0:01

Also Media.

0:08

Greetings podcast Into theis. It's

0:10

me James, a man who has

0:13

commenced his one man war against

0:16

cutter airlines, who detained

0:19

me against my will for most of the last

0:21

two days in a very small part

0:24

of a very big plane. See

0:26

there's a there's.

0:27

A You know, airlines

0:30

from Middle Eastern countries are

0:32

are usually like the best airlines

0:35

are like Royal Jordanian and the Air

0:37

Immirates. If it's if it's

0:39

owned by a king, it's usually

0:41

a safe bet. But but

0:43

cutter airways, that's what they say about England

0:45

breaks that mold, proudly breaks that

0:48

mold. Yeah, yeah,

0:50

fuck me.

0:51

One of the one of the less pleasant experiences

0:53

available to a human being that doesn't end in death

0:56

is a thirty six hour trip from

0:58

Kingston to now in California,

1:01

which see I've just enjoyed.

1:04

I always enjoyed those trips back from Air

1:06

Emirates because when you're on the Air Emirates

1:08

flight, if you ask the steward

1:11

or whatever to you,

1:13

if you tell him, hey, I would like eight

1:16

shots of vodka and four glasses

1:18

of orange juice, He'll just give it to you, like,

1:21

not even a question, not even a question.

1:23

And so have I vomited

1:25

on a couple of Air Emirates flights?

1:27

Yes?

1:27

Is it always a good time? Probably you

1:30

don't remember. No, No,

1:33

yeah, I see.

1:34

I was at the point of frustration where like and

1:36

I'm as an english Man,

1:39

if if I've become frustrated and drunk, then

1:41

my instinct is to fight everyone or

1:44

throw bottles, and I thought that would probably result

1:47

in further detention, so

1:49

decided against decided against becoming

1:51

bladdered. Or it could have started

1:54

singing. I guess that's the other option available to

1:56

me that fits my

1:58

culture. Yeah, so we're

2:00

not here to talk about things that I like

2:02

to do in my free time, as much as I would

2:04

love that, but we are here to talk about

2:07

things that I have been seeing in

2:10

my worktime. When I was traveling to

2:13

Kurdistan last couple of weeks.

2:15

Kurdistan, for people who are not familiar, is

2:18

a big area, the area where Kurdish

2:20

people live, and it spans

2:22

several countries. The areas I went, we're

2:24

in Iraq and in Syria

2:28

or in that it's not really in I guess

2:30

Syrian regime territory. But if you look

2:32

on the.

2:32

Mout northeast Syria known as Rojava.

2:34

The other two parts that are generally considered

2:36

part of Kurdistan are a chunk, big chunk

2:39

of southern Iran and also a big chunk of

2:41

southern Turkey.

2:43

Yeah, so Java just means

2:45

west. I think Roja lat is east

2:47

eastern Kurdistan. So

2:50

yeah, I've spent the last several

2:53

last week and change in that area.

2:56

And while I was there, the

2:58

Turkish state began and a massive

3:02

drone bombing campaign, which

3:04

is what we are gathered here today to discuss.

3:07

So for people who are not familiar,

3:10

it's four years almost

3:12

to this drone bombing campaign started

3:14

almost four years to the day since Turkey's

3:16

invasion of what they call the M four Strip.

3:19

So that's the area around Surakania and

3:22

tell Abayad, we've talked

3:24

about that before on the Podka, So if you want to know more

3:26

about that, you can go back and listen

3:28

to it. It's the area along

3:30

the border, one of the areas on the border

3:33

between Turkey and Syria. And

3:36

as people will know, Syria

3:39

is a country that has had a long

3:41

and terrible civil war, which they've heard

3:43

about in lots of episodes, right, and we're

3:45

not talking about that today, so much as we're talking

3:48

about the Turkish

3:50

state's use of drones to bomb,

3:52

what people generally in this country will know

3:54

as for a Java, right, So just

3:57

to give them statistics off the top, this

4:00

is the fourth year in a row of aggression

4:03

at this time of year, right, So

4:05

there have been two land attacks

4:09

I think Operation Olive Branch and Operation

4:11

with someone called peace Spring, and

4:14

then two years the last two years there have

4:16

been drone strikes at this time of year,

4:18

this time of year, it seems

4:21

very hard not to conclude that these are attempts

4:23

to destroy civilian infrastructure

4:25

and make it very hard for people in the

4:28

cold months of the year. So

4:30

right now, around two million people in

4:33

north east Syria are going to be without power

4:35

and without water. And I experienced

4:37

some of that when I was there, and the places

4:39

I stayed will run off generators,

4:43

so you'd have like intermittent power, you'd have power

4:45

from it and then they'd put some petrum in the generator

4:47

and the power will go down, or the generator would

4:50

have a little tantrum and the power would go down. But

4:53

generally I had a lot better access to power

4:55

that some people had a lot better access to water.

