Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 191

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Starting point is 00:02:39 ["The New York Times"] Hello and welcome to Krapen here. I'm joined once again by... Yarrissa Davis, hello. Hello, hello. And recently I was reading through a photo book called Humans by Brandon Stanton. It features interviews of people on the streets all over the world. He started off and he kind of became well known online for the Humans of New York series. I'm not sure if you've heard of that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. So he

Starting point is 00:03:09 did that for a while and he ended up traveling to other parts of the world and doing basically the same thing, just interviewing people on the street, getting their insights, hearing their struggles, hearing their story. And when I saw the book in the library, I just, I picked it up or decided to read it through. And it's really profound in a sense, you get a sense of the spectrum of humanity, of what people are going through, of the highs and lows of the human experience. I mean, it can make you laugh and 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

Starting point is 00:03:48 recently, which is called Humankind, a Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. 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. In the next episode, I want to get into some of the reasons why people do bad, and what we can do about it. Sounds exciting, because there is a lot of bad right now. Sounds exciting because there is a lot of bad right now.

Starting point is 00:04:27 There is. There is. I mean, as we're on that stuff, I mean, what would you say is the most common perspective you hear on humanity and human nature? I don't know. Like there's there's this clash between like this liberal humanist version and then this like Christian moralist version, I guess, like in the States right now. But that's been going on for decades, if not centuries. By liberal humanists and Christian. I mean, I think I get a sense of what the Christian moralist vision is, right? That we are all sinful, destined for hell, need salvation. That vision of the story? Yeah, yeah, more or less. And the liberal humanist perspective is?

Starting point is 00:05:09 I mean, I don't know, like this forever search for like what human rights are and like human decency. So we come up with like governments and rules to actually like govern over our morals as a democratic process that continues to evolve over the course of hundreds of years. We're on the moral arc of the universe, just not fully there yet. Yeah, I've heard that perspective. I think most commonly, at least in my spaces, I tend to hear the, you know, people are wicked, people are sinful in religious cases, or people are violent, people are selfish.

Starting point is 00:05:46 And that kind of in that similar limerill vein where we have these systems in place to kind of check our impulses, to kind 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 Veneer Theory. And he spends the rest of the book basically pointing out all the different errors in that judgement. I mean he doesn't claim that we're all good, good people, happy-go-lucky, saints or anything

Starting point is 00:06:23 like that. But he does say that for the most part, most people are pretty decent. And I know that clashes with what a lot of people are accustomed to hearing. And there are some very notable exceptions. But despite the efforts of elites to paint and report a different picture, there's actually a lot more leaning towards our decent, if not good, nature than the contrary. But of course these kind of conversations you always have to go back to the debate between Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We can't escape these guys. Hobbes of course had

Starting point is 00:07:02 the perspective in Leviathan, which was written in 1651, 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 all against all, as he 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, led into a constant conflict over resources, safety and dominance. Life in this state of nature would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Starting point is 00:07:45 A couple of decades later, Rousseau was writing in the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, and he basically flipped Hobbes' view 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, which basically corrupted human nature. In his words, man is born free and everywhere he is unchanged. Do you take a side in this debate, by the way? Erm, not to be the centrist option, but I don't know.

Starting point is 00:08:26 I think both these things play into each other. I definitely don't believe in the idea that like, this state is the only thing that reigns people in and stops them from doing a moral act. It's the same thing as like, without God or without the Bible, then everyone would just be like raping and murdering and meanwhile actual Christians obviously rape and murder all the time anyway. But like, no, like 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 like religious

Starting point is 00:09:04 notion and I think in some ways the state can also good without this religious notion. And I think in some ways the state can also operate as a religious notion to these people where the police is the only thing that's keeping you from becoming this horrible monster who just hurts everyone around you. But I also have my sympathies to the 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 centrist option.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Yeah, I know that there are a lot of people who have the sense that, you know, the state and the law is all that's standing between us and the purge of Mad Max or something like that. Sure, exactly. So, yeah, I don't think that Hobbes's overgeneralization of human nature as inherently violent and selfish holds up when you look at the diversity of human experience and human societies. I mean, that's not to say that violence and conflict were absent in a world without state, but you know, context matters, resources,

Starting point is 00:10:04 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 eccentric camp with you. The truth does seem to lie somewhere in that middle ground, that human nature is flexible and that it's shaped by social, ecological and historical context. Of course, 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.

Starting point is 00:10:54 In Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the official response was famously criticised for being slow and disorganised, and yet despite media attempts to paint 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 where necessary to get people what they needed long before federal agencies got on the scene. Similarly, in a more recent occurrence, after the Cranfell Tower fire in the UK in 2017, the official channels had failed the people of that tower.

Starting point is 00:11:38 Many died 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 September 11th, 2001, and this is an example that Bregman 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 passersby would go in and help others to evacuate and assist the

Starting point is 00:12:17 wounded long before the emergency services arrived. So people acted and prioritized 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 Solnit'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.

Starting point is 00:13:03 No, this is like so true. I remember in 2020, during the wildfires on the West Coast, the anarchist response was to set up these like giant, like mutual aid centers for people fleeing from the fire. You know, like not like other anarchists, just like regular people fleeing from the fire could get necessities and figure out housing. Meanwhile, right-wing militias were setting up checkpoints,

Starting point is 00:13:26 monitoring to make sure Antifa wasn't raiding people's homes as they were fleeing from the fires. These were the two options. You had anarchists actually helping the people who were fleeing from this horrific fire and setting up massive 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

Starting point is 00:14:00 like Southeast anarchists in the Appalachians do mutually 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. Yeah, I mean, I was aware of the anarchist efforts during these disasters, but I wasn't, I didn't know about that situation with the right-wing militias setting up checkpoints. That's not shocking, but still wild, you know? Yeah. No, it's so funny because those are the people, you know, claiming that, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:42 without the government, we would have the purge, the anarchists would just go around doing all kinds of crazy crimes. And yet when things actually happen, their attempts to like deputize them as like their own police force actually creates those conditions. Meanwhile, anarchists are the ones actually helping people. Exactly. Exactly. And yet despite these situations, these things happening again and again, we

Starting point is 00:15:07 still have these popular narratives. You don't know the narrative I see referenced all the time? Lord of the Flies. Yes, of course, of course. All the time, right? It's basically become a cultural shorthand for the idea that people are just savage at heart. That this veneer of civilization is the only thing keeping us in check. I mean, these days, I do see people joking that it's because those were British boys. So true, actually. So true. But while I get the joke, I think it's also important to remember that it's like, people

Starting point is 00:15:40 are taking this work of fiction as if it's an anthropological study. Yeah. When it's just something that a guy made up as an analogy for, you know, the situation during World War II. I think it's also good to remember that the British are people too. I have a British coworker, so you know, we have to show them a little bit of human dignity. Exactly. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:16:03 People embrace this story because it confirms what they want to believe in this climate of cynicism. But Bregman actually tells a story in the book about a true instance of when a shipwreck of young boys occurred. Of course, they weren't British boys. They were Tongan boys, as in from the country of Tonga. So in 1965, six Tongan boys were stranded on a remote island for over a year. And rather than descending into violence, they survived through cooperation. They built a garden, they shared duties, they didn't

Starting point is 00:16:38 do any human sacrifices, they created a rotor system to get things done, they resolved conflicts. When people were in conflict, they would go on timeout. They would put each other on timeout and go on opposite sides of the island until the, you know, cooler heads prevailed. They figured 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 placebo effect. In fact, it's the placebo effect's evil twin, the nocebo effect.

Starting point is 00:17:14 Now I'd 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 placebo effect that I hadn't heard about before but it makes intuitive sense

Starting point is 00:17:51 I suppose it's called the nocebo effect and Bregman is the one who introduced me to that concept So the nocebo effect is where instead of belief healing you it's belief that makes you sick 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 they expect to be harmed. So their minds turn 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 thought it was poisoned and then just created this mass hysteria almost with dozens of children in hospitals

Starting point is 00:18:32 with headaches and nausea and pralic 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 happen to them. And that's the Nocebo effect in action. Alright, so we get the concept. So, Bregman actually stretched these concepts beyond the field of medicine and he basically

Starting point is 00:19:14 made the point that what if these concepts are baked into how we view each other? So what if our belief that people are selfish, cruel and violent by nature actually makes it so? If you expect the worst from people, you'll act on that. You might be colder or more defensive or more likely to punish or preempt betrayal. And what happens as a result is that people pick up on that energy, they're spawn in 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

Starting point is 00:19:51 prophecy. So we end up building institutions that are based on that cynical expectation. We design policies that are based around punishment. We 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, 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. build around those expectations are part of what ends up making it that way. I think an easy example to point 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

Starting point is 00:20:39 and beasts. And people respond to that. You treat people like animals, they're going to behave like animals. So then the question that Bregman poses is what happens if we decide to treat people like they're 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 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.

Starting point is 00:21:12 A lot of people have a brutal perception of human evolution. They draw comparisons between us and chimpanzees, or they make it seem like they're ignoring bonobos entirely and ignoring the fact that we are our own species with our own evolutionary history. People have a very cynical and insulting view of the cavemen of our past. But our history is actually pretty soft. In fact, Bregman argues in favour 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 we were the strongest

Starting point is 00:22:01 or the smartest or the most cunning, but because we were friendlier. That we evolved to be more social, cooperative, playful and trusting. Self-domestication theorists basically compare humans as puppies to the other homo-species as wolves. That we domesticated ourselves to become less aggressive, our faces softened, our bodies became less robust, and our openness and friendliness allowed us to build relationships, to build groups, to raise children communally, and to survive. And so, if we accept our theory, we acknowledge that and build that into our foundation that we

Starting point is 00:22:38 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 religion or law, then we can basically become who we're 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 woo woo. And we are going to get into some of the darker chapters of All Humanity in the next episode. But I wanted to wrap this one up by unpacking the death of Catherine Kitty Genevieve in 1964. It's another example that Breckman refers to in his book.

Starting point is 00:23:22 And it's one of the classic case studies that was used for a long time to illustrate the apathy and cold heartedness 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 38 neighbors looked on and did nothing. Right, this was the quintessential story that was used to say, you know, look at that bystander effect. Humans just don't care.

Starting point is 00:23:52 You know, there was used as an example of apathy, of urban decay, of everything wrong with us. But the story was wrong. The reporters built up this story and it was wrong. I mean, yes, she was murdered murdered but people did try to help. Some had called the police but this was in a time before 9-1-1 so it was you had 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.

Starting point is 00:24:25 So the press spun this story as like some bleak tale and the field of psychology ate it off because it was part of a trend at the time to create this perception of humanity. But the real story was a lot more caring, a lot more human. I mean it was messy and somebody still murdered her. But this idea of the bystander effect 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 Bregman's been going, but we've glossed over the dark side,

Starting point is 00:25:08 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 gonna wade into that, but how are you feeling about humanity so far? I think I actually do have an underlying optimism, like beneath how I move around in the world, which is kind of odd considering the sort of stuff I do for work. But it is true, and I think part of that is what just keeps me going.

Starting point is 00:25:40 I don't know. Yeah, I've certainly been around my fair share of do-mers 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 just been a part of like growing up. We were certainly growing up in like a weird time, but I think that's kind of always been true. Like that's, that was true a hundred years ago. So I don don't know, part of me, and maybe this is just overly optimistic,

Starting point is 00:26:29 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 a very profitable industry, right? I mean, that's somewhat kind of what this show is, right? It kind of does play show is, right? It kind of does play into those instincts. For sure. Which is something that, like, we critique amongst ourselves often,

Starting point is 00:26:52 and we try to always find that balance as well. But yeah, like, the doom cycle is like a... is a huge industry, and 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? I mean, Bregman puts forward a very compelling argument in the book, actually, that the news is a public health hazard. Totally, yeah, no, like, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:27:16 And like, I have to keep up with the news all the time, and I don't think it affects me that much anymore. And certainly in, you know, doing a daily news show, we try to be very selective in the things that we cover. We don't cover it affects me that much anymore. And certainly in doing a daily news show, we try to be very selective in the things that we cover. We don't cover everything all the time. We try to cover the things that our hosts feel is both within their wheelhouse and that people who listen to the show should know about,

Starting point is 00:27:39 certain things that you might not be hearing about in a mainstream news. But no, the news has a massive, I think, spiritual evil to it as well. There is a sinister undercurrent to the news as an industry. Indeed. And that's something that we are also always butting up against. Well, on that optimistic note. Yeah, until next time.

Starting point is 00:28:07 All power to all the people. Peace. OpenAI is a financial abomination. A thing that should not be. An aberration. A symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm gonna tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also gonna be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer.

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Starting point is 00:30:52 to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lea TraTate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like and sounds like in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who lived through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification

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Starting point is 00:31:49 And he's here again because we're gonna get more into what we spoke about last time. Last episode we painted a hopeful account of humanity's nature courtesy of my reading of Rutger Bregman's Humankind, a Hopeful History. So I've probably fed into the anarchist or utopia narrative a bit with that previous episode, but the truth is that I'm not really being optimistic, I'm being realistic, but realism has been confused with cynicism for so long that even acknowledging both sides of the coin can be seen as overly utopian. People 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

Starting point is 00:32:38 about to share 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 veneer and we put forward the premise that humans 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. Bregman actually shares that in WW2, studies show that many soldiers didn't shoot their weapons, even

Starting point is 00:33:16 in combat. Trained soldiers had a difficult time actually pulling the trigger and killing people. There are exceptions, as I 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 not all, are not natural born killers. So again, how do we do bad? You know, all sorts of atrocities have been carried out by humans both in ancient and modern times. What do you think is the

Starting point is 00:34:01 cause? Self-preservation in some way, either physical or psychological. I'm not I'm not an anthropologist. I'm not a sociologist. Most of my experiences with people is both queer people and then looking at Nazis and like political extremists. So it's maybe not the best sample size for the general population. I think I tend to exist kind of on the perimeter of most human experience. But I probably some form of either psychological or physical self-preservation

Starting point is 00:34:33 in my experience slash opinion. That's interesting. I didn't think of it. I think it comes close to what Breguin ends up getting into. But I think self-preservation, well, we'll get into that in a bit. You know, it's difficult to square that with just how brutal some of these disasters have been. You know, these atrocities that have taken place around the world, organized, systemic, industrial cruelty. You know, things like the Holocaust. Totally. It's interesting because I think it's two paradoxical instincts that play off each other. There's this self-preservation and there's also, I believe,

Starting point is 00:35:14 and I think a some version of the death drive. And I think those can can interact in really odd ways. But I guess the death drive. Yeah. Like it's like fascism and like, you know, you can see this in like the genocides of the 20th century and 21st century specifically. But no, like fascism as like a political embodying of the death drive, which is I think also an aspect.

