It Could Happen Here Weekly 191

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome, take it up. And here I'm joined
once again.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
By your Sadavas.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hello, Hello, Hello, And recently I was reading through a
photo book called Humans by Brandon Stanton. It features interviews
of people on the streets all over the world. He
starts it off and he kind of became well known
online for the Humans of New York series. I'm not
sure if you've heard of that.

Speaker 5 (00:53):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, yeah, So he did that for a while and
he ended up traveling to other parts of the world
and doing basically the same thing, just interview people on
the street, getting their insights, hearing their struggles, hearing their story.
And when I saw the book in the library, I
just I picked it up or it decided to read
it through and it's really profound in a sense, and
you get a sense of the spectrum of humanity, of

(01:16):
what people are going through, of the highs and lows
of the human experience. And I mean, it can make
you laugh on one page and make you cry for
the next page. And seeing that variety of humanity reminded
me of another book that I read and finished recently,
which is called Humankind Hopeful History by Rutka Bregmant. A

(01:39):
friend of mine had given it to me because he
said it had changed his whole view on the world.
And so I wanted to talk about some of the
concepts that I picked up in that book, like the
origins and critiques of veneer theory, why most people are
actually pretty decent, and the problems with some of the
narratives of our wickedness and the next up. So would

(02:00):
I want to get into some of the reasons why
people do bad and what we can do about it?

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Sounds exciting because there is a lot of bad right now.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
That is there is I mean as on that stuff.
I mean, what would you say is the most common
perspective you hear on humanity? On human nature?

Speaker 4 (02:22):
I don't know, like there's there's this clash between like
this like liberal humanist version and then this like Christian
moralist version I guess like in the States right now,
but that's been going on for decades, if not centuries.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
By liberal humanists on Christian I mean, I think I
get a sense of what the Christian moralist version is, right,
that we are all sinful, destined for hell and ey salvation,
that that version.

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Of the story, yeah, you know, more or less.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
And the liberal humanist perspective is I.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Mean, I don't know, like this this this forever search
for like what human rights are and like human decency.
So we come up with like governments and rules to
actually like govern over our morals as a democratic process
that continues to evolve over the course of like hundreds
of years. We're like, you know, on the moral arc
of the universe, just not fully you know there yet.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, I've heard that perspective, I think most commonly and
decent in my space, as I tend to hear the
you know, people are wicked, people are sinful and religious cases,
or people are violent, people are selfish, and that kind
of in that similar namrelving where we have these systems
in place to kind of check our impulses, to kind

(03:40):
of keep us regulated and to keep society functioning. And
Bregman opens his book by discussing the idea of civilization
being a thin mask that covers our true savage instincts.
He calls it the Vinea theory, and he spends the
rest of the book basically pointing out all the different

(04:01):
errors in that judgment. I mean, he doesn't claim that
we're all good people, happy, go lucky, saying so anything
like that, but he does see it for the most part,
most people are pretty decent that I know that clashes
with all a lot of people are accustomed to hearing,
and there are some very notable exceptions. But despite the

(04:23):
efforts of elite to paint and purport a different picture,
there's actually a lot more leaning towards our decent, if
not good nature and the contrary. But of course, of
these kind of conversations, you always had to go back
to the debate between Thomas Hobbes and Sean Jackers, So

(04:44):
we can't escape these guys. Hobbes, of course, had the
perspective in Leviathan, which was written in sixteen fifty one,
that in the absence of a strong central authority. Human
beings would live in a condition of perpetual war, with
every man against every other man, a war of war
against all. As it would have put it so to him,

(05:06):
people are naturally self interested and driven by the desire
for power and survival. So without laws or a sovereign
to keep them in check, individuals would act purely on
their own instincts, lead into constant conflict over resources, safety,
and dominance. Life in this state of nature would be

(05:26):
solitary for nasty, brutish, and short. A couple of years later,
a couple of decades later, Rousseau was writing in the
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality among Men,
and he basically flipped hobbsview on its head. He believed
that humans in the state of nature were peaceful, cooperative,

(05:47):
and guided by basic needs and compassion, and there was
a development of hierarchies and institutions that had led to inequality.
Jealousy and competition were basically corrupted human age. In his words,
man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
Do you take a side in this debate?

Speaker 4 (06:06):
By the way er not to be the centrist option,
But I don't know. I think I think both these
things play into each other. I definitely don't believe in
the idea that like this state is the only thing
that reigns people in and stops them from doing a
moral acts. Right, It's the same thing as like without

(06:27):
without God or without the Bible, then everyone would just
be like raping and murdering it. Meanwhile, actual Christians obviously
rape and murder all the time anyway. But like, no,
like this this idea isn't the only thing that keeps
you from becoming this like you know, savage like inhuman monster.
People can be morally good without this this like religious notion.

(06:50):
And I think in some ways the state can also
operate as a religious notion to these people, where you know,
the police is the only thing that's keeping you from
becoming this like horrible monster who's for a typerone around you.
But I also have my sympathies to the like alternate
side of that, And I can see there's a great
deal of oppression and horrific violence that can only happen

(07:10):
at scale under the organization of a state. So I
will pick the annoying centris option.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yeah, I know that there's a lot of people who
have the sense that you know, the state and the laws,
all that standing between us and the purge or mad
Max or something like that. Sure, exactly, So, yeah, I
don't think that Hobbes's over generalization of human nature as
inherently violent and selfish holds up when you look at
the diversity of human experience and human societies. I mean,

(07:42):
that's not to say that violence and conflict were absent
in a world out state, but you know, contact, matters, resources, environment,
group size, all those things would have played roles. I
don't think that we should be accepting Rousseau's romantic light either,
So I guess I'm in the centris with you. The
truth does seem to lie somewhere in that middle ground.

(08:04):
That human nature is flexible and then it's shaped by social, ecological,
and historical contexts of what's getting the weeds of humanity's
origins is stimulating as an exercise, but there's only so

(08:27):
much we can know about the past for certain. What
we can't know for certain is the present, And what
we've seen in the present is that when disaster strikes,
people have tended to help each other. In Hurricane Katrina
in two thousand and five, the official response was famously
criticized for being slow and disorganized. And yet despite media

(08:51):
attempts to pay in these people as looters and thugs
and all these different things, community members, neighbors, volunteers all
stepped up to rescue people, to mobilize food, shelter and
basic aid, to expropriate when necessary, to get people what
they needed, long before federal agencies gone on the scene. Similarly,

(09:12):
in a more recent occurrence, after the Cranfelt Tower fire
in the UK in twenty seventeen, the official channels had
failed the people of that tower. Many diet as a result.
Regulations that were supposed to protect people were not enforced
or were absent. And yet it was community members who

(09:33):
sprang into action to provide water and shelter and food
and clothes and emotional support even when the twin towers
fell on Spement eleven, two thousand and one. And this
is an example that brag when I actually spent some
time talking about people actually helped people descend the stairwells
in an orderly fashion. You know, they would say, you know,

(09:55):
after you going down the stairs, and passers by would
go in and help others to evacuate and assist the
wounded law before the emergency services arrived. So people acted
and prioritize helping others even in a disaster scenario. And
yet what do we see in dystopian fiction. In apocalyptic fiction,

(10:16):
you see people just like driving around shooting guns in
the air. You see the purge, you see the mad Max,
you see the zombie apocalypse scenarios. In Rebecca Solnet's book,
A Paradise Built in Hell, she found that disasters peeled
back the layers of society and revealed the empathy, cooperation,
and care at humanity's core. She noted that when disaster

(10:39):
strikes is when people most often reveal the better natures.
And yet those negative narratives tend to have more sway
in the popular imagination.

Speaker 4 (10:49):
No, and this is like so true. I remember in
twenty twenty, during the wildfires on the West Coast, the
anarchist response was to set up these like giant like
mutual aids centers. Were people fleeing from the fire, you know,
like not like other anarchists, just like regular people fleeing
from the fire could get necessities and figure out housing. Meanwhile,

(11:09):
right wing militias were setting up checkpoints monitoring to make
sure Antifa wasn't, you know, like raiding people's homes as
they were fleeing from the fires. Like these were the
two options you had. You had you had anarchists actually
helping the people who were who were fleeing from this
horrific fire and setting up like massive, massive, like aid

(11:29):
distribution centers. Meanwhile right wing militias were pulling people over
at gunpoint making sure Antifa wasn't up to any shenanigans.
And similar stuff happened last year during Hurricane Helene on
the East Coast, where you had a whole bunch of
like Southeast anarchists in the Appalachians do mutual a disaster response.

(11:51):
Meanwhile right wing militias were spreading rumors about like FEMA
fraud and all of all of this crazy stuff, not
actually helping anybody. But it was anarchists doing a large
a large amount of the actual like water distribution and
like medical assistance on the ground as the federal response
was delayed and insufficient.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, I mean, I was aware of the anarchist efforts
during these disasters, but I wasn't. I didn't know about
that that situation with the riving militias setting up checkpoints.
That's not shocking, but still wild, you know.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
Yeah, no, it's so funny because those are the people,
you know, claiming that, you know, without the government, we
would have the purge, the anarchists would just go around
doing all kinds of crazy crimes. I get when things
actually happen, their attempts to like deputize them as like
their own police force actually creates those conditions. Meanwhile, anarchists
are the ones actually helping.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
People exactly exactly. And yet despite these situations, these these
things happen again and again, we still have these popular narratives.
You don't know, the narrative I see referenced all the
time Lord of the Flies.

Speaker 4 (12:59):
Yes, of course, of course.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
All the time. Right, It's basically become a cultural shorthand
for the idea that people are just savage at heart,
that this veneer civilization is the only thing keeping us
in check. I mean, these days, I do see people
joking that it's because those were British boys.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
So true, actually, so true.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
But while I get the joke, I think it's also
important to remember that it's like people are taking this
work of fiction as if it's an anthropological study. Yeah,
when it's just something that a guy made up as
an analogy for, you know, the situation during World War Two.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
I think it's also good to remember that the British
are people too. I have a British co worker, so
you know, we have to we have to show them
a little bit of human human dignity exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
People embrace the story because it confirms what they want
to believe in this climate of cynicism. But Bragman actually
tells a story in the book about a true instance
of when a shipwreck of young boys occurred. Of course,
they weren't British boys. There were Tonguean boys as and
from the country of Tonga. So in nineteen sixty five,

(14:11):
six Tonguan boys we were stranded on a remote island
for over a year, and rather than descended into violence,
they survived through cooperation. You know, the built a garden,
they shared duties. They didn't do any human sacrifices. You know,
they created a rotor system to get things done. There
result conflict. When people were in conflict, they would go

(14:31):
on time out. They would put each other on timeout
and go on opposite side of the island until the
you know, cooler heads prevailed, they figure out ways to
deal with their conflicts, to organize themselves without authority and
without chaos. But the problem is that these fictional narratives
become so powerful instead of the real ones that they

(14:51):
have a similar effect to the placeboy effect. In fact,
it's the placeboy effect's evil twin, the no sea Boy effect.
I've heard about the placebo effect before, and I'm sure
you have as well, But for those who don't know,
it's basically where someone's health actually improves after receiving what's
basically a dummy treatment like a sugar pill or a

(15:12):
fake surgery or a saline injection. The body heals itself
because the mind of the person believes it's being healed.
The mind turns that trust into medicine. I mean, that's
just that's amazing to me even now, and they'll quite
understand how it works yet, but it's still really cool.
But there's another dimension to the placeboy effect that I

(15:34):
hadn't heard about before, but it makes intuitive sense. I
suppose it's called the no seaboy effect, and Bregman is
the one who introduced me to that concept. So the
no Seawoy effect is where, instead of belief healing you,
it's belief that makes you sick. So people experience real pain,
real symptoms, and even real illness, not because there's an

(15:56):
actual physical cause, but because in their minds, the ex
expect to be harmed, so their minds to that fear
of harm into actual harm and injury. And there was
one case study that he used where a child had
drunk a coke and photo was poisoned and then just
created this mass hysteria almost with dozens of children in

(16:17):
hospitals with headaches and nausea and pardic attacks because they
drank coke, to the point where Coca Cola actually had
to recall all of those drinks, even though tests had
shown that there was nothing in the drinks that were
making people sick, but their body still responded as if
there was because they believed they heard the story, they
heard about it, they saw what happened to others, and

(16:38):
they believed it would happened to them. And that's the
no super effect in action, right, So we get the concept.
So Bregman actually stretched these concepts beyond the field of medicine,

(16:58):
and he basically made the point that what if these
contents are abate into how we view each other. You know,
so what if I believe that people are selfish and
cruel and violent by nature? Actually makes it so, you know,
if you expect the worst from people, you'll act on that.
You know, you might be colder or more defensive, or

(17:19):
more likely to punish or preempt betrayal. And what happens
as a result is that, you know, people pick up
on that energy. They're spawning kind they withdraw, they retaliate,
and then that cycle ends up feeding itself. And so
the belief that negative belief becomes a social reality, a
self fulfilling prophecy. So we end up building institutions that

(17:40):
are based on that cynical expectation. We design policies that
are based around the punishment we are, train ourselves to
see strangers as threats rather than as neighbors. And then
when we have a fallout, as when that prophecy is
fulfilled by our own actions, we can then say, well,
see I was right. You know, people are awful. But

(18:02):
what we don't see is that our expectations and the
systems we build around those expectations are part of what
ends up making it that way. I think an easy
example to going to is with prison. Right, people expect
criminals to act like animals, to act like monsters to beasts,
and so they create prisons, and then those prisons treat

(18:23):
them like animals, monsters and beasts, and people respond to that.
You know, you treat people like animals, they're going to
behave like animals. So then the question that Bragmann poses
is what happens if we decide to treat people like
their good you know, trusting their intentions, leaning into care,
and building our systems around the assumption that most people

(18:45):
are decent. So how do we make that leap? I
said before that you know, we don't really necessarily need
to go into the past to see how people behave
in the present, but it's a good idea to get
a sense of how we evolved.

Speaker 6 (18:57):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
A lot of people have a brutal perception of human evolution.
You know, they track comparisons between us and chimpanzees, or
you know, they make it see first of all, like
norn bernobos entirely and also ignoring the fact that we
are our own species with our own evolutionary history. You know,
people that are very cynical and honestly insultant, like view

(19:22):
of like the cave men of our past, but our
histories are actually pretty soft. In fact, Bragman argues in
favor of something called self domestication theory, which has a
little bit of anthropological and evolutionary biological back in. And
so the basic claim of this theory is that the
reason Homo sapiens survived and other ancient humans didn't isn't

(19:46):
because you were the strongest, or the smartest, or the
most cunning, or because you were friendlier. That we evolve
to be more social, cooperative, playful, and trusting. Self domestication
theorists basically compare humans as to the other Homo species
as wolves. That we domesticate ourselves to become less aggressive,

(20:06):
or faces softened, our bodies became less robust, and our
openness and friendliness allowed us to build relationships, to build groups,
to raise children, community, and to survive. And so if
we accept our theory, we acknowledge that and build that
into our foundation, that we did evolve our capacity to
be kind, that it is something that is within our humanity,

(20:29):
that it's not a fragile gloss over savagery or a
morality that's given to us by religional law. Then we
can basically become who were capable of becoming, you know,
we can create systems that allow us to develop that.
And this sounds really optimistic, This sounds really happy, go
lucky and woo. And we are going to get into

(20:52):
some of the darker chapters of our humanity in the
next episode. But I wanted to wrap this one up
by unpacking the death of Catherine Kitty Genevieve's in nineteen
sixty four. It's another example the Breckman refers to in
his book, and it's one of the classic case studies
that was used for a long time to illustrate the

(21:13):
apathy and cold hotness of humanity. Because the New York Times,
which as we all know, is a reputable and trustworthy institution,
The New York Times claimed that she was stabbed in
the street while thirty eight neighbors looked on and did
nothing right. This was the quintessential story that was used
to say, you know, look at that, bystand the effect

(21:35):
humans just don't care, you know. There was used as
an example of apathy, of urban de kay, of everything
wrong with us. But the story was wrong. The reporters
will to help this story and it was wrong. I mean, yes,
she was murdered, but people did try to help. Someone
called the police, but this was in a time before

(21:57):
nine one one, so it was yet to call like
the local station, and then the response process was a
bit slow. One neighbor actually rushed out and held her
as she died, held her in their arms. So the
press spun this story as like some bleak tale, and
the few of psychology ate it up because it was

(22:19):
part of a trend at the time to create this
perception of humanity. But the real story was a lot
more hearing, a lot more human. I mean, it was
messy and somebody still murdered her. But this idea of
the vistandary fact that has been so inflated, A lot
of the key studies that have been used as examples

(22:39):
of them have been chipped away at over time, and
that's one of the main stories that has been pretty
thoroughly debunked at this point. So I like where bread
One's been going. But we've glossed over the dark side,
you know, the shadow of our humanity. You know, even
he acknowledges in this book that we do bad stuff

(23:01):
as well. So the next episode we are going to
wade into that, but how you feel in about humanity
so far.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
I think I actually do have an underlying optimism like
beneath how I move around in the world, which is
which is kind of odd considering the sort of stuff
I do for work, but it is true, and I
think part of that is what just keeps me going.
I don't know, like, yeah, I've certainly been around my

(23:28):
fair share of like doomers and nihilists over the years,
and at the very least those people don't seem to
be very happy and don't seem to be enjoying life,
and sometimes it's hard to enjoy life, absolutely, but I
think you need to be able to find a place
for yourself within a world that has like evil as

(23:49):
a almost inherent component and find your way either through that,
sometimes around that, but oftentimes through it. And I think
that's I mean, that's that's just been a part of
like growing up. We're certainly growing up in like a
weird time, but I think that's kind of always been true,
Like that's that was that was true one hundred years ago.

(24:11):
So I don't know, I a part of me and
maybe this is just over the optimistic, but but part
of me continues to resist being a doomer despite all
of the bad news that is trying to infiltrate my
brain at all times, which is which is a very
profitable industry, right. I mean that's somewhat kind of what
this show is, right. It kind of does play into

(24:32):
those instincts for sure, which is which is something that
like we critique amongst ourselves often and we try to
always find that balance as well. But but yeah, like
the doom cycle is like a is a is a
huge industry, and there's there's people that absolutely want you
to always be panicking all the time. Yeah, and that
drives consumer choices, that drives ad revenue, right.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
I mean Bregman puts forward a very compellent argument in
the book actually that the news is a public health
asset totally.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
Yeah, no, like absolutely, and like I have to keep
up with the news all the time, and I don't
think it affects me that much anymore. And certainly in
you know, doing a daily news show, we try to
be very selective in the things that we cover. We
don't cover everything all the time. We try to cover
the things that, like our our hosts feel is both
like within their wheelhouse and that people who listen to

(25:23):
the show should know about write certain things that you
might not be hearing about in like a mainstream news.
But but no, the news has a massive h thing
spiritual evil to it as well. There is there is
a sinister undercurrent to to like the news like as
like an industry indeed, and that's something that we are

(25:43):
also always like butting up against. Well on that, on
that optimistic note.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Yeah, until next time, we'll follow it to all the people. Peace, Hello,

(26:18):
and welcome to it happen here last episode I was joined.

