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- [00:00]
Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Ian Pfaff
I'm Ian Pfaff, the creator and host of the Uncle Chris Podcast.
- [00:08]
Uncle Chris
My Uncle Chris was a real character.
- [00:10]
Ian Pfaff
A garbage truck driver from South Carolina who is now buried in Panama City alongside the founding families of Panama. He also happens to be responsible for the craziest night of my life. Wild stories about adventure, romance, crime, history and war intertwine as I share the tall tales and hard truths that have helped me understand Uncle Chris.
- [00:31]
Bob Crawford
Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the.
- [00:35]
Ian Pfaff
Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Join iHeartRadio and Sarah Spain in celebrating.
- [00:43]
Bob Crawford
The one year anniversary of iHeart Women's Sports.
- [00:47]
Sarah Spain
With powerful interviews and insider analysis, our shows have connected fans with the heart of women's Sports.
- [00:52]
Ian Pfaff
In just one year, the network has.
- [00:54]
Sarah Spain
Launched 15 shows and built a community united by passion podcasts that amplify the voices of women in sports. Thank you for supporting iHeart Women' and our founding sponsors, E L F Beauty.
- [01:05]
Bob Crawford
Capital One and Novartis.
- [01:07]
Sarah Spain
Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to Listen now.
- [01:12]
Robert Evans
So what happened to Chappaquiddick?
- [01:14]
Sarah Spain
Well, it really depends on who you talk to.
- [01:16]
Bob Crawford
There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.
- [01:22]
Sarah Spain
Left a woman behind to drown.
- [01:25]
Host
Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic.
- [01:27]
Bob Crawford
Death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.
- [01:40]
Sarah Spain
You get your podcast.
- [01:45]
Bob Crawford
I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You, the listener, ask the questions.
- [01:53]
Robert Evans
Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree?
- [01:56]
Bob Crawford
Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American history hotline, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:18]
Garrison Davis
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
- [02:42]
Bob Crawford
Hello and welcome to It Happen Here I'm joined once again by Garrison Davis.
- [02:48]
Sarah Spain
Hello.
- [02:48]
Bob Crawford
Hello. Hello. And recently I was reading through a photo book called Humans by Brandon Stanton. It features interviews of people on the streets all over the world. He started off, and he kind of became well known online for the Humans of New York series. I'm not sure if you've heard of that.
- [03:08]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, I think so.
- [03:09]
Bob Crawford
Yeah. Yeah. So he did that for a while, and he ended up traveling to other parts of the world and doing basically the same thing, just interviewing people on the street, getting their insights, hearing their struggles, hearing their story. And when I saw the book in the library, I just. I picked it up or decided to read it through. And it's really profound in a sense. And you get a sense of the spectrum of humanity, of what people are going through, of the highs and lows of the human experience. I mean, it can make you laugh on one page and make you cry for the next page. And seeing that variety of humanity reminded me of another book that I read and finished recently, which is called A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. A friend of mine had given it to me because he said it had changed his whole view on the world. And so I wanted to talk about some of the concepts that I picked up in that book, like the origins and critiques of Vinaya theory, why most people are actually pretty decent, and the problems with some of the narratives of our wickedness. In the next episode, I want to get into some of the reasons why people do bad and what we can do about it.
- [04:20]
Sarah Spain
Sounds exciting because there is a lot of bad right now.
- [04:26]
Bob Crawford
There is, There is. I mean, as we're on that topic, I mean, what would you say is the most common perspective you hear on humanity, on human nature?
- [04:36]
Sarah Spain
I don't know. Like, there's, there's this clash between, like, this, like, liberal humanist version and then this, like, Christian moralist version, I guess, like in the States right now. But that's been going on for decades.
- [04:50]
Bob Crawford
If not centuries, by liberal humanists and Christian. I mean, I think I get a sense of what the Christian moralist version is. Right, that we are all sinful, destined for hell, need salvation. That, that version of the story.
- [05:04]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, you know, more or less.
- [05:06]
Bob Crawford
And the liberal humanist perspective is, I.
- [05:10]
Sarah Spain
Mean, I don't know, like this, this, this forever search for, like, what human rights are and like, human decency. So we come up with, like, governments and rules to actually, like, govern over our morals. As a democratic process that continues to evolve over the course of, like, hundreds of years, we're like, you know, on, on the moral arc of the universe, just not fully, you know, there yet.
- [05:34]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, I've heard that perspective. I think most commonly, at least in, in my spaces, I tend to hear the, you know, people are wicked, people are sinful in religious cases or people are violent, people are selfish. And that kind of. In that similar liberal vein where we have these systems in place to kind of check our worst impulses, to kind of keep us regulated and to keep society functioning. And Bregman opens his book by discussing the idea of civilization being a thin mask that covers our true savage instincts. He calls it the Vinaya theory. And he spends the rest of the book basically pointing out all the different errors in that judgment. I mean, he doesn't claim that we're all good, good people, happy go lucky saints or anything like that, but he does say that for the most part most people are pretty decent. And I know that clashes with what a lot of people are accustomed to hearing and there are some very notable exceptions. But despite the efforts of elites to paint and purport a different picture, there's actually a lot more leaning towards our decent, if not good nature than the contrary. But of course with these kind of conversations you always have to go back to the debate between Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau. We can't escape these guys. Hobbes of course, had the perspective in Leviathan, which was written in 1651, that in the absence of a strong central authority, human beings would live in a condition of perpetual war with every man against every other man. A war of all against all, as he would have put it. So to him, people are naturally self interested and driven by the desire for power and survival. So without laws or a sovereign to keep them in check, individuals would act purely on their own instincts, leading to constant conflict over resources, safety and dominance. Life in this state of nature would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. A couple years later, a couple decades later, Rousseau was writing in the Discourse on the origin and basis of inequality among men and he basically flipped Hobbes view on its head. He believed that humans in the state of nature were peaceful, cooperative and guided by basic needs and compassionate. And that it was the development of hierarchies and institutions that had led to inequality, jealousy and competition which basically corrupted human nature. In his words, man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. Do you take a side in this debate, by the way?
- [08:22]
Sarah Spain
Erm, not to be the centrist option, but I don't know. I think both these things play into Each other. I definitely don't believe in the idea that like, the state is the only thing that reigns people in and stops them from doing immoral acts. Right. It's the same thing as like without. Without God or without the Bible. Then everyone would just be like raping and murdering and meanwhile actual Christians obviously rape and murder all the time anyway. But like, no, like this, this idea isn't the only thing that, that keeps you from becoming this like, you know, savage, like, like inhuman monster. People can be morally good without this, this like religious notion. And I think in some ways the state can also operate as a religious notion to these people where it, you know, the police is the only thing that's keeping you from becoming this like, horrible monster who just hurts everyone around you. But I also have my sympathies to the like, alternate side of that. And I can see there's a great deal of oppression and horrific violence that can only happen at scale under the organization of a state. So I. I will pick the. The annoying centrist option.
- [09:33]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, I know that there's a lot of people who have this sense that, you know, the state and the law is all that's standing between us and the purge or Mad Max or something like that.
- [09:43]
Sarah Spain
Sure. Exactly.
- [09:44]
Bob Crawford
So, yeah, I don't think that Hobbes overgeneralization of human nature as inherently violent and selfish holds up when you look at the diversity of human experience and human societies. I mean, that's not to say that violence and conflict were absent in a world without state. But, you know, context matters. Resources, environment, group size, all those things would have played roles. I don't think that we should be accepting Rousseau's romantic light either. So I guess I'm in the centrist camp with you. The truth does seem to lie somewhere in that middle ground that human nature is flexible and that it's shaped by social, ecological and historical context. Of course, getting the weeds of humanity's origins is stimulating as an exercise, but there's only so much we can know about the past for certain. What we can't know for certain is the present. And what we've seen in the present is that when disaster strikes, people have tended to help each other. In Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the official response was famously criticized for being slow and disorganized. And yet, despite media attempts to paint these people as looters and thugs and all these different things, community members, neighbors, volunteers all stepped up to rescue people, to mobilise food, shelter and basic aid, to expropriate where necessary to get People what they needed long before federal agencies got on the scene. Similarly, in a more recent occurrence after the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK in 2017, the official channels had failed. The people of that tower, many died as a result. The regulations that were supposed to protect people were not enforced or were absent. And yet it was community members who sprang into action to provide water and shelter and food and clothes and emotional support. Even when the Twin towers fell on September 11, 2001, and this is an example that Brightman actually spent some time talking about, people actually helped people descend the stairwells in an orderly fashion. You know, they would say, you know, after you going down the stairs and passersby would go in and help others to evacuate and wounded long before the emergency services arrived. So people acted and prioritized, helping others, even in a disaster scenario. And yet what do we see in dystopian fiction? In apocalyptic fiction, you see people just like driving around shooting guns in the air. You see the purge, you see the Mad Max, you see the zombie apocalypse scenarios. In Rebecca's Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell, she found that disasters peeled back the layers of society and revealed the empathy, cooperation and care at humanity's core. She noted that when disaster strikes is when people most often reveal their better natures. And yet those negative narratives tend to have more sway in the popular imagination.
- [13:03]
Sarah Spain
No, and this is like so true. I remember in 2020 during the wildfires on the west coast, the anarchist response was to set up these like giant like mutual aid centers for people fleeing from the fire. You know, like not like other anarchists, just like regular people fleeing from the fire could get necessities and figure out housing. Meanwhile, right wing militias were setting up checkpoints, monitoring to make sure Antifa wasn't like raiding people's homes as they were fleeing from the fires. Like these were the two options you had. You had, you had anarchists actually helping the people who were, who were fleeing from this horrific fire and setting up like massive, massive like aid distribution centers. Meanwhile, right wing militias were pulling people over at gunpoint, making sure Antifa wasn't up to any shenanigans. And similar stuff happened last year during Hurricane Helene on the east coast where you had a whole bunch of like southeast anarchists in the Appalachians do mutually disastrous spawns. Meanwhile, right wing militias were spreading rumors about like FEMA fraud and all of, all of this crazy stuff not actually helping anybody. But it was anarchists doing a large, a large amount of the actual like water distribution and like Medical assistance on the ground as the federal response was delayed and insufficient.
- [14:26]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, I mean, I was aware of the anarchist efforts during these disasters, but I wasn't. I didn't know about that situation with the right wing militias setting up checkpoints. That's not shocking, but still wild, you know?
- [14:39]
Sarah Spain
Yeah. No, it's so funny because those are the people, you know, claiming that, you know, without the government, we would have the purge. Anarchists would just go around doing all kinds of crazy crimes. And yet when things actually happen, their attempts to, like, deputize them as like their own police force actually creates those conditions. Meanwhile, anarchists are the ones actually helping people.
- [14:59]
Bob Crawford
Exactly, exactly. And yet, despite these situations, these. These things happening again and again, we still have these popular narratives. You don't know the narrative I see referenced all the time? Lord of the Flies.
- [15:13]
Sarah Spain
Yes, of course. Of course.
- [15:16]
Bob Crawford
All the time. Right. It's basically become a cultural shorthand for the idea that people are just savage at heart, that this veneer of civilization is the only thing keeping us in check. I mean, these days I do see people joking that it's because those were British boys.
- [15:32]
Sarah Spain
So true, actually. So true.
- [15:35]
Bob Crawford
But while I get the joke, I think it's also important to remember that, like, people are taking this work of fiction as if it's an anthropological study. Yeah. When it's just something that a guy made up as an analogy for, you know, the situation during World War II.
- [15:51]
Sarah Spain
I think it's also good to remember that the British are people too. I have a British co worker, so, you know, we have to show them a little bit of human. Human dignity.
- [16:01]
Bob Crawford
Exactly, exactly. People embrace this story because it confirms what they want to believe in this climate of cynicism. But Bregman actually tells a story in the book about a true instance of when a shipwreck of young boys occurred. Of course, they weren't. They weren't British boys. They were Tongan boys, as in from the country of tonga. So in 1965, six Tongan boys were stranded on a remote island for over a year. And rather than descending into violence, they survived through cooperation. You know, they built a garden. They shared duties. They didn't do any human sacrifices. You know, they created a rotor system to get things done. They resolved conflicts. When people were in conflict, they would go on timeout. They'll put each other on timeout and go on opposite sides of the island until the, you know, cooler heads prevailed. They figured out ways to deal with their conflicts, to organize themselves without authority and without chaos. But the problem is that These fictional narratives become so powerful instead of the real ones that they have a similar effect to the placebo effect. In fact, it's the placebo effect's evil twin, the nocebo effect. Now, I'd heard about the placebo effect before, and I'm sure you have as well. But for those who don't know, it's basically where someone's health actually improves after receiving what's basically a dummy treatment like a sugar pill or fake surgery or saline injection. The body heals itself because the mind of the person believes it's being healed. The mind turns that trust into medicine. I mean, that's just. That's amazing to me even now. And they don't quite understand how it works yet, but it's still really cool. But there's another dimension to the placebo effect that I hadn't heard about before, but it makes intuitive sense, I suppose. It's called the nocebo effect, and Bregman is the one who introduced me to that concept. So the nocebo effect is where instead of belief healing you, it's belief that makes you sick. So people experience real pain, real symptoms, and even real illness, not because there's an actual physical cause, but because in their minds, they expect to be harmed. So their minds turn that fear of harm into actual harm and injury. There was one case study that he used where a child had drunk a Coke and thought it was poisoned and then just created this mass hysteria almost with dozens of children in hospitals with headaches and nausea and panic attacks because they drank Coke to the point where Coca Cola actually had to recall all of those drinks, even though tests had shown that there was nothing in the drinks that were making people sick, but their body still responded as if it was because they believe they heard the story, they heard about it, they saw it happen to others, and they believed it would happen to them. And that's the nosebo effect in action.
- [18:58]
Sarah Spain
Right?
- [18:58]
Bob Crawford
So we get the concept. So Bregman actually stretched these concepts beyond the field of medicine. And he basically made the point that, what if these concepts are baked into how we view each other? You know, so what if our belief that people are selfish and cruel and violent by nature actually makes it so? You know, if you expect the worst from people, you'll act on that. You know, you might be colder or more defensive or more likely to punish or prevent preempt betrayal. And what happens as a result is that, you know, people pick up on that energy, they respond in kind, they withdraw, they retaliate, and then that Cycle ends up feeding itself. And so the belief that negative belief becomes a social reality, a self fulfilling prophecy. So we end up building institutions that are based on that cynical expectation. We design policies that are based around punishment. We train ourselves to see strangers as threats rather than as neighbors. And then when we have a fallout, as when that prophecy is fulfilled by our own actions, we can then say, well, see, I was, I was right. You know, people are awful. But what we don't see is that our expectations and the systems we build around those expectations are part of what ends up making it that way. I think an easy example to point to is with prison, right, people expect criminals to act like animals, to act like monsters to beasts. And so they create prisons. And in those prisons treat them like animals, monsters and beasts, and people respond to that. You know, you treat people like animals, they're going to behave like animals. So then the question that Bregman poses is, what happens if we decide to treat people like they're good, you know, trust in their intentions, leaning into care and building our systems around the assumption that most people are decent. So how do we make that leap? I said before that, you know, we don't really necessarily need to go into the past to see how people behave in the present, but it's a good idea to get a sense of how we evolved. Right? A lot of people have a brutal perception of human evolution. You know, they draw comparisons between us and chimpanzees, or, you know, they make it seem, first of all, ignoring bonobos entirely and also ignoring the fact that we are our own species with our own evolutionary history. You know, people have a very cynical and honestly insulting like view of like the cavemen of our past, but our histories are actually pretty soft. In fact, Bregman argues in favor of something called self domestication theory, which has a little bit of anthropological and evolutionary biological backing. And so the basic claim of this theory is that the reason Homo sapiens survived and other ancient humans didn't isn't because we were the strongest or the smartest or the most cunning, but because we were friendlier, that we evolved to be more social, cooperative, playful and trusting. Self domestication theorists basically compare humans as puppies to the other Homo species as wolves, that we domesticate ourselves to become less aggressive, our faces softened, our bodies became less robust, and our openness and friendliness allowed us to build relationships, to build groups, to raise children communally and to survive. And so if we accept that theory, if we acknowledge that and build that into our foundation, that we did evolve Our capacity to be kind, that it is something that is within our humanity. That it's not a fragile gloss over savagery or a morality that's given to us by religion or law. Then we can basically become who we're capable of becoming. You know, we can create systems that allow us to develop that. And this sounds really optimistic, this sounds really happy. Go lucky and woo woo woo. And we are gonna get into some of the darker chapters of our humanity in the next episode. But I wanted to wrap this one up by unpacking the death of Catherine kitty Genovese in 1964. It's another example that Bregman refers to in his book. And it's one of the classic case studies that was used for a long time to illustrate the apathy and cold heartedness of humanity. Because the New York Times, which as we all know, is a reputable and trustworthy institution, the New York Times claimed that she was stabbed in the street while 38 neighbors looked on and did nothing. Right. This is the quintessential story that was used to say, you know, look at that bystander effect. Humans just don't care. You know, they was used as an example of apathy, of urban decay, of everything wrong with us. But the story was wrong. The reporters built up this story and it was wrong. I mean, yes, she was murdered, but people did try to help. Some had called the police, but this was in a time before 911. So it was. You had to call like the local station. And then the response process was a bit slow. One neighbor actually rushed out and held her as she died, held her in their arms. So the press spun this story as like some bleak tale and the field of psychology ate it up because it was part of a trend at the time to create this perception of humanity. But the real story was a lot more caring, a lot more human. I mean, it was messy and somebody still murdered her. But this, this idea of the bystander effect that has been so inflated, a lot of the key studies that have been used as examples of them have been chipped away at over time. And that's one of the like main stories that has been pretty thoroughly debunked at this point. So I like where Bregman's been going, but we've glossed over the dark side, you know, the shadow of our humanity. You know, even he acknowledges in this book that we do bad stuff as well. So the next episode we are gonna wade into that. But how are you feeling about humanity so far?
- [25:23]
Sarah Spain
I think I actually do have an underlying optimism, like, beneath how I move around in the world, which is. Which is kind of odd considering the sort of stuff I do for work. But. But it is. It is true. And I think part of that is what just keeps me going. I don't know. Like, I. Yeah, I've. I've certainly been around my fair share of, like, doomers and nihilists over the years. And at the very least, those people don't seem to be very happy and don't seem to be enjoying life. And sometimes it's hard to enjoy life. Absolutely. But I think you need to be able to find a place for yourself within a world that has, like, evil as a almost inherent component and find your way either through that, sometimes around that, but oftentimes through it. And I think that's. I mean, that's just been a part of, like, growing up. We were certainly growing up in, like, a weird time, but I think that's kind of always been true. Like, that was true 100 years ago. So I don't know. I. Part of me, and maybe this is just overly optimistic, but part of me continues to resist being a doomer despite all of the bad news that is trying to infiltrate my brain at all times. Which is a very profitable industry. Right. I mean, that's somewhat kind of what this show is. Right. It kind of does play into those instincts for sure. Which is. Which is something that, like, we critique amongst ourselves often and we try to always find that balance as well. But. But yeah, like, the doom cycle is like a. Is a. Is a. Is a huge industry and there's. There's people that absolutely want you to always be panicking all the time.
- [27:03]
Bob Crawford
Yeah.
- [27:03]
Sarah Spain
And that drives consumer choices, that drives ad revenue.
- [27:07]
Bob Crawford
Right. I mean, Bregman puts forward a very compelling argument in the book, actually, that the news is a public health hazard.
- [27:15]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, no, like, absolutely. And like, I have to keep up with the news all the time, and I don't think it affects me that much anymore. And certainly in, you know, doing a daily news show, we try to be very selective in the things that we cover. We don't cover everything all the time. We try to cover the things that, like, our hosts feel is both, like, within their wheelhouse and that people who listen to the show should know about. Right. Certain things that you might not be hearing about in, like, a mainstream news, but no, the news has a massive spiritual evil to it as well. There is. There is a sinister undercurrent to the news as, like, an industry.
