0:00

Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production

0:02

of My Heart Radio. Welcome

0:08

Everything,

0:14

So don't don't don't, Hey,

0:21

yo, what's up? Welcome back to Worst

0:23

Year Ever. My name is Katy Stole. Oh

0:26

cool man Cody Johnson. Yeah,

0:29

and you and I also have a name.

0:31

Yeah.

0:34

You don't feel the need to like,

0:37

we're a community of equals and I don't need to prove

0:39

anything to you. I just did it. You

0:41

just told everybody's name. I did. I

0:43

got impatient out

0:47

of you on this Now, this,

0:49

this podcast, if I'm not mistaken, is

0:52

called the Worst Year Ever, and it's supposed

0:54

to be about um,

0:56

but right now there's some people in

0:58

a little little corner of the world who

1:00

were having well, actually not the

1:02

worst year ever by their standards, but a pretty bad

1:05

year. Yeah. Yeah,

1:07

So welcome to the

1:09

worst Year currently. That's

1:12

happening time time

1:16

the show. Welcome

1:18

to Bad Times. That was an al title

1:20

pitch, but uh yeah,

1:23

So we figured we'd take a pause from going into

1:25

our deep dies on candidates to talk a

1:27

little bit about what's happening with

1:30

the Kurds and Turkey and over

1:32

in Syria. And Robert of course has a lot

1:34

of background over there, and

1:36

what better person to help us then?

1:41

And Robert's gonna bite his tongue the whole time.

1:44

I've got some notes. He's not gonna let us

1:47

know when we pronounced things wrong. We're just going to

1:49

fumble through it. As

1:54

per agreement before this, I too have notes,

1:56

but I'm just going to light them on fire. Um,

1:58

and then sit quietly through out the rest of the episodes,

2:01

Do every ad break another page of notes?

2:03

Well, it's difficult because all of his notes are on the

2:05

computer, so he won't be connected

2:07

with us anymore. Right, the first page of notes goes

2:10

up in flames, and then so does his

2:12

device. Wait,

2:14

no, Skype does not work on fire,

2:18

So we're going to troubleshoot this on the

2:20

fly. It's going to be fun short

2:23

episode. Yeah, probably so,

2:27

Um yeah, this is this is this

2:30

is our our Rojava episode. I

2:32

guess there's like I have like twenty

2:35

something pages of typed up notes that I took while

2:38

I was there over my like not.

2:41

I spent a week there in August

2:43

of earlier this year in northeast Syria. Um.

2:46

And it's like the news always refers to

2:48

it as the Kurds because I think at a certain

2:50

point in the history of the Syrian Civil War, all

2:52

mainstream foreign journalists just gave up and

2:55

we're like, let's just refer to things by

2:57

the laziest possible term. Um

3:00

So, the SDF is like made

3:03

up a bunch of different militias. Yeah, and

3:05

they're not all Kurdish. Yeah, the

3:07

SDF is the Syrian Democratic Forces

3:09

and they were um So the way, I

3:12

guess a little bit of backstories. Good back. You

3:15

know, there was a Kurdish political party

3:17

in northeast Syria called the p y D that was

3:19

initially like a hard line Marxist

3:22

party, and they were doing ship like killing landlords

3:24

and stuff back in the early odds, and they

3:27

kind of win a little bit more uh,

3:30

a little bit less extreme as time went

3:32

on, and when um the Syrians

3:34

Civil War kicked off. You know,

3:36

in most of the country, the regime was

3:39

battling with different rebel groups,

3:42

but in a lot of Northeast Syria they just kind of

3:44

pulled the hell out because they realized

3:46

they couldn't hold it. And so there's this

3:48

big power vacuum and the p y D,

3:50

which again is this kind of Kurdish leftist

3:52

party, was one of the most organized

3:55

groups in the area, and they kind of wound

3:57

up taking control with a

3:59

group the help of called p KK,

4:01

which is like a Turkish

4:03

militant Kurdish group um

4:06

that are considered to be terrorists by the United

4:08

States and by Turkey, but not by a lot of other

4:11

countries. Didn't they done some big

4:13

thing in the eighties and the terrors.

4:16

Tens of thousands of people have died, and most

4:19

of them have been killed by Turkey. UM.

4:21

But the p k K did a bunch of really awful

4:23

stuff too. Now, what makes the p KK complicated

4:26

is that they're also the ones who saved the z

4:28

d S when ISIS started rampaging like

4:31

it was they were, you know,

4:33

it was the White PG and the Wye p J, which

4:35

is like the Syrian forces, but in the in the

4:38

early days of the Civil war, they were basically

4:40

just p KK. That's no longer true.

4:42

But like see, this is this is really

4:44

complicated. There's a lot of fucking acronyms and a lot

4:46

of different groups. UM. What's

4:48

important to understand is that what started out

4:50

as a group of very very um

4:53

ideological militants, most of

4:55

whom have been fighting for decades against primarily

4:58

Turkey saw the operator the eyes

5:00

of Isis and the collapse of order in their

5:02

chunk of Syria as an opportunity to

5:05

number one finally control a sizeable

5:08

chunk of land of their own and not just be hiding in the

5:10

mountains of Turkey fighting as guerrillas, but

5:12

number two institute some of

5:14

these radical political ideas that

5:16

they had. The guy who founded the pak

5:19

Ak is a dude named up de Lagelon, and

5:21

he was a hard core terrorist and he's been trapped

5:23

alone on an island prison for the last twenty

5:25

years or so um, and he's published

5:28

a bunch of books by sending

5:30

them out as legal briefs to his lawyers,

5:32

who then published them as works of political theory.

5:35

And he basically spent a bunch of

5:37

time in prison reading about history

5:40

and became like like ancient history, like

5:42

like like paleolithic neolithic human

5:44

history, and became convinced that like

5:46

where everything had gone wrong was

5:49

the beginning of agriculture, when men started

5:51

to dominate women and we went from being a matriarchal

5:53

society to a patriarchal society.

5:56

So Ajalon's idea was that, Okay,

5:58

Funckett I was you know, I was I was wrong in the past

6:00

to try to like want to institute a Marxist state

6:02

or whatever we like. That's why all these revolutions

6:05

in the Middle East keep failing, as we just keep putting in

6:07

new strongman leaders who do

6:10

terrible, shitty things, and instead we

6:12

should seek to reform the primary imbalance

6:14

in our society, which is the domination of

6:16

women by men. So that's like the underlying ideology

6:19

that these groups who wind up in charge in Northeast

6:22

Syria have and like two isn't thirteen two fourteen?

6:25

Um, So they just start kind of building

6:28

a government, um, and using

6:30

a lot of principles that they cribbed from an American

6:32

anarchist thinker named Murray book Chin. It's

6:35

like focused around communes, like local communes,

6:37

like every neighborhood will have, you

6:39

know, everyone will get together and vote on issues that

6:41

deal with them immediately, and then the elect representatives

6:44

to represent them for like you know, at the city

6:47

level and so on and so on and so forth.

6:49

Um. In every elected position they elect

6:51

a man and a woman. UM. That's one of like the

6:54

core ideas behind it is you you never have like

6:56

one person elected to do a job like that, because

6:58

that's kind of a it's both the seed of authoritarianism

7:01

and it's sort of guarantees I had. UM. Someone

7:04

explained to me when I was in a

7:06

meeting with a couple of Kurdish military leaders,

7:08

UM, the co presidents of

7:10

security for Rocca, the former capital of Islamic

7:13

State. That UM they're understanding

7:15

was that if you just had it really piste

7:18

off the coalition having to deal with like two

7:20

elected leaders because coalition

7:22

forces used to a very linear sort

7:24

of chain of command and it's not as

7:27

much with the the SDF.

7:29

UM. And they were like, but if you have one leader,

7:32

just because of the history of the region, it's going

7:34

to be a man, and then you're gonna wind up reinforcing

7:36

all of these things. So so within the SDF, you mean,

7:38

there's these two elected positions within

7:41

all aspects of society. So the SDF

7:43

is the military force, UM,

7:46

and it's you know, the Kurds are are who's best

7:48

known, and at one point they were, you know, more

7:50

than seventy percent of the effort UM

7:52

and actually a lot of Rajava. Now it's

7:54

majority Arabic fighters in the WHITEPG

7:57

and the YEPG and again, this is all so

7:59

the SDF is a broad umbrella organization

8:02

and there's a number of different militias within it. The

8:04

WIEPG and the YEPG are the largest, but

8:06

there's you know, a lot of the

8:08

fighters are Arabic. We saw Armenian fighters,

8:10

Assyrian fighters, Syric

8:13

fighters, Turkmen fighters, so

8:15

it's it's a very it's basically a collection.

8:17

What what you had in Rojava was all these different

8:19

minority groups who've been traditionally oppressed

8:21

in Syria and the region. UM

8:24

wound up as the only power in

8:26

the area. And because they were fighting

8:28

Isis, the US started shipping

8:30

them huge amounts of of weaponry and

8:32

military training, and they

8:34

kind of nailed it UM to

8:36

the extent that it's you talked to US

8:39

soldiers about it, Special Forces guys, you

8:41

talked to or you read interviews with some of these guys

8:43

who are like colonel and higher level, and

8:46

they always seem kind of shocked at how well

8:48

the cooperation went. UM.

8:51

There were no insider attacks, which is

8:53

something that you look in Afghanistan, right and it's it's

8:55

a constant series of US

8:57

and other Western military and political officials

8:59

getting murdered. UM as a result

9:01

of somebody sneaking their way into the Afghan

9:04

security apparatus and carrying out an attack.

9:06

Right, that doesn't happen UM

9:08

in ra Java. They're people have obviously died in

9:10

suicide bombings and stuff, but you've never had

9:13

a guy in the SDF pull out

9:15

a gun and start shooting at an American general,

9:17

which has happened so often in Afghanistan.

9:19

It's it's basically a joke. UM.

9:23

So it was a really good cooperation.

9:26

They fought very well, UM. And

9:29

it was one of those things where as I was looking

9:31

reading the stories about this place and about

9:33

the evolution these political ideas in the

9:35

region, you know, from about two fourteen

9:37

on, UM, part of me was

9:39

like, this sounds amazing because I'm

9:42

UM. I'm personally an anarchist.

