing a lot of think pieces about how liberals are embracing Trump over this.

0:40:14 Thomas: I have a lot to say about that, and then I'm going to give you a bit. Here's the cliffhanger. After examining all of this and looking at all the evidence and everything and what's trying to be accomplished, I have a somewhat favorable view toward this airstrike. I promise you guys, I didn't think I did. I hated it at first. I thought it was a waste of money, of time. I saw all these things after doing, looking into it.

I'll be honest, I think it might've been toward the right move. Now there's a lot of qualifications on that. There's a little bit of a, a lot to say about that.

And what I'm going to do is I'll put out part two Monday, and And I will put that part two out early for patrons, so go to patreon.com/seriouspod if you want to hear the Syria analysis early for part two, but I have a lot more to say on the reaction and why I think it might have actually been a good idea, so I'm sure liberals be prepared to be mad at me, but, I can't help it, I'm a slave to what I think is the right thing, and it may have been, with a lot of qualifications, it may be the right move. Okay. I've got some great voicemails that I heard from people. Hey, make sure to keep it up with these calls. It's really fun. And some of these are a little old because I was gone for so long, but they're nevertheless good and it gives a good diversity of things to talk about. So there you have it. Let's get to the voicemail.

0:41:42 Thomas: It's time to check the voicemail. And of course, if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 9-1-6-7-5-0-4-7 4-6. Let's check out this week's messages.

0:41:57 Voicemail: Hey Thomas, this is Evan from Lodi. I know this is from a couple of shows back, but I wanted to mention something that's been bugging me about the Bill Maher, Milo Yiannopoulos interview. Specifically where Bill said that it was reasonable that women don't want trans women in their bathrooms. Another caller a few weeks back expressed what seems to be the majority opinion, which is that no, it's not reasonable. It's transphobic. And while I personally am in favor of trans people using whichever bathroom they want to, here's the thing that bugs me about the backlash and the outrage that some people don't want trans women in women's bathrooms. Bathrooms are inherently segregated by gender identity. Discrimination is woven into the country's entire bathroom paradigm. For reasons I can only speculate on, they seem to be the only instance where separate but equal seems to work okay and is in full force.

0:42:53 Voicemail: I'm pretty sure very few people would have a problem if Bill Maher said it was reasonable that women don't want gay men, or just any men, in women's bathrooms. But that's definitely still discrimination based on gender. I'm firmly on the side of trans people eliminating waste in the location of their choosing. I just think it's a little naive to take the one place where gender discrimination is the overarching theme, where gender discrimination is considered totally okay, even by the most staunch social justice advocates, and then act shocked and appalled when your personal category of gender discrimination occurs there. I'm not saying it's right. I am just saying if there's one situation where we shouldn't automatically label people monsters or whatever phobic, this is probably it. Love the show. Thanks.

0:43:38 Thomas: Hey, Evan. Okay, I'm going to be honest. I hope, I know I have a lot of trans listeners, I hope you guys know that you have nothing but my support. And also, I want to say that this is more appropriately done in the future trans panel episode that I'm planning. I'm definitely doing I got tons of emails from people volunteering, more than I can have, unfortunately, because of the limits of Skype and what's reasonable. So that will be coming soon. Let me just give a quick thought that is only meant as a sort of a precursor to an episode that will actually feature trans voices on this issue. Just a quick pre-thought. This is something I've struggled with myself as well. And I'm looking forward to speaking with my trans panel about this, because it seems odd to me that, as you've said, gender segregation in bathrooms is something that we're all pretty much okay with, it seems.

0:44:33 Thomas: Maybe not all of us, but maybe some people aren't. But it is a very strong institution in this society. It's a very common thing. It's not like you look at gender-segregated bathrooms and think, well, this is weird. What, what country am I in? No, it's very common. And there are a lot of trans people who have not made any sort of appearance transition yet, who still, by all outward appearances to passersby, will look as the sex they were born as rather than the gender they identify to. And it is something I think about it, that it would be hard to expect with people who are very used to only doing these private bathroom things around people of their own sex, or their own outward gender, I suppose, to expect people to be able to instantly deal with that.

