It Could Happen Here - What’s Happening In Rojava

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

James talks to Dani Ellis about Turkish aggression in North and East Syria and we hear from Têkoşîna Anarşîst from their position on the front lines.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today and I'm joined by Dani. Dani's an engineer and photographer who lived in northeast Syria from 2018 until 2023 and a founding member of the RIC, which is the Rojava Information Center, if you're not familiar. And she worked for the Self-Administration and Civil engineering while she was there. Welcome to the show, Dani. Hi, James. It's really good to be on.

Yeah, cheers. Thanks for coming. I know it's like a stressful time. So what I thought we would do is there's been a lot of reporting on Syria that people have probably seen if they're living in the US or the UK. Nearly all of it has either excluded or footnoted what's happening in North and East Syria and specifically in the areas that are under the self-administration. So I was hoping today we could give people a little more introduction towards happening there. There's been a lot of jubilation about what's happening in Syria and things have been very

far universally positive. There's a massive displacement of civilians, ethnic cleansing of areas that have been captured by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, and genuine peril for the self-administration project, the like of which we haven't seen for a long time. So perhaps if listeners aren't familiar, would you give them the real basics of the self-administration of the AANES and what it means and what's going on there? Yeah, well, that's a big question because it's like it's a big project. It's been going on for quite some time. Yeah, it really has kind of been

lost in discussions and news about the Syrian civil war because it has been such a complex multipolar, multi-access, multi-ethnic conflict and it's been going on for what like 13, 14 years now? Yeah. Coming up to 14 years. The Kurds in the northeast had been preparing for some time before the outbreak of civil war back in 2011 for something like this. Obviously they didn't know this was going to happen but they had been working on revolutionary emancipation for decades and in particular since around 2000 they've been working on this concept of democratic confederalism which is

moving away from a sort of what they call an old paradigm of Marxist-Leninist thought to this system they've now quite effectively built up there where democracy is bottom up, it's structured around small communes and self-organizing units, cooperatives. There's a market economy but it's not a capitalist economy where there's sort of radical emancipation of oppressed peoples, particular women, who are really centered in the revolutionary process and organizing that. And I think because they, maybe you can't call them conflict avoided,

like they haven't avoided conflict. They very famously defeated ISIS, amongst other groups in the Northeast. They fought against Al-Nusra Front and various other jihadi groups. They also didn't enter into serious conflict with either the FSA as they were or the regime and the Assad regime. And so they kind of managed to carve out a sort of democratic and semi-enclave, I mean people would describe it as a statelet and they quite

vehemently say it's not a state in the northeast of Syria, whilst the worst of the fighting was between the Assad regime and the FSA and groups that came out of the FSA in the west and south of the country. Yeah, I think it's a very good summary. I think like it gets missed maybe because of how relatively successful it's been compared to other like democratization projects within Syria, it gets missed that when people are talking about what will happen in Syria now, bizarrely, I don't quite understand how we get here, but people seem to go to Libya,

or I understand how we get here through a process of orientalism and ignorance. But we have a functioning democracy, an example of like, it's not just Kurdish people, right? It's lots of communities living together in North and East Syria. And because of democratic confederatism, they're able to like co-exist and still feel they have enough sovereignty to be safe. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think something that is hard to

convey or fully understand unless you spend a lot of time there or you're deeply involved with any of these communities is quite how hard that was to do. Yeah, a lot of different ethnic groups, political groups that hate each other, you know. Yeah. The Kurds, they brought in lots of different policies like their right to be taught in your mother tongue. When they took power 2012 onwards, they were very keen not to just sort of replace everything with Kurdish, make it a Kurdish state, you know, start being the oppressor instead of the oppressed. They made sure that they could use an Arabic as the majority language because it is

the majority language that the is the majority language. The north and east of Syria is still an Arab majority area. And this is despite the fact that they've been pretty horrendously oppressed by the Arab population through the Ba'ath party and its oppressive systems for decades. So it has been a pretty hard ongoing process to negotiate and to put aside pretty serious conflicts

between quite a few different groups that exist there. Yeah, it won't be any easier across the whole country than it was there. But like, they have a system that works. And it's kind of frustrating to see these discussions of what happens next, that just ignore the fact that there's a functioning multi ethnic democracy right there. If we just look at women's liberation, you know, I've reported from lots of places around the world, lots of places in that part of the world, and the difference is profound. In like everyday life, it's not just a kind of rhetorical commitment, right? Like, at least my impression as a man is that like, this is a revolution by women, not a revolution. It's about women.

It's not a revolution by men that like seeks to liberate women, says it's going to liberate women, you know, with the US invaded Afghanistan saying it's going to liberate women and look what we got. And like the difference in just the way people are able to like every aspect of everyday life is completely different. But that's in danger right now. The narrative, I guess, that people will be familiar with from Syria is that the state has been defeated, the Assad

regime has been defeated, and that therefore the revolution has succeeded. But the Assad regime is not the only state in play in Syria, right? So can you explain the Turkish antipathy to the project in North East Syria and how that's manifesting itself currently? Yeah, it's pretty hard to discuss any of this stuff without talking about Turkey and without understanding where they're coming from. I think it's something that isn't said enough or understood enough that the modern state of Turkey is an ethno-nationalist project and I don't say that as a slur, that's like a basic founding principle of the state. It's a state founded on genocide and the mass forced demographic change across the whole country and it's continued that way

and there have been reforms for sure. Yeah. But that's still a founding principle and even now sort of speaking a non-Turkish language in the Turkish parliament is a pretty serious violation. Yeah. And the size of Turkey, the size of its economy, the size of its military, the regional power status they have in the Middle East means that they have an enormous gravity. They have an enormous amount of power over Syria. A lot of the goods and services that Syria relies on come in through Turkey or rely on Turkish industry. And the Turkish military is a huge supporter of the groups in the northwest like Hayat-i-Alsham and the Syrian National Army. And of course the Kurdish

question within Turkey is the main reason for their antipathy towards what's been built up in northeast Syria. As much as the self-determination for oppressed people as minorities is something that's an issue, the fact that it's Kurdish-led, and in particular, it's emancipatory for Kurdish people, threatens this ethno-nationalist aspect of their state. And they see it as something that needs to be nipped in the bud, right? And they've sort of done that with northern Iraq,

the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, by essentially vassalizing the KDP, the main party there. And they know they can't do the same in Northeast Syria. And the military option is their best chance, their best hope, of upping Kurdish emancipation and Kurdish self-determination in the bud and preventing it from snowballing across the region. Yeah.