9:44

I'm personally someone who I hold a

9:46

lot of the things that they were saying they were doing

9:48

and trying to like reform about society are

9:51

things I very much believe in. UM. The kind

9:53

of dismantling of hierarchy and sort

9:55

of reducing authoritarian

9:57

impulses in government very

10:00

into the commune aspect of it. It's very interesting

10:02

because it's not what most people I

10:05

think associate with

10:08

you know, what's happening over there. No,

10:11

And but also it's it was impossible for me to

10:13

know like how real is any of this ship? Yeah,

10:16

yeah, yeah you. One

10:18

of the things that in my work in Iraq has

10:20

become very clear to me is that the way things look

10:22

on the surface, or the way they were reported in

10:25

the foreign media often has very little

10:27

to do with the actual reality on the ground. And

10:29

that was something I encountered a lot with the

10:32

Iraqi Kurds. The Iraqi kurdistands much

10:34

better than the rest of Iraq. It's a much more

10:36

effective government, but it's unbelievably

10:39

corrupt and fucked up. And while things

10:41

are better for women there than they are in a

10:43

lot of the country, um, you still

10:45

don't see them doing much like running

10:47

things. You don't see them doing a lot

10:50

of important work in the society,

10:53

and not like really public facing positions. There's

10:55

a few. I have met a couple of women who were in positions

10:57

of like management or government. But

10:59

and like the stuff about the the Kurdish

11:01

female fighters in Iraq, they had a

11:03

few that they would try out for the cameras

11:06

during the worst part of the invasion by Isis. But

11:08

once the fighting died down, those

11:11

women got pushed back and mainly

11:13

we're doing photo ops. That's not

11:15

the case in Rojava. Um. And

11:17

it was obvious as soon as I crossed

11:20

the border, just in terms of how the women carried

11:22

themselves, how they dressed,

11:24

the fact that some of the first

11:26

people I met who were like processing

11:29

our passports and stuff and giving us are

11:31

our passes in order to like travel through the country were

11:33

women who were like just handling administrative

11:36

jobs. Um. And

11:38

then we started crossing. We crossed

11:41

the Tigris in this little pontoon bridge, which

11:43

was the only real way, and it was it was real pain in

11:45

the ask getting in because we had to get approval

11:47

with the Iraqi government everything. But as soon as we crossed

11:49

over, um. You know, there's checkpoints

11:52

all throughout the region and there would just be

11:54

women with machine guns at the checkpoints doing

11:56

jobs like working with men. Um.

11:59

It was so at

12:01

first it was really kind of jarring. And there's

12:03

the suspicious part of me that was like, are

12:06

they putting on a show? Um?

12:09

But you know, the guy I was with, Jake,

12:11

is a former reporter for Vice. You were on the site called

12:14

No No no, yes, yes, Jake Tapper, Jake Tapper.

12:17

We were there mainly to talk about the

12:19

time Monica Lewinsky almost sucked him. Oh

12:23

he did he did this close? This

12:26

this this close? Yeah. Um

12:28

No. Jake Hanrahan who runs a site called Popular

12:31

Front, and then me, who makes

12:33

podcasts for the Internet. Neither of us are

12:35

the kind of people you would get

12:37

hundreds of folks to stage, um

12:40

a series of uh

12:44

like. There was a certain point at which

12:46

we I had to accept this couldn't have been staged.

12:48

The pageantry wouldn't have been for you.

12:51

Yeah, nobody's nobody's

12:53

getting thousands of people to dress up

12:55

and pretend they're treating women right to like impress

12:58

Robert Evans. Yeah,

13:01

of the podcast with a swear word in the name.

13:06

Um, but hey, maybe

13:08

you know, hey man, hey, maybe

13:11

that would be nice. I would like to be important

13:13

enough to be gas lit to

13:16

that extent, and

13:21

that I I hope. So, I

13:24

hope it's Michigan. I would love to be

13:27

by Michigan. Um.

13:29

So yeah. The first city

13:32

we entered when we rolled into Rojava

13:34

was this place called Derek, which there's a lot of

13:36

fighting there right now. Um.

13:38

The Turkish army is like kind of pushing into the outskirts

13:40

of city of the city, and the SDF is

13:43

mounting a pretty furious defense. Um.

13:46

But when we were there, Derek was just like incredibly

13:48

peaceful, very quiet town. The

13:50

first thing I noticed is that the

13:53

way that sort of cities are built in this part of Syria,

13:55

they have you know, you have rows of

13:57

houses and there will be apartment blocks on the top floors,

13:59

and the bottom floors will be shops. And all

14:01

those shops have like little metal

14:04

grates that pulled out in front when it's time

14:06

to like close up for the night, kind

14:08

of like in a mall or something that I've seen those that yeah

14:10

yeah, yeah UM. And during

14:13

the days of the Syrian regime, they would

14:15

all be painted with um Syrian

14:18

like national flags like the flag of Ashar al

14:20

Assad Um. And they've been

14:22

repainted when we were there, UM in

14:24

lavender with green clovers on them

14:26

and um our. Our fixer, this woman named

14:28

Kabat, who showed us around the country UM,

14:31

said that it had been done by the women in town because

14:33

they were like, well, the regime's gone, there's no

14:35

need to have these fucking flags here, Like let's let's

14:37

make it look nice. Um. And so it was a really

14:40

it was a really pretty and calming place

14:42

to drive into, and we met

14:44

a lot of journalists. There's some really neat folks

14:47

who had all been working in the region for a

14:49

while, and they all had really different opinions

14:52

on what was going on in ro Java

14:54

and how revolutionary it actually was. And

14:56

Um I met this um cipherin

14:59

photojournalist named Achilles Um

15:01

who had been in Syria dozens of times. I think,

15:03

like like constantly from the beginning of the war

15:05

on and Achilles

15:08

Um. You know, it had a lot of praise for like the

15:10

fighting prowess of the YPG and the y PGJ,

15:13

but I think kind of this sense of doom about

15:15

what was going to happen to the whole project,

15:18

Like it was this matter of it can't it's

15:20

not going to last, like the Americans

15:22

are going to pull out, and when they do, Turkey

15:25

has planes and tanks. Um

15:28

and I would say when talking to foreigners,

15:30

there were two things they all agreed on. One of

15:32

them was that the changes to women's

15:35

rights in the region in the seven or

15:37

eight years since the establishment of of

15:39

the the Autonomous Region was

15:41

was remarkable, almost unbelievable.

15:44

Um. And the second thing was that they were completely

15:46

fucked and that was that was not

15:48

an uncompos One of my friends in Iraq who

15:51

drove us up to the border, um and helped

15:53

us get in. It's a very good fixture over there. Um

15:56

loves going to Rojava. Would visit every

15:58

Ramadan because they didn't have religious there,

16:00

in his words, and so he could get wasted. And

16:05

he was like, you know, it's great over there. I really

16:07

like it. It's very chill. But you know, they're

16:10

basically like the people in charge were dumb.

16:13

They weren't willing to compromise on any of the things

16:15

they believed, and so they're only friends are the Americans.

16:18

And let me tell you, my American

16:20

friend, Americans are bad friends

16:25

currently seeing all over the world, but especially

16:27

there. Um uh yeah,

16:30

I have a quick question. So

16:32

I know that this week

16:35

there's this power vacuum that sprung up after

16:37

you know, America withdrawing.

16:40

Uh. And so now the STF

16:43

is teamed up with the Charles Sad and

16:45

I'm seeing reports that the

16:48

Syrian forces are like now seizing up territory

16:52

that they haven't had in years, and that would be Rojava.

16:54

Correct, So like this specifically

16:57

hits me a little bit to see I

17:00

say, no, that was coming in

17:03

sooner or later, knowing that America can't stay there forever.

17:05

But like especially this description you're giving

17:07

us of, like the shops painted

17:09

with these peaceful images as opposed to

17:12

the nationalistic baganda.

17:14

And so that's the area that they are now reclaiming

17:16

and taking back for their own, well chunks

17:19

of it. So one of the first areas, Yeah,

17:21

one of the first things that went back to the regime's

17:24

control was Rocca, again, the former capital of the

17:26

Islamic State, which was being managed

17:28

and run by the autonomous government,

17:31

but was not really considered to be a part of

17:33

Rojava. From one thing it was it was Yeah,

17:35

it was a majority um Arab

17:38

city, and again, like what most of what you

17:40

have going on in Rojah was kind of a coalition of different

17:42

these different little like minority groups.

17:44

So Rocca was not a city they wanted

17:46

and it was not a friendly city to that

17:48

extent. That was probably always going to go

17:50

back to the control of

17:53

the Syrian government. Um. But yeah,

17:55

they are taking other areas. It's kind of

17:57

unclear to me, and I think to everyone

18:00

except maybe Bashar al Assad, what

18:02

the exact extent of UM,

18:04

the absorption of Rojava into

18:07

the regime is going to be. I asked

18:09

a lot of people about that. UM that

18:11

was obviously the one of the big questions

18:13

on my mind, because I think but al Assad is one of, if

18:15

not the very worst war criminals

18:17

of our age. And you

18:19

know, one of the things that's really controversial

18:22

within sort of people who are followers

18:24

of the Syrian Civil War, and particularly people who got

18:26

really emotionally uh invested

18:29

in the rebel movement is the fact

18:31

that in Rojava, the forces

18:33

there didn't fight the

18:36

regime. They did a little bit early on, at

18:38

the very start of the civil war, that they fought alongside

18:40

some of the groups like the f s A, but that

18:42

that stopped pretty quickly. And

18:45

there's a lot of reasons for that, some of which are kind

18:47

of beyond the scope of what I want to talk about today.

18:49

But the gist of it is that the international

18:52

community did not provide any support to

18:54

UM, not really to the two And this is one

18:57

thing that leftists get wrong a lot when they argue about,

18:59

like the West giving weapons to Jehtas.

19:01

We didn't give fucking shit to the Syrian

19:03

rebels, like they barely had bullets

19:05

for their guns. You talked to some dudes, um,

19:08

like I taught when I was talking to Achilles, because he was there

19:10

from the beginning of the war. He was friends with

19:13

uh An f s, a leader free

19:15

Syrian army leader who lost I think

19:17

five of his sons um in the fighting

19:19

against the regime and was sending his men in the

19:21

battle with like a dozen bullets each or something

19:23

like that, like barely any ammunition, certainly

19:26

not enough to get into firefights with soldiers

19:28

who were equipped. And he wound

19:30

up. This guy went up joining the Islamic state, and he didn't

19:32

do it because he was a hard line Islamist. He didn't do it

19:35

because he wanted to establish

19:37

a caliphate. He did it because he wanted bullets,

19:39

and he wanted to kill Bashar al Assad's

19:41

men because they killed his sons. And Achilles

19:43

told me, like I was asking, can I come back and in bed

19:46

with you guys again, And he's like, you know, I would love

19:48

to have you back, um, but

19:51

you know, if Myamir says I gotta kill you, I gotta kill

19:53

you. Um. So it was like these

19:55

sort of decisions,

19:57

like hard decisions

19:59

are made by people in hard circumstances.