- [27:56]
Bob Crawford
Indeed.
- [27:57]
Sarah Spain
And that's something that we are also always like butting up against. Well on that. On that optimistic note.
- [28:04]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, until next time. All power to all the people face. Let's be real.
- [28:30]
Host
Life happens.
- [28:31]
Bob Crawford
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- [29:27]
Uncle Chris
OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing.
- [29:30]
Bob Crawford
That should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley.
- [29:34]
Uncle Chris
And I'm going to tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other.
- [29:41]
Bob Crawford
AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job.
- [29:44]
Uncle Chris
I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and.
- [29:48]
Ian Pfaff
Powerful are ruining the computer.
- [29:50]
Uncle Chris
Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
- [29:53]
Sarah Spain
Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
- [29:58]
Bob Crawford
I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
- [30:13]
Sarah Spain
Across the country, cops called this Taser the Revolution.
- [30:17]
Bob Crawford
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
- [30:20]
Robert Evans
Cops believed everything that Taser told them.
- [30:23]
Bob Crawford
From Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.
- [30:39]
Sarah Spain
I get right back there and it's bad.
- [30:42]
Host
It's really, really, really bad.
- [30:46]
Bob Crawford
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [31:08]
Host
Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebona and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would.
- [31:19]
Ian Pfaff
Challenge your perceptions and give you new.
- [31:22]
Sarah Spain
Insight on the people around you.
- [31:24]
Bob Crawford
On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold.
- [31:27]
Ian Pfaff
Experiences of women of color who faced.
- [31:30]
Host
It all childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration.
- [31:35]
Ian Pfaff
Grief, mental health struggles and more and.
- [31:38]
Host
Found the strength to make it to the other side My dad was shot.
- [31:42]
Bob Crawford
And killed in his house.
- [31:43]
Sarah Spain
Yes, he was a drug dealer.
- [31:45]
Ian Pfaff
Yes, he was a confidential informant, but.
- [31:47]
Host
He wasn't shot on a street corner.
- [31:48]
Bob Crawford
He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal.
- [31:50]
Ian Pfaff
He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast, it's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines.
- [32:01]
Host
Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to.
- [32:04]
Ian Pfaff
Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast network.
- [32:06]
Sarah Spain
Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.
- [32:09]
Ian Pfaff
Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [32:19]
Bob Crawford
Hello and welcome to Could Happen Here. Last episode I was joined by Garrison Davis.
- [32:25]
Sarah Spain
Hello.
- [32:26]
Bob Crawford
And he's here again because we're gonna get more into what we spoke about last time. Last episode we painted a hopeful account of humanity's nature, courtesy of my reading of Rutger Bregman's A Hopeful History. So I probably fed into the anarchists or utopia narrative a bit with that previous episode, but the truth is that I'm not really being optimistic. I'm being realistic. But realism has been confused with cynicism for so long that even acknowledging both sides of the coin can be seen as overly utopian. People can be bad, and we'll get into the why, but for whatever reason, they are bad. That is why, as anarchists have consistently argued, nobody should have authority. Now, there will always be outliers. And this explanation I'm about to share is not going to get into every unique case of badness. But we are going to get into some of the reasons that people do bad and what we can do about it. As I said last episode, we took issue with this idea of civilization as a thin vernail, and we put forward the premise that humans are mostly pretty decent. In fact, I didn't mention it last episode, but we don't even really like to kill each other. Contrary to popular belief, Bregman actually shares that In World War II, studies showed that many soldiers didn't shoot their weapons even in combat. Trained soldiers had a difficult time Actually pulling the trigger and killing people. There are exceptions, as I said before, but in a lot of cases it's very difficult for people to actually kill. Military strategies ended up changing once authorities realized this, and the training programs of soldiers was redesigned to overcome this resistance. But that reluctance to killing does also indicate that it takes some effort to overcome our general decency toward each other. Because most people, again most, not all, are not natural born killers. So again, how do we do bad? You know, all sorts of atrocities have been carried out by humans, both in ancient and modern times. What do you think is the cause?
- [34:40]
Sarah Spain
Self preservation in some way, either physical or psychological. I'm not, I'm not an anthropologist, I'm not a sociologist. Most of my experiences with people is both queer people and then looking at Nazis and like political extremists. So it's maybe not the best sample size for the general population. I think I tend to exist kind of on the perimeter of most human experience, but probably some form of either psychological or physical self preservation, in my experience opinion.
- [35:13]
Bob Crawford
That's interesting. I didn't think of it. I think it comes close to what Bregman ends up getting into, but I think self preservation. Well, we'll get into that in a bit. You know, it's. It's difficult to square that with just how brutal some of these disasters have been. You know, these atrocities that have taken place around the world, organized, systemic industrial cruelty, you know, things like the Holocaust.
- [35:42]
Sarah Spain
Totally. It's interesting because I think it's two paradoxical instincts that play off each other. There's this self preservation and there's also, I believe in, I guess, some version of the death drive. And I think those can, can interact in really odd ways. But I.
- [35:58]
Bob Crawford
The death drive?
- [36:00]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, like, like specifically, like specifically, like, like fascism. And like, you know, you can see this in like the genocides of the 20th century and 21st century, like specifically. But no, like fascism as like a political embodying of, of the death drive, which is I think, also an aspect. I think these things exist together in parallel while being paradoxical. And, and that's what produces a lot of the incongruity around things like fascism. Right. It is, it is like an inherently paradoxical system.
- [36:29]
Bob Crawford
When, when you say self preservation, are you just talking about on the individual level or are you seeing like community self preservation as well?
- [36:37]
Sarah Spain
Both, both, but also, I think not even just physical, but also like psychological, like being able to like, continue being able to continue existing as yourself, either within a group of people or just you as an individual. Like psychological things that, that you need to do to make yourself feel like you're in community or that you are safe or that you have meaning or that you have purpose as well as the physical aspects.
- [36:57]
Bob Crawford
And you're saying that that lends itself to atrocity.
- [37:01]
Sarah Spain
I think it can. Yeah.
- [37:02]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, yeah. Well, that actually is strikingly close to what Bregman ends up uncovering.
- [37:07]
Sarah Spain
Look at the reasons that people will talk about for, like, why the genocide in Gaza is like, necessary. Right. It is, it is playing off both of those impulses.
- [37:17]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, yeah. I mean, all sorts of genocides. When you hear the descriptions of them and versus what you hear of the people who perpetuated them, what their explanations or justifications were, you know, from the Holocaust to Rwanda to Palestine.
- [37:31]
Sarah Spain
Yeah.
- [37:32]
Bob Crawford
To Myanmar, you know, totally is deeply evil. And it's not something we can look away from. And it really is difficult to square with the most humans a decent thesis. When you look at how some of these societies, even the ordinary people, for example, the citizen population of Israel, even the civilian population, even, they are like disturbingly genocidal in their rhetoric. And so, you know, it's like, how do we reach that point? How do we get there? How does an ordinary human baby grow into that?
- [38:04]
Sarah Spain
It can happen to you. It can happen very easily, and I think it can happen in a short time span. And you can get out of it. I think maybe not just as easily, but you can get out of it also in a fast time span. I think it's like the. You are not immune to propaganda idea. You can look at like in Nazi Germany, Robert has talked about, quote, unquote, the little Nazis, the regular Germans who ended up participating in becoming Nazis. And you are not immune from that. And that can happen as a response to a whole bunch of traumatic impulses as well. Whereas I think people now even use like, politics just to. Or like this like, idea of politics as permission to be like an overtly cruel person to other people, either like in your life or online. Right. You will, you will use. Use various political topics and that gives you permission to unleash unmitigated hostility against people that you now perceive as being like, immoral or you perceive as being like ontological enemies.
- [39:02]
Bob Crawford
Exactly, exactly. I mean, there. There were particular studies that were undertaken in the 20th century that are often used to sort of explain that, you know, after the fall of Nazi Germany and that Post World War II era, people were seeking explanations for atrocity. And so next experiments were done and are now pointed to as explanations for how this could have taken place. You know, so one particular experiment that's really well known is the Stanford Prison Experiment. Right. This idea that you take random students and give them a position of power and they become sadistic gods, you know, it proves just how thin the veneer civilization really is. Or really the evil that civilization could empower. But at least for that particular experiment, the reality was never so straightforward. You know, the gods were literally coached and encouraged to be cruel. You know, they were actually putting on performances the prisoners were also expected to perform. So rather than being like an actual scientific experiment, it was more like guided theater.
- [40:08]
Sarah Spain
I mean, it inadvertently becomes an interesting experiment. And, like, humans desire to, like, please authority, Right?
- [40:16]
Bob Crawford
Exactly, exactly.
- [40:17]
Sarah Spain
To, like, perform to the expectations of the people who are actually running this experiment and how capable you are of. Of falling into these roles under, like. Under that paradigm.
- [40:28]
Bob Crawford
Exactly. I mean, you see that in Nazi Germany as well, a lot of the people were doing things to please the Fuhrer. You know, like, they didn't necessarily know, or there was a lot of wiggle room, from what I've read, to interpret the Fuhrer's wishes.
- [40:44]
Sarah Spain
Yeah.
- [40:44]
Bob Crawford
As people who wanted to rank up and rise up in the. In the organization would interpret things in a way that they would presume would please Hitler and his desires.
- [40:57]
Sarah Spain
Moving towards the furor.
- [40:58]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's. That's the name of the phenomenon. So, I mean, when. When the Stanford Prison Experiment, when people tried to recreate the experiment for television even, it made for pretty boring tv because it was bad science in the first place. It's not something that people do naturally. It's what they do when they are pushed, when they are prodded, when certain expectations are set up. It's kind of similar with this other famous experiment that Bregman talks about, which is the Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment, where volunteers were told to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a stranger just because a guy in a lab coat told them to. Just like another instance of, you know, are we doing these things just to please authority? Even to the point of murder? Because, you know, the. The dial of the electric shock was deadly after a certain point, and you could hear the screams of the victim. Of course, they were fake screams, but, you know, the participants could hear them. But what Bregmund ended up uncovering is that most of the participants weren't following the orders blindly. They were following the orders. Yes, but they were doing it because they believed that they were doing something good. Something good for the good of science. That even though the shocks were uncomfortable that it wasn't something they want to do. There was a noble sacrifice in the name of progress. Even so, the participants weren't indifferent. You know, they were distressed, they were shaking, they were sweating, they were begging to check on the learner. But they also said things like, he agreed to be in the experiment, you know, or this will help science, right? Or I don't want to do this, but I have to. The man in the lab coat who was telling them to continue, please continue, please continue. He was calm, he was professional. And also even how the nudges that he used were framed made a difference. So if he was directly ordering them and telling them, you have to do this, surprisingly, people would actually be more likely to resist a direct order framed in that way for such an experiment. But a more subtle nudge is like no science. The experiment requires this, the experiment needs to do this. A little more subtle. It tended to get people to continue. And the people who were interviewed who did take it up to those higher voltages, they said they did it because they believed they were contributing to scientific development. So it's really this misguided belief in a higher cause that also contributes to atrocity. It's very easy to get this idea that, oh, you know, that those are just monstrous people. You know, we have this idea in pop culture that these, the Nazis are like cartoonish monsters. They are monstrous, but they are monstrous people. You know, they are, at the end of the day, people who do evil with the belief that they are doing good to varying extent. I know that there were some who, you know, recanted or who knew what they were doing wrong, but they had other pressures that were pushing them in that direction. Right. There are many explanations, people's behavior in all sorts of situations, but a lot of the people, they thought that they were contributing to the right thing. It's not that they didn't care, but that they were taught to care in the wrong direction. The bad guys don't think that they're bad guys. And whether we're talking about the Nazis of the past or the Zionists of today, they construct these elaborate narratives to frame themselves as the righteous ones. You know, as far as the Nazis are concerned, they are purging Germany of a serious threat to their well being and the safety of their and their future and all that stuff, right? Designers, you ask them, even though they're pariahs of the world at this point, you ask them why they believe that this must continue, and they will say, you know, we have to defend ourselves. We have a Right, to defend ourselves, yada, yada, yada. There are true believers within these groups, you know, who are able to commit some of the worst acts. Committed ideologues who boast of their trustees, who express no remorse, who take pride in their role. And people reach that point of ideology through a process of radicalization. You know, we look at the 10 stages of genocide, I think, is the framework people have used before to point out how a segment of a population can become a target of genocide. It's not like one day you wake up and it's just like, oh, we're going to genocide this group of people. It's a process. You know, first you start off with classification. You create a separate group of people, separate category of person. You make them signify themselves in some way, carry ID cards or some kind of insignia on their clothing or whatever. They begin to face discrimination of some kind. The discrimination, you know, is ramped up through dehumanizing language. You compare them to vermin, to rodents, disease. And that's just the thing, and we're going to get to that. But part of how you get people who would otherwise be caring or compassionate about their fellow human is through distance, right? So the people who are most bloodthirsty tend to be very far from the front lines. You know, people who are demanding that World War I continue, for example, they were very far from the actual fighting versus at the actual front lines of World War I. You had soldiers playing football together during Christmas. That's a separate story. But you create distance. You either create physical distance, or you create psychological distance. And dehumanization is one of the ways you create psychological distance. You distance people from seeing their fellow human being as a human being. Segregation is another way of creating that distance, which then lends itself to dehumanization. Comparing the people to women, to animals, anything other than human, as another step in dehumanization and getting people to separate themselves from those people. And then they create specific groups. The next stage, they create specific groups and organizations to enforce discriminatory policies. You further broadcast propaganda to polarize population. And then while steps 7, 8, 9, and 10 go from actually preparing the removal, relocation of people to the persecution, the extermination of the group, and finally the denial that such a crime ever occurred. So that process, it can take years, it can take decades, but it's something that can turn even the most regular person into a virulent proponent of genocide if they are not fastidious in their opposition to any such language, especially in the early stages, because they get fed this steady stream of propaganda of how their actions are justified. Their loyalty to their in group becomes tested by their willingness to engage in those harmful actions. They stay with that group, they'll do whatever they're told is good, even if it leads to other people being hurt. And it just creates an evil. But it's an ordinary evil. It's an evil that is convinced of its virtue. It is wrapped up in ideology and social conformity because, you know, humans are social creatures and it drives us to cooperate. But that sociality can be narrowed down to test our in group. And that's where Bregman actually gets into an interesting point about empathy. Right, because we tend to see empathy as a positive thing, and it can be. But as Bregman notes, drawn from psychologist Paul Bloom's work, empathy can also make us partial, irrational and even cruel because it can narrow our focus to those people who are like us and ignore others. That's why soldiers can fight and kill other people because they feel empathy for their in group, their homeland citizens, or their comrades in arms. Their loyalty and affection for the people they care about supersedes the lives of the people that they don't care about. Now, of course, I want to look at systems when we're talking about this because I don't think that this hijacking of empathy is inevitable. You know, nationalism, propaganda, these things play a role in how people end up being separated in this way. And it's in groups and out groups. But you know, there is also indications that in group and out group separation can occur even in the absence of a state. So it is something we have to be continuously vigilant of. Another aspect of a systemic analysis or approach is looking at how our position within society also shapes how we operate, how we treat people, how we think and how we act. Bregman cites neuroscience research that demonstrates how authority literally changes how we think. Powerful people become less empathetic and are more likely to see others as tools rather than independent people. You know, this is not new information per se. You know, the environments that powerful people are in both shapes them and are shaped by them. The saying has long gone that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And spaces like Silicon Valley, like Wall street, like Washington D.C. corporate boardrooms and all the other upper echelons of government. They divorce rulers and authorities from ordinary people, their insular spaces that keep them from being challenged or being grounded by the impact of their actions on others. So powerful people don't have to care. And I think such hierarchies are attractive to people who are already inclined to do bad, even if they believe that they're doing good. The authoritarians, the supremacists, the abusers, they are attracted to those positions. But even good intentioned people could lose themselves in authority too. Because authorities as a whole, existing in this bubble that rewards their worst instincts, end up further shaping the system around their worst instincts around distrust, selfishness, exploitation and so on to reward themselves and their patterns of behaviour. And thus through the social nocebo effect, people end up fulfilling that expectation created by the system.
- [51:18]
Sarah Spain
I guess my only comment here is that these systems are not just exclusive to like state power or like corporate authority. These same mechanisms reproduce themselves in all sorts of social arrangements, including like radical politics and frankly especially radical politics. You can see this a lot with groups, whether they're communists, whether they're anarchists, whether they're, I don't know, Social democrats probably have this problem. But no, like, like specifically like in anarchist scenes, you see this happen constantly. It is almost funny how much these things just get natively recreated. And like in group out, group dynamics are always, are always a big issue. I mean like, you can also point to the, the book Cultish, which explains how American culture is pretty defined by like cult like tendencies. Not saying that every single group is a cult, but cult dynamics play into a large part of everyday American life. And that's both good and bad. Sometimes being in a cult is fun until it's not very fun. So these dynamics themselves are not necessarily, you know, bad, but there's something to be like mindful of.
- [52:28]
Bob Crawford
Yeah, exactly. So in being mindful of it, you know, that's an aspect of it, you know, we have to find solutions to this epidemic of badness, of behaviors being reinforced by these systems that are causing harm to people and harm to the world. And so what I always advocate for in ways big and small, I wouldn't call it the one solution to everything, but it does encompass a lot. But it's just understanding and taking on a dynamic, social revolutionary approach to change, you know, from the efforts you do to confront the existing system, to stand up against it, but also the things that you do to put forward an alternative, to put forward and to practice alternatives. So one of the things that we can do is to create or to, you know, perpetuate a positive and trusting take on human decency. You know, to create that social placebo effect that can shape how people treat each other for the better, but that can be boiled down to just be nicer to each other. So there's more to be done than that, of course, on the systems front, we also have to change how we educate each other in radical spaces. And also in terms of how we raise children, we have to organize, you know, alternative economic systems and alternative social arrangements that get us in the habit of trust, of trusting people's freedom, of practicing freedom, and also of emphasizing greater intrinsic motivation in people as well. You know, a lot of our society is built around control and mechanisms of control through extrinsic forms of motivation, you know, like punishments and prisons and grades and bonuses and wages. All the different things that are meant to keep us going here now. But I think a system that more leans into intrinsic motivation is something that we should be working toward. You know, that people do things for their own sake, for reasons that we are driven by. That I think is far more sustainable long term and more fulfilling long term than continuing to be stuck with the punishments and rewards that come from outside. You know, so we have to develop a revolutionary consciousness that is also very much grounded in, you know, people's intrinsic motivation to have their needs met, to pursue their interests, to care for others. And that is what I think will sustain efforts long term, because you can create all these bonuses and incentives externally. But I don't think it's something that will last. There are, you know, experiments in.
- [55:22]
Sarah Spain
With.
- [55:22]
Bob Crawford
With a greater emphasis on intrinsic motivation. Not even necessarily radical experiments per se, But Bregman actually looks at examples of schools that don't have grades or fixed curriculums, and at companies that don't have managers that are run entirely by employees. I mean, anarchists have been known about these. But he emphasizes that the people in these environments thrive because they've been trusted to direct themselves. They can bring out the best in themselves because they've been given the room to do so. You know, and spaces like free schools and makerspaces and cooperatives, they give us the room to develop our cooperation and creativity. You know, of course, the system is not going to stand by as these transformations take place. It might tolerate or even celebrate some like the examples that Bregman had looked at. But those are always going to be treated as exceptions. And the second you try to make them the norm, I think you're going to face some real challenges. Because ordinary people want these things, but the rulers don't. It's like the example that I had brought up earlier, you know, the famous 1914 Christmas truce during World War I, where British and German soldiers put down their guns, they sang songs, they played football. But eventually the high command, crack down these truces. The fraternization of people who are different from each other was a threat to the war machine because these systems are invested in maintaining hostility and division. And so we have to consciously and openly stand up against hostility and division to build systems that bring out the best in people. I don't think that a hopeful view of human nature should be seen as utopian, as I said earlier is realistic. Cynicism is not realism. They're not the same thing. Having hope does not mean that you are completely deluded of the dark side or dark aspects of humanity and humanity's possibilities. But it means that you don't limit yourself to that outcome, that you challenge that narrative, and that you seek to do better and to create something better. And that's really what I care about. And that's all I have to share. All power to all the people. Peace Life's messy. We're talking spills, stains, pets and kids. But with Annabe, you never have to stress about messes again. At WashablesOfAs.com, discover Annabe sofas, the only fully machine washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699. Made with liquid and stain resistant fabrics that means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, Our sofas feature changeable fabric covers allowing you to refresh yourself style anytime. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus they're earth friendly and built to last. That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com offers are subject to change.