I think we should probably mention that like, I guess if we talk about like the electoral method or the electoral path, people in Turkish Kurdistan, in Northern Kurdistan, if you want to call it, in addition to the armed struggle which has been there since 1984, they have also like tried to vote and repeatedly seen their votes ignored or changed or their elected officials removed. Like this is within the last year, I'm not talking about back in the 80s and 90s.

And like Turkey has been aggressively attacking any attempts at like self-determination within the country. And then as you say, like militarily attacking the Kurdish freedom movement within North East Syria. Do you want to talk about the Syrian National Army or the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army, whatever you want to call them and explain? I think part of what we're dealing with is that Turkey has a very well-established state media project, and they seem to do very well at creating viral social media content.

So people might not be fully familiar with who the SNAR and specifically like turkeys rolling creating them. Do you want to explain that a bit to people? Yeah, I mean, this is this is one of the reasons why I think it's so hard for people to report on the Syrians Civil War. It's very hard to convey like a simple coherent narrative of one side versus the other, you know, like Ukraine versus Russia, the Russian world and Ukrainian world, because there are so many different groups and the SNA is an important one. And they are grouped together with this concept of the rebels that have liberated Syria. And despite the fact that they're not actually part of Hayat al-Sham, the liberation movement as it calls itself, that have taken over

Syria. Yeah, the Syrian National Army, it's kind of like a loose collection of various, some of them call themselves brigades or groups. It's essentially a military proxy force of Turkey. They don't have a coherent political framework, they're not revolutionary groups, they're not liberatory or emancipatory, they wouldn't describe themselves as that in the same way that maybe HTS would. I mean the Kurds in North East Syria describe them as gangs, which kind of sounds like a propaganda term, but when you actually look at what they do, they really are like a sort of a criminal enterprise, a criminal gang that's used as a convenient proxy force

by Turkey, because ultimately Turkey has like a massive military. Their Navy is quite underfunded and not particularly well-staffed. The Air Force has suffered pretty seriously from the fallout of the coup in 2016. But the Army is massive, it's relatively well funded, and their drone program is huge. The thing that they struggle with is the losses that are incurred against Kurdish groups,

particularly the PKK in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey. And they need to control that because they realize that they've been fighting militarily, as you say, since the early 1980s. And they can't have a Vietnam situation of a mass movement against their military occupation and against their military efforts in Syria. They can't afford financially or politically to get into a quagmire there. And so by funding this sort of collection of groups called the SNA, that's their way of being able to incur pretty massive losses without having to report on it without that creating unrest or opposition within the Turkish population of Turkey. Right, and I think especially when like some of the things the SNA have done, which we can maybe get into in Mampi, like it gives them a deniability that wouldn't exist if

that was regular soldiers doing that. Like some stuff which is war crimes is, I guess, a nice way of saying it, like a more sanitized way of saying it, but horrific stuff, really terrible stuff. This has been happening since at least 2018, but Turkey doesn't have to be held accountable for that because like you said, it's not Turkish. It's not the Turkish army. Do you want to explain how the situation in North Syria has changed since, when was it, like two weeks ago, a week ago? I guess that they moved south from Aleppo and the HTS largely with some support from SNA moved towards Damascus and then the SNA launched its own assault on the self-administration. Can you explain a little bit of what's happened

there in terms of displacement and in terms of the terrain that the SNA have captured? Yeah, it's been very fast moving. As you say, it's only been two weeks since the Battle for Aleppo started, if you can call it a battle. So the SDF, so this is like the alliance of military groups that falls under the remit of the self-administration in the Northeast Syria. So the YPG and the YPJ are like the most famous and largest components of this force, but there are a whole bunch of Arab and Syrian and Armenian units within the SDF. They held this sort of salient pushing out into Northwest Syria towards Afrin, which was captured by the SNA in Turkey in 2018.

That was on one side surrounded by HTS and on the other by the SNA. When things really kicked off, the SNA started a pretty concerted campaign to capture this area known as Sheepa and because of its position and its relatively difficult terrain and difficult logistical position to resupply, they pulled back from that towards Aleppo and Manbij which is the only major city that the STS still held on the west of the Euphrates and this is the area closest to Aleppo.

They got hit pretty hard. If you follow a live update map or any of these sort of update maps it looked like that collapsed pretty quickly. Actually it ended up being a sort of large gray zone of the guerrilla attacks and yeah potentially still ongoing. It's been really murky and hard to tell what's going on there, but essentially there's a large area of uncontrolled but heavily contested territory between Aleppo and the Euphrates River now, which the SDF and the SNA have been fighting over. Like one of the curious things for me is that the Turkish Air Force and military did not get involved for a while, but after about a week they did and they started hitting Manbij very very heavily. And at that point when the centre of Manbij

started being contested and four over the US stepped in, we don't know the details of it but there seems to have been some kind of negotiation whereby the suggestion is that if the SDF fighters pulled back across the Euphrates the SDF would assure their protection from any further assault. We don't know how that how true that is and we know that today further negotiations on this failed, but it's it's really hard to tell right now as we speak what's disinformation and what's truth because stuff's only coming out officially in dribs and traps.