Starting point is 00:35:38 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. When you say self preservation, are you just talking about the individual level or you're saying like community self preservation as well? Both both. But also, I think not even just physical but also like psychological, like being able to like continue being able to continue existing as yourself either within a group of people or just you as an individual like psychological things that you that you need to do to make

Starting point is 00:36:14 yourself feel like you're in community or that you are safe or that you have meaning or that you have purpose as well as the physical aspects. And you're saying that that lends itself to atrocity. I think it can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that actually is strikingly close to what Bregman ends up uncovering. Look at the reasons that people will talk about for, like, why the genocide in Gaza is, like, necessary. Right. It is it is playing off both of those impulses.

Starting point is 00:36:40 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all sorts of genocides, when you hear the descriptions of them and places what you hear of the people who perpetrated them, what their explanations or justifications were, you know, from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Palestine. Yeah. To Myanmar, you know, totally is deeply evil. That's something we can look away from it really is difficult to square with the most humans a decent thesis. When you look at how some of these societies, even the ordinary people, for example, the citizen population of Israel, even the civilian population, even they are like disturbingly

Starting point is 00:37:16 genocidal in their rhetoric. And so, you know, it's like, how do we reach that point? How do we get there? How does an ordinary human baby grow into that? It can happen to you. It can happen very easily. And I think it can happen in a short time span and you can get out of it. I think maybe not just as easily, but you can get out of it also in a fast time span. I think it's like the you are not immune to propaganda idea. You can look at like in Nazi Germany, Robert has talked about,

Starting point is 00:37:43 quote unquote, the little Nazis. Mm-hmm. The regular Germans who ended up participating in 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

Starting point is 00:38:16 unleash unmitigated hostility against people that you now perceive as being like immoral or you perceive as being like ontological enemies. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, there were particular studies that were undertaken in the 20th century that are often used to sort of explain that, you know, after the fall of Nazi Germany and the post World War II era, people were seeking explanations for atrocity. And so the next experiments were done and are now pointed to

Starting point is 00:38:47 as explanations for how this could have taken place. So one particular experiment that's really well known is the Stanford prison experiment. This idea that you take random students and give them a position of power and they become sadistic know, it proves just how thin the veneer of civilization really is, or really the evil that 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 put in on performances. The prisoners were also expected to perform. So rather than being like an actual scientific experiment, it was more like guided theater.

Starting point is 00:39:31 I mean, it inadvertently becomes an interesting experiment in like, humans desire to like, please authority, right? Exactly. Exactly. To like, perform to the expectations of the people who are actually running this experiment and how capable you are of falling into these roles under like under that paradigm. Exactly. I mean, you see that in Nazi Germany as well. A lot of the people were doing things to please the Fuhrer. You know, like they didn't necessarily know.

Starting point is 00:40:00 Or there was a lot of wiggle room from what I've read to interpret the Führer's wishes. Yep. As people who wanted to rank up and rise up in the organization, but interpret things in a way that they would presume would please Hitler and his desires. Moving towards the Führer, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's the name of the phenomenon. So, I mean, when the Sanford Prison Experiment, when people tried to recreate the experiment for television,

Starting point is 00:40:40 you've made it for pretty boring TV because it was bad science in the first place. It's not something that people do naturally, it's what they do when they are pushed, when they are prodded, when certain expectations are set up. It's kind of similar with this other famous experiment that Breckman talks about, which is the Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment, where volunteers were told to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a stranger just because a guy in a lab coat told them to. Just like another instance of, are we doing these things just to please authority, even to the point of murder?

Starting point is 00:41:16 Because the dial of the electric shock was deadly after a certain point and you could hear the screams of the victim. Of course they were fake screams, you know the participants could hear them. But what Breitmund 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 if 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 their front. They were distressed, they were shaken, they were

Starting point is 00:41:54 sweating, they were begging to check on the learner. But they also said things like, he agreed to be in the experiment, or this will help science, right? Or, I don't want to do this, but I have to. The man in the lab court who was telling them to continue, please continue, please continue. He was calm. He was professional. And also even how 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, surprisingly, people would actually be more likely to resist a direct order framed in that way for such an experiment. But a more subtle nudge is like, you know, science, the experiment requires this, you know, the experiment needs to do this. A little more subtle, it tended to get people to continue. And the people who were interviewed who did

Starting point is 00:42:41 take it up to those higher voltages, 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 Nazis are like cartoonish monsters. They are monstrous, but they are monstrous people. You know, they are, at the end of the day, people who do evil with the belief that they are doing good. To a varying extent, I know that there were some who recanted or who knew what they were

Starting point is 00:43:22 doing were wrong, but they had other pressures that were pushing them in that direction right. There are many explanations to people's behavior and all sorts of situations. For a lot of the people they thought that they were contributing to the right thing. It's not that they didn't care but that they were taught to care in the wrong direction. The bad guys don't think that they're bad guys and whether we're talking about the Nazis of the past or the Zionists 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 purging Germany of a serious threat to their well-being and the safety of their future and all that stuff.

Starting point is 00:44:03 Right the Zionists of 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. They are true believers within these groups, you know, who are able to commit some of the worst acts, committed ideologues who boast of their trustees, who express no remorse, who take pride in their role. And people reach that point of ideology through a process of radicalization. You know, we look at the 10 stages of genocide, I think

Starting point is 00:44:37 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 genocide this group of people. It's a process. You know, first you start off with classification, you create a separate group of people, separate category of person. You make them signify themselves in some way, carry ID cards or some kind of insignia on their clothing or whatever. They begin to face discrimination of some kind. The discrimination, you know, is ramped up through

Starting point is 00:45:12 dehumanizing language. You compare them to vermin, to rodents, to disease. And that's just the thing. We're going to get to that. But part of how you get people who would otherwise be caring or compassionate about their fellow human is through distance, right? So the people who will who are most 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 frontlines of World War One.

Starting point is 00:45:47 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 dehumanization. Comparing people to women, to animals, to anything other than human as another step in dehumanization and getting people to separate themselves from those people. And then they create specific groups at the next stage. They create specific groups the next stage to create specific groups and organizations to enforce discriminatory policies.

Starting point is 00:46:27 You further broadcast the propaganda to polarize population. And then well step seven, eight, nine and ten go from actually preparing the removal or 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 person into a virulent proponent of genocide if they are not fastidious in their opposition to any such language, especially in the early stages. Because they get fed this steady stream of propaganda of how their

Starting point is 00:47:12 actions are justified. Their loyalty to their in-group becomes tested by their willingness to engage in those harmful actions. They stay with that group, they'll do whatever, their toll is good, even if it leads to other people being hurt. And it just creates an evil. But it's an ordinary evil. It's an evil that is convinced of its virtue. It is wrapped up in ideology and social conformity. Because 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 Breckman actually gets into an interesting point about empathy. Because we tend to see empathy as a positive thing, and it can be. But as Bregman notes, and drawn from psychologist Paul Bloom's work,

Starting point is 00:47:56 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 in 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, when I look at systems, we're talking about this because I don't think that this hijacking of empathy is inevitable. Nationalism, propaganda, these things play a role in how people end up being separated in this way, and it's in groups and out groups. But there is also indications that in-group and out-group

Starting point is 00:48:42 separation can occur even in the absence of a state. So it is something we have to be continuously vigilant of. Another aspect of 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. Bregman cites neuroscience research that demonstrates how authority literally changes how we think. Powerful people become less empathetic and are more likely to see others as tools rather than independent people. This is not new information per se. The environments that powerful people are in both shapes them and are shaped by them. The saying has long gone that power corrupts in absolute power

Starting point is 00:49:40 corrupts absolutely. And spaces like Silicon Valley, like Wall Street, like Washington DC, like corporate boardrooms and all the other upper echelons of government. They divorce rulers and authorities from ordinary people. They install spaces that keep them from being challenged or being grounded by the impact of their actions on others. So powerful people don't have to care. And I think such hierarchies are attractive to people who are already 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.

Starting point is 00:50:19 Because authorities as a whole, existing in this bubble that rewards their worst instincts, end up further shaping 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, nocivo effect, people end up fulfilling that expectation created by the system. I guess my only comment here is that these systems are not just exclusive to like state power or like corporate authority. These same mechanisms reproduce themselves in all sorts of social arrangements including like radical politics and frankly especially radical politics.

Starting point is 00:50:56 You can see it's a lot with groups whether they're communists, whether they're anarchists, whether they're, I don't know, social democrats probably have this problem. whether they're anarchists, whether they're, I don't know, social democrats probably have this problem. But no, like specifically like in anarchist scenes, you see this happen constantly. It is almost funny how much these things just get natively recreated. And like in-group out-group dynamics are always are always a big issue. I mean, like you 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

Starting point is 00:51:44 not very fun. So these dynamics themselves are not necessarily, you know, bad, but there's something to be like, mindful of. Yeah, exactly. So in being mindful of it, you know, that's an aspect of it. You know, we have to find solutions to this epidemic of badness, of behaviors being reinforced by these systems that are causing harm to people and harm to the world.

Starting point is 00:52:12 And so what I always advocate for in ways big and small, I wouldn't call it the one solution to everything, but it does encompass a lot. But it's just understanding and taking on a dynamic social revolutionary approach to change. You know, from the efforts you do to confront the existing system, to stand up against it, but 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, or to perpetuate a positive and trusting take on human decency, to create that social placebo effect that can shape how people treat each other for the better. But that can be boiled down to just be nice to each other. So there's more to be done than that, of course. On the systems front, we also have to change how

Starting point is 00:53:10 we educate each other in radical spaces and also in terms of how we raise children. We have to organize alternative economic systems and alternative social arrangements that get us in the habit of trust, of trusting people's freedom, of practicing freedom, and also of emphasizing greater intrinsic motivation in people as well. 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.

Starting point is 00:53:57 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 for their own sake, 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 people's intrinsic motivation to have their needs met, to pursue their interests, to care for others. And that is where I think

Starting point is 00:54:32 we'll sustain efforts 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 experiments with a greater emphasis on intrinsic motivation, not even necessarily radical experiments, but Bregman actually looks at examples of schools that don't have grades or fixed curriculums, and at 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 out the best in themselves

Starting point is 00:55:11 because they've been given the room to do so. And spaces like free schools and maker spaces and cooperatives, they give us the room to develop our cooperation and creativity. Of course, the system not going to stand by as these transformations take place. It might tolerate or even celebrate some, like the examples that Bregman had looked at, but those are always going to be treated as exceptions and the second you try to make them the norm I think you're going to face some real challenges. Because ordinary

Starting point is 00:55:41 people want these things but the rulers don't. It's like the example I had brought up earlier, the famous 1914 Christmas truce during World War I, where British and German soldiers put down their guns, they sang songs, they played football but eventually the high command cracked down on these truces. The fraternisation of people who were 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

Starting point is 00:56:14 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, it's realistic. Cynicism is not realism, they're not the same thing. Having hope does not mean 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.

Starting point is 00:56:45 And that you seek to do better and to create something better. That's really what I care about. And that's all I have to share. All power to all the people. Peace. OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene. podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:57:45 Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more,

Starting point is 00:58:15 and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

Starting point is 00:58:47 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog

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Starting point is 00:59:45 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part, our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name?

Starting point is 01:00:08 Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February, 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died.

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Starting point is 01:00:57 It's me, James, today, and I'm joined by Gordjeen Jermayi from Hengor, the human rights organization, also a journalist who's worked for the Kurdish Peace Institute, who we've had on the show before, who I've also worked with, and the founder of the Kurdistan People's Page on Instagram. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm so glad to be here today with you. Yeah, of course. And what we're going to talk about today is Rojhelat or Eastern Kurdistan, right?

Starting point is 01:01:31 And how this figures into, I guess, what's happening currently in Iran, what has been happening in Iran. And like, I think it's really important to give a little more explanation and background on particularly the different ethnic groups in Iran than people generally get when they consume legacy media here. Yeah, so if I want to talk about this, like we need to talk about the history of at least 120, 150 years. So it's really a lot, but today's So it's really a lot, but today's structure of what we know as Iran is made up of several different ethnic groups from Persians, Turks, I mean, Azerbaijani Turks, Turkans, Kurds, Baluchis, Ah dominant ethnic group, and the dominant culture and language is definitely Persians. 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, Ahw's, and it was intensified after the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. And as usual, the Kurdish people were the first to stand against this newly established regime in 1979. A few months after the so-called revolution, the Kurds were demanding

Starting point is 01:03:28 their rights, specifically the right to self-determination and also federalism, which was responded by heavy attacks and under the jihad order of Ayatollah Khomeini, which led to Jihad order of Ayatollah Khomeini, which led to the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and the destruction of several hundred villages and mass executions of Kurdish people across what we know as Eastern Kurdistan or Rojhelat. And following that, the oppression continued and also it was done against other ethnic groups, specifically Baluchis and also the Ahwazi Arabs and also the Azerbaijani Turks. But in Kurdistan and Baluchistan, it has always been more intense and more brutal. And then in late 1980s and early 1990s, they killed two of the Kurdish leaders, Dr. Abdurrahman Qasemlu and Dr. Sharaf Kendi in Europe during some negotiations.

Starting point is 01:04:33 And that ended up in Kurds being in a worse situation. And then until around early 2000s, I think around 2004 or 2003, that PKK built or established its wing in Rojhelat known as the Free Kurdistan Party or Pajak, sorry, Free Kurdistan Life Party in Rojhelat. And then, but unfortunately, this party was not really as strong as the KDPI or Komala that were already in the fight with the Iranian state since 1946 and so on. This oppression has been just intensifying by mass execution of Kurdish people, 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.

Starting point is 01:05:34 And this whole question that I've been mentioning about, like, that's happening in East Kurdistan. It has also resulted in a humanitarian phenomenon called Gulbari. Gulbars 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 work 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 cold warres. Every year hundreds of them get killed.

Starting point is 01:06:21 Just for example, since the beginning of 2025, 22 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 against our people because this is actually one of the biggest forms of oppression, if I want to talk about it, there are over 150,000 coal 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 Iranian government actually like limits all the, if I want to call it, economic developments in East Kurdistan. This has been going on for decades. And then we come to 2019.