4:58

So as I was traveling around, I noticed some people didn't have

5:00

access to to like running water, right they can't turn

5:02

on the tap and get water. Obviously

5:04

that's a massive problem. It's something I

5:06

think like as people are listening to this,

5:10

Israel is also bombing the shit

5:12

out of Gaza, the

5:14

whole of the Gaza Strip, and

5:17

the US recently intervened to ensure

5:19

that people there have access to water, and

5:22

they have done very little in the

5:24

case of protecting people in North

5:27

and East Syria. Right. So across

5:30

this drone campaign, forty eight people

5:32

have died, and in the

5:35

worst of I guess the highest casualty of producing

5:37

strike was one that happened

5:39

while I was there, twenty nine internal

5:43

security forces. Sometimes you'll see

5:45

it translated as police, but I don't think

5:47

that's quite accurate, like that they don't do cop shit,

5:49

Like they're not there to you

5:52

know, like arrescue for parking in the wrong place,

5:54

or and they do the things that cops do. They're

5:56

there largely as like internal security

6:00

to the various non

6:02

state armed groups that are in the area and state armed groups.

6:04

I guess that they're operating in the area that would make things

6:06

dangerous for people living there. So these

6:08

particular essays were anti narcotics

6:11

essays. And again why I'm

6:13

grounding this and what they do is because they're not the people

6:16

who like send you to jail for the rest of your life

6:18

for like having an ounce of weed. They're

6:20

the people whose job is to prevent

6:23

the trading cap to gone will

6:26

people know what people know what captagon is.

6:28

Absolutely yeah, it's it's it's

6:31

it's one of the drug I mean, it's that when you when you

6:33

hear about drug interdiction forces, like

6:35

like police in Rojava, they're going after CAPTI

6:37

Gone. It's a big chunk

6:39

of both what kept isis it's it's the it's

6:41

the purveten, you know, the meth that Nazis

6:44

took that for isis right, and

6:46

it was also a big chunk of how they got their funding was

6:48

was moving and the a sad regime also gets

6:50

a piece of a lot of the captivegone

6:52

trade.

6:53

It continues to fund these largely

6:56

these like it's the mist insurgent groups right

6:58

in the area because it's small and it high

7:00

value, and like Roberts also

7:02

to give it to their fighters. This is very

7:04

common, like around the world, We discuss

7:07

this in Miandmar too, right, that the military

7:09

there take something else called yabba. But

7:12

these kind of meth derivatives are

7:14

very common and they're very commonly sold.

7:16

That's how a lot of these non state armed groups get

7:18

money to buy stuff. Right. So when

7:21

we're talking about drug

7:24

interdiction, it's not done

7:26

in a vacuum. It's not done because they

7:29

think that necessarily that drugs are bad

7:31

or that you know, there's some kind of moral failure that comes

7:34

from the use of these substances.

7:36

It's because it allows funding for groups

7:38

that are trying to kill people on

7:41

the ground. So like interdicting the drugs is part

7:43

of an anti terrorism operation that allows people

7:45

to live safely, which is what they deserve

7:48

after ten plus years of war in that

7:50

area. So twenty

7:53

nine people is a lot of people, right, twenty nine

7:55

anti narcotics assay issues is a lot of

7:57

the people who do that job. It's going to make it

7:59

signific currently harder for

8:02

them to continue doing that job, which means it's going to make

8:04

it significantly easier for those armed

8:06

groups to get funding. Right. It's also

8:09

so while I was there, there was a massive funeral

8:11

for these people right, every town, every

8:14

settlement across where Java

8:17

has lost somebody in that strike,

8:19

right, So in Kambishloh, in

8:22

Kabani, in Alhasaka,

8:25

like all these places had big funerals because

8:27

you know, three or four or ten people came

8:29

from that town, and

8:31

like that's I saw a little girl like

8:34

going to her dad's funeral, right, like a little girl

8:36

holding a picture of her dad. And it's pretty

8:38

fucked up. Like it's hard for that not to affect you,

8:41

especially as like these people

8:43

weren't fighting anyone, they weren't

8:45

attacking anyone, right, they were just

8:48

they were taking a training. They were taking an anti narcotics

8:50

training at night, and sixty of them

8:52

were gathering. It's building. Twenty nine were killed, twenty

8:54

eight rain injured. And it's in the sort

8:57

of furthest northeast part

9:00

of northern Eassyria, but around a town

9:02

called Derek, which is on the

9:04

board of at al Malkay. Derek.

9:06

Yeah, probably my pronunciation is asked

9:09

al Malachaia might say on the map if

9:11

you're looking at a Google map, so you're trying to work out what it is.

9:14

Lots of these places. The reason they will have two names

9:17

is cored edition and Arabic.

9:18

Right.

9:19

So, like under the previous Sad

9:21

regime, like Arabic was the sort

9:23

of language that people were enforced

9:25

to speak and use, and now under

9:29

the self administration, people tend to use Kurdish,

9:31

and they tend to use a Latin

9:33

script as opposed to an Arabic script. Right, So

9:35

that's why you'll see two names very often you're looking

9:38

on a map, But like twenty

9:40

nine is only you know, there's nineteen

9:42

other people, mostly civilians,

9:44

right, who were killed, and two

9:47

million people are now living

9:49

without power, without water and

9:52

without these basic services, which in

9:54

turn will result in more death. Right,

9:57

more people will die because they

10:00

don't have access to those things which are life sustaining,

10:02

right, old people, young people, sick people. Both

10:05

things are the very basics

10:07

of sustaining human life, and so

10:11

without them, things are going to get a lot harder. I

10:14

want to talk a little bit about like where these drone

10:17

strikes happened, because

10:19

largely aside from the one of

10:21

their age, they weren't at like

10:23

large groups of people or buildings. Instead,

10:27

they were like deliberately targeting infrastructure.