Yeah, and stuff's coming out unofficially, often that is just not true every five minutes and getting blasted by maybe people who just don't understand or who do understand but have a certain agenda to push on social media especially, but on Telegram too. It can be really confusing and it's really frustrating. Yeah, for instance, just before we came on air, I saw a couple of videos being posted by Pro-Turkish accounts of purportedly showing mass troop concentrations lined up against this border wall waiting to invade. And I realized that they were from 2019 when Serekhani and Talabayed were invaded, and

they were just reposting material from then. As disinformation on these movements and whether that's going to happen, what the negotiations between the US and Turkey turned out to be and the truth is like right now we don't know exactly what's going on. Yeah and like you probably won't and that's probably a good thing. One other thing is that like the SDF tends to have much better operational security discipline than the SNA does. So you won't see as much of like media with an SDF spin or people directly streaming. I mean, one thing the SNA likes to do is a war crime and then post it on Telegram. And so like it could be easy to only see that and be like, Oh it's terrible like and it is terrible those

things are horrific but like because you're not seeing when the SDF is making movements or making advances until a bit later until you get something from like an official press channel it can give the impression that the SNA is just romping around which is not the case. Yeah we saw this a few times when Manbij was reported to have been captured by the SNA and they posted videos of themselves in the middle of the city. And then an hour later, the SDF posted a video from the centre of the city of 20 or 30 dead SNAs littering about the streets and them flying their own flags.

So yeah, it's really, it's really hard to tell. It's also really hard as like anyone who cares about the region or has been there has reported on it, anyone interested in the kind of politics that the Kurds have built up in the region and others I should say, you know, it's been a multi-ethnic project. If you care about that, it's really hard not to be glued to social media to see what's going on, but it can be quite detrimental to morale. It can be quite an act of self-harm to be constantly checking on this because it's so murky. And as you say, things can turn around within two hours of info or disinfo getting out there. Yeah, and I think it's a super important time to be looking at trusted

sources and be considering if you need to be on Telegram that much. Something I have been considering this weekend. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Would you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes

with supernatural creatures. No! Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne, Tales from the Shadows, as part of my Kultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross and more. Make sure you listen to the BlackFatFam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, other podcasts or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh I know that's right. Hi I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast and we're kicking off our second season

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hey, I'm Gianna Prenti. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things

about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hmm, but you also have a lot of questions. Like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Too, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down.

I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's talk about like right now, certainly the focus is on Kobani, right? But there's also, well, there's a lot of self-administration that could potentially be under threat if Turkey decides to go as hard as it can against the self-administration, against the existence

of I guess any form of democratic project in North and East Syria, if it attempts to kind of bring the whole thing under one government from Damascus. Can you explain like, what might happen, what people can do? And like, we should talk about what's at stake as well, especially with the prison at al-Haw, which maybe we can come to after those two things, because I think that's a lot to ask you in one question. But maybe if people aren't familiar with al-Haw, we'll leave that one. But can you explain at first, like, what could potentially happen if Turkey decides to go as hard as it wants to here? I mean, I think the best way to answer that question is to look at what's already happened. So in 2018 and 19, they already

captured three significant cities that were under control of the self-administration. So the first and most famously was Afrin, which was in the far northwest of the country, like just north of Aleppo, jutting out into Turkey. That was a majority Kurdish city. I don't know the exact details, but it was something like 80 or 90 percent, which I think is higher than any other city in northern Syria. And it was also like, it had seen the least fighting of pretty much anywhere in Syria by that point. So the war had been going on for like, what, seven years and everyone was pretty much untouched. So it was in a pretty good state and Turkey and the SNA invaded just as the war against ISIS was winding down.

And I mean, it's become hell on earth. It's been almost completely depopulated. I think it's less than 10% now Kurdish ethnically. It has been ruled by a number of different groups. We can say the SNA but you know different groups within the SNA have fought over it. The HTS at times have had control over certain parts of the area and there's been a lot of infighting, there's been horrendous war crimes committed, rape, murder and thousands of disappeared people and as you say they really like to openly put videos out of them committing this stuff. I mean they're pretty shameless about it and there are some pretty disturbing videos of them mutilating the bodies of fallen YPJ soldiers, committing summary executions, wiping out whole towns. It's been awful and the same thing happened again in 2019 around in October

when they captured Sariqani and Talabayad. It's worth also pointing out that these were not Kurdish majority cities as far as I'm concerned. I think that Serikani maybe was about 50%. And Talabayad, which is kind of close to Kobani, I'm pretty sure wasn't a Kurdish majority city but it was organized under the self-administration and it was organized quite effectively. And they committed the same horrific crimes there. They are an anti-Kurdish force if we can say that. They are racist. They do have a stated goal of committing genocide

against the Kurds. That's not an exaggeration, this is something they openly say, but they don't seem to care who they steal from, or who they rape or who they extort. Wherever they go, it's death and destruction. And it still is now. And there's still something like a quarter of a million internally displaced people from these areas in Northeast Syria, hoping to go back and now having to see the situation get even worse and not knowing if they ever will be able to. Yeah. back and now having to see the situation get even worse and not knowing if they ever will be able to. Yeah and I think like what you were talking about like we're seeing it right now in Manbij right?