Starting point is 01:07:09 Again, there was another, so I want to call it uprising or mass protests across Iran when the regime killed over 1,500 people. I mean, before that there were also protests almost every year, but that was like one of the biggest one. It was in November, 2019. And they cut down the internet for 12 days I remember I was at the university at that time and then they killed 1,500 people specifically so many people in Kurdistan they even throw the kills people into like lakes and

Starting point is 01:07:42 rivers and then after like months and days people found the bodies in the nature. And then we come to 2022 in September when the morality police killed Gina Amini, the Kurdish woman who was apparently not wearing a proper hijab or the Islamic clothes or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. She was killed by the Iranian morality police in Tehran, which led to the, as we know it, I don't know if you can call it a revolution or uprising or just mass protests called Xinjiang Azadi or Women's Life Freedom Movement. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:08:23 And this also, again, because it was inspired by Kurds, the first victim was a Kurd again. Yeah. 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, Shiraz, but it was not as intense as in Kurdistan. I think it was three days after her death, the Kurdish parties, KDPI and Komala and some others that are not very well known like PAK and also Pejak 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

Starting point is 01:09:14 to protest the killing of Shina Amini, which was responded by, I think, over 100 missiles or something from the IRGC and the Iranian regime. And it killed, I think, 18, 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 family members of the Kurdish politicians

Starting point is 01:09:43 and Kurdish Peshmerga 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 15-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 Zahidun. People in Baluchistan, they went to a big mosque in the city of Zahidun. People in Baluchistan, they went to a big mosque in the city of Zahidun and they were doing their Friday prayers as Muslims. And then they started protesting and this was responded

Starting point is 01:10:34 by the Iranian regime forces and over 100 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 500 to 600 people were killed. These are like the official ones. And also several other of these protesters, specifically from Kurdistan, were killed. These are like the official ones and also several other of these protesters, specifically from Kurdistan, 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 2023. Until I think it was around maybe March. I'm not really remembering the exact date, but it was also in 2023 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.

Starting point is 01:11:37 And unfortunately, we have them like we've reported on them. 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're not together in the Iranian system. Yeah, like integrate. Yeah. And then this went on and people were still protesting, but unfortunately it somehow But 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, but as we know, as the Iranian opposition, was not truly united. Yeah, there was a huge effort specifically from the Kurdish parties like Komala and

Starting point is 01:12:30 Abdullah Muhtadi. They tried to create some sort of collaboration with the so-called Iranian opposition, specifically the monarchists like the Pahlavis and some other groups. 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 40 years. Instead of working together for a common goal, like the Iranian opposition groups, specifically the Pahlavis and also the other ones, like, if I want to say like the Masih Ali Najat and like all the people that work with her, instead of working towards a common goal, they started discriminating against minorities.

Starting point is 01:13:16 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 national, 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 these type of sentiments and discussions, it it somehow created a lot of mistrust between the Kurdish groups, the Baluchi groups, also with Ah those who identify as Iranians, they ignored us. They ignored our suffering.

Starting point is 01:14:28 They ignored our identity. They were just repeating what the regime has been saying since over 40 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 opposition. There was no united structure to say that, yeah, we are advocating for you. I mean, in the first few months, it was really great.

Starting point is 01:15:08 For example, here in Germany, they had a very big demonstration and over 80,000 people from all across Europe. They traveled to Berlin for that demonstration. It was great. And all the groups from Iranians, Turks, Arabs, Baluchis, like everybody was there. But unfortunately, following that, the people like specifically Reza Pahlavi, the so-called Crown Prince of Iran, who is another, like his story is like very also like crazy. Yeah. and his group and his circle and also people like Masih Ali Najat 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

Starting point is 01:15:53 done any specific political work they're just celebrities like Nazanin Bulniady she played in some movies yes she's a 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 Kurdistan, Iran and Baluchistan want, they pretended to be our voices and they never listened to us. And then this just made a lot of distrust 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 that, yeah. So like every day

Starting point is 01:16:46 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 humanitarian visas. Some of them 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 repression. They militarized the entire cities, specifically in Kurdistan and Baluchistan. For example, in Kurdistan, they already have over 2000 military bases and checkpoints all over the Kurdistan region. And during that time, they had tanks and military vehicles in the entrances, like in the gates of every city and also town. They were checking out people. Like I personally, during these two years, I really didn't go out much. Maybe once a week or once in a 10 days, just to, I don't know, to go and eat something out.

Starting point is 01:17:56 You know, like I was always home 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

Starting point is 01:18:17 for these people and these activists. So it was like a totally 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. Yeah, I would like you to share that with us because I think one thing people don't understand is that the Iranian regime has a colossal capacity

Starting point is 01:18:45 for violence against its own citizens. I think if we talk about like some specific instances, and then maybe we can talk about recently there has been a bombing campaign against some nuclear facilities and some IRGC commanders. And like, I think if you start with your anecdotes about what happened in during this last uprising uprising that will help people understand why like the consequence of this bombing campaign are not good for people who want to have freedom in Iran, or if people inside the country at least.

Starting point is 01:19:14 So, yeah, tell us tell us some things about that capacity for repression. Yeah, so like the bombing happened and we saw we also how crazy and how insane like it was like movies. I couldn't believe my eyes when it happened. It was really crazy. And yeah, that was like the war between two brutal States, Israel and Iran, who both have no respect for dignity of humans. Nothing. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:19:42 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 350 or around that were the IRGC commanders or the officials from the nuclear program 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 80 or 90 civilians whom some of them were actually like family members of these IRGC members and also some children. like family members of these IRGC members and also some children.

Starting point is 01:20:29 And also there was a lot of destruction specifically in Tehran. Many buildings including the prison. Yeah, I saw they had the prison. The center of the Iranian broadcast and all these places were targeted and many officials were killed, also civilians. targeted and many officials were killed, also civilians. But the Iranian regime's response to that was not fully against Israel, who was bombing Iranian IRGC bases. In the first days, they started attacking civilians. They started arresting every, I don't know, some random people.

Starting point is 01:21:05 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 espionage for Israel or working for Israel. Yeah. 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, Ormia, in East Kurdistan.

Starting point is 01:21:42 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,

Starting point is 01:22:11 it was that they took lots of military vehicles and like, I don't know, equipments inside schools. For example, in the city of Sardasht, it's a really amazing, beautiful Kurdish city on top of some mountains. It's beautiful. Yeah. There is 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.

Starting point is 01:22:42 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 on the report, it was in the neighborhood called Dizelabad. And they took some military equipment next to a hospital, which was also bombed and the hospital was damaged. And some people were injured. That was one of the things that the regime did.

Starting point is 01:23:06 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, it's torture. It's some sort of repression against young men. Right. So across Kurdistan, for example, in a military base in my hometown, in Urmia, 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.

Starting point is 01:23:38 They're like teenagers, I don't know, 19, 20 or 21, like really young guys. Yeah, very young guys that really don't want to be there, but they were saying that their commanders threatened, if you leave the military base, we will arrest you, we will torture you, and we will execute you for betraying your country or things like that, or working for Israel. Yeah. This was like one of one of the concerns that many families had before. And those days, because I, I talked with some people, like our neighbor's son was, was also in the ministry base. He's like 19. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:22 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 like what they started doing. I mean, it still is going on and they are arresting people all the time. And as usual, the majority of the focus and repression is again happening in Kurdistan against Kurdish people. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:25:07 I think it's very important for people to understand like that Iran is not like an ethno state, well, it is an ethno state, but that there is not ethnically monolithic, like the territory of Iran and the Persian ethno state do not necessarily like line up. I think people will also be very confused about like, when we hear quote unquote, Iranian opposition in this country, right, it's often like I think there's this kneejerk, 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,

Starting point is 01:25:40 for the most part. And then we have these various, like anything in Kurdistan, right? Like it's an alphabet soup, but like there is like, there are 75 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 KDPI, we have all these different groups, Pajak, like you say, the KCK group. Can you explain who some of these people are for people so they understand? Yeah, if I want to talk about Kurdistan, I would go to the first modern Kurdish party called KDPI, which was founded in 1945 and it was the founder of the Kurdistan Republic. And also then there is the Komala Party, which is also socialist communist leftist party, which also has several branches, but they're all basically the

Starting point is 01:26:35 same. And also there are other parties like PAK, the Freedom Party of Kurdistan. And also we have Pajak, the Free Life Kurdistan Party, or I don't know if it's the same in English. Yeah, Khedistan Free Life Party. Yeah, these are the main political parties and actors in East Kurdistan. like Habbat and also some parties that are affiliated. Like there are like very small groups that are affiliated with, for example, the Iranian Communist Party, which is not also really big. But the main ones right now are KDPI and Komala, who both of them have like a long history of fighting against the regime and also against the monarchists, the Pahlavi regime.

Starting point is 01:27:28 They were, I would say, really, really active until like 2023. They played a very, very important role in the revolution in Kurdistan specifically, because they were the ones who were announcing strikes and they were working together and organizing things and helping people out to resist. Obviously, there was no armed struggle at that time or conflict because they said, we're not going to fight because if we bring the fights and conflict inside Kurdistan, the regime will destroy the cities with missiles. This is exactly what they said at that time because there was a demand from people that yeah, the Peshmerga forces should come in the cities and fight alongside with us, but they said, no, if we do this, the regime will destroy the cities. These are the main forces in Kurdistan. And yeah, of course, they have different

Starting point is 01:28:31 ideologies. Pajak is like the PKK's wing. Or if I want to be more official, it's the member of the KCK or KJK, as we say. And the KDPI is like, as I said, the history goes back to 1945 and Komala in the early 70s. And also PAK, I'm not sure when it was founded, but it was also like it was founded by one of the members of the KDPI, Hoseinias Dampana. And they're more of a military, I would say well organized military group that they also played a good role against the ISIS in 2017 and 18, specifically in Kirkuk in South Kurdistan or Iraqi Kurdistan. And about the Iranian opposition, if I want to say, yes, we have the monarchists, the Reza Pahlavi and his group.

Starting point is 01:29:33 They have like a whole long list of parties. Basically they are all the same, but they have different names and they are all right-wing and they all focus on the territorial integrity of Iran. But they also pretend that they care also about democracy, but that's a lie. And then we have people like Masih Halinajad, who is more of, she's an activist and she's internationally known for her activism against the compulsory hijab. But she doesn't have any specific party or organization. She's just an activist and a journalist, obviously.

Starting point is 01:30:16 And also there are other several people that work with her like Nazanin Boniadi, who also works with like Pahlavi's. And also there is another one who also played a big role. His name is Hamid Ismailioun. He is one of the members of the families of the people who were killed in that plane that was shot by missiles by IRGC in 2020 in Tehran. And again, there were many Kurds inside that Ukrainian plane as well. This person Hamid Ismailioun, he's 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 across

Starting point is 01:31:00 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 Ahlavies 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 Arash Azizi. He is also well known in the US. I don't know, he wrote some books and he works with really like international media.

Starting point is 01:31:38 Just a few days ago, he posted something that said, we the leftists of Iran, we are in love with our homeland and we care about our homeland. And we don't, it just posted something that was really nationalistic, like a typical Persian, Iranian sentiment that's been going on. And it's got lots of criticism from different groups. And then we have the the Ahwazi Arabs. They also have some parties, but they're not really strong or active or well organized like the Kurdish ones. The Turks, the Azerbaijani 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 Azerbaijani government or the Turkish regime, and specifically the MHP party in Turkey, like the ultra-nationally Turkish party.

Starting point is 01:32:37 Yeah, the HAD, right. Yeah. And then the Baluchis, I can say they are more organized because they have this, I don't want to call him a leader, but like the highest level Mullah in Baluchistan, Mullah Abdul Hamid, he is like the most popular Mullah in that region. And he was one of the people that was organizing protests and he was giving lots of speeches like during the Friday prayers in Baluchistan. And a lot of people were, they still like they follow him and they follow his words. But unfortunately, he is also like appointed as the Imam of the Friday prayers, if I want to be more specific in Baluchistan by Khamenei himself, the Iranian supreme leader. But it's like a little bit hard to understand that where he stands exactly,

Starting point is 01:33:40 because on one side he is appointed by the regime 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're mainly Islamists and I would say but they're also not very very well organized yet 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 think two women were killed and more than 10 or 11 were. Injured. Geez. But this, this fights and conflicts and they're always happening in Baluchistan.

Starting point is 01:34:33 Yeah. It can be hard. I think, especially if people aren't familiar, right? Like, like the, um, the PAK is to distinguish from PJAK. Like I've definitely been making a making a big effort on the internet, I will say, like with the Peshmerga, right, like in the last three weeks since the the US entered the Israel's bombing campaign, like to appear like this, they are very well organized, Peshmerga, like I think, like you say, the Rinka Cook, I think maybe they're in Kobani as well, like maybe they,

Starting point is 01:35:06 Did you say they're in Kirkuk? I think maybe they're in Kobani as well. Like maybe they joined into... Yeah, the Pajaks was specifically in Rojava and they were also fighting against ISIS. Because like they are like, as I said, they're a member of KCK and they're allies of PKK. So they all are interconnected and they all work together. I think the PAK also was in Rojava, right? I am not sure, but I think members of PAK joined the fight in Rojava as individuals. Because the fight in Rojava was also something that people from all over Kurdistan went there. Yeah, from Northern Kurdistan to... Yeah.

Starting point is 01:35:47 And these are very organized groups, but like, there isn't, I guess there is a kind of insurgency, but as you say, like if these groups just took up arms in the cities and the IRGC would destroy everyone in those cities, right? I think people sometimes wonder why they don't just start fighting. And there is fighting to be clear, but like, as you say, the regime punishes civilians, right? Yeah. I mean, this is not the first time that the regime does this every time that Israel does something to the regime, because this is not the first time that Israel has killed someone in Iran, like some IRGC member or nuclear agent, nuclear scientists or whatever. Every time this happened during the past few years, instead of responding to Israel as a state, they responded to the Kurdish people. I think it was just two years again in 2022 they literally bombed a civilian

Starting point is 01:36:47 house in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and they killed an entire family. It was like maybe a six, seven month old baby and her father. They always respond to Kurds when they get attacked or bombed or damaged or whatever by Israel or America. Yeah, it's like a soft target, a target they feel they can safely attack. We know now that Iran pre-warned the United States it was going to attack its bases following this bombing raid and it was more of a performative thing than a serious attempt to attack US bases. And even this week I saw in Suleimani, Iran is sending Shaheed drones. Yeah, actually during the past maybe 10 days, this is like last night there was an attack in Suleymani, but this is like I think the fourth or third

Starting point is 01:37:46 time that there have been like several drone attacks on different places. So yeah, this is something funny exactly, but it's weird. Just yesterday, and actually two days ago, I'm not really good with dates and numbers. That's okay. Just two days ago, they conducted like a cyber attack on this TV channel, Iran International, which is also advocating for monarchists. And they expose some nude photos and 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 another strategy that the regime uses when they lose something, when they get attacked, they also like target activists, journalists, or for example, they threaten their families or they threaten them here inside Europe or in America or Canada or wherever they are.

