Pushback with Aaron Mate

Syria and its allies prevented regime change, but the US and its allies are continuing to squeeze Syria's population with crippling sanctions on all aspects of civilian life and a US military occupation in Syria's northeast breadbasket. Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, analyzes the state of the Syria proxy war and the ongoing propaganda campaign to whitewash it. Guest: Peter Ford, ve...

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson assesses Biden's "national security" picks, including Gen. Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense and Anthony Blinken for Secretary of State. "I don't see a different kind of administration being formed," Wilkerson says. "And it disturbs me because it just means more of the same -- a little more calmness, a little more serenity, which lulls everyone into thinking that things...

Israel's assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist is the latest act of aggression in the Trump-Netanyahu campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. Although President-elect Joe Biden has voiced support for returning to the JCPOA, longstanding US-Israel hostility to Iranian sovereignty will continue under his watch. Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter debunks the myths about Iran's nucl...

Former Trump 2016 campaign deputy chair Rick Gates was once widely portrayed as the key Mueller witness who would expose Trump-Russia collusion. Gates' testimony ended up seriously undermining the collusion conspiracy theory, but that has done little to undo the media narrative. Gates joins Pushback to debunk several key Russiagate conspiracy theories: that Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian spy; th...

President Trump is refusing to concede to Joe Biden over what he claims was widespread electoral fraud. But investigative journalist Greg Palast says that the real 2020 voting scandal is Republican-led voter theft targeting Black and youth voters in key battlegrounds, including Georgia, where Senate control will be decided. Guest: Greg Palast. Veteran investigative journalist and author of several...

As President Trump refuses to concede over baseless allegations of widespread fraud, the Biden team has sent signals that there will be little to no transition away from US regime change abroad. The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal discusses Trump's rejection of democracy at home, and the records of the likely Biden cabinet members who have adopted the same attitude to governments around the world. Guest...

Support Pushback at Patreon: www.patreon.com/aaronmate Former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended by his successor, neoliberal Blairite Keir Starmer, even as a new report confirms that claims of a Labour "anti-Semitism crisis" under Corbyn's watch were without merit. Former UK Labour MP Chris Williamson, a Corbyn ally who has denounced the anti-Semitism allegations as a smear campaig...

Stephen F. Cohen, the eminent historian who helped shape the field of Russia studies and bravely exposed the fallacies and dangers of Russiagate and the new Cold War, passed away on September 18, 2020 at the age of 81. Cohen's wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine, reflects on his life and legacy. Guest: Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and p...

In his new memoir "Unforgetting," award-winning Salvadoran American journalist Roberto Lovato explores personal histories, including his own, shaped by decades of murderous U.S. terror wars in Central America that have also fueled the migrant crisis and gang violence. Lovato discusses his new book; the erasure of Central American voices in US media; and the bipartisan cruelty toward Central Americ...

Former intelligence officials, Democratic leaders, and media outlets dismissing the Hunter Biden story as "Russian disinformation" are spreading more Russiagate disinformation, ex- CIA officer Ray McGovern says. Media outlets are amplifying the claims of former intelligence officials, including John Brennan and James Clapper, as well as of top Democrats, including Joe Biden and Adam Schiff, that t...

Noam Chomsky warns that the Trump administration poses a unique threat to humanity, but its most reckless policies are receiving far too little attention. Chomsky discusses the White House's threats to the New START treaty, the last remaining accord limiting the US and Russia's nuclear weapons arsenals; its latest round of crippling sanctions and threats against Iran; the bipartisan US refusal to...

In a Grayzone exclusive, José Bustani, the former head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, speaks out in support of two veteran OPCW inspectors who challenged a US-backed cover-up of their investigation in Syria. Bustani also reacts to the recent US-UK-France-led effort to prevent his testimony at the UN Security Council about the OPCW's Syria cover-up scandal. And Bustani...

Weeks before the U.S. election, the Trump administration has imposed crushing new sanctions that sever Iran from the global financial system and further threaten the import of humanitarian goods. The Israeli government and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-regime change think tank, reportedly lobbied White House officials for the new move. Assal Rad of the National Iranian American...

Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Ian Henderson, a veteran OPCW inspector who challenged a cover-up of his organization's investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, recently testified before the United Nations Security Council. At the meeting, Henderson was both attacked and ignored by U.S., UK, and French diplomats whose governments bombed Syria ove...

A trove of leaked UK government documents exposes a massive propaganda network used to shape the media narrative during the Syrian proxy war. Western government-funded intelligence cutouts trained Syrian opposition leaders, planted stories in media outlets, ran a cadre of journalists, and whitewashed the jihadist militants armed, trained and supported by the US, UK, Turkey and Gulf monarchies. "Ev...

Facing Palestinian-led criticism, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has cancelled an appearance at an event honoring the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin played a personal role in the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine; ordered Israeli forces to brutalize Palestinian protesters during the 1st Intifada; and oversaw a so-called Oslo "peace process" that cemented continued occupation and...

Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate The Trump administration is running out the clock on talks with Russia over renewing New START, the last treaty limiting the nuclear weapons arsenals of both countries. Russia has proposed an unconditional extension, but the US has stalled the talks and demanded new conditions -- even issuing an ultimatum that the "price of admission"...

As the UAE and Bahrain reach a US-backed agreement with Israel, author and scholar Norman Finkelstein discusses the confluence of powerful forces that have sold out the Palestinian cause: Gulf monarchies, Palestinian Authority leaders, and U.S. liberals who have found common cause with far-right evangelicals and neocons in backing the Israeli occupation. Finkelstein contrasts their legacies on Pal...

Historian and author Gerald Horne on Trump's proposed "1776 Commission"; leftist criticism of the 1619 Project; William Barr's attacks on Black Lives Matter; and the significance of NBA players' recent walkout over racism and police violence. Guest: Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Author of more than three dozen books, includ...

The Senate Intelligence Committee's final report on alleged Russian interference focuses on "a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election." Does the report advance our understanding of the Trump-Russia story? Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, joins Pushback. Guest: Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for the New...

Claims that Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has been poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok are threatening a new standoff between Russia and NATO states, with calls for punitive measures against Moscow, including cancelling the Nordstream 2 German-Russia pipeline. Navalny's opposition activism is "marginal in Russian politics -- it's not currently a threat to the Kremlin," says Fred Weir...

David West, a retired two-time NBA All-Star and two-time NBA Champion, discusses the NBA walkout over racist police violence; the challenges of activism in pro sports; his involvement in a new league challenging the NCAA's exploitation of young players; the neocon attacks on the NBA over China, and more. Guest: David West. Retired 15-year NBA player; two-time NBA All-Star and two-time NBA Champion...

Attorney and writer Malaika Jabali reports from Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a 17-year old right-wing white militant killed two people during the protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. "I think the problem is that we live in a right-wing country," Jabali says. "There will always be ways to justify gun violence. But if you go anywhere else in the world, it's absurd that you can have an arme...

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, discusses the connections between the global US empire and the record US death toll during the coronavirus pandemic. "We're really not doing anything very well or right, and that's a consequence in part at least of our fascination with an attempt to maintain and even expand this empire that we've created since 1945," Wilkerson says. H...

In a new article for Foreign Affairs, scholar Joshua Landis and former Obama administration official Steve Simon write that US sanctions on Syria "further immiserates the Syrian people, blocks reconstruction efforts, and strangles the economy that sustains a desperate population during Syria’s growing humanitarian and public health crises." Landis, a leading expert on Syria, joins Pushback. Guest:...