Like the SNA seems to largely be in control of the city albeit with YPG fighters kind of more in I guess in a guerrilla role so it would seem still fighting there but where I believe we're on the second day of a general strike in Manbij, like after less than a week of the SNA holding it because of looting and executions and other like war crimes. Yeah, I think this is like actually a really good political education to see what's happening because what's been built up in the northeast has been built up over decades, right? They like to use this analogy of the mycelium and the fruiting bodies of a mushroom. They appear to magically emerge from the earth in the autumn out of nowhere, but actually, you know, they've been

growing underground for years before, and they use this analogy because it took decades to put in place these structures. That's why they were ready as soon as the Assad regime pulled out and collapsed in the face of ISIS in the early stages of the war, they were ready to build up these structures. They already had self-organized militias, they had the economy planned out, they set to work immediately and the SNA don't have any of that. They are a force of convenience and they're mostly sort of young men who were in groups before that were defeated in Syria like ISIS who are simply taking the opportunity to enrich themselves and that's that's always a very convenient

for Turkey because they do the dirty work against the population of North East Syria. So I think it's worth saying that that aspect of it, that preparation, that resilience is something that also works in favour in the event of the worst case, a full invasion of North East Syria. I do think they are significantly better prepared than they were in 2018 and 19. And even if the worst happens, even if militarily it's defeated, that's not going to be the end of this project, right? It's not going to be the end of this emancipation. There's now an entire generation of young people in Northeast Syria who have grown

up entirely living amongst a liberated and emancipated region and people. That's not something you can militarily defeat. So I'm not completely hopeless and obviously I'll be like devastated if the worst does happen there. But I don't think it means the end of this incredible political, I know it feels wrong to call it a project, because it's not, it's a really is a revolution in India, and every possible meaning of the word, and it's deeply embedded now. Yeah, and I think everyone I spoke to that like, there's a deeply held conviction that they're not going back. Some people who have seen, like first hand hand the fascist violence of ISIS and fascist is the right

word. It's something maybe worse than fascism. But like certainly that like speaking to women in Rojava about how they're not going back to the gendered violence of their experience for decades to include ISIS, but by no means like only from ISIS. And I guess that kind of brings us on to, I wanted to talk a little bit about the situation in the parts of Syria that are controlled by HCS and in so much as they really are controlled, if perhaps the wrong word, like they haven't fully established their state project yet, but they're certainly moving towards that. They've sort of captured the institutions of the state rather than destroyed them. You'd spoken about like, there's this very, I don't, I think, I guess, maybe

I'll use an example, sorry, I'm phrasing this question in a very meandering way. I saw this CNN clip where they're there like, oh, we found a guy who's liberal, who's like in this prison and he was stuck here. And then second part of this was not broadcast on CNN. This, this person turns out to be like an air force Lieutenant who was in fact himself, someone who tortured and killed civilians. And like, there's this very liberatory, very excited messaging coming from media in the West, I guess, some of which is good, right?

It's good that the Assad regime is good. Assad was fucking terrible and tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. But that doesn't mean that things are all perfect in Damascus. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the worrying stuff we've seen in the last few days from those areas? Yeah, this is something that I worry isn't being spoken about enough. I don't, as a non-Syrian, don't want to say to people, you shouldn't be celebrating your own liberation because people should absolutely should be. It's their right to be and I'm like extremely

happy that this brutal dictator has gone. I mean, it's hard to summarize quite how awful he was and it's deeply frustrating that he's probably not going to see justice. But it's also really hard to see stuff which is really reminiscent of like 1979 Tehran, 2003 Baghdad of a sort of jubilation whilst at the same time there were videos of sort of pogroms being carried out against minorities, minorities like the Alawites who were in control and you don't know if the person being executed in the street was a torturer, an intelligence agent, you don't know who they were but like this is happening. But you're also seeing like Salafist groups raising their flag, you know like hardline Islamists raising their flag in places like Latakia and Tartus that have significant minority populations. I am very,

and tattoos that have significant minority populations. I am very, I mean concerned is the right word, like it's hard to feel that spirit of liberation when you see not only these things happening but that the people who have captured these state institutions are admitted former members of al-Qaeda and they are jihadis, hardline people, that have now got a very effectively made themselves out to be moderates. But my gut feeling is that we're going to see something like 1979 Tehran of a lot of talk of reconciliation, a lot of talk of the concerns of the Kurds or working with the communists, but mass executions and oppression is not far around the corner. And I guess when the jubilation dies down, my question is what's going to happen when

minorities do demand their rights or women don't want to wear a hijab inside the buildings of state institutions. And I'm finding it very hard to believe that these men who are professed Islamists are going to allow a moderate future to exist. Yeah, it's... I don't know, every day we get different information, right? But like, yeah, I don't know if concerned is the right word either. I don't quite know what the word is, but like, I'm worried, I guess. I'm worried that... I word is, but like, I'm worried, I guess. I'm worried

that I'm especially worried when like, rather than what we saw in the self administration was not like a continuation of institutions, right? When the Assad regime left in 2011 and 2012, and areas that the regime or ISIS have left since then, like it wasn't like, okay, we'll take over these institutions, administer them differently. It was we will build democracy from the bottom up. No, we'll just change the people in charge versus what it seems like we're now seeing for Damascus is like, hey, could the police from the Assad regime please stay at work, which is concerning. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by I Heart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters... ...to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. No! Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne Tales from the Shadows as part of my cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho.

And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Ooh, chat! This year we have had some of our favorite people on, including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelika Ross and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, other podcasts or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh, I know that's right.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Hey, I'm Gianna Prenti. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job

is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hmm. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Too, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and

you end up getting 8, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking of police, the last thing I wanted to address was the Al-Hol camp. I've spoken about it before on this show and people can look back on other episodes, but if you've not heard about it, can you explain briefly what Al Hul is and then the massive risk that this Turkish-backed invasion poses to Al Hul and other camps? I guess Al Hul is not the only camp, just the biggest one.