10:30

So of the ones that I

10:32

saw and the ones that I read about, they

10:35

targeted like an electricity substation in

10:37

one case, they targeted a

10:40

lot of water facilities, right, like water

10:42

pumping stations, et cetera, that allow

10:44

people to get water, a cooking gas

10:47

plant, which it's

10:49

pretty obvious what that does, right, It allows people to get bottles

10:51

of gas to cook their food, and

10:55

a lot of oil in destructures. So I saw a

10:57

few of those called

10:59

like donkeys, you know, the things that go

11:01

up and down, yeah, using.

11:04

I don't know the word, but the little crane things.

11:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the like the the

11:09

things you can see if you drive through Bakersfield.

11:12

I'm sure there's a name.

11:13

Yeah. Are they oiled derricks? Yeah?

11:17

Someone someone googled the name of the nodding

11:20

dog they pumps jack?

11:21

Is that no?

11:24

Yeah, that's that's the

11:26

first sounds like like

11:28

a dude who goes to the gym a lot, Yeah,

11:30

broke and pump jecked.

11:31

I mean it is called the an

11:34

oil donkey as well. So you were, yeah,

11:37

nodding donkey pumps. Yeah's thought

11:39

they were noding donkeys. Okay, yeah, that's that's

11:41

that's a phrase we're going with. So

11:44

you could see a lot of these that were like knocked over on their

11:46

side, right that had been drawn struck, and then

11:49

you could see others that were just knocked out because

11:51

the power to them had been knocked out. So obviously

11:54

that's not only a major revenue source, but

11:56

also like that is how people in the region

11:59

get fuel, right, so like it's

12:01

going to be harder for them to get diesels,

12:03

going to be harder for them to drive around. People already

12:07

don't drive around a lot because a lot of the drone

12:09

strikes on people

12:12

in the Yepagay Yepja, so that the

12:14

People's Defense Forces and Women's Defense Forces,

12:17

lots of drun strikes have happened when those people are driving

12:20

their cars. When they get

12:22

in a car, so it

12:24

can be quite hairy driving. And

12:27

so a lot of people were driving to like I drive around,

12:30

but that's just one of the areas of risk

12:32

for people.

12:33

Right. Of the people killed,

12:36

thirty fives a eleven were civilians

12:38

and two SEFs, So most of these were either internal

12:40

security or civilians.

12:43

And I think Robert you were Robert

12:45

and I spoke well while I was there, and Robert

12:47

made a good point about how this like enables

12:50

these non state armed groups like either

12:53

ISIS or like.

12:55

HID that My main concern

12:58

for you while you were there was not the you

13:00

would get hit in an air strike, but

13:02

it was that because

13:05

of the damage done to the security forces

13:07

as a result of the Turkish are strikes,

13:10

you would it would, it would. There's

13:12

there's always been is as cells there right

13:14

that they're they're they've never gotten rid

13:16

of all of them. And periods

13:18

where the A and E. S self administration

13:21

is under attack are the periods in which it's most

13:23

dangerous because it provides

13:25

there's less security forces, you know,

13:27

watching everything. People in general are

13:30

are outless, which provides cover for

13:32

for some of these groups that may want to do like a kidnapping.

13:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's not a place where

13:37

a lot of I guess folks who look

13:40

like memory. That

13:42

was a concern for us, and like it's a concern for these

13:44

people too. Write they still do car

13:47

bombs in derizor not,

13:50

you know that they think still kill civilians. Yeah,

13:52

they roll up IIS people

13:55

on a probably weekly basis, and

13:57

people are interested in getting more information both the drone

14:00

strikes and about what they call sleeper cells.

14:03

The Java Information Center very

14:05

nice people. They have a good

14:07

website. It's Jarva Information Center

14:09

Org, which they produce monthly reports on

14:12

both things, so that will give more information

14:15

on those things. That would

14:17

be a good time to pivot to adverts. But I've

14:21

got all that is. Do you know

14:23

who else provides great services?

14:26

I don't think we can. I don't reasonably

14:28

make that claim.

14:29

The products and services that support this podcast here

14:32

they are.

14:43

We're back and we are discussing

14:46

torone strikes North Asyria,

14:49

I guess not just from North Asyria, like these also happen

14:51

up around Slimani

14:54

sort of many if you're looking on the map, depends

14:57

again on the language. Right, those have

15:00

happened again against

15:03

KSEK, which is like the Kurdistan

15:05

Communities Council, So that would be the

15:09

I guess the the

15:12

that if you look at like Syria,

15:15

Iran, Turkey and Iraq

15:18

as different countries, all of which have

15:21

some administrative control over the nation

15:24

of Kurdish people, right, Kurdish people live in all

15:26

four countries, and they live in other countries too. Of course,

15:29

then the movements in each of those countries

15:31

are subsidiary to the k c K,

15:35

and so some

15:37

of those KTK folks are up in Solimani.