20:02

And it's certainly worth criticizing

20:04

the fact that the

20:06

Rojava didn't really directly fight

20:08

with the regime, but they had a situation

20:11

where the regime didn't have

20:13

any power over them because

20:15

of the US presence in the region, the

20:17

Syrian Arab air force, there

20:19

was there was no chance that assad or Russia

20:22

was going to bomb ro Java. And

20:24

if they were going to bomb Rojava, and they're only

20:26

option for taking back that land would have been ground

20:28

forces. And the Syrian Arab army

20:30

is not a good army, not even today. They only

20:32

ever had air support and artillery um,

20:35

and whereas the forces of the FDS SDF

20:37

are very good fighters. So um,

20:40

it's a situation where because

20:44

um, they were able to have a really

20:46

good holding pattern, they had oil, which Bashard

20:48

needed, so they would sell him oil, and when he made

20:51

demands or did things they didn't like, they would cut off

20:53

the oil. So they had a lot of power. Was actually a pretty

20:55

good situation to be in. And I asked

20:58

everyone i could about bush Are

21:00

all aside and about the Syrian government, like how would

21:02

you feel about it? Taking back over what

21:04

because that's been Assad's line the whole

21:06

time, is that this is going to be reabsorbed into

21:08

the country, And I didn't meet a single person

21:10

who wanted that to happen. Now.

21:12

It was kind of confusing because none of them wanted to

21:14

be separate from Syria either.

21:17

Um A lot of them had family and other series

21:20

cities and stuff like. So it was very complicated.

21:22

People were like, the most common thing I

21:24

heard is people saying, like, I just kind of want things to go

21:26

on the way they have been. This is going

21:28

pretty well because their whole idea

21:31

of how society should be and how community

21:33

should be structured lends itself to that,

21:35

like, well, we want things to be the same they

21:37

are here now, but we also want to be

21:39

a part of Syria and have these uh these

21:42

relationships. Yeah, I want to be able to visit

21:44

my family in Damascus and stuff like

21:46

I don't. Yeah, so it's it's a really it was really

21:49

complicated, but nobody wanted

21:51

to be back under the regime's thumb. Now

21:54

that said, there are factions within Rojava.

21:56

There's like like there are within any organization

21:58

that includes millions of people. Um

22:01

so my, my fixer,

22:03

Habbat. So, whenever you're in a place like this um,

22:07

a lot of how you you interpret the

22:09

place and experience it is very heavily dependent

22:11

upon your fixers, the people who lead you around and interpret

22:14

for you and introduce you to this part

22:16

of the world. That's a very critical thing,

22:19

and it really changes how you experience it. And Habbat

22:22

is she's not an ideologue

22:24

in terms of she she's not unreasonably

22:27

sort of married to the y PG

22:29

or the y p J or or the p k

22:32

K or any of these groups. But she's a fundamentally

22:34

a believer in the Rojavan revolution

22:36

um and very much a believer in

22:39

sort of this women's liberation movement. She identified

22:41

herself as an an anarchist to me and

22:43

kind of our last couple of days together. But she's

22:46

so she's in this interesting position of having

22:49

really good relations with a lot of these people, knowing

22:51

how to work with them and knowing how to get what she

22:53

wanted from them, but also not being

22:55

like blinded um by ideology.

22:57

And one of the things she repeatedly pointed out

22:59

to me is when because I asked a bunch

23:01

of different men um what they

23:04

thought about all the changes to women's rights

23:06

in the region, and I got a lot of different answers,

23:08

and whenever somebody gave a really positive,

23:10

detailed answer, she would tell me

23:13

if she thought they were lying

23:15

or not. What makes you

23:17

think they're lying? She's like, Oh, there's a lot of these guys

23:19

are just fake feminists. A lot of them are just sort

23:21

of yeah,

23:23

yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. We had a lot of conversations

23:26

about that, you say the yeah,

23:29

and one of those it was interesting because one of the

23:31

guys she believed. We were out in front of this UM,

23:33

this Women's Economic Development Headquarters

23:36

UM, which was like this this or

23:39

this building that like women would go to if they're

23:41

like, hey, I want to I want to learn to like do something. I've

23:43

been a you know,

23:45

I was married at the age of like fourteen, and I don't

23:48

have any like job skills, and like I want to live

23:50

independently, and like, okay, well here we'll find you some

23:52

training, like what are your interests like that it

23:54

was a place for that, So we we visit, we

23:56

interview one of the women there, UM a couple

23:58

of the women there, and then we um we're coming

24:00

out and there's a guard station outside

24:02

of it right, because we're in the city where

24:04

in Komischlow is the most dangerous city

24:07

outside of Rocca. Um. It was partly

24:09

controlled still by the Syrian regime, and so

24:11

you'd see like there's would be neighborhoods

24:13

that would be but char al Assad's picture in

24:15

the neighborhoods that's the YPG. So

24:18

it was a little bit of a sketchy place. There were a decent

24:20

number of ISIS attacks there. So there were

24:22

guards out inside in front of this building. Two

24:24

of the guards were young women, UM

24:27

with you know, a K forty seven's and uniforms

24:30

and stuff. And then one of the guards was an older man in his sixties.

24:33

UM. And I went up to him and I asked him a

24:35

couple of questions. UM. I asked

24:37

him how he felt about working,

24:40

you know, as as an older man and a man who like

24:42

wouldn't have grown up with this, how he felt seeing

24:44

women with guns uh and working alongside

24:47

them, And he was like, I feel really good about it. I'm very

24:49

happy to see that. Um. I'm I'm

24:51

happy that they're contributing to

24:53

the fight. Like we wouldn't have been able to do this without the

24:55

women. UM. And I asked him if

24:57

he considered himself a feminist UM,

25:00

And he thought about that for a second, and he

25:02

said, I don't think there's any revolution

25:05

without the women, um, which is a line

25:07

a line from Abdulla Agelan there's no revolution

25:09

without the women, or the women are the center of the revolution,

25:12

and you can translate anything different ways, and

25:14

she believed him. There was this other guy

25:16

we met um in Rocca, one

25:18

of the co presidents of the Defense Counsel, who

25:21

was I thought, very nice and very

25:23

um uh said all of the right

25:25

things, was very eloquent about his things.

25:27

UM. But the way that his

25:30

partner looked at him during a couple of lines, who was

25:32

who was a woman and a very very tough

25:34

lady, UM Like you could just see

25:36

it in her eyes and the way that she directed

25:38

people. And then Kabat afterwards

25:40

was like, oh, yeah, that guy, if

25:42

if things went back to the way they were tomorrow, that

25:44

guy wouldn't have any trouble. And essentially

25:47

yeah, yeah. And so that's

25:49

one of the things that really worries when we talk about

25:51

the regime coming back in and Russia coming back

25:53

in, is there are a lot of true

25:56

believers within the Rojavan project.

25:58

I met a bunch of them, people who were very

26:00

hard to to do something incredible.

26:03

Um. I'm sure there's also people who have

26:05

been kind of frustrated with all

26:08

of those women's ship um,

26:10

and if they get an opportunity to push things

26:12

in the other direction and have the backing of another

26:14

power, they'll do it. Now, I don't

26:17

think that's the majority of people involved,

26:19

particularly in the government, because a lot of these people,

26:21

a lot of the core of the movement are

26:23

former or current members of the p JK who

26:25

were struggling in the mountains for decades

26:28

and very hard, strong believers and a lot of this

26:30

stuff. But there's definitely factions

26:33

that I think would have no issue m

26:35

going back to the way things. It just sounds that it's

26:37

tenuous enough that this kind

26:40

of upset right now is it's

26:42

the whole thing in like great peril, the whole

26:45

idealogical experiment, not experiment,

26:48

but you know what I mean, Like this is relatively

26:50

new and it doesn't have enough

26:52

roots to necessarily sustain this, survive

26:54

this. Um, we

26:57

take a real quick break for

26:59

things. Oh you know, Katie, speaking

27:01

of breaks, Yeah, you know, what will

27:03

heal any broken bones. You have what

27:06

the products and services advertised on their

27:09

show. That's an FDA backed guarantee.

27:11

I should have known that's where you were going with this health

27:14

I've got so many broken bones, so I'm excited

27:17

about these products and health taps, download

27:20

bones, vowels where

27:23

Yeah, bones, you've heard it here,

27:25

folks. Whatever products you buy from a podcast

27:28

heal broken bones. So everything,

27:39

don My

27:42

bones are all healed, and that's great news for

27:44

me. Yeah, and we're back for more

27:46

talking about stuff and

27:49

less talking about bones. Yeah,

27:52

there's probably still some talking of bones to come.

27:54

I'm waiting for about that. Assume

27:57

that there's more bone talk. Yeah, yeah, there

27:59

there's gonna be more owne talk. Welcome to bone

28:01

Talk. Welcome to bone Talk. So

28:04

I want to talk a little bit about the Women's Economic

28:06

Development Headquarters. UM. So, this

28:08

is a place we went to on our second day there, and

28:10

it was really remarkable

28:13

spot. Um. For one thing, it was by

28:16

far the cleanest place that we went into

28:19

up to that point, because we'd mainly been staying in like

28:21

hotels and stuff for journalists. And I don't know

28:23

if you guys know this, but journalists

28:25

are filthy degenerates. Familiar.

28:28

Yeah, I've heard. Actually the hotel we stayed in

28:30

and Durek was lovely, but I I

28:33

it was a very nice room. Yeah,

28:35

filled with filthy degenerates. Um.

28:37

So the walls

28:40

of this place and the walls of most of sort of the administrative

28:43

buildings in Rojava were covered in pictures

28:45

of martyrs um the shahids,

28:47

which is like a word

28:50

from martyr um and

28:52

uh. In this case, it was the picture of a bunch of different

28:54

female martyrs, including um, a

28:56

young woman who blew herself up

28:58

destroying an ISIS tank during the battle for

29:00

Kobani. So you see a

29:02

lot of the same faces UM in

29:04

a lot of these walls. And this was the faces of all

29:07

a lot of the young women who had died fighting. And it

29:09

was it was a really good

29:11

constant reminder of just like among other

29:13

things, like the cost of the fighting against ISIS.

