The following is an abridged transcript of a segment from System Update’s most recent episode, lightly edited for clarity and readability. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.System Update is an independent show that is free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals where we host our members-only after show, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

Aaron Maté is a friend of our show and one of the reasons for that is that he is a truly intrepid and fearless, independent journalist. One of the topics on which he has reported most over the last decade or longer is the U.S. and Western involvement in and policy towards Syria. He has been following every detail of it in the way that he follows through whatever he covers with almost an obsessiveness that makes him an encyclopedia to help learn about it. And when we knew, we were going to talk about Syria tonight, there were very few people that we thought of to have on the show who we thought would be better than Aaron. He is an independent journalist with Gray Zone, does a lot of reporting and a lot of appearances on podcasts, including ours, and we are thrilled to have him. 

Aaron Maté On Syria Upheaval, The Western Role, and What's Next for the Region

Find below an abridged transcript of a segment of System Update, lightly edited for clarity and readability. You can watch the complete episode here or listen in podcast form here.

System Update is an independent show free for anyone to watch, made possible with your support. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can join our Locals community here. In addition to helping fund the show, subscribers have access to the after-show (where we take questions from the audience), the SYSTEM UPDATE Weekly Newsletter, articles and other exclusive perks.

Bashar Assad, who has ruled Syria for the last 24 years, was forced out of the country over the weekend by anti-government rebels who – with remarkable speed – advanced from their stronghold in the Northwest to the capital in Damascus. Assad fled to Russia, where he and his family were given safe refuge. Thus, the long-time goal of major powers – including the U.S., Israel and Turkey - has finally come to fruition, as both Tehran and Moscow have lost a key ally in the region, leaving a power vacuum in Syria for those other countries and all sorts of different factions in the country itself. 

Because Assad was a brutal and violent dictator, we in the West celebrate that the Syrian people are finally free and joyous. This is always the highly self-serving and self-flattering narrative to which we are subjected in the face of any major geo-political events and there is, undoubtedly, a compelling emotional appeal to it, just as there was for similar scripts about how devoted we were to liberate the Vietnamese or the Iraqis or the Afghans or the Libyans and even the Ukrainians. 

Anyone paying even minimal attention to political reality knows that this script is a pure fairy tale. The U.S. and its Western allies are not remotely opposed to tyranny and oppression. In fact, we love tyranny, which is why we spend so much time and money installing tyrants all over the world and then doing everything possible to prop them up, even when opposed to and trying to crush a pro-Democratic citizen movement, as we are doing right this very minute for states at least as brutal and autocratic as Assad ever was, including the butchers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, our close allies and partners.

Western Reaction To Assad’s Ouster Reveals Glaring Double-Standard

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On a recent After-Show on Locals, the most common question was from people who wanted us to address the oral argument held at the Supreme Court this week that discussed the constitutionality of a law in Tennessee that banned all minors, all people under the age of 18, from getting what is called gender-affirming medications, particularly cross-sex hormone. So, giving, for example, estrogen to boys when they claim that they're trans women or trans girls, or giving testosterone to young girls who claim that they're actually trans men.