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Hrvoje Morić: Joining me now is author Mark Taliano, who combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives on Syria, any comments on other global issues as well. He’s the author of Voices from Syria, which I highly recommend. I’ve got a copy myself. You can find them at marktaliano.net. Welcome to TNT Radio, Mark.
Mark Taliano: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.
Hrvoje Morić: Thanks for taking the time. And if you could maybe just tell us a bit about yourself and the work you’ve been focusing on over the years.
Mark Taliano: Okay. Well, I taught high school for quite a while. I lose track now. I retired early at age 50. I started teaching young. And then I started branching out and I went to… So I have a background in research, and I went to Syria three times during the war. And as you know, I wrote that book. But I also did a second edition with Basma Qaddour. And so, it’s a revised second edition, and that’s on PDF at the same site, Global Research. And also Kindle, but I prefer the Global Research version, it’s got a lot of nice pictures. But there’s a lot of continuity in this. If people, for example, can understand what did happen and what is happening in Syria, then they will be better equipped to understand what did happen and what is happening in Ukraine because there are extraordinary similarities. I’ll find that-
Hrvoje Morić: Yeah, I would totally…
Mark Taliano: Go ahead.
Hrvoje Morić: No, no, sorry. You go ahead.
Mark Taliano: So yeah, there’s striking similarities between the two. So it becomes a question of historical literacy and how that can… So if you understand one war that Empire is waging, you can understand other wars. If you understand Syria, which many people do not, even though basically everything was admitted by Western sources. But you have to dig a bit deep for it. But anyway, if you understand Syria, you can understand Ukraine. Right now, people in this country, a lot of them do not have an understanding of what is really happening in Ukraine. And it’s a continuum of Empire’s devastation of the world in the name of humanitarian warfare. And of course, there’s no such thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s a big lie. What the politicians are parroting is a lie. And we’ll go into some of those lies, no doubt. But they’re using the same tactics that they use in Syria, and they’re still using them in Syria, and they’re using those same tactics in Ukraine. And what’s happening, vast numbers of people are being slaughtered unnecessarily. Didn’t need to happen.
Hrvoje Morić: Yeah, just going to say, I have the second edition of your book I purchased. [inaudible 00:03:31]
Mark Taliano: Yeah, that’s a good one. Well, they’re both good, but I just… Yeah, it’s an expanded… Yeah.
Hrvoje Morić: I was going to mention as well, I’m a former high school teacher just like you as well. I taught history and politics and I taught this stuff as well. And I totally, I think it’s an important point that you brought up. If you understand the blueprint, the framework of Empire and history and all of this, everything else, then just it is easy to grasp. Well, once you understand, as you said, Syria, then you get create everything else. And let’s get into Syria because it is not something I’ve touched on that often on my show. And so I’ve had on my podcast the former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, I think is his name, a couple years back, I’ve interviewed him. So yeah, he’s good.
I’m a big proponent of sovereignty in a fair world order, just like I believe I should love my neighbors and not break into their home and steal their things and make them subject to me. If anything, I want to serve them. And so I don’t believe any nation or Empire has the right, like the US, to seek to overthrow a country like Syria, as you said, kill the people of Syria. Now they’re stealing 80% of their oil wealth and so forth. And maybe I don’t like my neighbor, let’s just say for example. [inaudible 00:04:46] But I would seek peace with him rather than conspire against him. And so Mark, you’re more of an expert on Syria than me. You’ve been there many times. And I think also in the news cycle, Syria, it has been neglected. And so, where would you begin? I know we have that, I think, CIA declassified memo from 1957 that for many decades the US has been trying to get at Syria. So what’s the story here?