29:15

They lost about eleven thousand people

29:18

um fight and a lot of them were very

29:20

very young. Um. You

29:22

looked at the age on the gravestones, and I

29:24

think seventeen was a pretty common age

29:27

UM, and some people who were younger. UM.

29:30

So it's another

29:33

picture you'll see. You saw all over the place and I saw

29:35

in the wall this building is the picture of Abdulla

29:37

Alan. They call him Apo, which I think

29:39

means uncle, like a p o is

29:42

kind of the nickname for him. And there

29:45

he's taken very seriously. There's a mix

29:47

some people he's revered, vered almost as like

29:50

identified um, and and

29:52

there are there is some like concerning sort

29:54

of like leader worship that I saw amongst sort

29:56

of segments there and other people just

29:58

what they're doing, yeah, yeah,

30:01

and it it kind of did strike me that

30:04

they're acts. He's accidentally in the best

30:07

situation possible for them,

30:09

because I think it's it's

30:11

arguable that in some situations you do need

30:14

a figurehead like that for people to rally

30:16

behind, and especially just sort of given some

30:18

cultural nuances of that area, that's

30:21

very common. Every movement has their kind of strong

30:23

male figurehead, and they have that.

30:25

But he's also locked in an island prison

30:27

thousands of miles away, so he can't actually do

30:29

anything. It was kind of perfect

30:31

yeah, um, but

30:34

yeah, you would see the pictures of him are

30:36

kind of hilarious because they're all at some point

30:38

before he got arrested. This guy just had thousands

30:40

of pictures taken of him, and in some of them

30:42

it's like the normal militant thing where we have like he'll

30:44

be in fatigues or whatnot, directing troops.

30:47

But most of them he's wearing like Cosby sweaters

30:49

and like he's literally he's

30:51

got his head in his hands like this, and he's smiling

30:53

and it looks like it looks like your your chubby

30:56

uncle in a caussted

31:00

was it was around the term

31:02

of the that makes sense, that kind

31:04

of like small clamor pick.

31:07

Yeah, it was, there's really weird. You would see

31:09

some really strange ones. It

31:12

was a lot to like keep from giggling at a

31:14

couple of points. Anyway, So we

31:16

go into this room and were these pictures all over

31:18

the walls, and I sit there and I talked to this woman who's um.

31:21

She was an older lady, the head of the Economic Development

31:23

Council. And from the mountains

31:26

is the term that everyone used for

31:28

the Kurds who were part of the movement,

31:30

who had clearly been part of the

31:32

p KK before, Like the mountains of Turkey

31:34

is what they're in Iraq or what they're referring to. So like

31:36

that was the term that would be like whispered

31:38

whenever we'd meet somebody, and they were usually the

31:40

people who would be very

31:43

very stern, very hard eyes,

31:46

very taciturn and kind of less

31:48

like friendly and smiley.

31:50

UM, and you know, someone would whisper at some point.

31:52

I think he's from the mountains. I think she's from the

31:54

mountains. It is just kind of a thing over

31:56

there. So we meet this woman, we're sitting were talking

31:58

with her. Um. She explains to us in

32:01

a lot of detail about UM.

32:04

Yeah, I I'm just gonna read from my notes

32:06

actually here. UM. So she's talked

32:08

to us about the struggle against patriarchy,

32:10

which she saw is much more difficult

32:12

and dangerous than the struggle they had fought against

32:14

isis UM. One of

32:16

the lines that really stuck out to me was it

32:19

is always poor women, those with no solution who

32:21

come here. So these are the women who were like coming in

32:23

for help from this place. She told us about a deaf

32:25

woman who had come by it recently, was the widow of a martyr.

32:28

UM and her parents had wanted to take the kids

32:30

she'd had with her dead husband because

32:32

they didn't believe she could take care of them, and she had no income

32:35

to do so. And so one of the things that center

32:37

had done recently was put this woman in training for

32:39

a job as a seamstress, and she had been able to get work

32:41

and like keep her children and like maintain

32:44

her family. So that's like an example of the sort of work they

32:46

were doing. Yeah. Um.

32:49

One of the lines she said that really stuck out to me

32:51

was if you fall into the mentality of capitalism,

32:54

you were already a martyr. She didn't

32:56

bring up Sheryl Sandberg's lean in um,

32:58

but that's when she was referring to is we

33:01

don't Our goal with this place isn't to

33:03

make women into like entrepreneurs

33:05

that they can create giant businesses and get rich.

33:08

Our goal is to help women who

33:10

have been marginalized to the sidelines of our

33:12

society take roles in the

33:14

center of our society. And it's it's not about

33:16

making money. Our goal isn't for her to

33:18

like create a sewing app or it's not

33:21

like more females. It's

33:24

able to be like self sustainable to live

33:26

a life, and yeah, not

33:29

need to be in fear

33:31

and all that. Yeah, she said.

33:33

Another thing she said was Western women, Uh,

33:36

they work but receive less, which

33:38

I think she was referring to the pay gap there because

33:40

they work in the mentality of the men. If

33:43

I am free here, I can only be as free

33:45

as the other women here. Um. So

33:47

is this understanding that like, if our equality

33:49

is based on us acting like men, that's

33:52

not real equality. That was the

33:54

attitude she expressed to me and

33:56

her you know, she's one of the people. I asked if

33:58

she wanted regime can troll of the area

34:01

to to return um, and

34:03

she had a very hard line on that. Um. She

34:05

said that she did not want We

34:08

do not want to be a state, was her line.

34:10

Um. So, she did not want reintegration of the

34:12

Syrian government. She didn't want statehood at all. Um.

34:15

The term she used and that most people would use

34:17

was autonomous. You know, we want

34:19

to remain autonomous. That's what's important to

34:21

us. So, Yeah, that was a really interesting

34:24

interview to me, and I've got more like one of the things.

34:27

Yeah, I have a whole

34:29

long recorded interview with her that I'm in the process

34:31

of getting translated. Unfortunately,

34:34

my translators are all based in Rojava.

34:36

Uh so some of them have

34:38

been getting shelled by the Turks.

34:41

So it it's gonna Part

34:44

of why we're doing some of this today is it's going

34:46

to take a bit longer for me to get this series

34:48

out because that's not the

34:50

ideal situation. So

34:53

another place we went to was

34:55

jin War. Jin is the

34:57

Karmaji Kurdish word for women,

35:00

UM and war means land UM,

35:03

and so women's land. It's a village and

35:05

all women village UM.

35:07

That's located in Rojava, not that

35:09

far from Comische low Um

35:11

and it was it was pretty small when

35:14

we went there. I think there were about a dozen or so families

35:16

UM, but it was only around a year old and

35:19

it was really beautiful. For one thing,

35:21

UM lavender painted walls again,

35:23

which I I I started

35:26

to recognize as a bit of a theme. Very

35:28

orderly, spacious homes built around

35:30

all very eco friendly. So one of the things in the Rojavan

35:33

constitution was UM a focus on ecology

35:36

UM because the the American anarchist

35:38

who is really influential to they're

35:41

thinking, a guy named Murray buck Chin was

35:43

like one of the very first people back in the sixties

35:45

who was like, climate change is going to be a problem.

35:47

So that's a big part of the ideology at

35:49

least UM it's the it's the aspect of their

35:52

constitution that they made the least progress on,

35:54

because when you're fighting a war for

35:56

extermination, recycling isn't

36:00

of their priorities. But this place

36:02

sounds incredibly fascinating, an

36:04

interesting. Yeah, progressive

36:07

in so many ways. Uh yeah,

36:10

this is this is wild to me.

36:12

I mean, to include ecology in your actual

36:14

constitution is when something when

36:16

we're battling for people to even acknowledge

36:19

that climate change is a

36:21

real thing. Yeah, we're

36:23

still having like is it just bad if we kill all the whales?

36:26

I mean, they're kind of dicks, hoard

36:29

the water. Make a quote from

36:31

our constitution. It is a quote the whales

36:33

are dicks. Which, Yeah,

36:36

Thomas Jefferson's anti whale legenda,

36:39

it hasn't

36:42

It does not look good for Thomas Jefferson.

36:45

Yeah, that's the one. The one problem with Thomas Jefferson.

36:48

The one problem otherwise is hatred

36:50

of whales. Yeah. Yeah, nothing

36:53

nothing else. They're nothing else going on with that guy.

36:56

Okay. Um,

36:58

So one of the people I met in jin Are was

37:00

a German woman. Um, very

37:03

German, very heavily tattooed. Um

37:05

seemed to be I think I would guess in her late

37:07

thirties early forties. UM. And

37:09

she spoke what sounded to me at least like fluent

37:12

uh Cormagi Kurdish as well

37:14

as as pretty good English. UM.

37:16

And she had volunteered

37:19

to live there and had been living

37:21

there pretty much since the beginning and was clearly like one

37:23

of the people helping to organize it. And

37:25

yet looking at jin war kind

37:28

of the the cynical asshole and me wanted

37:30

to pick it apart because it was very small. You know, it's

37:32

not a big village. You're talking a couple of dozen people

37:34

with all the kids and stuff in total, and

37:36

that that's the kind of thing that you could look at and

37:38

be like, well, maybe this is just like a tempkin village

37:40

purely for show, and it's

37:42

it certainly doesn't seem that significant

37:44

when you're talking about you know, there's four million people in

37:47

Rojava. We're talking about a war

37:49

that's killed hundreds of thousands, and you know,

37:51

in the context of a global authoritarian resurgence

37:54

that's like still threatening to

37:56

to to kill us all. Um.

37:58

But even kind of with all of that in mind

38:00

and like looking at the small scale of it, it still

38:02

felt um remarkable

38:05

to me. Um. The energing

38:07

there was was something special, and I think

38:09

the audacity of what they were going for their

38:12

um was humbling. Uh.

38:16

It really impressed me.

38:18

We talked to a number of women there. UM.

38:21

One woman who had like

38:24

she had a tattoo on her arm of

38:26

flowers, which struck me because you don't see

38:28

a lot of tattoos in that part of the world. Although as

38:30

I went on through a Java actually encountered there's

38:32

a huge tattoo culture that's taken off there just in

38:35

the last couple of years. But her husband

38:37

was UM. She she noticed

38:39

that her husband was an alcoholic h and

38:41

she reported him to the women's councils through the women's

38:43

houses, which are these buildings that they set up in every

38:46

town and city in Rojava

38:48

where women can come and get help if they need

38:50

it. UM. So she reported him to the women's

38:52

councils, and they suggested that she leave and

38:55

moved to gen War Um, which she

38:57

had done with her kids. UM. And so she was like

38:59

learned they were farming. They grew a significant amount

39:01

of food, really tasty cucumbers. UM.