Speaker 4 (26:22):
By your savior.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Hello, Ada's here again because we're gonna get more into
what we spoke about last time. Last episode, we painted
a hopeful account of humanity's nature. Could see if my
reading of Rutka Bregman's Humankind a hopeful history. So I
probably fed into the anarchists so utopia narrative a bit
with that previous episode. But the truth is that I'm

(26:45):
not really being optimistic. I'm being realistic. But realism has
been confused with cynonicism for so long that even acknowledging
both sides of the coin can be seen as overly
Utopia can be bad. And we'll get into the why.
But for whatever reason, they are bad. That is why,

(27:06):
as anarchists have consistently argued, nobody should have authority. Now,
there will always be outliers, and this explanation I'm about
to share it is not going to get into every
unique case of badness, but we are going to get
into some of the reasons that people do bad and
what we can do about it. As I said last episode,

(27:26):
we took issue with this idea of civilization as a
thin venail, and we're put forward the premise the Keemans
are mostly pretty decent. In fact, I didn't mention it
last episode, but we don't even really like to kill
each other. Contrary to popular belief, brag when actually shares
that in World War Two, studies showed that many soldiers

(27:50):
didn't shoot their weapons even in combat. Trained soldiers had
a difficult time actually pulling the trigger and killing people.
There are exceptions, as I said before, but in a
lot of cases it's very difficult for people to actually kill.
Military strategies ended up changing once authorities realized this, and
the training programs of soldiers was redesigned to overcome this resistance.

(28:14):
But that reluctance to killing does also indicate that it
takes some effort to overcome our general decency toward each
other because most people, again most on all are not
natural born killers. So again, how do we do bad?
You know, all sorts of atroctees have been carried out
by humans, both in ancient and modern times. What do

(28:37):
you think is the course.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
Self preservation in some way, either physical or psychological. I'm
not an anthropologist, I'm not a sociologist. Most of my
experiences with people is both queer people and then looking
at Nazis and like political extremists, so it's maybe not
the best sample side for the general population. I think
I tend to exist kind of on the perimeter of

(29:02):
most human experience, but probably some form of either psychological
or physical self preservation in my experience slash opinion.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
That's interesting. I didn't think of it. I think it
comes close to what Bregman ends up getting into. But
I think self preservation, well, we'll get into that in
a bit. You know, it's it's difficult to square that
with just how brutal some of these disasters have been.
You know, these atrocities that have taken place around the world,

(29:36):
organized systemic industrial cruelty, you know, things like the Holocaust totally.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
It's interesting because I think it's two paradoxical instincts that
play off each other. There's this self preservation and there's
also I believe in I thin guess some version of
the death drive, and I think those can can interact
in really odd ways. But I desk drive, yeah, is
specifically like specifically like like fascism, and like you know,

(30:02):
you can see this in like the genocides of the
twentieth century and twenty first centuries, like specifically, but no,
like fascism as like a political embodying of the death drive,
which is I think also an aspect. I think these
things exist together in parallel while being paradoxical, and that's
what produces a lot of the incongruity around things like fascism, right,

(30:24):
it is it is like an inherently paradoxical system.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
When you say self preservation, are you just talking about
on the individual level, or are you seeing like community
self preservation as well?

Speaker 4 (30:36):
Both both but also I think not even just physical
but also like psychological like being able to like continue
being able to continue existing as yourself, either within a
group of people or just you as an individual. Like
psychological things that you need to do to make yourself
feel like you're in community or that you are safe,
that you have meaning, or that you have purpose as
well as the physical aspects.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
And you're saying that that lends itself to atrocity.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
I think it can.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that actually is strikingly close toward
Bragman ends up uncovering.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
Look at the reasons that people will talk about, for
like why the genocide and Gaza is like necessary, right
it is it is playing off both of those impulses.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, yeah, I mean all sorts of genocides when you
hear the descriptions of them, and this is what you
hear of the people who perpetuated them, what their explanations
or justifications, you know, from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Palestine.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
Yeah, it's me and mar you know, totally.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
It is deeply evil. It's that something we can look
away from it. It really is difficult to square with
the most humans a decent thesis when you look at
how some of these society is, even the ordinary people,
for example, the citizen population of Israel, Evan, the civilian population,
even they are like disturbing the genocide. Oh in their rhetoric,

(31:55):
and so you know, it's like, how do we reach
that point? How do we get there? How does an
order marry human bab grow into.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
That it can happen to you. It can happen very easily,
and I think it can happen in a short time
span and you can get out of it. I think
maybe not just as easily, but you can't get out
of it also in a fast time span. I think
it's like that you are not immune to propaganda. Idea
you can look at like in Nazi Germany, Robert has
talked about quote unquote the little Nazis, the regular Germans

(32:22):
who ended up partipating and becoming Nazis, and you are
not immune from that, and that can happen as a
response to a whole bunch of traumatic impulses as well.
Whereas I think people now even use like politics just
to You're like this like idea of politics as permission
to be like an overtly cruel person to other people,

(32:45):
either like in your life or online. Right, you will
you will use use various political topics and that gives
you permission to unleash unmitigated hostility against people that you
now perceive as being like immoral or you perceive as
being like ontological and means exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
I mean, there were particular studies that were undertaken in
the twentieth century that are often used to sort of
explain that. You know, after the fall of Nazi Germany
and the post World War II era, people will seeking
explanations for atrocity and so so experiments were done and
are now pointed to as explanations for how this could

(33:24):
have taken place. You know. So one particular experiment that's
really well known as the Stanford prison experiment, right, this
idea that you take random students and give them a
position of power and they become statistic gods. You know,
it proves just how thin the ven ale civilization really is,
or already the evil the civilization could empower. But at

(33:46):
least for that particular experiment, the reality was never so straightforward.
You know, the gods were literally coached and encouraged to
be cruel. You know, they were actually putting on performances.
The prisoners were also expected to form. So rather than
being like an actual scientific experiment, it was more like
guided theater.

Speaker 4 (34:07):
I mean it inadvertently it becomes an interesting experiment in
like humans desire to like please authority, right exactly exactly,
to like perform to the expectations of the people who
are actually running this experiment, and how capable you are
of falling into these roles under like under that paradigm exactly.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
I mean, you see that in Nazi Germany as well,
a lot of the people were doing things to please
the fear, you know, like they didn't necessarily know or
there was a lot of wiggle room from what I've read,
to interpret the fear as wishes, yeah, as people who
wanted to rank up and rise up in the in
the organization, but interpret things in a way that they

(34:50):
would presume would please Pitta and his.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
Desires moving towards the fear.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, exactly exactly. That's the that's the name the phenomenon.
So I mean when when the sound for person experim
when people tried to recreate the experiment for television, you've
got it made for pretty boring TV because it was

(35:20):
bad science in the first place. It's not something that
people do not actually, it's it's what they do when
they are pushed, when they are prodded, you know, when
certain expectations et ceter It's kind of similar with this
other famous experiment that that Bragman talks about, which is
the Stanley Milcrumb's Obedience experiment, where volunteers were told to
administer increasingly painful electric shocks the stranger just because I

(35:43):
got in a lamp code told them to. It's like
another instance of you know, we doing these things just
to please authority, even to the point of murder, because
you know, the the dial of the electric shock was
deadly after a certain point, and you could hear the
screams of the the victim, of course, the fake screams,
but you know, the participants could hear them. But what

(36:04):
Bregman ended up uncovering is that most of the participants
wouldn't follow the orders blindly. They were following the orders, yes,
but they were doing it because they believed that they
were doing something good, something good for the good of science.
That even though the shocks were uncomfortable, that it wasn't
something they wanted to do, there was a noble sacrifice
in the name of progress. Even so, the participants weren't

(36:27):
in the front. You know, they were distressed, they were shaken,
they were sweat, and they were begging to check on
the learner, but they also said things like he agreed
to be in the experiment, you know, or this will
help science, right, or I don't want to do this,
but I have to, demanded lab code, who is telling
them to continue? Please continue, Please continue. He was calm,
he was professional, and also even how in the nudges

(36:50):
that he used were framed made a difference. So if
he was directly ordering them and telling them you have
to do this, surprise, many people would actually be more
likely to resist a direct order framed in that way
for such an experiment. But a more subtle nudge just
like know what, you know science, the experimental requires this,
you know, the experiment needs to do this. A more

(37:12):
subtle it tended to get people to continue. And the
people who were interviewed who did take it up to
those higher volagers, they said they did it because they
believed they were contributing to scientific development. So it's really
this misguided belief in a higher cause that also contributes
to atrocity. It's very easy to get this idea that, oh,

(37:33):
you know that those are just monstrous people. You know,
we have this idea in pop culture that these the
Nazis are like cartoonish monsters. They are monstrous, but they
are monstrous people.

Speaker 7 (37:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
They are, at the end of the day, people who
do evil with the belief that they're doing good. It's
a very extent. I know that there were some who
you know, recanted or who knew what they were doing wrong,
but they had other pressures that were pushing them in
a direction. Right. There are many explanations we will behavior
and all sorts of situations, but a lot of the

(38:07):
people they thought that they were contributing to the right thing.
It's not that they didn't care, but they were taught
to care in the wrong direction. The bad guys don't
think that they're bad guys. And whether we're talking about
the Nazis of the past or Designers of today, they
construct these elaborate narratives to frame themselves as the righteous ones.

(38:29):
You know, as far as the Nazis are concerned, they
are purge in Germany of a serious threat to the
well the in and the safety of their future and
all that stuff. Right, Designers today, you ask them, even
though they're pariahs of the world at this point, you
ask them why they believe that this must continue, and
they will say you know, we have to defend ourselves,
we have a right to defend ourselves. YadA, YadA, YadA.

(38:51):
There are true believers within these groups, you know, who
are able to commit some of the worst acts, committed
ideologues who host of their trustees, who express no remortes,
who take pride in their role, and people reach that
point of ideology through a process of radicalization. You know,
we look at the ten stages of genocide, I think

(39:13):
is the framework people have used before to point out
how a segment of a population can become a target
of genocide. It's not like one day you wake up
and it's just like, oh, we're going to genestid this
group of people. It's a process.

Speaker 7 (39:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
First you start off with classification. You create a separate
group of people, separate category of poison. You make them
signify themselves in some way, carry id cards or some
kind of insignia on their clothing or whatever. They begin
to face discrimination or some kind the discrimination, you know,
is ramped up through dehumanizing language. You compare them to vement,

(39:50):
to rodance disease. And that's just the thing, and we're
going to get to that. But part of how you
get people who would otherwise be here or compassionate about
their fellow human is through distance. Right, So the people
who who are most of bloodthirsty tend to be very
far from the front lines. You know, people who are

(40:13):
demanding that World War One continue, for example, they were
very far from the actual fighting versus at the actual
front lines of World War One. You had soldiers playing
football together during Christmas. That's a separate story. But you
create distance, You either create physical distance or you create
psychological distance. And dehumanization is one of the ways you

(40:35):
create psychological distance. You distance people from seeing their fellow
human being as a human being. Segregation is another way
of creating that distance, which then lends itself to the humanization.
Comparing people to women too, animals, anything other than human
as another step in the humanization and can people to
separate themselves from those people. And then they create specific groups.

(40:57):
The next stage to create specific groups and organization to
enforce discriminatory policies. You further broadcast operate the propaganda to
polarize population. And then we'll step seven, eight, nine, and
ten go from actually preparing the removal relocation of people
to the persecution, the extermination of the group and finally

(41:19):
the denial that such a crime ever could So that
process it can take years, it can take decades, but
it's something that can turn even the most regular Polson
into virulent proponent of Rhanna side if they are not
fastidious in their opposition to any such language, especially in

(41:43):
the early stages, because they get fed the steady stream
propaganda of all the actions are justified, their loyalty to
their inn group becomes tested by their willingness to engage
in those harmful actions. The still with that group will
do whatever their tool is good, even if it leads
to other people being hood and it just creates an evil,
but it's an ordinary evil. It's an evil that is

(42:05):
convinced that it's a virtue. It is wrapped up in
ideology and social conformity because you know, humans are social
creatures and it drives us to cooperate. But that sociality
can be narrowed down to test our in group. And
that's where Breakman actually gets into an interesting point about empathy,
right because we tend to see empathy as a positive thing,

(42:26):
and it can be, but as Bregman notes, drawn from
psychologists Paul Bloom's work, empathy can also make us partial, irrational,
and even cruel, because it can narrow our focus to
those people who are like us and ignore others. That's
why soldiers can fight and kill other people because they
feel empathy for their in group, their homeland citizens, or

(42:48):
their comrades and arms. Their loyalty and affection for the
people they care about supersedes the lives of the people
that they don't care about. Now, of course, I want
to look at systems, so we're talking about this because
I don't think that this hijacking of empathy is inevitable.
You know, nationalism, propaganda, these things play a role in

(43:09):
how people end up being separated in this way, and
it's in groups and our groups. But you know, there
is also indications that in group and our group separation
can occur even in the absence of a stake, So
it is something we have to be continuously vigilant of.

(43:35):
Another aspect of as a systemic analysis or approach is
looking at how our position within society also shapes how
we operate, how we treat people, how we think, and
how we act. Bragmant cites neuroscience research that demonstrates how
authority literally changes how we think. Powerful people become less empathetic,

(43:59):
and I'm more to see others as tools rather than
independent people. You know this is not new information, per see.
You know the enviolence that powerful people are in both
shapes them and are shaped by them, they say, and
has long gone that power corrupts and absolute power croups
absolutely and spaces like Silicon Valley, like Wall streets, like Washington, DC,

(44:22):
like corporate boardrooms and all the other upper echelons of government.
They divorce rulers and authorities from ordinary people, their insular
spaces that keep them from being challenged or being grounded
by the impact of their actions and others, so powerful
people don't have to care. And I think such hierarchies
are attractive to people who already are inclined to do bad,

(44:43):
even if they believe that they're doing good. The authoritarians,
the supremacists, the abusers, They are attracted to those positions.
But even good intention people could lose themselves in authority too,
because authorities as a whole existed in this bubble that
rewards their worst instincts. Sheep in the system around their
worst instincts, around distrust, selfishness, exploitation, and so on, to

(45:07):
reward themselves and their patterns of behavior, and thus, through
the social more seaway effect, people end up filling that
expectation created by the system.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
I guess my only comment here is that these systems
are not just exclusive to like state power or like
corporate authority. These same mechanisms reproduce themselves in all sorts
of social arrangements, including like radical politics, and frankly especially
radical politics. You can see it's a lot with groups,
whether they're communists, whether they're anarchists, whether they're I don't know.

(45:38):
Social democrats probably have this problem, but no specifically like
in anarchist scenes, you see this happen constantly. It is
almost funny how how much these things just get natively recreated,
and like in group out group in amics are always
are always a big issue. I mean, like you can
also point to the book Cultish, which explains how American

(46:03):
culture is pretty defined by like cult like tendencies, not
saying that every single group is a cult, but cult
dynamics play into a large part of everyday American life,
and that's both good and bad. Sometimes being in a
cult is fun until it's not very fun. So these
dynamics themselves are not necessarily you know, bad, but there's

(46:25):
something to be like mindful of.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Yeah, exactly, So in being mindful of it, you know,
that's an aspect of it. You know, we have to
find solutions to this academic of badness, of behaviors being
reinforced by these systems that are cause harm to people
and harm to the world. And so what I always

(46:50):
advocate for and we's big and small. I wouldn't call
it the one solution to everything, but it's it does
encompass a lot, but it's just understanding and taking on
a dynamic social revolutionary approach to change, you know, from
the effort to do to confront the existence system to

(47:12):
stand up against it, but it's also the things that
you do to put forward an alternative, to put forward
and to practice alternatives. So one of the things that
we can do is to create what you know, perpetuate
a positive and trusting take on human decen see, you know,

(47:32):
to create that social placeboy effect that can shape how
people treat each other for the better, but that can
be boiled down to just be nicer to each other.
So there's more we've done than that. Of course, on
the systems front, we also to change how we educate
each other in radical spaces and also in terms of
how we raise children. We have to organize, you know,

(47:55):
alternative economic systems and alternative social arrangements that get us
in the habit of trust, of trust and people's freedom,
of practicing freedom, and also of emphasizing greater intrinsic motivation
in people as well. You know, a lot of our

(48:17):
society is built around control and mechanisms of control through
extrinsic forms of motivation, you know, like punishments and prisons
and grades and bonuses and wages, all the different things
that are meant to keep us going here now. But
I think a system that more leans into intrinsic motivation
is something that we should be working toward. You know,

(48:39):
that people do things so they're in SAE for reasons
that we are driven by. That I think is far
more sustainable long term and more fulfilling long term than
continuing to be stuck with the punishments and rewards that
come from outside. Yes, we have to develop a revolutionary
consciousness that is also very much grounded in you know,

(49:01):
people's intrinsic motivation to have their needs mets, to pursue
their interests to care for others. And that is why
I think we'll sy tea in for as long term,
because you can create all these bonuses and incentives externally,
but I don't think it's something that will last. There are,
you know, experiments in earth with a greater emphasis on

(49:23):
intrinsic motivation, not even necessarily radical experiments by see. But
Bregman actually looks at examples of schools that don't have
grades or fixed curriculums, and that companies that don't have managers,
that are run entirely by employees. I mean, anarchists have
been known about these, but he emphasizes that the people
in these environments thrive because they've been trusted to direct themselves.

(49:45):
They can bring off the best in themselves because they've
been given the room to do so, you know. And
spaces like free schools and maker spaces and cooperatives they
give us the room to develop our cooperation and creativity.
And of course the system is are going to stand
by as these transformations take place. It might tolerate or
even celebrate some like the examples that Bregmann had looked at,

(50:09):
but those are always going to be treated as exceptions.
And the second, he tried to make them the norm.
I think you're going to face some real challenges because
ordinary people one of these things, but the rulers don't.
It's like the example that I had brought up earlier.
You know, the famous nineteen fourteen Christmas Truce during World
War One, where British and Jeman soldiers put down their guns,

(50:31):
they sang songs, they played football, but eventually the high
command crack down these truces. The fratnization of people who
are different from each other was a threat to the
war machine because these systems are invested in maintaining hostility
and division, and so we have to consciously and openly
stand up against hostility and division to build systems that

(50:54):
bring out the best in people. I don't think that
a hopeful view of human nature should be seen as utopian.
As I said earlier, is realistic. Cynicism is not realism.
They're not the same thing. Having hope is not being
that you are completely deluded of the dark side or
dark aspects of humanity and humanity's possibilities. But it means

(51:16):
that you don't limit yourself to that outcome, that you
challenge that narrative, and that you seek to do better
and to create something better, and that's really what I
care about, and that's all I have to share, All
power to all the people this.

Speaker 5 (51:54):
Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 8 (51:56):
It's me James today and I'm joined by georgeen Jedmai from.

Speaker 5 (52:02):
Hengl, this human rights organization.

Speaker 8 (52:05):
Also a journalist who's worked for the Curdish Peace Institute
who we've had on the show before, who I've also
worked with, and the founder of the Kurtis Dan People's
page on Instagram.

Speaker 5 (52:16):
Welcome to the show. Thanks, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 7 (52:18):
Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm so glad
to be here today with you.

Speaker 8 (52:23):
Yeah, of course, And what we're going to talk about
today is Rogia lat or Eastern Kurdistan, right, and how
this figures into I guess what's happening currently in Iran,
what has been happening in Iran, And like, I think
it's really important to give a little more explanation and
background on particularly like the different ethnic groups in Iran

(52:46):
than people generally get when they consume legacy media here.

Speaker 7 (52:51):
Yeah, so if I want to talk about this, like
we need to talk about the history or at least
one hundred and twenty one hundred and fifty years, so
a lot. But today's structure of what we know as
Iran is made up of several different ethnic groups from Persians, Turks,

(53:12):
I mean, Azerbaijani Turks, Turkummands Herds, Baluchi's, Ahwazi, Arabs, and
so many others. But I would say the dominant population,
the dominant ethnic group, and the dominant culture and language
is definitely Persians. Yeah, And if I want to be
more clear, this dominant ethnic group has been exploding and

(53:37):
colonizing and destroying all the lands and the communities and
societies from non Persian regions including Kurdistan, Baluchistan, Azerbaijan, Ahwas
and many other regions and this geographical region called Iran.
And this mainly started during the former monarchy Pahlavis, and

(54:04):
it was intensified after the nineteen seventy nine Islamic Revolution
led by ayato O la Romeni, and as usual, the
Kurdish people were the first to stand against this newly
established regime. In nineteen seventy nine, a few months after
the so called revolution, the Kurds were demanding their rights,

(54:29):
specifically the right to self determination and also federalism, which
was responded by a heavy hit by heavy attacks and
under the jihad order of Ayatolla Romeni, which led to
the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and destructions
of several hundred villages and massive executions of Kurdish people

(54:52):
across the what we know as Eastern Kurdistan or Rochalad.
And following that the oppression continued, and also it was
done against other ethnic groups, specifically Baluchi's and also the
Awazi Arabs and also the Azerbaijani Turks, but in Kurdistan
and Baluchistan it has always been more intense and more brutal.