Yeah, Al Hul is a really important point to talk about. Al Hul is a very large camp. It's hard to sum up what kind of camp it is because it's so vast and has different sections. It's near Al-Hasakah, which is one of the largest cities in northeast Syria. It mostly contains families who were members or were resident in the Islamic State when it collapsed. were members or were resident in the Islamic State when it collapsed. So in the beginning of 2019 ISIS was sort of squeezed into this little corner in the eastern side of Syria between the Euphrates and the Iraqi border and when the state collapsed or the caliphate collapsed, a lot of people had nowhere to go and a lot of them were foreigners coming from abroad. I'm going to say a lot, I mean like tens of thousands. Yeah. There were something like 20,000 families left within Susa and Bagos, like the last parts of the caliphate to hold out and they didn't have

anywhere to go and there were already camps set up for IDPs and for members of ISIS and families in north Eusaria but al-Haw was rapidly expanded to take these on so it's a sort of semi prison semi open camp yeah that I think peaked at 75,000 people which it sounds like a lot on its own but when you consider that a large city in in North East Syria is about a hundred and fifty thousand people it still is significant I don't you probably have more accurate recent figures than me but I think the current Syria is about 150,000 people. It still is significant. I don't you probably have more recent figures than me, but I think the current population is about 40,000. Yeah, it shrunk definitely. I'm not sure what it is exactly.

The big problem that the Assad administration have had is multitude really. Many of the people that are foreigners, many of them don't have papers. Many of them come from countries that either don't want them back, or will almost certainly execute them if they're sent back, like Iraq, which is against the policy of the abolition of death penalty in North East Syria. There are some in Al-Hol but mostly in other camps in the north and east of Syria, former ISIS members like Shamama Begum, who come from countries like the UK, who simply won't take them back. The UK has taken back some families that simply refuses to take back their citizens who joined ISIS as card-carrying members. So they've made a pretty massive effort to repatriate as many families as possible.

They've made a big effort to rehabilitate and de-radicalize as many people as possible. They have shrunk the camp massively, but there's still 40,000 or something left there. And these are like really, a lot of them are really radical. Like I think, I don't know what the exact number is, but something in the order of 10,000 of them are still like professory members of ISIS. And they have a lot of children. And this was something that shocked me when I was at the end of the caliphate in Bagots

and witnessed tens of thousands of people coming out, and I could not have imagined how many children there were. And this was like, what, five years ago now, coming up to six years ago. So some of them who were, you know, seven, eight, nine years old, are now like heading towards their mid teens, they've spent their entire lives being radicalized. And like, what do you do with it? Right. And it's no I think there's no coincidence that in

previous Turkish attacks, because Turkey's been attacking the north east of Syria for, you know, the last five, six years now, through the air, through nation warfare, a lot of their attacks have focused on trying to break the people out. They have bombed the entrances to prisons multiple times and they provided funding and arms and ammunition to groups that are trying to break them out and they provide a safe passage back to Turkey for those who have managed to escape. So it's massively in their favor but of course it's a Pandora's box because you know if that does break open and if these people aren't repatriated or aren't de-radicalized then it's a Pandora's box because you know if that does break open if these people aren't repatriated or aren't

De-radicalized then that's a lot of people who have pretty much only known their whole lives a extremely radical Fascist Islamist ideology. I don't think they're just gonna give it up. Hey, yeah No, they're not gonna join this moderate future Syria. No, and like those people like have probably experienced like probably have terrible experiences within that camp and that's not going to make that does that don't tend to be moderating and sort of pacifying experiences and I'm sure that they will there's a there'll be a lot of hate yeah coming from there when those people come out and I don't want to like you know portion blame too much but we've had a long time to deal with this. The world's had a long time to deal with this.

I mean, I would happily apportion blame. This is entirely on the hands of the coalition. North East Syria is a very poor place. It's deeply impoverished. It's been kept impoverished by sanctions, by Turkey. The oil refineries, the industry, the economy has been smashed to pieces. They've held on really well and that, like, all credit to them, they have maintained this camp. They have tried to give these people a life, but it's pretty awful conditions.

Yeah. And this could have been solved if the international community, if the coalition, particularly the United States, had helped with these repatriations, who put political pressure on European countries in particular to take back their citizens, and had just provided the funding, you know, for... Right. They have provided funding. I'm not saying they haven't, pretty much, but like, it's a drop in the ocean compared

to the, you know, Department of Defense budget. You know, we're talking a few tens of millions here and there, as opposed to a concerted effort to deradicalize and repatriate people that could pose a serious threat to Europe and the US. Yeah. And like, you've got Britain doing the opposite of what's helpful, which is removing people's passports, right? Like, de-nationalizing them, leaving these people stateless, and saying it's not our problem, which is pathetic.

I'm very incredibly short-sighted. Yeah, I don't like using the word terror or terrorism because I think they've become meaningless terms. But ISIS did commit horrendous acts of terror in Europe and the United States. And these people, a lot of them I'm sure, would happily do so given the opportunity. So I don't even think that the threat is sufficiently understood in the West.

Yeah, and it's going to end up biting them in the ass because they've put this off, put this off and wouldn't spend the money to have justice? To go through a system and to have a chance to plead their cases, to have a tribunal, whatever it is. Instead, these people have just been essentially abandoned by most of the world. The self-administration has been forced to take care of the people who did horrific things right there. And yeah, at some point, this population will continue to grow if we don't keep removing people from it and that's going to be a problem for the

whole world even if the whole world wants to pretend it's not happening right now and it is just endlessly frustrating to see it not even be covered let alone kind of addressed in in the West. Yeah I think that's really really important point. When similar atrocities have been carried out in in Europe, we see international tribunals, we see the ICC and the ICJ step in, we see arrests, we see prosecutions, you know, like Milosevic, like the new event trials. And ISIS was a was a

massive state. It had something like 10 million inhabitants. It committed multiple genocides. And this isn't just people in the region saying, oh, they're committing genocides. These are like Western, highly studied, highly understood, accepted by Western states as genocide against the Yazidis. They committed horrendous atrocities. They pose an international threat and a massive regional threat. And at the end of the caliphate, as a territorial realm, as a serious military presence, it just disappeared off the radar. I think this really shows the sort of racist and colonial mindset behind this rules-based international order, that the people who were their victims and who have left big up pieces after it's got very little support or recognition and they've been