39:03

And you hear about cumbers

39:06

that often. I'll say that interjection. Tasty

39:09

cucumber is not something I associate anyway,

39:12

they actually did. Like then I went to a

39:14

couple of farms the agriculture. There's really good,

39:16

really like better tasting cucumbers

39:18

than I've ever had. And I don't I don't like cantaloupe,

39:20

It's garbage fruit. But their cantaloupe

39:23

was fucking delicious. It was like nothing

39:25

I'd ever eaten before. And they had these one

39:27

of the things they were doing with these farms,

39:29

you know, one of which was small and one of which was medium

39:32

sized, I would say, like capable of growing you know,

39:34

truck fulls of food um

39:37

acres and six big hoop houses um.

39:39

And it was they were trying to do like all

39:42

organic um uh,

39:44

fertilizers and stuff. Because the

39:47

Rojava is traditionally it's like the Kansas of Syria.

39:49

It's like the breadbasket. It grows a shipload of

39:51

food um and the

39:53

regime had just been pumping in fertilizers

39:56

and pesticides for years to try to maximize

39:58

production. And people

40:00

there would say that like it really decreased the

40:02

quality of the food and the flavor of the food

40:05

UM and was also bad for the soil, so a big part

40:07

of what they were doing over there was soil reclamation. That was

40:09

part of what they were doing in gen War, part of where they were

40:11

doing at this um. I went to another, a woman's

40:13

farming commune um that was a separate thing.

40:15

So there there are a few things like this

40:18

where it's all or majority women

40:21

engaging in some large undertaking.

40:23

It was really interesting to see and

40:25

uh jim War itself like consisted

40:28

of there were a couple of Kurdish women, There was obviously

40:30

that German lady. There were Arabs, there were Yazd's.

40:33

It was really a very polyglot

40:35

sort of culture. And that was really impressive

40:38

to see, especially since, like one of the criticisms

40:40

that I repeatedly heard about Rajava before going

40:42

there was that it was really just like a Kurdish

40:45

supremacist project. And I could say pretty

40:47

conclusively I didn't see any fucking

40:49

evidence of that. And I talked to a lot of

40:51

Arabs and Assyrians and Turkmen.

40:54

Yeah, that was gonna be my question. So it's not just

40:56

I mean, it's not just Kurdish

40:59

people that are living there. This is

41:02

a mixture, but I

41:04

mean, primarily the

41:07

Curds were the like start of

41:09

it, the core of it, and part of that just because the Curds

41:11

are really fucking good fighters, um,

41:14

and they've been working, they've been wanting a place that

41:17

can be I mean, they're a land list. They don't have

41:19

any place there. Yeah

41:23

there, and they're they're they're um

41:25

they've been organized politically for a long

41:27

time. So yeah,

41:30

Um. It was really uh,

41:32

it was really interesting. One of the things as I was leaving

41:35

Um, I looked back at the gate to gen War

41:37

and so that it had the name jin War printed

41:39

in um in in English characters

41:42

on the on the gate, and

41:44

one side of it said gin and

41:46

one side of it said war. Um.

41:49

And I expressed

41:51

to Kabbat that

41:54

that struck me particularly because it's kind of like

41:56

a bit of a like

41:59

obviously the literal translation is women's

42:01

land, but kind of reading it in English

42:04

a mix of English and Kurdish is women's war. Um.

42:07

Is what a lot of the women they were talking to me about

42:09

is that like, we see this as a we see

42:12

this struggle for equalities essentially kind of a military

42:14

undertaking, um. And that's the way we're

42:16

proceeding with it. Yeah, it was really interesting

42:18

to me. Um, you know, I

42:20

could go through a

42:23

bunch of stuff. I it's one of

42:25

those things that's like when the full series

42:27

comes out, it will be um, probably

42:29

like six to eight episodes. This

42:32

is fascinating to me. And

42:34

it's just like such a you know, I've ever said

42:36

this expresses a few times. It's just really

42:39

challenging my conceptions

42:41

of what life is like

42:43

over there. And you know, we get just

42:45

these broad stroke images

42:48

and pictures of of

42:50

of who these people are and

42:52

it's nothing nothing to do with this

42:54

note. It's an important portrait too,

42:57

right. Do you have a lot of contact with people

42:59

over there? Yeah, yeah, I've been in contact

43:01

with a few of my friends over there. It's a little bit

43:03

um erratic, shall we say, just

43:06

because there's a lot going on. Um,

43:09

But what I hear is

43:11

very worrying. Now, it's

43:14

not like a lot of people

43:16

have died. Um, it's not a situation

43:18

where at this point the SDF

43:21

isn't helpless against the Turkish advance.

43:24

Um. So one of the things we saw when we were there, I was sometimes

43:26

just within a couple hundred feet of the Turkish border. There's

43:28

this gigantic wall, huge Stone

43:30

Wall looming over you through huge sections

43:32

of the trip there, so it was always in everyone's mind.

43:35

And there were while we were there, are to when the President

43:38

of Turkey made numerous statements about wanting to destroy

43:40

the hPG, wanting to kill all the terrorists

43:42

over there. So they were like numerous days

43:44

where like suddenly security would be heightened and

43:47

like we'd all walk around knowing, well, okay, the

43:49

Turks might invade today. I have

43:51

a question, maybe it's a dumb one, but we

43:54

mold over it a little bit last week on even

43:56

more News, What our nations, What our nations

43:58

go? Uh No, So I understand

44:00

Air Towan having issues

44:03

with Kurdish within Turkey

44:05

and what's been going on with terrorist organizations

44:08

there which they consider to be but versus

44:10

going into Syria right now? Is

44:13

it because Rojava and the organization

44:15

feels like a threat to him? I am

44:17

just curious if you could talk a little bit about that.

44:20

This is a very complicated um

44:23

so I'm going to do my best to explain it.

44:25

The the surfaced and simplest answer is

44:27

that the p k K are

44:30

seen as and not entirely

44:32

without right, a terrorist group in Turkey, and it definitely

44:34

carried out attacks like that. I would say one

44:37

of one of the issues that we haven't discussing this

44:39

is like people here terrorists now and they think ISIS are

44:41

all kind of where like their only goal is to kill innocent

44:43

people. They're more like the I Rara was

44:46

back in the day, where there's individual

44:48

actions they take that you that are deplorable and

44:50

horrible, and targeting of civilians is never justified.

44:52

But they're not just trying to kill people. They're

44:54

fighting a struggle for independence and they have

44:57

there's a lot of logical arguments, and they can

44:59

point to a tross Citi's by the other side.

45:01

It's that sort of struggled. So the p k

45:04

K is a group that has carried out and continues

45:06

to carry out attacks on Turkey when

45:08

we were there, like the day that we landed

45:11

in Iraq because we had to cross over into

45:13

Syria from Iraq, um the Turkish

45:15

ambassador to Kurdistan was

45:17

murdered uh in our Bill,

45:20

which is normally a pretty safe city, by a

45:22

couple of p k K guys, And it was a kind of thing

45:24

like nobody knew who did it, but also everybody knew

45:26

who had it. Like there was not not a doubt in anyone's

45:28

head that it was the PK separate from

45:30

STF. It's

45:33

but there, I know there's ties, but there

45:36

were ties. It was much more tied earlier

45:38

on. So earlier on the hPG and the y pg

45:41

J. We're basically just rebranded

45:43

p KK. That's certainly no longer

45:45

the case. And for one thing, most of the people

45:47

making up those organizations have never been

45:50

to Turkey, were not alive to take part

45:52

in any of the PKK's main struggles. Um.

45:55

They were Syrian civilians until the revolution

45:57

happened when they were fourteen or fifteen, and then they

46:00

wind up to fight Isis or whatever. Um.

46:03

So that's uh,

46:06

there's it's there's not a zero connection

46:08

to them. But also, like you know, one of the things

46:10

you can point out, while the PKK has continued their

46:12

guerrilla war against the Turks, it's not

46:15

like they're firing Javelin missiles on Turkish

46:17

Leopold tanks inside southern Turkey.

46:19

Like they've been smart about it. They haven't

46:21

been just like, well, let's take all of our U S guns

46:23

and immediately use them to go attack Turks and Turkey.

46:26

Um, like they're not idiots. UM.

46:29

So Radwin's justification for the invasion

46:32

is that UM. And I think it's one that a

46:34

lot of people who don't know much about the situation

46:36

can see as understandable because it's like, oh, they're terrorists,

46:38

like isis isis bad, so Turkey

46:40

should get to funk with these guys. It

46:42

goes back much deeper than that. One of the bigger

46:44

issues is that Turkey has a long

46:47

and horrific history of repressing

46:49

the Kurdish people, including banning the speaking

46:51

of the language and the teaching of it in school. I guess

46:53

this is yeah,

46:57

and there's there's a saying in Turkey

47:00

that there's no such thing as Kurds. They're just mountain

47:02

Turks who lost their language. Um, I think

47:04

is one of the phrases used.

47:07

UM. And there was I think in UM.