0:45:29 Thomas: You know, it's something I'm sympathetic to. That's all I'm saying. I'm not making it, you know, I definitely share your opinion too, that I want trans people to be able to use whatever the bathroom they want. And maybe the solution is that we just kind of should do away with bathrooms being gender segregated in general. It's something that, you know, that wouldn't be terribly easy for me personally.

0:45:55 Thomas: Interestingly enough, in Europe, this would be no problem. I think that if you're a European listener and you haven't been to America, I think you may want to cut us Americans a bit of a break on some of these issues. Because I recently went to Europe, as I've mentioned, and bathroom stalls where, you know, you might go number two if you're a guy, are a completely different story than bathroom stalls in the US. Bathroom stalls in the US offer no privacy. There's very little privacy, it's uncomfortable to me personally to imagine how that might work, Disregarding trans people, just if all bathrooms were gender neutral. It's difficult for me to imagine occupying a stall next to a girl and doing that. Now, I don't know, maybe the correct answer is people would need to get used to that. It is a sensitive thing. It's something I do sort of understand. So anyway, that's an initial thought. In Europe, by the way, in some of these European bathrooms, I would not care. It's remarkable.

Like the stalls are like, you could survive a nuclear holocaust in some of these bathroom stalls. That's not how it is in America. So I don't know. I'm just stating facts as I see them here. I get the discomfort, the potential discomfort. But I'm looking forward to speaking with my panel of trans listeners who will hopefully be able to set me right on some of this stuff or provide a better perspective.

0:47:28 Thomas: And all I can say is I'm honestly just trying to seek knowledge here. I'm not, as I hope everybody realizes, I really am on the side of trans rights. And I certainly don't support any bathroom bills. I think it's something that we need to deal with socially and just looking for the best way to do that. So that's my thoughts on that. Thank you for the call.

0:47:52 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas. This is Felicia Entesel from Salt Lake City and the Utah Outcast podcast, Shameless Plug. I know I'm a little bit late to the game, but I was listening to the episode on the ethics of having kids. And your guest talked a lot about global warming and and the problems with overpopulation, and while this doesn't necessarily make an obligation to have kids, I can't help but thinking of the fact that the more people there are in the planet, the better life has gotten. We have less poverty, less starvation, we have longer lives, happier lives. Overall, the world is better than it's ever, ever been, and that's because more people aren't like hordes of insects. They're more thinking, creative human beings who offer more solutions to problems and better collaboration.

0:48:51 Voicemail: So it just makes me think that maybe overpopulation isn't a good moral reason to not have kids. Because the more of us there are, the better life has gotten for all of us. Thanks.

0:49:06 Thomas: Hey, Felicia, thanks for the call. Yeah, yeah, interesting point there. Let's think about this. So I think the first thing I would say is that my argument for why it might not be ethical to have kids actually involves consent, which is that I didn't talk about it as much, but, and that's okay. You're responding to my guest's argument. That's totally cool. But just to put in my two cents, mine was more about it's weird that we can't get a person's consent to bring them into the world ahead of time. It's just impossible.

0:49:37 Thomas: So that troubles me, actually. But to your point, and to my guest's point at the time, I think that as far as climate change goes, I don't think your argument works. I think your argument is worth considering for things like medicine, technology, other things that have made our lives easier. But when it comes to climate change, it's just a fact that any additional human is a more carbon footprint. And you could make the argument, and I think it was mentioned in the episode, that you can hope that your child will be like a net good if somehow your child contributes to a solution that is negative carbon footprint, but the odds aren't in favor of that.