15:40

So like that there will be drowne strikes there, and

15:42

that's that's far inside Iraqi

15:45

Kurdistan. Right, You're you're a long way from the border

15:47

there, and that's that's what these drone

15:49

strikes. I guess.

15:52

The drone strikes allow Turkish

15:54

intelligence in the Turkish military to target people

15:57

much much further inside with with a

16:00

little consequent or risk on their own. Right, these

16:03

drones are largely not being targeted

16:05

because, certainly in an

16:08

Ees, the Autonomous Administration in North Eastyria,

16:11

they don't have the means to target them, right. The United

16:13

States hasn't supplied them with the

16:15

weapons that they would need to shoot

16:17

down those drones, which I think brings me onto

16:20

the role of the US in this and

16:23

I guess, more broadly, the

16:25

role of the coalition in this case.

16:27

Coalition is a coalition to defeat ISIS.

16:30

Right, it's made up of dozens

16:32

of countries, the UK, the

16:34

US, Germany, lots

16:37

of other Western I

16:39

guess countries broadly, and countries

16:42

in that part of the world too, like I think Iraq is

16:44

part of it. Certainly, like Iraqi,

16:47

Kurdistan has done their own operations

16:49

against ISIS sleeper cells, peshmurger

16:52

and like everywhere you go you go through pesh

16:54

mega checkpoints. Like I was going through an area where

16:58

they had arrested and isis

17:00

member the day before, So like

17:03

it's they'll be getting you out

17:05

of the car, you know, going through your bags, looking through

17:07

your stuff. Right, So that's all

17:09

part of the same operation. But the US

17:11

has a base in a place called Alhassaka,

17:13

which again you can look up on the map, right, it's a little

17:16

west. I'm trying to land up my compass here, a

17:18

little west of Camishlo, which

17:21

is a capital of the region, and the

17:23

US pretty much US

17:26

troops don't do a great amount of leaving

17:28

that base. It's fair to say they'll

17:30

come out in helicopters. They were going out

17:32

like sort of supporting SDF

17:37

patrols in the Ahaska region, but they were

17:39

supporting them from the air.

17:40

Right.

17:41

They generally aren't going

17:43

out and about like with people

17:45

on the ground, talking to people unless it's a specific

17:48

mission, which they do sometimes you

17:50

can if people are interested in like the US

17:52

presence. It's called Operation Inherent

17:54

Resolve, And they have a Twitter account whether sometimes post

17:57

themselves doing things. But what they

17:59

don't do is protect that and

18:01

So the US and the Autonomous Administration

18:04

are allies in this fight against ISIS,

18:06

right, but they are only

18:09

allied in this fight against ISIS. The

18:11

US is not supporting them in

18:14

defending themselves from drone strikes or like

18:16

ensuring that a civilian population

18:19

is protected from those attacks. So the US

18:21

has the capacity to shoot down these drones,

18:24

and they prove that by shooting one down last

18:27

week or the week before. I'm a little

18:29

bit jet lagged, a bit bangledo on time, but I

18:32

think it was last week the US shut

18:34

down a Turkish drones that came out

18:36

two weeks ago for when this is airing,

18:39

Yes, yeah, sure, good point. Yeah.

18:41

So yeah, two weeks ago the United States shut down and

18:44

F sixteen shut down a Turkish

18:46

drone. So specifically,

18:48

it was a drone called an a Kinji, which

18:51

is a newer variant of the Bairaktar

18:53

drone. We've spoken about these drones before, right,

18:55

they're the drones that people like,

18:58

I know, you can go on actually by a stuffy

19:00

version of these drones, which rights that's

19:03

concerning.

19:04

Yeah, it's really dystopian

19:07

and crazy.

19:08

I don't like it. Yeah, I

19:11

do not like it either. I think it illustrates

19:14

the way the war in Ukraine has become like a football

19:16

match for some people, yeah yes, or

19:19

like a film where like I just want to reinforce

19:21

it.

19:21

Like it's turned into like fandom.

19:23

Yeah yes, yeah, I think that's an excellent way

19:25

of putting it. Garasay, Like, it's

19:27

not cool when anyone gets fucking drone struck.

19:30

It's not cool when like everyone

19:33

in an area spends every night

19:35

worrying if death

19:38

is going to come from the sky at some point, right

19:40

Like, the effect of these drones trucks

19:42

isn't just on the people killed, or the people injured,

19:44

or even the infrastructure. The effect is on

19:47

every single person worrying

19:50

what's going to happen tonight? Right Like, And I

19:52

can speak to a tiny part of that experience.

