It Could Happen Here Weekly 191

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

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

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 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 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, 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

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, 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?

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. 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 at scale under the organization of a state. So I will pick the annoying centris option.

the diversity of human experience and human societies. I mean, 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.

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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 strikes is when people most often reveal the better natures.

And yet those negative narratives tend to have more sway in the popular imagination.

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 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. 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.

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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.

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 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, 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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

I don't know, like, yeah, I've certainly been around my 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 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.

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 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.

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 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

also always like butting up against. Well on that, on that optimistic note.

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,

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, 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 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. 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 you think is the course.

in really odd ways. But I desk drive, yeah, is specifically like specifically like like fascism, and like you know, 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, it is it is like an inherently paradoxical system.

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 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,

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.

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 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.

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

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 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

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

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

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, 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.

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. 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.

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 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.

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 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 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. 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 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

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

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, 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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, 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 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.

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 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 something to be like mindful of.

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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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

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. 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, 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, 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 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 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.

is definitely Persians. Yeah, And if I want to be more clear, this dominant ethnic group has been exploding and 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 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, 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 enough time to talk about, like some different and specific things that happened, and it was really scary at that time.

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

have no respect for dignity of humans. Nothing, absolutely. Yeah, 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 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 was a lot of destruction, specifically in Tehran, many buildings, including the Evan prison.

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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 forced into it. They're like teenagers, I don't know, nineteen twenty or twenty one, like you were.

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 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 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.

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 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?

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.

Pahlavi regime. They were i would say, really really active until like twenty twenty three. They played a very very 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 specifically the MHP party in Turkey, like the ulternational Turkish party.

follow him and they follow his words. But unfortunately he 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. 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 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 this fights and conflicts and they're always happening in Baluchistan.

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 baby and her father. They always respond to Kurtz when they get attacked or bombed or damaged or whatever by Israel or America.

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 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 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, 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.

in Iran or maybe more. Nobody knows the exact numbers because the Iranian government never ever publishes the true statistics, 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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. 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 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.

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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 and activists.

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 individuals and researchers. Yeah, you can also follow them for more professional analysis about East Kurdistan or Rochalot.

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 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 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.

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, where people jump over fires. There's a lot of fireworks, and the Kurdish and atros is basically the start of a new beginning.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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, 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

some areas in Damascus where they have the presence. So the Drews basically during the time when the Asad regime 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

That very shortly after, Israel started bombing heavily the cern 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 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 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

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

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.

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.

So there was also recently there were talks between Damascus 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.

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

For instance, during the battle for Raka, which was used to be the capital of the ISIS Caliphate, they were 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 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

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

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 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.

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 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.

small percentage of their weapons. Were they just burning like kalashnikov? So did they burn like larger weapons too?

But I think also that's because they're waiting on Turkey 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.

so it's a bit different than in the past. But it seems that the Turkish government was very happy with the ceremony.

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.

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.

And like a week and a half ago, a memo 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 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 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 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 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.

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.

three minutes. Pam Bondi initially tried to say that there's usually a minute missing from footage because of a computer 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.

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 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.

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. 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.

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.

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,

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.

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, 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.

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 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 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

on the lookout about stuff like this. You have to keep your head on a fucking swibble.

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.

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 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 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

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 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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

Oh no, So, the Indonesian government was complaining to the press about how much of a shit show negotiating this was. 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.

it up as they go right now. There has also been very very funny news in our story from last week about Trump's tariff demand on Brazil to try to get them to release Bulsonaro, which is that.

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.

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 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.

chain down the supply chain. Right, so, every firm involved 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

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 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

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.

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. 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 a receipt for clothing that he admitted to purchasing for the former Marine reservist.

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 classified materials.

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. Finally it adds some non Elon bits at the end. Fifty four out of the sixty four citations are about Elon unquote.

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.

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