0:50:24 Thomas: At least that's what my guess said to that, if I remember correctly. The other thing I'd be worried about in terms of your argument is that you may be just looking at a correlation and not necessarily a causation. Who's to say, I mean, this really has to do with where in the world you're talking about. In the West, things are a lot better, and they are overall worldwide as well. But the places that are the most overpopulated right now are some of the toughest places in terms of poverty and that sort of thing. And it could just be that there's a correlation between the population always going up and things getting better, but it's not necessarily a causation. Like if there were less population, things maybe would still always progress because as long as you have certain people working on these problems, progression is kind of a natural thing that humans will do through technology.

0:51:20 Thomas: Maybe you could argue it'd be slower or faster or whatever, but it would be hard to believe that if we cut somehow, took away a billion people right now from the world, that we would be significantly worse off in terms of technology. And then I guess the final thing I'd say is there has to be some end point, right? Because you can stretch the numbers to absurdity, 100 billion. Can we have 100 billion people? Can we have 200 billion people? There, there is eventually going to be a time when it's not sustainable, unless you're just assuming and hoping that one of these new people will invent a way to take us faster than light travel some or something crazy to get us to another sustainable planet to inhabit. That's a, it's not for sure. It's a stretch. I don't know.

0:52:05 Thomas: It, it's, so I hear your argument, but overall, I'm not totally sure that it works. I think you would have to do a lot of research on and try to do some sort of calculus on the return on investment of a human versus the cost. So, but interesting stuff to think about. Thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

0:52:31 Voicemail: Hi, my name is Blake. Listening to your latest episode. I am also a fellow truck driver. I have listened to and watched the whole situation with the truck driver that was freezing to death in his truck. We have situations like that all the time. You got companies that just don't give a damn. They just want to put you out there, make you do your job, and not allow you to go anywhere until that job is done.

They'll make you sit for hours on end at a dock, or they'll do anything they can to just screw your day over. And that's why we have certain laws in the DOT area that allow the truck driver to refuse a load or to refuse to do their job, so that it is more safe for the public and for themselves. I completely agree that this truck driver was, situation was completely mishandled, and it was not a good situation at all. You know, we work our asses off every day and we get treated like crap everywhere we go. So we try to stick together, and whenever I hear another truck driver that's in that kind of situation, it's just, it really gets me a little butthurt. But, uh, I really enjoy the show. Keep up the good work. Good luck. Thanks. Bye.

0:53:42 Thomas: Hey, Blake, thanks for the call. Yeah, it's so cool to hear from you. Truck driving is something I have absolutely zero experience or a connection to. No one I know as a truck driver. And yet I have a lot of truck driver listeners because you guys get a lot of time to listen to podcasts. And that is so cool. I've heard from a lot of you and you people, no, truck drivers.

0:54:04 Thomas: And I think it's really cool. So I also, I'm glad that you called. I wanted to play your comment because I think that's really important. I mean, it's an indication of Gorsuch really not giving a shit about the little guy and coming up with these justifications for a totally unjust thing and hiding behind the, well, this is just the letter of the law. This is the words that are written on the page. When Andrew Torrez over on Opening Arguments showed pretty convincingly to me that judges have to care about fairness. This was an argument I didn't even know to make because I'm not a lawyer. You might remember if you listened to it, but he said that he had a case where the law totally was one way and it, it totally favored him. And yet he still knew he would have to argue to the judge, like, hey, this is, I know the law says this, but, you know, this is fair.

0:54:55 Thomas: Like we need to make sure this is fair. Judges are concerned with fairness all the time. There's not this idea that letter of the law says, you know truck driver can be fired for trying to stay alive, you know, and we can't do anything about it. No, you can do something about it, you can say, hey that's an absurd result and you can rule the other way as the two two other justices did. So, Blake, thanks for the call. Stay safe out there. And thanks for listening so much.