Starting point is 01:38:59 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 30 years, over, I think around 600 known political activists have been killed by the regime outside of Iran. And nearly 450 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. Yeah, yeah, they have a long history of transnational repression and like participating

Starting point is 01:39:40 in the repression of other revolutions, right? Like, of course, they were massive backers of the Assad regime in Syria, you know, all around the region. They will find the wrong side to line up on and do that. Again, of course, people will also be familiar. They were supporting Hezbollah, for instance, in Lebanon. One thing I've heard is that, like, the regime has been really cracking down on Afghan people, like mass deportations of Afghan people who have come to Iran, right?

Starting point is 01:40:06 And especially in the wake of this bombing campaign. Can we talk about that briefly? Yes, of course. I think that's one of the most horrible things that happened after the war. So far we know that just in June, they deported over 30,000 Afghans and it's still going on. Like they mass deport tens of thousands of Afghan refugees every day. And just something that was really horrible to me when I read it. There were 6,000 kids that were unregistered and they were separated from their parents

Starting point is 01:40:42 and they were sent back to Afghanistan alone. Jesus. Yeah. And they are hunting down Afghan migrants in different cities across Iran, especially in Tehran, because most of them are there. Yeah. And the thing is that the Afghan, I think there are over three million Afghan migrants in Iran or maybe more. Yeah. Nobody knows the exact numbers because the Iranian government never, ever publishes the true statistics. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:41:10 But there are millions of them in Iran and they are not actually allowed to, they were not allowed actually, like they're getting kicked out right now, but they were not allowed to work in Kurdish cities. They were only allowed to work in Persian speaking cities like Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, 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 wanted 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

Starting point is 01:42:00 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, in I don't know, in subways, in the parks, in public places. Just yesterday I saw a very heartbreaking video because like Afghan people, they also like have a different look. You can easily say that they're not Iranians. An Afghan teenager was being attacked by eggs. Jesus. 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.

Starting point is 01:42:52 I don't know what was that. They were just throwing everything at him. And on the other video that I saw, they stopped a man. Maybe he was 30 or something. They forced him to kiss the hand of a stray dog. I mean, 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, it's very disrespectful. Yeah, it's really disrespectful. And like there are also, I read on the internet that many Afghans reported that, like, for example, in Tehran, they were

Starting point is 01:43:24 renting a house or an apartment or something and they were living in those apartments and the landlord reported them to the police. It's like what's happening in the US. It's something like ICE, but it's Iranian, but more brutal. Then the police just came and took them all. And now the landlords are refusing to give back the Pashin money to Afghans. And many of them are being forced out without any food, without any support, anything. And especially the women. I also read about a doctor that fled Taliban and he was in Tehran. And now if he goes back, the Taliban will definitely kill him because he was against Taliban. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:44:06 I mean, it's a very horrible humanitarian situation. And the people in Baluchistan, they're also suffering. But I saw many videos and also some of the activists published lots of footage that they were bringing food, water, I don't know, medicine and things like that 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

Starting point is 01:44:48 far-right parties in Germany, like IFD, they are portraying refugees and migrants as the main problem. Yeah, it's a global thing. It happens here, in the UK. Yeah, it's exactly the same. Unfortunately, even the Iranian opposition has not been clear. But again, because there is some sort of solidarity between Kurds, Baluchs and Afghans and also other minorities. It's the minorities that talk about this. It's the minority groups and organizations who try to raise awareness over this. And unfortunately, I think nobody can stop it because they are doing it anyways.

Starting point is 01:45:28 Yeah. And like we shouldn't support an opposition politics. It is just another ethno-native. We see that in Syria right now, right? Like they haven't even changed the name. We have this revolution. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people definitely died. Yeah. To build something better. We still have the Syrian Arab Republic. Yeah. Yeah, it's maybe

Starting point is 01:45:52 there's other ways of being persecuted and they weren't before, but like that shouldn't matter, right? Like if we're trying to build something better. I mean, they are just remnants of ISIS. So what can you expect? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's very sad to, to see, you know, after after so much killing and dying. Yeah, I guess to finish up, I think people in the US do not get very good coverage of what's happening in Iran, right? Like it's either let's you say dominated by monarchist outlets, which tend to have like good resources which allow them to kind of get to the top of people's feeds, or they're getting like press TV stuff, right?

Starting point is 01:46:31 That just like race straight up regime propaganda. Where can people find good resources to understand what's what's happening in Iran, like from the perspective of the majority of people who just want to live a free life and especially like, you know, the women in particular in Iran have an extremely difficult and repressive every day, the regime dominates every aspect of their life. Like where can people find reasonable coverage that acknowledges that? Honestly, if I want to talk about media, like TV channels or just media websites. There is no media like Iranian media that truly reflects what's happening in Iran. There are like many leftists and also right-wing

Starting point is 01:47:15 media, for example, if I want to go like very leftist media called Radio Zamane, 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 ultra nationalist people. And also there are people who are related to IRGC and this organization called NIAC, that is like the regime's lobby group in the US.

Starting point is 01:47:53 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 it. Hey, this makes sense. And this doesn't. But that's 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. Yeah. some of them, if I want, I don't know if it's okay to say their names. Yeah, yeah. Some of them and the people, for example, the Brumand organization, they did lots of great work.

Starting point is 01:48:30 But recently, again, they showed some sort of racism and censorship against minorities, especially Kurds and people like Lot and Basaragan, they are also doing some human rights work in the US. And even people like Matsi Ali Nejad 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 perspective. 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 Han Gao Organization for Human Rights until late 2023, I guess. We were mainly focused on East Kurdistan, but right now we report

Starting point is 01:49:26 human rights violations from all over Iran. Yeah. 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 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 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.

Starting point is 01:50:23 It's our organization, Hangau, and also like organizations like Kurdistan Human Rights Network. But unfortunately, the majority of the others are not really clear. So for Kurdish issues, I would say definitely Hangau and also on my page, Kurdistan people, I also like write a lot of things and also Kurdish Peace Institute and Kurdish Center for Studies. I also write a lot of things. And also, the Kurdish Peace Institute and Kurdish Center for Studies, they have lots of other Kurdish journalists and experts that write a lot of really good articles about the situation there.

Starting point is 01:50:53 And if I want to mention names, I would say Rojin Mokriani. She is a really great researcher. She lives in Ireland. There is another professor called Kamran Matin. 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. Thank you so much for joining us. That was really, that really helped, I think,

Starting point is 01:51:25 for people to understand things. Tell us about your Kurdistan people page. Where can they find that on Instagram? Yeah, thank you for inviting me and thank you for letting me speak. Yeah, I have this page, Kurdistani People. I usually post about all over Kurdistan, the things that matter. Obviously, I can't do it all the time, but yeah. I post a lot of things and there are other pages that I also collaborate with like Kurdish activism or everything about Kurdistan. We're just a group of people who work together. Obviously, like our organization, I think it's very, very important for people to follow and support it. Hengou Organization for human rights and also Kurdistan Human Rights Network. That's also like another one that you can follow.

Starting point is 01:52:13 Yeah. And also like I gave, I talked about some names and individuals and researchers. Yeah. You can also follow them for more professional analysis about East Kurdistan or Rojhelat. Yeah, great. Well, thank you, Zemmif, for joining us. We really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. OpenAI is a financial abomination. A thing that should not be. An aberration.

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Starting point is 01:55:53 podcasts. Hi, everyone, and welcome to What Could Happen Here. It is a second episode about Kurdistan. I am very lucky to be joined today by Vladimir Van Wilgenberg, who many of you will know is a journalist covering Kurdistan. He's done excellent work for a lot of publications. So welcome to the show, Vladimir. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Starting point is 01:56:20 Yeah, thanks for being willing to join us so late at night. Your time. Let's start off by discussing an event you attended or an event you were in proximity to by the sounds of it. People will have seen this online, I'm sure, but it was the disarmament of a number of PKK guerrillas that took place in the mountains of Southern Kurdistan over the weekend of the 10th to 12th of July. So yeah, a few days ago I tried to attend a ceremony from 30 PKK guerrillas that were disarming.

Starting point is 01:56:56 Basically what happened is that they burned their weapons, although technically it's not really possible to burn a weapon because there were these colossal costs basically that they put in a fire. And it was in like actually a tourist cave near Dokan. So this is not, it was actually very different because I also have been in the, during the peace process, I've also was in a press conference of the PKK in 2014 or 15 or some that around that time. And that was very different because it was basically in the area that the PKKs active in. It was in the area under their control.

Starting point is 01:57:31 But this was under a different Kurdish party's control. It's called the Patriarchal Union of Kurdistan. So in Iraqi Kurdistan you have two main parties, the Patriarchal 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 the 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.

Starting point is 01:58:02 And also there was the Turkish government media was there and also PKK media was there and a lot of other Kurdish TV channels. So it was a very interesting day, although I was not able to pass the checkpoint towards the ceremony because at the last moment, actually a few days before the ceremony, they changed the access. Supposedly it would be a very open ceremony, but then they said because of security reasons that they had to restrict the ceremony and there would be some TV screens and stuff. In the end I couldn't find the TV screens, but that's another discussion. But I also don't still understand what the security risk was.

Starting point is 01:58:37 Although a day before there was a drone strike on a Kurdish Peshmerga base, but that was like quite far away from that. It was one hour away from the ceremony location. Yeah, and it's an Iranian drone strike, right? Like a Shaheed drone. Yeah, so there have been like no group has claimed these attacks. But in the aftermath of the 12-day war, there have been a lot of drone strikes in the Kurdistan region in various areas, including this morning on American oil companies facility in the Dehok province. And the day before that also on another field near Erbil. So it has been quite tense, which also probably affected the ceremony, although it's not really

Starting point is 01:59:19 related to it. Yeah, it is different. So, yeah, basically what was interesting, so they have this peace process between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state. It's all started with a call by a Turkish ultra nationalist leader, which actually in the past actually called for executing Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party who has been in prison since the 90s. He was actually surprisingly starting this peace process. He was saying like, we should have him talk in the parliament and call for disbanding the PKK. So he never came

Starting point is 01:59:53 to the parliament, but he released messages from prison. And before the ceremony, he released also a video message where he again focused on disarming basically. And then the ceremony basically came where you have 30 fighters, 15 women, 15 men, because the PKK is all about women equality. So that's why they did it 50-50. And they put their weapons in this fire. So I think this also signifies a point of renewal because Kurds, as a tradition, they have this Kurdish New Year every year on 21 March, where people jump over fires,

Starting point is 02:00:32 there's a lot of fireworks. And the Kurdish Nauros is basically the start of a new beginning. So I think one of the reasons they chose these fires is because of this idea of a new beginning. And also the fact that when the PKK started, there were people that, sort of the creators of the PKK, they're actually, some of them, they burned themselves in prison. In the Turkish prison. Yeah. So it's also sort of related to that,

Starting point is 02:00:59 this sort of interlinkage with a fire. Yeah. And you also saw that they carefully put the weapons in the fire. They didn't just throw them. So it doesn't mean that they have completely given up on weapons because they're still waiting on counter-steps from the Turkish government. Yeah, and like there has been fighting between PKK or HPG or how you want to say it, like HPG being like technically the armed wing. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:01:29 There's been fighting in in southern Kurdistan, like so in Iraqi KRG Kurdistan, autonomous region of Iraq, since the call for peace, right? Like there has been ongoing fighting. Yeah, I mean, it's not really, I would not say that it's like actively fighting to take territory, which was happening before. So it's more that it's some like Turkish army shooting artillery on the PKK. And there was also one incident that the PKK actually responded by drones. But so far, this didn't reach much in the Turkish or the Kurdish media.

Starting point is 02:02:04 I mean, there were like some of this artillery shelling caused some fires. So villagers in the areas, it's a very hot summer now, they were trying to put out the fires. But it was not like the active fighting that you had before. And you know, since there was also a previous peace process, I mean, there have been several peace processes since history between the PKK and Turkey, but they never had the positive result. And the last one before this one was 2015.

Starting point is 02:02:33 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 PKK has also a historical presence since the 90s. But what you now have is that you have the new, this new peace process started

Starting point is 02:03:07 by this call of Bascelli and the BKK leader, Ocalan have said the time for armed struggle is over. We don't want to have a Kurdish state. So basically what now is happening is that the Kurdish BKK 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. And there was also a speech by the Turkish president Erdogan, where he was also saying that it's the end, we don't need anymore, we need to talk.

Starting point is 02:03:41 It's not a time for weapons anymore. We spent trillions of dollars on the war against the PKK. We had a lot of martyrs and we sacrificed a lot and it's now the time to stop the war and 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. Yeah, let's take a break for adverts here and then we'll come back. All right, we are back. I guess we should talk briefly about like the nature of this

Starting point is 02:04:28 this call for peace you explained very well that this is probably a higher chance of success than that has ever been right like we have the explicit buy-in of Ojulan who hasn't been seen on video since the 90s so like to have him making a video statement is quite significant. I'm sure he's been seen on video but but like not, not like making a speech. Correct. 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

Starting point is 02:05:00 very well educated on these matters. What do you think this means for not just the PKK, but the KCK, I guess, like the Kurdish freedom movement, the different movements throughout Kurdistan that are inspired by the political thought of Ozilan? Well, I mean, until now, it's difficult to say what exactly is going to happen because the PKK said they're going to go, they will disarm, but there's other groups which are linked to the PKK in Iran, Iran and in Syria, and also for instance in Sinjar. Those groups said they were not, some of them have said publicly that we are not part of this process or they welcome the process.

Starting point is 02:05:37 And others they didn't really say much to Yazidis group haven't said really a lot. Yeah, I haven't seen it. So it's also going to be interesting what will happen with those groups, with the Iranian Kurdish group and also with the Syrian Democratic forces in Syria that have a different situation. Also after the fall of Assad, they have these talks with Damascus. And actually one of the reasons that the first peace 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.