Mark Taliano: Okay, so I was thinking about this today. Now, if we were to use a metaphor about Empire, and Canada’s part of it, but Washington led Empire, it would be if it were distilled into one person, that person would be a mass murdering, drug dealing outlaw. The rules be… And making his or her own rules to suit oligarch interest. So, this rules-based order is absolute nonsense. It’s Empire saying, well, we can do what we want. And what Empire wants to do… And they lie. And Empire is lying to its own people also, because it is impoverishing its own people. What Empire wants to do is just lie about everything so that it can loot and pillage then. So they like to use the word brutal dictator. Every time Empire wants to destroy a prey country so that they can loot and pillage, it presents this image of the leader as a brutal dictator.
I was talking to someone the other day and he said, “Oh, Putin’s a brutal dictator.” I knew for a fact that that person obviously doesn’t understand what’s going on in terms of imperialism. Well, how can we dispel that notion? Well, let’s use a Western source, and I’ll just read it here, NATO in 6th June, 2013, and the war started more or less in 2011. NATO reveals… A NATO survey. Now just read it. It says, NATO reveals 70% of Syrians support Bashar al-Assad, and that’s from Voltaire Network. Okay, so there goes a story about brutal dictator. Now I met him, and he is not a brutal dictator. He’s very well-spoken, sophisticated. He’s actually an eye doctor. And he has widespread support from Syrian people. And we saw this at the time of the elections.
Eva Bartlett did some videos, and they were in Douma, which previously was terrorist occupied, but now liberated. And the support was palpable. And the media, of course, doesn’t… It gives distorted views of anti-Assad protests prior to the war. But there were people protesting, as they do in any country, that’s what you’re supposed to be able to do. But they were peaceful. But unfortunately… And on the other side, there were pro-Assad rallies, which were huge. But the peaceful protestors were displaced by Empire’s proxies, which wanted to draw fire from police, and did. Until President Assad said to the police, “Well, you can’t go to these protests anymore armed.” So they were sitting ducks and they were slaughtered. Well, that’s not in the news.
Hrvoje Morić: Yeah Mark, we’re going to have to jump to a break. I just did want to mention, you mentioned Voltaire Network. I love their work. I have interviewed Thierry Meyssan, I think last year on my podcast. Now, I wanted to cite my former professor, you probably know him as well, Alfred de Zayas. He was my dear professor in Geneva. He recently tweeted, “A rules-based international order is yet another scam to meet Western rules, Western imperialism, neocolonialism, hegemony.” And so, I think you and I would agree.
Mark Taliano: Yeah, absolutely.
Hrvoje Morić: So you were talking about Assad, and of course I’ve never believed the stories of Assad being a butcher. He seems reasonable. And I’ve listened to many of his interviews. And he has told more truth in an hour-long interview about the West and the world than what I’ve heard all of my life as a Westerner. And so, he reveals a lot when he speaks. And how was the meeting with him? What was it like? I’m just curious.
Mark Taliano: Well, there were a bunch of us, and we were there in a group and I was able to shake his hand and meet him very briefly. And then actually, Max Blumenthal was there too. And then, okay, so I got a picture of that. And he’s very, he looks in the eye. And sometimes you can tell a person just by meeting them briefly, well, although I’ve known his background for a long time, but he’s very genial. You can tell in the interviews. He is very well spoken, very intelligent. And then we went to a meeting in a large conference room. But I found, I think probably what you found, which you just described, and it was kind of shocking to me, is that he tells the truth. I’m not accustomed to that in Canada where (politicians are lying).
It’s just, it’s disingenuous. But he is telling the truth. And one of the reasons for that is because it’s still a sovereign country. He’s not a part of these transnational globalist alliances or coalitions where you have to go by the party line and the people are left knowing nothing. And yet they call that democracy. And we could tie that into COVID too. So he’s very personable, very intelligent. And this would explain why a NATO survey says 70% of Syrian support him. The number is probably much higher, and I’ll tell you another reason for that. Another reason why he has support by the vast majority of people is that the opposition that Washington wants to install is basically Al-Qaeda/ ISIS. And the Syrians do not want that.
Hrvoje Morić: That was my next-
Mark Taliano: If we… Go ahead.
