Hello, this is moderate rebels. I am Ben Norton. For this episode, we did a live stream

discussion with our friend and colleague Aaron Matae and also with the Iranian-American

Professor Muhammad Miranda, who is based in Iran. He and Aaron were part of a delegation that just took a

trip to Syria to see what life is really like on the ground, to talk to average working-class

Syrians, to talk about the effects of the decade-long Western regime change war, this dirty

war that has destabilized the country and caused so

much massive human suffering. They talked about the horrific impact of the U.S. and EU sanctions

on Syria, which amount to a de facto economic blockade of the country. And they talked about

so much more. So without further ado,

here is part one of our lengthy two-hour discussion. This is just the first part with Aaron Mata

and Muhammad Miranda. Randy. Hello, hello, everyone.

I'm Ben Norton.

You are watching a live stream of moderate rebels and also the gray zone.

I mean, they're very similar.

My co-host, Max Blumenthal, will be joining us in a little bit.

We're starting this episode, which will also be posted afterward as a podcast for anyone who want to just listen as opposed to watching here on YouTube or on Twitch over at twitch.tv.tv slash moderate rebels.

But I'm joined by my colleague Aaron Mata.

Aaron just got back from a trip to Syria, on the ground in in Syria and set off a firestorm across

liberal media and Twitter and all the blue check marks who are calling him a

genocide denier and a conspiracy theorist and a boot-licking Assadist so Aaron I

just want to start off this interview asking what is it like like to love Bashar al-Assad and to lick his boots?

You know what's interesting? And I think you guys have experienced this too before, you know, you being in Nicaragua and whenever you guys go to Venezuela, once you get on the ground of the places that are so demonized and entire countries that are like reduced to a cartoon portrayal of one person, in this case, Assad, you realize this is how irrelevant all those people are back home who sit in front of their computers and whitewashed dirty wars,

...