A very warm welcome to you know watching r. T. International with me mickey airing. Our top story during an emergency meeting at the u. N. Security council on syria damascus has accused turkey of harboring al qaeda and islamic states so casey one envoy in return wants the Syrian Government not to directly target turkish troops he will not abandon those and well going to you all military reinforcements. Are all the different my country is combating terrorism in its own territory and we are committed to using tools to defend our people and the unity of syria. In response to the ongoing violation of the cease fire within the loop zones of the syrian army has every right to subdue the terrorists the assad regime russia and iran must halt their offensive before more innocent civilians are killed and displaced. The emergency meeting followed reports 33 turkish soldiers were killed during an offensive by Syrian Forces the president s of russia and turkey have held a phone call in which they did discuss holding a high level meeting about the escalation earlier russias foreign minister spoke out in support of the syrian armys right to respond to a cease fire violations and called for cooperation between all sides within the agreed framework. We reaffirm our commitment to agreements reached by the president s of russia and turkey a suggestion is that everyone should already start fulfilling their was a the syrian army have every right to respond to regular violations of cease fire from inside the observer on to neutralize terrorists we cannot restrict the syrian army from fulfilling requirements written in the u. N. Resolution on fighting terrorism. The syrian army has been engaged in a very violent fight to defeat the last militant stronghold in syria and the province according to moscow the turkish troops that were killed on thursday were among terrorist fighters involved in a large scale offensive against the syrian army but the russians say they werent even informed of the presence of turkish troops until they were hit by that airstrike on february 27th near the settlement of the whom turkish soldiers who were embedded with terrorists came on to the Syrian Army Fired at the same time according to the coordinates transmitted by the turkish side to russia there were no turkish troops or units in the area and the Russian Reconciliation Center says that they immediately rushed to the aid of the injured turkish troops after discovering what had happened its certainly strange they werent informed in the 1st place since the center maintains regular contact with ankara and the russians say that the data turkey provided suggested that there were no turkish troops there although ankara recently denied this and said that they did inform russia of their troop locations the banker also called for a consultation with its nato allies following the attack leading to an emergency meeting of the military alliance and theres even been speculation that article 5 could be a vote now what that means is article 5 would potentially draw turkey turkeys allies into a war against syria and russia but again as of now that is thats just speculation but we also heard from the countrys minister of affairs and he said that syria will be held accountable for what happened to her he is determined to continue to it fulfills its objectives in accordance with its legal rights the murderous regime and those who encouraged it will account for their betrayal in the most severe way now a lot of this chaos stems from disagreements over a cease fire that came into effect earlier this year on the one hand turkey accuses syria of violating that cease fire with this stuff. And serve against the militant stronghold in ad lib and on the other hand syria and russia accuse turkey of not holding up its end of the bargain apparently ankara was supposed to remove terrorist groups from the region while negotiating with the more moderate groups but making a firm dividing line between the 2. Possibilities between groups there but the efforts that its made to that effect have been quite ineffective and more talks are scheduled in march actually between iran and turkey and russia on the issue so well have to see if that yields any results of back and solve the crisis currently going on in the syrian province i mean while nato was out a special meeting in brussels at the request of turkey as secretary general says the alliance stands behind uncorrupt a call on all sides to find a peaceful solution. Constantly looking into what more they can do to provide further support for turkey they dollars are engaged in trying to move forward in the efforts of the un there 1st and find a peaceful solution we call on turkey we call on. Russia to fully engage in such a un led efforts to find a peaceful solution we spoke about this with mark almost hes a political analyst and director of the Crisis Research institute and believes nato support well the main vocal. Nato forces will enter syria in support of those whove gone the problem to turkey is the Nato Alliance principle is an attack on one as an attack on all but the turks might be risking trying to save it in attack by one nato states brings in all the others to support it and i think its also reluctant to see new to come into direct confrontation with russia so theres quite a lot of powerful forces of nato who support the turks desire to see the syrian armys offensive stopped but im not sure they want to go beyond words and perhaps symbolic gestures. As military conflicts continues in the region large groups of refugees continue to head for europe earlier on friday there were reports of a turkish official saying the country would no longer stop refugees including syrians from crossing into the e. U. These pictures from our video agency ruptly show people in turkey some carrying children reportedly making their way to the border with greece now in greece these new pictures show migrants arriving on the island of les paul spy boat volunteers have been meeting them with a blanket sons essential supplies that processed some groups greek islands in recent days with locals opposing government plans to build new migrant camps there almost again believes turkey is using tensions around e. U. Migrant controls to blackmail europe or support separate problems in recent months we told his government spokespeople to himself. First of all turkey has through a hole