19:54

Right Nothing compared to what people are living there have gone through

19:56

at all, But it's a concern every

19:59

time it gets dark, you know, well it

20:01

it's tonight then, I especially for the rural folks

20:03

who might be living in a rural area but near to a

20:05

substation, or near to one of those

20:07

nodding donkeys or other infrastructure

20:10

which has been targeted, or near a cooking

20:12

gas plant, right those things I can imagine explode

20:14

with quite some force. They

20:17

can't leave, right, they can't just up and and

20:19

not live near any infrastructure. Infrastructures what allows

20:22

the place to be survivable for civilians. So they

20:24

just have to live with this

20:26

constant fear. And

20:28

it's very odd to see that and

20:31

then simultaneously see this this sort

20:33

of deification of drone strikes

20:35

that are happening in Ukraine and like this,

20:38

you know, people with dog dressed

20:40

as Napoleon Twitter avatars, Yeah,

20:44

cheering someone's kid dying.

20:46

Yeah, I mean throughout all of the

20:49

kind of new conflicts we've had the past

20:52

five years, like the and especially

20:54

the past like two three years, Like the idea

20:57

of like politics as fandom has

21:00

produced some of the like most like inhumane,

21:03

gross aspects

21:05

of how people have been like consuming

21:07

social media and just the sheer. It's

21:10

like people forget that this is like thousands

21:13

of people's actual, like human lives that they're

21:16

like meaming about, and it's

21:18

it just it just becomes just

21:21

they talk about it in the same way they talk about like a Marvel

21:23

movie or like a star sport like it's

21:25

it's it's yeah, or sports like it's it

21:28

it it it's like this weird like gamified.

21:31

It allows you to to approach

21:35

these things from a just a from a very

21:37

separate perspective when you're when

21:39

you're viewing it from like this fandom angle, I

21:42

think. But politics is fandom in general. I think

21:44

it's gotten a whole lot worse since the Trump era,

21:46

YE had, you know, like that's where we had like resistance

21:49

libs that were like copying

21:51

off some of the stuff from the New Star

21:53

Wars trilogy, which is kind of the inspiration for a

21:55

lot of their stuff. We got Nazis doing

21:57

a whole bunch of politics as fandom as well. It

22:01

just creates like it's it's it's like this team sports

22:04

like fandom thing that is just pervate.

22:07

It's it's it's it's seeped into like almost every

22:09

single aspect of like not just politics,

22:11

but now like conflict and like geopolitics.

22:15

It's like whoever has the best branding is the one that

22:17

has the best chance.

22:20

Yeah, and it's I don't know, it's it's

22:23

it's disturbing to watch.

22:24

I I don't know how to like counter counter

22:27

it, because it feels like the more you

22:29

engage the further sucked into

22:31

the abyss you become. But

22:34

it also doesn't feel good to just like ignore it as well, because

22:37

it's just it's like, it feels like this kind

22:39

of endless trap that is just a

22:41

part of existing in this

22:43

weird postmodern internet world.

22:46

Yeah, I don't know. I think like one

22:49

would hope that the Internet in some ways

22:51

could help us see that, like at the

22:53

end of every drone strikes a little fucking child

22:56

most of the time, or like like I spent

22:58

some time last week with the family who almost

23:00

exactly one year ago lost their fifteen year old turn

23:02

in a drone strike, and like it that,

23:06

Like I understand people die

23:08

in these things, like on an intellectual level

23:10

and even on a personal level, like having spent

23:12

time in these places for a decent

23:15

amount of my life, But fuck

23:17

me, it's just like it destroyed you.

23:19

Like seeing a mum bury her son cry

23:22

for her little boy. It's fucking heartbreaking,

23:24

and like I got

23:27

to live that for one morning, and those people live

23:29

that every single day and

23:31

every time, like and I don't,

23:33

I don't know, it makes me want to shout at people when

23:36

I see this.

23:37

I don't actually think it's I

23:41

don't mean to be a doomer here. I don't think it's a solvable

23:43

problem. Yeah, this

23:45

is we are talking about it within the language

23:47

of fandom because that is kind

23:49

of the defining public social

23:52

relationship of our time. But

23:54

like this is always what people

23:56

have done to watch, sure one way or

23:58

the other. Right, Yeah, it's faster

24:01

now and and more commercial,

24:04

right, like one thing for whatever reason, I think

24:06

just because we're a culturated to it. Hearing

24:08

people talk about, you know, doing what they

24:10

do in times of war because of patriotism,

24:13

because of nationalism, because of belief in

24:15

the founding principles of their country, seems

24:19

a little bit less coarse than

24:22

like doing it because you fell in

24:24

with a bunch of memers who use little dog avatars

24:26

and shit. But like, I don't know, it's

24:29

it's not like less logical

24:32

than yeah, being right

24:34

or die, because like you happen to be

24:36

born under you know so and

24:38

so the king.

24:40

Yes, yeah, yeah, and like that

24:43

dehumanization. I think the difference,

24:45

like to me is like so

24:48

like Robert and I have bose experiences, right to in

24:51

order to kill somebody, you have to dehumanize

24:53

them. To kill people on mass you have to do that on mass

24:56

right, if you're fighting a war, it

24:58

doesn't behoove you to make it sound like we're

25:00

killing people.

25:01

Ge.

25:01

Well that's the thing that we do on the podcast, Robert,

25:04

Yeah, we kill people in maths.