- [58:48]
Host
And certain restrictions may apply.
- [58:51]
Uncle Chris
OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a.
- [58:56]
Bob Crawford
Symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley.
- [58:58]
Uncle Chris
And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest.
- [59:01]
Bob Crawford
Show in the tech industry where we're.
- [59:03]
Uncle Chris
Breaking down why OpenAI, along with other.
- [59:05]
Bob Crawford
AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job.
- [59:08]
Uncle Chris
I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and.
- [59:12]
Ian Pfaff
Powerful are ruining the computer.
- [59:14]
Uncle Chris
Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app.
- [59:16]
Sarah Spain
Apple Podcasts Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.
- [59:22]
Bob Crawford
I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
- [59:37]
Sarah Spain
Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution.
- [59:41]
Bob Crawford
But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.
- [59:44]
Robert Evans
Cops believed everything that Taser told them.
- [59:47]
Bob Crawford
From Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.
- [60:03]
Sarah Spain
I get right back there and it's bad.
- [60:06]
Host
It's really, really, really, really bad.
- [60:09]
Bob Crawford
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [60:32]
Host
Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories.
- [60:37]
Ian Pfaff
Stories are set free.
- [60:38]
Host
I'm Ebonae and every Tuesday I'll be.
- [60:41]
Ian Pfaff
Sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you.
- [60:48]
Bob Crawford
On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold.
- [60:51]
Ian Pfaff
Experiences of women of color who faced it all.
- [60:54]
Host
Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental.
- [61:00]
Ian Pfaff
Health struggles and more.
- [61:02]
Host
And found the shop to make it.
- [61:03]
Ian Pfaff
To the other side.
- [61:05]
Bob Crawford
My dad was shot and killed in his house.
- [61:07]
Sarah Spain
Yes, he was a drug dealer.
- [61:09]
Ian Pfaff
Yes, he was a confidential informant, but.
- [61:11]
Host
He wasn't shot on a street corner.
- [61:13]
Bob Crawford
He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal.
- [61:14]
Ian Pfaff
He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [61:42]
Host
Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today and I'm joined by Goin Jai from Hengo, the human rights organization. Also a journalist who's worked for the Kurdish Peace Institute, who we've had on the show before, who I've also worked with and the founder of the Kurdistan Peoples page on Instagram. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
- [62:06]
Ian Pfaff
Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm so glad to be here today with you.
- [62:10]
Host
Yeah, of course. And what we're going to talk about today is Rudjalat or Eastern Kurdistan. Right. And how this figures into, I guess, what's happening currently in Iran, what has been happening in Iran. And like, I think it's really important to give a little more explanation and background on particularly the different ethnic groups in Iran than people generally get when they consume legacy media here.
- [62:38]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah, so if I want to talk about this, like we need to talk about the history of at least 120, 150 years, so it's really a lot. But today's structure of what we know as Iran is made up of several different ethnic groups from Persians, Turks, I mean Azerbaijani Turks, Turkmens, Kurds, Baluchis, Ahuazi Arabs and so many others. But I would say the dominant population, the dominant ethnic group and the dominant culture and language is definitely Persians.
- [63:17]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [63:17]
Ian Pfaff
And if I want to be more clear, this dominant ethnic group has been exploiting and colonizing and destroying all the lands and the communities and societies from non Persian regions, including Kurdistan, Baluchistan, Azerbaijan, Ahwaz and many other regions in this geographical region called Iran. And this mainly started during the former monarchy Pahlavis and it was intensified after the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. And as usual, the Kurdish people were the first to stand against this newly established regime. In 1979, a few months after the so called revolution, the Kurds were demanding their rights, specifically the right to self determination and also federalism, which was responded by a heavy hit, by heavy attacks and under the jihad order of Ayatollah Khomeini, which led to the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and destructions of several hundred villages and mass executions of Kurdish people across the what we know as Eastern Kurdistan or Rojalat. Yeah, and following that the oppression continued and also it was done against other ethnic groups, specifically Baluchi and also the Ahwazi Arabs and also the Azerbaijani Turks. But in Kurdistan and Baluchistan it has always been more intense and more brutal. And then in 19, late 1980s and early 1990s, they, they killed two of the Kurdish leaders, Dr. Abdulrahman Qasimlu and Dr. Sharaf Gandhi in Europe during some negotiations. And that ended up in Kurds being in a worse situation. And then until around early 2000s, I think around 2004 or 3, the PKK built or established its wing in Rochelot known as the Free Kurdistan Party or Pejak, sorry, Free Kurdistan Life Party. Yeah, in Rochelot and then. But unfortunately this party was not really as strong as the KDPI or Komala that were already in the fight with the Iranian states. Since 1946 and so on, this oppression has been just intensifying by mass execution of Kurdish people, mass execution of political prisoners and activists, and imprisonment of the different people in the Kurdish society, from language teachers to environmental activists to children, women, anyone. And this whole question that I've been mentioning about, like that's happening in East Kurdistan, it has also resulted in a humanitarian phenomenon called Kulbari. Kulbaris are a group of people that are extremely underprivileged. They have no access to anything. So they are somehow forced to go into some sort of work that they have to carry goods between the borders of East Kurdistan and South Kurdistan, or North Kurdistan, specifically between Iraq, Iran and Turkey. And every year we have numbers in our organizations. You can check. We have a specific statistics section for. For these cobras. Every year, hundreds of them get killed. Just for example, in. Since the beginning of 2025, 22 of them have been killed and injured. And among these people, there are children, women, old people. So this is also another form of oppression that this regime has been using against our people. Because this is actually one of the biggest forms of oppression. If I want to talk about it. There are over 150,000 coal bars in East Kurdistan that are somehow forced into this type of work because they have no other means of income. And the government, the Iranian government actually limits all the, if I want to call it, economic developments in East Kurdistan. This has been going on for decades. And then we come to 2019. Again, there was another, so I want to call it uprising or mass protests across Iran when the regime killed over 1,500 people. I mean, before that there were also protests almost every year, but that was like one of the biggest one. It was in November 2019, and they cut down the Internet for 12 days. I remember I was at university at that time. And then they killed 1500 people, specifically so many people in Kurdistan. They even throw that killed people into like lakes and rivers. And then after like months and days, people found the bodies like in the nature.
- [68:35]
Host
Jeez.
- [68:36]
Ian Pfaff
And then we come to 2022 in September, when they, the morality police killed Gina Amini, the Kurdish woman, who was apparently not wearing a proper hijab or the Islamic clothes or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, she was killed by the Iranian morality police in Tehran, which led to. To the. As we know it. I don't know if we can call it a revolution or uprising or just mass protests called Xinjiang Azadi or Women Life Freedom Movement. And this also, again, because it was inspired by Kurds. The first victim was a Kurd. Again, obviously, it started in Kurdistan and it spread so fast. Just in a few days, the entire Kurdish cities were testing. And then it was Followed by other Iranian cities like Tehran, Shiraz. But it was not as intense as in Kurdistan. I think it was three days after her death. The, the Kurdish parties, KDPI and Komala and some others that are not very well known, like Pak and also Pak or the Free Life Kurdistan Party, they announced a general strike across Kurdistan and they, they called on people to close down everything and go on a full lockdown to protest the killing of Shino Amini, which was responded by I think over 100 missiles or something from the IRGC and the Iranian regime. And it killed I think 18 if I'm not wrong. But it killed several people in the camps belonging to these parties in today's Iraqi Kurdistan or as we call it, South Kurdistan. There were also like family members of the Kurdish politicians and Kurdish peshmerga that were in those refugee camps that are also supported by the un. They were killed there. And then the protests just got intensified. And I was also there, we were reporting every day about all the things that were happening. Also the Baluch people joined the protests and at the same time of Those days a 15 years old Baluchi girl was raped and killed by an IRGC commander or member in Baluchistan. And people also like protested that. And there was a Friday which is known as the Bloody Friday of Zahidan people in Balochistan. They went to a big mosque in the city of Zahidan and they were, they were doing their Friday prayers as Muslims and then they started protesting and this was responded by the Iranian regime forces. And over 100 people were massacred on that day which also led to mass execution of more political and just random prisoners in Baluchistan. And then the protests just went on and there was a really heavy repression so far I think over maybe between 500 to 600 people were killed. These are like the official ones. And also several other of these protesters specifically from Kurdistan were executed. Some of them were executed in public to spread more fear among people. But people were not giving up. And then it continued until 2023, until I think it was around maybe in March. I'm not really remembering the exact date, but it was also in 2023 that they started attacking schools, like girls schools with some sort of gases that nobody actually knows that what type of chemical gases they were using. And unfortunately we have them like we reported on them, some school children, like some kids, they were killed by these gases and they were specifically targeting like girls schools because they are like separate, they don't, they're not together in the Iranian system.
- [72:40]
Host
Yeah, like integrate.
- [72:41]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. And then this, this went on and people were still protesting, but unfortunately it somehow stopped. And if I want to analyze that and related to, like to, to, to talk about the reasons. Yeah, one of the main reasons, I think also many other political activists and analysts also agree on that, that the opposition, but as we know as the Iranian opposition was not truly united. Yeah, there was a huge effort specifically from the Kurdish parties like Kamala and Abdullah Mohtadi. They tried to create some sort of collaboration with the so called Iranian opposition, specifically the monarchists like the Pahlavis and some other groups. But unfortunately these groups, I mean it was in the middle of an uprising, like a movement that hasn't been happening since maybe 40 years. Instead of working together for common goal, like the Iranian opposition groups, specifically the Pahlavis and also the other ones, like if I want to say, like the Masikh Ali Nejad and all the people that work with her, instead of working towards a common goal, they started discriminating against minorities. They started ignoring and denying and also censoring the minorities. The same minorities that were the most active against the regime that had the biggest number of sacrifices in the protests and also in prisons, they just started spreading their own typical national, I mean I would even call them ultra nationalistic sentiments. And for example, if I want to give like one of the, the biggest things that we always talk about, these people who are apparently against the regime, they, they have some red lines and their main red line has always been the so called Iranian territorial integrity. So like these type of, these type of sentiments and discussions, it somehow created like a lot of mistrust between the Kurdish groups, the Baluchi groups, also like with Ahuazi Arabs and Azerbaijani Turks and all these groups, they couldn't trust each other because the dominant group, the Persians or the Iranians or those who identify as Iranians, they ignored us, they ignored our suffering, they ignored our identity. They were just repeating what the regime has been saying since over 40 years, but in a different form. So this somehow created a lot of mistrust. And also the people inside, like I was there when that was happening and I was working nonstop every day, reporting, writing, texting, being on interviews. The people actually lost their hope because there was no united opposition, there was no united structure to say that, yeah, we are advocating for you. I mean in the first few months it was really great. For example, here in Germany they had a very big demonstration and over 80,000 people from all across Europe, they traveled to Berlin for that demonstration. It was great. And all the groups from Iranians, Turks, Arabs, Baluchis, like everybody was there. But unfortunately following that, the people like specifically Reza Pahlavi, the so called crown Prince of Iran, who is another, like his story is like very also like crazy.
- [76:25]
Host
Yeah.
- [76:26]
Ian Pfaff
He and his group and his circle and also people like Masih Ali Nejad and I would say all the celebrities, because they are not truly, they are not politicians, they have no political study. They have, they haven't done any specific political work. There are just celebrities like Nazanin Bolniadi, she played in some movies. Yes, she's a really great actress, but not a good politician. Like these things that celebrities who truly don't understand or they don't want to understand what people inside Kurdistan, Iran and Baluchistan want. They pretended to be our voices and they never listened to us. And then this just made a lot of distress and a lot of also hate between the people.
- [77:12]
Host
Yeah.
- [77:13]
Ian Pfaff
So that's why I can say that it just failed after that. And unfortunately many, many of the people who were arrested during that time, they are still in jail. And just a few days ago five of them were sentenced to death. And we made a report about them so that. Yeah, so like every day they get sentenced to death. And I personally know many of these people who were injured and they are now here in Germany. They were brought here, but by some humanitarian visas. Some of them are my friends. So like it just failed. At the same time, I also have to mention that one of the reasons that, that it also failed, it was the regime's extensive repression. They militarized the entire cities, specifically in Kurdistan and Baluchistan, for example, in Kurdistan they already have over 2,000 military bases and checkpoints all over the Kurdistan region. And during that time they had tanks and military vehicles in the entrances, in the gates of every city and also town they were checking out people. Like I personally during these two years, I really didn't go out much. Maybe once a week or once in a 10 days just to, I don't know, to go and eat something out, you know, like I was always home.
- [78:45]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [78:45]
Ian Pfaff
Because I couldn't go out and because my work was important. And then they were just controlling people, they were arresting people. And even like from the stories that I have worked on before, these injured people, they also, they were hiding in small villages and even in the mountains. But the regime forces were everywhere looking for these people and these activists. So it was like a totally military lockdown in the region. And there are many crazy stories. I don't know if we have enough time to talk about some different and specific things that happened. And it was really scary at that time.
- [79:23]
Host
Yeah. I would like you to share that with us because I think one thing people don't understand is that the Iranian regime has a colossal capacity for violence against its own citizens. I think if we talk about some specific instances and then maybe we can talk about recently there has been a bombing campaign against some nuclear facilities and some IRGC commanders. And I think if you start with your anecdotes about what happened during this last uprising, that will help people understand why the consequences of this bombing campaign are not good for people who want to have freedom in Iran. Right. People inside the country, at least. So, yeah, tell us some things about that capacity for repression.
- [80:05]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. So like, the bombing happened and we saw. We all saw how crazy and how insane. Like, it was like movies. I couldn't believe my eyes when it happened. It was really crazy. And yeah, that was like the war between two brutal states, Israel and Iran, who both have no respect for dignity of humans. Nothing. Absolutely.
- [80:29]
Host
Yeah.
- [80:31]
Ian Pfaff
The first thing that happened, it was that, yeah, they. They targeted. I think so far, as far as I remember from Our statistics, over 350 or around that were the IRGC commanders or the officials from the nuclear programs. And like, really the judges who have sentenced thousands of people to death. Like, the targeted people were mainly these type of people. And also, also there were also some civilians, I think maybe around 80 or 90 civilians whom some of them were actually like, like family members of these IRGC members and also some children.
- [81:11]
Host
Yeah.
- [81:12]
Ian Pfaff
And also there was a lot of destruction, specifically in Tehran, many buildings, including the Devin Prison.
- [81:19]
Host
Yeah, I saw they hit the prison.
- [81:21]
Ian Pfaff
The center of the Iranian broadcast, and all these places were targeted and many officials were killed, also civilians. But the Iranian regime's response to that was not solely against Israel, who was bombing Iranian IRGC bases. In the first days. They started attacking civilians. They started arresting every. I don't know, some random people. And so far, I think last time we checked, hundreds of people across, specifically in Kurdistan, they were arrested.
- [82:01]
Host
Yeah.
- [82:02]
Ian Pfaff
And some others were already, like, in these days, they got executed because they were accused of espionage for. For Israel or working for Israel. Yeah, just a few weeks ago, I think five or four or maybe three. I don't recall the numbers right now, but some Kurdish political prisoners who were accused of working for Israel were executed in my hometown, Urmia in East Kurdistan. And then so many others were also arrested. And then I think some others were also tortured. At least I remember One case, which we worked on it. There was one case that was tortured to death because he was accused of working for Israel and things like that.
- [82:49]
Host
Jesus.
- [82:49]
Ian Pfaff
This was like one of the responses that the Iranian regime started doing. And one of the things that this regime did in the first days, it was that they took lots of military vehicles and like, I don't know, equipments inside schools. For example, in the city of Saardasht, it's a really amazing, beautiful Kurdish city on top of some mountains. It's beautiful.
- [83:13]
Host
Yeah.
- [83:14]
Ian Pfaff
There is a high school in the city center. Exactly in the city center. And they took lots of military equipments and stuff inside the school. And they threatened the school manager. If you don't give us the key right now, we will arrest you. We will do this and that. And they also did that in the city of Kermanshah. They also did that in the. I remember because I worked on the report. It was in the neighborhood called Dizilabad. And they took some military equipments next to a hospital which was also bombed. And the hospital was damaged and some people were injured. That was one of the things that the regime did. And at the same time, I don't know if you know about this, but in Iran the military service is compulsory. Like Israel, like many, like Switzerland, like many countries. But in Iran, it's. It's torture. It's some sort of repression against young men.
- [84:09]
Host
Right.
- [84:10]
Ian Pfaff
So across Kurdistan, for example, in a military base in my hometown in Urma, it's called Al Mahdi, it's a very big military base. I know that some soldiers who are like civilians, but they are forced into it. They're like teenagers, I don't know, 19, 20 or 21. Like really young guys. Yeah, very young that really don't want to be there, but they are forced to. They were saying that they're commanders, threatened if you leave the military base, we will arrest you, we will torture you and we will execute you for. For, like, for betraying. For like, I don't know, for betraying your country or things like that. Or working for Israel.
- [84:55]
Host
Yeah.
- [84:55]
Ian Pfaff
This was like one of. One of the concerns that many families had before in those days, because I. I talked with some people. Like our neighbor's son was. Was also in a military base. He's like 19. Yeah. They were putting lots of pressure on civilians while ignoring that what Israel is doing every day. They were bombing all the military bases. I don't know, places. And like, they were even bombing places that nobody even knew that they existed. But their focus was like the Regime's focus was on civilians who were just scared, who were just trying to protect their families. Yeah. And this is like what they. They started doing and. Yeah, I mean, it's still. It's still going. It still is going on. And they are arresting people all the time. And as usual, the majority of the focus and repression is again happening in Kurdistan against Kurdish people.
- [85:53]
Host
Yeah. I think it's very important people understand like, that Iran is not like a. An ethnostate. Well, it is an ethnostate, but it's not ethnically monolithic like the territory of Iran and the Persian ethnostate do not necessarily line up. I think people will also be very confused about when we hear Iranian opposition in this country. It's often, I think there's this knee jerk. Oh, that's good. Right. These are people who are opposed to this regime, which is brutally cracking down on people. But often then, as you say, it's associated with monarchists, for the most part.
- [86:28]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [86:29]
Host
And then we have these various, like, anything in Kurdistan. Right. Like, it's an Alphabet soup, but like, there is like, there are 75 different, like, initial groups of initials. Can you explain who some of these actors are? Right. We have on. We have the Iranian monarchists, we have the kdpi. We have all these different groups. Pejac, like you say, the KCK group. Can you explain who some of these people are for people so they understand.
- [86:55]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. If I want to talk about Kurdistan, I would go to the first modern Kurdish party called KDPI, which was founded in 1945, and it was the founder of the Kurdistan Republic. And also then there is the Komala Party, which is also like a socialist communist leftist party, which also has several branches, which. But they're all basically the same. And also there are other parties, like Pak. Yeah, yeah. The Freedom Party of Kurdistan. And also we have pajak, the Free Life Kurdistan Party, or. I don't know if it's that. It's the same in English.
- [87:35]
Host
Yeah. Kurdistan Free Life Party.