through 3 quarter 1000000 refugees that its a pain to go after maybe a european should be more for them all that go to europe and she could be what hes now doing in this crisis is saying to the europeans if you dont back i have a weapon i can use to stabilize your society is remember what happened when when the whole refugees arrived in germany in 2015 while the spin off section joan politics was to appear important and so in a way a person i dont understand your friends support me but if you dont i think blackmail you with opening the floodgates to perhaps 2 or 3000000 refugees trying to enter the European Union that makes you course when i walk the walk with my wife to have if you try to hold a gun to your head as well as with his other hand a gun to the head of the. Big hitters in the u. S. Democrat party are being urged to unite behind anybody but Bernie Sanders a wealthy donor has made the plea believing that sanders could not beat donald trump in the next president ial election so i ask you tell the reports. They say money cant buy you friends or happiness but might be true but they could just buy you the white house mega dona Bernard Schwartz has been digging deep in his pockets to help the democrat course but its not entirely a no Strings Attached situation we should know who is the best person to be dull trump and with all due respect bernard sun theres. So which horses shorts betting on well hes not fussy but either of his friends from the Billionaires Club will do just like him on shy on splashing the cash and since were already here together lets look at just how much cash with tweaking take joe biden now hes discovered that he cant just rely on his instagram a bromance with obama to take him all the way so decided instead to drop a 6 figure sum on just one ad for good measure though he did keep in some a bomb and. This is an extraordinary man with an extraordinary career but what serves youve got to admire him though if i were trailing 12 percent behind the top counted and have my own backers jumping ship id be a bit tighter on the past strings by the way biden still pales in comparison to what his buddy bloomberg has spent so far its estimated the ex new york mayor has dropped a casual 400000000 on his campaign but hey its only no point 6 percent of his 64000000000. 00 fortune so no biggie also at least hes having some fun with it not even the aspiring u. S. President is above a cheeky trolling campaign and it seems to be paying off because hes risen from the very bottom of the polls to somewhere near the top of course lets not forget he is an old hand when it comes to knowing just what money can get you all of the new democrats that came in put nancy pelosi in charge and gave the congress the ability to control this president i got them hoops well lets look for. Field now at some of the candidates like. To its credit he sensed that people might not be found of this whole exclusive club of the rich so decided to play the role of the average joe just the man on the street and im the only candidate on those debates stages in this race the major candidates whos not a millionaire or a billionaire what the if a penniless candidate and big Money Politics well if you believe bunny not quite were going to contrast our viewers with mayo to judge 40 billionaires who are contributing to his campaign the heads of the c. E. O. s of the large pharmaceutical industries the Insurance Companies and so forth well since bonnie is made to the parents lets peek inside his coffin he might go about divvying up the cash once he gets his hands on those Government Funds but until then it seems hes more about treating himself he has dipped into his funds and brought out around 14000000 dollars for just a few t. V. Ads so it seems that no matter what side of the political spectrum youre on you know that to win in this game you need a lot of the green stuff to help you along the way but money is always played a big part in american elections especially since 2010 with the Us Supreme Court ruled in a case called Citizens United that you could spend as much money as you wanted on candidates because corporations spending money on politics is free speech spending money is free speech corporations are people thats what this Supreme Court decided thats a travesty and thats really undermined american democracy even more and made it more a money game then ever before thats a big problem in the u. S. Money yes and the role of money is growing even more but you know i dont think its at a point where a Movement Like senators could still prevail. French police have arrested 54 people in paris after a fire broke out near the gate to leon train station. Forces that was started by a group of people who had been attending the concert of a congolese artist nearby who described the groups action is totally unacceptable assembled crowd reportedly tried to prevent firefighters from getting closer to the blaze firefighters managed to extinguish the fire quickly although a number of vehicles were destroyed the station was has been evacuated along with the metro when people have been asked to avoid the area. So any reports in the u. K. Has found that minority groups are being overrepresented in the media but kasia and other ethnic minorities have twice the presence on t. V. Than they have actually on the streets of britain the same also applies to the l. G. B. Community well one of the channels looks into the reporter and says its simply trying to reflect reality channel 4 was c. E. O. Claims its main goal is to reflect modern diversity in its output but critics say its gone too far grobe our endeavors characters to reflect demographics or. You dont what else is overrepresented on t. V. For white people that its even worse there are 4 characters here well to have to be nonwhite and one must be gary the country isnt 50 cent nonwhites and a quarter again. It will be a show for debate with new York Observer columnist andre walker and human rights activist Peter Tatchell. Highlights the ludicrous idea of having quotas for everything i genuinely believe that in Television Like all the rest of life you should have the best people for the job but you know what if you can have quotas that when the white middle class heterosexual man represents it then youve got to throw somebody else out but we dont have a quota system in british t. V. There are attempts and have been successful