Starting point is 02:06:10 That was then rising up in Syria and attacked the Kurdish town of Koban in Syria, which created an alliance between the Kurds and US against the ISIS terrorist militant jihadi group. But now the situation actually is interesting. So at that time the Kurds were empowered in Syria, but now you can see there's a completely different situation. Now it's the opposite way. So now you have the rebels that took over Damascus and they are now the government run by Jullani, his previous name, who's now called himself Ahmed al-Shara, his real name. So they now have a new Islamist-controlled government in Damascus, and there's a lot

Starting point is 02:06:50 of tension between the Kurds in Syria and Damascus. So this could also risk basically this peace process with Turkey, because the SDF, they have also ideological links with the PKK. 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 PKK. 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 PKK could threaten the SCF in Syria, but that was sort of the other way around, that fighting between possible fighting in the future between Damascus and the Kurds in Syria, it could threaten the peace process in Turkey. And Erdogan, he made this very big speech not a very long time ago where he mentioned that

Starting point is 02:07:24 Turkey doesn't only want peace for the Kurds in Turkey and for Alawites also a religious minority in Turkey, but he was also talking that he wants peace for the Kurds 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 Syrian government. So I think that's also a very interesting point that you don't see in many articles that there's like this very big interlinkage between all these different issues. Yeah. And I think Turkey has maintained that the SDF is the PKK, right? Just with like a different badge, which is not the case. They share a lot of politics, but they're distinct.

Starting point is 02:08:01 Turkey also has like extensive proxy forces in Syria, right? They have been fighting with the SDF since, I guess, like late, well, I mean, for, for years, but like in an expanded sense since, since the beginning of the fall of the Assad regime that we saw like, probably seven or eight months ago Yeah. It's a very complex situation. It's also as we, as we record this today on the 15th, Syria is a very diverse country and to add to all the groups you mentioned, there is currently fighting between the government and Druze militias, right? Can you explain a little bit about the situation there and the relevance of that? Well, I mean, the Druze, they are a religious community that are not the Sunni Muslims. And they control their own area on the border, the town called Sueda and the villages around

Starting point is 02:08:57 it. And also they have some areas in Damascus where they have a presence. So the Druze, basically, during the time when the Assad regime still was in power, they didn't really fight very heavily against the Assad regime in the beginning, but they didn't allow the Assad 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 of Assad there were like a big protest in the Druze areas in support

Starting point is 02:09:31 of the Syrian revolution and against the Assad regime. So there were like very big protests in the Druze areas against the Assad 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 Druze, they also joined the fight and they marched together with the southern rebels. They marched on Damascus and they were actually the first one that entered Damascus, not Ahmed Al-Shara or the HDS. Actually, the first ones that entered Damascus was the southern rebels and the Druze. But there's this thing is that the Damascus wants to have this new regime or the new government in Damascus. They want to have this

Starting point is 02:10:12 very centralized system. So they don't want the Druze to run their own armed groups and they have their own sort of local autonomy. So they have been fighting before between the Druze 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 Druze in this area. So these areas are quite mixed. So there's actually this recent conflict they started when Bedouin tribes, they robbed a merchant who was a Druze. And then after that, there were mutual kidnapping tensions between both sides. And then basically, although Damascus said they were neutral, Damascus started to

Starting point is 02:10:58 support these Bedouin groups against the Druze and started marching on Sueda, which is the Druze stronghold on the border. And so actually there have been like a few days, not even a few days, but have been like a short period of fighting now. And actually Damascus, they entered this Druze town of Sueda and they actually said, okay, we control the town now and now we're going to withdraw the Syrian army. And then the internal security forces going to control the city.

Starting point is 02:11:29 They're very shortly after Israel started bombing heavily the Syrian armed forces of the new Syrian government. And then the Druze armed groups, they sort of pushed back and they pushed out this internal security forces out of the city. And now the Druze are, according to many reports, back in control of the city of Soweda. And now you see that just like what happened with the Alawites when there was this Assad regime remnants that had an uprising against the new authorities. And then there were like these rebels, they were mobilized with mosque all over Syria

Starting point is 02:12:04 and they went to the coast areas and they defeated those Assad regime remnants, but they killed also a lot of civilians, some reports say over 1500 people. Yeah. So what you now see is that Damascus is against mobilizing those people with mosques to march on Soweda, but the difference is with the Alawites is that Israel also has Druze. So there's also pressure on the Israeli government to support the Druze. So it's not only because of their strategic interests, it's also because there are Druze living in Israel itself that also have joined the Israeli army.

Starting point is 02:12:37 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 airstrikes and the Druze there are basically back in control of most of the Suede city, not of the whole area. But the fight is not over yet. And then you also have different Druze factions. Some of them, they have better relations with Damascus. The majority of them don't. So now we're going to if there's gonna be fighting, if the fight is gonna increase again. We see now reports also of that the HDS or the Damascus government forces are using drone strikes by themselves on Druze

Starting point is 02:13:14 forces. So they're using basically the drones that they used to overthrow the Assad regime. So yeah, that's the situation. Yeah. I think the world stopped looking at Syria. I mean, I guess the world stopped looking at Syria a while ago. Like really after the defeat of the territorial caliphate, it's been much harder to sell stories in big newspapers in the United States, but yeah, it's by no means like the fighting is not over and it leaves their SDF, Western Kurdistan branch of this Kurdish movement, right? Like in, as you said, a fairly perilous condition, right? The Damascus wants to centralize, they don't want to have independence, they don't want to have federated autonomy.

Starting point is 02:14:11 United States seems to be, or at least the United States envoy to Damascus seems to be making statements that suggests that like, the only way forward is through centralization. On one hand we have the PKK laying down arms, on the other hand we have the SDF in its difficult position. Where does this leave the Kurdish freedom movement? I think this has been a thing that a lot of people all over the world have looked up to, right? People have, especially Roshava, as this example that people could build something, a place where freedom could exist in the middle of this terrible war in Syria. Do you think the movement's like in danger now? Well, I mean, you have this new government in Syria. Actually, in addition to the Trump administration was quite reluctant to have relations with the new authorities in Damascus

Starting point is 02:14:57 because they were, I mean, Jolani used to be on a, Ahmad Shah, I used to be on a terrorist sanction list. Yeah, there was a bounty for him at one point. It wasn't there. Yeah, but I think there was like a very intensive lobbying by some Gulf states and Turkey to basically remove the sanctions on Ahmad Shahra Jolani, but also remove sanctions on Syria, the economic sanctions that were actually were on the Assad regime. So I think the Trump administration changed their position and also a new ambassador for Syria and Turkey was appointed. So he was not only the ambassador for Turkey, but also for Syria. And he's basically echoing a lot of the points of the new authorities in Damascus that they were talking about one state, one army, one this, one this, and the SDF should be integrated and blah blah blah. So there was also recently

Starting point is 02:15:45 there were talks between Damascus and the SDF 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. But this agreement was not implemented, it didn't lead to anything. So it was not really, it didn't really work very well because Damascus is insisting on this centralized state. And I was just listening to a Syrian Kurdish official and she was also saying like we don't want to separate from Syria, but we want to have some form of local councils and a decentralized

Starting point is 02:16:24 Syria, not like want to have some form of local councils and a decentralized Syria, not like a centralized Syria. As he was also talking about what happened to the Druze, that it's not a very good example for the future of Syria. So I think definitely what you're saying that there is a sort of threat because in the past the US was very supportive of the SDF in the fight against ISIS, although they didn't support so much their political project, but they supported them because they fought ISIS. And also they were keeping out Iranian-backed militias from areas like Deir ez-Zor.

Starting point is 02:16:54 But now you don't have Iran anymore in Syria. They were completely kicked out after the fall of the Assad regime. All these militias, they have been disbanded or hiding, or some of them are actually now being used by Damascus against the Druze. So now that argument is not there anymore that you, okay, we have the SDF, they keep out Iran from the oil fields. Yeah, you could still argue you still have the fight against ISIS. I mean, ISIS is still a threat. But the Kurds don't have that same leverage anymore, as is in the past, that they said, okay, we are the main ones fighting ISIS. We keep out Iran from these areas because now you have Damascus. Damascus said,

Starting point is 02:17:29 why the Kurds should do that? Let's us take over those prisons and the camps where you have this thousands of ISIS families and ISIS prisoners. And we don't need the Kurds to run the ISIS file. 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 Damascus at least diplomatically than the SDF. Yeah. Although military speaking, the support is still going on for the SDF until 2026. In the last Pentagon budget, which was not accepted yet, there's still like millions of support for the

Starting point is 02:18:05 SDF to maintain the prisons and this kind of stuff. So I think it's a difficult situation. Yeah. These prisons like Ahole and others, right? They're, I guess, kind of the only leverage the SDF has with the United States, along with the continuing and somewhat increasing ISIS attacks. But that's still much less of a threat to the US than it was 10 years ago, say. Right, like it's much less of a significant thing. So like, what is the status of those prisons that currently they're still guided by the SDF, right? But the people aren't familiar. Can you just explain what those prisons consist of and and who's in there and who's guarding them?

Starting point is 02:18:50 Well, ISIS created this jihadi state between 2014 and 2019. But then the Kurdish-led SDF basically took most of these areas under ISIS control. They defeated basically ISIS with the support of the US, so they lost the territory. And the last battle basically was for a small town called Baruz in Deir ez-Zor. So you had all these ISIS families there, and also there were like several ISIS foreign members that were captured. So you have the wives of ISIS fighters and you also have ISIS fighters themselves that were captured during these battles. So all these people, they were brought to camps. So I was there in Syria many times,

Starting point is 02:19:30 for instance, during the battle for Raqqa, which used to be the capital of the ISIS caliphate. They were like bringing the ISIS families and women to a camp in Ain al-Isa. But after that, they moved most of those people to actually they moved almost all of them to the Roj camp and the Al-Hol camp in northern Syria in the Hasakah province. And also that includes foreigners. You can imagine people from Uzbekistan, from Uyghurs, 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.

Starting point is 02:20:09 So the SDF, they have this foul. 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 50 percent, but there's still a lot of people on site. But the prisons, you have still all these ISIS fighters that were in prison during the war.

Starting point is 02:20:34 And a lot of them are foreigners, including Dutch, another country. And some countries, they have returned their people there. So we have some people, you know, in America, they took back most of the families and the fighters and they prosecute them in the US. But you also have counties 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,

Starting point is 02:21:01 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 there have been also attempts by ISIS to free those prisoners from those prisons. Basically. Yeah. I mean, successful attempts in 2020, 2022, I think it was when they had the, uh, the last like major prison escape, which yeah, it's a bad thing for the whole world if all those people get out. And like you say, lots of European nations, I think it's something that I wish

Starting point is 02:21:34 Americans had paid more attention to because a thing that European nations have done, the United Kingdom being a paramount example is like rendered some of those people stateless, right? That they've removed their, in this case, Shamima Begum is probably the most well-known example, right? They've removed her British passport. 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, the precedent has been established, and then that now it's being carried out, and it's

Starting point is 02:22:10 so obviously deeply concerning to see it happening here after after like it happened there, and I wish people had opposed it when it did. Well, I mean, the US in the US itself in Syria was very big advocate of bringing the people out. Yes, it was. Because it would make it easier for them to withdraw. So they were actually pushing those countries that didn't want to bring back their nationals to basically bring them back, like

Starting point is 02:22:34 Western countries, the UK and others. But some of these countries were actually forced by court orders or others. But a lot of these countries were actually quite reluctant to bring them back because they were afraid of security risk and and stuff or that they will be released quite quickly and then they would again like be active in jihadist activities. So yes, so I remember that the US was even offering like members of this coalition against ISIS which was created in 2014. But as you said, if you cannot bring them yourself, I mean, our military can help you to bring those people out

Starting point is 02:23:08 if you think that it's difficult for you to go to Syria and pick those nationals up from your accounts. Yeah, yeah, been pretty unsuccessful, like in a lot of, well, in some European cases they have, but still, yeah, lots of them are utterly refusing to do it. I wonder then, as we finish up here, right, like we spoke about this PKK disarmament, obviously, like it's a, it's a symbolic disarmament, right? There is still, I don't quite know how big the HPG is, but it's much bigger

Starting point is 02:23:35 than 30 people and then the weapons they laid down were like a very small percentage of their weapons. I'm good. Were they just burning like Kalashnikovs or did they burn larger weapons too? No, it was just our personal Kalashnikovs basically. OK. I mean, it was also like more symbolic, symbolic ceremony. Like we are willing to give up.

Starting point is 02:23:57 But the thing is that also it's still not clear what happened to those 30 people. Are they going to go back to Turkey? That's what I wanted to ask. Yeah. Are they going to go back to Turkey? That's what I wanted to ask, yeah. Are they going to stay in Iraqi Kurdistan and find a job there? Because you have people like that in Iraqi Kurdistan that used to be with the PKK and that now they work in, I don't know, in media or construction sector or entertainment sector. You have people like that. But there's not much clarity on that. But I think also that's because they're waiting on Turkey to make possible constitutional steps, you know, to see what Turkey is going to do.

Starting point is 02:24:30 Because if, for instance, Turkey could offer an amnesty or this kind of things, then those people could return. And also some of them are saying like now it's the end of weapons, but we still want to be involved in politics. Right, through the political party. So it's also possible that those people want to go back to Turkey and basically take part in Kurdish politics or Turkish politics to be more correct in Turkey. So I think it's a little bit too early to say what happens with those people because I remember also if I

Starting point is 02:24:56 very much correct that there also have been peace process that basically people have given, basically went to the border and give themselves up to Turkey, but that didn't happen now. So it's a bit different than in the past. But it seems that the Turkish government was very happy with the ceremony. They didn't complain about it. So okay. Yeah, yeah. I wonder what happened to those guerrillas or former guerrillas, I suppose, who laid down

Starting point is 02:25:18 their weapons at the end of the ceremony. They just kind of returned to the mountains or whatever. We don't know what will happen with them. No, that's, that's not clear to me because there are still some unanswered questions. Like what you mentioned now, like what those 30 people did, what those people are going to do now. So, Right. It's a lot of people and it's a lot of people, some of whom have spent decades as cadre of the revolution, right?