25:06

Yeah.

25:06

Yeah, sure, you're going to have to school.

25:09

A zone is where we talk about the killings. If

25:11

people want to subscribe, that's what we do instead

25:13

of adverts, is we list the people we've killed.

25:16

Yeah, James as the as the quote on your Blue

25:18

Sky account says, one death is a tragedy,

25:21

one million is a statistic James

25:23

Stout.

25:24

Yeah, yeah, that's right, and

25:26

it's every every

25:28

day I strive to get

25:30

my number up, you know, but so

25:33

far I've let everyone down. That's not true. And

25:36

to my knowledge, none of us have killed anyone but your

25:39

knowledge, to my knowledge, yeah, Sharen's

25:41

probably got some bodies in the in the

25:43

class, you know, Jesus Christ. It's

25:58

so what I want to to say is that like when

26:01

yeah, like if you're in the military,

26:03

you probably know this, right, like like this sort of

26:05

blood makes a grass grows, shit, fine,

26:08

whatever, Like that's how wars work. War

26:10

is undesirable, it's horrible. You have to be

26:12

horrible. You have to you have to dehumanize

26:14

people to kill them. You don't have to

26:16

fucking do that if you're on Twitter dot com.

26:19

But like people, you

26:21

know, people with the silly dog advatars chiefly, but

26:23

other people to have begun to see themselves

26:25

as like participants in conflict in

26:28

a way that they maybe didn't. Maybe

26:30

they did and I just wasn't around in the second world.

26:32

Yeah, No, I think I

26:35

think that does tie into part of how the fandom things

26:37

works, because a part of participating in fandom

26:39

is being in these kind of very very

26:42

alienating online spaces. Because any type of like

26:44

engagement on the Internet in this way is fuel

26:47

through the process of alienation. But when

26:50

that kind of starts applying to politics,

26:53

you feel like either the act of consuming or

26:56

or like you know, joining in on conversation

26:59

is itself like a form of activism. By

27:02

just like just through like a consuming or sharing

27:05

content, you feel like you're actually participating in

27:07

the thing itself.

27:09

Yeah, And I think some of it's this almost narcissistic

27:12

need to not let

27:14

the world pass you by because it's there.

27:17

There's something deeply uncomfortable about

27:19

just like watching massive things happen

27:21

and realizing like there's nothing I can do about

27:24

this. Yeah, to feel

27:27

there isn't a lot of the time, right, like your

27:30

your take, you know, the the instant a

27:32

hospital gets attacked in Gaza, your

27:35

your take on that is is

27:38

not particularly helpful or necessary

27:41

unless your I don't know Joe

27:44

Biden, right, but

27:47

which is not. I don't think his take was helpful, but right,

27:50

it was like it had an impact because he's the president,

27:53

but like most of us were just kind

27:55

of part of the churn, And

27:57

there's almost there's like a degree of emotional need

28:00

to it, especially when you see these horrible footage

28:02

of bodies piled high. Right, you feel like I'm

28:04

a bad person if I don't do something,

28:07

and the only thing I can do is tweet or

28:10

whatever your social.

28:11

Media, I feel like I just just to play Devil's

28:13

advocate for hot sake. I think it's a little

28:15

different when there's so much conflicting

28:19

information, especially I mean, like the Gaza think is

28:21

a great example. Because the

28:23

electricity is out, they don't want them to share

28:26

anything. So I think when it comes to something

28:28

like that, it's more about like spreading awareness

28:31

versus like having a take. In my opinion. It's

28:33

more just like, hey, the news might

28:35

say this, but this is from the actual person

28:38

on the ground telling you what's happening. So

28:40

I think there's a little bit of nuance

28:43

because I also think the only reason that like,

28:46

like just for Palestine for example, just is we don't

28:48

have to go into it too much. But a huge reason

28:50

why there's so much more support

28:53

for the Palestinian movement is because of social

28:55

media.

28:56

Yeah, so definitely, Yeah, people see people

28:58

in gods are as people now, not as statistics

29:01

or just through the lens of hamas

29:03

or whatever.

29:04

Like yeah, yeah, I mean it depends.

29:06

I think it depends on how you

29:09

do it. And like, I mean, it

29:11

is it is accurate to say that to

29:13

a significant extent, the ultimate

29:16

outcome of these conflicts are determined

29:19

in large part due to public sympathy,

29:21

right Like, That's going to be probably

29:24

true of, however, things that ultimately

29:26

shake out in Gaza, And it's

29:29

certainly been true of the conflict

29:31

in Ukraine, right Like, the degree

29:33

to which weapons keep flowing to that country

29:36

is going to be heavily based on the degree to which

29:39

sympathy for that cause

29:42

remains among US tax payers and taxpayers

29:44

in other countries that are sending them those weapons. That's

29:46

going to have an impact on the presidential election maybe,

29:51

I mean that is the other thing, right that, like everyone

29:54

who is engaging with this stuff via

29:57

social media, the

30:00

a tendency to get caught up in a bubble in terms of just

30:02

thinking about how much this is on the mind of

30:04

like American voters. Maybe it'll be

30:06

different this election, but generally, like

30:09

again, my feelings on this are kind of muddle, but like

30:11

very very often, no matter

30:13

how big a deal a story is, you

30:17

know, online and stuff, American voters

30:20

rarely vote based on foreign policy concerns.