attempts according to these statistics to redress the marginalization exclusion and clicked the past decades and i think thats a great thing to celebrate because it does show that we are a more accepting understanding Inclusive Society this is about normalizing the fact that we live in a Diverse Society this is not about diversity it ought not to be about diversity what it should be about is the best person for the job television is bad to tell humans so you pick the best guy for the job or the best woman for the job who acts in the best way all the social change that Peter Tatchell is talking about all of this lets get a gay person cause that guy your black person has a black its just a load of 970 s. Im certain that all those black and gay actors are chosen not because of their race sexuality but because they happen to be good actors we need to fight discrimination we need to ensure that people who are disabled or gay or black and not discriminate against the idea of just lets just pick this person whoever they are just in order to fill a quota is not doesnt so good you know everybodys doing the right. Pretty good after you get a piece of pizza i love you to pieces if youre out of date. Theres a con American Research is there report that participate in the for love by libyan president even muralitharan sufficient evidence for its claims about the story and more after this short break. Thats also important. To us the 2nd instance. The nature and taking these steps in the whole. Structure is today decided to show. Some sense and so i hope that. In the book. The republicans have a reputation as knowing a little more about money than the democrats but the democrats are always very confusing and some Bernie Sanders is just out of a tradition hes talking about socialism which again is a its a its a model based on it in comprehensible all. Non existent theory about money. Join me every thursday on the alex simon show and ill be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business im show business ill see you then. Welcome back research as americas Mit University have found a report into irregularities during the bolivian election didnt provide sufficient evidence the allegations of Election Fraud sparks must protests which that led to president evo morales quitting now the report was made by the organization of american states it looked at People Living in general Election Results of november when there was a break in voting and it appeared moroccos was significantly in front of his rival the report found irregularities and therefore claimed the Election Results were not accurate one of the mit research as John Williams explained what made them doubt the findings. Wanted to specifically look at the portion where they claim that there is a significant difference in the results following the interruption and then also in the last 5 percent of results of the unofficial vote count. During this process me and my colleague were unable to find the evidence that the oas had created here results are out there and. Having an effect on the World Without any methodological or even like even just that they used to produce the results that they created we find it extremely difficult to naturally find the breaks that they found and then used for their results so following the release of the oas report some Media Outlets spoke of Election Fraud like it was a proven facts and audit indicated there was a clear manipulation in the countrys elections last month accusations of irregularities in last months president ial election result of american states put out a report saying if. Or if they should. Agree to hold you election. Without williams again believes the media and opposition use the oas reports to their own interests. The statistical claim was the one that was able to be tied to the results and to claim that the results that were being presented were illegitimate and thatll be the Opposition Party and then the media is also used to justify those people knew that there was problems with the oh yes research but maybe didnt have the Technical ExpertiseSteward Center for economic and policy research had released a report prior but it had not much traction among especially the media and so i think they really wanted someone to evaluate this and take it seriously. However to the u. S. State of montana where a total of 4 City Council Officials have now lost the Prosecutors Office to drop charges against whistleblower Brandon Bryant who is famous for lifting the lid on civilian killings in the u. S. Overseas Drone Operations the air force veteran has been charged with threatening city officials in a you tube video and is currently in detention of the past few months hes attended multiple City Council Meetings criticizing the way tax money is being used as mother though claims his incarceration is politically motivated shes launched a campaign in the hope of raising 100000. 00 for his burial my son was the u. S. Air force of the civil war who broke the code of silence on the Drone Program now hes in jail in the. Facility he has no criminal record and yet he is held on 100000. 00 bail under detention he is isolated from this family and his friends in from his medically i mean indeed an emotional support animal. Brandon bryant served as a u. S. Air force drone operator from 2006 to 2011 having left the military he began exposing cases of what he alleged to be civilian deaths resulting from american drone strikes brian claims commanders often prioritize the elimination of a target of accuracy was also an innocent people being killed in the process his revelations won him a german whistleblower award in 2050 and also intensified debate over the use of a German Air Base by American Drones heres how brandon described his experience to us back in 2050. I actually talked with a lady whose husband. Was killed he has been in brother was killed in a drone strike or talked to or face to face and she asked me why her husband and brother had to die and they werent bad guys and i just looked at her and i said i dont know. That thats not really the best thing that i can tell someone who is asking questions about why someone that they cared about was killed and they need to know the answers and the really true hard answer to say is that im sorry that. The mistake happened and im doing everything that i can to prevent further mistakes from happening although as