Hrvoje Morić: That was my next question. And I think this is a key point. And in my decade of teaching history, international relations at the high school level and undergraduate level. I would bang on about this because I thought this was so important, and I would provide declassified documents. Basically, I think one of the key strategies of the Western Empire. And it’s everywhere, you name it, Al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan in the ’80s, they do it in Libya. They do it all over the place. So the West financing, arming and training terrorists, Salafists, Wahhabists, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. You’ve got that 2012 DIA memo from Michael Flynn. And over the years I’ve collected all of this information from mainstream sources.
Mark Taliano: Good for you. Good for you.
Hrvoje Morić: Yeah. And you see world leaders attest to this. Putin at a UN speech, I think, between the lines talked about this, the former Afghan prime minister, Pakistani officials. I remember reading an article from an Iraqi commander saying that… An Iraqi commander literally said, “If the West stopped financing ISIS tomorrow, there would be no ISIS.”
Mark Taliano: Absolutely.
Hrvoje Morić: And by the West, I understand it’s the United States, it’s various European countries, the GCC, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, probably. And in your book I read a… You say the ISIS Daesh brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisors. So, if you want to tell us more about how the West supports these jihadi mercenaries all over the world.
Image is from Twitter/The Cradle
Mark Taliano: Yeah, well, it’s true. As you said, it is fully admitted by Western sources. Even Tulsi Gabbard admitted it. And I could read something that she said, as soon as I find it. But anyway, so it’s a military intelligence operation. In other words, the Empire tries to disguise what it’s doing. So all that nonsense about moderate rebels that they were apparently blabbing about on TV, I don’t watch mainstream anymore, but that was the deal. They said, oh yeah, we’re just arming moderate rebels. Nonsense. There are none. And then Timber Sycamore was very clear and Jeff Sack acknowledged it, you’re giving these weapons to terrorists, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. Okay. So I went to… And here’s another example of the civilization of the Syria versus the barbarism of the West. So my first trip there, we met the Minister of Reconciliation. And his story is similar to many others, and that his son was assassinated.
So, this is absolute barbarism. This is what the West and its proxies do. They try to destroy resistance by destroying powerful people in prey countries. And they also murdered the Grand Mufti’s son. And I met him too, they murdered his son. So a lot of people are not aware of the brutality that our governments are financing and training and supporting. But he (Minister of Reconciliation) said this to us, one of the things he says, well yeah, sure, you give weapons to one group, but the next day they’re in the hands of the other group. So that’s one way in which the West tries to disguise its hand. They call some moderate and some not moderate, even as they support both groups. And the one group will deliver weapons to the other group. Well, that’s just one way. So even Vladimir Putin and every… I know everyone’s vilified him. Personally, I think Russia is lucky to have him. He also… You made reference to that.
He acknowledges that they’re mercenaries. They go where there’s money. And guess who’s got the money? Saudi Arabia. And guess who works for Washington, is Saudi Arabia. And there’s admissions from these sources. Now, where was I going after that? Oh yeah. So one way they… Well okay, so when ISIS was operating and occupying oil fields, where did the oil go? Well, it went to Turkey. Okay? So Turkey, which is a member of NATO, and that’s where all the terrorists came through because it was a big porous border. They came right through Turkey. One journalist was murdered (Serena Shim) because she figured that out. So Turkey’s buying the oil. So, well, if you have a purchaser for ISIS oil, you are supporting ISIS. So that’s one way. Sometimes the support for these terrorist groups is overt. For example, I probably pronounced it wrong, but Prof Tim Anderson, you may have heard of him. He wrote a wonderful book too, a couple books on this. And he went and interviewed a military figure in al-Tharda Mountains.