47:10

There was an uprising in southern Turkey

47:12

by the Kurdish population, specifically

47:14

by a bunch of young Kurdish

47:17

uh militants UM

47:19

with an organization called the y d g h yet

47:21

a gahash Um and they got massacred

47:24

in the cities they were in, got pounded into

47:26

fucking concrete and huge. Almost

47:28

no one reported on. There were almost no reporters

47:31

there, but it was catastrophic

47:34

crime. And so Urdawan

47:36

sees not just the p KK as

47:38

a threat, but he sees the idea of an organized

47:41

Kurdish state based along revolutionary

47:43

militant lines as a threat that he can deal

47:46

with the Iraqi Kurds because they're fundamentally

47:48

more mainstream, more capitalists, they're not

47:51

they're willing to work with him. The Syrian

47:54

Kurds are not well, and they've got

47:56

this ideology and they're building something

47:58

there and it's to their land

48:01

border, and so that right here feels

48:03

like a threat, and here's this opportunity

48:05

to go in um and

48:09

Dan racism, but also the political project is

48:12

m yeah. Yeah. And also the

48:14

fact that you know, Turkey controlled Syria

48:17

up until about a century or so ago, so

48:19

Arede is definitely I think in kind of the same way

48:21

that Vladimir Putin there's some desire in his

48:23

part to like reconstitute the geographical

48:26

like scope of the Soviet Union. I think

48:29

there's some of that with are to one as well. I wanted

48:31

to talk about about Russia. So we also

48:33

have been seeing reports that now

48:36

uh Vladimir Putin Russia has deploying

48:38

troops to help keep the

48:40

advancing the Syrian government and the turk Ships

48:42

forces Turkish forces that keep

48:45

them keep the peace. I guess kind of feeling

48:47

the vacuum again left by America one

48:50

of the uh yeah, yeah, sorry,

48:53

no, No, I was just kind

48:55

of generally lobbing that out there to hear

48:57

your thoughts, because, like, I understand that on the service level,

48:59

but I'm sure you've had a lot more information that can

49:01

help us understand it a bit more. No,

49:04

I mean, that's essentially accurate, and I think

49:06

it's like a mark of what a clusterfuck

49:09

this decision has been, outside of its immoral

49:11

like connotations, outside just what a bad idea

49:13

it was. You had a situation where there

49:16

was not war in Rojaba, there

49:18

was not fighting. There were occasional ISIS sleeper

49:20

cell attacks, but it was very safe. I never felt,

49:23

um, you know, like I was in serious danger

49:25

walking around in the cities at night or whatever. So

49:28

many places where you have felt that, Yeah,

49:31

it was. It was a very safe place. There

49:33

was not active fighting, um

49:35

And the only thing that was required to maintain

49:37

that situation was two d U S

49:39

Sports Special Forces guys chilling out

49:41

on basis and the knowledge that if anyone

49:43

bombed them, it would be a thing. And

49:46

now that that's been removed, this

49:48

situation where there was not active fighting

49:50

has turned into what is essentially a war

49:52

between Russia, Turkey, the

49:54

Syrian government in this autonomous region,

49:57

like within a week. It's an un

50:00

speakable cluster fuck with huge

50:02

implications. Um. And

50:04

it's just so dumb that none

50:06

of this needed to happen. And it creates

50:08

a situation where like now

50:11

any any solution or

50:13

anything that we do will make it

50:15

even worse. Like as

50:18

opposed to staying there, now

50:20

that we've left, it's created all these other tensions

50:23

that getting involved and is even more

50:25

complicated. I don't

50:28

know what could even be done

50:30

at this point. Like I guess I'm always

50:32

in support of like a no fly zone being established,

50:35

but like now that's so much messier of an ever

50:38

we had one over ro Java, Um

50:40

and it worked. Um yeah,

50:42

it's it's well, I mean, now we're traders,

50:45

we can't be trusted, I mean, and his implications

50:47

around the world. Uh, it

50:50

just speaks to who we are and who President

50:52

Trump is and where how reliable

50:54

we are. Um. But even if we

50:56

were to undo this, like right now, they

50:59

hate us, like like

51:01

they can't trust us. I'm

51:04

not sure they never trusted

51:06

us individually. I

51:08

will say they're individual Americans, individual

51:10

soldiers that um, they absolutely

51:12

trusted UM, the American government.

51:15

They're not dumb people. They read history

51:17

books. They know what anybody actually right

51:21

now nothing that we do. UM. I

51:23

don't know that I agree with that. I do think if we could

51:25

now obviously because Russia is moving

51:27

in, because the Syrian government's moving in, because

51:29

there's Turkish troops, like, I don't know

51:32

how you would that it would be very

51:34

a dicey maneuver to try to reinsert

51:36

American troops. That said, I

51:38

know for a fact they would prefer to be working

51:41

with US than the Russians in the Syrian government.

51:43

And there was a widespread

51:46

nobody I met who I felt like had a really

51:49

nuanced understanding of the international situation.

51:51

None of them thought the US was going to stay.

51:53

Everyone thought Turkey was going to invade.

51:56

And we watched them building thousands of

51:58

miles of tunnels all are round

52:00

the entirety of Rajaba, twenty four

52:02

meters down into the ground. Um,

52:05

these these incredibly deep and complicated

52:07

tunnel systems where they were storing munitions and

52:10

so that they could transfer populations

52:12

and fighters all around the region without

52:14

the Turks being able to bomb them, and a

52:17

lot of that, a lot of those defenses they had to

52:19

give up because one of the things that was really fucking

52:21

shitty that Trump did is um,

52:23

he got the curt here, he got

52:26

the the SDF to agree to a

52:29

uh A withdrawal from some sections

52:31

of their line with Turkey, UM as

52:33

part of an agreement for like a safety

52:35

zone, and they did with the understanding that the U

52:37

S would be staying. And then once they'd

52:40

given up their first front line defenses

52:42

were like, as, wasn't

52:45

that like a month ago or something like

52:47

very recently. Yeah. Also, I've been reading

52:49

a lot that there are like approximately

52:51

fifty nuclear weapons that

52:54

we had stored in the area and now Turkey

52:56

just has them. Uh well

52:59

we're oh no, no, no, we I think

53:01

it's more that we have bases in Turkey,

53:04

yeah, basically everywhere. But yeah,

53:07

well I just from a couple of people of

53:09

a couple of people a couple of places describing

53:11

them now as at Wan's hostages. Well

53:15

that's sort of okay, So this is one of the big

53:17

reasons why, you know, one of the one of the one

53:19

of the questions that um

53:22

I found myself asking a lot and asking

53:24

with my colleagues over there, was like,

53:26

why the fund does Turkey get to get away with all this

53:29

ship? And the answer is the

53:31

air base and in Serlik is a huge part

53:33

of it. Um. Now that's an American

53:35

air base, UM, and it is critical

53:38

to our operations in the Middle East. UM.

53:40

Another reason for this is that, of course Turkey

53:43

is a NATO nation and they're kind of holding

53:45

down NATO's flank. So

53:47

it's uh, I'm not

53:49

saying there's nothing that could be done. I think there's a shipload

53:51

that could be done against air to one, but nothing

53:54

is being done because everyone is scared

53:56

of the implications and scared of upsetting

53:58

the apple cart. Even more, well,

54:01

I guess all the EU

54:04

Union members are now

54:06

not going to sell arms to Turkey or

54:09

whatever, even though that's great. They've got

54:11

plenty of fucking guns. Yeah, I mean,

54:13

like, yeah, that's that's what's being done,

54:16

right, all the all the sanctions and stuff. It's like

54:18

they want to do this, so you knew

54:20

what they were going to do this. Everybody

54:23

knew that this was going to happen. I don't

54:25

know. Like it's frustrating because I think

54:28

one possible. Everyone's worried about the genocide.

54:30

Obviously, I'm where like a lot of people have died, um,

54:32

and that's terrible. UM. But

54:35

I worry even more

54:37

because I think it's more likely. UM. I

54:39

don't think. I don't think Turkey

54:41

could possibly take the whole region,

54:44

or even a sizeable chunk of what

54:46

they've claimed that they want to take.

54:48

For a number of reasons. Well, the Turks have a powerful airport

54:51

force and good artillery. UM. They don't

54:53

have a very good military. It's

54:55

well equipped, but it's not good fighters,

54:58

um. Whereas the STF

55:00

is filled with like veteran guerillas who are particularly

55:03

expert at using a kind of weapon system called an a

55:05

g t m UM, a wire guided missile

55:08

UM which uh turns

55:11

advanced tanks into fireworks.

55:14

So I especially when

55:16

you consider like the fact that the Russians

55:18

and the Syrian Arab army and its air force

55:20

are moving in to support them, I

55:22

don't think Turkey is going to

55:24

be able to actually take most of what

55:27

they want to take. Maybe I'll be wrong about that, but

55:29

I do think that the fact that the

55:32

forces of the Autonomous Region have had to call in

55:34

back up from that particular side

55:36

means there's a good chance it's the end

55:39

of this revolutionary experiment and

55:41

the start of their absorption back into

55:43

the most brutal dictatorship on the planet. Um

55:46

And I understand some of the people

55:48

I've talked to will say, like, look, assad's terrible,

55:51

we know that, but are to One's worse

55:53

for us. You know, are too one may not have killed

55:55

as many people, but as occurred, he's worse

55:57

for us. And so because we

56:00

still are one of the dominant powers

56:02

in this group, that's who we're going

56:04

to worry about the most. Um And

56:06

I can't say they're wrong. I've never

56:09

had to make a decision like that. Um

56:11

It breaks my heart that the decision is being made

56:13

because it's so fucking unnecessary. It is

56:15

really heartbreaking. This whole thing is just so

56:19

It's going to be the worst year ever for

56:22

a lot of vulnerable people in

56:24

a region of the world where things seem to be

56:26

getting better as recently as this August,

56:29

but you know where it's not going to be the worst year ever,

56:31

Katie, And where tell me in

56:34

the products and services that support this program?

56:36

Once again, I should have seen that coming. It's gonna

56:39

be the best year ever for them. It's going to be the yeah,

56:41

Harry, because we

56:43

are going to move a lot of

56:45

whatever it is we sell products and products

56:50

services. Yeah, yeah, some

56:52

of those, uh, some of those

56:55

I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't have a good joke.

56:57

I was gonna I was gonna make a condom

57:00

cooke or something, but then I couldn't think of

57:02

one in time, have come

57:04

up with one. There it is, Cody.

57:06

There we go, all right, well

57:12

together everything,

57:19

Oh my gosh, I've bought them all.

57:22

He sure did snap them up. I'm

57:24

excited about having bought them. Yeah, I bet

57:27

you, I bet you are put

57:29

in them excited. I received the

57:31

I received the gifts. See how fast

57:33

our products and services ship? You

57:35

know what? You know what I'm excited about most is

57:39

when we inevitably get to the point

57:41

where the entire episode is just one

57:43

long ad plug but with no ads,

57:45

we just never get there. We're trying to. We're constantly

57:48

like, yeah, we're building to it. Yeah,

57:52

that's what the people want. The PIV is an ad

57:55

plug that never starts. Welcome to the

57:57

ad transition, the show that is constantly

57:59

transitioning to an ad that never comes.

58:03

But first day,

58:08

let's talk a little bit about the Republicans

58:10

here in America and what they're

58:13

like. Republicans, the Republicans.

58:15

Yeah, I think I solved the political what

58:18

was? What was yours? Cody? I

58:22

didn't want to steal your joke that the

58:24

Republicans

58:28

um they're pissed. Yeah, they are.

58:31

It's the first time in

58:33

recent memory where they've actually stood

58:36

up kind of a

58:39

little a little bit, a little bit to the president,

58:42

although still managing to

58:44

not say his name. It's

58:46

very fascinating standing up to what's happening,

58:49

but not to him specific Right, They're like, oh,

58:51

there's a you know

58:53

a lot of tweets of like, oh there's you know, this is cleansing.