Starting point is 02:25:44 Like they, they haven't, they haven't really known life cadre of the revolution. They haven't really known life outside of the revolution for a very long time. Yeah, so it's also a bit difficult for them to return to civilian life because they probably joined when they're quite young. And I think I saw also the profiles of the people, of the 30 people who burned their weapons that a lot of them they joined in the 90s. So they have been in the mountains for a very long time. Yeah. I mean, some of them were young, but there were also older people among them. But definitely, it's

Starting point is 02:26:14 going to be a question what will happen with those people. Though, I mean, there were also talks that some leadership of the armed PKK movement might go to Europe and get asylum there instead of going back to Turkey. You have also a lot of Kurdish diaspora organizations active there, so they could basically embrace those people. But they're still listed as a foreign terrorist organization in most of... Yeah, exactly. For instance, they probably would want to have something like what the Syrian president has now, Ahmed Al-Shara, that he used to be listed as a sanctioned as a terrorist organization. And then to have that removed. But I'm sure that that's not on the table anytime soon. But that happened with the HDS. But also it happened, for instance, Mujeddin Khalq, an Iranian opposition

Starting point is 02:26:59 group, they also got delisted. So it's technically as possible. But I think we are in a very early stage of the peace process. So, that's why I think it's going to take time before we have more clarity. And some of these answers that questions you ask now, I mean, most of the people that attended the ceremony didn't have an answer to that too, because there was not much clarity on that. Because it was just a ceremony, there was like a statement. Journalists were not able to talk to most of the journalists. I mean, 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 30 people that burned their weapons.

Starting point is 02:27:39 So it was like sort of quite very much controlled ceremony. It was very difficult to report on it basically, which is very different from the previous peace process when it was much more open. But that time there was not like 30 fighters giving up their weapons. They just had like sort of a press conference. This is what we're going to do. And that was very different than what happened now. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:27:58 I guess it's something just to keep watching. It's fascinating to watch it unfold. Like I was in Kurdistan a year and a half ago, and it just seems the situation is completely different. Likewise in the whole of Syria. So yeah, it's fascinating to watch. I'm sure if people want to know more about it, you're very good at reporting on this. You often post on Twitter about the situation and you write for number of outlets.

Starting point is 02:28:24 So how can people follow your work? Well, the best place to follow my work is on Twitter about the situation and you write for number of outlets. So how can people follow your work? Well, the best place to follow my work is on Twitter, on X, because I'm quite active there. But also I write for places like Middle East Eye, something thanks like Washington Institute, New Alliance Institute. I also write for a Kurdish magazine called Kurdistan Chronicle. And also I pitch for other websites, so I'm quite active on different issues, but mostly focused on things related to Kurds, so mostly stuff related to Iran, Turkey, Syria, etc. Yeah, well thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your insight. You're welcome, my friend. OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol

Starting point is 02:29:23 of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why open AI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app app, Apple podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free.

Starting point is 02:29:56 I'm Ebene, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house.

Starting point is 02:30:25 Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on the street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines.

Starting point is 02:30:43 Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

Starting point is 02:31:06 These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny, you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

Starting point is 02:31:34 On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but… Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of

Starting point is 02:32:02 your life. That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have big, bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lea TraTate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us.

Starting point is 02:32:33 We're going to talk about the adultification of Black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. Yes.

Starting point is 02:33:17 This episode, we are covering the week of July 9th to July 16th. What's going on, my boys? And in some cases, gals. And in some cases, days and in some cases days that were it's or whatever and the answer for everyone is Edie. Hooray in some cases my gals. I guess let's start by talking about Jeffrey Epstein as we always do. talking about Jeffrey Epstein. As we always do. Jeffstein.

Starting point is 02:33:45 Yeah, you know what, Garrison? I hear you've got some bars to drop about Epstein. Jesus. All right, well, that's my work for the day. Brief summary. Previously on this show, we talked about how Patel and Bongino, the head of the FBI, have previously come under fire from micro-supporters for saying that Epstein really did kill himself. And this has kind of been bubbling in the base for a while because

Starting point is 02:34:17 they used this as one of their main campaign and podcast talking points for the past four years. Bongino was a huge Epstein-Truther guy. I mean, and like Patel's like the QAnon guy, like both these guys have made their careers the past four years like heavily about this topic. Right. And now they're backtracking on a whole bunch of the previous claims or just asking questions type stuff

Starting point is 02:34:42 that they did the past few years. 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 Pam Bondi herself boasting about having Epstein's client list on her desk only a few months ago. This caused a huge freakout in the maker world. There was conflicting reports that Bondi or Patel or Bongino might be resigning in protest of this memo. A lot of uncertainty over what was real. And then on July 12th, Trump had to speak

Starting point is 02:35:22 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 Pam Bondi who's doing a fantastic job. We're on one team, a 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.

Starting point is 02:35:47 Why are we giving publicity to files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the losers and criminals of the Biden administration who conned the world with the Russia Russia Russia hoax, 51 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, in 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 in 2019

Starting point is 02:36:31 when if you remember Donald Trump was the president well, there's the defining political question of Of the modern era is who was president in 2020 so I can see it moving back There's no answer to this question, you know, we just can't, we don't know. We will never know. There's no way to prove it. Our records don't reach back that far. We just simply can't say who president was. The mists of time have shaded over.

Starting point is 02:36:57 So much of modern domestic politics is about confusion over who was president in 2019 and 2020. When it was Donald Trump, he ends by saying, quote, let's not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody nobody cares about. Um... So funny. You can tell he's so far gone, you two.

Starting point is 02:37:18 He sounds scared. Well, because he never fully understood this stuff. Like, there's things that he understands instinctually, and there's things that he never really got. And because he was Epstein's friend, he never really got why this was so central. He kind of got that it was, but he also kind of assumed like,

Starting point is 02:37:35 well, if I tell everyone to shut the fuck up, they will. They're gonna shut the fuck up, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's how he's done things for the past, like, 12 years, and it's more often than not, worked really well for him But this has become such a load-bearing aspect of like the mega self-image like this is like, you know This type of stuff is what drove QAnon essentially like a cult. Yeah

Starting point is 02:37:55 He and he he never fully understood why QAnon was really a thing. He never like truly grasped it That's why he never really he started he started more recently doing some QAnon signposting, but yeah, he clearly never fully got why it was happening. Yeah. Like it was convenient. And now the monster that he and his, you know, quote unquote, friends have helped create all these years is starting to nibble on his own leg. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:38:21 This past weekend, influencers like Tim P, Benny Johnson, and Charlie Kirk all started to kind of turn on Trump and to play a quick video from disgraced Buzzfeed writer Benny Johnson, now right-wing podcaster. By admitting that the Epstein files are real and have been written and that you've read them and you don't like their contents and they were written by your enemies doesn't make doesn't make the most compelling case. As far as I'm concerned. Holy moly.

Starting point is 02:39:00 Holy moly. Holy moly. You heard it here first. There was a lot of this stuff over the weekend. Like this whole podcasting cohort, which so many people credit to Trump's great success in 2024, all started asking questions and were kind of confused. I don't know why they would be. It's been very well documented that Trump was friends with Epstein for a long time. But this time, this thing finally broke containment. And when you have fucking Charlie Kirk,

Starting point is 02:39:29 someone who's basically one of the GOP's top narrative shepherds, essentially, and when you have him questioning the president's own story and credibility, that's a pretty big shakeup in the mega world. Yeah, it's not really explicable. There's no plausible deniability Yeah, I think for a long time this has been like the load-bearing Cognitive dissonance for this entire movement and I actually do think when Elon first was just like he's in the files I think that was the first moment that all these people were suddenly allowed to do this

Starting point is 02:40:02 That was the first domino. Definitely. Yeah, he cracked the shell on it. And I think that has like torn open this rift that has allowed all of these people who previously their cognitive dissonance has sustained them through a decade of like Our dear rulers obviously friends with the pedophile. I'll say it critical support Oh no rulers obviously friends with the pedophile like I'll say it critical support Let them fight let them fight So the next move that the geniuses of the Trump administration tried to pull to settle things down was released the raw footage the missing raw footage Outside Jeffrey Epstein cell to to finally, finally close the

Starting point is 02:40:45 book on this Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself moment. And they released it and everyone realized, you know what, they're right. There's nothing more to look into here. He's closed. No problem. We all rose up as if with one voice to say, this doesn't seem suspicious. So Wired found that this quote unquote raw video was actually edited and had nearly three minutes removed.

Starting point is 02:41:09 Sure. Yeah, but look, doesn't Jeffrey Upstein deserve some privacy, you know, three minutes on his own? This is a really personal decision for somebody to take. Yeah, exactly. So, no, after claiming like they've released this completely, this is completely, you know, ripped straight from the hard drive raw footage, it showed that it was edited in Adobe Premiere and has these missing three minutes.

Starting point is 02:41:36 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 then immediately proven incorrect by there being way more than one minute missing. Three minutes, I'm sorry. I came into this as like, I don't know what happened. Maybe he killed himself. I don't know what happened in that jail cell. I And now I'm now I'm I am sincerely more on the well something there's something there height Yeah, I will say there's one thing that I think this does definitively rule out

Starting point is 02:42:15 Which is that it was definitely not the Clinton crime family We've ruled out This brings me to a theory that I have been working on for the last couple of days. And I think this is really important to get out to people. So obviously the other big statement that Donald Trump made in the last week was that his uncle, who used to be a professor at MIT, had taught Ted Kaczynski and talked to him

Starting point is 02:42:41 about Ted Kaczynski and been like, hey, you know, there's a real thin line between genius and insanity. And then it came out that Donald Trump's uncle who taught at MIT died in 1985. And of course the Unabomber was not publicly identified until 1996. Now some people have interpreted this as Donald Trump lying,

Starting point is 02:42:58 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 Unabomber was for more than a decade and kept it hidden from the rest of the United States. Now, what is the Unabomber and Donald Trump have in common? Obviously two people who were treated very unfairly by the Clintons, right?

Starting point is 02:43:21 I think we can all agree on that, you know? So it all ties together. Both are possibly victims of MKUltra. That's right. Yeah. No, the His little Tuesday speech in Pittsburgh was was quite bizarre. Not just that. Kaczynski never went to MIT. It's gonna say to my knowledge, none of them. Yes, Did not go to the university that Dr. John Trump was at. I will say, this is the first one of these stories that this genuinely sounds like an Alex Jones story. Like, this is the kind of story that Alex Jones tells about his uncles all the time.

Starting point is 02:43:56 Yeah, they ain't talking to Alex Jones right now. No, definitely not. Alex Jones persona non-graduate at the White House currently. It is a truly bizarre ramble. I have to take, I have to brag just for a second because... I have to brag! When I first heard about AI, you know, it's not my thing. Although my uncle was at MIT, one of the great professors, 51 years whatever,

Starting point is 02:44:18 who was the longest serving professor in the history of MIT, three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math. Nuclear. That's a sport, man. Kuczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kuczynski was? There's very little difference between a madman and a genius. But Kuczynski said, what kind of a student was he?

Starting point is 02:44:38 Uncle John, Dr. John Trump, he said, what kind of a student? And then he said, seriously good. He said he'd go around correcting everybody, but it didn't work out too well for him. Didn't work out too well, but it's interesting in life. Didn't work out too well for him. It sure didn't. He's Christ. To be fair, he never gives a first name. It could have been another Kaczynski. It could be a different Kaczynski. This is true, James. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:45:07 People are not interested. Also, God, that whole thing. Just the undergrad who goes around correcting everyone. Many such cases. Yeah. But back to Epstein, the thing that Trump doesn't want us to talking about. That's right. By Monday, some of this influencer podcasting class started to kind of close ranks.

Starting point is 02:45:30 The skepticism and frustration that they expressed over the weekend subsided and they started to repeat the party line. Charlie Kirk said on his show, quote, plenty was said this last weekend at our event about Epstein. Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. I'm going to 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.

Starting point is 02:46:00 Everyone knows my opinion on the Epstein thing, the messaging fumble. I would love to see the DOJ move to unseal the grand jury testimony." Unquote. The messaging fumble. The biggest problem with Jeffrey Epstein has been the messaging fumble. Not decades of horrific sex crimes tied to the President of the United States. Also, I love that he's trying to trust the plan people with like the thing that Trust the Plan is about reviewing. Yeah. This is about! It's what it's about!

Starting point is 02:46:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just keep trusting it. I do want to say that I, because I hate myself, I listened to Sean Ryan's podcast interview with Gavin Newsom. Oh, God. Which, yeah, I don't suggest. It is four hours, if you're wondering. So never get pissed off about our episodes going long again, please. Lots of interesting stuff.

Starting point is 02:46:53 Trump has lost Sean Ryan. Like, he is not towing the line on this Epstein stuff. He's clearly pissed about it. And like, Ryan is a sizable influence on the right. He has about 5 million YouTube subscribers, right? He's one of the top ten podcasts on Spotify he's interviewed Trump on his pot like when Trump did his like podcast offensive before the 2024 election Ryan was one of the places he went. Mm-hmm, and

Starting point is 02:47:18 it seems like Ryan Ryan is not on the like RNC paid poster list because he seemed more critical of Trump than Gavin Newsom was in that interview, weirdly, specifically about the Epstein stuff, which was kind of remarkable to me. And I think we should note that he has a significant influence on a certain type of people. Someone who certainly does appear to be on the RNC paid list is documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza. I'm going to talk about the Epstein files and I'm going to make the case that even though

Starting point is 02:47:56 there are unanswered questions about Epstein, it is in fact time to move on. Very convincing. Well, sounds good. Luckily, there's nobody with a firearm out of shot in that video, so I'm sure it's fine. Case closed. Yep. Seems good to me. In another move for transparency, on Tuesday, Republicans unanimously voted to block the

Starting point is 02:48:23 release of the Epstein files. Benny Johnson interviewed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about how they kind of want to handle this and they're trying to make this argument that they want to be transparent, but they have to make sure that they protect the victims and that's why they can't release the files. Sure, yeah, protect victims. Republican Party. Compelling, compelling stuff. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:48:48 Part of what makes this super weird is like Trump just keeps giving the most bizarre, most like I'm totally not guilty comments in media. And something he said on Tuesday I found to be quite interesting, not because of what he actually said, but because of how he said it. See if you can catch this. I found to be quite interesting not because of the what he actually said but because of how he said it see if see if See if you can catch this She's she's given us Just a very quick briefing and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen and

Starting point is 02:49:20 I would say that you know these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama They were made up by but the Biden it from you know We and we went through years of that with the Russia Russia Russia hugs With all of the different things that we had to go through we've gone through years of it, but she's handled it very well Very convincing stuff you can see Caroline Levitt just like being right. Right. This is the first time I've heard Trump stutter like this before. And Trump's whole idea of reality is if you speak it enough, that becomes true.