And he describes in detail how Western military war planes directly supported ISIS, slaughtered Syrian soldiers who were trying to defeat ISIS. And then the ISIS proxies immediately occupied the territory, thanks to the West’s overt support. So sometimes the support is overt, sometimes the support is covert. Always what you’re reading in the mainstream media is a lie. And I’ll get into that in a minute too. So another way that this military intelligence operation works is ISIS will occupy an area, and let’s call them place sitters. And then when they move on, the area is not liberated. And it may be SDF, for example.. It’s not liberated, they’re just taking the place. They’re reoccupying it. Or when ISIS was allowed into Mosul in Iraq, the Empire got to destroy that city, which was part of the plan. But they also got to funnel ISIS out to go to Deir ez-Zor. So they use these terrorists in absolutely vile ways, and that impacts people because the terrorists are… They’re sectarian. Okay? So we’ll get to that in a minute too.
Image: Terrorist damage to Syria’s industrial base, Aleppo, Syria
But I went also to Aleppo into this industrial park. Okay? It was in the [inaudible 00:19:16] of Aleppo. And I hope I don’t make mistakes here, but if I do, I do. Anyway, we went to this industrial park and it was totally destroyed. And we sat down with some business people. And it was totally destroyed. And what happened was the terrorists, Western-supported terrorists, went in there and they stole… Everything that they could steal, they did steal and it ended up in Turkey, and everything else they destroyed. So the goal here is to help Empire destroy infrastructure, destroy the country, to weaken the country. And they’re still doing it. Now Empire’s openly stealing the oil. Trump said, yeah, I like oil. And they’re openly stealing the oil. So Syria is a oil-rich country, but now with the sanctions, they have maybe one or two hours of electricity a day. Most of them, 80 or 90% are living in poverty, and they don’t have enough oil resources. Why? Because it’s being stolen. Why? Because Empire has imposed these unilateral, coercive measures called sanctions, they are criminal, that amount to collective punishment.
Hrvoje Morić: Just on that point-
Mark Taliano: So, another anecdote to tie in with that is the hospitalization. So prior to the war, they had a lot of things that we don’t have. They had free healthcare, free schooling. And now, and this is all by design, they can’t get replacement parts for a lot of the health equipment, for a lot of the advanced medical equipment. So what is the direct result of that? A lot of people died. So this gets back to the psychopath mass murderer, metaphorically this is what Empire is. It’s equivalent to a psychopathic mass murderer making its own rules. Because this is what happens to prey countries. So they bomb infrastructure, they steal, they steal Empire, they steal resources, they destroy water resources through their proxies indirectly. And the proxies are… they’re expendable. Okay? So you might hear stories about, oh, they just killed this ISIS guy. Well, first of all, we don’t know if they did or not. Second of all, well, maybe he was expendable.
Hrvoje Morić: Mark, I’m just going to have to pause you. We’re going to have to jump a break. I just want to read another quote from your book where you write, “The life of a Syrian soldier is so hard. A terrorist paid by the US or Saudi or Qatar makes about three to $400 a month. The Syrian soldier receives one 10th of that.” And on the oil, I’ve been reading reports from The Cradle and from the Syrian SANA, the Syrian agency-
Mark Taliano: The Cradle’s very good.
Hrvoje Morić: And that 80% of Syrian oil is being taken. We got US forces illegally in the northeast of Syria taking 80% of oil, which is insane. Mark, what would you say are the latest developments in Syria? From my vantage point, it seems like there’s a war of attrition. That Syria is between a rock and a hard place. They don’t have enough leverage to do anything. They don’t have enough power themselves, nor from their allies at the moment. So it’s sort of like this waiting game. I did see the, I don’t know, it was a minister or the head of the UAE visit Syria recently. It seems like the UAE maybe is wanting to reconcile with Syria. And I did see just this week that The Cradle reported the Assad refused to meet with that slippery snake, Erdogan. And so what are your thoughts on where we’re currently at with Syria?