you say bryant was arrested on a felony charge after he had allegedly exhibited threatening behavior during City Council Meetings and on top of that he threatens to eliminate his members in a you tube video however former f. B. I. Agent on whistleblower Colleen Rowley believes brians current predicament is connected to his past revelations. This does seem to be more retaliation for his having spoken out about the Drone Operations and the fact that they were killing innocent civilians more so then what hes now done typically what the. Whistleblower they look back in your personnel file 1st to see if theres anything bad that they can use to discredit the messenger and if they cant find anything bad bad in someones background or personnel file then they wait for the whistleblower to you know make a small error or mistake and i think the draw was so low ours are in a fragile emotional state already as you can see with all the veterans they suffer from p. T. S. D. And we know from many other cases of retaliating and persecuting was of lors that that seems to be the the standard oh the government is in perpetual war and so the war goes on for ever that means that even if you speak out even years ago and if especially if you continue to speak out about the rom full actions in the war crimes its going to continue this is not to negate the fact that brandon certainly he erred if he made any threatening remarks or comments he certainly should be corrected and he should receive more treatment but i dont think he should be punished the way hes being punished. Thanks for joining us on aussie this hour were back at the top of the hour with the latest headlines. You know dont put it to fit to good number 2 number one when you have no kids of you to go home and phone and dont going to put. It in all the good that you did on the house and that of all the use in the body only because i. Also was in the back of the conflict are you going to get to see more. Of it in the sense that i dont want to bring you all that we would love that this morning to find out what is it. Something to motivate to you all to be overseas so some of it to do. With each other go to shows. Local to the world put him in his book the usual usual musical performance from. The new. Plan to perform for the supernatural mean argos. In the United States president ial candidates debate the future of the u. S. And the world. Max kaiser and Stacy Herbert dig into the burning questions of this election cycle one self big every week wealth tax student debt trade was corporate money universal basic income and more catch up with whats front running this sunday exclusively on r. T. Hello and welcome to cross talk were all Things Considered im Peter Lavelle in london Julian Assange and youre standing trial on whether he will be extradited to the u. S. To face espionage charges the stakes could not be higher songes liberty even life is on the line freedom of speech is also on trial though you would know that from the Mainstream Media. Talking Julian Assange im joined by my guest in london joe lauria hes the editor in chief of Consortium News dot com we also have taylor she is an independent journalist and cofounder of action for a stone age and were joined by alexander make your us he is a writer and Legal Affairs as well as editor in chief of the duran dot com all right cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it lets go to the the legal part of this story here well go to alexander me curious alex i mean the Mainstream Media when it does report the trial it seems to me theres an enormous amount of omission being played out here. In europe you have a legal mind you have a legal legal experience is he getting a fair trial go ahead ill. Have to say there are certain aspects of the trial which do cause me a great deal of money on dont want to go into the. Details. But firstly are i have to have genuine concerns about the physical layout of the courtroom the fact that he is care behind a glass beriah hes been complaining that this is limited hes contacts with his lawyers there is incidentally case law which says the physical layout of the court room can have bearing on whether a trial is fair or not so for all or his protests about that have been disregarded but beyond this i am becoming worried by the trend of some of the legal arguments in the very interesting really the prosecution seems to have accepted i should say the crown seems of accepted that the things that he has been charged with are political offenses but the argument now seems to be that that isnt relevant it at all in extraditing him because the u. K. Extradition act of 2003 doesnt say that people cant be extradited on police for political offenses even though there has always been well understood well how to even though the extradition treaty with the United States seems to preclude it and that does worry me that worries me a great deal well it should worry us all because Julian Assange as a journalist ok i mean the way hes being treated me go to jail or here also in london the way hes being treated here is if he said terrorists i mean the the layout is theres alexander macarius just told us i mean this is treating him as if hes a danger to society in themselves there is no evidence in his past to to prove that to have this justified whatsoever he is being treated like a terrorist because hes a political prisoner and theres no 2 ways about it go ahead taylor. Yes youre exactly right peter in fact we know that Julian Assange has been an langdons and belmarsh prison which is often referred to. As the u. K. s Guantanamo Bay and we also learned earlier that in fact Julian Assange has been placed in 5 Holding Cells hes been handcuffed frequently and i believe that his case files have been confiscated at the end of the day and his attorney Edward Fitzgerald has argued that in fact that impairs his right to a fair trial 4 we also have learned that while he was staying in the Ecuadorian Embassy in london that this Spanish Security firm that you see global was actually spying on him in spying on his visitors in particular journalists especially those who were russian or american so that even infringes on his rights to Attorney Client privilege as well you know joe i mean considering how hes being treated during this trial and of course the the the information that has come out that he was spied on when he was in the ecuador