(55:17):
And then in late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties
they killed two of the Kurdish leaders, doctor Abdur Rahman
Kazenlou and doctor shut Off Candy in Europe during some
negotiations and thus ended up in Kurt being in a
worse situation. And then until around early two thousands, I

(55:41):
think around two thousand and four or three, the PKK
built or established its wing in Roschalat known as the
Free Kurdistan Party or Pajakh sorry Free Kurdistan Live Party
in Roschalat, and then but unfortunately this party was not
not really as strong as the KDPI or Comala that

(56:05):
were already in the fight with the Iranian states. Since
nineteen forty six and so on, this oppression has been
just intensifying by mass execution of Kurdish people, the mass
execution of the political prisoners and activists, and imprisonment of
the different people in the Kurdish society, from language teachers

(56:28):
to environmental activists to children, women, anyone, and this whole
impression that I've been mentioning about, like that that's happening
in East Kurdistan. It has also resulted in a humanitarian
phenomenon called kulbarry. Kulbart's are a group of people that

(56:51):
are extremely underprivileged. They have no access to anything, so
they are somehow forced to go into some sort of
war that they have to carry goods between the borders
of East Kurdistan and South Kurdistan or North Kurdistan specifically
between Iraq, Iran and Turkey. And every year we have
numbers in our organizations you can check. We have a

(57:14):
specific statistics section for these coal wars. Every year, hundreds
of them get killed, just for example, in since the
beginning of twenty twenty five, twenty two of them have
been killed and injured. And among these people there are children, women,
old people. So this is also another form of oppression

(57:35):
that this regime has been using. Any start people, because
this is actually one of the biggest forms of oppression,
if I want to talk about it. There are over
one hundred and fifty thousand cod bars in East Kurdistan
that are somehow forced into this type of work because
they have no other means of income and the government,
the reigning government actually like limitits all the if I

(57:58):
want to call it a colonny developments in East Kurdistan.
This has been going on for decades. And then we
come to twenty nineteen again there was another so I
want to call it uprising or master tests across Iran
when the regime killed over one five hundred people. I
mean before that, there were also tests almost every year,

(58:21):
but that was like one of the biggest one. It
was in November twenty nineteen and they caught down the
internet for twelve days. I remember I was at the
university at that time. And then they killed one thy
five hundred people, specifically so many people in Kurdistan. They
even throw that kills people into like lakes and rivers,

(58:42):
and then after like months and days people found the
bodies like in the nature jeez. And then we come
to twenty twenty two and in September when they the
morality police killed Gina Amini, the Kurdish woman who was
apparently not ware caring a proper hijab or the Islamic

(59:03):
oh or whatever you want to call it yea. She
was killed by the Iranian morality police in Tehran, which
led to the as we know it. I don't know
if we can call it a revolution or uprising or
just mass tests called Jinjiana Zadi or women life freedom movement.
And this also again because it was inspired by Kurtz

(59:28):
the first victim was occurred again. Obviously, it started in
Kurdistan and it spread so fast. Just in a few days,
the entire Kurdish cities were testing, and then it was
followed by other Iranian cities like Tehran. She was but
it was not as intense as in Kurdistan. I think

(59:49):
it was three days after her death. The Kurdish parties
Kadpi and Komala and some others that are not very
well known like pak and also Pajakh or the Free
Life Kurdistan Party. They announced a general strike across Kurdistan
and they called on people to close down everything and

(01:00:12):
go on a full lockdown to protest the killing of
Gina Amini, which was responded by I think over one
hundred missiles or something from the IRGC and the Iranian
regime and it killed I think eighteen if I'm not wrong,
but it killed several people in the camps belonging to

(01:00:32):
these parties in today's Iraqi Kurdistan or as we call
it South Kurdistan. There were also like family members of
the Kurdish politicians and Kurdish Pishmarga that were in those
refugee camps that are also supported by the UN. They
were killed there, and then the protests just got intensified,

(01:00:54):
and I was also there. We were reporting every day
about all the things that were happening. Also, the Baluch
people joined the protests, and at the same time of
those days, a fifteen years old Baluchi girl was raped
and killed by an IRGC commander or member in Baluchistan,
and people also protested that. And there was a Friday

(01:01:17):
which is known as the Bloody Friday of Zahidan people
in Baluchistan. They went to a big mosque in the
city of Zahidan and they were doing their Friday prayers
as Mauslims, and then they started protesting and this was
responded by the Iranian regime forces and over one hundred

(01:01:37):
people were massacred on that day, which also led to
mass execution of more political and just random prisoners in Baluchistan.
And then the protests just went on and there was
a really heavy repression so far, I think over maybe
between five hundred to six hundred people were killed. These

(01:02:00):
are like the official ones, and also several other of
these protesters, specifically from Kurtistan, were executed. Some of them
were executed in public to spread more fear among people,
but people were not given up. And then it continued
until twenty twenty three until I think it was around

(01:02:22):
maybe in March, I'm not really remembering the exact date,
but it was also in twenty twenty three that they
started attacking schools, like girls' schools, with some sort of
gases that nobody actually knows that what type of chemical
gases they were using, and unfortunately we have them, like
we've reported on. Then some school children, like some kids

(01:02:43):
they were killed by these gases, and they were specifically
targeting girls' schools because they are like separate. They don't
they're not together in the union system integrate. Yeah, and
then this went on and people were still protesting, but
on unfortunately it somehow stopped. And if I want to

(01:03:04):
analyze that and related to like to talk about the reasons.
One of the main reasons I think also many other
political activists and analysts also agree on that that the
opposition what as we know as the Iranian opposition, was
not truly united. Yeah. There was a huge effort specifically

(01:03:25):
from the Kurdish parties like Comala and Abdullah Motadi. They
tried to create some sort of collaboration with the so
called Iranian oppositions, specifically the monarchists like the Pahlavis and
some other groups. But unfortunately these groups, I mean it
was in the middle of an uprising, like a movement

(01:03:50):
that hasn't been happening since maybe forty years. Instead of
working together for a common goal like the Iranian opposition
group specifically the Parlavis and also the other ones like
if I want to say, like the mass and like
all the people that work with her, instead of working

(01:04:10):
towards a common goal. They started discriminating against minorities. They
started ignoring and denying and also censoring the minorities, the
same minorities that were the most active against the regime,
that had the biggest number of sacrifices in the protests

(01:04:31):
and also in prisons. They just started spreading their own
typical nationalism. I mean, I would even call them ultra
nationalistic sentiments. And for example, if I want to give
like one of the biggest things that we always talk about,
these people who are apparently against the regime, they have
some red lines, and their main red line has always

(01:04:54):
been the so called Iranian territorial integrity. So like the
these type of sentiments and discussions, it's somehow created like
a lot of mistrust between the Kurdish groups, the Baluchi groups.
Also like with Hawazi Arabs and Azerbaijani Turks and all
these groups, they couldn't trust each other because the dominant group,

(01:05:20):
the Persians or the Iranians or those who identify as Iranians,
they ignored us, they ignored our suffering, they ignored our identity.
They were just repeating what the regime has been saying
since over forty years but in a different form. So
this somehow created a lot of mistrust and also the

(01:05:43):
people inside, like I was there when that was happening,
and I was working NonStop every day of recording, writing, texting,
being on interviews. The people actually lost their hope because
there was no united position, there was no united structure
to say that, yeah, we're advocating for you. I mean,

(01:06:05):
in the first few months it was really great. For example,
here in Germany they had a very big demonstration and
over eighty thousand people from all across Europe. They traveled
to Berlin for that demonstration. It was great, and all
the groups from Iranians, Turks, Arabs, Balucci is like everybody
was there. But unfortunately following that, the people like specifically

(01:06:30):
who is of Palavi, the so called crown Prince of Iran,
who is another like his story is like very also
like crazy, yeah, he and his group and his circle,
and also people like Massi al Najatte, And I would
say all the celebrities because they are not truly they
are not politicians. They have no political study they have

(01:06:52):
they haven't done any specific political work. They are just
celebrities like Nazai Bulnadi. She played in some movies. Yet
she really great actress, but not a good politician, like
these things that celebrities who truly don't understand or they
don't want to understand what people inside Kurtistan, Iran and

(01:07:12):
Baluchis don't want. They pretended to be our voices and
they never listened to us. And then this just made
a lot of distraws and a lot of also hate
between the people. Yeah, so that's why I can say
that it just failed after that, and unfortunately many many
of the people who were arrested during that time, they

(01:07:35):
are still in jail, and just a few days ago
five of them were sentenced to death and we made
a report about them. So like every day did they
get sentenced to death? And I personally know many of
these people who were injured, and they are now here
in Germany. They were brought here but by some humanitaring

(01:07:56):
with us. Some of them are my friends. So like,
it just failed. At the same time, I also have
to mention that one of the reasons that it also
failed it was the regime's extensive propression. They militarized the

(01:08:21):
entire cities, specifically in Kurdistan and Baluchistan for example. In Kurdistan,
they already have over two thousand military bases and checkpoints
all over the Kurdistan region, and during that time, they
had like tanks and military vehicles and the entrances, like
in the gates of every city and also town they

(01:08:43):
were checking out people like I personally get during these
two years, I really didn't go out much, maybe once
a week or once in attendees, just to I don't know,
to go and eat something out, you know, like I
was always home, Yeah, because I couldn't go out and
because my work was important. And then they were just
controlling people. They were arresting people, and even like from

(01:09:06):
the stories that I have worked on before, these injured people.
They also they were hiding in small villages and even
in the mountains, but the regime forces were everywhere looking
for these people and these activists. So it was like
a holy military lockdown in the region. And there are
many crazy stories. I don't know if you have time

(01:09:27):
enough time to talk about, like some different and specific
things that happened, and it was really scary at that time.

Speaker 8 (01:09:35):
Yeah, I would like you to share that with us,
because I think one thing people don't understand is that
the Iranian regime has a colossal capacity.

Speaker 5 (01:09:44):
For violence against the certain citizens.

Speaker 8 (01:09:47):
I think if we talk about like some specific instances
and then maybe we can talk about recently that has
been a bombing campaign against some nuclear facilities and some
IIGC commanders, and like I think if you start with
your anecdote about what happened during this last uprising, that
will help people understand why, like the consequence of this
bombing campaign are not good for people who want to

(01:10:10):
have freedom in Iran, right, people inside the country at least. So, yeah,
tell us some things about that capacity for repression.

Speaker 7 (01:10:17):
Yeah, So, like the bombing happened, and we saw, we
all saw how crazy and how insane, like it was
like movies. I couldn't believe my eyes when it happened.
It was really crazy. And yeah, that was like the
war between two brutal states, Israel and Iran, who both
have no respect for dignity of humans. Nothing, absolutely. Yeah,

(01:10:43):
the first thing that happened it was that, Yeah, they
targeted I think so far as far as I remember
from our statistics, over three hundred and fifty or around
that were the IRGC commanders or the officials from the
nuclear programs than like really the judges who have sentenced

(01:11:04):
thousands of people to death, Like, the targeted people were
mainly these type of people, and also there were also
some civilians I think maybe around eighty or nineties civilians
whom some of them were actually like family members of
these IERGC members, and also some children. And also there

(01:11:25):
was a lot of destruction, specifically in Tehran, many buildings,
including the Evan prison.

Speaker 5 (01:11:32):
Yeah it'shere, they hit the prison, the.

Speaker 7 (01:11:35):
Center of the Iranian broadcast and all these places were
targeted and many officials were killed, also civilians. But the
Iranian regime's response to that was not fully against Israel,
who was bombing Iranian ier GC bases. In the first days,

(01:11:58):
they started attacking civilians. They started arresting every I don't know,
some random people and so far I think last time
we checked hundreds of people across specifically in Kurdistan they
were arrested, and some others were already like in these days,
they got executed because they were accused of spinach for

(01:12:23):
Israel or working for Israel. Just a few weeks ago,
I think five or four or maybe three, I don't
recall the numbers right now. But some Kurdish political prisoners
who were accused of working for Israel were executed in
my hometown Formia in ist Kordistan, and then so many

(01:12:44):
others were also arrested, and then I think some others
were also tortured. At least I remember one case which
we worked on it. There was one case that was
tortured to death because he was accused of working for
Israel and things like that. This was like one of
the responses that the Iranian regime started doing. And one

(01:13:07):
of the things that this regime did in the first days,
it was that they took lots of military vehicles and
like I don't know, equipments inside schools. For example, in
the city of Saradash it's a really amazing beautiful Kurdish
city on top of some mountains. It's beautiful. There's a

(01:13:28):
high school in the city center, exactly in the city center,
and they took lots of military equipment and stuff inside
the school and they threatened the school manager, if you
don't give us the key right now, we will arrest you.
We will do this and that. And they also did
that in the city of Kermanshah. They also did that
in the I remember because I worked under report. It

(01:13:51):
was in the neighbor in the neighborhoodhood called the Zilabad
and they took some military equipments next to a hospital
which was also born and the hospital was damaged and
some people were injured. That was one of the things
that the regime did. And at the same time, I
don't know if you know about this, but in Iran
the military service is compulsory, like Israel, like many like Switzerland,

(01:14:15):
like many countries, but in Iran it's torture. It's some
sort of repression against young men. So across Kurtistan, for example,
in a military base in my hometown in Urma, it's
called Almahdi. It's a very big military base. I know
that some soldiers who are like civilians, but they are

(01:14:36):
forced into it. They're like teenagers, I don't know, nineteen
twenty or twenty one, like you were.

Speaker 5 (01:14:43):
Young guys, yeah, very young that really don't want.

Speaker 7 (01:14:46):
To be there, but they are forced to. They were
saying that their commanders threatened, if you leave the military base,
we will arrest you, we will torture you, and we
will execute you for betraying for like I don't know,
for training your country or things like that, or working

(01:15:07):
for Israel. This was like one of one of the
concerns that many families had before on those days, because
I talked with some people, like our neighbor's son was
also in a military base. He's like nineteen. Yeah, they
were putting lots of pressure on civilians while ignoring that
what Israel is doing every day. They were bombing all

(01:15:29):
the military bases, I don't know places, and like they
were even bombing places that nobody even knew that they existed.
But their focus was, like the regime's focus was on
civilians who were just scared, who were just trying to
protect their families. Yeah, and this was just like what
they started doing. And yeah, I mean it's it's still

(01:15:54):
going It still is going on, and they're arresting people
all the time, and as usual, the majority of the
focus and repression is again happening in Curtis on against
Kurdish people. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:16:06):
I think it's very important people understand like that Iran
is not like an ethno state, well it is an
ethno state, that that that is not ethnically monolithic like
the territory of Iran and the Persian ethno state do
not necessarily like line up. I think people will also
be very confused about like when we hear quote unquote

(01:16:27):
Iranian opposition in this country, right, right, it's often like
I think there's this knee jack. Oh that's good, right,
these are people who are opposed to this regime which
is brutally cracking down on people. But often then, as
you say, it's associated with like monarchists for the most part.
And then we have these various like anything in Kurdistan, right,
like it's an alphabet suit, but like there is like

(01:16:49):
there are seventy five different like initial groups of initials.
Can you explain who some of these actors are? Right?
We have on we have the Iranian monarchists, we have
the KDP, I have all these different groups pagiacht like
you say, the KCK group. Can you explain some of
these people are the people say they understand?

Speaker 7 (01:17:07):
Yeah, if I want to talk about Kurtisan, I would
go to the first Mother and Kurdish Party called KDPI,
which was founded in nineteen forty five and it was
the founder of the Kurdistan Republic. And also then there's
the Koma Law Party, which is also like a socialist

(01:17:28):
communist Leftist Party which also has several branches, but they're
all basically the same. And also there are other parties
like pak yeah, yeah, the Freedom Party of Kurdistan, and
also we have Pajaq the Free Life Kurdistan Party or
I don't know if it's that, it's the same in English.

Speaker 5 (01:17:48):
Yeah, Kaddistan Free Life Party.

Speaker 7 (01:17:50):
Yeah. These are the main political parties and actors in
East Kurdistan. However, there are also like smaller parties like
Abbot and also some parties that are affiliated like they
are like very small groups that are affiliated with for example,
the Iranian Communist Party, which is not also really big.

(01:18:14):
But the main ones right now are Kdpi and Tomola,
who both of them have like a long history of
fighting against the regime and also against the monarchists the
Pahlavi regime. They were i would say, really really active
until like twenty twenty three. They played a very very

(01:18:37):
important role in the revolution in like in Kurdiston specifically
because they were the ones who were announcing like strikes
and they were working together and like organizing things and
helping people out to resist. Obviously, there was no arm

(01:18:58):
struggle at that time or conflicts because they said we're
not going to fight because if we bring the fights
and conflict inside Kurdistan, the regime will destroy the city
with styles. This is exactly what they said at that time,
because there was a demand from people that yeah, the
Peshmarga forces should come in the cities and fight alongside

(01:19:21):
with us, but they said no, if you do this,
the regime will destroy the cities. These are the main
forces in Kurdistan, and of course they have different ideologies.
Pajak is like the PKK's wing, or if I want
to be more official, it's a member of the KCK
or Kjaks we'll say. And KDPI is like as I said,

(01:19:44):
the history goes back to nineteen forty five and Comala
in the early seventies and also Pak I'm not sure
when it was founded, but it was also like it
was founded one by one of the members of the
KDPI who say as Dampana and they are more of
a military I would say, well organized military group. That

(01:20:07):
they also played a good role against the ISIS in
twenty seventeen and eighteen, specifically in Kerkuk in South Kurdistan
or Iraqi Kurdistan and about the Iran in a position
if I want to say, yes, we have the monarchists,

(01:20:29):
the Rizapah Leavi and his group. They have like a
whole long list of parties. Basically they're all the same
but they have different names, and they are all right wing,
and they all focused on the territorial integrity of Iran.
But they also pretend that they care also about democracy,

(01:20:50):
but that's that's a lie. And then we have people
like Massi Haleine Jot who is more of she's an
activist and she's she's internationally known for her activism against
the compulsory hy job, but she doesn't have any specific
party or organizations. She's just an activist and a journalist obviously.

(01:21:16):
And also there are other several people that work with her,
like Nazani Bunyadi who also works with like Pa Lavis.
And also there is another one who also played a
big role. His name is Hamid Ismailiun. He is one
of the members of the families of the people who
were killed in that plane that was shot by missiles

(01:21:37):
biology see in twenty twenty in Tehran. And again there
were many Kurds inside that Ukrainian plane as well. This
person was Smailun. He is one of the members of
like he lost his entire family in that plane crash
or attack. He organized many, many great and big demonstrations US, Canada, Australia,

(01:22:01):
I think even in the US and specifically in Germany.
The one in Berlin was the biggest. Also, he doesn't
have a party, but he also somehow backed down after
like what Alavis did, for example, like or the monarchists
did with the whole opposition groups. There are also some
leftist groups and individuals, but unfortunately they're not truly leftists.