Mark Taliano: Well, chaos. But, the legitimate government is still in power so that’s a victory in and of itself. All of the people are suffering from this war being waged on it, this terror war, which is why the war on terror is the opposite. We are not waging war on terror, we are supporting the terrorists. So Erdogan is NATO, but there’s sometimes cross-cutting alliances. He wants land so Bashar is right to reject him. It’s like, how can you make agreements with other countries when they have a proven record of not abiding by agreements? That applies to Washington and Canada as well. So, Russia has played a big factor. The terrorists were increasing continuously until Russia came in.
And then Russia was able to put a stop to it. But as you say, Washington is still occupying oil fields. Washington is still stealing oil fields. The imperial goal is still to partition and hence destroy. But it’s also an information war, because I think that if more people were aware of what’s going on that… Well, there are a lot of people aware of it. So your question is, where are they going now? The sanctions need to be lifted. They’re entirely based upon a fake pretext. The Caesar photos were from Western sources. All the source information that we get is from Western sources. For example, the White Helmets are a propaganda construct. And we get information from Al-Qaeda because White Helmets are Al-Qaeda. And people say, ooh, that can’t be. Well, Tulsi Gabbard admitted it. Do we have time? How much more time do we have?
Hrvoje Morić: We have about eight or nine minutes.
Mark Taliano: Okay. So can I read you briefly what Tulsi said?
Hrvoje Morić: Sure.
Mark Taliano: Because I’m getting back to the notion that everything has been admitted by the West. I mean, John Kirby was caught on tape saying, Well, we were waiting for ISIS to push and maybe ISIS could put pressure on Assad. Well, this is what Tulsi said publicly: “We were all lied to. This is the betrayal, this is the betrayal to the American people, to me, to my fellow service members. We were all lied to, told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was working with Al-Qaeda and posed a threat to the American people. I enlisted after 9/11 to protect our country, to go after those who attacked us on that fateful day.” That’s another story, 9/11. “And took the lives of thousands of Americans. The problem is that this current president is continuing to betray us.
We were supposed to be going after Al-Qaeda. But over the years, not only have we not gone after Al-Qaeda, who is stronger now today than 9/11, our president is supporting Al-Qaeda.” And I have many other quotes from Western sources. So if people were to understand that Empire uses proxies to prosecute its wars, and that would be a big step forward. And then they could tie it into Ukraine because Empire is using Nazis in Ukraine. Just as they use Isis in Al-Qaeda, in Syria and beyond, Iraq, Libya, wherever they need proxies, the database, they’re using Nazis in Ukraine. And that’s a longstanding CIA project since after the war to foster Nazism. Where there’s a national day to revere Stefan Bandera, who was a villain, a Nazi collaborator, participated in the Holocaust atrocities, as many others did. But that’s a different story, isn’t it?
Hrvoje Morić: Yeah.
Mark Taliano: Go ahead. Go ahead.
Hrvoje Morić: I was going to say, I talked about that with Thierry Meyssan a while back. He was talking about how a third of the military Ukrainian forces are Nazi as of… And I did just want to mention, Francis Boyle, he does good work on the Middle East. I was actually using his book, Destroying Libya and World Order as partial assigned reading in my courses. And in that book, I really like that he details how… I think he’s met Gaddafi. But why Russia, through Libya to the Dogs in 2011. And we had that, I think it was the UN… Was it 1973, the resolution to allow NATO to go in and bomb Libya because Russia back from the-
Mark Taliano: Yeah, with limitations.
Hrvoje Morić: Right. And that Russia was not, and China, in 2011 they were not strong enough. Russia was too weak. They could not do anything. And so they just had to let Libya go. But as you say, by a few years later, Russia was able to build itself up, and look where we are now. And so I thought that was interesting. And you mentioned as well the plan. There’s a 1979 Bernard Lewis plan. He was Council Foreign Relations. He published this map of a dismembered Syria. And there was a NATO war game map from 2004, Ralph Peterson. Also, it shows like Iraq dismembered, Sudan in two parts, Iran Balkanized. And then you’ve got the Clinton emails.