calling for tribunals for years and it's just fallen on deaf ears. Yeah. And sadly, I don't see that changing given the incoming administration in the United States, like it's, it's, it's deeply concerning, deeply concerning to run where it's just fucked. I want to ask like people, I think want to be in solidarity with the revolution. They want to help if they can. They want to support. I did a fundraiser last night. Thank you to everyone who gave their money and came. That was really nice. But what can people do to, you know, it's

one thing to like be in solidarity or post or whatever, but like what concrete actions can they take to help? This is a question that gets asked a lot. Yeah. I think doing anything is helpful. Yeah. It's also a question that's really hard to answer, given how things are just across the border in Palestine. You know, I personally find it hard to engage and ask for help and ask for solidarity when there's a genocide being committed next door, but we might be about to see the same thing happen

in Syria and I do think we should be taking it seriously. Anything from raising awareness to actually going there and lending support, anything on that spectrum. It's not just the material contribution that you can make. It's the people that do really feel left out. They feel betrayed. They feel let down by the international community, by the rest of the world. And any act of solidarity goes on incredibly well. Like the first year I was there, I was basically useless because I didn't speak the language. I didn't know my way around I was like a burden on society more or less and for people just like happy that you're there

You know showing solidarity and it's not about being useful. It's about that act. It's about more than that That's what I'm trying to say and and if you can show solidarity in any way you can, this is incredibly important to find to do it. Yeah, I think like, I don't know, if I go back to when I moved to the US, which was 2008, George W Bush was president, and I had my little free Palestine badge when I got off the plane and my little kefir and like was immediately sent to secondary inspection by the customs people because like that was not really, of course there were Palestinian people and people in solidarity with the people of Palestine in the US then and there were for a long time before but like I would never have imagined that I would see thousands of people in the

streets for the Palestinian cause. And like that the only thing that has materially held back the genocide of the Palestinian people has been the solidarity that they've experienced. And like that shows the power that people have, though obviously it's been able to do comparatively little and Israel still seems to be killing, build children every day. But like it shows that we can build solidarity really quickly and really meaningfully. And like you don't have to go but you can go. It's much harder to get to Palestine than it is to get to North and East Syria. I went last year and I think people who are already organizing can bring that into their organizing too.

These things don't have to compete. Like they can be, there's a lot of solidarity to go around but I would say a lot of the news we see unfortunately from Turkey and that will unfortunately give you information that's extremely biased when it comes to North East Syria so being conscious of your media consumption is very important. Yeah absolutely, I think I would just add to that to say that solidarity with any group is a long-term project right and you're not going to jump in in and be able to make a huge difference immediately, but also at the same time, if the worst happens, if Turkey invades, full-on, and there's genocide in northern Syria, that isn't the end of it.

It's a massive international movement, and there are practices from it that are being put in place in things that actually don't even have anything to do with the Kurds as a nation. And there are ways of organizing, there are methods that they use, there's personality analysis, there's criticism and self-criticism. There's a lot of that that goes far beyond a single geographic region. And I think engaging with that can, and I've seen with my own eyes since I've been back, like there's a lot of groups around the UK that use techniques for self-organisation within land rights movement, within worker struggle, within anti-cuts campaigning. And these have got nothing to do with with Rojava, but they have seen that through solidarity with Rojava and Kurdistan, that there are ways

they can improve their own practice and their own actions. Yeah, I think that's really important too and those are things maybe we'll cover in the future and there are plenty of good resources online. Are there any resources you'd like to plug or like personal social media things you think people could follow to get good information on what's happening? Definitely the RIC, that's the Rojava Information Centre. They are probably the best source on the ground in Rojava and they are a collective of journalists, a mixture of locals and internationalists who've been working there for six years now.

So they're at RojavaIC on various social media platforms. You can follow me as at Lapinesq, L-A-P-I-N-E-S-Q-U-E. I'm also posting about it, although I'm not there anymore. I'm posting updates from friends, people I know there. And my take on the situation based on my experience is being there for almost five years. Yeah, and I think good to follow if you can. Thank you very much, Dani. What we're gonna do now is I got some voice notes

from some friends who are at the front with Tekosina and Assist, which means Anarchist Struggle in Kurdish. They're a group within the SDF, that is an anarchist group that's there fighting and in this case, actually doing frontline medical support on behalf of the self-administ self administration on behalf of the revolution. They sent me some notes this morning, Monday, today, from their positions on the frontline.

So, obviously, those notes will be a little bit, they'll be like 24 hours old by the time you hear them. But I still think it's very important to hear from people who are there when we can, not from like someone who's supposedly an expert, but hasn't set foot in Syria in 15 years and hasn't really talked to anyone who's Syrian either. So we'll drop those in after a little advertising break here. And with that, I will say thank you very much, Danny. Thanks for giving us your time and we really appreciate all your insight today. Thanks very much, James. Welcome. I'm Danny Drell.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturna, Tales from the Shadows, as part of my cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, it's John also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan or Joe Ho. And we are the BlackFatFilm Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity are celebrated. Oh, chat. This year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, have a podcast

or whatever you get your podcast girl. Oh, I know that's right. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists

in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positivepositive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso

as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

Hey, I'm Gianna Prenti. And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.