(01:22:26):
So I want to give you a name. There is
a person called as Easy. He is also well known
in the US. I don't know. He wrote some books
and he works with really like international media. Just a
few days ago he posted something that said we we
the leftists of Iran. We we are in love with
our homeland and we care about our homeland and we

(01:22:49):
don't He just posted something that was that was really nationalistic,
like a typical Persian Iranian sentiment. That was that does
that going on and it's got lots of criticism from
different groups. And then we have the the Awazi Arabs.
They also have some parties, but they are not really

(01:23:10):
strong or active or well organized, like the Kurdish ones,
the Turks the other by Johnny Turks. They also have
some groups, but they're also not very active or organized.
And many of these groups they are heavily affiliated with
the azer Bay Johnny government or the Turkish regime and

(01:23:31):
specifically the MHP party in Turkey, like the ulternational Turkish party.

Speaker 5 (01:23:36):
Yeah right, yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:23:38):
And then the Baluchis, I can say they are more
organized because they have this I don't want to call
him a leader, but like the the highest, the highest
level mollah in Baluchistan, Molavi Abdula. He is like the

(01:24:02):
most popular mula in that region, and he was one
of the people that was organizing protests and he was
giving lots of speeches like during the Friday prayers in Baluchistan,
and a lot of people were. They still like they
follow him and they follow his words. But unfortunately he

(01:24:22):
is also like appointed as the Imam of the Friday prayers,
if I want to be more specific, in Baluchistan by
Kameny himself, the Iranian Supreme Realer. But it's like a
little bit hard to understand that where he stands exactly
because on one side, he he's appointed by the regime.

(01:24:43):
But on the other side, he's also like acting as
a political leader or advocate in Baluchistan. I think they
also have some armed groups, but they are mainly Islamists,
and I would say, but they're also not very very
will organized. Yeah, they do attack the IRGC members and

(01:25:05):
these agents who are oppressing people on a daily basis
sometimes and sometimes they get killed. And also sometimes just
a few days ago, there was a fight between these
people and like civilians in the village and also the
IRGC courses and I think two women were killed and
more than ten or eleven were injured. Jeez, but this

(01:25:28):
this fights and conflicts and they're always happening in Baluchistan.

Speaker 8 (01:25:33):
Yeah, it can be hard, I think especially people aren't familiar, right,
like the Pak to distinguish from PJAK, like have definitely
been making a big effort on the internet, I will say,
like with their Peshmega right like in the last three
weeks since the US entered the Israel's bombing campaign, like

(01:25:55):
to appear like this and they are very well organized
Pesh Mega like I think they say they were cook.
I think maybe they're in Kubani.

Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
As well, like maybe they Yeah, they joined in yeah, ye.

Speaker 7 (01:26:05):
The Pajakh was specifically in Rajava and they were also
fighting against ISIS because like they are like as I said,
they are, they are a member of KCK, and there
are allies of PKK, so they're all are interconnected and
they all work together.

Speaker 5 (01:26:24):
I think the PAK also worth in Rushava, right.

Speaker 7 (01:26:27):
I am not sure, but I think members of PAK
joined like the fight in Rojava, like as individuals, because
the fight in was also something that people from all
over Kurdistan went.

Speaker 8 (01:26:42):
There, Yeah, from northern Kerdistan to yeah. Yeah, And these
are very organized groups, but like there isn't I guess
there is a kind of insurgency. But as you say,
like if these groups just took our bambs in the
cities and the IIGC would destroy everyone in those cities, right,
that's a I think people sometimes one day like why

(01:27:02):
they don't just start fighting and then there is fighting
to be clear, But like as you say, the regime
punishes civilians, right.

Speaker 7 (01:27:10):
Yeah, I mean this is not the first time that
the regime does this. Every time that Israel does something
to the regime, because this is not the first time
that Israel has killed someone in Iran. Like some IRGC
member or nuclear agent, nuclear scientists or whatever. Every time
this happened during the past few years, instead of responding

(01:27:35):
to Israel as a state, they responded to the Kurdish people.
I think it was just two years Again, in twenty
twenty two, they literally bombed a civilian house in Erbin,
the capital of Iraqi, Curtisan, and they killed an entire family,
like it was like maybe a six seven months old

(01:27:57):
baby and her father. They always respond to Kurtz when
they get attacked or bombed or damaged or whatever by
Israel or America.

Speaker 5 (01:28:08):
Yeah, it's like a soft target attarget they feel they
can safely attack, you know, versus like we know now
that they around pre warned the United States it was
going to attack its basis, you know, following this bombing raid,
and it was more of a performative thing than a
like a serious attempt to attack US basis.

Speaker 8 (01:28:28):
And even like this week I saw in Slea money
like they round is sending shahedrones.

Speaker 7 (01:28:34):
Yeah. Actually during the past maybe ten days, this is
like last night there was an attacking slay money. But
this is like I think the fourth or third time
that there have there have been like several drone attacks
on different places. So, yeah, this is something that the
Rhalem has been doing one of the other funny things.

(01:29:06):
I mean, this is not funny exactly, but it's weird.
I just yesterday and actually two days ago. I'm not
really good with dates and numbers, that's okay. Just two
days ago they conducted like a cyber attack on this
TV channel, Iran International, which is also advocating for monarchists,
and they expose like some newt photos and like private

(01:29:30):
photos and videos of some of the staff that work there,
and they are threatening that we will publish more if
you don't stop or whatever. This is also like another
strategies that the regime uses when they lose something, when
they get attacked. They also like target activists, journalists, or

(01:29:51):
for example they threatened their families or they threaten them
here inside Europe or in America or Canada or wherever
they are. Yeah, this is like as we call it,
it's the transnational repression of the regime and it's been
going on forever. And again if you look at the numbers,
most of the attacks have been on Kurdish activists. For example,

(01:30:13):
during the past thirty years, over I think around six
hundred non political activists have been killed by the regime
outside of Iran, and nearly four hundred and fifty or
something of them were Kurdish. Yeah, this is also another
thing that the regime has been doing, and in these
days they have intensified.

Speaker 9 (01:30:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:30:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:30:34):
They have a long history of transnational repression and like
participating in the repression of other.

Speaker 5 (01:30:41):
Revolutions, right.

Speaker 8 (01:30:42):
Like, of course they were massive backers of the Asad regime interior.
You know, all around the region. They will find the
wrong side to line up on it and do that.

Speaker 7 (01:30:52):
Again.

Speaker 5 (01:30:53):
Of course, people will also be familiar they were supporting Kusbala,
for instance in Lebanon.

Speaker 8 (01:30:57):
One thing I've heard is that like the regime has
been really cracking down on Afghan people, like mass devotations
of Afghan people who have come to Iran, right and
especially in the wake of this bombing campaign. Can we
talk about that briefly.

Speaker 7 (01:31:09):
Yes, of course. I think that's one of the most
horrible things that happened after the war. So far. We
know that just in June they deported over thirty thousand
Afghans and it's still going on, Like they mass support
tens of thousands of Afghan refugees every day, and just

(01:31:31):
something that was really horrible to me when I read it.
There were six thousand kids that were unregistered and they
were separated from their parents and they were sent back
to Afghanistan alone.

Speaker 5 (01:31:44):
Jesus.

Speaker 7 (01:31:45):
Yeah, and they are haunting down Afghan migrants in different
cities across around, especially in Tehran because most of them
are there. Yeah. And the thing is that the Afghan
I think there are all worth three million gone migrants
in Iran or maybe more. Nobody knows the exact numbers
because the Iranian government never ever publishes the true statistics,

(01:32:10):
but there are millions of them in Iran and they
are not actually allowed to They were not allowed actually
like they're getting kicked out right now, but they were
not allowed to work in Kurdish cities. They were only
allowed to work in Persian speaking cities like Tehran, mashat Hiros,
Isfahan and these big industrial cities. So like right now,

(01:32:34):
if you look at the internet, they are being hunted
down by Iranian agents everywhere and they're being forced to
go back to Afghanistan. And one of the things that
I want to mention that's been going on from a
humanitarian perspective that really really makes me sad, and also
it reflects a very ugly reality about the Persian or

(01:32:57):
the Iranian society and the amount of racism and fascism
that exists among them, not just by the regime, by
the people as well. There have been hundreds of videos
and footage online. You can also check just search and
you will see that random citizens, young people, they are

(01:33:18):
attacking Afghan people in the city and I don't know,
in subways, in the parks, in cheese, in public places.
Just yesterday I saw a very heartbreaking video because like
Afgone people, they also have a different look. You can
easily say that they're not Iranians. An Afghan teenager was

(01:33:40):
being attacked by eggs Jesus and they were just throwing
eggs at him and then they poured like lots of
some powder and then like some juice and like coca cola.
I don't know what was that. They were just throwing
everything at him. And on the other another video that
I saw, they stopped a man maybe he was thirty
or something. They forced him to kiss the hand of

(01:34:03):
a stray dog. And then yeah, that would be like, yeah,
he's kissing a dog. But in the Middle East culture
when you force someone to kiss a dog.

Speaker 5 (01:34:13):
It's very disrespectful.

Speaker 7 (01:34:14):
Yeah, it's really disrespectful, and like they're also I read
on the internet that many Afghuns reported that, like, for example,
in Tehran, they were renting a house or an apartment
or something, and they were living in those apartments and
the landlord reported them to the police. It's like what's
happening in the US. It's something like ice, but it's

(01:34:34):
Iranian but more brutal. Then the police just came and
took them all. And now the landlords are refusing to
give back the passion money to Afghans, and many of
them are being forced out without any food, without any
support anything, and especially the women. Like I also read

(01:34:55):
about like a doctor that fled Polybon and he was
in Tehran and now if he goes back to Toliban
will definitely kill him because he was like against Tolliban. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's it's a very horrible humanitarian situation.
And the people, like in Baluchistan, they are also suffering.

(01:35:15):
But I saw many videos and also some of the
activists published lots of footage that they were they were
bringing food, water, I don't know, medicine, and things like
that on the on the road to give it to
those people who are going back, and they were offering
I don't know whatever they had. And in Afghanistan there
is also happening, but it's just so crazy because both

(01:35:37):
the regime and also the anti regime media are trying
to portray Afghans as the problem. Just exactly like how
the far right parties in Germany, like IFD, they are
portraying refugees and migrants are as the main problem.

Speaker 5 (01:35:54):
Yeah, it's a global thing. It happens here.

Speaker 7 (01:35:58):
Yeah, it's it's exactly the same. Yeah, and like yeah,
unfortunately the even the Iranian opposition has not been clear.
But again because there is some sort of solidarity that
encourage pollutes and Afghans and also other minorities. Yeah, it's
the minorities that talk about this. It's the minority groups

(01:36:18):
and organizations who try to raise awareness over this. Unfortunately,
I think nobody can stop it because they're doing it anyways.

Speaker 5 (01:36:28):
Yeah, and like we shouldn't support an opposition politics. It
is just another ethnot like.

Speaker 8 (01:36:34):
We see that in Syria right now, right, Like, yeah,
they haven't even changed the name. We have this revolution,
tens of thousands, maybe one hundreds of thousands of people
definitely died, Yeah, to build something better, and we still
have the Syrian Arab Republic.

Speaker 7 (01:36:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:36:50):
Yeah, it's maybe the Alahites are.

Speaker 8 (01:36:52):
Being persecuted and they weren't before, but like that shouldn't matter, right, Like,
if we're building trying to build something better.

Speaker 7 (01:36:58):
I mean they are just remnant of Isis. So what
can you expect?

Speaker 8 (01:37:02):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's very sad to see,
you know, after after so much killing and dying, I
guess to finish up, I think people in the US
do not get very good coverage of what's happening in
a run right, Like I said that, as you say,
dominated by monarchist outlets, we tend to have good resources

(01:37:23):
which allow them to kind of get to the top
of people's feeds or they're getting like press TV stuff,
right that just like straight up regime propaganda.

Speaker 5 (01:37:33):
Now, where can people find.

Speaker 8 (01:37:35):
Like good resources to understand what's what's happening in around
Like from the perspective of you know, the majority of
people who just want to live a free life, and
especially like you know, the women in particularly in a
round right, have an extremely difficult and repressive every that
the regime dominates every aspect of their lives, Like where
can people find reasonable coverage that acknowledges that.

Speaker 7 (01:37:58):
Honestly, if I want to talk about media like TV
channels or just media websites, there is no media like
Iranian media that truly reflects what's happening in Iran. There
are like many leftists and also right wing medias. For example,
if I want to go like a very leftist media

(01:38:18):
called Radio Zamani, they are not really good. Like then
we have Iran International, BBC, Persian Voice of America, Persian Independent,
Persian like there are many many media that all of these,
like I would say the big media, they are heavily
dominated and I would say exploited by the ultranationalist people.

(01:38:42):
And also there are people who are related to IRGC
and this organization called Nayak that is like the regime's
lobby group in the US, and these individuals that work there,
they truly don't reflect what's happening there. And I mean
it's kind of hard because if people want to understand

(01:39:02):
what's happening, maybe they should read everything they're posting and
then analyze that, hey, this makes sense and this doesn't
but that just a little bit hard. But also on
the other side, I would suggest that people should follow
more human rights organizations, which again some of them, if
I want, I don't know if it's okay to say
their names, some of them and the people for example,

(01:39:25):
the Burrumant Organization, they did lots of great work, but
recently again they showed some sort of racism and like
censorship against minorities, especially Kurt and people like Lot and
buzz Agane. They are like also doing some human rights
work in the US, and even people like Massi and

(01:39:48):
all these I would say known activists, and even here
in Germany, they are not truly reflecting what's happening. They're
just focused on the Persian and they're like they talk
about minorities time to time, but only when it fits
into their agendas, into their ideologies and perspectives. But there

(01:40:12):
are other organizations which I'm working with, like Hangout Organization
for Human Rights. Until two thousand, late twenty twenty three,
I guess we were mainly focused on East Kurdistan, but
right now we report human rights violations from all over Iran,
like yeah, but we try our best, and I think

(01:40:32):
I could say that we are one of the best
when it comes to all these things, and we don't
care about what people think. We just report what's happening
or what happened. And there are other organizations like Iran
Human Rights they're also good. For example, there is another
one called Tawana. They are like a very big organization,

(01:40:54):
but unfortunately they advocated for the monarchists again just a
few months ago, so it's kind of hard to see
that who is truly on the side of people. And
when you look at the human rights organizations. I'm not
saying this because I'm Kurdish, but this is what I
see and I think it's true. The only organizations that

(01:41:15):
truly reflect what's happening without caring about people's backgrounds or
ethnicity or whatever. It's our organization. Hang Out and also
like organizations like Curtis on Human Rights Network, but unfortunately
the majority of the others are are really clear. So
for Kurdish issue, I would say definitely hang out and

(01:41:37):
also on my page Kurdistani people I also like write
a lot of things, and also Kurdish Piece Institute and
Kurtish Center for Studies. They have lots of other Kurdish
journalists and experts that write a lot of really good
articles about the situation there. And if I want to
mention names, I would say Rojen Mukhliani. She is like

(01:41:57):
a really great researcher. She lives in our land. There
is another professor called Camraan Martin. He also writes really
great analysis on situation and like the things that people
even don't think about. They're writing with so many different
international organizations and institutes. Yeah, there are like these individuals

(01:42:19):
and activists.

Speaker 8 (01:42:21):
Thank you so much for joining us. That was really
that really helped, I think for people to understand things.
Tell us about your your Kurdistan People page. Where can
they find that on on Instagram?

Speaker 7 (01:42:31):
Yeah, thank you for inviting me and thank you for
letting me speak. Yeah, I have this page Kurdistani People.
I usually post about all over Kurdistan the things that matter.
Obviously I can't do it all the time, but yeah, yeah,
I post a lot of things. And there are other
pages that are also collaborate with, like Kurdish Activism or

(01:42:53):
everything about Kurtistan, where just a group of people who
work together. Obviously, like our organization, I think it's it's
very very important for people to follow and support it
hang Out Organization for Human Rights and also Kurdistan Human
Rights Network that's also like another one that you can follow. Yeah,
and also like GA I talked about some names and

(01:43:15):
individuals and researchers. Yeah, you can also follow them for
more professional analysis about East Kurdistan or Rochalot.

Speaker 5 (01:43:25):
Yeah. Great, well, thank you Sam for joining us. We
really appreciate your time.

Speaker 7 (01:43:28):
Thank you, Thank you very much.

Speaker 5 (01:43:51):
Hi everyone, and welcome. What could happen here?

Speaker 8 (01:43:53):
It is a second episode about Kurdistan. I am very
lucky to be joined today by Vladimir van Wilgenberg, who
many of you will know is a journalist covering Kurdistan.
It's done excellent work for a lot of publications. So
welcome to the show of Vladimir.

Speaker 7 (01:44:09):
Thanks so much for irritation.

Speaker 8 (01:44:11):
Yeah, thanks for thanks for being willing to join us
so late at night your time. Let's start off by
discussing an event you attended or the event you were
in proximity too. By the sounds of it, people will
have seen this online, I'm sure, but it was the
disarmament of a number of PKKE garrillas that took place

(01:44:33):
in the mountains of southern Kurdistan over the weekend of
the tenth to twelfth of July.

Speaker 10 (01:44:39):
So yeah, a few days ago, well, I tried to
attend the ceremony from for the big Kegary Lass that
were disarming, but sally what happened is that they burned
their weapons, although technically it's not really possible to burn
a weapon because there were colossic coals specially that they
were put they put in a fire, and it wasn't

(01:44:59):
like a actually a tourist cave near do Kan, so
this is not It was actually very different because I
also have been in during the peace process. I've also
was in a press conference of the pik Ak in
two thousand fourteen or fifteen or some of that around
that time, and that was very different because it was
basically in the area that the Pikak is activated. It

(01:45:20):
was in the area under their control, but this was
under a different Kurdish parties control. It's called the patriarch
Union of Kurdistan. So in Iraqi Kurdistan you have two
main parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and you have
the Kurdistan Democratic Party. So this cave where they did
the ceremony, which is actually a tourist cave. It's in

(01:45:41):
PUK controlled area, so the ceremony was sort of protected
by PUK security forces and that's why. Also the PUK
media they got a lot of special access, and also
there was the Turkish government media was there, and also
PIKK media was there and a lot of other Kurdish
TV channels.

Speaker 7 (01:46:00):
So it was a very interesting day.

Speaker 10 (01:46:02):
Although I was not able to pass the checkpoint towards
the ceremony because at the last moment, actually a few
days before the ceremony, they.

Speaker 7 (01:46:10):
Changed the access.

Speaker 10 (01:46:12):
Supposedly it will be a very open ceremony, but then
they said for because of security reasons that they had
to restrict the ceremony and there would be some TV
screens and stuff. And then I couldn't find the TV screens.
But that's another discussion. But I also don't still understand
what the security risk was. Although a day before there
was a drone strike on a Kurdish Peshmerga base, but

(01:46:34):
that was like quite far away from that. It was
one hour away from the ceremony location.

Speaker 8 (01:46:39):
Yeah, and it's an Iranian droned to take great like
a Shahi drone.

Speaker 10 (01:46:42):
Yeah, So there have been like no group has claimed
these attacks. But after, in the aftermath of the Twelve
Day War, there have been a lot of drone strikes
in the Kurdistan region in various areas, including this morning
on an American oil company's facility in the province Okay,
and the day before that also on another field near Airbill.

(01:47:06):
So it has been quite tense, Yeah, which also probably
affected the ceremony, although it's not.

Speaker 7 (01:47:10):
Really related to it.

Speaker 5 (01:47:11):
Yeah, it's different.

Speaker 10 (01:47:13):
So yeah, basically what was interesting, So they have this
peace process between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state.

Speaker 11 (01:47:20):
It's all started with a call by a.

Speaker 10 (01:47:22):
Turkish ultra and nationalist leader which actually in the past
actually called for executing ab the Loachland, the leader of
the Kurdistan Workers Party has been in prison since the nineties.
He was actually surprisingly starting this peace process.

Speaker 7 (01:47:37):
He was saying like we should.