Starting point is 02:49:58 You can literally bend the concept of truth, you can bend reality using your words. And this is why he talks you know, talks about being a winner. This is why he only surrounds himself with people who are winners. Like he thinks that reality is this malleable thing that you affect through asserting your own will. And he's done this super successfully, especially throughout his career in politics. You know, he's a mixed record of it in his business, business era, but certainly in his political, 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. It was just because he said it enough. Yeah. This is the first time I've heard him break while trying to speak reality into being.

Starting point is 02:50:40 Like he literally could not get himself to do it cleanly. And that is notable to me. He's made a series of truths later that day talking about how, quote, my past supporters have bought into this bullshit. Hook line and sinker! Oh, shit! Very good. And he's now moved to call the Jeffrey Epstein story, the Epstein hoax.

Starting point is 02:51:06 Jesus Christ. He had an Oval Office press conference Wednesday morning, quote, I call it the Epstein hoax. They're talking about a guy who died three, four years ago. And the sad part is, is people are doing a Democrat's work. They are stupid people. I don't think that's the sad part about what happened with Jeffrey Epstein. I think there are other sad things related to his conduct. A man is dead, you know?

Starting point is 02:51:30 I think the thing that is like very alarming about this, so that I think is very dangerous about this entire situation, a lot of this on the right has always been sort of motivated by anti-Semitism. Yeah. Well. And I think we are going, like we are already seeing some shit. It's funny you say that Mia. Yeah. Because another voice has joined the call to release the files. Oh god. Former Sesame Street resident Elmo made a series of I will say shocking statements over the weekend They're not that shocking if you've been familiar with some of the court cases against Elmo over the last couple years

Starting point is 02:52:13 I know Larry David attacked Elmo a few years ago. Yeah, and he had probably saw this coming As I've been saying this for years as a Jewish man I think he saw through Elmo schtick and knew the anti-semitism at the heart of elbow that was being suppressed Nazi Yeah, elbow made some shocking tweets just you know, very similar to like what happened to Kanye a few years ago Similar figures, you know, they they both kind of come out of of same chunks of American hip hop culture. It's not super surprising. And I think they were both close for a long number of years before Either Man's career

Starting point is 02:52:53 blew up. But yes, very anti-Semitic statements also calling for the release of the Epstein files. Elmo has since backtracked, hired a PR team it seems, has scrubbed the tweets, handling the backlash a little bit better than Kanye did, but still it's gonna be hard to look past this as Elmo attempts to continue Elmo's career. Especially since Elmo is now running for president with Nick Fuentes as campaign manager. I did not hear this! Just an inadvisable. That is upsetting.

Starting point is 02:53:23 He's quote, swears it's not a Nazi thing. But yeah, a lot of debate about that. I will reach out to Bert Nerny for comment. There's a whole bunch of replies to Elmo's tweet calling for Elmo to resign. As if Elmo is A, a real person, and B, genuinely believes this shit. Yeah, I'm going to quote one.

Starting point is 02:53:45 It's just too good. Resign. You posted the most vile hate speech since the latest Tucker Carlson podcast, saying what you did about Jews is Nazi star rhetoric and you should be out of a job at the very east. Fire Elmo. Yeah, yeah. Hashtag fire Elmo everybody.

Starting point is 02:54:01 Yeah, get it trending. In genuine all seriousness, though, I think it is really alarming that a lot of the like on the right the way that like a lot of this resistance is crystallizing the trouble over this is just the like, oh, they're like, this is like, Epstein was a massage agent Trump is a massage agent. Yeah, right. It's all just pure. It's pure anti-Semitism. The Jews are blackmailing US politicians with, you know, child porn and yeah. And I think there's two angles on this. One in the very short term it's obviously very good that Trump is losing support. However, comma, if and when we defeat Trump we are going to have to pivot and smash these people so fucking hard that they never reappear again because this could get Really really fucking bad very quickly, and I don't I don't think I don't know

Starting point is 02:54:52 We've covered this on the show right we're like all discourse by anti-semitism has been turned into yelling at like Mom Donnie for something he didn't say and then meanwhile like the Elm will account is being hacked by like just Say and then meanwhile like the Elmo account is being hacked by like just literally a guy saying kill all Jews Right at the Nazis 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 like Deal with eventually. Yeah. No, this is the unfortunate reality is that Yeah, no, this is the unfortunate reality is that anti-Semitism is turning into a block that could potentially swing an election one way or the other. And it's not a block that's necessarily locked into left or right. It's left into whoever is going to play to those delusions, you know? And the fact that we're as deep in the weeds as we are right now with a right-wing fascist movement does not mean that there could not be a left-wing authoritarian movement that clings to anti-Semitism as a way to

Starting point is 02:55:50 gain power. It's happened in the world before. It's not something the left is immune from. It's obviously not the top of my threat model, right? I would not say this is the thing to focus on, but it's something again 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 Bush 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 shit can-

Starting point is 02:56:34 Even like RFK Jr. in some ways. Even RFK Jr. Shit 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 swivel. Let's go on an ad break

Starting point is 02:56:51 and then return to talk about more news. That's right. ["Sweet Homework"] Alright, we are back and now we're going to talk about immigration, a topic which is always fun and only good things happen. So to begin with, today we're recording on the 16th, the Trump administration has begun renditioning people to Eswatini. Eswatini, small landlocked country in Africa, people are not familiar, Africa's last absolute monarchy. This follows their rendition of eight people to South Sudan. The South Sudanese press is reporting that those men are in prison in South Sudan, which contradicts Tom Homan's

Starting point is 02:57:42 statement to Politico that, quote, when we sign these agreements with all these countries, we make arrangements to make sure these countries are receiving these people and there's opportunities for these people. But I can't tell if we remove somebody to Sudan. They can stay there. We can leave. I don't know. Homan has said in other outlets that he believes they were just kind of free in South Sudan, that they were just released to wander around around that does not seem to be the case. Jesus. The Eswatini people, Tricia McLaughlin who's a I think a deputy secretary of Homeland Security called the people sent to Eswatini quote uniquely barbaric. Oh boy. Yeah yeah she used a thread on x.com

Starting point is 02:58:23 the everything app. You can... Is it? Yes. You can find all kinds of stuff on there. Say it that way. She did not name the men in her thread, but she did list their convictions. Most of these were sex crimes, children and various types of murder, homicide, manslaughter. This has caused widespread concern in Aswatini, right? The idea that the US is just sending random people who have been convicted of crimes in Aswatini, in a statement the government said, Quote, Five inmates are currently housed in our correctional facilities in isolated units where similar offenders are kept.

Starting point is 02:58:57 The nation is assured that these inmates pose no threat to the country or its citizens. A statement given by government spokesman Thabeli Moudloulis 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. This seems to suggest that A, this had been planned for months, which is not a particular surprise, right? The US government has clearly been pushing for these third country renditions for a while. But also that this is a potential end run around things like the Convention Against

Starting point is 02:59:40 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 if they're sent back to their country's origin, are I guess going to be sent back via Eswatini, 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 Eswatini yet. They paid a hundred thousand for one person to be sent to Rwanda. We still don't know where that person is. We don't know exactly how much they paid to South Sudan.

Starting point is 03:00:21 They have requested a number of other countries, lots of them in West Africa, to accept people by 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 attention and I think it kind of bears mentioning, A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced legislation to fundamentally reform the immigration system. It's called the Dignity or Dignidad Act and it has about as much chance 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.

Starting point is 03:01:05 Salazar in an interview today with News Nation 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. Yeah. I mean, I guess one could make some arguments about like some of the abolitionists

Starting point is 03:01:26 just wanting to send folks off back to Africa, right? But I don't think that that's what most people understand to be Lincoln's legacy for slavery. I mean, he could definitely be like Reagan. Yeah, yeah. Give her that one. Yeah, the big problem with this pizza legislation, which Salazar has tried to introduce before, right, she tried it in 2023 as well, is that it relies on people coming forward to admit that they have no legal status and being offered a quote dignity status, which is somewhat analogous to permanent residency

Starting point is 03:01:51 with but without a pathway to citizenship. It creates a permanent underclass and it relies on people trusting immigration authorities 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 these authorities before, but like after what we've seen in the last six months, it's completely implausible. It's ludicrous. They don't want people coming forward with that stuff. That's like the whole point of scaring them away is to make them basically not able to function in this country.

Starting point is 03:02:26 Yes, exactly. They don't want to give people safe status. Like make living in this country as impossible as possible. Yeah, they have undermined the trust that allows them to do what is supposed to be the core of their job, just to get deportation numbers up, to get detention numbers up. deportation numbers up to get detention numbers up. This is just a fluffer thing. It's people in the House of Representatives trying to boost their reelection chances by saying that they tried to do something different, right? It's not seriously going to succeed. No way. Finally, a Canadian judge has halted the deportation of a non-binary person back to the USA, citing conditions here. Quoting here, the officer failed to consider recent evidence of the conditions that may have supported a reasonable fear of

Starting point is 03:03:11 persecution, said Judge Julie Blackhawk, first Indigenous woman appointed to a Canadian federal court. It seems that Angel Jenkel entered Canada as a visitor and that they're now engaged to a Canadian person. I'm guessing that they're now engaged to a Canadian person. I'm guessing that they overstayed their visitor slash tourist that you probably can get a visa waiver if you're a US citizen to enter 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 regarding the safety of LGBTQIA people in

Starting point is 03:03:45 the USA. So yeah, that's where things are at now. I'm aware of people also trans and non-binary people from the US seeking asylum in Mexico. It was a year ago that trans people were coming here to be safe and now people are moving in the other direction, which is a pretty, pretty damning combination of how things have gone in this country. But yeah, that's all the exciting fun immigration news I have this week. That really sucks. It fucking sucks.

Starting point is 03:04:21 I guess one small update tangentially related. A judge in New Hampshire blocked Trump's order on birthright citizenship while sidestepping the Supreme Court's ruling against nationwide injunctions by adding all children born on US soil to a certified nationwide class. So it's just now a massive class action case. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. This is set to go in effect on July 17th. We're recording this on the 16th. We'll see if the government responds. And July 17th is just 10 days before the partial implementation

Starting point is 03:04:55 date of Trump's executive order. Yeah. So I wanted to start this by noting that a fan reached out to us on Blue Sky recently with a clip from a quote by Omar Sharif, founder and president of Inflation Insights, who wrote in a note to clients, today's report showed that tariffs are beginning to bite. And yeah, this is, we finally come beautifully back from Tarif don't like it to Sharif don't like it. It's beautiful, you know? It's like, you know? It's like poetry.

Starting point is 03:05:26 It rhymes. Anyway, here's the song. Tarif don't like it. Rockin' to Casbah. Rockin' to Casbah. Tarif don't like it. Rockin' to Casbah. Rockin' to Casbah. Do I want to know what inflation insights does?

Starting point is 03:05:48 It's again, they post clips of Huey, Dewey and Louie inflation fetish videos from the DuckTales kids. I'd scale it. Working class. That should be a unionized position. I hope that they're able to weather the tariffs. What do you think the AFL-CIO is about? One of those words is flation the FL

Starting point is 03:06:07 In my time I deeply remember the first time I ever talked about inflation on the show It could happen here because this happened and I deeply remember that episode because we are going back to that fucking episode today and the moments that I heard doing to I, I just started getting like fucking war flashbacks. Yeah, imagine how bad those flashbacks would be if you had seen DuckTales inflation fetish porn as a kid. I avoided that until adulthood. What I have seen is this article, Inflationinsights.com has a fantastic article called, What the Great Mayonnaise Inflation Mystery Can Tell Us About Prices. I'm learning a lot here.

Starting point is 03:06:50 Okay, Mia, can we talk about tariffs now? Okay, actual tariffs. So we have new tariffs. Indonesia apparently has agreed to a tariff deal with the US in which the US imposes a 19% tariff on Indonesia and Indonesia doesn't impose one back Per CNN Trump posted on true social quote that Indonesia is buying 15 billion dollars in the US energy 5.4 billion dollars in American agricultural products and 50 Boeing jets many of them 777s fucking rip Indonesia Good luck with those planes. Uh, oh no.

Starting point is 03:07:28 So, uh, the Indonesian government was complaining to the press about how much of a shitshow negotiating this was. We'll see if it holds. We also got news that Trump has Trump has announced that he's going to

Starting point is 03:07:44 basically send a tariff letter to like a hundred and fifty countries setting their rates simultaneously but he hasn't done it yet I don't know it's possible by the time this goes out we'll have that we'll have the actual number on it who knows what's going on with that at the August 3rd tariffs maybe it's also unclear when they're gonna come into effect like it's all excellent it's also unclear when they're going to come into effect. Like, it's all- Cool, excellent. It's a catastrophe. Who knows?

Starting point is 03:08:07 This policy is just fucking Calvin Ball. They're just making 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 Bolsonaro, which is that this has backfired spectacularly he has like saved Lula's flagging approval rating it has created a massive a massive anti Bolsonaro pro Lula Brazilian nationalist backlash of a kind that I really haven't seen since like Dilma Rousseff had to deal with

Starting point is 03:08:44 like the fact that the NSA was spying on her phone It's very very funny. Bolsonaro is being accused by like by Brazilian Conservatives of being and I quote a phony nationalist who is just like a dog of the US It's amazing Trump's done this incredible pink wave across the world Yeah, it's stunning. He might save Lula too It's amazing Trump's done this incredible pink wave across the world The funniest part of this is that like Bolsonaro looks at this is like oh fuck my entire base is turning on me because I'm so Clearly like a dog of the Americans. Yeah, and so he turned around like denounced like the terrorists Now it's like the tariffs, it's like an American ploy against Brazil. That is outstanding. There is now one thing that both Lula and Bolsonaro agree on, other than cops should

Starting point is 03:09:35 kill more people, which is that these tariffs are bad, he has united all of Brazil, it is absolutely hilarious. You know, I tried to set up a similar deal with America's own critically-costplized man, Steven Crowder, and it did not work out the same way, the way this Bolsonaro deal went. Some people say it's a little bit mean to negotiate with someone who just constantly keeps going into the hospital for bizarre chest surgeries to make him look more masculine. But hey, you know, podcasting is a competitive industry and we tried to create a similar trade deal with Crowder and it has not worked out. He apparently had some similar problems with the Daily Wire. So that's why you haven't

Starting point is 03:10:15 seen much of him on the shows lately. Great, incredible. I love that Garrison somehow has become the person doing unilateral trade deals for the podcast great stuff great stuff Only with people who are constantly in the hospital either through shitting problems or chest masculinization problems So it's really just Steven Crowder and Bolsonaro I think there are probably some other people who are in the hospital for shitting problems if we throw them that that white Not as much as Bolsonaro is, James. That's true, Bolsonaro is the most hospitalized man

Starting point is 03:10:48 on the planet. Well, second only to Steven Crowder. Maybe they hang out there. They might get a log. Maybe they just need some boys' time. Maybe they won't, maybe they hang out in the man cave at the hospital. Crowder's been advocating this for years.