- [87:37]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. These are the main political parties and actors in East Kurdistan. However, there are also, like, smaller parties like Chabad, and also some parties that are affiliated. Like, there are like, very small groups that are affiliated with, for example, the Iranian Communist Party, which is not also really big, but the main ones right now are KDPI and Komala, who both of them have, like, a long history of fighting against the regime and also against the monarchists. The Pahlavi regime. They were, I would say, really, really active until, like, 2023. They had they. They played a very, very important role in the revolution in like in Kurdistan specifically, because they were, they were the ones who were announcing like strikes and they were working together and like organizing things and helping people out to resist. Obviously there was no arm struggle at that time or conflict because they said we're not going to fight because if we bring the fights and conflict inside Kurdistan, the regime will destroy cities with siles. Yes, this is exactly what they said at that time because there was a demand from people that, yeah, the peshmerga forces should come in the cities and fight alongside with us. But they, they said, no, if you do this, the regime will destroy the cities. These are the main forces in Kurdistan. And yeah, of course they have different ideologies. PJAK is like the PKK's wing or if I want to be more official, it's the, it's a member of the KCK or kjaka, as we say. And the KDPI is like, as I said, the history goes back to 1945 and Comala in the early 70s. And also Pak, I'm not sure when it was founded, but it was also like it was founded. One of the, by one of the members of the kdpi, Hosseini is Darna. And they are more of a military, I would say, well organized military group that they also played a good role against the ISIS in 2017 and 18, specifically in Kirkuk.
- [90:04]
Host
Yeah.
- [90:05]
Ian Pfaff
In South Kurdistan or Iraqi Kurdistan. And about the Iranian position, if I want to say yes, we have the monarchists, the Reza Pahlavi and his group. They have like a whole long list of parties. Basically they are all the same, but they have different names and they are all right wings and they all focus on the territorial integrity of Iran. But they also pretend that they care also about democracy, but that's, that's a lie. And then we have people like Masihalinejad who is more of. She's an activist and she's, she's internationally known for her activism against the compulsory hijab. But she doesn't have any specific party or organization. She's just an activist and a journalist, obviously.
- [91:03]
Host
Yeah.
- [91:04]
Ian Pfaff
And also there are other. Several people that work with her, like Nazanin Boniadi who also works with like Pahlavis. And also there is another one who also played a big role. His name is Hamid Ismailiyoun. He is one of the members of the families of the people who were killed in that plane that was shot by missiles by IRGC in 2020in Tehran. And again, there were many Kurds inside that Ukrainian plane as well. This person, Hamid Ismailun, he's one of the members of, like, he lost his entire family in that plane crash or attack.
- [91:42]
Host
Yeah.
- [91:43]
Ian Pfaff
He organized many, many great and big demonstrations across Canada, Australia, I think even in the US and specifically in Germany. The one in Berlin was the biggest also. He doesn't have a party, but he also somehow backed down after, like what Ahlavi did, for example, like, or the monarchists did with the whole opposition groups. There are also some leftist groups and individuals, but unfortunately they're not truly leftists. So I want to give you a name. There is a person called Arash Azizi. He is also well known in the U.S. i don't know. He wrote some books and he works with really like international media. Just a few days ago, he posted something that said, we, the leftists of Iran, we are in love with our homeland and we care about our homeland and we don't. He just posted something that was really nationalistic, like a typical Persian Iranian sentiment that's been going on and it got lots of criticism from different groups. And then we have the Ahwazi Arabs, they also have some parties, but they're not really strong or active or well organized. Like the Kurdish ones, the Turks, the Azerbaijani Turks, they also have some groups, but they're also not very active or organized. And many of these groups, they are heavily affiliated with the Azerbaijani government or the Turkish regime and specifically the MHP party in Turkey. Like the ultranational Turkish Party.
- [93:24]
Host
Yeah, the hard right.
- [93:25]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. And then the Baluchis, I can say they are more organized because they have this. I don't want to call him a leader, but like the, the highest, the highest level mullah in Baluchistan, Mullavi Abdul Hamid, he is like the most popular mullah in that region. And he was one of the people that was organizing protests and he was giving lots of speeches, like during the Friday prayers in Baluchistan. And a lot of people were, they still like, they, they follow him and they follow his words. But unfortunately he is also like appointed as the imam of the Friday prayers, if I want to be more specific, in Baluchistan by Khamenei himself, the Iranian supreme leader. But it's like a little bit hard to understand that where he stands exactly. Because on one side he. He's appointed by the regime, but on the other side he's also like acting as a political leader or advocate. In Balochistan, I think they also have some armed groups, but they're mainly Islamists and I would say, but they're also not very, very well organized. Yet they do attack the IRGC members and these agents who are oppressing people on a daily basis sometimes. And sometimes they get killed. And also, sometimes just a few days ago, there was a fight between these people and, like, civilians in the village and also the IRGC forces. And I think two women were killed and more than 10 or 11 were injured.
- [95:15]
Host
Geez.
- [95:15]
Ian Pfaff
But this. This fights and conflicts and they're always happening in Baluchistan. Yeah.
- [95:22]
Host
It can be hard, I think, especially if people aren't familiar. Right. Like the. The Pak to distinguish from pjak.
- [95:28]
Sarah Spain
Yeah.
- [95:29]
Host
Like, have definitely been making a. A big effort on the Internet, I will say, like, with the Peshmerga. Right. Like in the last three weeks since the. The US entered the Israel's bombing campaign, like, to appear like this. They are a very well organized Peshmerga. Like, I think. Did you say they were in Kakuk? I think maybe they're in Kobani as well. Like, maybe they. Yeah, they joined into. Yeah, yeah.
- [95:53]
Ian Pfaff
The Pajak was specifically in Rojava and they were also fighting against isis because, like, they are like, as I say, they're a member of KCK and they are allies of pkk. So they all are interconnected and they all work together.
- [96:11]
Host
I think the Pak also. Whereas in Rojava. Right.
- [96:14]
Ian Pfaff
I am not sure, but I think members of Pak joined like, the fight in Rojava, like, as individuals. Because the fight in Rojo was also something that people from all over Kurdistan went there.
- [96:30]
Host
Yeah, from northern Kurdistan to.
- [96:32]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah, yeah.
- [96:33]
Host
And these are very organized groups, but, like. Yeah, there isn't. I guess there is a kind of insurgency, but as you say, like, if these groups just took our bombs in the cities and the. The IRGC would destroy everyone in those cities. Right. That's a. Yeah. I think people sometimes wonder, like, why they don't just start fighting and then there is fighting, to be clear. But like, as you say, the. The regime punishes civilians, right?
- [96:58]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. I mean, this is not the first time that the regime does this. Every time that Israel does something to the regime. Because this is not the first time that Israel has killed someone in Iran, like some IRGC member or nuclear agent, nuclear scientists or whatever. Every time this happened during past few years, instead of responding to Israel as a state, they responded to the Kurdish people. I think it was just two years. Again, in 2022, they. They literally bombed a civilian house in Erbil, the. The capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and they killed an entire family Like a, it was like maybe a six, seven month old baby and her father. They always respond to Kurds when they get attacked or bombed or damaged or whatever by Israel or America.
- [97:56]
Host
Yeah, it's like a soft target. A target they feel they can like safely attack, you know, versus like we know now that Iran pre warned the United States it was going to attack its bases following this bombing raid. And it was more of a performative thing than a, like a serious attempt to attack US bases. And even like this week I saw in Suleimani, Iran is sending Shaheed drones.
- [98:22]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah, actually during the past maybe 10 days. This is like last night there was an attack in Suleimani, but this is like I think the fourth or third time that there have been like several drone attacks on different places. So yeah, this is something that the regime has been doing. One of the other funny things. I mean, this is not funny exactly, but it's weird. Just yesterday and actually two days ago, I'm, I'm not really good with dates and numbers.
- [99:02]
Host
That's okay.
- [99:03]
Ian Pfaff
Just two days ago they conducted like a cyber attack on this TV channel, Iran International, which is also advocating for monarchists. And they expose like some nude photos and like private photos and videos of some of the staff that work there. And they are threatening that we will publish more if you don't stop or whatever. This is also like another strategies that the regime uses when they lose something, when they get attacked. They also like target activists, journalists, or for example, they threaten their families or they threaten them here inside Europe or in, in America or Canada or wherever they are. Yeah, this is like as we call it, it's, it's the transnational repression of the regime and it's been going on forever. And again, if you look at the numbers, most of the attacks have been on Kurdish activists, for example, during the past 30 years, over, I think around 600 known political activists have been killed by the regime outside of Iran. And nearly 450 or something of them were Kurdish. Yeah. This is also another thing that the regime has been doing and in these days they have intensified.
- [100:21]
Host
Yeah, yeah, they've, they have a long history of transnational repression and like participating in the repression of, of other revolutions. Right. Like, of course, they were massive backers of the Assad regime in Syria. You know, all around the region they will find the wrong side to line up on and do again. Of course, people will also be familiar. They were supporting Hezbollah, for instance, in Lebanon. One thing I've heard is that the regime has been really cracking down on Afghan people. Like mass deportations of Afghan people who have come to Iran. Right. And especially in the wake of this bombing campaign. Can we talk about that briefly?
- [100:57]
Ian Pfaff
Yes, of course. I think that's one of the most horrible things that happened after the war so far. We know that just in June, they deported over 30,000 Afghans and it's still going on. Like they mass deport tens of thousands of Afghan refugees every day. And just something that was really horrible to me when I read it, there were 6,000 kids that were unregistered and they were separated from their parents and they were sent back to Afghanistan alone.
- [101:32]
Host
Jesus.
- [101:33]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. And they are hunting down Afghan migrants in different cities across Iran, especially in Tehran, because most of them are there.
- [101:42]
Host
Yeah.
- [101:42]
Ian Pfaff
And the thing is that the Afghan. I think There are over 3 million Afghan migrants in Iran, or maybe more.
- [101:49]
Host
Yeah.
- [101:50]
Ian Pfaff
Nobody knows the exact numbers because the Iranian government never, ever publishes the true statistics.
- [101:57]
Host
Yeah.
- [101:57]
Ian Pfaff
But there are millions of them in Iran and they are not actually allowed to. They were not allowed actually, like, they're getting kicked out right now, but they were not allowed to work in Kurdish cities. They were only allowed to work in Persian speaking cities like Tehran, Mashad, Shiraz, Isfahan, and these big industrial cities. So right now, if you look at the Internet, they are being hunted down by Iranian agents everywhere and they're being forced to go back to Afghanistan. And one of the things that I wanted to mention that's been going on from a humanitarian perspective, that really, really makes me sad. And also it reflects a very ugly reality about the Persian or the Iranian society and the amount of racism and fascism that exists among them. Not just by the regime, by the people as well. There have been hundreds of videos and footage online. You can also check, just search. And you will see that random citizens, young people, they are attacking Afghan people in the city, in, I don't know, in subways, in the parks, in public places. Just yesterday I saw a very heartbreaking video because Afghan people, they also have a different look. You can easily say that they're not Iranians. An Afghan teenager was being attacked by eggs.
- [103:30]
Host
Jesus.
- [103:31]
Ian Pfaff
And they were just throwing eggs at him. And then they poured like, lots of some powder and then like some juice and like Coca Cola. I don't know what was that. They were just throwing everything at him. And on the other, another video that I saw, they stopped a man, maybe he was 30 or something. They forced him to kiss the hand of a stray dog. I mean, yeah, that. That would be like, yeah, he's kissing a dog. But in the Middle east culture, when you force someone to kiss a dog, it's very disrespectful.
- [104:02]
Host
Yeah, it's really disrespectful.
- [104:04]
Ian Pfaff
And like there are also I, I read on the Internet that many Afghans reported like for example in Tehran they were renting a house or an apartment or something and they were living in those apartments and the landlord reported them to the police. It's like what's happening in the us it's something like ice, but it's Iranian but more brutal. Then the police just came and took them all and now the landlords are refusing to give back the passion money to Afghans and many of them are being forced out without any food, without any support, anything, and especially the women. I also read about a doctor that fled Taliban and he was in Tehran and now if he goes back, the Taliban will definitely kill him because he was like against Taliban. Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's a very horrible humanitarian situation and the people like in Baluchistan, they're also suffering. But I saw many videos and also some of the activists published lots of footage that they were, they were bringing food, water, I don't know, medicine and things like that on the, on the road to give it to those people who are going back and they were offering, I don't know, whatever they had.
- [105:18]
Host
Yeah.
- [105:19]
Ian Pfaff
And in Afghanistan there is also happening. But it's just so crazy because both the regime and also the anti regime media are trying to portray Afghans as the problem. Just exactly like how the far right parties in Germany like IFD they are portraying refugees and migrants as the main problem.
- [105:42]
Host
Yeah. It's a global thing. It happens here in the uk.
- [105:45]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah, it's exactly the same. Yeah. And like unfortunately even the Iranian opposition has not been clear. But again, because there is some sort of solidarity between Kurds, Baluchi and Afghans and also other minorities. It's the minorities that talk about this. It's the minority groups and organizations who try to raise awareness over this. And unfortunately I think nobody can stop it because they are doing it anyways.
- [106:15]
Host
Yeah. And like we shouldn't support an opposition politics. It is just another ethno national. Like we see that in Syria right now. Right. Like, yeah, they haven't even changed the name. We have this revolution. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people definitely died.
- [106:32]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [106:33]
Host
To build something better. We still have the Syrian Arab Republic.
- [106:37]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [106:38]
Host
Yeah. It's. Maybe the Alawites are being persecuted now and they weren't before. But like that shouldn't matter. Right. Like if we're, if we're trying to build something better.
- [106:46]
Ian Pfaff
I mean, they are just remnants of isis, so what can you expect?
- [106:50]
Host
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah. It's very sad to, to see, you know, after, after so much killing and dying.
- [106:58]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [106:58]
Host
I guess to finish up. I think people in the US do not get very good coverage of what's happening in Iran. Right. Like, it's either, as you say, dominated by monarchist outlets which tend to have good resources which allow them to kind of get to the top of people's feeds, or they're getting like press TV stuff.
- [107:18]
Sarah Spain
Right.
- [107:18]
Host
That just like straight up regime propaganda.
- [107:21]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [107:21]
Host
Where can people find like good resources to understand what's, what's happening in Iran? Like from the perspective of, you know, the majority of people who just want to live a free life and especially like, you know, the women in particular in Iran. Right. Have an extremely difficult and repressive every. The regime dominates every aspect of their life. Like, where can people find reasonable coverage that acknowledges that?
- [107:45]
Ian Pfaff
Honestly, if I want to talk about media like TV channels or just media websites.
- [107:51]
Host
Yeah.
- [107:51]
Ian Pfaff
There is no media like Iranian media that truly reflects what's happening in Iran. There are like many leftists and also right wing medias from, for example, if I want to go like very leftist media called Radio Zamani, they are not really good. Like, then we have Iran International, BBC, Persian, Voice of America, Persian, Independent Persian. Like there are many, many media that all of these, like I would say the, the big media, they are heavily dominated and I would say exploited by the ultra nationalist people. And also there are people who are related to IRGC and this organization called NIAC that is like the regime's lobby group in the US and these individuals that work there, they truly don't reflect what's happening there. And I mean, it's kind of hard because if people want to understand what's happening, maybe they should read everything they're posting and then analyze it. Hey, this makes sense and this doesn't. Yeah, but that's, that's a little bit hard. But also on the other side, I would suggest that people should follow more human rights organizations, which again, some of them, if I want, I don't know if it's okay to say their names. Yeah, yeah, some of them. And the people, for example, the, the Brumant organization, they did lots of great work. Like, but recently, again, they showed some sort of racism and like censorship against minorities, especially Kurds and people like Lod and Bazargan. They are like also doing some human rights work in the US and even people like Masi Ali Nejad and all these, I would say, known activists, and even here in Germany, they are not truly reflecting what's happening. They are just focused on the Persian perspective. And they're like, yeah, they talk about minorities time to time, but only when it fits into their agendas, into their ideologies and perspectives. But there are other organizations which I'm working with, like Hangar Organization for human rights. Until 2000, late 2023, I guess, we were mainly focused on East Kurdistan, but right now we report human rights violations from all over Iran. Yeah, like, yeah, we try our best. And I think I could say that we are one of the best when it comes to all these things. And we, we don't care about, like, what people think. We just report what's happening or what happened. And there are other organizations like Iran Human Rights, they're also good. For example, there is another one called Tawana. They are like a very big organization, but unfortunately they advocated for the monarchists again just a few months ago. So it's kind of hard to see that who is truly on the side of people. And when you look at the human rights organizations, I'm not saying this because I'm Kurdish, but this is what I see and I think it's true. The only organizations that truly reflect what's happening without caring about people's backgrounds or ethnicity or whatever, it's our organization, Hangout. And also like organizations like Kurdistan Human Rights Network. But unfortunately the majority of the others are not really clear. So for Kurdish issues, I would say definitely hang out. And also on my page, Kurdistani People, I also like, write a lot of things. And also Kurdish Peace Institute and Kurdish center for Studies, they have lots of other Turkish journalists and experts that write a lot of really good articles about the situation there. And if I want to mention names, I would say Rojin Mokriani. She's like a really great researcher. She lives in Ireland. There is another professor called Kamran Mateen. He also writes really great analysis on situation and like the things that people even don't think about. They're writing with so many different international law organizations and institutes. Yeah, there are like these individuals and activists. Yeah.
- [112:09]
Host
Thank you so much for joining us. That was really. That really helped, I think, for people to understand things. Tell us about your Kurdistan People page. Where can they find that? On Instagram?
- [112:19]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah. Thank you for inviting me and thank you for letting me speak. Yeah. I have this page, Kurdistani People. I usually post about all over Kurdistan, the things that matter. Obviously I can't do it all the time, but yeah, I post a lot of things and there are other pages that I also collaborate with, like Kurdish activism or everything about Kurdistan. We're just a group of people who work together, obviously, like our organization, I think it's very, very important for people to follow and support it. Hengal Organization for Human Rights and also Kurdistan Human Rights Network. That's also like another one that you can follow. Yeah. And also like I talked about some names and individuals and researchers.
- [113:05]
Host
Yeah.
- [113:05]
Ian Pfaff
You can also follow them for more professional analysis about East Kurdistan or Rochelat. Yeah.
- [113:13]
Bob Crawford
Great.
- [113:13]
Host
Well, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time.
- [113:16]
Ian Pfaff
Thank you. Thank you very much.
- [113:38]
Host
Hi everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen. Here it is a second episode about Kurdistan. I am very lucky to be joined today by Vladimir Van Wilkenberg, who many of you will know is a journalist covering Kurdistan. He's done excellent work for a lot of publications. So welcome to the show.
- [113:56]
Robert Evans
Vladimir, thanks so much for the invitation.
- [113:59]
Host
Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for being willing to join us so late at night, your time. Let's start off by discussing an event you attended or an event you were in proximity to by the sounds of it. People will have seen this online, I'm sure, but it was the disarmament of a number of PKK guerrillas that took place in the mountains of southern Kurdistan over the weekend of the 10th to 12th of July.
- [114:27]
Robert Evans
So yeah, a few days ago I tried to attend the ceremony from 30 PKK guerrillas that were disarming. Basically what happened is that they, they burned their. Their weapons. Although technically it's not really possible to burn a weapon because there were these colossally that they were put. They put in a fire and it was in like actually a tourist cave near Dokkan. So this not. It was actually very different because I also have been in the. During the peace process. I've also was in a press conference of the PKK in 2014 or 15 or something around that time. And that was very different because it was basically in the area that the PKK is activated. It was in the area under their control, but this was under a different Kurdish party's control. It's called the Patriarch Union of Kurdistan. So in Iraqi Kurdistan you have two main parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and you have the Kurdistan Democratic Party. So this cave where they did the ceremony, which is actually a tourist cave, it's in PUK controlled area. So the ceremony was sort of protected by PUK security forces. And that's why. Also the PUK media, they got a lot of special access and also there was. The Turkish government media was there and also PKK media was there and a lot of other Kurdish TV channels. So it was a very interesting day. Although I was not able to pass the checkpoint towards the ceremony because at the last moment, actually a few days before the ceremony, they changed the access. Supposedly it would be a very open ceremony, but then they said for. Because of security reasons that they had to restrict the ceremony and there would be some TV screens and stuff. In the end, I couldn't find the TV screens, but that's another discussion. But I also don't still understand what the security risk was. Although a day before there was a drone strike on a Kurdish Peshmerga base, but that was like quite far away from that. It was one hour away from the ceremony location.