58:56

We've betrayed our allies a

58:58

lot of the language, and they never arrive

59:01

at And it was that decision

59:03

was made by yeah, why is

59:05

that happening? Likely by

59:07

somebody after a phone call without

59:10

consulting anybody like

59:13

margat Rubio and Lindsay Graham. Obviously come to mind

59:15

specifically, but just so many of like,

59:17

Oh, I can't believe we've done this? Who who did

59:19

it? What are you talking about? Why don't you just say

59:23

his name? Just say his name once? But they don't

59:25

want to because they know that he's gonna attack

59:27

them, hit them on Twitter. They'll

59:29

like, he'll he'll drag He'll drag him on Twitter,

59:32

so they don't they don't want to do it. But

59:34

it is that this is like the

59:37

one time they're they're actually

59:40

not happy about something he's done

59:42

and vocal about it, because I can't imagine they're

59:45

happy all the time. I mean, they're in a real dicey

59:47

situation now what with impeachment stuff

59:49

going on obviously not related to this, but

59:51

like, well

59:53

they're they're constantly because I think they're like

59:56

several different factions of this where

59:59

you have like the Republican

1:00:01

reaction, um,

1:00:03

but then you also have the conservative pundit

1:00:05

reaction, and then you have

1:00:08

I guess what I would call like the

1:00:10

grifter proto fascist reaction,

1:00:14

like like a Jack Possobic type,

1:00:17

like Jack Possobic who has attacked the

1:00:19

Kurds as supporting Antifa exactly

1:00:22

mainly on the strength of literally two

1:00:24

guys who like spray painted some some ANTIFA

1:00:27

signs and Antiva flag or something like

1:00:29

that. And it's like, first of all,

1:00:31

Jack, you know the fuh and that is isis

1:00:34

right, Like that's

1:00:36

the fa that they're they're anti and

1:00:39

this is weird, like like

1:00:42

supporting isis to own the Libs mentality.

1:00:44

Um. But juxtaposed with before

1:00:46

this happened, where he

1:00:49

was very supportive of the Kurds and has

1:00:51

all these all these tweets mentioned like oh the Curds

1:00:53

are so brave and X and y, But as

1:00:55

soon as dear Leader does

1:00:58

this reversal, they switch gear. So

1:01:00

fascinating. It's very fascinating how that works out

1:01:03

every single time. It's fucking

1:01:05

shocking to me that the bravest

1:01:08

reaction from the right wing uh

1:01:10

and most direct attack on the president as a result

1:01:12

of this came from Pat fucking Robertson.

1:01:15

Oh man, yeah

1:01:18

he named the president. Yeah I didn't

1:01:20

see that. Yeah, yeah, he said President

1:01:22

Trump is has lost or is

1:01:24

in danger of losing the Mandate of Heaven.

1:01:29

Was distracted by the Mandate of Heaven part.

1:01:31

It's it's fucking wild because

1:01:33

Alex Jones seized on that as evidence

1:01:35

that Pat Robertson is part of a Chinese communist

1:01:37

conspiracy. So

1:01:40

good, that is delicious.

1:01:42

It's one little little bit of brightness.

1:01:45

They can't help themselves. That's amazing. Yeah,

1:01:48

it's incredible. Alex Jones triggered,

1:01:51

Um, Yeah, side note, I saw Info

1:01:53

Wars sticker in a random

1:01:56

remote road in Maui yea greater

1:01:59

mind. They're

1:02:02

in Paradise and there it was smacked up

1:02:04

on a no no, remember actually what's

1:02:06

going on with this beautiful vista behind

1:02:08

it was like, damn it, try

1:02:10

to escape that. But it's just interesting, um

1:02:13

that there is this it's this weird spectrum where,

1:02:15

yeah, you got these Grift proto fascists,

1:02:18

and then you've got the Republicans actually speaking out, and then

1:02:20

you have like a lot of the Fox News

1:02:22

figures not really taking

1:02:24

a stance other than these

1:02:26

Republicans are caring too much

1:02:29

about what's happening in Syria and on the Syrian

1:02:31

border and not enough about our own border

1:02:34

where we need the wall. Like they keep like

1:02:36

bringing it back to this like America first,

1:02:39

build the wall talking point,

1:02:41

which is weird. Oh yeah, what

1:02:43

did the president tweet like

1:02:46

today? Tweet something today, or maybe

1:02:48

it wasn't today, but it was. I'm

1:02:51

sure he tweeted something today. He

1:02:53

is he a tweeted? Did he do that? Uh?

1:02:56

Some people want the United States to protect

1:02:58

the seven thousand mile away border Syria,

1:03:00

presided over by Bischl Assad,

1:03:03

our enemy. At the same time, Syria

1:03:05

and whoever they chose to help, want naturally

1:03:07

to protect the Kurds. I would much rather focus

1:03:09

on our southern border, which a

1:03:12

butt's either

1:03:14

that's my typeo or his, and is part of the

1:03:16

United States of America, and by the way, numbers

1:03:18

are way down in the wall is being built.

1:03:20

It is ironic

1:03:23

about that statement. Is the

1:03:25

chunk of the Syrian border that

1:03:28

touched Iraq and large pieces of

1:03:30

Turkey was not run by a Bishar up

1:03:33

until a couple of days ago, right as

1:03:35

we just discussed. Yeah,

1:03:37

yeah, I did not run into any Syrian

1:03:40

Arab Army soldiers on the border, suggesting

1:03:42

he doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm suggesting

1:03:45

that because of his actions, Bashar al Assad

1:03:47

now controls way more border than

1:03:49

he did before. You're asking that earlier

1:03:51

he tweeted, Uh, he tried to tweet impeach

1:03:53

the press, but he forgot the extra

1:03:56

s, so it says impeached the press. That

1:03:59

was good. That was that that that's that's one.

1:04:01

A little bits of levity we get careening

1:04:04

flaming dumpster truck. Um.

1:04:07

I think it's

1:04:09

uh yeah, it's just this

1:04:13

mentality of you've seen the

1:04:15

seventh seven thousand miles away thing. Uh,

1:04:17

it's the earlier last

1:04:20

week he was talking about how they

1:04:22

didn't help us in the Civil War.

1:04:26

They didn't.

1:04:28

That's that's fair, the right,

1:04:31

they weren't. They weren't normandy with

1:04:33

us. Um, even though like, yeah,

1:04:36

if they were involved in World War two, guy,

1:04:38

yeah there were there were tons of Kurdish soldiers

1:04:41

who fought belongs unbelievable, but like, yeah,

1:04:44

just this idea of

1:04:46

like, no, we're not going to do that, We're not going to

1:04:48

do this. It's America first, We're not going to get

1:04:50

involved. We can't do endless wars. In

1:04:53

the same breath as saying that, by the way, and

1:04:55

get this, we're gonna sell all of

1:04:57

our mercenary army to Saudi

1:04:59

A and anyone else who

1:05:01

wants to be the highest bidder. He's like proudly

1:05:04

announcing this um

1:05:06

while also saying we don't do we don't want

1:05:08

to do wars anymore. It's wild. We

1:05:11

don't want to do wars that aren't profit

1:05:13

making in depth, right this and

1:05:15

this is one of the things that's like frustrating to be

1:05:17

about, like how how the Iraq War gets spun

1:05:19

with like its focus on the oil and stuff. And it's

1:05:21

like there was a profit motive in

1:05:23

the Iraq War, but it was on behalf of a lot of private

1:05:25

corporations. The US government

1:05:28

didn't didn't get a lot of money out

1:05:30

of that, Like we we fucking

1:05:32

spent all of our money on that ship. Um.

1:05:35

And that's the issue a guy like Trump has. Trump

1:05:37

would actually be totally down with a war for

1:05:39

oil because he specifically said

1:05:42

he thinks that Irac should have to give us their oil, Like

1:05:44

that was literally what it was about, was just going

1:05:47

in there and stealing the oil and leaving. He would

1:05:49

have been on board. Well, there's literally there's

1:05:52

a there. He used to have a vlog where

1:05:54

he would vlog from his office, real

1:05:57

beautiful stuff. They've since

1:05:59

been deleted. I think they got deleted right before the election.

1:06:03

Oh I got them all. But there are a

1:06:05

few videos where he talks about this and uh

1:06:08

in regards to Libya specifically, where

1:06:10

he says, we should go into Libya,

1:06:12

we should help these people for humanitarian

1:06:14

reasons, and then when we're done, we

1:06:17

go to them and then we say, give us

1:06:19

half of your oil. So, like he's literally said

1:06:21

before, like years ago, just like, yeah,

1:06:23

we're gonna do humanitarian things

1:06:25

with our military if we can get

1:06:27

paid in oil. He's like laid

1:06:30

it out like that, right,

1:06:33

I like humanitarian things that require

1:06:37

being paid with oil afterwards. But

1:06:39

he and he's like maybe they'll give us the

1:06:42

oil whatever. Um. But he's like literally laid

1:06:44

out like this is how he thinks. He would absolutely

1:06:47

of course do a war for oil. Um.

1:06:50

And he just doesn't want to do a war for

1:06:52

protecting four million people, right, But

1:06:56

if they're willing to give us all

1:06:59

the stuff when after we've saved them,

1:07:01

then he would then then maybe he would. Maybe

1:07:04

he definitely would until their stuff runs

1:07:06

out then Yeah. So just like all the all the surprise,

1:07:09

uh that you see from all these people, even

1:07:11

like Trump fans who are like I can't believe he's

1:07:13

doing this this. Yeah, he's talked about this

1:07:15

for years, um. And like obviously

1:07:17

the Republicans are craven

1:07:21

ghouls who know better, and

1:07:23

they're just playing the game of being surprised by

1:07:25

his actions. So what is it that we are

1:07:27

doing. We've been out there because we all know when

1:07:29

this all started. A week

1:07:31

ago, a week and a half ago, he sent that

1:07:34

Banana's tweet about his

1:07:37

great and unmatched wisdom, blah blah

1:07:39

blah. If they do anything that I

1:07:42

disagree with, I will

1:07:46

be like he has before, so

1:07:49

many questions about that. But

1:07:51

has he decimated their economy? Have they

1:07:54

done something that in his

1:07:56

mind has crossed a line so

1:07:59

that he would be I

1:08:01

mean, there's some pretty shocking videos coming

1:08:04

out of it, are I mean,

1:08:06

did you see I'm sure you did. Sure if uncle

1:08:08

will get very upset and talk to her out about it. Yeah.