30:22

Yeah, tends to be elections, I want to say.

30:25

I'm not saying that's what matters morally. I'm

30:27

just talking about, like you're totally correct. Yeah,

30:29

yeah, and especially in terms of your ability

30:32

to influence something, it doesn't matter how much other

30:34

people don't. An election time, I want to

30:36

maybe finish up. I've just knocked over bottle of os

30:38

of procol alcohols. My office is

30:40

rapidly becoming yourself.

30:45

That's why I went to turn on the fan and open the door.

30:48

Good times. So maybe

30:51

I want to finish up before I evacuate by

30:54

saying that that it's something

30:56

you can do, and like it's to give your time and

30:58

money. I know that doesn't feel as good as like,

31:01

yeah, you know, trying to do amateur ocin on

31:04

Reddit. But you can help,

31:06

actually, like and you can make a meaningful

31:08

difference with a few bucks. And I know I sound

31:10

like an NPR advert now, but like the

31:13

rajarv of Information Center has some good resources,

31:16

and like they they have, I'm

31:19

not going to read them because it's very complicated, like I say, it's

31:21

bank transfer information. But if

31:23

you feel helpless, you are not, Like you

31:25

can do a lot with a little. You can raise

31:27

money, you can help to organize

31:30

donations, right that, Like these

31:32

things make a difference. If someone who doesn't have

31:34

water now gets a palette of bottled water, that

31:37

makes a difference. If someone gets a heater

31:39

for their home, that makes a difference. If

31:41

even if it's someone whose kid has died, right

31:44

like, making their life a little less

31:46

painful in a physical sense, rightly helping

31:48

them be warm at night, that does make a difference.

31:50

And you can do that. And if

31:53

you want to make a difference, I would really encourage

31:55

you to do whatever it is, and it

31:57

doesn't have to be here, right, it's had that like that,

32:00

Like there's an ethnic cleansing happening in Azerbijan,

32:03

there is an ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza,

32:06

right, Like these are places where like you

32:08

can show meaningful solidarity and support

32:11

with a little bit of a donation or

32:13

a fundraiser. Right, it's happening at our fucking border,

32:15

right, Like someone died at our border since I last

32:17

recording. Someone else got run over

32:20

by some chat in the truck. Like,

32:23

you can make a difference in a meaningful way

32:26

with actions, And it's really easy to

32:28

get sucked into like just posting into the void

32:30

and feeling helpless. But like there

32:32

are helpful things you can.

32:34

Do and yeah, yeah,

32:36

and you don't have to just you

32:39

don't have to be like rich or have a lot of disposable

32:41

income to do this. There's a lot of like traditionally

32:45

anarchist communities have put on benefit

32:47

shows to run to fundraise

32:50

from an entire community. So

32:53

that's not just you trying to you know, you

32:55

know, put like your few pennies aside.

32:58

There's there's ways, there's ways to do this that

33:00

just involve you actually like

33:02

getting involved with your like local culture,

33:06

and a part of that is like it's not politics

33:08

as fandom, it is metapolitics. It's

33:10

where you actually put your politics into your into

33:13

your actual everyday life and it influences

33:15

the friends you have, the communities you have. So

33:18

whether that's you know, a whole bunch of trans

33:20

musicians doing a benefit show to get

33:23

donations to send over to Rajava

33:25

or send over to to Gaza, or

33:27

you know, there's a lot of other sorts

33:30

of things that that is

33:32

a way of actually having part of your

33:34

politics be not just like consumption have

33:37

not it's not just like Twitter accounts

33:39

with flags and your avatar. It's

33:41

actually like living your life in a way

33:44

that matches the things that you believe.

33:46

And I think that that like, sorry, having

33:49

spoken to people in more Java, in the Yepigay

33:51

and the Yepijay and these other organizations,

33:53

Like one of the things that makes them distinct from other

33:55

militaries is that they are building

33:58

the well they want to see. They're fighting against

34:00

the thing that's killing it right like they're destroying it.

34:03

Like a lot of times we'll see leftist military is not exactly

34:06

doing the equality that

34:08

leftism is about. One hopes. So

34:11

like you can participate in that,

34:14

as Garrison said, right, by doing the mutual aid,

34:16

by doing the benefit, sure, by doing the fundraiser,

34:18

Like you are making a world in

34:20

which this shit will happen less

34:23

when you do things to stop it happening or to

34:25

ease the pain of it happening. Now. So and

34:28

you're building communities, right and in strong communities

34:30

are more resilient to this shit. Yeah, And

34:33

like things are getting pretty bleak

34:36

and we're only going to get through them by helping each

34:38

other and so building a network that continue.