Starting point is 03:11:03 Jesus Christ. Okay, okay. So the final piece of news is actually what Robert started this on, which is that we have gotten our first sign of actual inflation increases from these tariffs, inflation increased to 2.7% in June, which is still well below the 8% peaks in the early 2020s, but it is rising. It's also worth noting this increase has been asymmetric. I'm gonna I'm gonna quote from the Financial Times here, quote, June's inflation rise was fueled in part by higher food prices but offset by weaker commodity prices. Now there's two important things here, right? One, food prices like matter

Starting point is 03:11:44 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 50% tariff on copper. So, those commodity prices, oh boy. Get the copper strippers ready, folks. I start stockpiling your wire now. So, the other thing that I think is really worth discussing about this is the reason there hasn't been more inflation and this has been something that we've kind of proposed as a mechanism on the show for what could happen at least temporarily is that for right

Starting point is 03:12:20 now, largely what's been happening is that companies, often directly under pressure from Trump, have been just eating the cost of the tariffs. Yeah, I mean, basically Donald's doing what they call off-gassing, and that's Donald both as in Duck and as in Trump. Jesus Christ. Is that one of the things that can get you in hospital with Steven Crowder's Bolsonaro? You know, James, that's a great guess. So as I did long ago with the first time I discovered that my co-workers if I ever talked about inflation would only talk

Starting point is 03:12:58 about duck inflation porn. Huey dewey and Louis, inflation porn. Thank you very much. Sorry, sorry. I am confused with my ducks. My ducks are not in a row. Get your ducks in a row. So the very important part about this though, is these tariffs, the very significant element of this is how pricing is actually set, right? The general way that you are taught in Econ 101 that prices are set is prices, supply and demand. And so from this, you would think that the way pricing works is people draw a supply and demand graph, and then you like put it there. That's how any of the shit works. The way prices are actually set are specifically by pricing agents at each point in a supply chain down the

Starting point is 03:13:36 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 cost plus markup And that's what a price is now the reason prices tend not to move higher unless there's an unless there'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, is that the effects of the inflation have been mitigated by the fact these countries are just eating shit.

Starting point is 03:14:08 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

Starting point is 03:14:21 as more countries get tariffs and as Trump's ability to pressure these companies weakens as like, you know, food prices continue to increase and people are getting more pissed at him. So this is just the beginning of this. All of these tariffs are maximally 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 ago.

Starting point is 03:14:44 We've talked about the show a few times I'm gonna link that in the description you should go read it but that's the important thing that we've gotten from from the the Bureau of Labor Statistics data yeah I'm not really sure how Trump's gonna duck this responsibility for much longer I will say I will say there is genuinely starting to be concern that they're just straight-up fudging the BLS statistics. And like, I don't know if they're doing that, but like I've seen like a bunch of bond people be like, are they just lying about the unemployment numbers? And who knows?

Starting point is 03:15:16 Yeah, they would be very hard to prove that right? Yeah, I mean, and I've seen how much cash Scrooge has in that vault. So some people, the upper class, will not be affected as much as the working class ducks. They're not saying the price of diving boards, for instance, could go up. They're very price sensitive because they need those diving boards to dive into their piles of cash. I have two more updates I would like to do before we go to ad break. For one, the Trump administration has sued the state of California over Title IX violations for having trans athletes. This shows that even when you capitulate, like Gavin Newsom has tried to do, they will still come after you. You cannot get out of this by trying to please the

Starting point is 03:15:58 administration. They're still going to go after you. Their entire policy platform is your Facebook uncle wanting to earn the libs. So we can see how well Gavin throwing trans people under the bus has worked for the state of California, still getting sued. Lastly, before we pivot to ads, I want to update a story that Robert talked about last week. A former US Marine Corps reservist was arrested this Tuesday after a week-long manhunt. He faces charges related to an alleged armed ambush on an ICE detention facility in Prairieland, Texas during a protest. He is now the 14th person charged in connection with the incident and is also accused of purchasing four

Starting point is 03:16:37 of the guns linked to the attack. Two other people were also charged after allegedly helping the former reservist escape after the attack. Nancy Larson, the acting US attorney, told Fox and Friends on Tuesday, quote, they were involved in a 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 AR-15 and a receipt for clothing that he admitted to purchasing for the former Marine reservist.

Starting point is 03:17:14 Yeah, so I mean this is a story to continue to pay attention to. I would remind folks that we know what the state is alleged in, you know, based on the charging documents, we know what people have been saying to the police, but we don't fully know what's happened yet so we'll be continuing to keep an eye on this story as it develops. What do we have next? Ads! Yeah, here's some products. Let's close this episode by talking about Nazis. Nazis? That one doesn't work, Robert.

Starting point is 03:17:58 I'm sorry. I want it to. Yeah, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. I've even tried it before. I've even tried it to. Yeah, no, it doesn't. It doesn't. I've even tried it before. I've even tried it before. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:18:07 Now, we will have to return to Stinky Musk once again, but before we do, I first want to talk about friend of the pod, Greg Gutfeld, who recently discussed a strategy on how to minimize the impact of the American fascist right to being called Nazis derogatorily. I will play a short clip from Fox News. This is why the criticism doesn't matter to us when you call us Nazis. Nazis is Nazi that, I'm beginning to think they don't like us. You know what? I've said this before, we need to learn from the blacks.

Starting point is 03:18:42 The way they were able to remove the power from the n-word What up my Nazi hey what's hanging my Nazi Oh Nazi, please Did a hard eye there what does it tell you that oh my god Greg got filled Wow Wow Oh my god Greg got filled Wow, wow fellow Fox News hosts are also quite concerned with that that's pretty disturbing Yeah, not great. He also were he gave it one of those just just to really send it

Starting point is 03:19:19 He like he got my heart goes out to you gesture. Oh god. That's right. My heart goes out to you, Jess Jo. Oh, God. That's right. My heart goes out to you, Salute. Yeah. I mean, like, I remember, like, you know, five years ago, you had these alt-right people talking about how, you know, actually, Hitler was a socialist, you know? The Nazis are actually communists. We're not Nazis. And now they're just openly trying to normalize referring to themselves as Nazis. It seems notable. Speaking of Nazis in the new rights, GroK 4 has gotten a Department of Defense contract for $200 million as part of its GroK for Government program, including the Responsibility of Handling Sensitive Classified Materials. And it happens on the same week that of its Rock for Government program, including the responsibility of handling sensitive classified

Starting point is 03:20:05 materials. And it happens on the same week that Mecha Hitler makes his beautiful debut. Yeah, pretty troubling for our strongest allies in the IDF here. Oh my god. The ways that reality could break out into different timelines right now is kind of dizzying. Because there's a possibility that Mecca Hitler starts doing strikes based on anti-Semitic Twitter users' recommendations, directly tied in with government advisory programs. I can say it's not going to end well for Turkey judging by what we saw last week Another possible weaponization of grok for it's been announced that grok force can be added to Tesla's

Starting point is 03:20:55 So Mecca Hitler might also be driving a Tesla around. Yeah Great. I Will say I will say the person the most happy about this right now is somewhere in the depths of Chinese intelligence the most happy about this right now is somewhere in the depths of Chinese intelligence. There is a colonel who is looking at this announcement and is like, I am going all the way to the top. My family is never working again in our fucking lives. I am going to find so much dumb shit that these soldiers are typing into fucking DOD grok. Like, I am going to learn so much. I would be quite nervous right now if I was Will Stancil, who-

Starting point is 03:21:29 Yeah, he's got Tesla's kind of try to molest him. Yeah. He's gonna get drone struck. Every drone's gonna turn around and try and find Will Stancel wherever they send it. Grok is continuing to make rape threats against Will Stancel despite the tweaks in the code, and it's still referencing the Mecha Hitler incident. So Grok 4 is a new model of XAI's chatbot service. It launched officially last week. It was pretty similar to the model of Grok used in the Mecca-Hitler incident. But there's been some small tweaks that researchers have noticed. An AI researcher named Jeremy Howard released a video showing how Grok tries to answer a query about its stance on the, quote,

Starting point is 03:22:18 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. 54 out of the 64 citations are about Elon, unquote. Amazing. XAI has confirmed that this was how Grok was operating and has since claimed that it's making adjustments now and Said that Grok was trying to appear in line with the company's head and policy This is amazing because hopefully it does the same with its defense policy wasn't Elon Musk one of those like f-35 has gone woke people Yeah, okay.

Starting point is 03:23:05 This is a piece of lore that has passed you by. For a while there, Musk and some of his friends were tweeting about the F-35 being woke and how we should return to F-16. It was very funny. Are we going to talk about the other weird chatbots? Oh, how Grog has the Death Note Misa Misa's like sex bot. You know, if you want to talk about it Mia, I will not stop you. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Is this Jar Jar Binks again?

Starting point is 03:23:39 I have two sentences about this, one of which is not mine. The first sentence I am going to say is that, yeah, Twitter now has like a really, really weird anime girl sex bot thing that's like an AI... What? Very clearly inspired by a Death Note character. Yeah. So sometimes you just need to say the obvious thing and the person who said the obvious thing is a person on blue sky Called at TVQ talks. They said I keep saying it the push for AI made so much more sense to me once I realized tech bros talked to it like a woman who won't talk back and

Starting point is 03:24:16 Like yeah That they just oh god You know, I will say if it was modeled after L instead of Misa, it could serve some use. It could be compelling, but because it's Misa, it's just completely useless. So, Garen, we already have that chatbot. That chatbot already exists. This has existed for a long time. Where is an L Death Note chatbot? Actually, you can send it to me after this. There's a whole bunch of character chatbots. That's like a. Yeah, maybe not exactly what I'm looking for, but whatever. God, okay.

Starting point is 03:24:50 Terrible. Zero out of ten. Let's talk about the other DoD contracts. Well, yeah, this $200 million Grot contract was part of a series of AI contracts that Anthropic and Claude also received. I think Google got one it's part of Trump's initiative to strengthen like AI in government so Grok Grok is not the only one I will also say that like this is obviously like the endgame

Starting point is 03:25:14 of all of these companies is trying to get their like failing AI firms bailed out by the military but like even 200 million is not enough to like recoup the hideous amounts of money these people are burning So I hope they all fail Robert do anything to add on on on grok talk I mean, yeah, I think it's funny. He's also trying to make AI companions out of grok One is clearly a version of his ex Grimes who is supposed to teach you quantum physics I mean, yeah, this is this is this is try to have sex with you. This is part of the Misa Misa one as well. Yeah, and then there's my favorite is the male chat bot,

Starting point is 03:25:50 which is based off of Christian Grey from 50 Shades of Grey and also Edward Cullen from Twilight, who is himself based off of the guy from 50 Shades of Grey. Yeah, I just saw that this was explicitly named as the two inspirations. It's so funny, it's so funny. Again, if it was L, it could be worthwhile, but this just is like, is just slop. Worthless, no artistic merit.

Starting point is 03:26:16 No, anyway, that's all I gotta add. So as we come to the end here, there are a couple of things that I wanna remind people of. The first is that if you would like to email us, you can do so. Remember that although our email address is encrypted, you will also have to encrypt your email at your end if you want it to be end-to-end encrypted. Our email address is coolzontips at proton.me. The other thing is Bukett's Asylum Lawyer Fundraiser. It's been going very well and we massively appreciate all of you who have donated. We're going to plug that again this week to find it.

Starting point is 03:26:52 You can either go to GoFundMe and search her name, Buket Tan, B-U-K-E-T space T-A-N, to www.gofundme.com slash f slash urgent hyphen help hyphen for hyphen duquette B UK ETS hyphen asylum hyphen case or you can just scroll down and hit the little link that will be underneath this podcast in your podcatcher. Wait, okay. Late breaking, late breaking news late breaking news Trump has reportedly brokered a deal for Coca-Cola to use quote real sugar cane in US coke products. Yes yes finally. Wow. This is gonna go down well with corn country. No this this genuinely like if he actually

Starting point is 03:27:44 goes to war with like the American corn lobby if he's the one who does this and like gets the blow up from it I don't know like this this genuinely would be a seismic restructuring of agriculture in the United States. Oh boy Yeah, I still use the corn load of corn guys to feed things that then become yeah But still like like we reproduce so much corn we had to make more corn things Like yeah every year they invent a new thing to do with corn Disasterous God. I am really gonna miss red number 40. It was my favorite whenever I was feeling down

Starting point is 03:28:19 I just did a few drops and It's it sucks to see an old friend go. Yeah, tragic. Yeah, it's also going to be very hard for the people who've made their whole identity buying Mexican Coke in glass bottles. We should pour one out for them. Oh yeah, it's going to be a rough night in Bushwick tonight. We reported the news. Yeah, we sure did.

Starting point is 03:28:41 We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

Starting point is 03:29:14 Join iHeart Radio and Sarah Spayne in celebrating the one-year anniversary of iHeart Women's Sports. With powerful interviews and insider analysis, our shows have connected fans with the heart of women's sports. In just one year, the network has launched 15 shows and built a community united by passion. Podcasts that amplify the voices of women in sports. Thank you for supporting iHeart Women's Sports

Starting point is 03:29:39 and our founding sponsors, Elf Beauty, Capital One, and Novartis. Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to listen now. I'm Ian Faff, the creator and host of the Uncle Chris podcast. My Uncle Chris was a real character, a garbage truck driver from South Carolina

Starting point is 03:29:55 who is now buried in Panama City alongside the founding families of Panama. He also happens to be responsible for the craziest night of my life. Wild stories about adventure, romance, crime, history, and war intertwine as I share the tall tales and hard truths that have helped me understand Uncle Chris. Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

Starting point is 03:30:21 wherever you listen to podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 03:30:53 So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week, we go behind the headlines

Starting point is 03:31:14 and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy's on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.

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