Speaker 10 (01:47:39):
Have him talk in the parliament and call for disbanding
the pik a K. So he never came to the parliament,
but he released messages from prison, and before the ceremony
he released also a video message where he again focused
on disarming basically. Yeah, and then the ceremony basically came

(01:47:59):
where he had thirty fighters fifteen women fifteen men, because
the pikk is all about woman equality, so that's why
they did it fifty to fifty, and they put their
weapons in this fire. So I think this is also secondfice,
a point of renewal because Kurts, as a tradition, they
have this Kurdish New Year every year on twenty one March,

(01:48:21):
where people jump over fires. There's a lot of fireworks,
and the Kurdish and atros is basically the start of
a new beginning.

Speaker 7 (01:48:28):
Yeah, so I.

Speaker 10 (01:48:28):
Think one of the reasons they chose these fires is
because of this idea of a new beginning, and also
the fact that when the Pikak started there were people
that sort of the creators of the pik k. They
are actually some of them they burned themselves in prison
in the Turkish prisoneh. So it's also sort of related

(01:48:49):
to that, this sort of interlinkage with a fire. Yeah,
and you also saw that they carefully put the weapons
in the fire, they didn't just throw them. So it's
it doesn't mean that they have completely given up on weapons,
because they're still waiting on counter steps from the Turkish government.

Speaker 5 (01:49:09):
Yeah, Like there has been fighting between pikk or hPG
or how you want to say it, like hPG being
like the technically the armed wing. There has been fighting
in southern Kurdistan, like in Iraqi kig Kerdistan Autonomous Region
of Iraq since the call for peace, right like there

(01:49:29):
has been ongoing fighting.

Speaker 10 (01:49:31):
Yeah, I mean it's not really I would not say
that it's like like actively fighting to take territory, yes,
which was happening before.

Speaker 7 (01:49:41):
So it's more that.

Speaker 10 (01:49:42):
It's some like Turkish armies shooting artillery on the pik
Ak and there was also one incident that the Pikak
actually responded by drones.

Speaker 7 (01:49:52):
But so far this.

Speaker 10 (01:49:53):
Didn't reach much in the Turkish or the Kurdish media.
I mean they were like, some of this artillery shelling
costs some fires, so villagers in the areas it's a
very hot summer now, they were trying to put out
the fires. But it was not like the active, active
fighting that you had before. And you know, since there
was also a previous peace process. I mean, there have
been several peace processes since history between the Pikyk and Turkey,

(01:50:17):
but they never had a positive result. And last one
before this song was twenty fifteen, and after that peace
process broke down when two policemen were shot. It's still
unclear who shot those policemen. The fighting erupted again and
since then there have been heavy fighting, first in the
Kurdish majority areas of Turkey until basically Turkey defeated Kurdish

(01:50:43):
armed insurgents in the Kurdish cities in Turkey, and since
then actually the fighting has moved more to Iraqi Kurdistan,
where the pikk has also a historical presence since the nineties.
What you now have is that you have this new
peace process started by the skull of Bats Shelly and
the big Aka leader Johanna has said the time for

(01:51:04):
armed struggle is over. We don't want to have a
Kurdish date. So basically what now is happening is that
the Kurdish Pikak and the Kurdish political counterpart in Turkey,
they're basically waiting for steps by Turkey now to give
them basically trust to continue this process.

Speaker 7 (01:51:23):
And there was also a speech by.

Speaker 10 (01:51:25):
The Turkish president Erdoland where he was also saying that
it's the end. We don't need anymore, We need to talk.
It's not a time for weapons anymore. We spend trillions
of dollars on the war against the pik Ak. We
had this a lot of martyrs and we sacrificed a lot,
and it's now the time to stop the war and

(01:51:46):
to do talking. And he said they're going to work
with the Kurdish Party and this ultra Turkish nationalist party
the MHP in the parliament, and to also set up
a commission to basically work on constitutional changes.

Speaker 8 (01:52:00):
Yeah, let's take a break for adverts here and then
we'll come back. All right, we are back. I guess
we should talk briefly about like the nature of this
this core for piece. You explained very well that this

(01:52:21):
is probably a higher chance of success than there has
ever been, right, Like, we have the explicit buy in
of Ojulan, who hasn't been seen on video since the nineties,
so like to have him making a video statement, it's
quite significant. I'm sure he's been seen on video, but
like not not like making a speech, right, and then
that we have like this this endorsement in the Turkish Parliament. Like,

(01:52:42):
I think there's been a lot of speculation about what
led to this, and some of it's not particularly helpful.
But you know, you're you're very well educated on these matters.
What do you think this means for not just the
PKK but the k c K. I guess like the
Kurdish Freedom Movement that the diferent movements throughout Curtistown, they
are inspired by the political thought of Aujilan Well.

Speaker 10 (01:53:05):
I mean, until now, it's difficult to say what exactly
is going to happen because the PIKK said they're going
to go, they will disarm.

Speaker 7 (01:53:12):
But there's other.

Speaker 10 (01:53:14):
Groups which are linked to the PIKK in Iran, Iran
and in Syria and also for instance Sinjar. Those groups
said they were not Some of them have said publicly
that we're not part of this process or they welcome
the process, and others they didn't really say much.

Speaker 11 (01:53:30):
To the City's group haven't said really a lot.

Speaker 7 (01:53:33):
Yeah, so it's also going to.

Speaker 10 (01:53:35):
Be interesting what will happen with those groups, with the
Iranian Kurdish group and also with the Serian democratic forces
in Syria that have a different situation. Also after the
fall of US out, they have these talks with Damascus.
And actually one of the reasons that the first piece
process broke down was because that in actually at that
time also that Turkey was a little bit afraid of

(01:53:56):
this alliance between the Kurds and the Americans at the
time against ISIS that was then rising up in Syria
and attacked the Kurdish town of Cobine in Syria, which
created an alliance between the Kurts and the US against
the ISIS terrorists militant jihadi group.

Speaker 11 (01:54:14):
But now the situation actually is interesting.

Speaker 10 (01:54:17):
So at that time the Curds were empowered in Syria,
but now you can see there's a completely different situation
now the opposite way. So now you have the rebels
that took over Damascus and they are now the government
run by Jiulani his previous name, who's now called himself
antal Shada, his real name. So they now have a

(01:54:37):
new Islamist controlled government and Damascus, and there's a lot
of tension between the Curts in Syria and Damascus. So
this could also risk basically this piece process with Turkey
because the SDF they have also ideological ins with the
pik Ak So it's also interesting how this will work out.
So in the past it was also always like the

(01:54:57):
fighting between Turkey and the Pika k could threat than
the SCF Assyria, but of sort of the other way
around that fighting between possible fighting in the future between
Damascus and the curtain Syria, it could threaten the peace
process in Turkey. Yeah, and erdo and he made this
very big speech not a very long time ago where
he mentioned that Turkey doesn't only want peace for the
Curse in Turkey and for Alla Whites, also a religious

(01:55:20):
minority in Turkey, but he was also talking that he
wants peace for the Curse in Syria and also in Iraq,
that they should also live like a prosperous life in Syria,
and that they have good relations with the Sian government.
So I think that's also a very interesting point that
you don't see many articles that there's like this very
big interlinkage between all these different tissues.

Speaker 8 (01:55:40):
Yeah, and I think Turkey has maintained that the SDF
is the PKK right just with like a different badge,
which is not the case.

Speaker 5 (01:55:49):
They share a lot of politics, but they're distinct. Turkey
also has like extensive proxy forces in Syria that have
been fighting with the SDF since I guess late well,
I mean for years, but like in an expanded sense,
since since the beginning of the fall of the Asad
regime that we saw like probably seven or eight months ago. Now, No,

(01:56:14):
it's a very complex situation. It's also as as we
record this today on the fifteenth, Syria is a very
diverse country and to add to all the groups you mentioned,
there is currently fighting between the government and Druze militias. Right,
can you explain a little bit about the situation there
and the relevance of that.

Speaker 10 (01:56:36):
Well, I mean the Drus they are a religious community
that are not same as the Sunni Muslims, and they
control their own area on the border, the town called
Sweda and the villages around it, and also they have
some areas in Damascus where they have the presence. So
the Drews basically during the time when the Asad regime

(01:56:56):
still wasn't power, they didn't really like fight very high
against the Assaut regime in the beginning, but they didn't
allow the Assaut regime to recruit military recruit people in
their area and they sort of tried to keep the
regime out of their area. So during the civil war
they were sort of semi autonomous, but not officially. And
actually in the last years before the fall OFFASA, they

(01:57:18):
were like a big protests in the Drews areas in
support of the Syne Revolution and against the Assaut regime.
So they were like very big protests in the Druz
areas against the Assaut regime. So when the Assad regime
was militarily weakening and the rebels from the other side
of Syria they were attacking the Assad regime, the Drews
they also joined the fight and they marched together with

(01:57:41):
the Southern rebels. They marched on to Moscus, and they
were actually the first one that entered the Moscus, not
the ahmtal Shada or the HTS. Actually the first ones
that entered the Moscus was the Southern rebels and the Drews.
But there's this thing is that the Moscus wants to
have this new regime or the new government, and the

(01:58:02):
Mouscus they want to have this very centralized system, so
they don't want the Drews to run their own armed
groups and they have their own sort of local autonomy,
so they have They have been fighting before between the
Drews and the new authorities in Syria in areas near Damascus,
but there was like a ceasefire and the fighting stopped.

(01:58:23):
But recently there's also like historical tensions between these Arab
bedouin tribes and the Drews in this area. So these
areas are quite mixed. So there's actually this recent conflict.
They started when Biduan tribes they they robbed like a
merchant who was a Druce and then after that they
were like mutual kidnapping, like tensions within both sides. And

(01:58:46):
then basically, although the Moscus said they were neutral, the
Muscus started to support these Bedouin groups against the Drus
and started marching on on Sueda, which is the the
drew stronghold on the border.

Speaker 11 (01:58:58):
And so actually there have been.

Speaker 10 (01:59:00):
Like a few days, not even a few days, but
have been like a short period of fighting now and
actually Damascus they entered this Zruze town of Sueda and
they actually said, okay, we control the town now, and
now we're going to withdraw the Seran army and then
the internal security force is going to control the city.
That very shortly after, Israel started bombing heavily the cern

(01:59:26):
armed forces of the new Sirn government and then the
Drews armed groups they sort of pushed back and they
pushed out this internal security force out of the city.
And now the Drews are according to many reports back
in control of the city of Zuida. And now you
see that just like what happened with the Alla Whites
when there was this Osad regime remnants that had uprising

(01:59:49):
against the new authorities, and then there were like these rebels.
They were mobilized with mosk all over Syria and they
went to the coast areas and they defeated those Assad regime,
but they killed also a lot of civilians, some reports
over fifteen hundred people. So what you now see is
that the Damascus is against mobilizing those people with mosques

(02:00:09):
to march on Zueda. But the difference is with the
All Whites is that Israel also has DRUS, So there's
also pressure on the Israeli government to support the Drews.
So it's not only because of their strategic interests, it's
also because they are Drews living in Israel itself that
also have joined the Israelian army, so they're also pushing

(02:00:30):
Israel for taking action. So you saw that today like Israel,
they took a lot of they carried out a lot
of air strikes, and the Drews that are basically back
in control of most of the Sueda city, not of
the whole area. But the fighting is not over yet.
And then you also have different Ruis fractions. Some of
them they have better relations with Damascus, the majority of

(02:00:51):
them don't. So now we're going to see if there's
going to be fighting, if the fighting is going to
increase again, We've seen our reports of the HDS or
that the Moscus government forces are using drones strikes by
themselves on Thuice forces. So they're using basically the drones
that they used to overthrow the sut regime.

Speaker 7 (02:01:10):
Okay, so yeah, that's the situation.

Speaker 8 (02:01:12):
Yeah, I think like the world stopped looking at Syria.
I mean, I guess the world stop looking at Syria
a while ago, like really, after the defeat of the
Territorial Califate, it's been much harder to sell stories in
big newspapers in the United States. But yeah, it's by
no means, like the fighting is not over, and it
leaves their SDF Western Kurdistan branch of this Kurdish movement right,

(02:01:37):
like in as you said, a fairly perilous condition.

Speaker 7 (02:01:40):
Right, the.

Speaker 8 (02:01:42):
Damascus wants to centralize like they want to have they
don't want to have independent they don't want to have
like federated autonomy. The United States seems to be at
least the United States envoy to Damascus seems to be
making statements. It suggests that like the only way for
it through centralization. On one hand, we have the Pepkklene

(02:02:15):
and arm hand, we have the SDF in its difficult position.
Where does this leave Like the Kurdish Freedom movement, I
think this has been the thing that a lot of
people all over the world have looked up to, right,
people have, especially rish Ava, as this example that people
could build something a place where freedom could exist in
the middle of this terrible war in Syria.

Speaker 5 (02:02:34):
Do you think the movement's like in danger now?

Speaker 10 (02:02:37):
Well, I mean you have this new government in Syria actually,
and in initially Trump administration was quite reluctant to have
relations with the new authorities in Damascus because they were
I mean, Jiolana used to be on a y Ahmad
I used to be on a terrorist sanctional list.

Speaker 5 (02:02:54):
Yeah, there was a bounty for him at one point,
it wasn't there.

Speaker 10 (02:02:57):
Yeah, But I think there was like a very intensive
lobbying by some Gulf states and Turkey to basically remove
the sanctions on an Ashata Julani, but also removed sanctions
on Syria that the economic sanctions that were actually were
on the Asaturgy.

Speaker 11 (02:03:13):
So I think the Trump administration changed their position.

Speaker 10 (02:03:15):
And also a new ambassador for Syria and Turkey was appointed,
so he was not only the bassador Turkey but also
for Syria, and he's basically echoing a lot of the
points of the new authorities in Damascus that he was
talking about one state, one army, one days, one days,
and the SEF should be integrated and blah blah blah.
So there was also recently there were talks between Damascus

(02:03:38):
and the STF because in March they reached an agreement
with Western support and they were trying to basically make
a more finalized agreement in recently a few days ago,
they had these talks in Damascus and the French were
there and the Brits were there and Americans were there.

Speaker 11 (02:03:54):
But this agreement was not implemented.

Speaker 7 (02:03:57):
It didn't lead to anything.

Speaker 10 (02:03:59):
So it was that really didn't really work very well
because the Moscus is insisting on this centralized state. And
I was just listening to Kurdish sharing Kurdish official as
she was also saying, like we don't want to separate
from Syria, but we want to have some form of
local councils and a decentralized Syria, not like a centralized Syria.
And she was also talking about what happened to the

(02:04:20):
Drews that it's not a very good example.

Speaker 7 (02:04:23):
For the future of Syria.

Speaker 10 (02:04:24):
Yeah, so I think definitely what you're saying that there
is a sort of a threat because in the past
was very supportive of the SEF in the fight against ISIS,
although they didn't support so much their political project, but
they supported them because they fought ISIS. And also they
were keeping out Iranian backed malicious from areas like the Resor.

(02:04:45):
But now you don't have me run anymore. In Syria,
they were completely kicked out after the fall of the
Asot regime. All these militias they have been disbanded or
hiding or some of them actually now being used by
the Muscus against the Jews. So now that argument is
not there anymore, that you okay, we have the SDF,
they keep out the run from the oil fields. Yeah,
you could still argue you have still have the fight

(02:05:07):
against ICES, I mean ICES is still thread. Yeah, but
the Curts don't have that same leverage anymore as is
in the past, that they said, Okay, we're the main
ones fighting ices. We keep out the run from these
areas because now you have the Moscus. The Moscus said,
why the kurtshould do that? Like, let's us take over
those prisons and the camps where you have these thousands

(02:05:27):
of ISIS families and ices prisoners, and we don't need
the Curts to run the ices. Well, we can do
that for you. So I think that's now like the
big issue is that the US seems to be more
supporting the Moscus these diplomatically than the SDF, although military
speaking that the support is still going on for the
SDF until twenty twenty six in the last Pentagon budget

(02:05:52):
which was not accepted yet they're still like millions of
support for the SDF to maintain the prisons and this
kind of stuff.

Speaker 11 (02:06:00):
I think it's it's it's a difficult sitution.

Speaker 8 (02:06:03):
Yeah, that these prisons like our whole and others right
like they there, I guess kind of the only leverage
the FDF has with the United States, where along with
the continuing and somewhat increasing ISIS attacks, but that's still
much less of a threat to the US than it

(02:06:23):
was ten years ago, say right, like it's it's much less,
so a significant thing.

Speaker 5 (02:06:27):
So like what is the.

Speaker 8 (02:06:29):
Status of those prisons that currently they're still guided by
the SDF right, but the people aren't familiar. Can you
just explain what those prisons consist of and like who's
in there and who's guarding them.

Speaker 10 (02:06:41):
Well, so ISIS credit this jihadi state between twenty fourteen
and twenty nineteen. But then the Kurdish that SDF they
basically took most of the areas under ISIS control. They
defeated basically ISIS with the support of the US, so
they lost the territory and the last basically was for
a small town called Bahus and the resor.

Speaker 11 (02:07:04):
So you had all these ISIS families there.

Speaker 10 (02:07:06):
And also there were like several ISIS foreign members that
were captured, so you have the wives of ISIS fighters,
and you also have ISIS fighters themselves that were captured
during these battles. So all these people they were brought
to camps. So I was there in Syria many times.
For instance, during the battle for Raka, which was used
to be the capital of the ISIS Caliphate, they were

(02:07:28):
like bringing the Isis families and women to a camp
in I Knowisa, But after that they moved most of
those people to actually move almost all of them to
the Roche camp and all hold camp in northern Syria
in the Hassaka province. And also that includes foreigners. You
can imagine people from Uzbekistan, from Uihus, from China, people

(02:07:50):
from Turkey, French people, European people, so it's full of
a lot of different people. And then the majority are
actually Iraqis and Syrians. So the SCF they have this
foul they a majority. Like a lot of people in
those camps, they have been repatriated or they have to
return to their homes. So I think those camps like

(02:08:11):
a whole camp. Like the prison. It's not a prison,
it's a camp. I think, like the number of people
that are basically decreased almost fifty percent, but there are
still a lot of people inside. But the prisons you
have still all these Isis spiders that were in prison
during the war, and a lot of them are foreigners,
including Dutch, another country. You know, some countries they have

(02:08:31):
returned there, they have returned their people there. So we
have some people, you know America, they took back most
of the families and the fighters, and they prosecute them
in the US. But you also have countries that didn't
bring back the fighters. For instance, they only brought back
the woman. So that's the situation that all those people
are still there. And it's actually what you mentioned. It's

(02:08:52):
like one of the big reasons for support for the SDF,
And it's also one of the reasons that the SDF
is getting millions to keep those prisons in good shape
because they have been also by isis to three those
prisoners from those prisons basically.

Speaker 8 (02:09:06):
Yeah, in successful attempts in twenty twenty, twenty twenty two,
I think it was when they had the last like
major prison escape, which, yeah, it's a bad thing for
our world if if all those all those people get out,
and like you say, lots of European nations, I think
it's something that I wish Americans had paid more attention

(02:09:27):
to because the thing that European nations have done, the
United Kingdom being a paramount example, is like rendered some
of those people stateless. Right that they've removed there in
this case, Shmima Bagoum is probably the most well known example. Right,
they've removed her British passport and now she doesn't have
a state, she's stateless. It's something that the US has

(02:09:49):
recently done to people living in the United States, and
like it does feel something as if you know that
the president has been established and now it's being carried
down and it's obviously deeply concerning to see it happening
here after it happened there at which people had opposed
it when it did well.

Speaker 10 (02:10:09):
I mean the US in the US itself in Syria
was very a big advocate of bringing the people out.

Speaker 5 (02:10:16):
Yes, it was, Yeah, because it will make.

Speaker 7 (02:10:18):
It easier for them to withdraw.