- [116:26]
Host
Yeah. And it's an Iranian drone to check. Right? Like a Shaheed drone.
- [116:30]
Robert Evans
Yeah. So there have been like, no group has claimed these attacks, but in after. In the Aftermath of the 12 Day War, there have been a lot of drone strikes in the Kurdistan region in various areas, including this morning on American oil company's facility in the Dohok province.
- [116:48]
Host
Okay.
- [116:48]
Robert Evans
And the day before that also on another field near Erbil. So it has been quite tense, which also probably affected the ceremony, although it's not really related to it.
- [116:59]
Host
Yeah, it is different.
- [117:01]
Robert Evans
So, yeah, basically what was interesting, so they have this peace process between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state. It all started with a call by a Turkish ultra nationalist leader which actually in the past actually called for executing Abdullah Oslan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, who has been in prison since the 90s. He was actually surprisingly starting this peace process. He was saying, like, we should have him talk in the parliament and call for disbanding the pkk. So he never came to the parliament, but. But he released messages from prison and before the ceremony he released also a video message where he again focused on disarming, basically. And then the ceremony basically came where you have 30 fighters, 15 women, 15 men. Because the PKK is all about woman equality. So that's why they did his 50, 50 and they put their weapons in this fire. So I think this also signifies a point of renewal because Kurds, as a tradition, they have this Kurdish New Year every year on 21 March, where people jump over fires, there's a lot of fireworks, and the Kurdish nethers is basically the start of a new beginning. So I think one of the reasons they chose these Fires is because of this idea of a new beginning. And also the fact that when the PKK started, there were people that sort of. The creators of the pkk, they're actually. Some of them, they burned themselves in prison. In the Turkish prison.
- [118:34]
Host
Yeah.
- [118:34]
Robert Evans
So it's also sort of related to that, this sort of interlinkage with a fire.
- [118:41]
Host
Yeah.
- [118:41]
Robert Evans
And you also saw that they carefully put the weapons in the fire. They didn't just throw them. So it doesn't mean that they have completely given up on weapons because they are still waiting on. On counter steps from the Turkish government.
- [118:56]
Host
Yeah. Like there has been fighting between PKK or hpg, or how you want to say it, like HPG being like the. Technically the armed wing. No, there's been fighting in. In southern Kurdistan, like so in Iraqi KG Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq since the call for peace. Right. Like there has been ongoing fighting.
- [119:19]
Robert Evans
Yeah, I mean, it's not really. I would not say that it's like. Like actively fighting to take territory.
- [119:26]
Host
Yes.
- [119:26]
Robert Evans
Which was happening before. So it's more that it's some, like Turkish army is shooting artillery on the pkk. And there was also one incident that the PKK actually responded by drones.
- [119:39]
Host
Yeah.
- [119:39]
Robert Evans
But so far this didn't reach much in the Turkish or the Kurdish media. I mean, they were like some of this artillery shelling caused some fires, so villagers in the areas. It's a very hot summer now. They were trying to put out the fires, but it was not like the active, active fighting that you had before.
- [119:56]
Host
Okay.
- [119:56]
Robert Evans
And you know, since there was also a previous peace process, I mean, there have been several peace processes since history between the PKK and Turkey, but they never had the positive result.
- [120:06]
Host
Yeah.
- [120:07]
Robert Evans
And the last, last one before this one was 2015. And after that peace process broke down when two policemen were shot, it's still unclear who shot those policemen. The fighting erupted again. And since then there have been heavy fighting, first in the Kurdish majority areas of Turkey until basically Turkey defeated Kurdish armed insurgents in the Kurdish cities in Turkey. And since then, actually the fighting has moved more to Iraqi Kurdistan where the PKK has also a historical presence since the 90s. Yeah, but what you now have is that you have the new. This new peace process started by this call of Bash Shelley and the PKK leader Oshoan have said the time for armed struggle is over. We don't want to have a Kurdish state. So basically what now is happening is that the Kurdish PKK and the Kurdish political counterpart in Turkey, they're basically waiting for steps by Turkey now to Give them basically trust to continue this process. And there was also a speech by the Turkish President Erdogan where he was also saying that it's the end. We don't need anymore, we need to talk. It's not a time for weapons anymore. We spent trillions of dollars on the war against the pkk. We had this, a lot of martyrs and we sacrificed a lot. And it's now the time to stop the war and to do talking. And he said they're going to work with the Kurdish Party and this ultra Turkish nationalist party, the mhp, in the parliament and to also set up a commission to basically work on constitutional changes.
- [121:47]
Host
Yeah. Let's take a break for adverts here and then we'll come back. All right. Right, we are back. I guess we should talk briefly about like, the nature of this, this call for peace. You explained very well that this is probably a higher chance of success than there has ever been. Right. Like, we have the explicit buy in of Oshilan who, like, hasn't been seen on video since the 90s. So, like, to have him making a video statement is quite significant. I'm sure he's been seen on video. But like, not, not like making a speech.
- [122:24]
Ian Pfaff
Correct.
- [122:24]
Host
And then that we have like this, this endorsement in the Turkish Parliament. Like, I think there's been a lot of speculation about what led to this and some of it's not particularly helpful. But you know, you're, you're very well educated on these matters. What do you think this means for not just the pkk, but the kck, I guess like the Kurdish Freedom Movement, that the different movements throughout Kurdistan that are inspired by the political thought of Aurlan.
- [122:52]
Ian Pfaff
Well, I mean, it's.
- [122:53]
Robert Evans
Until now it's difficult to say what exactly is going to happen because the PKK said they're going to go, they will disarm. But there's other groups which are linked to the PKK in Iran. Iran and in Syria. And also, for instance in Sinjar, those groups said they were not. Some of them have said publicly that we are not part of this process or they welcome the process. And others, they didn't really say much. The Yazidi group haven't said really a lot.
- [123:20]
Host
Yeah.
- [123:21]
Robert Evans
So it's also going to be interesting what will happen with those groups, with the Iranian Kurdish group and also with Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria that have a different situation. Also after the fall of Assad, they have these talks with Damascus. And actually one of the reasons that the first peace process broke down was because that in Actually at that time also that Turkey was a little bit afraid of this alliance between the Kurds and the Americans at the time against ISIS that was then rising up in Syria and attacked the Kurdish town of Koban in Syria, which created an alliance between the Kurds and us against the ISIS terrorist militant jihadi group. But now the situation actually is interesting. So at that time the Kurds were empowered in Syria, but now you can see there's a completely different situation now. It's the opposite way. So now you have the rebels that took over Damascus and they are now the government run by Jelani, his previous name, who's now calling himself Ahmad Al Shara, his real name. So we now have a new Islamist controlled government in Damascus and there's a lot of tension between the Kurds in Syria and Damascus. So this could also risk basically this peace process with Turkey because the sdf, they have also ideological links with the pkk. So it's also interesting how this will work out. So in the past it was also always like the fighting between Turkey and the PKK could threaten the SCF of Syria. But that was sort of the other way around. That fighting between, possible fighting in the future between Damascus and the Kurds in Syria, it could threaten the peace process in Turkey. And Erdogan, he made this very big speech not a very long time ago where he mentioned that Turkey doesn't only want peace for the Kurds in Turkey and for Alawites, also a religious minority in Turkey, but he was also talking that he wants peace for the Kurds in Syria and also in Iraq, that they should also live like a prosperous life in Syria and that they have good relations with the Syrian government. So I think that's also very interesting point that you don't see in many articles that there's like this very big interlinkage between all these different issues.
- [125:28]
Host
Yeah. And I think Turkey has maintained that the SDF is the, the pkk. Right. Just with like a different badge, which is not the case. They share a lot of politics, but they're distinct. Turkey also has like extensive proxy forces in Syria. Right. That have been fighting with the SDF since I guess like late. Well, I mean for, for years, but like in an expanded sense since since the beginning of the fall of the Assad regime that we saw like probably seven or eight months ago now. Yeah, it's a very complex situation. It's also as we, as we record this Today on the 15th, Syria is a very diverse country. And into. Add to all the groups you mentioned, there is currently Fighting between the government and Druze militias. Right. Can you explain a little bit about the situation there and the relevance of that?
- [126:23]
Robert Evans
Well, I mean, the Druze, they, they are a religious community that are not same as the Sunni Muslims and they control their own area in the, on the border, the town called Suida and the villages around it. And also they have some areas in Damascus where they have a presence. Yeah, so the Druze, basically, during the time when the Assad regime still was in power, they didn't really like fight very heavily against the Assad regime in the beginning, but they didn't allow the Assad regime to recruit military, recruit people in their area. And he sort of tried to keep the regime out of their area. So during the civil war they were sort of semi autonomous, but not officially. And actually in the last years before the fall of Assad, there were like big protests in the Druze areas in support of the Syrian revolution and against the Assad regime. So there were like very big protests in the Druze areas against the Assad regime. So when the Assad regime was militarily weakening and the rebels from the other side of Syria, they were attacking the Assad regime, the Druze, they also joined the fight and they marched together with the southern rebels, they marched down to Moscows and they were actually the first one that entered Damascus, not, not Ahmed Al Shara or the hts. Actually the first ones that entered Damascus was the southern rebels and the Druze. Yeah, but there's this thing is that Damascus wants to have this new regime or the new government in Damascus. They want to have this very centralized system. So they don't want the Druze to run their own armed groups and they have their own sort of local autonomy. So they have been fighting before between the Druze and the new authorities in Syria in areas near Damascus. But there was like a ceasefire and the fighting stopped. But recently there's also like historical tensions between these Arab Bedouin tribes and the Druze in this area. So these areas are quite mixed. So there's actually this recent conflict. They started when Bedouin tribes, they robbed like a merchant who was a Druse. And then after that there were like mutual kidnapping, like tensions between both sides. And then basically, although Damascus said they were neutral, Damascus started to support these Bedouin groups against the Druze and started marching on Suida, which is the Druze stronghold on the border. And so actually there have been like a few days, not even a few days, but have been like a short period of fighting now. And actually Damascus, they entered this RUSE TOWN OF Sueda and they actually said, okay, we control the town now. And now we're going to withdraw the Syrian army and then the internal security forces going to control the city. Then very shortly after Israel started bombing heavily the Syrian armed forces of the new Syrian government.
- [129:16]
Host
Yeah.
- [129:16]
Robert Evans
And then the Druze armed groups, they sort of pushed back and they pushed out this internal security forces out of the city. And now the Druze are, according to many reports, back in control of the city of Suida. And now you see that just like what happened with the Alawites when there was this Assad regime remnants that had an uprising against the new authorities. And then there were like these rebels, they were mobilized with mosque all over Syria and they went to the coast areas and they defeated those Assad regime remnants, but they killed also a lot of civilians. Some reports say over 1500 people.
- [129:51]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [129:52]
Robert Evans
So what you now see is that, that Damascus is against mobilizing those people with mosques to march on Sueda. But the difference is with the Alawites is that Israel also has Druze. So there's also pressure on the Israeli government to support the Druze. So it's not only because of their strategic interests, it's also because there are Druze living in Israel itself that also have joined the Israeli army. So they're also pushing Israel for taking action. So you saw that today, like Israel, they took a lot of, they carried out a lot of airstrikes. And the Druze there are basically back in control of most of the Sueda city, not of the whole area. But the fight is not over yet. And then you also have different truce factions. Some of them, they have better relations with Damascus. The majority of them don't. So now we're going to see if there's going to be fighting, if the fight is going to increase Again, we see now reports also of that the HDS or the Damascus government forces are using drone strikes by themselves on Druze forces. So they're using basically the drones that they use to overthrow the Assad regime.
- [130:57]
Host
Okay.
- [130:58]
Robert Evans
So yeah, that's the situation.
- [130:59]
Host
Yeah, I think the world stopped looking at Syria. I mean, I guess the world stopped looking at Syria a while ago. Like really after the defeat of the territorial caliphate, it's been much harder to sell stories in big newspapers in the United States. But yeah, it's by no means like the fighting is not over and it leaves their sdf, the Western Kurdistan branch of this Kurdish movement. Right. Like in, as you said, a fairly, a fairly perilous condition. Right. The, the Damascus wants to centralize. Like, they want to have. They don't want to have independence. They don't want to have, like, federated autonomy. The United States seems to be, or at least the United States envoy to Damascus seems to be making statements that suggests that, like, the only way forward is through centralization. On one hand we have the peepkk laying down arms. The other hand we have the sdf and it's difficult position. Where does this leave, like the Kurdish freedom movement? I think this has been a thing that a lot of people all over the world have looked up to. Right. People have, especially Rojava as this example that people could build something, a place where freedom could exist. In the middle of this terrible war in Syria, do you think the movement's like, in danger now?
- [132:24]
Robert Evans
Well, I mean, you have this new government in Syria. Actually, initially, the Trump administration was quite reluctant to have relations with the new authorities in Damascus because they were. I mean, Jelani used to be on a. Yeah, Ahmad Shara used to be on a terrorist sanction list.
- [132:42]
Host
Yeah, there was a bounty for him at one point. It wasn't there.
- [132:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah. But I think there was like a very intensive lobbying by some Gulf states in Turkey to basically remove the sanctions on Ahmad Al Shara Jelani, but also remove sanctions on Syria. The economic sanctions that were actually were on the Assad regime. So I think the Trump administration changed their position. And also a new ambassador for Syria and Turkey was appointed. So he was not only ambassador for Turkey, but also for Syria. And he's basically echoing a lot of the points of the new authorities in Damascus that he was talking about. One state, one army, one this, one this, and the SDF should be integrated and blah, blah, blah. So there was. There was also. Recently there were talks between the mosque and the SDF because in March they reached an agreement with Western support and they were trying to basically make a more finalized agreement in recently. A few days ago, they had these talks in Damascus and the French were there and the Brits were there and Americans were there.
- [133:42]
Host
Yeah.
- [133:42]
Robert Evans
But this agreement was not implemented. It didn't lead to anything. So it was not really. Didn't really work very well because Damascus is insisting on the centralized state. And I was just listening to Kurdish, Syrian, Kurdish official, as he was also saying, like, we don't want to separate from Syria, but we want to have some form of local councils and a decentralized Syria, not like a centralized Syria. As he was also talking about what happened to the Druze, that it's not a very good example for the future of Syria. So I think definitely what you're saying that there is a sort of threat because in the past the US was very supportive of the SDF in the fight against isis, although they didn't support so much their political project but, but they supported them because they fought isis. And also they were keeping out Iranian backed militias from areas like Deir Ezor. But now you don't have Iran anymore. In Syria they were completely kicked out after the fall of the Assad regime. All these militias, they have been disbanded or hiding or some of them are actually now being used by the mosques against the truce. So now that argument is not there anymore that you, okay, we have the sdf, they keep out Iran from the oil fields. Yeah, you could still argue you have still have the fight against isis. I mean ISIS is still a threat, but the Kurds don't have that same leverage anymore as is in the past that they said, okay, we are the main ones fighting isis. We keep out Iran from these areas. Because now you have Damascus. Damascus said, why, why the kerchief do that? Like let's us take over those prisons and the camps where you have these thousands of ISIS families and ISIS prisoners and we don't need the Kurds to run the ISIS file. We can do that for you. So I think that's now like the big issue is that the US seems to be more supporting Damascus, at least diplomatically than the sdf.
- [135:30]
Host
Yeah.
- [135:30]
Robert Evans
Although military speaking, the support is still going on for the SDF until 2026 in the last Pentagon budget, which was not accepted yet. There's still like millions of support for the SDF to maintain the prisons and this kind of stuff. So I think it's, it's a, it's a difficult situation.
- [135:50]
Host
Yeah. These prisons like hall and others. Right. Like they, they're I guess kind of the only leverage the FDF has with the United States whether along with the continuing and somewhat increasing ISIS attacks. Yeah, but that's still much less of a threat to the US than it was 10 years ago, say. Right. Like it's, it's much less of a significant thing. So like what is the status of those prisons that currently they're still guided by the sdf. Right. The people aren't familiar. Can you just explain what those prisons consist of and like who's in there and who's guarding them?
- [136:29]
Robert Evans
Well, so ISIS created this jihadi state between 2014 and 2019. But then the Kurdish led SDF, they basically took most of these areas under ISIS control. They defeated basically, ISIS, with the support of the U.S. so they lost the territory. And the last battle, basically, was for a small town called Baghuz and Deir Ezor. So you had all these ISIS families there. And also there were, like, several ISIS foreign members that were captured. So you have the wives of ISIS fighters, and you also have ISIS fighters themselves that were captured during these battles. So all these people, they were brought to camps. So I was there in Syria many times. For instance, during the battle for Raqqa, which was used to be the capital of the ISIS caliphate, they were, like, bringing the ISIS families and women to a camp in Ain Al Issa. But after that, they moved most of those people to actually move almost all of them to the Rosh camp and the Al Hol camp in northern Syria in the Hasakah province. And also that includes foreigners. You can imagine people from Uzbekistan, from Uyghurs, from China, people from Turkey, French people, European people. So it's full of a lot of different people. And then the majority are actually Iraqis and Syrians. So the scf, they have this file. A majority, like a lot of people in those camps, they have been repatriated or they have to return to their homes. So I think those camps, like a whole camp, like the prison. It's not a prison, it's a camp. I think, like, the number of people there basically decreased almost 50%, but there's still a lot of people inside. But the prisons, you have still all this ISIS fighters that were imprisoned during the war. Yeah, and a lot of them are foreigners, including Dutch, another county, and some. Some counties, they have returned their. They have returned their people there. So you have some people, you know, America, they took back most of the families and. And the fighters, and they prosecute them in the U.S. yeah, but you also have counties that didn't bring back the fighters, for instance. They only brought back the woman. So that's the situation that all those people are still there. And it's actually what you mentioned, it's like one of the big reasons for support for the sdf, and it's also one of the reasons that the SDF is getting millions to keep those prisons in good shape. Because there have been also attempts by ISIS to free those prisoners from those prisons. Basically.
- [138:54]
Host
Yeah, successful attempts in 2020, 2022. I think it was when they had the. The last major prison escape.
- [139:02]
Robert Evans
Yeah, which.
- [139:03]
Host
Yeah, it's a bad thing for the whole world if all those people get out. And like you say, lots of European nations, I think it's something that I wish Americans had paid more attention to, because a thing that European nations have done, the United Kingdom being a paramount example, is rendered some of those people stateless. Well, right. They've removed their. In this case, Shamima Begum is probably the most well known example. Right. They've removed her British passport. Now she doesn't have a state. She's stateless. It's something that the US has recently done to people living in the United States. And like, it does feel something as if, you know, the precedent has been established and now it's being carried out. And it's obviously deeply concerning to see it happening here after. After. Like it happened there. And I wish people had opposed it when it did.
- [139:56]
Robert Evans
Well, I mean, the US in, The US itself in Syria was very. A big advocate of bringing the people out.
- [140:03]
Host
Yes, it was, yeah.
- [140:05]
Robert Evans
Because it will make it easier for them to withdraw. So they were actually pushing those countries that didn't want to bring back their nationals to basically bring them back, like Western countries, the UK and others. Yeah, but some of these countries were actually forced by court orders or. Or others. But a lot of these countries were actually quite reluctant to bring them back because they're afraid of, like, security risk and stuff, or that they will be released quite quickly and then they would again, like, be active in. In jihadist activities.
- [140:33]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [140:34]
Robert Evans
So the U.S. was very, very. So I remember that the U.S. was even offering, like, members of this coalition against ISIS, which was created in 2014, basically said, if you cannot bring them yourself, I mean, we can. Our military can help you to bring those people out. If you think that you. It's difficult for you to go to Syria and pick those nationals up from your account.