You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. Mm-hmm. But you also have a lot of questions, like how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Too, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year,

you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're gonna get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello, this is Eriko talking from the provisional press office of the Koshina Anarchist. And we wanted to share a bit about the situation ongoing here in North Eastern Syria, because as you probably know, the regime has fallen. Bashar al-Assad left the country on the 8th of December, after a big offensive that started from Idlib, that took over, quite soon, quite fast, the city of Aleppo and continued moving on. We wanted to explain how is the situation right now on the ground and also give some insight on the situation of Northern Syria

and what the media is also not covering of the different events and situations that are ongoing here. The main thing to remark that this can be a bit of a confusing interview for those that are maybe not familiar with the ongoing situation. To give a short context, we can mention that there are right now two main conflicts ongoing, like military conflicts. One is widely reported, the other not so much. We are talking about the war that HTS or the offensive that HTS launched against the Syrian Arab Army and the other is the offensive that the SNA, Turkish proxy forces, that rallied under the name of Syrian National Army, but that they are trained, paid and supported by the Turkish state. The offensive that they have been launching against north of Syria and the democratic administration of north

of Syria, that is the area also known sometimes as Rojava that is started as a the Kurdish liberation movement leading the war against the Islamic State and establishing this autonomous administration. So let's go shortly to the first conflict this offensive of HTS or Ha'ir Tahrir al-Sham that it's a Islamist group, direct heritage of al-Nusra that was the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda that has been governing, having some like governance structures in the region of Idlib, in the northwest of Syria and was under heavy siege from the regime forces, the Syrian Arab Army. On the 27th of November, they launched this big offensive that led to the collapse

of the regime. We could reflect deeply about the reasons. No, we, on one side, the Syrian Arab Army was exhausted after years of war here in Syria, but especially their main allies and supporters were also in a bad situation. We are talking mostly about Russia and Iran. As we probably know, Russia has been entrenched in a war in Ukraine for two years almost. Iran recently had been also engaged in supporting their militias in the conflict against Israel after the brutal occupation that Israel started on Gaza a year ago. So these two conflicts create a situation that both partners like Russia

and Iran were not able to support the Syrian Arab Army as they did in the past. And this led also to the collapse of the front lines of the Syrian Arab Army, allowing the offensive of HDS to overrun very fast the defenses in the city of Aleppo and also taking control of the city of Hama. These sparked also other groups that also opposed the regime for a long time to start also taking action in southern Syria in the regions of like Zoueda and Dara and Quneita. In Cuneitra there was also an autonomous military operation room that started coordinated insurgents against the regime.

This sparked the collapse of the regime. A lot of soldiers were defecting their positions and finally the different military groups leading the offensive took Damascus. This was an offensive that was really not very bloody in the sense of like a lot of the Syrian Arab Army soldiers were just leaving their positions and running away and the offensive was able to advance very fast, very easily. Right now, this offensive led to the transition that we are seeing in Damascus, where the leader of HDS had been doing really public speeches and declaring the triumph of the revolution, trying to harvest the revolutionary spirit of 2011 for their

own benefit. And they imposed or proposed a transitional government that is formed exclusively by members connected or aligned to HTS. Could be good to discuss more about HTS, but maybe it's not the focus of our interview right now. Just mentioned that their authoritarian government in Idlib has been also really criticized by local population organizing protest against it.

And right now now running this interim government they are already making proposals for like a morality police Islamic Islamic courts so I don't know how much this comparison has been already shared but clearly what we saw in Afghanistan with Taliban taking over the state structures is probably a good guide to understand what could be happening in Syria if HDS takes control of the of the state as it seems to be happening. So this is one of the conflicts ongoing that is widely reported the only one maybe is not so much reported.

We see how the Turkish has been for a long time, Turkish state has been for a long time attacking the region of like north of Syria, especially the Kurdish areas, and this is connected not to their war against the Kurdish liberation movement that has been ongoing for more than 40 years. And the last chapter of this started in coordination with this offensive of HDS, where the proxy forces started to attack mainly the region of Tarifat. That was an area where a lot of the refugees from Afrin were living. Afrin was a region that was already occupied by Turkey in 2018

and a lot of the people from the city was displaced and living in refugee camps in the region of Shaba and the city of Tal Rifat. And these Turkish proxy forces attacked and conquered that region forcing all these people that already had to leave their homes more than five years ago 2018 yeah so forcing them to flee once again a lot of these people was trapped in a caravan that suffered brutal raids, attacks, kidnapping, ransoms, like it has been like a really terrible experience for a lot of people that was trying to flee the the offensive of these Turkish proxy forces and most of them are now arriving to Tabqa and to Raqqa

to the regions of the self-administration where they are found when they can find shelter. And for those willing to help, we can mention that Haib As-Sor is the humanitarian organization, one of the biggest humanitarian organizations working in northeast Syria, and has been providing tents and food and blankets and everything they can to support all these people that is arriving on these areas. So those willing to support economically in this humanitarian

crisis that we are experiencing, they can easily find the website and the bank account of Rebasor to donate to them, to support all these people that once again lost their homes. But the offensive didn't stop on Shaffa and the SNA continued their attacks and took over the city of Manbij already right now. This was a really heavy clashes, like it was a really serious military conflict that has been totally supported by Turkish artillery and Air Force. We are talking about drones hitting different positions and even airplanes that of course are like NATO Air Force had been bombing positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces allowing these

different Islamist groups that are part of this coalition of the SNA, these Turkish proxy forces, to control of the city. At the moment there is already several days that Manbij, this city, have been organizing protests and even a general strike that started yesterday against the occupation because these groups that occupied the city are looting and even killing local population in a really like terrible situation that is experiencing the local people living in Manbij. And they are willing to continue.