0:55:26 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, it's Alex from the call about the DNC. And I'd love the chance to try to make my point on that better. But I'm calling you on a more lighthearted note today. You made some quip about how someone should make a public scorebook, public score sheet for all of your predictions that you've been making. I want to tell you about a website I stumbled upon called predictionbook.com. And it basically makes it super easy to log any kind of predictions you want and then keep track of them long-term. So it essentially is your public prediction scoreboard. So I think something like that would actually be great to use as part of your public presence if you want to have a public prediction school board, and then you can lean on other pundits to do the same. Okay, I'm off. The awkward ending of this call.

0:56:13 Thomas: Hey, Alex, thank you so much for the call. Paul, I do want to talk about that call from before. I know we've chatted back and forth about that. We'll figure that out soon. But as for the prediction book, yeah, I took your advice. I went on there and I actually made my first prediction. I'm looking at it here. I created it eight days ago and I predicted with 80% confidence, no, 90% confidence. Sorry. 90% confidence that the Republicans would use the nuclear option and approve Gorsuch. And sure enough, it happened six days after I predicted it. So I am one for one. And there you go. And it's kind of cool because I didn't know this is how it worked, but people went on and like, there's like six comments or something and people making other observations about it. And other people rated it as true. Like I didn't even, I just logged back in now and I saw, oh, it's, it says I got that one right. So it looks like there's a community there of people who check out predictions and evaluate whether or not they came true, that kind of thing.

0:57:16 Thomas: A lot of the predictions I'm seeing are like stupid stuff, like I'm going to go visit my mom today and stuff like that. So there must be, I don't know, a lot of people on there doing it for weird reasons. But for now, I'll use predictionbook.com slash users slash SeriousPod. You can check me out there. And if I ever make a prediction, Maybe I did in the episode you've already heard this. I record this first, so I don't know. But I will try to remember to log the prediction over on predictionbook.com slash user slash series pod, and we can keep track of it there. I'll do my best. I'll just have to remember To Do It, and that'll be cool. I'm one for one, so great start, right? Doing better than I am over on the bar exam over on opening arguments. So maybe I'll just do this instead.

0:58:03 Thomas: No. All right. Thank you guys for the calls. I know those were some of those were a little old, but I was out for a long time. But keep them coming. Very, very fun to interact with you guys in this way. Thank you so much for doing it.

0:58:21 Thomas: Alright, that's it for the show. Yeah, it's already over an hour. I was not even close to done with Syria. Really sorry to do that to you, but I overprepared. I think two parts is warranted, and I hope my patrons enjoy the part two early, and like I said, I'll do that Monday so that it's not too late, because who knows what country Trump will have bombed by next Thursday, so we'll see.

Uh, so speaking of patrons, I want to thank my new patrons: we've got Randy Reed, Robin, Zacattackfromtheback, Stephen Riding, David Salisbury, Grunting Frog, uh, C1ph3rd, with some weird leap happening, Ray Watts, Alex McCrae, Laura Van Bram, Stewart Jordan Hall, and Cregan. Thank you guys so much for pledging, I really, really appreciate that. And of course I've got to thank all my all-time greats. And they are Travis Peterson, Matt Garrett, Dale, Brian Garefort, Peter Skelton, Steve Sigmund, Adrian Borschoff, Roger Metcalf, Matthew Maxson, Andrew Waddington, Zabby, Matthew Statton, John Bodley, Esq, Ian Ryan, Matthew Vernon, Ray Loves Jenny, Ian Rosano, Jonathan Moyet, Kaylee Reiser, Jesse, Michael Rops, Michael Schafer, and Hunter Ashe. Thank you guys so very kindly for being my top patrons. You make the show go round. And that's it. I hope you enjoy that early content and I will see you whenever you are able to listen to Monday's part two, the thrilling conclusion, my opinion on Syria and the reaction that we're seeing. There's some, there's some funny stuff. There's some hilarious examples of Republicans being

1:00:03 Thomas: Against it from 2013 and then for it in 2017. It's it's funny. So all that on Monday. See you then.