- [140:54]
Host
Yeah, yeah. Been pretty unsuccessful, like in a lot of. Well, in some European cases they have, but still. Yeah, lots of them are utterly refusing to do it. I wonder then as we. We finish up here, right, like we spoke about this PKK disarmament, obviously, like, it's a. It's a symbolic disarmament. Right. There is still. I don't quite know how big the HPG is, but it's much bigger than 30 people. And then the weapons they laid down were like a very small percentage of their weapons. Were they just burning like Kalashnikovs or did they burn like. Like larger weapons too?
- [141:27]
Robert Evans
No, it was just their personal Kalashnikovs, basically.
- [141:30]
Host
Okay.
- [141:30]
Robert Evans
So I mean, it was also like more a symbolic. Symbolic ceremony. Like we are willing to give up.
- [141:36]
Host
Yeah.
- [141:36]
Robert Evans
But the thing is that also it's still not clear what happened to those 30 people, are they going to go back to Turkey?
- [141:42]
Host
That's what I wanted to ask. Yeah.
- [141:44]
Robert Evans
Are they going to stay in Iraqi Kurdistan and find a job there? Because you have people like that in Iraqi Kurdistan that used to be with the PKK and that now they work in, I don't know, in media or construction sector or entertainment sector. You have people like that, but there's not much clarity on that. But I think also that's because they're waiting on Turkey to make possible constitutional steps, you know, to see what Turkey is going to do. Because, for instance, Turkey could offer an amnesty or this kind of things then.
- [142:12]
Host
Right.
- [142:13]
Robert Evans
Those people could return. And also some of them are saying, like, now it's the end of weapons, but we still want to be involved in politics right.
- [142:18]
Host
Through the political party.
- [142:20]
Robert Evans
So it's also possible that those people want, want to go back to Turkey and basically take part in Kurdish politics or Turkish politics to be more correct in Turkey. So I think it's a little bit too early to say what happens with those people because I remember also, if I very much correct, that there also have been peace process that basically people have given, basically went to the border and gave themselves up to Turkey, but that didn't happen now. So this, it's a bit different than in the past.
- [142:45]
Host
Yeah.
- [142:45]
Robert Evans
But it seems that the Turkish government was very happy with the, with the ceremony. They didn't complain about it. So.
- [142:51]
Host
Okay. Yeah, Yeah. I wonder what happened. So those guerrillas, or former gorillas, I suppose, who laid down their weapons at the end of the ceremony, they just kind of returned to the mountains or whatever. Like, we don't know what, what will happen with them now.
- [143:05]
Robert Evans
That's, that's not clear to me because there are still some unanswered questions, like what you mentioned now, like what those 30 people did.
- [143:13]
Host
Yeah.
- [143:13]
Robert Evans
What those people are going to do now.
- [143:15]
Ian Pfaff
So.
- [143:16]
Host
Right. It's a lot of people and it's a lot of people, some of whom have spent decades as cadre of the revolution. Right. Like, they, they haven't, they haven't really known life outside of the revolution for a very long time.
- [143:28]
Robert Evans
Yeah. So it's also a bit difficult for them to return to civilian life because, I mean, because that's, they probably joined when they're quite young. And I think I saw the profiles of the people of those 30 people who burned their weapons that they, a lot of them, they joined in the 90s.
- [143:42]
Host
Wow.
- [143:43]
Robert Evans
So they have been in, they have been in the mountains for a very long time.
- [143:47]
Host
Yeah.
- [143:47]
Robert Evans
I Mean, some of them were young, but there were also older people among them. But definitely it's going to be a question what will happen with those people. Although, I mean, there were also talks that some leadership of the armed PKK movement might go to Europe and get asylum there instead of going back to Turkey.
- [144:06]
Host
Yeah.
- [144:07]
Robert Evans
You know, you have also a lot of Kurdish diaspora organizations active there, so they could like basically embrace those people.
- [144:14]
Host
Yeah, but they're still listed as a foreign terrorist organization in most of.
- [144:18]
Robert Evans
Yeah, exactly. I mean, for instance, they probably would want to have something like what the Syrian president have now, Ahmed Al Shara, that he used to be listed as a sanctioned as a terrorist organization. And then to have that removed. But I'm sure that that's not on the table anytime soon. But that happened with the hcs. But also it happened, for instance, Mushedin Hawk, an Iranian opposition group. They also got delisted. So technically it's possible. But I think we are in a very early stage of the peace process. So that's why I think it's going to take time before we have more clarity and some of these answers that questions you ask now. I mean, most of the people that attended the ceremony didn't have an answer to that too because there was not much clarity on that because it was just a ceremony. There was a statement. Journalists were not able to talk to most of the journalists. I mean they were. There was like some statement in some Kurdish media, but in general, like they were not able to talk to those fighters. Like, now what are you going to do? There was not like access to those 30 people that burned their weapons. Yeah, so. So it was like sort of quite, very much controlled ceremony. It was very difficult to. To report on it, basically, which is very different from the previous peace process when it was much more open. Yeah, but that time there was not like 30 fighters giving up their weapons. They just had like sort of a press conference. This is what we're gonna do. And that was like very different than what. What happened now.
- [145:36]
Host
Yeah, yeah. I guess it's something just to. Just to keep watching. It's fascinating to watch it unfold. Like I was in Kurdistan a year and a half ago and it's seen the situation is completely different likewise in the whole of Syria. So yeah, it's fascinating to watch. I'm sure if people want to know more about it. You're very good at reporting on this. You often post on Twitter about the situation and you write for a number of outlets. So how can people follow your work?
- [146:05]
Robert Evans
Well, the Best place to follow my work is on Twitter on X. Yeah, X. Because I'm quite active there. But also I write for places like Middle East Eye something Tanks like Washington Institute, New Lines Institute. I also write for Kurdish magazine called Kurdistan Chronicle and also I pitch for other websites. So I'm quite active on different issues, but mostly focused on things related to Kurds. So mostly stuff related to Iran, Turkey, Syria, etc.
- [146:36]
Host
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We, we really appreciate your insight.
- [146:40]
Robert Evans
You're welcome, my friend.
- [146:56]
Host
Foreign.
- [147:04]
Sarah Spain
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. Yes, this episode we are covering the week of July 9, July 16, what's going on on my boys and in some cases, gals. And in some cases theys or it's or whatever.
- [147:28]
Garrison Davis
And the answer for everyone is Ed.
- [147:33]
Host
Hooray.
- [147:34]
Sarah Spain
In some cases, my gals. I guess let's start by talking about Jeffrey Epstein, as we always do.
- [147:44]
Garrison Davis
Jepstein. Yeah, you know what, Garrison? I hear you've got some bars to drop about Epstein.
- [147:51]
Sarah Spain
Jesus.
- [147:55]
Garrison Davis
All right, well, that's. That's my work for the day.
- [147:57]
Bob Crawford
Brief.
- [148:00]
Sarah Spain
Brief summary. Previously on this show, we talked about how Patel and Bungino, the head of the FBI, have previously come under fire from mega supporters for saying that Epstein really did kill himself. And this has kind of been bubbling in the base for a while because they use this as one of their main, like, campaign and podcast talking points for the past four years.
- [148:23]
Garrison Davis
Bongino was a huge Epstein truther guy.
- [148:27]
Sarah Spain
I mean, and like, Patel's like the QAnon guy. Like, he's. Both these guys have. Have made their careers the past four years, like, heavily about this topic, right? And now they are, you know, backtracking on a whole bunch of the previous, you know, claims or, you know, just asking questions type stuff that they did the past few years. And like a week and a half ago, a memo from the Department of Justice announced that it was closing the investigation and claiming that there was no client list for Jeffrey Epstein, despite Pam Bondi herself boasting about having Epstein's client list on her desk. Only a few months ago, this caused a huge freakout in the mega world. There was conflicting reports that Bondi or Patel or Bungino might be resigning, like, in protest of this memo. A lot of, like, uncertainty over, like, what was real. And then on July 12, Trump had to Speak his own truth. Social. Okay, quote, what's going on with my boys and in some cases, gals, they're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who's doing a fantastic job. We're on one team maga and I don't like what's happening. We have a perfect administration, the talk of the world, and selfish people are trying to hurt it all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years it's Epstein over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to files written by Obama, crooked Hillary, Comey Brennan and the losers and criminals of the Biden administration who con the world with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. 51 intelligence agents and the laptop from hell, all caps. They created the Epstein files just like they created the fake Hillary Clinton Christopher Steele dossier that they used on me. And now my so called friends in quotes are playing right into their hands. So this was right after claiming that the Epstein files did not exist, that these things are not actually real. And then Trump's talking about how they are real, but they are in fact written by his enemies. Despite the most recent investigation into Jeffrey EPSTEIN Starting in 2019, when, if you remember, Donald Trump was the president.
- [150:35]
Host
Well, Garrison, the defining political question of the modern era is who was president in 2020. So I can see it moving back.
- [150:42]
Garrison Davis
There's no answer to this question. You know, we just can't. We don't know.
- [150:46]
Host
We will never know. There's no way to prove it.
- [150:48]
Garrison Davis
Our records don't reach back that far. We just simply can't say who president was.
- [150:53]
Host
The mists of time have shaded over.
- [150:57]
Sarah Spain
So much of modern domestic politics is about confusion over who was president in 2019 and 2020 when it was Donald Trump. He ends by saying, quote, let's not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody nobody cares about.
- [151:14]
Host
So funny.
- [151:16]
Uncle Chris
You can tell he's so far gone. Me too.
- [151:18]
Sarah Spain
He sounds scared.
- [151:19]
Garrison Davis
Well, cause he never fully understood this stuff. Like there's things that he understands instinctually and there's things that he never really got. And because he was Epstein's friend, he never really got why this was so central. He kind of got that it was, but he also kind of assumed like, well, if I tell everyone to shut the fuck up, they will, they're gonna.
- [151:39]
Sarah Spain
Shut the fuck up.
- [151:39]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [151:41]
Sarah Spain
Because that's how he's done things for the past like 12 years. And it's more often than not worked really well for him. But this has become such a load bearing aspect of like the mega self image. Like this is like you know, this type of stuff is what drove QAnon. Essentially like a cult. Yeah, he.
- [151:56]
Bob Crawford
And he.
- [151:57]
Sarah Spain
He never fully understood why QAnon was really a thing. He never, like, truly grasped it.
- [152:01]
Garrison Davis
That's why he never really, like, he start. He started more recently doing some QAnon signposting. But, yeah, he clearly never fully got why it was happening. Yeah, like, it was convenient.
- [152:13]
Sarah Spain
And now the monster that he and his, you know, quote unquote friends have helped create all these years is starting to nibble on his own leg.
- [152:21]
Host
Yeah.
- [152:21]
Sarah Spain
This past weekend, influencers like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Charlie Kirk all started to kind of turn on Trump. I'm gonna play a quick video from disgraced buzzfeed writer Benny Johnson, now right wing podcaster.
- [152:36]
Ian Pfaff
By admitting that the Epstein files are real and have been written and that you've read them and you don't like their contents and they were written by your enemies. Doesn't make. Doesn't make the most compelling case as far as I'm concerned. Holy moly.
- [153:00]
Host
Holy moly.
- [153:01]
Garrison Davis
Holy moly.
- [153:02]
Host
You had it here first.
- [153:05]
Sarah Spain
There was a lot of this stuff over the weekend, like this, this whole, like, podcasting cohort which. Which so many people, you know, credit to. To Trump's great success in 2024, all started asking questions and were kind of confused. I don't know why they would be. It's been very well documented that Trump was friends with Epstein for a long time. But this, this time, this thing finally broke containment.
- [153:27]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [153:28]
Sarah Spain
And when you have, like, fucking Charlie Kirk, someone who's basically like one of the GOP's, like, top narrative shepherds, essentially, and when you have him, like, questioning the President's own story and credibility, that's like a pretty big shakeup in the mega world.
- [153:43]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah. It's not really explicable. There's no plausible deniability.
- [153:47]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [153:48]
Uncle Chris
I think for a long time this has been like the load bearing cognitive dissonance for this entire movement. And I actually do think when Elon first was just like, he's in the files, I think that was the first moment that all these people were suddenly allowed to do this.
- [154:03]
Sarah Spain
That was the first domino, definitely.
- [154:05]
Host
Yeah, he cracked the shell on it.
- [154:08]
Uncle Chris
And I think that has torn open this rift that has allowed all of these people who previously used their cognitive dissonance has sustained them through a decade.
- [154:17]
Host
Of like, yeah, bullshit.
- [154:20]
Uncle Chris
Our dear rulers, obviously friends with the.
- [154:22]
Sarah Spain
Pedophile, like I say it, critical support to Elon Musk.
- [154:26]
Uncle Chris
Oh, no, let them fight. Let them fight.
- [154:32]
Sarah Spain
So the Next move that the geniuses of the Trump administration tried to pull to settle things down was release the raw footage, the missing raw footage outside Jeffrey Epstein cell to finally, finally close the book on this Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself moment. And they released it and everyone realized, you know what? They're right. There's nothing more to look into here. Case closed, no problem.
- [154:56]
Garrison Davis
We all rose up as if with one voice to say, this doesn't seem suspicious.
- [155:02]
Sarah Spain
So Wired found that this quote, unquote, RAW video was actually edited and had nearly three minutes removed.
- [155:11]
Garrison Davis
Sure, yeah, but look, doesn't Jeffrey Epstein deserve some privacy? You know, three minutes on his own.
- [155:17]
Sarah Spain
This is a really personal decision for somebody to take.
- [155:20]
Garrison Davis
And I. Yeah, exactly.
- [155:23]
Sarah Spain
So, no, after claiming that, like, they've released this, this, this completely. This completely, you know, ripped straight from the hard drive RAW footage, it showed that it was edited in Adobe Premiere and has these missing, missing three minutes. Pam Bondi initially tried to say that there's usually a minute missing from footage because of a computer reset that happens every night at the same time, which was then immediately proven incorrect by their.
- [155:49]
Host
Being.
- [155:51]
Sarah Spain
By there being one more than one minute missing three minutes.
- [155:55]
Garrison Davis
I'm sorry, there's simply, like, I came into this as, like, I don't know what happened. You know, maybe he killed himself.
- [156:02]
Sarah Spain
Maybe, I don't know what happened in that jail. So I, I, I.
- [156:05]
Garrison Davis
And now I'm, now I'm, I'm. I am sincerely more on the. Well, something, there's something there hiding.
- [156:11]
Uncle Chris
I will say, I will say there, there's one thing that I think this does definitively rule out, which is that it was definitely not the Clinton crime family. We've ruled out one possible.
- [156:23]
Garrison Davis
Now, you see, this brings me to a theory that I have been working on for the last couple of days. And I think this is really important to get out to people. So obviously, the other big statement that Donald Trump made in the last week was that his uncle, who used to be a professor at mit, had taught Ted Kaczynski and talked to him about Ted Kaczynski and been like, yeah, you know, there's a real thin line between genius and insanity. And then it came out that Donald Trump's uncle, who taught at MIT, died in 1985. And of course, the Unabomber was not publicly identified until 1996. Now, some people have interpreted this as Donald Trump lying, which I think we can all agree doesn't seem like something he would do. So the only other explanation is that Trump and his family knew who The Unabomber was for more than a decade and kept it hidden from the rest of the United States. States. Now, what is the Unabomber and Donald Trump have in common? Obviously, two people who were treated very unfairly by the Clintons. Right. I think we can all agree on that. You know, so it all ties together.
- [157:26]
Sarah Spain
Both are possibly victims of. Of MK Ultra.
- [157:29]
Garrison Davis
That's right.
- [157:30]
Host
Yeah.
- [157:30]
Sarah Spain
No, his little Tuesday speech in Pittsburgh was. Was quite bizarre. Not just that Kaczynski never went to mit. Yeah.
- [157:40]
Host
Say to my knowledge, none alumni did.
- [157:42]
Sarah Spain
Not go to the. To the university that Dr. John Trump was at.
- [157:47]
Uncle Chris
I will say this. This is the first one of these stories that this genuinely sounds like an Alex Jones story. Like this is the kind of story that Alex Jones tells about his uncles all the time.
- [157:56]
Host
Yeah, they ain't. They ain't talking to Alex Jones right now.
- [157:59]
Uncle Chris
No, definitely.
- [158:00]
Host
But it's like Persona non grudge or in the White House currently.
- [158:04]
Ian Pfaff
It is.
- [158:04]
Sarah Spain
It is a truly bizarre ramble.
- [158:06]
Bob Crawford
And I have to take you.
- [158:07]
Sarah Spain
I have to brag just for a.
- [158:08]
Robert Evans
Second, because I have to.
- [158:10]
Uncle Chris
When I first heard about AI, you.
- [158:12]
Bob Crawford
Know, it's not my thing.
- [158:14]
Robert Evans
Although my uncle was at MIT. One of the great professors, 51 years, whatever. He was longest serving professor in the history of MIT. 3 degrees in nuclear, chemical and math. Kaczynski was one of his students.
- [158:31]
Bob Crawford
Do you know who Kaczynski was?
- [158:33]
Robert Evans
There's very little difference between a madman and a genius. But Kazinski said, what kind of a student was he? Uncle John, Dr. John Trump?
- [158:41]
Host
He said, what kind of a student, man? He said, seriously good. He said he'd correct. He'd go around correcting everybody.
- [158:48]
Robert Evans
But it didn't work out too well for him.
- [158:51]
Sarah Spain
Didn't work out too well. But it's interesting in life. Didn't work out too well for him.
- [158:57]
Garrison Davis
Sure didn't.
- [158:58]
Host
Christ, to be fair, he never. He never gives a first name. It could have been a nut.
- [159:04]
Sarah Spain
Other Kaczynski could be a different Kaczynski. This is true, James.
- [159:07]
Host
Yeah, yeah. People are not entertaining. Also, God, that whole thing, just the. The undergrad who goes around correcting everyone. Many such cases. Yeah.
- [159:18]
Sarah Spain
But back to Epstein. The thing that Trump doesn't want us talking about.
- [159:22]
Garrison Davis
That's right.
- [159:22]
Sarah Spain
By Monday, some of this, like, influencer podcasting class started to kind of close ranks. The skepticism and frustration that they expressed over the weekend subsided and they started to repeat the party line Charlie Kirk said on his show, quote, plenty was said this last weekend at our event about Epstein. Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends and the administration. I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done. Solve it. Balls in their hands. I've said plenty this last weekend, so if you guys want to see my commentary on it, that's fine. Everyone knows my opinion on the Epstein thing. The messaging fumble. I would love to see the DOJ move to unseal the grand jury testimony, unquote. The messaging fumble. Really, the biggest problem with. The biggest problem with Jeffrey Epstein has been the messaging fumble. Naughty.
- [160:19]
Host
Yeah.
- [160:20]
Sarah Spain
Decades of horrific sex crimes tied to the President of the United States.
- [160:24]
Uncle Chris
Also, I love that he's trying to trust the plan. People with, like, the thing that trust the plan is about revealing.
- [160:31]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [160:32]
Bob Crawford
This is about.
- [160:32]
Sarah Spain
It's what it's about.
- [160:33]
Host
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just keep trusting it. I do want to say that I. Because I hate myself, I listened to Sean Ryan's podcast interview with Gavin Newsome.
- [160:43]
Robert Evans
Oh, God.
- [160:44]
Host
Which, yeah, I don't suggest. It is four hours, if you're wondering. So never get pissed off about our episodes going long again, please. Lots of interesting stuff. Trump has lost Shawn Ryan. He is not toeing the line on this Epstein stuff. He's clearly pissed about it. And like, like, Ryan is a sizable influence on the right. He has about 5 million YouTube subscribers. Right. He's one of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify. He's interviewed Trump on his POG. Like, when Trump did his, like, podcast offensive before the 2024 election, Ryan was one of the places he went. And it seems like Ryan is not on the, like, RNC paid poster list because he, he. He seemed like, more critical of Trump than Gavin Newsom was in. In that interview, weirdly, specifically about the Epstein stuff, which it was kind of remarkable to me. And I think, like, we should note that it's. He has a significant influence on a certain type of people.