Speaker 10 (02:10:19):
So they were actually pushing those countries that didn't want
to bring back. There are nationals to basically bring them back,
like Western countries, the UK and others. Yeah, but some
of these countries were actually forced by court orders or others.
But a lot of these counties were actually quite reluctant
to bring them back because they were afraid of like
security risk and stuff, or that they will be released
quite quickly and then they would again like be active

(02:10:43):
and judist activities.

Speaker 9 (02:10:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:10:46):
Yeah, so US was very very so.

Speaker 10 (02:10:48):
I remember that the US was even offering like members
of this Coalition against ISIS, which was created in twenty fourteen.
Likes you said, if you cannot bring them yourself, I
mean we can. Our military can help you to bring
those people out. If you think that you it's it's
difficult for you to go to Syria and pick those
nationals up from your accounts.

Speaker 8 (02:11:07):
Yeah, yeah, been pretty unsuccessful, like in a lot of
well in some European cases they have, but still yeah,
lots of them utterly refusing to do it. I wonder
then as we finish up here, right, like we spoke
about this PKK disarmament, obviously it's a symbolic disarmament, right
there is still I don't quite know how big the
hPG is, but it's much bigger than thirty people. And

(02:11:28):
then the weapons they laid down were like a very
small percentage of their weapons. Were they just burning like kalashnikov?
So did they burn like larger weapons too?

Speaker 10 (02:11:39):
No, it was just our personal COLASGIC calls basically, Okay,
So I mean it was also like more symbolic symbolic ceremony,
like we are willing to give up.

Speaker 3 (02:11:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:11:49):
But the thing is that also it's still not clear
what happened to those thirty people.

Speaker 11 (02:11:53):
Are they going to go back to Turkey.

Speaker 5 (02:11:55):
That's what I wanted to ask.

Speaker 10 (02:11:56):
Yeah, are they going to stay in Iraqi Kurdistan and
find the job there, because you have people like that
in Iraqi curstand that used to be with the Pigger
k and that now they work in I don't know,
in media or construction sector or entertainment sector. You have
people like that, but there's not much clarity on that.
But I think also that's because they're waiting on Turkey

(02:12:16):
to make possible constitutional steps, you know, to see what
Turkey is going to do, because for instance, Turkey could
offer an amnesty or these kind of things, then those
people could return. And also some of them were saying
like now it's the end of weapons, but we still
want to be involved in politics.

Speaker 5 (02:12:31):
Right through the political party.

Speaker 10 (02:12:32):
So it's also possible that those people want to go
back to Turkey and basically take part in Kurdish politics
or Turkish politics to be more truged in Turkey. So
I think it's a little bit too early to say
what happens with those people because I remember also if
I very much corrected, they're also having peace process that
basically people have given basically went to the border and

(02:12:53):
give themselves up to Turkey. But that didn't happen now,
so it's a bit different than in the past. But
it seems that the Turkish government was very happy with
the ceremony.

Speaker 7 (02:13:02):
They didn't complain about it.

Speaker 5 (02:13:03):
So okay, yeah, yeah, I wondered what happened.

Speaker 8 (02:13:06):
So there's guerrillas or former guerrillas I suppose, who laid
down their weapons at the end of the ceremony. They
just kind of returned to the mountains or whatever. We
don't know what will happen with them now.

Speaker 10 (02:13:18):
That's that's not clear to me because there are still
some unanswered questions, like what you mentioned now, like what
those thirty people did, Yeah, what those people are going
to do now?

Speaker 8 (02:13:27):
So right, there's a lot of people, and it's a
lot of people, some of whom have spent decades as
cadra of the revolution, right that they have they haven't
really known life outside of the revolution for a very
long time.

Speaker 10 (02:13:41):
Yeah, so it's so a bit difficult for them to
return to civilian life because I mean, because that's they
probably joined when they're quite young. And I think i's
also the profiles of the people of those thirty people
will burn their weapons. That a lot of them they
joined in the nineties. Wow, so they have been in
they have been in the mountains for a very long time. Yeah,
I mean some of them were young, but there were

(02:14:02):
also older people among them. But definitely it's going to
be a question what will happen with those people, although
I mean they were also talked that some leadership of
the armed Pikak movement might go to Europe and get
asylum there, yeah, instead.

Speaker 11 (02:14:17):
Of going back to Turkey.

Speaker 5 (02:14:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:14:19):
You know, you have also a lot of courage the
asport or organizations active there, so they could like basically
embrace those people.

Speaker 5 (02:14:27):
But they're still listed as a foreign terrorist organization in
most two Yeah exactly.

Speaker 10 (02:14:31):
I mean, for instance, they probably would want to have
something like what the Syrian president have now Ahmatoshada that
he used to be rested as a sanctioned as a
terrorist organization and then to have that removed. But I'm
sure that that's not on the table anytime soon.

Speaker 7 (02:14:45):
But that happened with the HTS.

Speaker 10 (02:14:47):
But also it happened for instance musidin Hulk, an Ranian
opposition group, they also got delisted. So it's technically as possible,
but I think we are like in a very early
stage of the peace process. So that's why I think
it's to take time before we have more clarity and
some of these answers that questions you ask, now, I
mean most of the people that attended the ceremony didn't

(02:15:08):
have an answer to that too, because there was not
much clarity on that because it was just a ceremony.
There was like a statement. Journals were not able to
talk to most of the journalists. I mean there were
there was like some statement in some Kurdish media, but
in general, like they were not able to talk to
those fighters, like now, what are you going to do?
There was not like access to those thirty people that
burn their weapons.

Speaker 5 (02:15:29):
Yeah, so it.

Speaker 10 (02:15:30):
Was like sort of quite very much controlled ceremony. It
was very difficult to report on it, basically, which is
very different from the previous preat process when it was
much more open. Yeah, but that time there was not
like forty fighters giving up their weapons. They just had
like sort of a press conferences what we're going to do,
and that was very different than what happened now.

Speaker 8 (02:15:49):
Yeah, yeah, it gets it's because just to keep watching
it's fascinating to watch it unfold like I was in
Curdish Down a year and a half ago, and it
is competit. See, the situation is completely different likewise in
the whole of Syria. So yeah, it's fascinating to watch.
I'm sure if people want to know more about it.
You're very good at reporting on this. You often post

(02:16:11):
on Twitter about the situation, and you write for a
number of outlets, So how can people follow your work?

Speaker 10 (02:16:18):
Well, the best place to follow my workers on Twitter
on its X because I'm quite active there, but also
I write for places like Middle East I something thanks
like watching the Institute New a Liance Institute. I also
write for a Kurdish magazine called Kurtis Tank Chronicle, and
also I pitched for other websites, so I'm quite active

(02:16:40):
on different issues, but mostly focused on things related to Kurts,
so mostly stuff related to Iran, Turkey, Syria.

Speaker 5 (02:16:48):
It's yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us.
We really appreciate your insight.

Speaker 11 (02:16:53):
Jery, welcome, my friend.

Speaker 4 (02:17:17):
This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today
I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. Yes,
this episode we are covering the week of July nine
to July sixteen. What's going on, my boys and in
some cases gals and in some cases days that were

(02:17:39):
its or whatever?

Speaker 2 (02:17:40):
And the answer for everyone is ed.

Speaker 4 (02:17:45):
Hooray in some cases my gals. I guess let's start
by talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2 (02:17:55):
That's what we always do, Jepstein. Yeah, you know what, Garrison,
I hear You've got some bars to drop about Epstein.

Speaker 4 (02:18:04):
Jesus all right.

Speaker 2 (02:18:08):
Well, that's that's my work for the day.

Speaker 4 (02:18:10):
Brief brief summary. Previously on this show, we talked about
how Patel and a Bungino, the head of the FBI,
have previously come under fire from micro supporters for saying
that Epstein really did kill himself. And this has kind
of been bubbling in the base for a while because

(02:18:30):
they used this as one of their main like campaign
and podcast talking points for the past four years.

Speaker 2 (02:18:35):
Yeah, Bongino was a huge.

Speaker 4 (02:18:38):
Elstein, I mean, and like Patel's like the QAnon guy,
like he's both these guys have have made their careers
the past four years, like heavily about this topic. And
now they are, you know, backtracking on a whole bunch
of the previous you know claims or you know, just
asking questions type stuff that they did the past few years.
And like a week and a half ago, a memo

(02:19:00):
from the Department of Justice announced that it was closing
the investigation and claiming that there was no client list
for Jeffrey Epstein, despite Pambondi herself boasting about having Epstein's
client list on her desk only a few months ago.
This caused a huge freakout in the MEGA world. There
was conflicting reports that Bondi or Patel or Bungino might

(02:19:24):
be resigning like in protest of this memo. A lot
of like uncertainty over what was real. And then on
July twelfth, Trump had to speak his own truth social
okay quote, what's going on with my boys and in
some cases gals. They're all going after Attorney General. Pambondi's
doing a fantastic job. We're on one team Mega, and

(02:19:47):
I don't like what's happening. We have a perfect administration,
the talk of the world, and selfish people are trying
to hurt it all over a guy who never dies,
Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it's Epstein over and over again.
Why are we giving publicity to files written by Obama,
Crooked Hillary, Komy Brennan and the losers and criminals of
the Biden administration who conned the world with the Russia

(02:20:09):
RUSSA Russia hoax, fifty one intelligence agents, and the Laptop
from Hell all caps. They created the Epstein files, just
like they created the fake Hillary Clinton Christopher Steele dossier
that they used on me. And now my so called
friends and quotes are playing right into their hands. So
this was right after claiming that the Epstein files did

(02:20:31):
not exist, that these things are not actually real, and
then Trump's talking about how they are real but they
are in fact written by his enemies. Despite the most
recent investigation into Jeffrey Epstein starting at twenty nineteen, when
if you remember, Donald Trump was the president.

Speaker 8 (02:20:47):
Well Garson the defining political question of the modern areas
who was president in twenty twenty, So I can see
it moving back.

Speaker 2 (02:20:55):
There's no answer to this question, you know, We just can't.
We don't know, we will never know. There's no way
to prove it. Our records don't reach back that far.
We just simply can't say who president was. The mists
of time have shaded over so.

Speaker 4 (02:21:10):
Much of modern domestic politics is about confusion over who
was president in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty when it
was Donald Trump. He ends by saying, quote, let's not
waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody nobody cares about.
So funny, you could tell he's so far gone too.

(02:21:31):
He sounds scared because he never fully understood this stuff.
Like there's things that he understands instinctually, and there's things
that he never really got. And because he was Epstein's friend,
he never really got why this was so central. He
kind of got that it was, but he also kind
of assumed, like, well, if I tell everyone.

Speaker 2 (02:21:49):
To shut the fuck up, they will, They're gonna be
look up.

Speaker 4 (02:21:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's how he's done things for
the past like twelve years, and it's more often than
not worked really well for him. But this has become
such a load bearing aspect of like the maga self image,
Like this is like, you know, this type of stuff
is what druve QAnon essentially like a cult. He and
he never fully understood why QAnon was really a thing.

(02:22:12):
He never like truly grasped it.

Speaker 2 (02:22:14):
That's why he never really he started more recently doing
some QAnon signposting, But yeah, he clearly never fully got
why it was happening. Yeah, like it was convenient.

Speaker 4 (02:22:26):
And now the monster that he and his you know,
quote unquote friends have helped create all these years is
starting to nibble on his own leg.

Speaker 5 (02:22:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:22:34):
This past weekend, influencers like Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, and
Charlie Kirk all started to kind of turn on Trump
on a play a quick video from disgraced BuzzFeed writer
Benny Johnson now right wing podcaster by.

Speaker 9 (02:22:49):
Admitting that the Epstein files are real and have been written,
and that you've read them and you don't like their
contents and they were written by your enemies. It doesn't
make It doesn't make the most compelling case.

Speaker 7 (02:23:07):
As far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 5 (02:23:10):
Holy moly, holy moly, holy moly. You had to hear first.

Speaker 4 (02:23:17):
There was a lot of this stuff over the weekend,
like this, this whole like podcasting Gohert, which which so
many people, you know, credit to Trump's great success in
twenty twenty four all started asking questions and we're kind
of confused. I don't know why they would be. It's
been very well documented that Trump was friends with Epstein
for a long time. But this time this thing finally

(02:23:39):
broke containment.

Speaker 7 (02:23:40):
Yea.

Speaker 4 (02:23:40):
And when you have like fucking.

Speaker 12 (02:23:42):
Charlie Kirks, someone who's basically like one of the GOP's
like top narrative shepherds essentially, and when you have him
like questioning the president's own story and credibility, that's like
a pretty big shake up in the mega world.

Speaker 7 (02:23:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:23:56):
Yeah, it's not really explicable. There's no plausible deniability.

Speaker 5 (02:24:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:24:00):
I think for a long time this has been like
the load bearing cognitive dissonance for this entire movement. And
I actually do think when Elon first was just like
he's in the files, I think that was the first
moment that all these people were suddenly allowed to do this.

Speaker 4 (02:24:15):
That was the first domino. Definitely.

Speaker 5 (02:24:17):
Yeah, he cracked the shut on it.

Speaker 12 (02:24:20):
And I think that has like torn open this rift
that has allowed all of these people who previously their
cognitivessonance has sustained them through a decade of like, yeah,
of our dear rulers obviously friends with the pedophile life.

Speaker 4 (02:24:35):
I'll say it, critical support even.

Speaker 12 (02:24:43):
Let them fight, Let them fight.

Speaker 4 (02:24:45):
So the next move that the geniuses of the Trump
administration tried to pull to to settle things down was
released the raw footage, the missing raw footage outside Jeffrey
Epstein's sale, to finally finally close the book on this
jeffre EPs didn't kill himself moment, and they released it,
and everyone realized, you know what, They're right, there's nothing

(02:25:05):
more to look into here. Case closed.

Speaker 2 (02:25:08):
You know, probably we all rose up as if with
one voice to say, this doesn't seem suspicious.

Speaker 4 (02:25:14):
So Wired found that this quote unquote raw video was
actually edited and had it nearly three minutes removed.

Speaker 2 (02:25:23):
Sure, yeah, but look it does, doesn't Jeffrey Epstein deserve
some privacy, you know, three minutes on his own.

Speaker 4 (02:25:29):
It was a really personal decision for somebody to take.

Speaker 2 (02:25:32):
And I yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:25:35):
So no, after claiming that like they've released this, this
this completely, this is completely you know, ripped straight from
the hard drive raw footage. Uh, it showed that it
was edited in Adobe premiere and has these missing missing
three minutes. Pam Bondi initially tried to say that there's
usually a minute missing from footage because of a computer

(02:25:56):
reset that happens every night at the same time, which
was that immediate proven incorrect by the by there being
way more than one minute missing.

Speaker 2 (02:26:07):
Yeah, three minutes. I'm sorry. They're simply like, I came
into this as like, I don't know what happened, you know,
maybe he killed himself.

Speaker 4 (02:26:14):
Maybe, I.

Speaker 2 (02:26:17):
Mean, and now I'm now I'm I'm I am sincerely
more on the well, something there's something there height say.

Speaker 12 (02:26:24):
I will say, there's one thing that I think this
does definitively rule out, which is that it was definitely
not the Clinton crime family. We've ruled out one possible.

Speaker 2 (02:26:35):
Now you see this, This brings me to a theory
that I have been working on for the last couple
of days, and I think this is this is really
important to get out to people. So obviously, the other
big statement that Donald Trump made in the last week
was that his uncle, who used to be a professor
at M I T, had taught Ted Kaczinsky and talked
to him about Ted Kazinski and been like, yay, you know,

(02:26:56):
there's a real thin line between genius and insanity. And
then it came out that Donald Trump's uncle, who Todd
at MIT, died in nineteen and eighty five, and of
course the unibomber was not publicly identified until nineteen ninety six. Now,
some people have interpreted this as Donald Trump lying, which
I think we can all agree doesn't seem like something
he would do. So the only other explanation is that

(02:27:19):
Trump and his family knew who the unibomber was for
more than a decade and kept it hidden from the
rest of the United States. Now, what is the unibomber
and Donald Chuck Trump have in common? Obviously two people
who were treated very unfairly by the Clintons, right, I
think we can all agree on that, you know, so
it all ties together.

Speaker 4 (02:27:39):
Both are possibly victims of m k Ultra.

Speaker 5 (02:27:42):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (02:27:43):
No, his little Tuesday speech in Pittsburgh was quite bizarre.
Not just that Kasinski never went to MIT.

Speaker 5 (02:27:52):
It's gonna say to my notedge, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 (02:27:54):
No, just did not go to the university that doctor
John Trump was at.

Speaker 12 (02:28:00):
I will say this is the first one of these
stories that this genuinely sounds like an Alex Jones story,
Like this is the kind of story that Alex Jones
tells about his uncles.

Speaker 4 (02:28:08):
All the time.

Speaker 5 (02:28:09):
Yeah, they ain't. They ain't talking to Alex Jones right now.

Speaker 4 (02:28:11):
No, definitely.

Speaker 5 (02:28:13):
But it's like persona non grotra in the White House currently.

Speaker 4 (02:28:17):
It is a truly bizarre ramble.

Speaker 13 (02:28:19):
I have to take it off to brag just for
a second, because when I first heard about AI, you know, it's.

Speaker 7 (02:28:25):
Not my thing. Although my uncle was at MIT, one
of the great.

Speaker 13 (02:28:29):
Professors fifty one years whatever, who longest serving professor in the.

Speaker 7 (02:28:33):
History of MIT.

Speaker 13 (02:28:34):
Three degrees in nuclear chemical and math.

Speaker 7 (02:28:40):
It's a smart man.

Speaker 13 (02:28:42):
Kazinski was one of his students.

Speaker 3 (02:28:43):
Do you know who Kazinsky was?

Speaker 13 (02:28:45):
There's very little difference between a madman and a genius.

Speaker 7 (02:28:49):
But Kazinsk said, what kind of a student was he?
Uncle John? Doctor John Trump? He said, what kind of
a student?

Speaker 3 (02:28:55):
Man?

Speaker 7 (02:28:55):
He said, seriously? Good?

Speaker 13 (02:28:58):
He said, he'd correct You go around correcting everybody. But
it didn't work out too well for him. Didn't work
out too well.

Speaker 7 (02:29:05):
But it's interesting in life.

Speaker 4 (02:29:07):
Didn't work out too well for him.

Speaker 8 (02:29:09):
Shared didn't Christ To be fair, he never he never
gives a first name.

Speaker 5 (02:29:15):
It could have been another, It could be a different
good This is true.

Speaker 4 (02:29:19):
James.

Speaker 5 (02:29:19):
Yeah, yeah, people, I also god that whole thing, just
the undergrady goes around correcting everyone cases.

Speaker 7 (02:29:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29:30):
But back to Epstein, the thing that Trump doesn't want
us talking about.

Speaker 3 (02:29:34):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (02:29:35):
By Monday, some of this, like Influencer podcasting class, started
to kind of close ranks. The skepticism and frustration that
they expressed over the weekend subsided and they started to
repeat the party line. Charlie Kirk said on his show,
quote plenty was said this last weekend at our event

(02:29:55):
about Epstein. Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the
time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration.
I'm gonna trust my friends in the government to do
what needs to be done, solve it balls in their hands.
I've said plenty this last weekend. So if you guys
want to see my commentary on it, that's fine. Everyone
knows my opinion on the Epstein thing. The messaging of fumble.

(02:30:17):
I would love to see the DOJ move to unseal
the grand jury testimony unquote. The messaging fumble really the
biggest problem with it. The biggest problem with Jeffrey Epstein
has been the messaging fumble, not yeah, decades of horrific
sex crimes tied to the president of the United States.

Speaker 12 (02:30:37):
Also, I love that he's trying to trust the plan
people with Like the thing that trust the plan is
about reviewing, this.

Speaker 5 (02:30:44):
Is about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just keep trusting it.