34:40

Like if I think about how much better the

34:42

mutual aid response has been this time to what's

34:44

happened at the border compared to what it was in May,

34:47

that's because people built networks didn't

34:49

go away, and it was good in May

34:51

in part because we built networks that help

34:54

to make being on housed in San Diego feel

34:56

be survivable. Right, And like those

34:59

networks to resilient and they're

35:02

flexible that they and they help

35:04

us like mentally process all the horrible

35:06

shit and also physically help people. So

35:09

yeah, you have that within your means too, Right,

35:11

you have a signal on your telephone, like you

35:14

can organize things. I don't

35:16

have to feel helpless, but I

35:18

feel dizzy due to the I suprise but

35:20

alcoholic that has feeled. So maybe

35:23

that's a wonderful time to end the All right,

35:25

everyone, James is going to

35:27

hallucinate in his office,

35:29

and you, I hope, are going

35:32

to hallucinate wherever you happen to be right

35:34

now. Enjoy the

35:36

better world. Hallucinate the

35:39

better world. It might be the only way to live

35:41

through one wonderful

35:43

podcast. To Garrison Davis's everyone, Hi,

35:48

it's me James. You thought

35:50

I died, but I have not. I survived

35:52

the uproble alcohol fumes.

35:55

I wouldn't advise doing that to yourself. Very unpleasant,

35:57

But I'm back just to update you. We recorded

35:59

that last week and I am

36:01

recording this today before this goes out. So I'm

36:04

recording this on the afternoon of Monday, the twenty

36:06

third of October. I just wanted to update

36:08

everyone. As Robert mentioned

36:10

in the show, the

36:14

weakening of the Sae Shrint

36:16

and the fact that people are not

36:18

able to be out and about because of these drones strikes,

36:21

combined with the events in Israel

36:23

and Palestine in the last couple of weeks,

36:26

have resulted in a significant uptake in violence

36:29

in the area. So I just wanted to update

36:31

you on that, especially as I've seen a decent amount

36:33

of misinformation which will be shocking

36:35

to many of you on Twitter dot com. So there

36:38

have been a series of rocket and uav

36:40

UV and manned aerial vehicle

36:43

right drones drone attacks on US

36:46

bases across the north of Iraq

36:48

and across Syria. So

36:51

some of those happened to Altant, which is further south. Some of

36:53

them happened to Al Hassaka. Some

36:55

of them also happened to oil pipelines.

36:57

And I would be very wary of people posting,

37:00

which is are big fires and claiming that there

37:02

are attacks at the US Bass. Every

37:04

time I've seen that, it's actually been an attack on an oil pipeline,

37:07

and either the person doesn't know that

37:09

that's not a US base or they are willfully

37:11

being leading to try and get more clicks. People get

37:13

paid on Twitter for engagement now, so I'm

37:16

quite cynical about people's reasons for doing that. But there

37:19

definitely have been attacks that they have not

37:21

resulted in much loss of life. One contractor

37:24

I believe did lose their lives due

37:26

to Carliac incident that happened when

37:28

they were sheltering from a what

37:31

turned out to be a false alarm of a drone attack, but

37:33

no one has been directly killed by those drone munitions.

37:36

There have been a number of

37:38

people killed in increasing conflict

37:41

in the area. Both One

37:43

person was killed in Camishlow, very

37:46

very close to where I stayed. Actually you can probably see

37:48

it from my outolium in a car

37:50

bomb, which is not a normal thing

37:52

to happen in the middle of that city, a car bomb going

37:54

off, So that's obviously cosst for

37:56

concern for some people in

37:59

Deir rezor SDF and

38:01

coalition forces have conducted

38:04

a number of operations against ISIS sleeper

38:06

cells who are still there, arrested,

38:08

obtained a number of suspected ISIS members. They've

38:11

also been fighting against Iranian backed militias

38:13

across the Euphrates. We've also

38:15

seen fighting between

38:17

the Peshmerger so that those are the

38:19

military forces of the Kurdis

38:22

down regional government in that area of Iraq

38:24

and the Iraqi Army around

38:27

the Macmaal refugee camp, which is

38:29

a refugee camp for Kurdish people who

38:31

have fled from Turkey, and of course

38:33

we've seen a lot of

38:36

threats, a lot of even fighting inside Iran,

38:39

but it it's generally been an Iranian backed militias

38:42

attacking US bases so far

38:44

across that whole area.

38:47

So I just wanted to update you on those things. Obviously

38:50

we'll keep updating you on them, and also

38:52

to just suggest once again that people verify

38:55

the sources of information because I have seen, especially

38:57

about this area where I think literacy is really

39:00

among the general US populations, and outrageous

39:02

claims being made by people who either don't know what they're talking

39:04

about or are wilfully misleading

39:06

people. So I wanted to counsel people to be concerned

39:10

about that. We don't have exact I don't have exact numbers

39:12

of the numbers of drone attacks. I'm looking at a Pentagon

39:15

press conference that happened thirty nine minutes ago, and

39:17

they're not giving them out there.

39:20

So I have asked them for comment on a couple of things.

39:22

So didn't email me back, very sad ghosting

39:25

me a bit. Yeah, that's the latest information

39:27

on that. I wanted to make sure that we had the leaders update

39:29

for you.

39:34

It could happen here as a production of cool Zone

39:36

Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone

39:38

Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot

39:41

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39:46

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39:50

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