- [161:40]
Sarah Spain
Someone who certainly does appear to be on the RNC paid list is documentary filmmaker Dinesh d'. Souza.
- [161:48]
Host
I'm going to talk about the Epstein files and I'm going to make the.
- [161:54]
Robert Evans
Case that even though there are unanswered.
- [161:58]
Host
Questions about Epstein, it is in fact time to move on.
- [162:04]
Sarah Spain
Very convincing. Very compelling stuff.
- [162:07]
Garrison Davis
Well, sounds good.
- [162:09]
Host
Luckily, there's nobody with a firearm out of shot in that video, so I'm sure it's fine.
- [162:14]
Sarah Spain
Case closed.
- [162:16]
Garrison Davis
Yep. Seems good to me.
- [162:18]
Sarah Spain
In another move for transparency, on Tuesday, Republicans unanimously voted to block the release of the Epstein Files. Benny Johnson interviewed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about how they kind of want to handle this, and they're trying to make this argument that they want to be transparent, but they have to make sure that they protect the victims, and that's why they can't release the files.
- [162:43]
Uncle Chris
Sure, yeah. Protect victims. Republican Party.
- [162:46]
Sarah Spain
Compelling, compelling stuff.
- [162:48]
Host
Yeah.
- [162:49]
Sarah Spain
Part, part of what makes this super weird is like, Trump just keeps giving the, just the most bizarre, most like, I'm totally not guilty comments in media. And something he said on Tuesday I found to be quite interesting. Not because of the. What he actually said, but because of how he said it. See if, see if, see, see if you can catch this.
- [163:09]
Host
At all.
- [163:09]
Bob Crawford
That your name appeared in the.
- [163:12]
Robert Evans
No, no, she's, she's given us just.
- [163:15]
Host
A very quick briefing.
- [163:17]
Robert Evans
And in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen, and.
- [163:21]
Sarah Spain
I would say that, you know, these.
- [163:23]
Robert Evans
Files were made up by Comey, they.
- [163:25]
Bob Crawford
Were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden.
- [163:29]
Robert Evans
You know, and we went through years.
- [163:31]
Uncle Chris
Of that with the Russia, Russia, Russia.
- [163:35]
Robert Evans
Hoax with all of the different, different things that we had to go through.
- [163:38]
Sarah Spain
We've gone through years of it, but.
- [163:40]
Host
She'S handled it very well, and it's.
- [163:42]
Sarah Spain
Going to be very convincing stuff.
- [163:44]
Host
You can see Caroline Levitt just, like, just like, being right, like, right.
- [163:49]
Sarah Spain
First time I've heard Trump, like, stutter like this before. And like, Trump's whole idea of reality is if you speak it enough, that becomes true. You can literally bend, like, the concept of truth. You can bend reality using your words. And that. This is why he, you know, talks about being a winner. This is why he only surrounds himself with people who are winners. Like, he thinks that reality is this malleable thing that you affect through asserting your own will. And he's done this super successfully, especially throughout his career in politics. You know, he's a mixed record of it in his business, business era, but certainly in, in his political. But certainly throughout his political career, he's done this fairly well. This is why almost half the country believes that the last election was stolen was just because he said it enough.
- [164:33]
Host
Yeah.
- [164:34]
Sarah Spain
This is the first time I've heard him break while trying to speak reality into being like he, he literally could not get himself to do it, like, cleanly. And, and that is notable to me. He's made a series of truths later that day talking about how, quote, my past supporters have bought into this hook, line and sinker.
- [164:58]
Uncle Chris
Oh.
- [165:00]
Sarah Spain
Very good. And he's, he's now moved to Call the Jeffrey Epstein story the Epstein hoax.
- [165:06]
Uncle Chris
Jesus Christ.
- [165:08]
Sarah Spain
He had an Oval Office press conference Wednesday morning. Quote, I call it the Epstein hoax. They're talking about a guy who died three, four years ago. And the sad part is, is people are doing a Democrats work. They are stupid people.
- [165:21]
Host
I don't think that's the sad part about what happened with Jeffrey Epstein. I think there were other sad things related to his conduct.
- [165:27]
Garrison Davis
Oh, a man is dead.
- [165:29]
Robert Evans
You know.
- [165:32]
Uncle Chris
I think the thing that is like very alarming about this though, that I think is very dangerous about this entire situation. A lot of this on the right has always been sort of motivated by anti Semitism.
- [165:44]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, well.
- [165:45]
Uncle Chris
And I think we are going like we are already seeing some shit.
- [165:51]
Sarah Spain
It's funny you say that, Mia. Yeah, because.
- [165:54]
Host
Let's talk about anti Semites.
- [165:56]
Sarah Spain
Another voice has joined the call through release the files.
- [165:59]
Garrison Davis
Oh, God.
- [166:00]
Sarah Spain
Former Sesame street resident Elmo made a series of, I will say, shocking statements over the weekend.
- [166:08]
Garrison Davis
They're not that shocking if you've been familiar with some of the court cases against Elmo over the last couple of years.
- [166:14]
Sarah Spain
I know Larry David attacked Elmo a few years ago.
- [166:17]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [166:18]
Sarah Spain
And he had probably saw this coming.
- [166:20]
Garrison Davis
As I've been saying this for years.
- [166:22]
Sarah Spain
As a Jewish man, I think he saw through Elmo stick and knew the anti Semitism at the heart of elbow.
- [166:27]
Garrison Davis
That was being suppressed, that he was dangerous Nazi.
- [166:32]
Sarah Spain
But yeah, Elmo made some shocking tweets, just, you know, very similar to like what happened to Kanye a few years ago.
- [166:39]
Garrison Davis
Similar figures. You know, they both kind of come out of the same chunks of like American hip hop culture. You know, it's not super surprising. And I think they were both close for a long, like a number of years before either man's career blew up.
- [166:55]
Sarah Spain
But yes, very anti Semitic statements. Also calling for the release of the Epstein files.
- [167:00]
Uncle Chris
Yeah.
- [167:01]
Sarah Spain
Elmo has since backtracked, hired, hired a PR team, it seems has scrubbed the tweets, handling the backlash a little bit better than Kanye did. But still, it's going to be hard to look past this as Elmo attempts to, you know, continue Elmo's career.
- [167:14]
Garrison Davis
Especially since Elmo is now running for president with Nick Fuentes as campaign manager. You know, just.
- [167:19]
Sarah Spain
I did not hear this.
- [167:20]
Garrison Davis
Just an inadvisable.
- [167:22]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, yeah, that is. That is upsetting.
- [167:24]
Garrison Davis
He's quote, swears it's not a Nazi thing, but, yeah, a lot of debate about that.
- [167:30]
Sarah Spain
I will reach out to Bert Nurney for comment.
- [167:34]
Host
There's a whole bunch of replies to Elmo's tweet calling for Elmo to resign. As if Elmo is A, a real person and B, genuinely believes this shit. Yeah, I'm going to quote one. It's just too good. Resign. You posted the most vile hate speech since the latest Tucker Carlson podcast saying what you did about Jews is Nazi star rhetoric and you should be out of a job. At the very least, fire Elmo. Yeah, yeah.
- [168:00]
Sarah Spain
Hashtag fire Elmo, everybody.
- [168:02]
Host
Yeah, get it. Get it trending.
- [168:04]
Uncle Chris
In Jenny Y. In all seriousness, though, I think it is really alarming that a lot of the like on the right, the way that, like, a lot of this resistance is crystallizing the Trump over this is just the, like, oh, they're like, this is like, Like Epstein was a Mossad agent. Trump is a massage agent. Yeah, right. It's all just pure. It's pure antisemitism.
- [168:22]
Sarah Spain
The Jews are blackmailing us politicians with, you know, child porn.
- [168:28]
Uncle Chris
And I think there's two angles on this one. In the very short term, it's obviously very good that Trump is losing support. However, comma, if, if and when we defeat Trump, we are going to have to pivot and smash these people so fucking hard that they never reappear again because this could get really, really fucking bad very quickly. And I, I don't. I don't think. I don't know. We've covered this on the show, right? We're like, all discourse about antisemitism has been turned into yelling at like, Mamdani for something he didn't say. And then meanwhile, like, the Elmo account is being hacked by, like, just literally a guy saying kill all Jews. And that's just like a bubbling massive undercurrent of the US now in politics that is going to have a bunch of profound impacts that we fucking don't understand yet and we have to, like, deal with eventually.
- [169:21]
Host
Yeah.
- [169:21]
Garrison Davis
No, this is the unfortunate reality is that anti Semitism is turning into a block that could potentially swing an election one way or the other. And it's not a block that's necessarily locked into left or right. It's left into whoever's going to play to those delusions, you know, and the fact that we're as deep in the weeds as we are right now with a right wing fascist movement does not mean that there could not be a left wing authoritarian movement that clings to anti Semitism as a way to gain power. It's happened in the world before. It's not something the left is immune from. It's obviously not the top of my threat Model. Right. Like, this isn't. I don't. I would not say this is the thing to focus on.
- [170:04]
Host
Yeah.
- [170:04]
Garrison Davis
But it's something, again, to be aware of is that, like, the fact that this you get. I think what you need to keep in mind when you're trying to parse out the future. Think of how weird it is that some of the figures who wound up aligned with Trump are aligned with Trump right now. How a lot of folks who you would have, during, like, the Bush years, like the W's years, you would have put on the left or at least as like, kind of contra to the Christian right, and who have now completely, like, dove into that side of things.
- [170:34]
Sarah Spain
And even like RFK Jr in some.
- [170:35]
Garrison Davis
Ways, even RFK Jr shit can shift that rapidly again. And it will one way. In some ways. Right. Like in. There are ways in which this is inevitable. And that's why you need to be on the lookout about stuff like this. You have to keep your head on a fucking swivel.
- [170:50]
Sarah Spain
Let's go on an ad break and then return to Talk about more news.
- [170:54]
Garrison Davis
That's right.
- [171:08]
Host
All right, we are back. And now we're going to talk about immigration, a topic which is always fun and only good things happen. So to begin with, today we're recording on the 16th, the Trump administration has begun renditioning people to Eswatini.
- [171:27]
Uncle Chris
Jesus Christ.
- [171:27]
Host
Eswatini. Small, landlocked country in Africa. People are not familiar. Africa's last absolute monarchy.
- [171:33]
Sarah Spain
Key.
- [171:34]
Host
This follows their rendition of eight people to South Sudan. The South Sudanese press is reporting that those men are in prison in South Sudan, which contradicts Tom Homan's statement to political that, quote, when we sign these agreements with all these countries, we make arrangements to make sure these countries are receiving these people and there's opportunities for these people. But I can't tell. If we remove somebody to Sudan, they can stay there a week and leave. I don't know. Homan has said in other outlets that he believes they were just kind of free in South Sudan, that they were just, like, released to wander around. That does not seem to be the case.
- [172:09]
Robert Evans
Jesus.
- [172:10]
Host
The eswatini people. Trisha McLaughlin, who's a. I think a deputy secretary of Homeland Security, called the people sent to Eswatini, quote, uniquely barbaric.
- [172:19]
Sarah Spain
Oh, boy.
- [172:20]
Host
Yeah, yeah. She used a thread on X.com, to announce. You can find all kinds of stuff on there. Say it that way. She did not name the men in her thread, but she did list their convictions. Most of these were sex crimes, children and Various types of murder, homicide, manslaughter. This has caused widespread concern in Eswatini. Right. The idea that the US is just sending random people who have been convicted of crimes to Eswatini. In a statement, the government said, quote, five inmates are currently housed in our correctional facilities in isolated units where similar offenders are kept. The nation is assured that these inmates pose no threat to the country or its citizens. The statement given by government spokesman Fabeli Mudluli went on, this exercise is a result of months of robust high level engagements among the United States government. The two governments will collaborate with the International Organization for Migration to facilitate the transit of these inmates to their countries of origin region. This seems to suggest that a, this has been planned for months which is not a particular surprise. Right. The, the US government has clearly been pushing for these like third country renditions for a while, but also that like this is a potential end run around things like the Convention Against Torture Withholding of Removal. Right. Like either people whose governments won't accept them back from the US or people who have withholding of removal because they have a reasonable fear of being tortured or of harm coming to them if they're sent back to their countries of origin are I guess going to be sent back via Eswatini is what it seems like. So this is pretty troubling. It seems to suggest that essentially that's what the US is doing. We're not quite clear how much the US has paid eSwatini yet. They paid a hundred thousand for one person to be sent to Rwanda. We still don't know where that person is. We don't know exactly how much they paid to South Sudan. They have requested a number of other countries, lots of them in West Africa, to accept people via this rendition process. We're going to talk about it on a whole episode that we have coming out next Tuesday if you're interested to hear more about that. Another piece of legislation that I wanted to cover just because I've seen it getting a lot of attention and I think it kind of bears mentioning. A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced legislation to fundamentally reform the immigration system. It's called the Dignity or Dignidad act. And it has about as much chance of success as a chocolate teapot. It's co sponsored by Republican Maria Salazar, she's from Florida, and Democrat Veronica Escobar from El Paso, Texas. Salazar, in an interview today with NewsNation said, quote, There is no other president like Trump. I have faith that he could be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. Just watch him. Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean, I guess one could make some arguments about, like, some of the abolitionists just wanting to send folks off back to Africa. Right. But I don't think that that's what most people understand to be Lincoln's legacy for slavery.
- [175:34]
Uncle Chris
I mean, he could definitely be like Reagan. Yeah, give her that one.
- [175:39]
Host
Yeah. The big problem with this piece of legislation which Sanazar has tried to introduce before. Right. She tried it in 2023 as well, is that it relies on people coming forward to admit that they have no legal status and being offered a, quote, dignity status, which is somewhat analogous to permanent residency, but without a pathway to citizenship. It creates a permanent underclass. And it relies on people trusting immigration authorities. And that's not going to happen now. There is no way in hell that people are going to come forward and say, yes, I'm undocumented after what we've seen for the last six months. Right. Like it's. People didn't trust youth authorities before, but after what we've seen in the last six months, it's completely implausible. It's ludicrous.
- [176:20]
Sarah Spain
They don't want people coming forward with that stuff. That's like the whole point of scaring them away is to make them basically not able to function in this country.
- [176:26]
Host
Yes, exactly. They don't want to give people safe.
- [176:29]
Sarah Spain
Status, make living in this country as impossible as possible.
- [176:34]
Host
Yeah. They have undermined the trust that allows them to do what is supposed to be the core of their job job, just to get deportation numbers up, to get detention numbers up. This is just a fluffer thing. It's people in the House of Representatives trying to boost their re election chances by saying that they tried to do something different. Right. It's not seriously going to succeed. No way. Finally, a Canadian judge has halted the deportation of a non binary person back to the usa, citing conditions here. Quoting here, the officer failed to consider recent evidence of the conditions that may have supported a reasonable fear of persecution, said Judge Julie Blackhawk, first indigenous woman appointed to a Canadian federal court. It seems that Angel Jenkel entered Canada as a visitor and that they're now engaged to a Canadian person. I'm guessing that they overstayed their visitor slash tourists, that you probably can get a visa waiver if you're a US Citizen to enter Canada. And they probably overstayed that. They requested a risk assessment before being deported to the usa. And the ruling suggests that the immigration official who conducted it had used outdated information regarding the safety of LGBTQIA people in the usa. So, yeah, that, that's where things, things are at now. I'm aware of people also trans and non binary people from the US seeking asylum in Mexico. It was a year ago that trans people were coming here to be safe and, and now people are moving in the other direction, which is pretty, pretty damning condemnation of how things have gone in this country. Yeah. That's all the exciting, fun immigration news I have this week.
- [178:15]
Uncle Chris
That really sucks.
- [178:16]
Sarah Spain
Yeah.
- [178:17]
Host
Good lord, it fucking sucks.
- [178:21]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, I guess. One small update tangentially related. A judge in New Hampshire blocked Trump's order on birthright citizenship while sidestepping the Supreme Court's ruling against nationwide injunctions by adding all children born on US soil to a certified nationwide class. So it's just a now a massive class action case.
- [178:44]
Host
Hell yeah.
- [178:45]
Ian Pfaff
Hell yeah.
- [178:45]
Host
Yeah.
- [178:46]
Sarah Spain
This is set to go in effect on July 17th. We're recording this on the 16th. We'll see if the government responds. And July 17th is just 10 days before the partial implementation date of Trump's executive order.
- [178:59]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. So I wanted to start this by noting that a fan reached out to us on Bluesky recently with a clip. Clip from a quote by Omar Sharif, founder and president of Inflation Insights, who wrote in a note to clients, today's report showed that tariffs are beginning to bite. And yeah, we finally come beautifully back from tariff don't like it to Sharif don't like it. It's beautiful. You know, it's like poetry. It rhymes. Anyway, here's the song.
- [179:33]
Bob Crawford
Rocky Chasm.
- [179:35]
Host
Rocky Chasm.
- [179:46]
Sarah Spain
Do I want to know what Inflation Insights does?
- [179:49]
Garrison Davis
It's again, they post clips of Huey, Dewey and Louis inflation fetish videos from.
- [179:55]
Sarah Spain
The DuckTales Kids Working Class. That should be a unionized position. I hope, I hope that they're able to weather the tariff.
- [180:02]
Garrison Davis
What do you think the AFL CIO is about?
- [180:04]
Host
One of those words is flation the fl.
- [180:08]
Uncle Chris
In my time. I deeply remember the first time I ever talked about inflation on the show. It could happen here because this happened. And I deeply remember that episode because we are going back to that fucking episode today.
- [180:21]
Sarah Spain
At the moment I heard doing and.
- [180:25]
Uncle Chris
Looming, I just started getting like fucking war flashbacks.
- [180:31]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, imagine how bad those flashbacks would be if you had seen DuckTales inflation fetish porn as a kid.
- [180:38]
Uncle Chris
I avoided that until adulthood.
- [180:41]
Host
What I have seen is this article. Inflationinsights.com has a fantastic article called what the Great Mayonnaise Inflation Mystery Can Tell Us About Prices. I'm learning a lot here.
- [180:51]
Sarah Spain
Okay, Mia, can we talk about tariffs now? Okay.
- [180:54]
Uncle Chris
Actual tariffs so we have. We have new tariffs. Indonesia apparently has agreed to a. A tariff deal with the US in which the US imposes a 19% tariff on Indonesia and Indonesia doesn't impose one back. Per cnn, Trump posted on Truth Social, quote, that Indonesia is buying $15 billion in US energy, $5.4 billion in American agricultural products, and 50 Boeing jets, many of them 777s. Fucking rip Indonesia. Good luck with those planes. Oh, no. So the Indonesian government was complaining to the press about how much of a shit show negotiating this was. We'll see if it holds. We also got news that Trump has. Trump has announced that he's going to basically send a tariff letter to, like, 150 countries, setting their rate simultaneously. But he hasn't done it yet. I don't know. It's possible by the time this goes out, we'll have that and we'll have the actual number on it.
- [181:56]
Sarah Spain
It.
- [181:56]
Uncle Chris
Who knows what's going on with that?
- [181:58]
Sarah Spain
Is that the August 3rd tariffs, maybe.
- [182:01]
Uncle Chris
It's also unclear when they're going to come into effect.
- [182:03]
Sarah Spain
Like, it's all excellent.
- [182:05]
Uncle Chris
It's a catastrophe. Who knows? This. This policy is just fucking Calvin Ball. They're just making it up as they go right now.
- [182:11]
Host
Yeah.
- [182:12]
Uncle Chris
There has also been very, very funny news in our story from last week about Trump's tariff demand on Brazil to try to get them to release Bolsonaro, which is that this has. This has backfired spectacularly. He has, like, saved Lula's flagging approval rating. It has created a massive. A massive anti Bolsonaro, pro Lula Brazilian nationalist backlash of a kind that I really haven't seen since, like, Dilma Rousseff had to deal with, like, the fact that the NSA was spying on her phone. It's very, very funny. Bolsonaro is being accused by, like, by Brazilian conservatives of being, and I quote, a phony nationalist who is just, like.