1:08:10

Those those um, those mercenaries

1:08:13

gunning down a bunch of medical workers. Yeah

1:08:15

yeah, they pulled out a bunch of

1:08:18

people from the cars and one of them was

1:08:20

a female Kurdish politician

1:08:23

and they murdered them. Made

1:08:25

videos. Yeah. Anyway,

1:08:29

Um, so we we've got some sanctions

1:08:31

coming in, right. I will whisper

1:08:34

that to those corpses. I'm sure they'll be happy

1:08:37

they're being sanctioned. Well, the one thing

1:08:40

like when regimes

1:08:42

are uh doing

1:08:44

a genocide that they've been wanting to do for a

1:08:46

long time, thing, the thing

1:08:48

that stops them is steel tariffs. That

1:08:51

makes them, that gives them. Oh

1:08:54

no, it's just like a weird like approach

1:08:56

where you you basically give them the green light to do

1:08:58

this thing, and then you're like, it'll cost you little

1:09:00

more, the price tag up a little

1:09:02

more. But like that's not that stop you

1:09:04

know, that's guys, scraper, it's gore

1:09:07

expensive. You still get to do the genocide,

1:09:09

but it's gonna be price

1:09:13

here. And like some of the sanctions are

1:09:15

about the leadership

1:09:17

specifically because normally, like normally

1:09:19

sanctions are like they hurt

1:09:21

the people of the nation and

1:09:23

not the people who were in charge of the nation. No,

1:09:27

but so they're they're targeting air

1:09:30

to one and some of his folks

1:09:32

a little bit. But it's just

1:09:34

like yeah,

1:09:37

you're you're letting them do it. And then

1:09:39

you're like, well, but well,

1:09:41

and this is a part of a lot

1:09:43

of this all boils down to, like

1:09:46

we've been very harsh on Trump um

1:09:48

justifiably so, because he

1:09:50

took a situation that was not

1:09:54

great but I had some hope

1:09:56

in it and turned it into one that's just a

1:09:58

complete cluster fuck. But the reason

1:10:00

all of this got this bad, um

1:10:03

was years of liberal politicians

1:10:05

who did not want

1:10:08

to get involved in something complicated

1:10:11

because, for among other things, they didn't think they could sell

1:10:13

it to the American people. You can trace a lot of us back to

1:10:15

Libya. Um, a lot

1:10:17

of people, and uh,

1:10:20

it's so complicated. So with

1:10:23

Libya, the Obama administration attempted

1:10:26

to do something very humanitarian

1:10:28

and brave and decent and necessary,

1:10:31

and they succeeded. And if you look at the amount of people

1:10:33

who have died fighting in Libya since two thousand elevens

1:10:35

about fifty or so. Compared that to the more

1:10:37

than half a million you've died fighting the Syrians civil

1:10:39

war, even if you are quite for like the population

1:10:41

differences, A lot less people

1:10:43

have died in Libya just because we stopped

1:10:45

Kadapi from bombing the ship out of Benghazi.

1:10:48

Um. But you know the four

1:10:50

people, the four Americans who died in Benghazi that

1:10:53

has been was turned to a multiple years long

1:10:55

political issue to try to kill Hillary Clinton.

1:10:57

And the fact that things didn't work out perfically

1:11:00

in Libya, and it didn't They didn't instantly go like, all right,

1:11:02

I guess we're a functioning democracy like

1:11:05

slaves now. Well,

1:11:08

but they were before. That's another one of like you fucking

1:11:10

like there's plenty evidence of it under Condafi in the

1:11:12

nineties, um and in fact that it peaked in

1:11:14

the mid nineties. But like this, it's

1:11:16

very people

1:11:19

who are misinformed and who and

1:11:21

it's a mix of sides because there's a lot of people on the

1:11:23

left who will like to cry Libya as this like

1:11:25

tragedy because we got rid of Kadafi, a man who

1:11:27

kept at stable and it's like, you don't know shit about Kadafi.

1:11:29

He killed like five thousand people in a stadium

1:11:32

one time, just sucking because he's a piece of shit,

1:11:34

Like you don't fucking know what you're talking about.

1:11:36

You don't know anything about the region. You read one

1:11:38

bullshit lefty blog that claimed Kadafi was

1:11:40

a socialist, and so you think that it was US

1:11:42

imperialism, like and so because

1:11:45

of this, because you've got this mix of like assholes

1:11:47

on the right who just won't let

1:11:49

a democratic president have done anything

1:11:52

good. If they do something good, you've got to attack

1:11:54

them for it, and then that thing, humanitarian

1:11:57

intervention, becomes terrible. And then you have

1:11:59

other people who are well, if the US did it,

1:12:01

it has to be bad because we're always

1:12:03

evil. So I have to find reasons

1:12:05

why this is bad. And so that one of the

1:12:07

things that results in because guys like Barack

1:12:10

Obama and most of his his ideological

1:12:13

sympaticos and kind of the center left

1:12:15

are fundamentally not brave. Um,

1:12:18

so they just stopped doing ships. So when

1:12:21

air to one makes a massive power grab in

1:12:23

Turkey and starts imprisoning his enemies after

1:12:25

a very suspicious coup, nobody does

1:12:27

anything about this happening in a NATO nation.

1:12:30

So when Bashar al Assad starts firing

1:12:32

chemical weapons on his own people, nobody

1:12:34

grounds his fucking planes. So when Russia

1:12:37

invades Ukraine, nobody does

1:12:39

anything but slaps a couple of sanctions on

1:12:41

them, because they're scared about what

1:12:43

might happen if they actually take any

1:12:45

kind of effective stances. And because people

1:12:47

keep not doing anything, the situation

1:12:50

keeps getting worse. The authoritarians

1:12:52

keep grabbing more, and the

1:12:54

liberty of people's around the globe is

1:12:56

squeezed and squeezed and choked a

1:12:59

little bit more every day. And

1:13:01

there's a lot of individual authoritarian assholes

1:13:04

like President Trump you can blame for aspects

1:13:06

of it, but the fundamental reason that was allowed

1:13:08

to happen is a failure of courage

1:13:10

from the educated liberal sections

1:13:12

of our society who just didn't

1:13:15

have the fucking gorm to do

1:13:17

what needed to be done because it was scary.

1:13:19

Well yeah, well said, never

1:13:22

heard the word gorn before, but I picked it up.

1:13:25

That's a good one. Residual effects of like

1:13:27

Iraq, where you know, we

1:13:29

know that absolutely absolutely

1:13:31

a bunch of lies got us into a

1:13:35

disaster. And it's there's a little

1:13:37

i mean afraid of the backlash year of

1:13:39

people getting involved, of us getting

1:13:41

involved in situations and

1:13:44

not knowing how it's going to play out. But there's

1:13:46

this also and know what's

1:13:48

our responsibility? Yeah, knowing just

1:13:50

the relationship of of America

1:13:54

and war in the middle military industrial complex

1:13:56

and people that make money from it. So

1:13:58

intentions are always going to be questioned.

1:14:01

Yeah, and and you know, the

1:14:03

fucking what what did? The what did a lot of like the

1:14:05

liberal mainstay politicians who are still active

1:14:08

and we're active in two thousands three do. When

1:14:10

the Iraq War came around, they

1:14:13

voted for it. Yeah,

1:14:16

then some of them wished they hadn't a few

1:14:19

years later, a few few years

1:14:21

later. Um,

1:14:23

yeah, so boomo

1:14:29

universal bill fixed

1:14:31

it. Um, I don't

1:14:33

know. By bolt cutters,

1:14:35

um, boat

1:14:38

cutters buy food and stuff by food

1:14:40

and stuff by water, because we have to buy

1:14:42

water. We have to buy water for water.

1:14:45

Yeah, you gotta pay money for water, you

1:14:48

know, and buy the products and services

1:14:50

that's you

1:14:52

know, like the one we look for in

1:14:55

the in the universe. Uh, to look

1:14:57

for life. What if

1:14:59

we charge everybody for it? Sounds

1:15:01

like I can make a lot of money. Yeah, it does. And

1:15:04

you know that sounds like a flawless

1:15:06

situation, good for people. But

1:15:08

if we package huge amounts

1:15:10

of that water in tiny

1:15:13

bottles made out of a substance that kills

1:15:15

the ocean. Oh, I love

1:15:17

that you've taken. That's a brilliant

1:15:19

idea, and you've made it even better. This

1:15:22

is how we do it. Spitballen

1:15:24

ideas well. This has been the

1:15:26

last episode of the worst year ever. We're off

1:15:29

to make billions of dollars the

1:15:33

year every year. Republican

1:15:38

all the time. Yeah, my opinion on the

1:15:40

capital gains checks tax has changed

1:15:42

instantly. You

1:15:44

know, I didn't see it before, but now

1:15:46

I do. I'm gonna go hang

1:15:49

out with Georgia W. Bush and a baseball.

1:15:51

Yeah that sounds fun. He is a good guy,

1:15:55

he's sweet. He paints now before

1:15:59

you know, murder, but now

1:16:01

painting? What pain? He pay change

1:16:04

coding? Okay, Um,

1:16:08

this has been really fascinating. I'm really

1:16:10

glad that we did this. Yeah, thank you for sharing, Robert.

1:16:12

Yeah, yeah, thanks for

1:16:15

listening, you know, thank all of you for listening.

1:16:17

Yeah, guys, thank you so much. We're welcome. Mm

1:16:20

hmm. Well that's

1:16:22

going to do it for all of us here at the worst

1:16:24

year ever until next week when we talk

1:16:27

about probably Andrew Yang probably

1:16:30

will be more upbeat. That's actually episode

1:16:32

we recorded before this one. So I'm very

1:16:34

bummed out in it because my friends were getting

1:16:37

bombed. Now you've

1:16:39

got context when you hear it. We

1:16:41

report that last week, we pushed it for

1:16:43

next week. It's fine, it'll keep it's

1:16:45

fine, it'll keep you not Andrew

1:16:47

Yang ain't going nowhere. We

1:16:50

got a debate tonight or

1:16:54

like the butt all right, it is,

1:16:58

but I'm now

1:17:00

we've gotten our political commentary in good

1:17:03

all right, guys, thanks for listening. Thanks

1:17:06

Robert again, and I guess thanks

1:17:08

Cody, Oh,

1:17:10

you're welcome. I guess see you next week.

1:17:12

And you know who else we should thank the

1:17:16

products and Products. I should

1:17:18

have known that, I should have seen where you were going

1:17:20

with that. Thanks Products and Services.

1:17:23

Thanks Products and Services

1:17:26

Ever. Everything

1:17:33

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Year Ever is a production of I heart Radio. For

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