They have been threatening the city of Kobane, the symbol of resistance of the Rojava Revolution against the Islamic State. And these threats on the city are not just the bombings of like Turkish Air Force and artillery but also a lot of military personnel of the Turkish proxy forces gathering on the bridge that connects the the regions of Mount Beach and Kobane all across the Euphrates River. So this war is not so reported but it's been really brutal attacks against the self-administration in North East Syria. We are trying to report and update about the situation. We also published two

statements to call out tension for comrades about what is ongoing here and maybe I can also talk a bit about the work that we have been doing on the ground. We need to remark that this offensive over Manbij and now these threats on Kobane had not been the only attacks that the Turkish army and the proxy forces are doing. All around the street that they occupied in 2019, the areas around the city of Serekaniye and Aynisa next to the border with Turkey, also host a lot of Islamist groups that are part of this Turkish proxy coalition and they have been intensively bombing the areas and their surroundings and there have been widespread rumors of these Islamist groups gathering

forces to continue their attacks on the self-administration of North East Syria and their war against the Syrian Democratic Forces. We from Tekoshin Anarchists, we have been working in medical capacity, providing materials for the medical points in the front lines and being present in the front lines together with the Syrian Democratic Forces in case that a new invasion is happening. Right now the bombings are hitting different areas and it has been really intense in the last days. The Syrian Democratic Forces are in maximum alert and especially there is an important call in

solidarity with the city of Covani, a symbol of resistance that is now once again under threat. We have been seeing also demonstrations all around the world in solidarity with like the revolution here and this has been also bringing a lot of motivation motivation to continue the resistance on the ground. Right now these situations of instability and political transition is still playing in ways that are difficult to predict. We can see how the self-administration has been sending political delegations to Damascus to negotiate with this new provisional government, with the attempt to reach autonomy for the

region that connects with the ideas of democratic conferralism. The ideas of democratic conferralism don't expect to run a state institutions because we don't want to live in a society that is ruled by a state and are calling for autonomous like autonomy in a local governance where like the different communities can live together coexist coexist together, administrate their social affairs together and also their defense. We see how the Syrian Democratic Forces is like a military coalition of different local military forces that is based on the principles of self-defense.

Maybe to give a bit of context also of like what we have been doing here for several years that our organization has been operating in northern Syria. As anarchists, we came here in solidarity, international solidarity with this revolution because their political values and their political project is really close to our ideas. We see big similarities with the ideas of libertarian socialism and social ecology. Thinkers like Muray Bukchin have been a big inspiration for Abdul Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish liberation movement, and that has been proposing this political frame called democratic conferralism, where especially with the principles of woman liberation, social ecology and stateless democracy has been the political compass of the revolution here.

Building autonomy in the different regions has been also a very important element to develop the project and especially during the war against the Islamic State as soon as the different territories were liberated there was a big emphasis on creating local councils, civilian and military councils, both, that can run their own affairs. This is very interesting from an anarchist perspective, not to see how one of the main political points is this promoting self-defense and creating a military force that is not based on a centralized monopoly of violence but on allowing every community to take care of their own defense and their own

affairs. This is a really inspiring element that for us has been also a really extraordinary learning process. Being part of a revolution, living day to day the developments that are happening here and seeing what does it mean to make a revolution because it's something that sometimes we anarchists look back often in the epic times of Spain on 36 or Ukraine in the 20s to see examples of like an anarchist revolution and this is something that today is happening here. Kurdistan has been for a long time leading a resistance against the logic of national state especially in Turkey but we saw how it has been finally in Syria where like this movement found the

space to put in practice these ideas and to develop their evolutionary society that has been terrorized for a long time. So even if we cannot say that Rojava is an anarchist region, but we can say how anarchist principles inspired the project, that it's being developed here and implemented. This is really an important school. It brings a lot of lessons of the big challenges of reorganizing a society with principles of libertarian socialism. It is especially complicated here because of external reasons like the situation of the embargo, the constant threat of the Turkish army.

And this is something that for sure we can point out, it's like, well, it's very difficult to make a revolution with these factors, but this is also a lesson that making a revolution will always be difficult and will always have really big factors that make the situation very difficult. If making a revolution would be easy, we would already have done it.

So of course it's something that brings a lot of difficulties, a lot of contradictions, a lot of challenges and being here day to day leaving what it means to like build a revolutionary society, brought a lot of lessons and reflections that we also aim to translate and to reflect together with anarchist movements from all around the world to learn from this experience and to be able to analyze together and reflect and discuss together of what it means to build anarchism in the 21st century, what it means to build libertarian socialism nowadays in the

current society with all the different elements that we see. And of course the the military conflict that is ongoing, it can seem maybe sometimes far away for comrades in Western countries, but I think it's important to remember that revolution and war have been always two sides of the same coin. It's in these moments of instability, of war, where the logic and the status quo of national states is more weak. Because we can also see it in other times, in other moments, or even in other places nowadays. What is happening, for example, in Myanmar, what is happening in different areas where

the logic of national state is in question creates instability, creates a situation where different actors will push to take control and we know that often those actors will be led by a nationalist and fascist mentality with an authoritarian logic to just impose their ideas and their aims by force and it's very important that we think and we reflect and we organize force that is able to react to that situation because authoritarian and hierarchical military structures are quite fast to react. We as anarchists we need time to organize horizontally because our structures function based also on trust,

based also on like knowing each other. And even if I really believe that they are much more solid and much more reliable in the long term, in the short term we can face big, big challenge. So it's important to see fascism is also advancing all around the world, and we can see how the tensions are growing. So maybe this is also a call, to learn from the lessons here,

to learn from how the Kurdish movement had been working and preparing for decades and what happened in Syria made possible for a revolutionary movement to put their cards on the table, to organize together with the people and to defend their people and their communities, building this revolutionary process that nowadays so so many people have been like taking inspiration from. So yeah probably this is a bit confusing and maybe not so quiet and sorry we have been quiet some hours we had several weeks that had been extremely challenging with like really few hours of sleep. But I hope this is more or less clear.

Please, if there is something that is not so understandable, I'm always welcoming new questions and hoping we can answer and share more perspective. We have been also writing some statements and we are also trying to answer all those people interested in learning more about the situation here and in ways to support this revolution. 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.

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