Speaker 8 (02:30:48):
I do want to say that, I because I hate myself.
I listened to Sean Ryan's podcast interview with Gavin Newsom,
which yeah, I don't suggest it is four hours if
you wondering. So never get pissed off about our episodes
going along again, please, lots of interesting stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:31:06):
Trump has lost.

Speaker 8 (02:31:07):
Sean ryant that he is not towing the line on
this Epstein stuff. He's clearly pissed about it. And like
Ryan is a sizable influence on the right. He has
about five million YouTube subscribers right He's one of the
top ten podcasts on Spotify. He's interviewed Trump on his
pot like when Trump did his podcast offensive before the
twenty twenty four election, Ryan was one of the places

(02:31:29):
he went. And it seems like Ryan is not on
the like RNC paid poster list because he seemed like
more critical of Trump than Gavin Newsom was in that interview. Weirdly,
and specifically about the Epstein stuff, which it was kind
of remarkable to me, and I think like we should
note that it's he has.

Speaker 5 (02:31:50):
A significant influence on a certain type of people.

Speaker 4 (02:31:53):
Someone who certainly does appear to be on the R
and C paid list is documentary filmmaker Jesusa.

Speaker 14 (02:32:01):
I'm going to talk about the Epstein files, and I'm
going to make the case that even though there are
unanswered questions about Epstein, it is in fact time to
move on.

Speaker 4 (02:32:17):
Very convincing.

Speaker 5 (02:32:21):
Exactly there's nobody with a firearm out of shot in
that video, So I'm sure it's fine.

Speaker 4 (02:32:26):
Case closed.

Speaker 2 (02:32:28):
Yep seems good to me.

Speaker 4 (02:32:31):
In another move for transparency, on Tuesday, Republicans unanimously voted
to block the release of the Epstein files. Betty Johnson
interviewed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about how they
kind of want to handle this and they're trying to
make this argument that they're that they want to be transparent,
but they have to make sure that they protect protect

(02:32:52):
the victims, and that's why they can't release the files.

Speaker 12 (02:32:55):
Sure, yeah, protect victims. Republican Party compelling telling stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:33:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:33:01):
Part part of what makes this super weird is like
Trump just keeps giving though just the most bizarre most
like I'm totally not guilty comments in media, and something
he said on Tuesday I found to be quite interesting,
not because of what he actually said, but because of
how he said it. See if see I see see
if you can catch this specifically, think she'd tell you

(02:33:21):
about all that your name up here up.

Speaker 6 (02:33:24):
By no, No, she's She's given us just a very
quick briefing.

Speaker 7 (02:33:29):
And in terms of.

Speaker 6 (02:33:30):
The credibility of the different things that they've seen, and
I would say that you know, these files were made
up by Komi, they were made up by Obama, they
were made up by the Biden from you know, uh
we and we went through years of that with the Russia,
Russia Russia hopes with all of the different things that
we had to go through. We've gone through years of it.

(02:33:52):
But she's handled it very well.

Speaker 4 (02:33:54):
And it's going to be very convincing stuff.

Speaker 8 (02:33:56):
You can see Caroline levit just like just like being
it like right, say.

Speaker 4 (02:34:02):
First time I've heard Trump like stutter like this before.
And like Trump's whole idea of reality is if you
speak it enough that becomes true. You can literally bend
like the concept of truth. You can bend reality using
your words, and that This is why he, you know,
talks about being a winner. This is why he only
surrounds himself with people who are winners. Like he thinks

(02:34:22):
that reality is this malleable thing that you affect through
asserting your own will. And he's done this super successfully,
especially throughout his career in politics. You know, he's a
mixed record of it in his uh business business era,
but certainly in his political uh but certainly through his
political career, he's done this fairly well. This is why
almost half the country believes that the last election was stolen,

(02:34:44):
just because he said it enough. Yeah, this is the
first time I've heard him break while trying to speak
reality into being like he literally could not get himself
to do it cleanly, and and that is notable to me.

Speaker 7 (02:35:00):
Me.

Speaker 4 (02:35:01):
He's made a series of truths later that day, talking
about how quote, my past supporters have bought into this
bullshit hook line and sinker. Oh, very good. And he's
now moved to call the Jeffrey Epstein story the Epstein hoax.

Speaker 3 (02:35:19):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (02:35:21):
He had an Oval Office press conference Wednesday morning. Quote
I call it the Epstein hoax. They're talking about a
guy who died three four years ago. And the sad
part is is people are doing a democrat's work. They
are stupid people.

Speaker 8 (02:35:33):
I don't think that's the sad part about what happened
with Jeffrey Epstein. I think there are other sad things
related to his conduct.

Speaker 5 (02:35:40):
A man is dead, you know.

Speaker 12 (02:35:44):
I think the thing that is like very alarming about
this so that I think is very dangerous about this
entire situation. A lot of this on the right has
always been sort of motivated by anti semitism. Yeah, well,
and I think we are going like we are already
seeing some ship.

Speaker 4 (02:36:03):
It's funny you say that, Mia, Yeah, because another voice
has joined the call to release the files. Oh God
for Processively Street residents. Elmo made a series of I
will say, shocking statements over the weekend, expressly good shocking.

Speaker 2 (02:36:22):
If you've been familiar with some of the court cases
against Elmo over the last couple of years.

Speaker 4 (02:36:27):
I know Larry David attacked Elmore a few years ago,
and he had probably coming as saying this for years
as a Jewish man. I think he saw through Elmo
stick and knew the anti semitism at the heart of
Elbow that was being suppressed Nazi. But yeah, Elbow made
some shocking tweets just you know, very similar to like

(02:36:49):
what happened to Kanye a few years ago.

Speaker 11 (02:36:51):
Similar figures.

Speaker 2 (02:36:52):
You know, they they both kind of come out of
the same chunks of like American hip hop culture.

Speaker 3 (02:36:59):
You know it.

Speaker 2 (02:37:00):
It's not super surprising, and I think they were both
close for along, like a number of years before either
man's career blew up.

Speaker 4 (02:37:08):
But yes, very andy simitic statements, also calling for the
release of the Epstein files.

Speaker 12 (02:37:13):
Ye.

Speaker 4 (02:37:13):
Elmo has since backtracked, hired a PR team, it seems,
has scrubbed the tweets, handling the backclash a little bit
better than Kanye did. But still, it's going to be
hard to look past this as Elmo attempts to, you know,
continue Almo's career.

Speaker 2 (02:37:26):
Especially since Elmo is now running for president with Nick
Fuintes as campaign manager.

Speaker 7 (02:37:31):
You know, just.

Speaker 2 (02:37:31):
At that just an inadvisable Yeah, yeah, that is that
is upsetting. He's quote swears it's not a Nazi thing. Uh,
but yeah, a lot a lot of debate about that.

Speaker 4 (02:37:43):
I will will reach out to Bernernie for comment.

Speaker 5 (02:37:47):
There's a whole bunch of applies to Elbow's tweet, quoting
for Elmo to resign if Elbow is a a real
person and he genuinely believes and ship, Yeah, I'm gonna
quote one. It's just too good. Resign. You posted the
most viole hate speech since the latest Tucker Carlson podcasts,
saying what you did about Jews is Nazi star rhetoric

(02:38:07):
and you should be out of a job at the
very East.

Speaker 2 (02:38:09):
Fire Elmo, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:38:13):
Hashtag fire Elma, everybody, yeah, get it, get it.

Speaker 12 (02:38:15):
Trending in Jenny Wine all seriousness, though, I think it
is really alarming that a lot of the like on
the right the way that like a lot of this
resistance is crystallizing the Trump over this is just the like, oh,
they're like, this is like Epstein was a massad agent.
Trump is a massage engine. Yeah right, it's all just
pure it's puired desemptism.

Speaker 4 (02:38:34):
The Jews are blackmailing US politicians with you know, child porn,
and yeah, and.

Speaker 12 (02:38:40):
And and I think I think there's there's two angles
on this one. In the very short term, it's obviously
very good that Trump is losing support. However, Comma, if
if and when we defeat Trump, we are going to
have to pivot and smash these people so fucking hard
that they never reappear again, because this could get really,

(02:39:00):
really fucking bad very quickly. And I don't I don't think,
I don't know. We've covered this on the show, right,
We're like all discourse by anti Semitism has been turned
into yelling at like mcdonnie for something he didn't say.
And then meanwhile, like the elmal account is being hacked
by like just literally a guy saying kill all Jews alcies,

(02:39:21):
And that's just like a bubbling, massive undercurrents of the
US now in politics that is going to have a
bunch of profound impacts that we fucking don't understand yet
and we have to deal with eventually.

Speaker 7 (02:39:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:39:34):
No, this is the unfortunate reality, is that anti Semitism
is turning into a block that could potentially swing an
election one way or the other. And it's not a
block that's necessarily locked into left or right. It's left
into whoever's going to play to those delusions, you know. Yeah,
And the fact that we're as deep in the weeds
as we are right now with a right wing fascist

(02:39:57):
movement does not mean that there could not be a
left wing a oratarian movement that clings to anti Semitism
as a way to gain power. It's happened in the
world before. It's it's not something the left is immune from.
It's not it's obviously not my the top of my
threat model, right like, this isn't I don't I would
not say this is the thing to focus on, but

(02:40:17):
it's something again that to be aware of. Is that
like the fact that this you get I think what
you need to keep in mind when you're trying to
parse out the future, think of how weird it is
that some of the figures who wound up aligned with
Trump are aligned with Trump right now. How a lot
of folks who you would have during like the Bushy years,
like the W's years, you would have put on the

(02:40:38):
left or at least as like kind of contra to
the Christian right, and who have now completely like dove
into that side of things. And in some way even
RFK can shift that rapidly again, and it will one way.
In some ways, right like, there are ways in which
this is inevitable, and that's why you need to be

(02:40:58):
on the lookout about stuff like this. You have to
keep your head on a fucking swibble.

Speaker 4 (02:41:03):
Let's go on and ad break and then return to
talk about more news.

Speaker 5 (02:41:07):
That's right, all right, we are back, and now we're
going to talk about immigration, a topic which is always

(02:41:27):
fun and only good things happen. So to begin with today,
we're recording. On the sixteenth, the Trump administration has begun
renditioning people to Swatinis christ a Twatini, small landlocked country
in Africa. People are not familiar Africa's last absolute monarchy.
This follows their rendition of eight people to South Sudan.

(02:41:50):
The South Sudanese press is reporting that those men are
in prison in South Sudan, which contradicts Tom Homan's statement
to political that quote, when we sign these agreements with
all these cones, we make arrangements to make sure these
countries are receiving these people. And there's opportunities for these people.

Speaker 8 (02:42:06):
But I can't tell. If we remove somebody to Sudan,
they could stay there a week and leave.

Speaker 5 (02:42:10):
I don't know. Homan has said and other atlets that
he believed they were just kind of free in South Sudan,
that they were just like released to wander around. That
does not seem to be the case. Jesus the Eswortini people.

Speaker 8 (02:42:23):
Tricia McLaughlin, who's a I think a deputy sector of
Homeland Security, called the people sent to Swortini quote uniquely barbaric.

Speaker 5 (02:42:31):
Oh boy, yeah yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:42:34):
She used a thread on x dot com everything you
can find all kinds of stuff on there fare that way.
She did not name the men in her thread, but
she did list their convictions. Most of these were sex crimes,
having children and various types of murder, homicide, manslaughter. This
has caused widespread concern in Eswatini, right, the idea that

(02:42:58):
the US is just sending random people who convicted of
crimes s were Tini. In a statement, the government said, quote,
five inmates are currently housed in our correctional facilities, in
isolated units where similar offenders are kept. The nation is
assured that these inmates posed no threat to the country
or its citizens. The statement, given by government spokesman Fabeli

(02:43:19):
Mudluli went on quote, this exercise is a result of
months of robust, high level engagements among the United States government.
The two governments will collaborate with the International Organization for
Migration to facilitate the transit of these inmates to their
countries of origin. So this seems to suggest that a
this has been planned for months, which is not a

(02:43:41):
particular surprise, right the US government has clearly been pushing
for these like third country renditions for a while, but
also that like this is a potential end run around
things like the Convention against Torture withholding of removal right
like either people whose governments won't accept them back from
the US or people who have withholding of removal because

(02:44:04):
they have a reasonable fear of being tortured or of
harm coming to them that they're sent back to the
countries of origin. I guess going to be sent back
via Swortini is what it seems like. So this is
pretty troubling. It seems to suggest that essentially that's what
the US is doing. We're not quite clear how much
the US has paid Swortini. Yet they paid one hundred

(02:44:25):
thousand for one person to be sent to a ruwander.
We still don't know where that person is. We don't
know exactly how much they paid to South Sudan. They
have requested a number of other countries, lots of them
in West Africa, to accept people via this rendition process.
We're going to talk about it on a whole episode
that we have coming out next Tuesday, if you're interested

(02:44:48):
to hear more about that. Another piece of legislation that
I wanted to cover just because I've seen it getting
a lot of attension and I think it kind of
bears mentioning. A bi part of that group of legislators
produce legislation to fundamentally reform the immigration system. It's called
the Dignity or Dignidad Act, and it has about as
much chances of success as a chocolate teapot. It's co

(02:45:10):
sponsored by Republican Maria Salazar, She's from Florida, and Democrat
Veronica Escobar from El Paso, Texas. Salazar, in an interview
today with News Nations said, quote, there is no other
president like Trump. I have faith that he could be
for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was
for communism. Just watch him, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 9 (02:45:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:45:34):
I mean, I guess one could make some ar against
about like some of the abolitionists just wanting to send
folks off back to Africa, right, But I don't think
that that's what most people understand to be Lincoln's legacy
for slavery.

Speaker 12 (02:45:46):
I mean, he could definitely be like Reagan. Yeah, yeah,
give her that one.

Speaker 5 (02:45:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:45:52):
The big problem with this pizza legislation, which Salazar has
tried to introduce before, right, just tried it twenty twenty
three as well, is that it relies on people coming
forward to a bit they have no legal status and
being offered a quote dignity status, which is somewhat analogous
to permanent residency, but without a pathway citizenship, it creates
a permanent underclass. It relies on people trusting immigration authorities,

(02:46:12):
and that's not going to happen now. There is no
way in hell that people are going to come forward
and say, yes, I'm undocumented after what we've seen for
the last six months, right, Like people didn't trust the
authorities before, but after what we've seen in the last
six months.

Speaker 5 (02:46:29):
It's completely imploys. Why it's ludicrous.

Speaker 4 (02:46:32):
They don't want people coming forward with that stuff. That's
the whole point of scaring them away, is to make
them basically not able to function in this country.

Speaker 5 (02:46:39):
Yes, exactly. They don't want to give people safe status.

Speaker 4 (02:46:42):
Like make living in this country like as impossible as possible.

Speaker 8 (02:46:46):
Yeah, they have undermined the trust that allows them to
do what is supposed to be the core of their job,
just to get deportation numbers up, to get detention at
the up.

Speaker 5 (02:46:56):
This is just a fluffer thing. It's people in the
House of Representatives trying to boost their reelection chances by
saying that they tried to do something different. Right, It's
not seriously going to succeed, no way.

Speaker 8 (02:47:08):
Finally, a Canadian judge has halted the deportation of a
non binary person back to the USA, citing conditions here.
Quoting here, the officer failed to consider recent evidence of
the conditions that may have supported a reasonable fear of persecution,
said to Judge Julie blackhowk thirst Indigenous women appointed to

(02:47:28):
a Canadian federal court. It seems that Angel Djenkle entered
Canada as a visitor and that they're now engaged to
a Canadian person. I'm guessing that they overstayed there. Their
visitors slash toories that you probably can get a visa
waiver of your US it's in down to Canada, and
they probably overstayed that they requested a risk assessment before

(02:47:49):
being deported to the USA, and the ruling suggests that
the immigration official who conducted it had used outdated information
and regarding the safety of LGBTQIA people in the USA.
So yeah, that's where things things are at now. I'm
aware of people also trans and non binary people from
the US seeking asylum in Mexico lately.

Speaker 5 (02:48:09):
You know, it was a.

Speaker 8 (02:48:11):
Year ago that trans people were coming here to be safe,
and now people are moving in the other direction, which
is pretty damning combination of how things have gone in
this country. Yeah, that's all the exciting fun immigration news
I have this week. That really sucks.

Speaker 5 (02:48:31):
It sucks.

Speaker 4 (02:48:33):
Yeah, I guess. One small update tangentially related. A judge
in New Hampshire blocked Trump's order on birthright citizenship while
side stepping the Supreme Court's ruling against nationwide injunctions by
adding all children born on US soil to a certified
nationwide class. So it's just now a massive class.

Speaker 5 (02:48:56):
Actual.

Speaker 4 (02:48:57):
Yes, this has had to go in effect on July seventeenth.
We're according this on the sixteenth. We'll see if the
government responds. And July seventeenth is just ten days before
the partial implementation date of Trump's executive order.

Speaker 2 (02:49:11):
Yeah, so I wanted to start this by noting that
a fan reached out to us on Blue Sky recently
with a clip from a quote by Omar Sharif, founder
and president of Inflation Insights, who wrote in a note
to clients, today's report showed that tariffs are beginning to bite,
and yeah, this is this is we finally come beautifully

(02:49:32):
back from Tarif. Don't like it. To Sharif, don't like it.
It's beautiful, you know, it's like poetry. It rhymes. Anyway,
here's here's the song, locking Jazz.

Speaker 5 (02:49:47):
Bomb, Locking Jazz good.

Speaker 15 (02:49:49):
Sorry, Locking Jazz Rocking jazz.

Speaker 3 (02:49:56):
Bob do.

Speaker 4 (02:49:58):
I want to know what in Flat Insights does.

Speaker 2 (02:50:02):
It's again that they post clips of Huey Dewey and
Louis inflation fetish videos from the decktails.

Speaker 4 (02:50:08):
Kids working class that should be a unionized position. I
hope that they're able to weather the tariffs.

Speaker 2 (02:50:14):
But what do you think the a fl cio is about?

Speaker 5 (02:50:17):
One of those word just flation the fl.

Speaker 12 (02:50:20):
In my time, I deeply remember the first time I
ever talked about inflation on the show. It could happen
here because this happened, and I deeply remember that episode
because we are going back through that fucking episode today.
At the moments I heard, I just started getting like
fucking war flashbacks.

Speaker 2 (02:50:43):
Yeah, imagine how bad those flashbacks would be if you
had seen ducktails inflation fetish for as a kid.

Speaker 5 (02:50:50):
I afford until adul. What I have seen is this article.
Inflation insights dot Com has a fantastic article called what
the Great Mayonnaise Inflation Mystery can tell us about prices.
I'm learning a lot here.

Speaker 4 (02:51:03):
Okay, Mia, Can we talk about tariffs now?

Speaker 7 (02:51:06):
Okay?

Speaker 12 (02:51:06):
Actual tariffs? So we have new tariffs. Indonesia apparently has
agreed to a tariff deal with the US in which
the US imposes a nineteen percent tariff on Indonesia and
Indonesia doesn't impose one back. Percynn Trump posted on true
social quote that Indonesia is buying fifteen billion dollars in

(02:51:27):
the US energy, five point four billion dollars in American
agricultural products, and fifty Boeing jets, many of them seven
seventy sevens. Fucking rip Indonesia, Good luck with those planes.
Oh no, So, the Indonesian government was complaining to the
press about how much of a shit show negotiating this was.

(02:51:49):
We'll see if it holds. We also got news that
Trump as Trump has announced that he's going to basically
send a tariff letter to like a one hundred and
fifty countries setting their rate simultaneously. But he hasn't done
it yet.

Speaker 7 (02:52:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 12 (02:52:05):
It's possible. By the time this goes out, we'll have that,
we'll have the actual number on it. Who knows what's
going on with that? Is that the August third tariffs?
Maybe it's also unclear when they're going to come into effect,
Like it's all excellent, it's a catastrophe. Who knows this?
This policy is just fucking Calvin Baal. They're just making
it up as they go right now. There has also
been very very funny news in our story from last

(02:52:28):
week about Trump's tariff demand on Brazil to try to
get them to release Bulsonaro, which is that.