People can go read the declassified from the State Department talking about Libya, how they were discussing in Hillary Clinton’s emails Gaddafi’s wealth, massive oil, his massive gold and silver that they wanted to take. But just, this is from what I’m recalling from memory, but the propaganda, just your thought on that because it’s so bad. [inaudible 00:29:48] I just had a really bad experience. I’ve been attacked by American Christians, they’ve attacked me. And I’m also an American Christian. And these American Christians have called me an anti-American conspiracy theorist for attempting, like in your book, you talk about to defend Syrian Christians. In your book, you tell US-sponsored Jihadis were attempting to kill Syrian Christians. So the propaganda and the information war, it’s so bad.
Mark Taliano: Okay, wakey-wakey Christians. Bashar al-Assad saved Christianity in Syria. Our proxies behead and slaughter Christians. Okay? I went to St Takla, I saw all the damage. They slaughter Christians as policy. They’re sectarian terrorists. And the Christians in Syria wonder why they’re not getting more support from their fellow Christians. And I can guarantee you if President Assad, and this includes most Syrians who support Christianity, it’s not a sectarian country. It’s a very pluralist, democratically- oriented country, which is supportive of all religions. Unlike the opposing terrorists supported by the West, off with their heads, Alawaites to the grave Christians to Beirut. Okay, so the Christians… Sorry, that’s the story. I mean, the West supports sectarian terrorists. ISIS, Al-Qaeda, they slaughter Christians. They have other ethnic groups they slaughter.
They want to clear the land for while they’re working on behalf of Empire, even though some of them probably don’t even realize it. But they’re the worst of the worst. And this is what our countries are supporting beneath this smokescreen of war propaganda, which also is criminal. As it should be. But mainstream is just regurgitating lies that it gets from Al Qaeda because the White Helmets are embedded with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Whenever a place is liberated, the White Helmets go with the terrorists. They don’t stay with the government. They’re there to spin narratives, but they’re also terrorists. They’re carrying guns and so on. But they’re there to spin narratives, war criminal, war propaganda narrative. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, their primary source of information is Al-Qaeda, White Helmets. Okay? White Helmets also engage in military operations with equipment provided by Canada to detect when planes are coming over. So these people need to understand they’re sectarian terrorists, just like they need to understand there are Nazis in Ukraine, which they don’t understand that.
Hrvoje Morić: And Mark-
Mark Taliano: So you have for… Yeah?
Hrvoje Morić: Just to say we’ve got about a minute and a half left.
Mark Taliano: Okay.
Hrvoje Morić: So if you want to just give us any final thought and then remind us again best places to find your work, to subscribe to your channel and so forth.
Mark Taliano: So you can get the first edition off of Global Research, and also the second edition. But that’s only in PDF, but it’s also in Arabic. If you speak Arabic, you can get it from the co-author, Basma Qaddour. It’s also in German (hard copy). You can get it there. It’s in the German language. The first edition is in German and English. The second edition is in English PDF, and hard copy in Arabic. And one thing is, I talked to a soldier and, we’re wondering how this could ever happen, with the slaughtering of Christians and our governments (Western governments) are supporting it. And he said, and I think he’s right, “We have to teach the children the truth because they’re not getting the truth.” And all this warfare, permanent warfare is also coming back to us in terms of that’s where our money is going. And now more and more, we ourselves are being oppressed and impoverished.
Hrvoje Morić: Yeah, that’s a great…
Mark Taliano: Yeah, we need to teach the children the truth and stop this impoverishing, dysfunctional foreign policy.
Hrvoje Morić: A great final thought. Thank you, Mark, Voices from Syria marktaliano.net. I’m signing off. Keep staying tuned here on TNT.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this interview was originally published.
Featured image is from Mideast Discourse
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
**Voices from Syria**
Author: Mark Taliano
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1
Year: 2017
Product Type: PDF File
List Price: $6.50