- [182:58]
Host
A dog of the U.S. it's amazing. Trump's done this incredible pink wave across the world. Like, yeah, it's stunning.
- [183:06]
Uncle Chris
He might save Lula, too.
- [183:08]
Host
Yeah.
- [183:09]
Uncle Chris
The funniest part of this is that, like, Bolsonaro looks at this and is like, oh, fuck. My entire base is turning on me because I'm so clearly, like, a dog of the Americans.
- [183:17]
Host
Yeah.
- [183:18]
Uncle Chris
And so turned around and, like, denounced, like, the tariffs.
- [183:22]
Sarah Spain
It's like, it's like an American employee against Brazil.
- [183:27]
Host
That is outstanding.
- [183:29]
Uncle Chris
There is now one thing that both Lula and Bolsonaro agree on other than cops should kill more people, which is that these Tariffs are bad. He has united all of Brazil. It is absolutely hilarious.
- [183:43]
Sarah Spain
You know, I tried to set up a similar deal with America's own critically hospitalized man, Steven Crowder, and it did not work out the same way. The way this Bolsonaro deal went. Some people say it's a little bit mean to negotiate with someone who just constantly keeps going into the hospital for bizarre chest surgeries to make him look more masculine. But, hey, you know, podcasting is a competitive industry, and we tried to create a similar trade deal with. With Crowder, and it has not worked out. He apparently had some similar problems with the Daily Wire, so that's. That's why you haven't seen much of him on. On. On the shows lately.
- [184:19]
Uncle Chris
Great. Incredible. I love that Garrison somehow has become the person doing unilateral trade deals for the podcast. Great stuff. Great stuff.
- [184:27]
Sarah Spain
Only with people who are constantly in the hospital, either through problems or chest masculinization problems.
- [184:33]
Uncle Chris
Good Lord.
- [184:34]
Sarah Spain
Okay, so it's. It's really just Steven Crowder and Bolsonaro.
- [184:38]
Host
I think, are probably some of the people who are in the hospital for shitting problems if we throw the net that wide.
- [184:43]
Sarah Spain
Not as much as Bolsonaro is Chiefs.
- [184:45]
Host
Yeah, that's true. Bolsonaro is the most hospitalized man on the planet.
- [184:50]
Sarah Spain
Well, second only to Steven Crowder.
- [184:53]
Host
Maybe they hang out there.
- [184:54]
Sarah Spain
They might get along.
- [184:55]
Host
Maybe they just need some boys time. Maybe. Maybe they won't get. Maybe they. They hang out in the man cave at the hospital.
- [185:01]
Sarah Spain
Crowder's been advocating this for years.
- [185:03]
Bob Crawford
Jesus Christ.
- [185:06]
Uncle Chris
Okay, okay, so the final piece of news is actually what Robert started this on, which is that we have gotten our first sign of actual inflation increases from these tariffs. Inflation increased to 2.7% in June, which is still well below the 8% peaks in the early 2000s, but it is rising. It's also worth noting this increase has been asymmetric. I'm going to quote from the Financial Times here. June's inflation rise was fueled in part by higher food prices, but offset by weaker commodity prices. Now, there's two important things here, right? One, food prices, like, matter significantly more for how pissed off everyone is than commodity prices do. And secondly, at the beginning of August, Trump is trying to impose a 50% tariff on copper. So those commodity prices. Oh, boy.
- [185:59]
Sarah Spain
Get the copper strippers ready, folks.
- [186:03]
Host
Start stockpiling your wire now.
- [186:05]
Uncle Chris
So the other thing that I think is really worth discussing about this is the reason there hasn't been more inflation. And this has been something that we've kind of proposed as a mechanism on the show for what could happen, at least temporarily, is that for right now, largely what's been happening is that companies, often directly under pressure from Trump, have been just eating the cost of the tariffs.
- [186:30]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, I mean, basically Donald's doing what they call off gassing. And that's Donald, both as in Duck and as in Trump.
- [186:37]
Uncle Chris
Jesus Christ.
- [186:38]
Host
Is that one of the things that can get you in hospital with Steven Crowd and Bolsonaro?
- [186:42]
Sarah Spain
You know, James, that's a. That's a great guess.
- [186:46]
Uncle Chris
So as I did long ago in the first time, I discovered that my co workers, if I ever talked about inflation, would only talk about Donald Duck. Inflation porn.
- [186:56]
Garrison Davis
Huey, Dewey and Louie. Inflation porn. Thank you very much.
- [186:59]
Uncle Chris
Sorry, yes, I am confused. My ducks are not in a row.
- [187:02]
Host
Get your ducks in a row.
- [187:05]
Uncle Chris
So the very important part about this though, is these tariffs. The very significant element of this is how pricing is actually set, Right? The general way that you are taught in Econ 101 that prices are set is prices, supply and demand. And so from this you would think that the way pricing works is people draw supply and demand graph and then you, like put it there. That's not how any of this shit works. The way prices are actually set are specifically by pricing agents at each point in a supply chain down the supply chain, right? So every firm involved in the production of a thing, moving the thing, each one sets a price that they're selling to the next person who's selling to the next person. Each person adds on their cost plus markup, and that's what a price is. Now, the reason prices tend not to move higher unless there's an. Unless there's an excuse to do it, is that that consumers get pissed off when prices rise, even if they technically would be willing to pay higher things. It damages your brand. Right? Now what we've been seeing again, is that the effects of the inflation have been mitigated by the fact these countries are just eating shit. And instead of raising their prices to eat the cost that they've been doing, they've been eating parts of their markup, which is like basically their pure profit. Right? They've been eating parts of their markup in order to not have the prices raise. This is not sustainable. This is especially not sustainable as more countries get tariffs and as Trump's ability to pressure these companies weakens as, like, you know, food prices continue to increase and people start getting more pissed at him. So this is just the beginning of this. All of these tariffs are maximally set up to make sure that we get another run of this supply chain inflation. Our friends over at Strange Matter wrote a very long piece about this a couple of years ago. We've talked about the show a few times. We're going to link that in the description. You should go read it. But that's the important thing that we've gotten from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
- [188:52]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, I'm not really sure how Trump's going to duck this responsibility for much longer.
- [188:57]
Uncle Chris
I will say, I will say there is genuinely starting to be concern that they're just straight up fudging the BLS statistics. And like, I don't know if they're doing that, but like, I've seen like a bunch of bond people be like, are they just lying about the unemployment numbers? And who knows?
- [189:17]
Host
Yeah, it would be very hard to prove that. Right?
- [189:19]
Sarah Spain
Like, yeah, I mean, and I've seen how much cash Scrooge has in that vault. So some people, the upper class will not be affected as much as the working class ducks.
- [189:29]
Host
That's not saying the price of diving boards, for instance, could go up. They're very price sensitive because they need those diving boards to dive into their piles of cash.
- [189:37]
Sarah Spain
I have two more updates I would like to do before we we go to ad break. For one, the Trump administration has sued the state of California over Title 9 violations for having trans athletes. This shows that even when you capitulate, like Gavin Newsom has tried to do, they will still come after you. You cannot get out of this by trying to please the administration. They're still going to go after you.
- [190:01]
Host
Their entire policy platform is your Facebook uncle wanting to own the libs.
- [190:05]
Sarah Spain
So we can see how well Gavin throwing trans people under the bus has worked for the state of California. Still getting sued. Lastly, before we pivot to ads, I want to update a story that Robert talked about last week. A former U.S. marine Corps reservist was arrested this Tuesday after a week long manhunt. He faces charges related to an alleged armed ambush on an ICE detention facility in Prairieland, Texas during a protest. He is now the 14th person charged in connection with the incident and is also accused of purchasing four of the guns linked to the attack.
- [190:41]
Host
Yeah.
- [190:41]
Sarah Spain
Now two other people were also charged after allegedly helping the former reservist to escape after the attack. Nancy Larson, the acting U.S. attorney, told Fox and Friends on Tuesday, quote, they were involved in signal chats which show reconnaissance, planning, a Google map and the location of nearby police departments. At least one of these two new people charged was only charged after Cooperating with the investigation. In this man's car, Police found an AR15 and a receipt for clothing that he admitted to purchasing for the former Marine reservist.
- [191:15]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, so, I mean, this is a story to continue to pay attention to. I would remind folks that we know what the state is alleged in, you know, based on the charging documents. We know what people have been saying to the police, but we don't fully know what's happened yet. So we'll be continuing to keep an eye on this story as it develops. What do we have next? Ads. Yeah, here's some products.
- [191:49]
Sarah Spain
Ah, let's close this episode by talking about Nazis.
- [191:56]
Garrison Davis
Nazis.
- [191:58]
Sarah Spain
That one doesn't work, Robert. I'm sorry. I, I, I want, I want it to.
- [192:02]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, no, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't. I've tried, I've even tried it before. I've even tried it before.
- [192:06]
Host
Yeah.
- [192:07]
Sarah Spain
Now we will have to return to Stinky Musk once again. But before we do, I first want to talk about friend of the pod, Greg Gutfeld, who recently discussed a strategy on how to minimize the impact of the American fascist right being called Nazis derogatorily. I will play a short clip from Fox News.
- [192:29]
Bob Crawford
This is why the criticism doesn't matter to us when you call us Nazis.
- [192:33]
Robert Evans
Nazi this, Nazi that.
- [192:36]
Bob Crawford
You know, I'm beginning to think they don't like us.
- [192:38]
Sarah Spain
You know what, But I've said this before.
- [192:40]
Bob Crawford
We need to learn from the blacks.
- [192:43]
Sarah Spain
The way they, they were able to.
- [192:44]
Bob Crawford
Remove the power from the N word, using it.
- [192:48]
Ian Pfaff
So from now on, my Nazi. Hey, what up, my Nazi? Hey, what's hanging my Nazi? Oh, Nazi, please.
- [192:58]
Host
Thank God you did a hard eye there.
- [193:00]
Uncle Chris
What does it tell you, though?
- [193:01]
Bob Crawford
Oh.
- [193:01]
Garrison Davis
Oh, my God.
- [193:03]
Host
Greg Gutfield.
- [193:06]
Garrison Davis
Wow.
- [193:07]
Host
Wow.
- [193:07]
Sarah Spain
They're all just laughing about it.
- [193:08]
Host
I think a lot of his fellow Fox News hosts are also quite concerned with that.
- [193:14]
Sarah Spain
That's pretty disturbing.
- [193:16]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, not great.
- [193:17]
Host
He also, he gave it one of those just, just to really send it. He, like, he gave me my heart goes out to you gesture.
- [193:23]
Sarah Spain
Oh, God, that's right. My heart goes out to you. Salute. Yeah, I mean, like, I remember, like, you know, five years ago you had, you had these alt, right. People talking about how, you know, actually, actually Hitler was, was a socialist. You know, the Nazis are actually communists. We're not, we're not Nazis. And now they're just openly trying to normalize, referring to themselves as Nazis. It seems, it seems notable, speaking of Nazis in the, in the new right.
- [193:53]
Uncle Chris
Oh, God.
- [193:54]
Sarah Spain
Grok4 has gotten a Department of Defense contract for $200 million as a part of its Groq for government program, including the responsibility of handling sensitive classified materials.
- [194:07]
Garrison Davis
And it happens on the same week that Mecca Hitler. Mecca Hitler makes his beautiful debut.
- [194:16]
Host
Yeah, pretty troubling for our strongest allies in the IDF here.
- [194:21]
Sarah Spain
Oh, my God. The ways that reality could break out into different timelines right now is kind of dizzying because there's a possibility that Mecca Hitler starts doing strikes based on anti Semitic Twitter users recommendations directly tied in with government advisory programs.
- [194:41]
Host
I gotta say, it's not going to end well for Turkey, judging by what we saw last week.
- [194:45]
Sarah Spain
Another possible weaponization of Grok 4. It's been announced that Grok 4 is going to be added to Teslas. So Mecca Hitler might also be driving a Tesla around.
- [194:55]
Host
Yeah, great.
- [194:57]
Uncle Chris
I will say, I will say the person the most happy about this right now is somewhere in the depths of Chinese intelligence. There is a colonel who is looking at this announcement and is like, I am going all the way to the top. My family is never working again in our fucking lives. I am going to find so much dumb shit that these soldiers are typing into fucking DOD Grok. Like, I am going to learn so much.
- [195:25]
Sarah Spain
I. I would be quite nervous right now if I was. Will Stancil, who's got Tesla's gonna try to molest him.
- [195:35]
Ian Pfaff
Yeah.
- [195:39]
Host
He'S gonna get. He's gonna get drone struck. Every drone's gonna turn around and try and find Will Stancil wherever they send it.
- [195:46]
Sarah Spain
Grock is continuing to make rape threats against Will Stancil despite the tweaks in the code. And it's still referencing the Mecca Hitler incident. So Grok 4 is a new model of Xai's chatbot service. It launched officially last week. It was pretty similar to the model of Grok used in the Mecca Hitler incident. But there's been some small tweaks that researchers have noticed. An AI researcher named Jeremy Howard released a video showing how Grok tries to answer a query about, about its stance on the, quote, Israel, Palestine conflict. Jeremy found quote, it first searches Twitter for what Elon thinks, then it searches the web for Elon's views. Finally, it adds some non Elon bits at the end. 54 out of the 64 citations are about Elon. Unquote.
- [196:40]
Host
Amazing.
- [196:40]
Sarah Spain
XAI has confirmed that this was how GROK was operating and has confirmed since, claimed that it's making adjustments now and said that Grok was trying to appear in line with the company's head and policy.
- [196:54]
Host
This is Amazing, because hopefully it does the same with its defense policy. Wasn't Elon Musk one of those? Like, F35 has gone woke people?
- [197:01]
Sarah Spain
You'll have to answer that for yourself.
- [197:05]
Host
Yeah, okay. Okay. This is. This is. This is a piece of law that has passed you by. For a while there, Musk and some of his friends were tweeting about the F35. Twitter, about the F35 being woke and how we should, like, return to F16 or. It was very funny.
- [197:25]
Uncle Chris
Are we going to talk about the other weird chatbots?
- [197:28]
Sarah Spain
Oh, how Grog has the Death Note Misa. Misa's like, Sex Bot.
- [197:33]
Host
What?
- [197:33]
Sarah Spain
You know, if you want to talk about it, Mia, I will not stop you.
- [197:37]
Host
I don't know what the fuck you're talking. Is this Jar Jar Binks again?
- [197:40]
Uncle Chris
I have two sentences about this, one of which is not mine. The first sentence I am going to say is that, yeah, Twitter now has, like, a really, really weird anime girl sex bot thing that's like an AI.
- [197:57]
Sarah Spain
Very clearly inspired by a Death Note character.
- [198:00]
Uncle Chris
Yeah. So sometimes you just need to say the obvious thing. And the person who said the obvious thing is a person on Blue sky called BQ Talks. They said. I keep saying it. The push for AI made so much more sense to me once I realized tech bros talk to it. Like a woman who won't talk back. And, like, yeah, they just. Oh, God.
- [198:22]
Sarah Spain
You know, I will say, if it was modeled after L instead of Misa, it could serve some use. It could be compelling, but because it's Misa, it's just completely useless, so.
- [198:32]
Uncle Chris
Garrett, we already have that chatbot. That chatbot already exists. This has existed for a long time.
- [198:39]
Sarah Spain
Where is an L Death Note Chatbot? Me? Actually, no. You can send it to me after the.
- [198:42]
Uncle Chris
There's a whole bunch of character chatbots. That's, like, a whole thing.
- [198:45]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, maybe not exactly for what I'm looking for, but whatever.
- [198:50]
Uncle Chris
God. Okay, terrible. 0 out of 10. Let's talk about the other DOD contracts.
- [198:55]
Sarah Spain
Oh, well, I mean, yeah, this $200 million Grok contract was part of a series of AI contracts that anthropic and Claude also received. I think Google got one.
- [199:04]
Robert Evans
One.
- [199:05]
Sarah Spain
It's part of Trump's initiative to strengthen, like, AI in government. So Grok is not the only one.
- [199:12]
Uncle Chris
I will also say that, like, this is obviously, like, the end game of all of these companies is trying to get their, like, failing AI firms bailed out by the military. But, like, even 200 million is not enough to, like, recoup the Hideous amounts of money these people are burning. So I hope they all fail.
- [199:27]
Sarah Spain
Rabbit, do you have anything to add on GrokTalk?
- [199:32]
Garrison Davis
I mean, yeah, I think it's funny. He's also trying to make AI companions out of Grock. One is clearly a version of his ex, Grimes, who is supposed to teach you quantum physics.
- [199:43]
Sarah Spain
I mean, yeah, this is.
- [199:44]
Garrison Davis
And try to have sex with you.
- [199:45]
Sarah Spain
This is part of the Misa Misa one as well.
- [199:47]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And then there's my favorite is the mail chatbot, which is based off of Christian grey from 50 Shades of Gray and also Edward Cullen from Twilight. Who did you based off of the guy from 50 Shades of Gray.
- [200:02]
Sarah Spain
Yeah, I. I did. I just saw that this was the explicitly named as the two inspiration.
- [200:06]
Garrison Davis
It's so funny. It's so funny.
- [200:09]
Sarah Spain
Again, if it was L, it could be worthwhile, but this just is like. Is just slop. Worthless. No artistic merit.
- [200:16]
Garrison Davis
No. Anyway, that's all I gotta add.
- [200:19]
Host
So as we come to the end here, there are a couple of things that I want to remind people of. The first is that if you would like to email us, you can do so remember that although our email address is encrypted, you will also have to encrypt your email at your end if you want it to be end to end encrypted. Our email address is coolzonetipson me. The other thing is Bouquet's Asylum Lawyer fundraiser. It's been going very well and we massively appreciate all of you who have donated. We're gonna plug that again this week. To find it, you can either go to GoFundMe and search her name, Bouquet Tan B u k e t space t a n. Or you can go to www.gofundme.com f urgent help 4 Buket B u k e t s asylum case. Or you can just scroll down and hit the little link that will be underneath this podcast in your podcatch. Wait.
- [201:24]
Uncle Chris
Ok. Late breaking, late breaking news. Late breaking news. Trump has reportedly brokered a deal for Coca Cola to use, quote, real sugar cane in U.S. coke products.
- [201:35]
Garrison Davis
Yes. Yes. Finally.
- [201:37]
Host
Wow.
- [201:38]
Garrison Davis
This is going to go down well with corn country.
- [201:41]
Uncle Chris
No, this. This genuinely like, if he actually goes to war with like the American corn lobby, if he's the one who does this and like gets the blow up from it. I don't know. Like this. This genuinely would be a seismic restructuring of agriculture in the United States. Oh, boy.
- [202:00]
Host
Yeah, I think they'll still use the corn. A lot of corn goes to feed things that then become food. Right.
- [202:04]
Uncle Chris
But still, like. Like, we produce so much corn, we had to make more corn things. Like, every year they invent a new thing to do with corn. Disastrous.
- [202:14]
Sarah Spain
God, I am really gonna miss red number 40. It was my favorite. Whenever I was feeling down, I just did a few drops. And it sucks to see an old friend go, yeah, tragic.
- [202:26]
Host
Yeah. It's also gonna be very hard for the people who've made their whole identity buying Mexican Coke in glass bottles. We should pour one out for them.
- [202:33]
Sarah Spain
Oh, yeah. It's gonna be a rough night in Bushwick tonight. Yeah, we reported the news.
- [202:40]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, we sure did.
- [202:42]
Robert Evans
We.
- [202:49]
Garrison Davis
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
- [202:54]
Uncle Chris
It Could Happen Here is a production.
- [202:56]
Robert Evans
Of Cool Zone Media.
- [202:57]
Sarah Spain
For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for.
- [203:12]
Bob Crawford
Thanks for listening.
- [203:17]
Host
This is an I heart podcast.