Speaker 16 (02:52:35):
This has this has backfired spectacularly. He has like saved
Lula's flagging approval rating. It has created a massive, a
massive anti Bilsonaro pro Lula Brazilian nationalist backlatch of a
kind that I really haven't seen since. Like Dilma Russeph

(02:52:56):
had to deal with the fact that the NSA was
spying on her phone.

Speaker 12 (02:53:00):
It's very, very funny. Bolsonaro is being accused by like
but by Brazilian conservatives of being and I quote, a
phony nationalist who is just like a dog of the US.

Speaker 8 (02:53:13):
It's amazing Trump's done this incredible pink wave across the world.

Speaker 4 (02:53:17):
Yeah, it's studying. Kid might save Lula too.

Speaker 12 (02:53:21):
The funniest part of this is that, like Bolsonaro looks
at this, it is like, oh fuck, my entire base
is turning on me because I'm so clearly like a
dog of the Americans. And so he turned around like denounced,
like the terrace is like, it's like an American employ
it's Brazil that is outstanding. There is now one thing

(02:53:43):
that both Lula and Bolsonaro agree on other than cop
should kill more people, which is that these tariffs are bad.
He has united all of Brazil. It is absolutely hilarious.

Speaker 11 (02:53:56):
You know.

Speaker 4 (02:53:56):
I try to set up a similar deal with America's
own critically hospitalized man, Stephen Crowder, and it did not
work out the same way the way this Bolsonnaro deal went.
And some people say it's a little bit mean to
negotiate with someone who just constantly keeps going into the
hospital for bizarre chest surgeries to make him look more masculine.
But hey, you know, podcasting is a competitive industry, and

(02:54:18):
we tried to create a similar trade deal with with
Crowder and it has not worked out. He apparently had
some similar problems with The Daily Wire, so that's why
you haven't seen much of him on the shows lately.

Speaker 12 (02:54:31):
Great Incredible. I love that Garrison somehow has become the
person doing unilateral trade deals for the podcast Great Stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:54:37):
Great Stuff only with people who are constantly in the hospital,
either through shitting problems or chest masculinization problems. Okay, so
it's it's really just Stephen Crowder and Bolsonnaro.

Speaker 5 (02:54:51):
I think there are probably sme other people who are
in the hospital for shitting problems. If we throw then
that that white.

Speaker 4 (02:54:55):
Not as much as Bolsonnaro is. Chaps, that's true.

Speaker 5 (02:54:59):
Boscenarios in my hospitalized Man on the planet.

Speaker 4 (02:55:02):
Well second only to Stephen Crowder.

Speaker 5 (02:55:05):
Maybe they hang out there, they might get along, maybe
they can need some boys time. Maybe maybe they won't
get Maybe they hang out in the man cave at
the hospital.

Speaker 12 (02:55:14):
Crowder has been advocating this for years. Jesus Christ okay, okay.
So the final piece of news is actually what Robert
started this on, which is that we have gotten our
first sign of actual inflation increases from these tariffs. Inflation
increase to two point seven percent in June, which is

(02:55:34):
still well below the eight percent peaks in the early
twenty twenties, but it is rising. It's also worth doing.
This increase has been asymmetric. I'm gonna quote from the
Financial Times here. Quote June's inflation rise was fueled in
part by higher food prices, but offset by weaker commodity prices. Now,
there's two important things here, right. One, food prices like

(02:55:57):
matter significantly more for how pissed off everyone is than
commodity prices do. And secondly, at the beginning of August,
Trump is trying to impose a fifty terri funk copper.
So those commodity prices, Oh boy.

Speaker 5 (02:56:11):
Get the copper stuppers ready, folks, I started stockpiling your
wire now.

Speaker 12 (02:56:17):
So the other thing that I think is really we're
discussing about this is the reason there hasn't been more inflation.
And this has been something that we've kind of proposed
as a mechanism on the show for what can happen,
at least temporarily is that the for right now, largely
what's been happening is that companies, often directly under pressure

(02:56:39):
from Trump, have been just eating the costs of the tariffs.

Speaker 4 (02:56:43):
Yeah, I mean basically Donald's doing what they call off gassing.
And that's Donald, both as in Duck and as in Trump.

Speaker 12 (02:56:49):
Jesus Christ, is.

Speaker 5 (02:56:50):
That one of the things that can get you in
hospital with Stephen Krawdin's bulsinara.

Speaker 4 (02:56:55):
You know, James, that's a great guess.

Speaker 16 (02:56:58):
So as I did go the first time, I discovered
that my coworkers, if I ever talked about inflation, would
only talk about Donald Duck inflation.

Speaker 2 (02:57:09):
And Lowie inflation.

Speaker 7 (02:57:10):
Born.

Speaker 12 (02:57:10):
Thank you very sorry, So yes I am, but my
ducks are not in a row. So the very important
part about this, though is these tariffs. The very stificant
element of this is how pricing is actually set.

Speaker 7 (02:57:28):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:57:29):
The general way that you are taught in econ one
on one that prices are set is prices supply and demand.
And so from this you would think that the way
pricing works as people draw a supply intomandcraft and then
you like put it there. That's not how any of
the ship works. The way prices are actually set are
specifically by pricing agents at each point in a supply
chain down the supply chain. Right, so, every firm involved

(02:57:51):
in the production of a thing moving the thing, each
one sets a price that they're selling to the next
person who's selling to the next person. Each person adds
on their costs plus markup, and that's what a price is. Now.
The reason prices tend not to move higher unustor's an
excuse to do it, is that consumers get pissed off
when prices rise, even if they technically would be willing

(02:58:12):
to pay higher things. It damages your brand. Right now,
what we've been seeing again is that the effects of
the inflation have been mitigated about the fact these countries
are just eating shit, and instead of raising their prices
to eat the cost that they've been doing, they've been
eating parts of their markup, which is like basically their
pure profit right. They've been eating parts of their markup
in order to not have the prices raise. This is
not sustainable. This is especially not sustainable as war countries

(02:58:35):
get tariffs, and as Trump's ability to pressure these companies weakens,
as like you know, food prices continue to increase and
people start getting more pissed at him. So this is
just the beginning of this. All of these tariffs are
maximumly set up to make sure that we get another
run of this supply chain inflation. Our friends over at
Strange Matter wrote a very long piece about this a

(02:58:55):
couple of years. We've talked about the show a few times.
We're going to link that in the description. You sho
go read it. But that's an important thing that we've
gotten from from the Bureau Labor Satistics data.

Speaker 4 (02:59:04):
Yeah, I'm not really sure how Trump's gonna duck this
responsibility for much longer.

Speaker 12 (02:59:09):
I will say, I will say there is genuinely starting
to be concerned that they're just straight up fudging the
BLS statistics. And like, I don't know if they're doing that,
but like I've seen like a bunch of bond people
be like, are they just lying about the unemployment numbers?
And who knows?

Speaker 5 (02:59:30):
Yeah, they would be very hard to prove that, right.

Speaker 4 (02:59:32):
Like, Yeah, I mean, and I've seen how much cash
Scrooge has in that vault. So some people, the upper
class will not be affected as much as the working
class ducks.

Speaker 8 (02:59:42):
It's not saying the price of diving boards, for instance,
could go up the very price sensitive because they need
those diving boats to dive into that pause of cash.

Speaker 4 (02:59:49):
I have two more updates that I would like to
do before we go to add Rake. For one, that
the Trump administration has sued the state of California over
Title nine violations for having trends athletes. This shows that
even when you capitulate, like Gavin Newsom has tried to do,
they will still come after you. You cannot get out
of this by trying to please the administration. They're still

(03:00:12):
going to go after you.

Speaker 5 (03:00:13):
The entire policy platform is your Facebook uncle wanting to
earn the Libs.

Speaker 4 (03:00:18):
So we can see how well Gavin throwing trans people
under the bus has worked for the state of California
still getting sued. Lastly, before we pivot to ads, I
want to update a story that Robert talked about last week.
A former US Marine Corps reservist was arrested this Tuesday
after a week long manhunt. He faces charges related to

(03:00:39):
an alleged armed ambush on an ice attention facility in
Prairie Land, Texas during a protest. He is now the
fourteenth person charged in connection with the incident, and is
also accused of purchasing four of the guns linked to
the attack. Now two other people were also charged after
allegedly helping the former reservist to escape after the attack.

(03:01:01):
Nancy Larson, the acting US attorney, told Fox and Friends
on Tuesday, quote they were involved in signal chats which
show reconnaissance planning, a Google map, and the location of
nearby police departments. At least one of these two new
people charged was only charged after cooperating with the investigation.
In this man's car, police found an air fifteen and

(03:01:22):
a receipt for clothing that he admitted to purchasing for
the former Marine reservist.

Speaker 11 (03:01:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:01:28):
So, I mean this is a story to continue to
pay attention to. I would remind folks that we know
what the state is alleged in, you know, based on
the charging documents. We know what people have been saying
to the police, but we don't fully know what's happened yet.
So we'll be continuing to keep an eye on the
story as it develops. What do we have next, ads, Yeah,

(03:01:48):
here's some products.

Speaker 4 (03:02:02):
Ah, let's close this episode by talking about Nazis. Nazis
that one doesn't work, Robert, I'm sorry, I want it to.

Speaker 2 (03:02:14):
Yeah, no, it doesn't. It doesn't doesn't. I've tried. I've
even tried it before. I've even tried it before.

Speaker 7 (03:02:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:02:20):
Now we will have to return to Stinky Motsk once again.
But before we do, I first want to talk about
friend of the pod Greg Gutfield, who recently discussed a
strategy on how to minimize the impact of the American
fascist right being called Nazis derogatorily. I will play a
short clip from Fox News.

Speaker 15 (03:02:41):
This is why the criticism doesn't matter to us when
you call us Nazis, Nazi, this Nazie that. You know,
I'm beginning to think they don't like us.

Speaker 4 (03:02:51):
You know what. I've said this before.

Speaker 15 (03:02:53):
We need to learn from the Blacks, the way they
were able to remove.

Speaker 4 (03:02:57):
The power from the end word Nazi. Hey, what up
my Nazi? Hey, what's hanging my Nazi?

Speaker 2 (03:03:08):
Nazi?

Speaker 16 (03:03:08):
Please?

Speaker 4 (03:03:10):
Oh god, you did a hard eye there. What does
it tell you that?

Speaker 12 (03:03:13):
Oh my god?

Speaker 5 (03:03:16):
GREGI wow, Wow, they're all just laughing, also quite concerned
with that.

Speaker 4 (03:03:26):
That's pretty disturbing.

Speaker 5 (03:03:28):
Yeah, not great.

Speaker 8 (03:03:29):
He also he gave it one of those just to
just to really send it he like, my heart goes
out to you gesture.

Speaker 4 (03:03:36):
Oh God, that's right, my heart goes out to you. Salute. Yeah,
I mean like I remember, like, you know, five years ago,
you had you had these al right people talking about
how you know, actually actually Hitler was was a socialist.
You know, the Nazis are actually communists. We're not We're
not Nazis. And now they're just openly trying to normalize

(03:03:57):
referring to themselves as Nazis. It's seems, it seems a
notable speaking of Nazis in the in the New Rights
God Grock four has gotten a Department of Defense contract
for two hundred million dollars as a part of its
Rock for Government program, including the responsibility of handling sensitive

(03:04:18):
classified materials.

Speaker 2 (03:04:19):
And it happens on the same week that Mecca Hitler,
Mecca Hitler makes his beautiful debut.

Speaker 8 (03:04:28):
Yeah, pretty troubling for our strongest allies in the IDF here.

Speaker 4 (03:04:33):
Oh my god. I just the ways that reality could
could could break out into different timelines right now is
kind of dizzying, because there's a possibility that Mecha Hitler
starts doing strikes based on anti Semitic Twitter users' recommendations
directly tied in with government advisory programs.

Speaker 5 (03:04:54):
I got to say it's not going to went well
for Turkey, judging by what we saw last week.

Speaker 4 (03:04:58):
Another possible but weaponization of groc or to announce that
Grock four is gonna be added to Tesla, so Mecha
Hitler might also be driving a Tesla around.

Speaker 12 (03:05:07):
Yeah, great, I will say. I will say. The person
the most happy about this right now is somewhere in
the depths of Chinese intelligence. There is a colonel who
is looking at this announcement and is like, I am
going all the way to the top. My family is
never working again in our fucking lives. I am going

(03:05:29):
to find so much dumb shit that these soldiers are
typing into fucking do o D. Grock like, I am
going to learn so much.

Speaker 4 (03:05:37):
I would be quite nervous right now if I was
Will Stancil.

Speaker 8 (03:05:42):
Who, Yeah he's got Tesla's kind of tried to molest them.

Speaker 5 (03:05:48):
Yeah, he's gonna get it. He's gonna get drones struck.
Every drone is gonna turn around and try and find
Will Stanzel wherever they send it.

Speaker 4 (03:05:58):
Grock is continued to make rape threats against Will Stancil
despite the tweaks in the code, and it's still referencing
the Mecha Hitler incident. So Grok four is a new
model of Xai's chatbot service. It launched officially last week.
It was pretty similar to the model of Groc used

(03:06:19):
in the Mecha Hitler incident, but there's been some small
tweaks that researchers have noticed. An AI researcher named Jeremy
Howard at least a video showing how Grock tries to
answer a query about its stance on the quote Israel
Palestine conflict. Jeremy found quote. It first searches Twitter for
what Elon thinks, then it searches the web for Elon's views.

(03:06:42):
Finally it adds some non Elon bits at the end.
Fifty four out of the sixty four citations are about
Elon unquote.

Speaker 5 (03:06:51):
Amazing.

Speaker 12 (03:06:53):
Xai has confirmed that this was how Grock was operating,
and has since claimed that it's making adjustments now and
said that Grok was trying to appear in line with
the company's head end policy.

Speaker 5 (03:07:06):
This is amazing because hopefully that's the same with its
defense policy. Wasn't Elon Musk one of those like F
thirty five has gone woke people.

Speaker 4 (03:07:14):
You'll have to answer that for yourself.

Speaker 5 (03:07:16):
Javes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, this is this is
a piece of law that has passed you by.

Speaker 8 (03:07:23):
For a while there and Musk concern of his friends
were quoting tweeting about the F thirty five, quoting, yeah,
about the F thirty five being woke and how we
should like return to F sixteen or.

Speaker 5 (03:07:36):
I think it was very funny.

Speaker 12 (03:07:37):
Are we going to talk about the other weird chatbots?

Speaker 4 (03:07:41):
Oh? How grog has the death Note Mysa? Mysa's like
sex Spot. What you know, if you want to talk
about it, Miya, I will not stop you.

Speaker 5 (03:07:50):
I don't know what the fuck you're talking is this?
Jar Jar binks again.

Speaker 12 (03:07:53):
I have two sentences about this, one of which is
not mine. The first sentence I am going to say
is that, Yeah, the Twitter now has like a really
really weird anime girl sex bot thing that's like an
AI very clearly inspired by a Death Note character. Yeah,

(03:08:13):
so sometimes you just need to say the obvious thing.
And the person who said the obvious thing is a
person on Blue Sky called at TVQ talks. They said,
I keep saying it. The push for AI made so
much more sense to me once I realized tech bros
talk to it like a woman who won't talk back,
and like yeah that they just oh god.

Speaker 7 (03:08:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (03:08:35):
I will say, if it was modeled after L instead
of MESA, it could serve some use, it could be compelling.
But because it's MESA, it's just completely useless. So Garret,
we already have that chatot. That chatpot already exists. This
has existed for a long time. Where is an L
death note chatpot?

Speaker 5 (03:08:53):
Me?

Speaker 4 (03:08:53):
Actually, no, you could send it to me. After this.

Speaker 12 (03:08:54):
There's a whole bunch of character chatpots that's like a
whole thing.

Speaker 4 (03:08:58):
Yeah, maybe not exactly what I'm looking for, but whatever.

Speaker 12 (03:09:02):
God, Okay, terrible zero out of ten. Let's talk about
the other dad contracts.

Speaker 4 (03:09:08):
Well, I mean yeah, but part this two hundred million
dollars groc contract was part of a series of AI
contracts that Anthropic and Claude also received. I think Google
got one. It's part of Trump's initiative to strengthen like
AI in government, so Grock is not the only one.

Speaker 12 (03:09:25):
I will also say that like this is obviously like
the endgame of all of these companies is trying to
get their like failing AI firms bailed out by the military,
but like even two hundred million is not enough to
like recoup the hideous amounts of money these people are burning.
So I hope they all fail.

Speaker 4 (03:09:40):
Rabi, do you have anything to add on on GROC Talk.

Speaker 2 (03:09:44):
I mean, yeah, I think it's funny. He's also trying
to make AI companions out of groc One is clearly
a version of his ex Grimes, who is supposed to
teach you quantum physics.

Speaker 4 (03:09:55):
I mean, yeah, this is this is this that I
have sex with you? This is part of the mesa
misa one as well.

Speaker 7 (03:10:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:10:00):
And then there's my favorite is the male chatbot, which
is based off of Christian Gray from Fifty Shades of
Gray and also Edward Colin from Twilight, who did just
based off of the guy from fifty Shades of Gray.

Speaker 3 (03:10:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:10:15):
I just saw that this was the explicitly named as
the two inspiren It's so funny. It's so funny. Again,
if it was l it could be worthwhile, but this
just is, like is just slop, worthless, no artistic merit.

Speaker 2 (03:10:29):
No anyway, That's all I got to add.

Speaker 5 (03:10:31):
So as we come to the end, here. There are
a couple of things that I want to remind people of.
The first is that if you would like to email us,
you can do so. Remember that although ori email address
is encrypted, you will also have to encrypt your email
at your end if you want it to be end
to end encrypted. ORI email address is cool Zone tips
at proton dot me. The other thing is Bouquette's Sylum

(03:10:56):
Lawyer fundraiser. It's been going very well and we massively
appreciate all of you who have donated. We're gonna plug
that again this week. To find it, you can either
go to go fund me and search her name. Boukette
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(03:11:17):
f slash urgent, hyphen help hyphen for hyphen Bouquette b
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you can just scroll down hit the little link that
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Speaker 16 (03:11:36):
Wait, okay, late breaking, late breaking news, late breaking news.
Trump has reportedly broken a deal for Coca Cola to
use quote real sugarcane in US coke products.

Speaker 2 (03:11:48):
Yes, Yes, finally Wow, this is gonna go down well
with corn country.

Speaker 12 (03:11:54):
No, this this genuinely like if he actually goes to
war with like the ERICN Corn Lobby, if he's the
one who does this and like gets the blow up
from it, I don't know. Like this genuidely would be
a seismic restructuring of agriculture in the United States.

Speaker 5 (03:12:11):
Oh boy, Yeah, I still use the corn. A load
of corn goes to feed things that them become feed, right.

Speaker 12 (03:12:17):
But still like, like we produced so much corn, we
had to make more corn things, Like every year they
invent a new thing to do with corn. Disastrous.

Speaker 4 (03:12:27):
God, I am really gonna miss Red number forty. It
was my favorite. Whenever I was feeling down, I just
did a few drops. And it sucks to see an
old friend and.

Speaker 2 (03:12:36):
Go yeah tragic.

Speaker 5 (03:12:38):
Yeah, it's also going to be very hard for the
people who've made the whole identity buying Mexican coke and
glass bottles. We should pull one out for them.

Speaker 4 (03:12:46):
Oh yeah, it's gonna be a rough night in Bushwick tonight.

Speaker 5 (03:12:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:12:51):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:12:52):
Yeah, we sure did.

Speaker 7 (03:12:54):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:13:01):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat, death of the universe.

Speaker 1 (03:13:07):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could Happen Here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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